The Time Travel Chronicles (34 page)

The sound of tentative shuffled steps made him pull down the pillow enough that he could see. Paga was there, just beside his bed and standing patiently, hands crossed in front of her. Her hair was mussed a little, and though it was hard to be sure in the dim light, he thought her eyes looked puffy from crying.

What finally made his laughter stop was her attempt at a smile. It was shaky and she couldn’t hold it, her lips trembling and then lifting again, torn between crying and smiling. And her confusion, because that was there too.

While she may have understood the words that the General had said—about their purpose, the great sacrifice they would make to ensure a safer future—she didn't understand how her life could really be meant to end this way. How could they, these coddled progeny of the future?

His laughter died and he pulled the pillow away from his face. They looked at each other in the glow of the night lights around the perimeter of their little cubbies. After a time, with all the others still watching from their places at the entrance to his little space or from the top of the partitions, Paga seemed to almost fall toward him. She sat on his bed, her butt heavy on his leg, and leaned forward, her face in her hands.

Her sobs were almost entirely silent. Only her hard, hitching breaths came through. Darren sat up and put a tentative hand on her bowed back, looking at all the other faces, at the dark pools of shadow where their eyes should be.

“We’re bait,” he said finally. “Just bait.”

No one answered him. They didn’t need to. They all understood. The protected zones—the thousands of miles around them—needed to be cleared. They need to be contained and the genetic mess his generation and the ones after his had left behind had to be cleaned up. What had Genarae said? That they did it slowly, because time was the best solution? He almost laughed to think of that idle conversation now. These people lived their whole lives without knowing what awaited them.

What had been progress in his time was now a serious pest control problem in theirs. It almost set him to laughing again to remember how many biotech firms he’d invested in, how many he’d gotten thousands of people to invest in.

And now…what about now? Now it was a simple problem with a complex answer. People here drew them in, the creatures of many shapes and sizes and levels of intelligence. And as they came near or set up their nests nearby, the soldiers killed them off. No more genetic solutions that caused more problems. No more drones or hunter-killer automatons to go haywire. Just bait, soldiers, and mechanical elimination of the pest.

Simple. Complex. Terrible.

Darren thought of Genarae, who would one day be his age, who would one day board her own train. He thought of his as yet unborn son, who would also be his age someday. And he thought of the camps like this one spread out all over the world. The slow and torturous retaking of the land at such momentous cost.

He, like all of the others, had been given a choice. Just go along with the program, be deployed into areas in cages or inside hollow balls dangling from trees or whatever else might be devised, day after day, until the day his luck ran out. Or he could choose to fight with them, just like the politician who now led them. That man had gotten his wish to see the future—just like Darren had. But choice or no, none of the soldiers he saw were old. They were young. Choosing to fight with them apparently meant nothing for extending a retiree’s life. Except the politician, the man from their past. 

There was no question what he would choose. Darren had built an empire from nothing, had cheated time, had leapt into the future. No, there was no question what he would choose. The lion inside him had napped for a while, enjoyed the food that appeared each day, but now it realized it was in a cage and was wide awake.

And he had no intention of being a lone lion. He would create others. These sheep didn't have to
stay
sheep.

He punched his pillow back into shape and lay back down. Paga lifted her head from her hands, perhaps sensing the change in his demeanor. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. They all had that expectant air, poised to hear something that might make their nightmare go away.

Darren looked up at the ceiling. Bare struts underneath the panels of their roof and industrial-looking lights hanging from the struts made it clear this wasn’t a place meant for comfort, either physical or emotional. These coddled people with their perfect equality and tranquility didn’t stand a chance.

He directed his words toward the roof, no longer comfortable looking into the faces of so many soon-to-be-dead people. “Go to bed, everyone. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’m going to show you a few things you can use. From your past. From my time. For now, get some rest. Go to bed.”

And with that, Darren rolled to his side, dislodging Paga from her perch on his bed. Strangely, he felt like he did when he’d opened his first investment house, with the odds against him and failure almost a certainty. He felt a fire in his belly that he’d thought he’d lost somewhere along the years of his life. That same lost fire that had sent him to Life/Time in the first place had returned. It was an irony not lost on him that he had gotten exactly what he wanted.

He could feel Paga behind him still, standing by his bed and waiting. He rolled back over and looked at her. She might be small, but she was strong and healthy. He could see that even in the low light. And there was something there, a stiffness in her posture or a certain defiant set to her shoulders. He smiled grimly at her and said, "I'm going to show you how to fight. Do you want to fight?"

He heard her deeply indrawn breath. She paused, then said, "I want to fight. I want to fight them
all
." She said nothing more, merely turned and left his cubicle. As he rolled back over in his bed, he heard the shifting of bodies and feet and the echoing words of many others as the sentiment spread through the warehouse like wildfire. Fight, fight,
fight
.

Darren closed his eyes, pushed the image of Genarae out of his mind, and after that, had no trouble at all falling asleep. The matter was settled. Tomorrow he would begin building his army and he had deals with a politician to strike. And whatever was in the forest was not the only enemy he sought.

He had bets to hedge and dividends to collect, and in this future, the markets opened early.

