Emperor-for-Life: DeadShop Redux (Unreal Universe Book 6)

by Lee Bond

  Rommen put his head in his hands, hard-core rock and roll hammering at his eardrums and his sanity. If he could hold on until later in the afternoon, when Garth was standing in front of the crowd, with nothing but empty space between him and the inevitable future that waited for him, everything was going to be all right. "What are you talking about?"

  "I," Garth pulled into a parking spot that was nicely empty and perfectly placed right before the bridge, "am talking about that cab."

  "What does a cab have to do …" Rommen didn't have time to finish his question.

  The cab blew up, raining debris and body parts all over the place. Cars on either side of the yellow vehicle caught fire, turning the bridge into a scene out of hell…

  ***

  Rommen blinked. The fire and explosions and death disappeared. The cab was driving down the street, just about to make it onto the bridge, as if nothing had happened. The ex-soldier had seen all kinds of strange things. All soldiers had. All soldiers would until the end of time, because war, war sure as hell wasn't going anywhere at all. War would persist as long as someone had something that someone else wanted, and didn't want to pay for or trade for.

  "What in the fuck?" Rommen sat bolt upright in his seat, head on a swivel. He remembered the explosion. He could still feel the concussive wave from the massive detonation on his skin, his ears could still hear the squeaking of their car's springs, adjusting to the force.

  Garth could barely contain himself. He fucking loved it, loved it, when he was right on the money. He'd always believed that if you were -in his instance- an actual time-traveler now or you were like Rommen, who'd had the top of his skull pulled off and had had some pretty heavy concepts poured into the resultant hole, you'd find yourself on the other side of the normal flow of time.

  And if you were just there, sneaking onto the border of the edge, and you were in the right place at the right time, you got to see something wonderful. Or terrifying. Some kind of in the middle thing.

  "This right here," Garth watched himself blow up again, gauged Rommen's reaction when everything blipped and skipped a jump before resetting itself, "is when I first appeared in the time line, Rommen deShure."

  "But you …" The cab ripped itself to shreds, the scene wavered, then started over again, "you died. Are dying? Keep dying? I don't … this is …"

  Garth made explosive noise with his mouth, eerily mimicking the very same sounds rattling their car over and over again. "Fucked up is what it is. But yeah. I do keep dying. Technically speaking, I think I died something like four hundred times? I'm not real sure. I lost track and let's be honest here, it's kinda sort of an experience that's just not really good to dwell on, right?"

  "…" Rommen was at a loss for words. He supposed he'd always been peripherally aware that Garth was either impossible to kill or that he had some sort of reboot switch, but seeing it in action.

  What made him think he could affect something that a time-traveler couldn't?

  It didn't matter. He had to make the effort. He would make the effort, he would be successful. Garth had made the mistake by announcing that he was no longer traveling through time, that everything he was doing was locked into the here and now.

  "Why do you keep blowing up?" It was best to ignore the unkillability of Garth Nickels and focus more instead on the vibrant and splashy death the man was enduring every few minutes. Was this Baron Samiel, or was this someone else?

  "Mmmm." They were almost to the end of his continued explosive debut into the 21st century simulation, which was nice. Personally, Garth was more excited than anything to get into the next bit because now he was on the other side of The Line, his personal experiences of this moment made a lot more sense.

  How much to reveal? Would it matter?

  Garth supposed it had more to do with how Rommen would react once he knew.

  "Mmmmm." Yeah, why not. The guy was already on board with the concept of time travel, so why not stretch Rommen's world view just a little wider? It'd help him come to grips with things … a few hours from now. "Because when I initially came here, to this place, this place … didn't really want me here. I was determined to be anathema, and my case of Sudden Onset Exploding Cab Car was the Universe's response."

  A bit of a fib, but better than the alternative. Rommen might be on board with time travel, but coming face to face with concepts like 'Gods' that were real would definitely send him careening into Crazy Town with a free pass to Straight Jacketsville.

