Timecaster: Supersymmetry (18 page)

Nothing.

Used the pliers for extra leverage.

His forearms began to bulge.

Come on! Come on, you son of a…

The key snapped in half.

Talon 2 and I both said, “Shit.”

We all stood there for a moment, wondering what to do next. Sata broke the silence by saying, “I’ve found an earth with your wife on it. According to the search terms, she should be living in this same cabin.”

I exchanged a glance with Talon 2, and knew he was thinking the same thing I was: Grandma would also have a locker full of guns. And her key might work.

But with so much at stake, we couldn’t pin all of our hopes on one solution.

“A Nife would cut through the Alloy 1090,” I said. Talon 2 nodded in agreement.

“Nifes are for psychos,” Phin said. “They’re illegal for a reason.”

The Nife, or nano-knife, was yet another miracle courtesy of carbon nanotubes. From the side, it looked like a military KA-BAR knife. But the Nife was invisible while looking at it edge-on because it was incredibly thin, only 1/10,000th the width of a human hair. This also made it ridiculously sharp. Because it was so easy to harm yourself—you could cut your finger off just lightly brushing against it—there were laws restricting them, and very few people owned one.

Unfortunately, I knew someone who did. A dissy roider named Rocket Corbitz.

Recently, on my earth, I got into a fight with Rocket, and he almost killed me.

On this earth, Alter-Talon never would have encountered Rocket. Which meant Rocket still had a Nife.

“I was raped by a byter,” Talon 2 said, spreading out his hands. “Rocket is all you.”

“You gonna keep bringing up that byter?”

“Do you know what
traumatic insemination
is?”

I frowned. “Sounds awful.”

“It was. Plus I saved your life with the nanopoison antidote.”

I couldn’t argue with the guy. He’d been through three more hours of shit than I had.

“What’s the plan?” I asked him.

“I’ll go with Phin, Sata, and Alter-Vick
i to get Grandma, and hopefully some weapons. You can have McGlade lead you to Rocket in Dissytown. Get his Nife and meet us back here in…”?” Talon’s wife asked.at faux-leather, which p He checked his DT. “Forty-two minutes. No longer than that. We still need to get back to Schaumburg to save your wife and stop our doppelgängers.”

“Does your headphone work?”

We both pressed our earlobes. I got a dial tone. Talon 2 nodded.

“I’ll call you when I get back to this earth,” he told me. “Good luck.”

We shook hands. Mine was shaking a little.

“It’s okay,” he told me. “You fought Rocket before, and won. You’re going to know every move he makes before he makes it.”

That didn’t do a thing to reassure me. I jammed them into my pockets to hide the fear tremors, and we all walked back into Phin’s cabin, where Alter-Vicki had almost finished baldifying McGlade.

“Is there a mirror?” he asked, feeling his crazy-quilt haircut. “Nevermind. Forget it. I don’t want to see.”

I sidled up to him. “Harry, me and you are headed to Dissytown. We need to find a roider named Rocket Corbitz.”

McGlade made the expected unhappy face. “Are you on hypercrack? That guy weighs five hundred pounds, all of it muscle. And I hear he’s one of those Illinois Nazis. I hate Illinois Nazis.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“We always have a choice. This is the United States of America and Canada. It’s the land of choice. Choice and freedom and the best hot dogs on the planet. Mmm. Hot dogs. Do you have any hot dogs, Phin?”

Phin folded his arms. “I’ve got some gopher jerky.”

“Perfect. I could
go fer
jerky right now. Get it?
Go fer
?”

McGlade waggled his one eyebrow.

Phin rolled his eyes. “There’s some in the pantry behind you.”

McGlade wandered up to a cupboard and pulled it open. “Ooo, it’s still got some fur on it. Just how I like my gopher; dry and unshaven.” Harry held up a brown, desiccated lump that looked inedible, and put half of it into his mouth. He had to really gnaw to bite off a piece. “Gamey, but not bad,” he said, chewing. There were unappetizing, crunchy sounds. “Does jerky normally have bones in it?”

“That’s not gopher jerky. That’s a dead rat. I feed them to the pigs.”

McGlade spat the rat head onto the floor.

I checked the time on my DT. “Time to go, McGlade.”

“I told you I’m not going.” Harry faced Alter-Vicki. “How do I look?”