A Word from Ann Christy

Like most people, I’ve yearned to find a way to know what happens next. By next, I mean what happens after I’m not here to marvel at it. It seems terribly unfair in this rapidly changing world that I’m unlikely to see humans uploading their minds into computers for eternal life in a silicon shell, or be replicated after eons of space travel to live on a new world. All these things and many more are deep desires and I’m just a smidge too old to see them come to fruition. Close? Yes. Tantalizingly near? Yes. Available for me? Not bloody likely.

This story was born from conversations I’ve had with many others. Every single person I’ve had the “deep” conversation with has expressed a similar desire. I console myself by saying, “Be careful what you wish for.” This is my fictional expression of that statement.

If you enjoyed reading “Life/Time in the New World”, then I invite you to visit other worlds that come out of my (slightly) demented brain. I write clean (mostly) science fiction that ranges from one end of the spectrum to the other. My latest series, the
Between Life and Death
series, is my take on zombies (though they aren’t zombies at all). Though I’ve spent my entire adult life as a scientist and a military officer, (now newly retired), I’m finding that creating new and interesting worlds is the best job ever.

You can get extended sneak peeks of my books and find out what I’m up to at
http://www.annchristy.com
. Also, I invite you to join my VIP Reader list. I sent out not-too-frequent newsletters, hold drawings for free books and swag only for subscribers, give chances to read my new stuff first and free, and all sorts of madness. Plus, there’s a freebie to read for you. You can do that here:
http://eepurl.com/buDy4r

by Robert J. Sawyer

T
HE
TRANSFERENCE WENT SMOOTHLY, like a scalpel slicing into skin.

Cohen was simultaneously excited and disappointed. He was thrilled to be here—perhaps the judge was right, perhaps this was indeed where he really belonged. But the gleaming edge was taken off that thrill because it wasn’t accompanied by the usual physiological signs of excitement: no sweaty palms, no racing heart, no rapid breathing. Oh, there was a heartbeat, to be sure, thundering in the background, but it wasn’t Cohen’s.

It was the dinosaur’s.

Everything was the dinosaur’s: Cohen saw the world now through tyrannosaur eyes.

The colors seemed all wrong. Surely plant leaves must be the same chlorophyll green here in the Mesozoic, but the dinosaur saw them as navy blue. The sky was lavender; the dirt underfoot ash gray.

Old bones had different cones, thought Cohen. Well, he could get used to it. After all, he had no choice. He would finish his life as an observer inside this tyrannosaur’s mind. He’d see what the beast saw, hear what it heard, feel what it felt. He wouldn’t be able to control its movements, they had said, but he would be able to experience every sensation.

The rex was marching forward.

Cohen hoped blood would still look red.

It wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t red.

* * *

“And what, Ms. Cohen, did your husband say before he left your house on the night in question?”

“He said he was going out to hunt humans. But I thought he was making a joke.”

“No interpretations, please, Ms. Cohen. Just repeat for the court as precisely as you remember it, exactly what your husband said.”

“He said, ‘I’m going out to hunt humans.’”

“Thank you, Ms. Cohen. That concludes the Crown’s case, my lady.”

* * *

The needlepoint on the wall of the Honorable Madam Justice Amanda Hoskins’s chambers had been made for her by her husband. It was one of her favorite verses from
The Mikado
, and as she was preparing sentencing she would often look up and re-read the words:

             
My object all sublime

             
I shall achieve in time—

             
To let the punishment fit the crime—

             
The punishment fit the crime.

This was a difficult case, a horrible case. Judge Hoskins continued to think.

* * *

It wasn’t just colors that were wrong. The view from inside the tyrannosaur’s skull was different in other ways, too.

The tyrannosaur had only partial stereoscopic vision. There was an area in the center of Cohen’s field of view that showed true depth perception. But because the beast was somewhat wall-eyed, it had a much wider panorama than normal for a human, a kind of saurian Cinemascope covering 270 degrees.

The wide-angle view panned back and forth as the tyrannosaur scanned along the horizon.

Scanning for prey.

Scanning for something to kill.

* * *

The Calgary Herald
, Thursday, October 16, 2042: Serial killer Rudolph Cohen, 43, was sentenced to death yesterday.

Formerly a prominent member of the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Cohen was convicted in August of thirty-seven counts of first-degree murder.

In chilling testimony, Cohen had admitted, without any signs of remorse, to having terrorized each of his victims for hours before slitting their throats with surgical implements.

This is the first time in eighty years that the death penalty has been ordered in this country.

In passing sentence, Madam Justice Amanda Hoskins observed that Cohen was “the most cold-blooded and brutal killer to have stalked Canada’s prairies since
Tyrannosaurus rex
 ...”

* * *

From behind a stand of dawn redwoods about ten meters away, a second tyrannosaur appeared. Cohen suspected tyrannosaurs might be fiercely territorial, since each animal would require huge amounts of meat. He wondered if the beast he was in would attack the other individual.

His dinosaur tilted its head to look at the second rex, which was standing in profile. But as it did so, almost all of the dino’s mental picture dissolved into a white void, as if when concentrating on details the beast’s tiny brain simply lost track of the big picture.