The universe twists and convulses. It tears me apart, atom by atom, then reassembles me in, as far as I can tell, the original matrix. It sucks. Time travel always sucks.
I land on a dirty sidewalk, in a dirty alley, in a dirty puddle of light. As always, I drop to a knee and catch myself with one fist. It’s kind of my thing.
You stole it from that Terminatrix movie, the Cat Lady purrs in my head.
And my perfect entrance is ruined. I don’t bother to correct the name. Why waste my time?
It’s 1941. Outside the military base known as “Pearl Harbor.”
Someone is messing with the timeline, and it’s my job to find out who.
The name’s Decker. Bobby Decker. And I’m a dick.
Here in 1941, that’s local-speak for “private detective,” but I’d be willing to lay down money there are plenty of folks who’d argue all definitions apply. I’m in a crappy neighborhood near the base. Didn’t know Hawaii had crappy neighborhoods, figured it was all palm trees and men in grass skirts.
You never do your homework, the Cat Lady growls in my head. She’s my boss. Feline woman from a species that evolved from cats. Go figure.
And she’s right. I rarely need to do the homework. Flying by the seat of my pants is also my thing. But in this case, I spent all my research time figuring out why someone saved Pearl Harbor from attack knowing they’d allow Hitler to beat the US to the Bomb which would end up with the entire planet destroyed by 1961.
Boom.
Time travel is a bitch.
I have a strong hunch They know exactly what They’re doing. In all likelihood, They have a single target. Someone They need to exterminate to preserve their concept of the timeline. And if They are who I think They are, They would destroy an entire planet to fulfill Their goals.
The Time Police. They have a misdirected concept of “maintaining the timeline” and tend to ignore collateral damage. I need to stop Them, find out who They’re after, and then save that individual.
And, possibly, the entire planet. It’s kinda what I do.
“Hey,” someone says behind me. His tone is aggressive.
This is a good thing since all this exposition is boring even for me.
A cop.
“What’s your problem?” He points a gun my way. “You on reefer?”
Well, I am sitting on a suitcase in the back of a dark alley. I reach for my Doohickey.
Timeline, the Cat Lady reminds me. And you can’t vaporize him, anyway.
Oh yeah. My Doohickey still looks like an I-phone from a visit with my doppelganger in the 21st. Likely not the best thing to pull out in 1941.
And I wasn’t going to vaporize him, anyway.
Humph, she sends.
Doohickey, I send to the device. Camouflage.
I hold out a flask.
“Just enjoying payday, occifer.” I slur my words appropriately, holding out the flask. “Businessman on his day off.” I waggle the booze. “The rest is for you.”
He looks around. Holsters his weapon. Grins.
That was easier than it should have been.
And no one died, the Cat Lady points out.
Yeah. That.
Elizabeth Turner of the Galactic Police watches the blip on a holographic map of Pearl Harbor that pinpoints the location of a likely criminal element. Her cruiser stationed itself in geosynchronous orbit over the city when the quantum anomaly first appeared.
A quantum jumper, here on her turf? Blast it to shadows!
And a time traveler no less? The worst kind of jumper! Almost definitely a criminal.
Perfect! Action at last!
“It’s good to see you excited about something, Stuff.” Her husband, Peter Test, stops behind her and rubs her shoulders.
Mm. That feels nice. Humans have an interesting nervous system. It took some adjustment.
Turner and Test are Shifters, as are most of the GP. Shifters are the most advanced species in the galaxy, able to assume the form of any being for whom they have a genetic sample. Saying they’re the most advanced isn’t bragging, really, because it’s true.
But humans? They have more pleasure centers in the brain than most species. Nearly everything feels good in a human outfit.
It can be decidedly distracting.
Anyway, they stand on the control deck of the GP cruiser that Turner commands at a railing that separates the action stations from a circular space where a hologram of the city slowly rotates. Ordinarily, on a ship the size of Turner’s, a much larger crew would bustle around them.
But on this beat? Babysitting a planet so backward the Primitive Planet Protection Pact prohibits any contact whatsoever? Who would waste the time?
So Turner and Test complete the command crew, and the ship’s compliment stands at six. The ship itself handles everything else.
But what in the Shadows would a time traveler want on Earth?
“Who knew getting stuck on this backwater planet could have any perks?” Turner says. Her husband continues his ministrations. Mmmm. “First, a plot to infiltrate the Japanese Army by someone who obviously has extraterrestial tech, and, now, a quantum jumper? We could get promotions from this.”
A 2D screen shows her an image of the jumper.
Then he turns away from the window. Most likely to take off his pants and get drunk. That seems his main pastime. Why in the world would someone travel through time to this exact moment and then waste all his time killing brain cells? Human beings are a puzzle. The 2D screen winks out.
