Timecaster: Supersymmetry (6 page)

Then she opened her mouth and removed her entire top row of teeth. The bridge was pearly white, perfect, except for a black molar on either end. She broke the molars off the falsies, and handed me one.

“Salmon repellant,” she said. Though the
s
in salmon was spoken with a
th
sound, the result of her teeth being out.

My Vicki didn’t have false teeth. Again I felt a stab of pity for this poor sexual goddess with the great rack. applause.

&os. That meant et

She swallowed her pill, and I managed to get mine down. As I did, a nine meter salmonster cruised by the bubble. It had the typical hook-shaped mouth common to the species. The triangular shark-like teeth were unique, as were the fangs jutting from the upper jaw that recalled saber-toothed tigers. Scarier still were the eight tentacles that encircled its head like a Victorian collar, covered with hooks embedded in suction cups, each one capable of lashing out like a two meter whip. Not only did these bioengineered monsters reduce the lamprey population by nine-tenths, but the few lampreys left were starving to death, afraid to come out of their holes.

I couldn’t blame them. This thing was so frightening, I felt my manhood shrink just looking at it. There was no way I was going to ever leave the polycarb bubble.

“I’m opening the bubble on three,” Alter-Vicki said.

“I’m going to veto that idea.”

“One…”

The salmonster swam back around. It might have been my imagination, but its eyes seemed to be glowing red.

“Two…”

“Vicki, I really don’t want you to—”

“Three! Open!”

I took a big breath just as the bubble split in half, cold water slapping me up against the underside of the heliplane. The raw panic I felt was all-consuming, blocking my ability to react, the thought of being in salmonster-infested waters with one so close I could touch it was among the most horrible feelings I’d ever experienced. I didn’t see how it could get any worse.

It got worse two seconds later, when the salmonster wrapped a tentacle around my neck. I felt the hooks dig in, watched as a plume of red blood puffed up around my head, and screamed out half my air as the salmonster opened up its toothy maw, dragging me toward a horrible death.

I looked for Alter-Vicki, but she was swimming toward the shipwreck. The salmon repellant was obviously FOS. Still clutching the magzer, I raised it forward, squeezing the trigger as the fish hyper-extended its jaws to accommodate my upper body.

The magzer didn’t do dick. It apparently didn’t work underwater.

I dropped it, reaching both palms out toward the creature’s snapping saber teeth, planting my hands on them and bracing myself, all the while thinking that there was no way lampreys were such a nuisance they deserved this.

Then, abruptly, the salmonster released me. It abated its attack as quickly as it had begun, swimming past, swishing its massive tail and disappearing into the green.

Not pausing to dwell on my good fortune, I beelined for the SS Wisconsin, placing a palm on the cold, rusty metal. The upside-down hull was rough under the thin layer of slimy algae, and I kicked frantically, following its length, not sure I was going in the right direction. By my best guess, I had thirty seconds of air left. Not enough to reach the surface. And not enough to search the entire ship, looking for a portho the antidote for the nanopoison to get . That meant etle that Alter-Vicki might have already closed and locked.

Movement, out of my peripheral right. I put out my hands, expecting the salmonster, back for another try. Instead I saw a pathetically skinny lamprey, its round mouth sucking at the bloody plumes of water in my wake. I swatted it away, and then tapped my right eyelid. There was still enough of a battery charge in my AVCL to switch my vision to infrared. I stared at the ship, looking for heat sources. Not finding any, I turned around and looked in the other direction.

There. A portal, glowing faint red.

I swam for it. After a few breast strokes, I got light-headed. My lungs felt like two burning paper bags, desperately craving air. I kicked with everything I had, dragging myself along the hull, cutting my palms and breaking my fingernails while scraping against zebra mussels and barnacles. Then I felt a light tug on the back of my neck, and pink filled my All Vision Contact Lens.

The salmonster. It was back.

I spun onto my back, ready to kick at the creature, but then its tentacle came free of my neck, and I watched it pull a lamprey into its mouth—a lamprey that had apparently been sucking my blood.

Fucking lamprey. They ought to do something to rid the waters of those damn things.