  "The Universe… the first time … what?" Thankfully, a combination of the ceaselessly erupting cab and Garth's highbrow concepts were working dutifully to drown out the heavy rock and roll, otherwise Rommen was sure his head would split wide open. "What do you mean?"

  "Time travel isn't a thing that's supposed to be." Garth nodded minutely when Rommen's posture relaxed. Everyone could agree with that. "And so … the Universe, or causality, or time line, or whatever you want to call it worked to remove me from the field of play. But then, I proved just as difficult to kill then as now."

  "This isn't the first time you've been here?" The cab, exploding. Over and over again. If you squinted, you could just barely make Garth out, dying, one second after another, continually roasted alive. Over and over and over.

  Who could handle something like that? Who came out the other side even remotely normal? Garth was a far cry from normal, sure, but at the same time and for the most part, he was on an even keel.

  "Nope." Garth pointed at the cab, drawing Rommen's attention. "Watch close now. This time or the next time, I figure shit out. Anyways, I've done all of this before. Very differently, of course, but yeah. I've been here before. Doing battle with Baron Samiel. I've been … ahem … encouraged to do all of this in a more satisfactory manner. Hence, the Good Samaritan tech savvy approach instead of the 'fuck everything, let's kill you all' deal that I'm more comfortable with."

  The cab seemed to erupt into metal slivers and shattered glass with a great deal more enthusiasm than every other time.

  Rommen found his words easily this time. "You're here against your will? Someone is making you do all this?"

  "Uh…" Across the street, on the bridge, a certain black haired, blue eyed maniac with a lopsided grin that made everyone either distrust him immediately or regret their choices in life later on down the road finally managed to get out of the cab. "Different story for a different time. Look at me go! Wooop!"

  Rommen watched Garth move warily through the chaos, entire body lit with flame. The ex-soldier knew it was just perspective and positioning, but from where the two of them sat, it was hard to separate the image of a devil straight from Hell from what was really going on. "You got out."

  "It was inevitable, really." Garth turned the car back on and angled his way into traffic. "I pointed out that me dying in a cab on a bridge wasn't nearly as exciting as everything else that'd happen after that point, and wiser heads prevailed. Ooops! There I go, right over the bridge and into the water! Fuck that was annoying."

  Head reeling from … well, from all of it, Rommen found purchase in Garth diving over the edge. "Why did you do that?"

  "Cops. On the other side. Didn't have my cover set up properly, didn't want to run the risk of getting stuck in another live, die, repeat horseshit scenario." Garth angled himself on the path to getting to the park where things got really weird. Rommen's noggin was sure to implode at that point. "Anyways, this next part is super dope. Gonna fuck you right up. It'll be fun."

  "Fun." The word tasted like ashes in Rommen's mouth. “Fun.”

  “Oh yeah, for sure.” Garth grinned like the madman he was feeling like these days. Being trapped inside your own head for two months or so did a lot to a guy’s perspective, and it was time to let loose a little bit.

  Besides which, the resultant shock to Rommen’s system might just have the opposite effect, which, all things considered, would be a better way to end the day’s proceedings.

  The time-traveler put the gear into a h
igher gear and sped up, humming along to the radio as if there was nothing particularly wrong or strange or even unusual about their day out and about, while Rommen was unable to take his eyes off the scene of the car explosion; the cab had still gone up, the bridge was still a scene right out of Hell itself, with people dying on all sides and more cars destined to go up like four thousand pound bombs made of glass and steel and rubber.

  Rommen had never felt more comfortable with a decision in his life. Had other people in similar circumstances –well, okay, perhaps not similar similar, but…- ever struggled with their choice as he had, only to receive confirmation that what they were doing was the right step to make?

  Time would prove him right.

  ***

  “You know,” Garth looked around him, positively beaming with delight, “on the other side of things, from a different perspective, goddamn is it a beautiful day.”

  Rommen absorbed the data from his smartphone and tucked it back into a pocket. Five dead on the bridge, thirty wounded, four cars totalled and a complete lockdown of the bridge itself for who knew how long while cleanup crews toiled with the misery left behind by one man’s arrival in the time line.