“You think they’re connected?” Peter moves around Turner and into the hologram.
“He’s been here a week,” she says, “right about the time the other guy showed up in Japan and waved his Doohickey around.” It’s almost like he wanted them to notice.
“You ever figure out who the other guy is?” As Peter turns toward her, the lights of the hologram play across his body in a distracting fashion.
She shakes her head. “All his credentials are fake. But good.”
“Alpaca Consortium good?” Peter raises an eyebrow.
“Better.”
Peter whistles. “Cheese-its.”
“Jesus.” Turner smiles, correcting him gently.
“Those, too.” Peter’s gaze returns to the display. “Doohickey, zoom in and scan through into room 2B.”
“Or not to be,” Turner mutters.
Peter points to the screen. “No, it’s 2B. See?”
Poor Peter. He didn’t do his research.
“This is another one of those obscure Earth references, isn’t it?” He looks sourly at her over a shoulder.
She pulls an innocent face and shrugs. So easy.
In an ironically human fashion, he rolls his eyes and gives her his back. “Why you waste time on that stuff, Stuff, I’ll never know.”
The hologram pulls in to street level, zooms on a particular building and a particular window, where it pushes through the walls to reveal a squalid little room and a rather squalid man.
“It pays to be thorough,” Turner says, but the truth is the backward little planet is growing on her. She likes the beaches. And cats. Cats are fun, feral little creatures that remind her of the blanth she had as a child.
“Seems to be most of what he does.” Peter shoves his hands into the pockets of his regulation black pants. It does nice things to his human outfit’s ass.
More distractions!
And he’s right. Bobby Decker, private detective, spent most of his time sitting in his underwear in his hotel room, as if waiting for someone to knock on his door or call him. Drinking. He did a lot of drinking.
Once in a while, he’d go to the beach to walk or swim.
Did he have any friends or compatriots at all?
Except…
“He’s making faces again,” Peter says as if reading her mind.
“Doohickey,” Turner says, “Scan for psychic activity.”
“Of course, Elizabeth,” her Doohickey says. “Low level psychic activity, and a minor quantum field.”
“Quantum?” Peter and Turner say simultaneously, exchanging a look.
“I need to check this out.” Turner looks down at her body. “What do you think of this outfit?”
Peter smiles. Well, of course, he liked any species she wore.
Hmmmm, what clothes to wear?
A knock on the door to my shitty hotel room. Interesting.
A man in my position learns that even though I have unlimited financial resources… they often prevent me from forming the good connections. The slums are often where the best intel resides.
It’s a week after my arrival in 1941, and none of my investigations have panned out.
Maybe this?
I peer through the spyhole. A dame. Why is it always a dame? Nice figure. Skin the color of coffee before the cream and sugar. Lips the color of blood. Good taste in dresses. She wears it well.
“What do you want?” I ask through the door.
She raises one eyebrow in a way that says this is the kind of woman for whom the phrase “femme fatale” was invented.
“I need a dick, Mr. Decker. And I hear you’re the best in town these days.”
She didn’t accentuate the word. Didn’t need to.
“I’ve only been here a week,” I tell her.
“Did I say you were the best in town last week?” She settles into one hip and stares at the door as if she can see through it. “And this is a professional call. Please put on some pants; I’ll wait.”
What? Can she see through the door.
She doesn’t need to be psychic, the Cat Lady tells me, to know a single man in his hotel room wouldn’t likely be wearing pants.
Touché, Cat Lady, touché.
I go for the pants, and, in deference to the period and overall atmosphere, a tie and fedora as well. It’s 1941, and I’m a dick meeting a dame. The fedora seems necessary.
When I open the door, the dame slips past and goes to the window. “The name’s Turner,” she says, “Elizabeth Turner.” She stares out the window, but, unlike most people on the top floor, she looks up, not down, which clues me to the fact that the name isn’t a coincidence.
See… I know Elizabeth Turner. Well, several Elizabeth Turners. She’s a temporal anomaly. Pops up all over the timeline… and yeah, femme fatale about covers it. She’s usually a cop with the Galactic Police, could kill someone with a paper clip from a hundred yards.
“How can I help you, Ms. Turner?” I ask, feigning ignorance since we obviously haven’t met in this 1941.
“I need you to help me find someone,” she obviously lies, still staring at the sky. “My husband.”
Really? Could she have found a worse cliché? Well, extraterrestrials do tend to cling to the clichés. Hmmm. Should I carry on with the charade? Or try the direct approach?
Surprisingly, the Cat Lady in my head has nothing to add, although I almost feel the psychic equivalent of a shrug.