He looked like a mangy dog who got partially stuck in a shearing machine and then was sprayed with nuclear radiation.?” Talon’s wife asked.at faux-leather, which p

“You look sexy.” Alter-Vicki ran her hand along his cheek. “You should go with Talon. Dissytown is crawling with BHVs, and a lot of them are SLPs. They’d eat you up.”

“You think?” he asked smoothing a hand over his head.

“Yes. And when you return, if you have any strength left, I promised you something. Remember?”

“Up close and personal time with your va-jay-jay?”

Alter-Vicki winked.

Harry turned to me. “What are we waiting on, my man? Let’s roll.”

“Hold up,” Phin said. “This big guy on steroids you’re going to fight, you fought him before?”

“Yeah.”

“And he kicked your ass.”

“Yeah.”

“Ever taken FMN pills?”

I shook my head.

“Forget-Me-Nots. They give you total recall of previous events. Hold on.” Phin searched a drawer, coming out with a bottle. “They’re ridiculously expensive. I’ve been using them to… well, to dwell in the past. Hopefully I won’t have to do that anymore.”

Phin tossed the bottle. There was one left.

“Put it under your tongue, let it dissolve, and concentrate on the memory you want to recapture. It will give a picture-perfect clarity. You can even fast-forward and rewind. But don’t swallow it. If you do, you won’t be able to control the flashbacks.”

There were always caveats with things like this. “How long does it last?”

“About thirty seconds in real time. But that’s long enough. You’ll see what I mean when you try it. But if you swallow the pill, you’ll be immobilized until it dissolves. Unless you like standing there, defenseless, keep it under your tongue.”

“Duly noted.”

“Also, take my knife. It isn’t carbon nanotubes, but it’ll do in a pinch.”

“Thanks,” I said. The short-bladed buck knife went into my belt, the pill into my pocket.

Then Phin did something I didn’t expect.

He embraced me.

“A man lives with his choices,” he said, “and if he’s damn lucky, he dies by his choices as well. Hopefully that won’t be today.”

I hoped so, too.

I hoped so a whole lot. digital tabletat faux-leather, which p

“Please, don’t!
I beg you! I’ll do anything you ask!”

Alter-Sata smiled. The voice was faint, high-pitched, perfectly suited to a cartoon character.

But this wasn’t a cartoon. This was real.

Alter-Sata opened his mouth, baring his teeth, soaking in the shock and horror.

Then he took a bite.

The apple screamed.

Dark Alter-Sata also had an apple, which did a similar begging/screaming act as he casually peeled off the sentient fruit’s skin with a paring knife. From the produce stand on the sidewalk, a larger apple wailed, “Lenny! Brianna! Nooooooo!”

“Apples that scream when you eat them.” Alter-Sata smiled. “This alternate earth is a lot of fun.”

“They’re delicious, too,” Dark Alter-Sata said, smacking his lips. “Food is so much more delectable when it pleads for its life.”

Alter-Sata nodded, perusing the other selections. Besides the screaming apples, the grocer had bananas who sang the blues, raspberries who recited Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetry, and something called
sour grapes
.

He plucked one from the bunch and held it up to his nose.

“So what do you do?” Alter-Sata asked the fruit.

The grape answered in a deep voice, “You are one ugly ass mother fucker.”

“I get it. You’re a sour grape. So if I squeeze you tight, will you let out a little wine?”

“Bitch, suck my cock.”

Alter-Sata flicked the fruit over his shoulder, listening to it yell out “Assssshole!” as it sailed into traffic. He glanced at Dark Alter-Sata, who was peeling a banana that crooned,
“My woman left me, now I’m ‘bout to get ate…”
Then he checked his DT.

“We should get going,” he said, noting the time.

“Did you check if there is a Jessica Fletcher on this earth who knows martial arts?”

“I did. No such luck.”

Dark Alter-Sata nodded, took a bite of the banana, and then dropped the remnants in a biorecycle can.

“The man bit my face off, then dropped me in the trash…”
the banana sang, his voice amplified by the container.

Alter-Sata had the grocer bag up some grapes, another apple, and a plum that told dirty jokes. the antidote for the nanopoisonamCan you Un“Yes.”

“That’ll be three hundred and seventy-five credits,” the grocer said.