  The cost of Garth’s presence in the 21st century grew even higher. It was a disgrace.

  “Why are we on the beach?” Rommen was unaccountably warm, pushing his way through the sand in his combat boots. He hated to admit it, but Rommen felt like he’d been Stateside for too long. Birchcreek or Gambelson or even Gagachuk would be right at home on this beach with Nickels, who’d dressed perfectly for both the weather and the conditions; in board shorts, running shoes and a Changetech t-shirt, his employer and total madman fit in one hundred percent, while everyone and their half-nude granddaughter was staring at him like he was the crazy person.

  “Uhh, look around, bro? There are, like, chicks in bikinis everywhere?” Garth couldn’t believe his ears. “How about you unclench the old security personality for, like, half a second or so? I guarantee that for the next,” Garth checked the specially made watch on his wrist for the time, “four hours or so, there isn’t going to be a single threat on my life. Well. My life. My life, yeah, still under pressure.”

  Woodenly, Rommen stammered, “I don’t know what’s going on here. And it’s making me uncomfortable.”

  Garth whistled low. “How much did that cost you to admit?” Then, when Rommen stiffened mid-stride, he made a hasty apology, adding, “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just trying to drive home what’s at stake here, what can be done when time-travel is in the mix. Everything you and I are going through today, Samiel went through something similar, then figured out a way to actually remove himself from The Line while still having everything he’d done happen.”

  Rommen and Garth skirted a fairly large sandcastle being worked on by a feverish eight year old; hopped up on a combination of more caffeine than was good for a kid his age and the lax parenting skills of the adults nearly twenty feet away, anyone getting too close to the well-crafted castle would find themselves on the wrong end of a spasticated child’s flailing bucket and spatula.

  “Give me a for instance.” Dealing with these kinds of concepts was one thing, asking Garth for a Layman’s For Instance was another thing entirely; as much as the man had a brain as big as the whole planet, he was extraordinarily adept at boiling things down to their core components, transforming highbrow ideas into nuggets that were easily digestible.

  When he felt like it. He still listened to their illicitly recorded conversation regarding the quintupled GPS bands, and it sounded like something a fifth year Quantum physicist would play when he was trying to get some damn sleep.

  Garth grabbed an invisible object and twisted it back and forth, literally creating a scenario in his head. “Okay. Let’s cover the reality of this kind of travel first. Firstly, you’ve got to experience time like an ordinary dude. You wake up, you do stuff, you go to sleep. The next day, same thing. For like, however the fuck long.”

  Rommen narrowed his eyes. “That sounds…”

  “Like a load of bullshit, yeah. You ain’t wrong. I mean, I did it for two months and holy shit, bro, it was a lot longer than that for me at the end.” No point in mentioning how long. Then questions like ‘why don’t you look older’ would start falling out of Rommen’s mouth and besides which, Earlier Garth was about to rise up out of the water, not looking like Daniel Craig so much as Homeless But Soggy Handsome Drifter. “So, you got that in your head? Samiel has already lived through all of this. For who knows how long. Running around, doing stuff, affecting The Line, buying hamburgers and making Macaroni and Cheese and all that shit.”

  “What about messing with peoples’ lives?” Rommen demanded darkly.

  “Oh yeah, for sure. Definitely fucking with people. You know how it goes. Samiel’s a dick. Anyways, yeah. So, we fast forward to a point in time somewhere in the future, with our man Sam sitting at the controls, and he’s thinking, ‘Boy, I sure do need to remove myself from The Line now because now I’m messing with the past like this, the me back then is feeling kind of … vulnerable’. Make sense?” Garth continued when Rommen nodded with an altogether too shrewd look in his eyes. “So what he does, and I bet it took way longer to accomplish than was good for his health, right, is, like, start manipulating events and people. To make the things he did happen by someone else. So The Line’s history of, erm, historical events? Whatever. The Line is satisfied. Everything happened like it happened even though one little detail got scrunched out. Instead of him buying a loaf of bread at the supermarket and making some kind of awkward comment about the price of cheese, some rando peep does it. Everyone at the supermarket experienced it, they react the same way as always, ‘nuff said.”