“You mean Peter Test?” I use the most likely name of Turner’s mate in this timeline.
She faces me with death in her eyes as well as the telltale flash of a data lens in the right. Her head tilts forward as she reads the Galactic Police file on me. In most timelines, it’s pretty long… and mostly fabricated by my colleagues in the resistance to mislead the GP wherever I’m embedded.
Turner’s posture changes, becomes less seductive and more professional. “I see you have me at a disadvantage, Mr. Decker. Have we met one another in the future?”
“In the past, in the future…” I gesture sideways with one hand indicating parallel timelines.
Both eyebrows raise in an uncharacteristic expression of surprise. It lasts less than a second, then she glides over to a chair.
“So why are you here?” she asks, sitting. “Now?”
“Why are you here?” I counter. “Now.”
Her eyes narrow. She doesn’t like me. She never does. I’ve known this woman in a score of timelines, in half a dozen shapes, which is few for a Shifter like her.
Thing is, she never likes me. This iteration is younger-seeming than usual. Did she plan on seducing me for intel? If so, she didn’t do her homework either.
The Cat Lady titters.
“I was in orbit monitoring the planet,” she says, “when I noticed a temporal anomaly. I came to investigate and found your ad… thought it an easy way to get… closer.”
The ad. If I really launch into the embedded role, I succeed more often than not. Also, you never know what the cat might drag in.
Turner shifts… er, just her position, not her form.
“And you?” she asks. “Why here? Why now?” She’s helped me before, and, in general, while timelines morph and change… You are who you are.
“We suspect someone changed this timeline to eliminate,” I say, “… a rival.” Close enough to the truth.
“A rival?” she asks with that pointed eyebrow lift.
“Pearl Harbor is meant to be destroyed by the Japanese in a week,” I explain. “Someone who has jumped into this timeline prevents that. Doing so eliminates the entire planet in 1961. Somebody wants someone very, very dead.”
She barely shows it, but it bothers her. What does that mean?
“Pearl Harbor is meant to be destroyed?” she asks, but she isn’t surprised. So, she has information after all. “We wondered. It didn’t make sense.” She reaches into her purse. “Why would the Japanese listen to him?” She digs out a compact… opens it. “But he didn’t have any temporal residue. He had extraterrestrial tech, but no time residue… how could he hide it?”
She opens the compact and an image appears above it: a 2D holographic photo.
A man.
Him.
Fuck.
Fuck him.
Gods damn Leighton Lawes.
I met Leighton Lawes years ago in the middle of a Very Big Problem. Four problems to be exact. Four eight-foot-tall problems of the decidedly insectoid kind that wanted to prevent me from seeing my seventeenth birthday. They were called Hunters, giant armor-plated fleas with enormous claws and even larger laser rifles. They acted as muscle for the Kla’arkians who pretty much owned the planet Earth back then.
I had an old pipe. And a bad attitude.
Both of my options—run away and get shot in the back of the head or storm the Hunters and hope they didn’t know that what I had was just an old pipe—sucked.
“AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!” I charged them, but not so fast that I’d actually close the space. “I’ll fucking kill you all, ya damned dirty bugs!”
The bugs chittered the Hunter equivalent of surprise.
“Halt!” the head bug shouted, holding up a claw. But it didn’t shoot me, which gave me a few seconds to think.
“What is that thing?” it demanded. “It looks like an old pipe.”
“An old pipe?” I grimaced and panted and shifted from foot to foot. Did it look like I was only barely holding back from charging them? “You don’t recognize the Shifter 38 quantum special? All I have to do is touch you with it and FOOM!”
I made an explosive gesture with my arms.
The bugs chittered again, this time even louder.
“Foom?” the head bug asked dryly.
“You EXPLODE!” I repeated the gesture. “Foom.”
One bug took a step away.
“Prove it.” The leader pushed forward the cannon fodder who’d stepped away. Yeah, it shouldn’t have done that. Hunters had no tolerance for fear.
“Foom this one,” the leader said. “If it works, there’s still three of us left to kill you, and one less laser charge for me to waste on this coward.”
Speaking of cowardice, I shifted from foot to foot and wheezed to keep the adrenaline up.
Think, think, think…
Nope.
Nothing.
Gonna die.
Might as well go out in style.
I lunged in a dramatic fencer’s pose, barely touching the carapace of the cannon fodder Hunter.
“Foom.”
The bug’s head exploded!
FOOM!
What the hell? I dove and rolled away, landing in a three-point crouch, scanning for the source of my salvation.
