Nobody Gets The Girl (23 page)

"I've either drunk too much or not nearly
enough," said Nobody. "I believe every word you just said."

"On December 16, 1974, I broke back through.
It was as if my hatred for him built up to a point that it twisted
the very fabric of reality, tearing a hole. I stepped through, and
found myself real once more. I was naked, starving, cold, and lost.
On one side of the hole I had been watching him play with his baby
daughter. When I stepped through the hole to strangle him, I was on
a snowy tundra, with no one around. I willed myself to walk for
three days before I found a small cabin, inhabited by a wild-eyed,
shaggy bearded recluse. He pulled a shotgun on me and told me
to get off his property. I informed him this was my planet, tore
the gun from his grasp, and beat him to death with it. I took his
clothes. I ate his flesh. I stayed in his cabin for three weeks
while I figured out what to do."

"You ate his flesh...?"

"Don't judge me. You can't imagine the state
of mind I was in, after being trapped so long outside of
reality"

"I can imagine better than you might
think."

"Perhaps you can. During my stay in the
cabin, I realized how much Dr. Know had the upper hand. He was the
one with the wealth and the power. He was the one with the ability
to read minds. I thought of confronting him directly, but feared
the consequences. I think he is the anti-matter to my matter...
should we ever meet, I believe it will destroy us both. His life I
wouldn't mourn, but my death would be just one goddamn
bummer."

"I hear ya."

"But, eventually, I learned I had special
abilities of my own. I couldn't read minds, but I could close them
off, prevent him from reading them. I began to father children,
and was pleased to learn they displayed strange powers and
abilities, just as his did."

"The Panic and Sundancer I can see," said
Nobody "But Pit Geek was, like, fifty"

"I can't explain Pit Geek. I just sort of
found him, and worked him into my little army. For years, I've
worked behind the scenes in opposition to my dark half's sinister
schemes. Where he tried to oppress indigenous people beneath the
thumbs of colonial invaders, I provided the arms to fan the flames
of revolution. Where he tried to disarm those nations that might
oppose him, I worked to keep them one step ahead on chemical and
biological weapons. But now, it seems my hard work and dedication
are coming to naught. With the destruction of Jerusalem, he seems
to have stoked the fears of the world sufficiently to provide the
leverage he needs to carry out his mad plans."

"Dude," said Nobody. "You can't really think
you were doing the right thing by starting wars, can you?"

"I wasn't starting wars. I was just trying to
ensure they run their natural course. Where natural hostilities are
repressed by outside forces, the hate festers and grows until the
war that finally comes when the outside forces vanish is far worse
than what would have come before. The lessons of history are
harsh, but irrefutable. True peace only comes when one side becomes
powerful enough that the other side is no longer a threat. Then
guilt sets in, the side with the power throws the side that lost a
few crumbs, and all is right with the world. That's how the west
was won."

"Forget the forces of history," said Nobody,
feeling increasingly sober. "You were going to blow up school
buses filled with children."

"Hard choices must be made when fighting a
foe as powerful and nearly omniscient as Dr. Know. I can't pretend
I'm proud of the things I've done. But perhaps you can understand a
little of the desperation and fear I felt, knowing that every lie
on the evening news bore the stamp of his plotting."

"Well," said Nobody. "He's no saint, that's
for sure."

"I want you to help me stop him," said
Monday.

"How?"

"I'm thinking a bullet in the head will do
the trick. His island is wired. If one of my agents stepped foot on
the sand there he would know it. But you've been there as his
guest. You could still get close enough to deliver a fatal
blow."

"Rex, if I may call you Rex . . ."

"Feel free."

"Rex, go screw yourself. I'm not a
murderer."

"You killed Baby Gun, my own flesh and blood.
I know you're capable of murder."

"Baby Gun was kind of stomping through
Jerusalem at the time, under your orders, and innocent people were
getting hurt."

"You didn't kill Rail Blade when she was
polishing off Jerusalem."