While I was preoccupied with that, something grabbed me from behind, shocking me so badly my lungs emptied. The urge to inhale was so strong now I knew I couldn’t resist it, and I opened my mouth, trying to brace myself for pain and death, realizing there was no way to brace myself for pain and death, then finally realizing that was a pretty stupid last thought to have.

Then something forced its way past my teeth. Something soft yet stiff.

Another lamprey, trying to eat my tongue as I drowned?

I couldn’t fight my body anymore, and sucked in, expecting the choke of lake water.

Instead, I breat
hed air.

Gasping, amazed, confused, relieved, I turned around and saw Alter-Vicki. She held a metal canister with two tubes coming from the top. One snaked into her mouth. The other led into mine.

A scuba tank.

She beckoned me forward with her finger, and I swam behind her, over to the porthole, following her inside the bowels of the ship. It was pitch black, so I tapped my eyelid again, going to night vision. We were in a hallway, upside-down and leaning to the right. Everything was an eerie, night-glow green, and as we swam we kicked up sediment in great, billowing clouds. If my mouth were free, I would have commented how this was a really shitty place for a hideout. But then we were through a doorway, swimming upward, into a room flooded with light.

Our heads broke the surface, and I tapped my AVCL back to normal and looked around.

Once again, Alter-Talon impressed me with his ingenuity. He’d somehow managed to turn a compartment in a shipwreck into a furnished mini-apartment, complete with a bed, refrigerator, microwave, breakfast bar, and a dining set for two. Tastefully done, I might add. Everything Rick Schieve.”

ed to like my wifeG in a faux woodgrain with mauve accents.

Alter-Vicki pulled out her mouthpiece, proving the hideout also came with air. Nice.

I pulled myself out of the water, onto the tile floor, and Alter-Vicki offered me a towel.

“Thanks,” I said. “For a second there, I thought you were trying to kill me.”

I took the towel, and saw she had a gun beneath it.

A gun she was pointing right at me.

Michio Sata blotted
his polyester napkin against his lips, patting off a dab of spaghetti sauce. The meal, while filling, was on the low end of mediocre. The chef apparently thought plenty of garlic could cover up his shortcomings.

The multiverse won’t miss this place when I destroy it.

Sata checked his watch. He’d originally planned on annihilating all life on the planet eighty-seven minutes from now, giving him a chance to get home and watch one final
Murder, She Wrote
rerun on satellite TV. The show was archaic and woefully predictable, but he liked Angela Lansbury’s portrayal of the plucky, determined Jessica Fletcher. How much fun it would have been to go up against her. She would have made such a better adversary than Talon. So smart and ahead of the curve.

Of course, she probably wasn’t much in the fighting department. Perhaps
Magnum, P.I.
would be a better adversarial choice.

Sata wondered if alternate earths had a Jessica Fletcher that was a martial arts expert.

Of course they do. In an infinite multiverse, there are infinite earths. Everything that can exist, will exist.

That much possibility had made searching for a suitable universe harder than Sata had anticipated. Before he destroyed this earth, he needed to find a new one to live on. But the overwhelming variety of earths that existed, coupled with his ever-expanding list of criteria, was taking a while. The search engine would winnow it down to a few million possibilities, then he’d add more demands, and the process would have to restart.

Finding the perfect world was a real pain in the ass.

He activated the touch screen on his TEV and added “Jessica Fletcher Martial Artist” to his already extensive list of requirements for a home planet. Some of his recent entries included:

Temperate climate without too much humidity.

No fossil fuel dependence.

Libertarian government.

No giant scorpions.

A comparable level of scientific advancement to the current earth.

No fat chicks.

talking about sci scienceI pu
Apples that screamed when you ate them.