Before the remaining Hunters had a chance to do much more than make noise, all three heads exploded. Foom! Foom! Foom! Red and blue goo sprayed me, but, no, I refused to puke at the idea of giant bug brains in my hair.
Someone saved me?
But who?
And why?
And how?
“Behind you, kid,” said a man’s voice.
Who?
On a dumpster behind me squatted a dark man with longish, floppy hair and a beard, a really nice piece in one hand. He jumped down to the street and held out his free hand. “You have balls, kid; I’ll give you that.”
Still on my knees, I held my pipe across my chest with both hands as a barrier. Sure, he’d saved my life, but who the hell was he?
The man rolled his eyes, grabbed the center of the pipe, and yanked me to my feet. Wow. Stronger than he looked.
“Let’s get out of here.” He checked the screen on the most advanced Doohickey I’d ever seen. “When these locator signals go dead, more bugs will head here. Lots more.” He sidestepped down the street. “They’re like fucking cockroaches that way.”
Something about the guy seemed sincere, the vest and jeans he wore almost a uniform in the resistance. Plus, well, if I had to admit it, he was a looker.
He stopped and held out a hand. “What the hell, kid? You want to be bug food? I didn’t save your frickin’ life just to let the Hunters turn you into a snack.”
Bug food? That got me moving. I grabbed his hand like a little kid about to cross the street.
“The name’s Leighton.” He dragged me forward. “Leighton Lawes.”
He brought me to meet the Cat Lady.
That’s how I didn’t die.
“You know him?” Turner asks for no reason. My expression must make it obvious. “I see.” Innuendo fills her voice.
“Not like that.” I dump more whiskey into my glass. “He was like a big brother. Family. I idolized him.”
“Until?”
I took a drink.
Until? Until he betrayed me. Until I found out he’d been an agent for the Time Police all along, a man I’d literally kept alive once by holding his ribs closed while a primitive Dr. Machine knit them back together.
Money. He’d betrayed us all for money. The worst cliché in the book. Any book.
Hmmm. Perhaps a bit too extravagant, even for film noir.
“If he’s involved,” I tell her, “then this planet will be destroyed without a second thought. That’s what his people do.”
See… the short version? Something Very Bad happens in 2256: the end of every universe in existence. Time travelers can’t get past that date. Absolutely no one. That Event creates a permanent Barrier to anything beyond.
What was the Event?
The stupidest accident in all of eternity.
Doesn’t matter. What matters is a difference of opinion on what should be done about it.
The Time Police were created to keep idiots from messing with the timeline. A noble pursuit, but any noble agency eventually devolves into a bureaucracy whose existence becomes a self-serving reason for their own existence.
In this case, since the Barrier Event exists, like all other temporal events, the Time Police surmise, it must be protected. “How much worse might we make things by preventing it?”
Really? Worse than the end of the multiverse?
Ending… literally… everything.
Anyway, my people, the resistance, think that maybe, oh, who knows, maybe we should try to save every living member of every fucking universe. Maybe that would be a noble cause.
“So this Leighton Lawes works for the Time Police?” Turner asks.
I nod.
“And he would see the entire planet destroyed, because…?”
I shrug. “It’s gotta be because someone on the planet in 1961 comes close to correcting the Barrier Event.”
“They’d destroy an entire planet to do that?”
They’ve done a lot worse.
She sees it in my face, grabs the bottle and pours herself a larger drink than I’d have guessed.
Bam. All in one go. Nice.
“So… I guess we have to stop him.” She holds her glass out to me this time.
“Just like that?” I fill the glass.
“It’s my job to protect the galaxy. Seems that allowing it to be destroyed along with the entire known universe goes against my job description.” She takes the topped-off glass. “Besides which, I’ve grown fond of this little ball of dirt. I’d hate to see it blown up by Nazis.”
Oh yeah. I’d forgotten. Her fondness for the planet causes her some problems down the road. Well, in a couple of timelines, anyway.
After Turner leaves, with a promise to reconvene tomorrow, I mess with the radio that hides my Doohickey. She doesn’t need to know I have this number.
Will Leighton answer? Will the line still exist? I want to believe it will. Over and over, he made me memorize the number because I would never find it electronically or in any quantum field. I had to know the number. It was like Batman’s red phone with Commissioner Gordon.
“Anywhere. Any time. Find a Doohickey and punch in these numbers,” he told me. “You will reach me. No matter what.”
And it worked any number of times when I was a wet-behind-the ears novice and needed a save. Will it still work? What will it mean if it does? And why the hell do I care?
He betrayed me. He should be dead to me.
But I need information.
That’s it. That’s all.
I dial the numbers.
My Doohickey is disguised as a radio. The static sounds all kinds of wrong.
Silence.
More silence.