  Rommen was at the edge of the rope in terms of understanding, but he held on to the explanation. It made a kind of sense, he supposed. “And then he just erased himself. How?”

  That kind of power … it was deadly. Someone outside time, looking in through a window, reaching out and changing someone’s entire life to suit their purpose, all without repercussion, without being caught, without being stopped … no one should hold onto that.

  “Fucked if I know, dude.” Garth eyeballed a cute twenty-something in a very revealing bikini before pointing at the water. “Oh, check this out, man, here I come in all my soggy glory.”

  Rommen followed Garth’s finger until his eyes fell on … Garth Nickels, rising up out of the water, soaked head to toe and looking as furious as anything. He chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Across the beach, about forty feet from where they stood, Earlier Garth was just getting into the conversation with Fat Shirtless Beach Guy.

  “This. That. You.” Rommen pointed, still laughing a bit breathlessly. “It’s just I’ve never seen you irritated before. Or without a plan. You just look so miserable.”

  “Bro,” Garth said sagely, “I’ve always got a plan. And the miserable thing? I just spent the majority of a personally experienced day being blown right the fuck up, and literally the first thing I get to do when I figure out a way to stop from being blown up is jump from a super high bridge into super cold water. Then I swam like who knows really how far, and now some fat guy … look at his stomach, Rommen, that thing looks as solid as a car tire … is making me feel all sorts of awk.”

  “You could always remove yourself from The Line.” The suggestion came out snider than intended, but once the words were out, Rommen couldn’t help but feel a bit better.

  The suggestion was ludicrous. Garth snorted, rolled his eyes and then shook his head, all so his friend got the point. “That’d take, like, ten thousand years, man. I interact with waaaay to many people on this here beach. In order to satisfy The Line of events, I’d need to check out every single man, woman and child’s personal lives from this moment until some indeterminate point in the future where their exposure to me begins to wane. In a few cases, that could be a day, a month, or a year. Depending. I come into contact with about a
hundred people in the next little bit. C’mon. Gotta get a good spot. It’s fucking hilarious.”

  “That seems like a stupid thing to do.” Rommen followed after Garth. “Why would you do that? Didn’t you already know you’d be in control of The Line like Samiel?”

  “Well, no, I didn’t. This whole trip is like a bonus round for me. Very unexpected, incredibly useful. There’s probably going to be payback in the next little while. You know how it goes. And besides,” Garth winked at Rommen, who was looking worse for wear, “that wasn’t my goal.”

  “What is … was … your goal?”

  “You’ll see.”

  ***

  “You look like a fucking crazy person.”

  “Wow. Way to pull the punches there, Rom.” Garth was playing the part of wounded duck, but the fact of the matter was, Earlier Garth, trying to make everyone in earshot understand that the world in which they lived was an illusion, did indeed look like a fucking crazy person.

  Rommen pointed at Earlier Garth, who was running around the enclosure like a man on drugs, desperate to find someone to trip with him. “Do you not see yourself?”

  “Relax, pal.” Garth raised a hand to slow Rommen’s particular roll right then. “The behavior is part of a plan to get me to the next part of the day, which is more imp … oh. Hold on. Watch this. This is going to be fucking awesome. It’s not yellow! It’s orange!”

  Rommen slapped Garth across the shoulder. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Don’t do that!”

  Amused, Garth demanded, “Why not?”

  “Because that’s you!”

  “Yeah, I know.” Garth made a gesture that was the non-verbal equivalent of saying ‘that’s the whole point’. “Looook, calm down. Over There Me doesn’t do anything about Over Here Me because I never did the first time, when I was OTM. Hah! Here comes the next bit. Fuck this is fun! They look for aliens. I know because I was watching this movie where this guy was doing that, and he found them, and they thought he was the king of the planet or … no, that was another movie. The movie with SETI had a girl, and she was…”