"Because of you," said Nobody, stabbing a
finger toward Monday's chest, "Veronica's dead."

"An unfortunate misunderstanding. I wanted
them to use her to contact you. There was never an order from me to
harm her."

"Just get away from me," said Nobody,
throwing up his hands. "Jesus, you're both a couple of sick
bastards."

"You could still have her back, you know,"
said Monday.

"Who?"

"Veronica. Once you kill Dr. Know, we'll have
access to his time machine."

"You're freaking crazy."

"You could go back in time and kill Dr. Know
just before he leaves on the trip that led to your present
condition."

"Don't be stupid," said Nobody. "I've watched
Star Trek. If I go back in time and kill him, then I would never
even meet him, which means I'd never have a reason to kill him. Oh,
Jesus, that kind of stuff makes my head hurt. Or maybe it's mixing
all this liquor."

Rex Monday grabbed a bar napkin and took out
a pen. He drew a line to the midpoint of the napkin, then looped
the line into a circle, returning to the line once more, continuing
on straight, so that he'd drawn a circle intersecting a line at one
point only.

"This is your time line," said Monday.

"And this is your time line on drugs," said
Nobody.

"Follow me," said Monday. "This line veers
off into a circle, but returns to continue its path. The same would
be true of your personal timeline. All the events that would have
occurred in your life since the morning you woke up unborn would
still exist, here, in this loop. The existence of the line isn't
disturbed by the existence of the loop. You would wake up in bed,
next to your wife, with full memory of everything that happened.
But your life would be normal again. You'd be free of this strange
curse."

"But Dr. Know would be alive again."

"In your timeline, sure. Not in mine. I'd
finally have what I want most."

"I think this is the stupidest thing I've
ever heard. No.
No.
I mean, everything would be back? Like
it was? Oh, forget it. I'm not going to kill him. You're more
deserving of a bullet in the head than he is."

"Maybe you'd give me a chance to change your
mind."

"I can't think of a damn thing you could say
to change my mind."

"There are things I could show you," said
Monday. "Let's take a little trip."

Nobody opened his mouth to speak, but no
sound came out. The bar vanished.

CHAPTER TWENTY

TALKING ABOUT WEATHER

ONCE MORE, THERE
was no up. Nobody
watched with nauseated fascination as his body fractured and
folded, smearing out over numerous flat and fragmented
dimensions.

When he snapped back into a cohesive whole,
he dropped to his hands and knees on rock-hard frozen ground, and
retched.

"Yeah," said Rex Monday, watching. "I thought
it would be best not to take you directly inside."

"Aauugh," moaned Nobody, drool dripping from
his lips. "Oooh, Christ. Give me some warning next time you...
you... you do whatever the hell it is you just did."

"Dr. Know built a time machine," said Monday.
"I built a space machine."

"Space machine?"

"Some of my less-educated colleagues insist
on calling it a teleporter. But a teleporter would imply the
transition of matter into information into matter again. Possible I
suppose, but only with absurd levels of computing power and raw
energy. My machine exploits the fractal math that underlies the
fabric of space, allowing the spontaneous transposition of points
along a curve. I built it out of a pocket calculator and a
microwave oven. Simple and obvious, at least if you were there to
watch the Big Bang."

"Nothing absurd about that," said Nobody,
wiping his mouth on his sleeve. The cold wind made him aware of the
beads of sweat dripping down his face. "Oh, God, I don't feel so
good."

"Come inside," said Monday, motioning toward
a small, crude cabin nearby. "I'll put on some coffee."

BY HIS SECOND
cup of coffee, the
aspirin Rex Monday had given him started to kick in. Nobody still
felt like he was going to die, but he no longer craved the relief
death would bring the way he had earlier.

Monday stood by the cabin's single small
window, watching the sunrise. The cabin was lit by oil lamps, and
the coffee pot was still simmering on the wood stove. The cabin was
one large room, with a single, small cot, a small table made from
an upturned barrel, two folding chairs and a very out of place
metal and glass office desk, on top of which was a laptop
computer.