Fuck. What am I even thinking?
Fuck him. Why even call? Why even…
Click.
I lift the radio from the table. Is he really there…?
“Hey, kid, I’m afraid I’m busy fucking someone right now…”
Heh. That’s him, all right. Might be true. Might not.
“So why not meet me where you jumped into this lousy timeline?” He gives coordinates. “Dress like a tourist. Don’t bring the dame. I don’t trust the GP.”
A pause.
“No matter the water under the bridge, I hope you know I won’t hurt you.”
A dial tone.
I hold the radio to my ear a few more seconds. It’s the closest I’ve been to a man who was tighter to me than anyone in my life. To a man I’ve hated for three years… But if the whiskey makes me honest, I’d give my left nut to see him again.
Maybe he’s changed.
Maybe…
No. I’m on a case. I need intel. Can’t let my affection for the traitor, for the enemy, for the man willing to let the entire planet blow up… I can’t let that interfere.
In a bizarre twist, the Cat Lady is silent.
Even I’m not that much of a bitch, she says quietly. This one’s up to you.
Well said, Cat Lady. Well said.
And thank you.
Purrrrr.
Turner stops on the dingy street outside Decker’s dirty apartment building. She pulls out her compact and opens it, ready to request transport back to the ship.
Laughter, just around the corner…
She purses her lips and looks into the compact mirror this way and that, pretending to check her makeup, as a pair of females, pale skinned and blonde, round the corner. She meets their gaze and smiles.
They scowl and look away. Odd.
No matter. Turner opens her mouth to speak, but a glimpse of her reflection stops her.
Time Police. Some sort of temporal resistance…? And she just happened to stumble into all that? Coincidence? Not likely.
“What a beautiful young woman,” a male voice says behind her. “Would you care to accompany me into the nearby alley for conjugal relations?”
She spins. An adult male, indeterminate age, stands facing her with a sword. Interesting hair, long and ethnic.
“Excuse me?” she says.
The male cocks his head to one side, as if listening to translator microbes. Hm. Offworlder. Likely his first time on this planet. Interesting.
“So sorry.” He smiles. “Into the alley, lady, or you’re fucked.”
Ah! That makes more sense. Aggressive threats are something she knows how to process. Compliance with his demand would afford her time to formulate a plan, so she heads down the alley.
“What do you plan to do with that primitive weapon against an agent of the Galactic Police?” Safely
out of view of the city street, she turns to face her abductor, Doohickey poised to vaporize him if need be.
The male shrugs and lowers his sword.
What? A trap! Had to be!
Blue light swirls around her.
“Fire,” she commands the Doohickey. “Disintegrate.”
A red beam lances out of her Doohickey… but slowly. The beam is visible as a slowly forming line as it leaves the compact and sluggishly wanders toward her abductor.
The man smiles, but slowly. Oh, so slowly….
Time has slowed down. Must have. Time Police.
I’m so sorry to have to abduct you, Agent Turner, a familiar voice says inside her head, but my experiences with you indicate you’d just talk me to death before accepting the inevitable.
Inevitable? And that voice. She knows that voice.
Bobby Decker.
You know what, Decker? she calls out in her mind. You just made the biggest mistake of your life!
Later that day, I stand in the shadows of a familiar alley, an even more familiar laser rifle in hand. I mean, why take chances? Leighton’s old goggles rest inside my Doohickey which is camouflaged as a suitcase.
He gave them to me when he’d pretended to be my brother. Giving them back will let him know I’ve given up on him. That he doesn’t mean anything to me.
Because keeping them all this time, the Cat Lady points out, screams of impersonal detachment.
While she has a point, I preferred her silent treatment.
How the hell could I care at all? He’d tried to kill me, had, in point of fact, killed a hundred innocents who happened to be on the wrong ship at the wrong time. Well, maybe none of them was quite so innocent. But none of them deserved to die.
I wait just outside the alley under a nearby bridge. The alley is a bit too dark and closed off for my taste.
Bang! Bang, bang! The concrete above my head splinters!
What the hell? Who in the world wants me dead? Well, who in this world in this time at any rate? I can tell by the sound that it’s a local piece.
In times of crisis, the body goes with the familiar. I heft Leighton’s old rifle at the ready before I realize it. Technically, I shouldn’t use a laser weapon in this time, but it’s handy, I know it’s balance, and fuck it, I’m not Time Police. I can always wipe the memory of the asshole taking potshots at me, and I will… once I disarm him and find out why he’s trying to kill me.
I shoot. Pew!
He staggers and drops the gun, a Luger. It clatters to the ground.
Bad guy disarmed and nobody dead. Nice.
For a change, the Cat Lady says.