“For some fruit?”

“Talking fruit. It isn’t born knowing how to talk. You’re not just paying for their delicious, nutritious properties. You’re also paying for years of schooling. The banana also had music lessons. He was a master pianist.”

Alter-Sata pointed his TEV at the grocer. “I for one do not have pianist envy. Do you, Sata?”

Dark Alter-Sata shook his head. “Not at all.”

The grocer spread out his hands. “Before you do anything rash, think about it. Think about it really hard. My name is Hinge. Jonbar Hinge. What you do next could very well alter the spacetime continuum and—”

Alter-Talon opened a wormhole, sending Jonbar and his fruit stand to an earth in the throes of another ice age. Served him right. His prices were outrageous.

“Ready?” he asked Dark Alter-Sata.

He nodded. “Let’s go kill some Talons.”

Talon and I
exchanged a long, parting glance, and then he and McGlade left the cabin.

I wondered if either of them would get back alive.

I felt for Talon. I’d rather face ten byters than fight Rocket again. But that wasn’t really why I wanted him to go instead of me. I had a much more personal reason than run-of-the-mill fear.

I was a wreck.

Watching my wife get killed was the most devastating thing I’d ever seen, and I knew I hadn’t recovered from it. The really messed up part was I had no idea how to grieve, because another version of my wife—Alter-Vicki—almost immediately took her place.

When I closed my eyes, I saw my dead wife.

When I opened them, I saw my new wife, who looked exactly the same.

It was really fuct up.

This was a loss, but also a gain. One of them lost her life, but I was giving another a new chance at life after years of misery with an abusive husband.

I was too distracted, too confused, to fight with Rocket.

Which heaped even more guilt on my shoulders. I didn’t even know Talon. I’d only met the guy today. But I’d lived almost the exact same life as he had, just a few hours ahead, and that made him closer to me than a brother.

And my selfish too much woman for that.”

“arthere was. Though “Yes.” action might have just sent him to his death.

I came up behind Alter-Vicki, put my arms around her. A familiar move, one I’d done hundreds of times. She felt like Vicki. She smelled like Vicki. She was Vicki, but at the same time she wasn’t. We didn’t share the same history, the same memories. This woman was a stranger.

I pulled away.

Had I actually lost anything? Did I still have to face the consequences of my actions? Or was the multiverse simply a big reset button, allowing me unlimited chances to make things right?

I couldn’t make things right for my dead wife, and the billions who died along with her. All I could do was delude myself. Why mourn when I didn’t really lose anything? Why feel guilty when I never had to face the consequences of my actions?

Alter-Vicki turned around. “Are you okay, sir?”

“I’m fine.”

But I wasn’t fine. I was the complete opposite of fine.

“You’re wondering,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re wondering how things could have turned out differently. Wondering how you wound up right here, right now. Wondering if you should beat yourself up over the choices you made.”

I was startled by her insight. Was I that transparent? “How do you know?”

She smiled sadly. “I wonder the same things, every day. I’m married to a terrible man who does terrible things, and I haven’t left him.”

“He’d kill you if you tried to leave.”

Alter-Vicki nodded. “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have tried. That’s true failure. Not trying at all. I know we don’t really know each other, but you reminded me of that.”

“Of what?”

“It’s better to die trying than to live with regret.”

I had no idea how to respond to that.

“It’s ready,” Sata said, holding the TEV pointed toward himself. “Everyone get behind me.”

Phin stood next to us.

“In three… two… one!”

We were swallowed by blackness—

—then the light instantly returned.

“Did we go anywhere?” Alter-Vicki asked.

I blinked, looking around. The cabin seemed the same.

Except where it didn’t. Same bookcase, but a different assortment of books, many about transhumanism. The metal shutters were bent inward and?” Talon’s wife asked.ats speaker-mouth, which p had an extra layer of bars over them. The wooden rocking chair had a red cushion on it, rather than no cushion.

Phin moved first, rushing into the kitchen, then going out the door. I followed.

The grounds were much different than Phin’s cabin. There was a chain link fence, topped with razor wire, surrounding the property. No pigs in the pen, but the chickens were running around freely. Phin ran alongside the cabin, and I followed. Next to the house, in the same spot, was a grave. This one had marigolds on it.