"Beautiful morning," said Monday. "Pink sky.
Might be a storm on the way later. Last big storm we had, snow got
higher than the roof."

"You didn't bring me here to talk about the
weather," said Nobody.

"Didn't I? I like talking about weather.
Weather is uncontrollable, unpredictable, something big that gives
man a little philosophical perspective."

Nobody rubbed his temples. "Sorry, but I'm
not really in the mood to discuss philosophy."

"We're not talking philosophy. We're talking
about weather."

"My bad."

"Dr. Know threatens this, you know."

"What? Weather?"

"You been to D.C. since they finished the
dome?"

"Briefly," said Nobody.

"It's always the same now. It's always
seventy degrees. There's fake rain three times a week to keep the
trees growing, and wind on demand to keep the air fresh. In D.C.
now, talk about weather is a thing of the past. They've done
something about it."

"Sure. But, really, is it any different than
this cabin? I doubt you like weather enough to keep the door and
window open during snowstorms. Just think of the D.C. Dome as a
great big cabin."

Monday nodded and took a sip of his coffee.
After a pause, he said, "He can stop hurricanes, you know."

Nobody nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, now that you
mention it, I heard that."

"He's trying not to abuse it. But the
temptation must always be there. I know how he thinks. He thinks
like I used to think. He can save lives and property by stopping
hurricanes. Of course, hurricanes play important ecological roles
in the grand scheme of things. So, he'll look for ways to create
new hurricanes, ones he'll control, that stay below dangerous
levels, and make landfall where he thinks they're most needed. He's
already running tests."

"How do you know that?"

Monday sat down at the desk and powered up
the laptop. "Remember, I spent years as a ghost, just like you are
now. I was able to watch him while he was putting together his
laboratory in his mansion. He's made some significant upgrades to
his systems over the years, but underneath it all, he's still
running slapped-together code he jammed out way back when. Getting
into his systems is a breeze. That's how I found out about your
existence. I was listening in on your encrypted radio
transmissions."

Nobody thought of something that struck him
as important. "You built that hood the Panic was wearing. The one
that let him see me."

"Yes. I had worked out the design in my head
ages ago when I was trapped outside of reality"

"You could build more for me."

"Don't need to," said Monday, pulling open
the center desk drawer. He pulled out another hood, and tossed it
to Nobody "My compliments."

"This will let anyone see me?"

"Yes."

Nobody held the hood, running his fingers
across the fine mesh, imagining the possibilities. For the briefest
instant, he imagined himself leading a normal life again. But, of
course, that was absurd. The hood would only let one person at a
time see him. It was unlikely he would be able to convince six
billion people to wear hoods all the time just so he'd be real once
more. If anything, holding the hood made his situation seem more
hopeless than ever.

"Look at this," said Monday, tapping the
laptop screen. "I can get into all of his files from here. I can
pull up information on his weather control experiments. I can pull
up live feeds of his agents who are negotiating with cities around
the world to put up domes. His goal is to have two-thirds of the
Earth's population under artificial skies by the year 2050. And
even that is just the midpoint of his plan. Eventually, he plans to
build floating super-cities in the middle of the ocean. He's
designed them to comfortably support ten billion people."

"That's quite a crowd."

"Most of the time the citizens will be
stacked up like firewood, existing in life-supporting wombs,
participating in a virtual reality. This is his ultimate plan to
save the Earth. Hitler had a final solution, and so does Dr. Know.
By 2150, he intends for the continents to be devoid of permanent
human habitation. Then he will begin to reforest and repopulate the
vanished species of Earth."

He tapped some keys. A list of endangered
species began to scroll up, a very, very long list.

"He's got a gene bank containing all these
species, and is pretty far along in developing the process he'll
need to clone them."

"Sounds pretty noble to me," said Nobody.

"People with noble intentions do the greatest
harm," said Monday. "And no one has ever had greater
intentions."