Hey, this is twice on one mission.
He runs for it.
Well, now that he doesn’t have a weapon, I can give chase with more confidence. Why the hell is this local trying to kill me? Who here even knows me, apart from Turner?
The guy runs through a nearby chain-link fence that makes shots more difficult. Unless I shoot with perfect accuracy, the chain-link will scatter a laser. I race through the gate to keep up.
Wait. Does he know that the fence is cover or is it a coincidence?
He jumps the stairwell leading up to a walking bridge.
He’s agile. I’ll give him that. Almost reminds me of… No… Leighton said he wouldn’t try to hurt me… And how the hell would he miss a sitting duck?
Whoever it is. He needs to go down… but I keep my rifle on stun. It’d be bad form to deep-fry an unarmed local.
At least before I find out who he is.
But I can’t get a clear shot. While I’m fine with using a laser out of time, there’s no reason to draw the attention of the local GP, as in Elizabeth Turner, by melting the entire staircase.
Pew, pew, pew! Lasers ricochet off the railings around me. Very distinctive lasers.
Doohickey lasers!
No one from this timeline should have a Doohickey with lasers! They’re at least twenty years away. That means… shit! Damn it, a time traveler… which… which means…
Time Police. It has to be!
Leighton?
I can’t get a good look at him. The sky is too bright. The only way to end this is to open myself up and hope that his Doohickey doesn’t have quantum lasers. I should be able to take a shoulder hit otherwise.
I push away from the wall and slam against the opposite railing, sighting and shooting at nearly the same time.
One deep breath. I get him in my sights.
But he’s faster… and more accurate. My shot flies past his hat. His shot….?
He hits me!
Damn, that hurts! But wait… no burning flesh. No searing pain.
My arm is still there.
A stun blast? A Time Cop shooting to contain and not to kill?
Gods damn it!
That means one thing. It is him.
Leighton Lawes.
Bastard! The man who taught me everything I know about fighting, about killing, about surviving. The man, once the Cat Lady’s lackey, who’d literally carried my dying body to a Dr. Machine more than once and who’d lured me into the resistance with his stories of Time Police atrocities, only to betray me and leave me—and so many others—for dead with nothing but questions and no answers.
And this was his way of saying hello?
“You could have killed me!” I shout, climbing the stairs
He smiles. Just that. No contradiction. No shouting. Just the vaguest hint of a smile, and I know him so well that that tiny gesture means that if he’d wanted me dead, I’d be dead, and he’d never accidentally kill me.
And he’s right. He is that gods damned good.
I face him at the top of the stairwell.
He leans forward half an inch in a gesture that tells me he wants to hug me.
I freeze.
It’s enough of a rebuff. He settles back. He nods.
Once upon a time, he and I shared a sleeping bag to avoid freezing to death on the desolate third moon of Krakrafoon. Once upon a time that seemed normal.
Now? If he touches me now, I’ll try to kill him. I’ll likely fail, but I’ll still bloody well try.
He nods again, glances at the supposedly unconscious homeless man curled up against the railing, then nods toward the other end of the bridge.
We cross it, moving away from the unconscious homeless man, in case he’s not so unconscious.
What crosses my mind? This man used to be more than a best friend, more than a brother. We’d each saved the other’s life more than once.
A Time Police battalion had appeared, literally, out of nowhere. Dozens of species, all armed with the weapons of their homeworlds. A Saurian had nothing but her razor-sharp teeth and claws, and one agent—had to be a Shifter in a humanoid outfit—used a quantum disruptor to disintegrate twenty recruits in moments.
I shot at—and missed—the Shifter. She winked at me and vanished.
I turned to see if Leighton needed any help—not that he ever did— but some kind of canine cop held an ax poised to swing at Leighton’s back. A fucking ax!
I screamed his name, and he turned in time to lift his rifle and avoid a beheading, but the canine cop was built like a werewolf, and the force of his swing planted the head of his ax in Leighton’s sternum one second before I separated the cop’s well-groomed head from his muscley torso.They slaughtered most of the recruits and popped out without checking for survivors. The bastards didn’t care. It must have been a show of force. A tactic to kill our spirit.
In any civilized timeline, we’d have had a Dr. Machine to stitch Leighton together in a minute, but we’d hidden the recruits in the past, in an era over a hundred years before Dr. Machines had nanotechnology. Leighton lay on the floor, gallons of blood spewing from his chest while I squeezed together his ribcage with both hands. The machine that would easily knit bone a hundred years later worked diligently to keep him from dying.
“I don’t think I can do this,” the Dr. Machine admitted.