The list went on for several virtual pages, with hundreds of other criteria. Sata chewed his lower lip, thinking. He really liked the apple idea. Something deep within him loved the idea of sentient fruit, though Sata couldn’t pinpoint why. He erased a few other criteria, such as
people randomly turn themselves inside out,
because even though it would be pleasant to watch, he didn’t want to be one of those random people. He’d also crossed out
man-eating yogurt
. Sata disliked yogurt, but he worried he might accidentally ingest some. Bloody bowels bursting from the bellies of unsuspecting innocents was a delightful concept, but not if he had to watch his own intestines take leave of his body. That was a tad hypocritical, perhaps, but he was the timecaster with the doomsday device, so he could be a hypocrite if he wanted to.

Anxious as he was to kill everyone on this planet—especially the chef at this restaurant for creating such a thin and garlic-heavy marina sauce—Sata knew he’d have to put more thought into where he wanted to move before he destroyed humanity.

I’ll annihilate them all tomorrow morning. Maybe after breakfast.

He sighed, then signaled for his check. The electronic slate came, and he wiped the chip in his wrist over it, adding a ten percent tip. He could have tipped more—his credits wouldn’t transfer to his new earth—but the service was merely adequate and Sata didn’t want to reward such behavior even though the restaurant would be destroyed by nightfall.

Sata got up and left the establishment, walking out onto Michigan Avenue. The view on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile was predictably green. Ivy lined every building. Hemp and kudzu bloomed on every roof. The green top—both the bio-scooter and the Kermit lanes—was densely compacted clover. The utopeons on the streets and sidewalks were predictably content with their perfect society, their heads no doubt filled with mundane, happy thoughts.

None of them could possibly recognize the genocidal mas
termind walking among them. I might as well be invisible.

“Sata-san!”

Sata whirled at the familiar voice, taking a defensive stance, legs wide, hands raised.

Josh Teague VanCamp hurried up to him. Teague was Sata’s best student when Sata had taught timecasting at the Chicago Peace Department. But Teague was also unimaginative and a bit annoying, the very reason why Sata favored Talon and chose him as an adversary.

Teague stopped a respectful distance away and bowed at Sata. Sata returned it, maintaining eye-contact. Though he hadn’t seen his name on any warrants, Sata knew that there was a slight possibility the CPD would catch on that he was the one behind the disappearance of Boise. But a quick glance around showed Sata he wasn’t being surrounded by peace officers, and a look skyward proved the heliplanes weren’t gunning for him.

Teague himself looked like he’d been chewed, swallowed, and shat out. His hair was matted, his face dirty, his clothes covered in brown stains that were obviously dried blood. And his hands…

He only has one. I’m pretty too much woman for that.”

“you, Sata-san.etsure, when he was my student, he had two.

“I need your help, Sata-san. I need to find Talon.”

Sata was about to dismiss the man, but before the words left his lips he paused.

Teague and Talon, once best friends, were now mortal enemies. Perhaps Teague could come in useful somehow.

“Let us grab a cup of tea and discuss it,” Sata said. “You may pay.”

The world might be ending tomorrow, but why spend credits if it wasn’t necessary?

Alter-Talon looked
at the drugged and sleeping Vicki, and his thoughts turned to the same thing they always turned to when he saw someone, anyone at all, sleeping.

Rape.

Normally a pleasant thought, but Alter-Talon’s procreational equipment was rotting just like his hands and feet, and he was afraid anything he stuck in Vicki would stay in Vicki. Especially if her kegel muscles were as strong as his real wife’s.

If all was going according to plan, Talon and his wife were now in the SS Wisconsin. He’d give it a bit of time, let the CPD recover the heliplane wreckage, then he’d move on to phase two of the plan.

Until then, he had to find an appropriate doctor to remove and transplant Talon’s choicer bits. The last doctor had been tough to find. Even with socialized medicine, physicians were well paid, and very few could be tempted by mere credits. That meant locating someone who was both a professional and sufficiently motivated. There were so many double-checks and fail-safes built into the healthcare system that malpractice was unheard of, so it wasn’t as if you could search for doctors who had lost their licenses.

With the previous doctor, Alter-Talon had used Vicki as the motivator. A promised one week no-holds-barred retreat with his prostitute wife was enough to make even the most dedicated surgeon do some rogue moonlighting. But he’d been the only doctor on Vicki’s client list. So instead of bribery, Alter-Talon knew he’d have to try extortion.