With Leighton’s blood covering my hands and tears flooding my cheeks, I glared into the engineered life form’s optic sensor. “If he dies, I will personally rewrite every subroutine in your brain until chess seems like a complex game.”
The engineered lifeform decided to try.
And Leighton had lived.
And then he betrayed me.
Three years have passed since he betrayed me, left me for dead. Maybe it’s time to move beyond his betrayal. Maybe I’m man enough to admit that there are two sides to every story, to accept that solving the mystery of why the Time Police are willing to destroy this Earth is more important than my petty grievances, maybe the years fighting together should make up for one cruel action.
Nah. Fuck it. I hate him.
So what did he do? He lied to me, and I don’t even know how badly. He vanished without a word. People died, and I never found out what he… I never knew…
He just fucking left.
Fuck him and every damn breath he’s ever taken in his lifetime.
I hit him. Hard.
I hit him again, enough to lift him from the ground.
He doesn’t fight back. He takes the blows passively. He lets me crush him.
I hit him again.
But it doesn’t help. The fact that he just takes it makes me feel… wrong… Gods help me, it feels like abuse.
I’m done… the anger fades.
He stares at me the way he always stared at me when I had a temper tantrum as a kid.
His eyes hold patience. And, damn him to every hell and back, they hold love. It was the love that hooked me, held my devotion, turned me into a pale imitation of the man, of the legend that was Leighton Lawes.
I’d always wanted to be Leighton. To make him proud. I even dressed the part for years.
And then he sold us out.
Three years have passed, and I have no idea why he brought me here.
Don’t get me wrong. The Cat Lady “discovered” the time anomaly in 1941, Turner showed me Leighton’s image, and I called the phone, but, unless I am highly mistaken, Leighton orchestrated the entire thing.
But I’m an agent now, in my own right. A man with his own duties and destinies.
And… oddly enough, I’m taller than he is now.
Heh.
Heh. Heh.
That shouldn’t matter. But, well… it does.
Heh, heh, heh, heh…
“Okay, Bobby, the testosterone finally kicked in and you grew a few inches.” He stares at me levelly. “If that really matters, enjoy it.”
I smirk. “I’m going to take what I can get with you.”
He smiles.
Fuck. Admitting that means I don’t hate him anymore. Not really. Damn it.
But I don’t hate him, do I? No matter how much I want to hate him, no matter how much I should.
“If you want to hit me again, you can,” he says. “I deserve it for vanishing like that.”
“Vanishing?” I ask. “That’s all you’re willing to admit? Vanishing? Seriously?”
“What else?” His brow furrows.
I close my eyes. What else? Leaving me to die, maybe, killing hundreds of innocent souls.
“Say it.”
So I say it. “You left me to die.”
His eyes scrunch up. “If I’d wanted you dead, I’d have left the Cat Lady jammed until after the ship blew up.” He smacks my shoulder. “You thought ending the jamming signal beforehand was a mistake? What kind of rookie do you think I am?”
“You killed a hundred innocent—” I square off to him.
“Innocent?” He shakes his head and settles into one hip. “You didn’t know.”
What garbage was this going to be?
“They were smuggling quantum pulse cannons,” he says. “I had to blow that ship before they got juiced. It blew my cover, which is why I vanished, but they had to go down, and I didn’t have time to get to you, and the only way to keep the explosion from shattering the entire system was with a temporal damper.”
It was the damper that had convinced me he was Time Police. They’re the only folks who have them.
“All this time you thought I tried to kill you,” he says. “And that I blew up a ship full of civilians?”
And I’m not so sure I believe his very convenient explanations, now. Damn it. But what’s really going on? Repentance isn’t his style.
“You’re not here for penance. So why? Why get my attention? Why involve the GP?”
He stares across the fields below the bridge, and I see it in his eyes. He wants to talk about the past but knows better than to push me on it. Not when there’s a job to do.
“I didn’t involve the GP. I involved Turner.”
What? What does that even mean?
“Okay,” I say. “I’m not going to pretend I can out-think you. Just tell me why we’re here.”
“It’s about the Barrier Event,” he says.
Well… no shit.
“What the hell does a war on a podunk little backwater planet like the Earth in some random timeline have to do with the Barrier Event?” But it makes sense, damn it. Why else would the Time Police be involved? “So the entire attempt to save Pearl Harbor?”
“Bullshit.” He smiles, so the whole thing was his way to get my attention. “We should stay away from the island for a while. It’s gonna blow up.”
“Too bad.” In spite of myself, I smile, too. “Nice beaches.” We’d visited a lot of nice beaches once upon a time.
His smile softens. “We’ve been on lots of planets with nice beaches.” Damn it, he remembers them, too.
Never mind. Not germane to the conversation.
“Why are we really here?” I ask.
He loses the smile. “I need to tell you something.”
“Why me?” I demand.
“Because of memories like the beach you just pushed aside as not germane to the conversation.” He sighs. “That kind of memory is why you’re here. I’m an untrustworthy douchebag, but you? You’re the best kind of guy.” He leans closer. “I know I abandoned you, and we’ll work out the rest of it later, but you have shit tons of integrity, and you can keep a secret.” He shrugged. “I needed you because Turner was far more likely to trust a guy like you than a guy like me, and I need her to trust me. And I need you to keep a secret.”
More secrets? Yay.
“Can you shut the Cat Lady out?” he asks.
“Why?” The request surprises me.
“I trust you, Bobby.” He shakes his head. “I don’t trust her.”
“I shut her out now, what’s to prevent me from telling her everything we say as soon as I let her back in?”
“I’ll risk it,” he says.
“Really?”
“I lied to you, Bobby.” His eyes meet mine. “You never once lied to me.”
He trusts me. He always will. And his eyes tell me he wants me to trust him.
As much as I don’t want to. I can.
Damn it.
Cat Lady? I send. This is important.
Me and the Cat Lady come to an agreement. She will stay out of this moment of my memory unless I allow it.
I shut her out.
Leighton holds up his hand.
A plain, all-too familiar wooden box appears.
“What the hell?” I snatch it away. It’s the same. It’s exactly the same. How is that possible?
I scan it. My DNA is on it. “What the hell?”
His eyes betray nothing. Is this a test?
Danny’s DNA is on it, too. So is Leighton’s, of course.
“This is literally the same box?” I hold it in his face. “How do you even know about this? How is that even possible? I gave it away, just a week ago.”
He nods. I know that expression, he wants me to work through it on my own. He’s the teacher. I’m the student. As always. I shouldn’t want his approval, should be years beyond that, but damn it, I can’t help myself.
My Doohickey pings.
A fourth set of DNA.
Turner.
“What the hell?” Think, think, think.
How does all of this add up?
“I would give you the box, Danny Decker,” Leighton says, a hint of a smile about his eyes, “but I do not have it.”
Wait. What? No way! It’s what the old man is supposed to say to Danny right before my doppelganger from that timeline hands him the box. It’s the signal I’d given the doppelganger to know it was time.
No one is supposed to know about that but me, the old man, and the doppelganger Bobby.
“How the hell do you know—” I demand.
There’s that gods damned knowing smile. Because Leighton is always one step ahead of me. But how….
Okay. The old man appeared, then brought me to a hill overlooking a scene: Bobby and Danny Decker under a huge glowing, weeping willow. An almost identical version of the old man beside Bobby stood over there, facing the brothers.
“From what I can tell, I need some kind of wooden box,” Danny said.
“Indeed, you do,” the old man said.
“Well, can I have it?” Danny asked.
And then he said them, the old man said the fateful words.
“I would give you the box, Danny Decker,” the old man said, “but I do not have it.”
Which prompted that other Bobby Decker to pull the box out of a backpack.
While the brothers argued about the secret Bobby had kept, the old man turned to this version of Bobby and glanced at the box in his hands.
“That is how your doppelganger from another timeline will know to reveal his secret.”
The old man smiled. And his eyes…
Ugh. Just… ugh…
His eyes.
I’d never noticed, but his eyes are the same as Leighton’s.
“And after Danny gave it back to the older version of me when he was done with it…” Leighton looks away. “That old man traveled in time and gave it to this me about a month ago according to my relative timeline.” He shrugged. “That’s the first I knew about it.”
“How do we even avoid imploding?” I step away from him. “This is circles of time in circles of time. He’s the same… you’re the same man who gave it to me to give to a different Bobby to give it to Danny. This should be as bad as the Barrier Event.”
“That’s what the box does.” Leighton points at the box.
“It’s a bungee cord,” I shout. “It was needed to get Danny back to his original—”
Fuck. Oh, fuck.
It was so much more.
“He had something to accomplish in the past,” I say, but I falter as I say it. “He had to go to his homeline for… for… things… and stuff.”
As the words totter out, I know they’re stupid.
Something that important has to do more. So much more.
“It does other things, too,” I mutter.
“It does other things, too.” He smiles. “It keeps us from imploding, for one. It fixes time. One of many things it does.”
The box was supposedly created by the most advanced species in all of space and time. No one even knows who they are, and dozens of worlds have tried to recreate the technology.
Most of those worlds are now dust. Timey-whimey things happened.
Wow. The box really is the most important object in the universe. Not the kind of thing I want to drop. I hand it to Leighton.
