Timecaster: Supersymmetry (12 page)

Even worse, there was ample evidence that after human beings,
cimicidae giganticus
had become the second-most intelligent species on the planet. They could learn. They could communicate. Some byters in captivity could beat people at checkers, though admittedly these people were on the stupid side.

Sata was a genius. But even geniuses had to sleep. If there was a byter in the house, it only had to stay hidden and wait until Sata was too exhausted to fight back.

“How long has Alter-Sata kept you here?” I asked.

“I can only estimate. I’ve been cut off from the outside world. But he stops by randomly, to bring food. Judging by the meals I’ve eaten, and how much w
eight I’ve lost, I’d say about two weeks.”

“And the byter hasn’t killed you yet?”

“This one is particularly clever. It doesn’t take enough of my blood to kill me. So it can continue to feed. Alter-Sata, as you call him, brought it here to keep me weak.”

Nice. “And it’s in the lab?”

“Yes.”

Hypershit. Like everyone in the world, I’d seen episodes of
Man vs. Byter
. The gameshow was genius in its simplicity. A human being is locked into an apartment with a bed bug, and if the person can survive for thirty days, they win a hundred million credits. They’re allowed to bring three things with them, anything from flamethrowers to poison to traps to amphetamines to chainsaws—you name it, someone has thought of it. But nothing has ever worked. In the twenty year history of the show, only one man has ever won, and it is universally agreed upon that the guy got really, really, really, REALLY lucky.

When the government or private sector exterminators were called in to rid an area of byters, they used a protocol called GAS. Grab And Soak. It involved catching the bug in a carbon nanotube net, and dropping it into a large body of water, letting it drown.

“Do you have a carbon nanotube net?” I asked.

“No.”

“How about a large body of water?”

He shook his pale, gaunt head. “All I applause.

&en Satellite.

ut the p have left are three sofa cushions, and half a loaf of bread.”

Those probably wouldn’t help much. “How bad are these byters? Really?”

Sata opened up his kimono, displaying his nude body. It was crisscrossed with so many scars, both new and old, there wasn’t more than a small patch of untouched flesh.

“It has no vulnerabilities, Talon-kun. I have done all I can, and not made more than a scratch on it. It is incredibly strong and resilient.”

My leg gave out and I fell to one knee. “I don’t have a choice. I need to try. Do you still have your bogu?”

“I do, but my kendo armor isn’t strong enough to protect you from an attack.”

“I’m not going to fight it. I’m going to try something else. Is it male or female?”

“I didn’t check. But it is quite large, and the male of the species is the larger of the two.”

“The armor. Please, Sata-san.”

Sata went off to find his gear. I wiped some dead chickula babies off the DT and did a search for the mating habits of byters. I confirmed what I’d suspected, which didn’t make me happy, but at least reassured me that my insane plan could work.

“When I distract it, get into the lab and find the antidote,” I told Sata when he returned with the bogu.

“Talon-kun, even if you get the antidote, we can’t get out of here, and there is no way we can stop my doppelgänger.”

I slipped on my protective chest plate, called a
duo
and made out of hard, thick faux-leather. “One crisis at a time, Sata-san.”

After ducking into
an alley, the new Sata laid it all out for Alter-Sata, while the Teagues just stood there, mute and looking confused.

“So you’re both from the dark part of this universe, which runs three point four hours ahead from ours, and you came to this earth, your sister earth, because your dark earth was destroyed.”

It was quite convenient and coincidental, considering he and Teague were just talking about this very thing.

Dark Alter-Sata nodded. “We’re dark matter superpartners. What happens to us, happens to you roughly three and a half hours later.”

Alter-Sata nodded as well. “Fascinating. And you invented the method of illuminating dark matter?”

“No. A Sata on an alternate earth—an alternate dark earth from your perspective—found a way to bind tachyons with möbiusite. It illuminates dark matter, allowing objects to traverse using the TEV as a wormhole.”

Like a tachyon, möbiusite was a formerly h-Novel-Terror-ebook/dp/B003t glanceem>“Yes.”ypothetical particle, one that defied quantum entanglement and could observably exist in every dimension at the same time. Theoretically, one could walk along the perimeter of a möbiusite particle and appear in all dimensions, including both light and dark matter universes.

“Is he locked up at your old house, guarded by a byter, like mine is?” Alter-Sata asked.

“He was. Until our earth imploded. So we came here to make sure it doesn’t happen to your earth.”

Both Teagues looked at each other and shrugged.

“This earth?” Alter-Sata asked. “Because I’m ready to blow this one up myself.”

“No. Your original earth. The one where you hold Sata prisoner.”

One of the Teagues said, “I’m confused.”

“Just roll with it,” the other said, “and trust it makes sense.”

Alter-Sata asked, “So have you, or I, destroyed the dark matter counterpart to this earth?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Dark Alter-Sata said. “We’ve been on the alternate dark-earth, which was destroyed by Talon.”

Alter-Sata had to let that sink in. If the dark matter earth, where things happened several hours ahead, wasn’t destroyed, then he wouldn’t be able to destroy this earth. Or could he? And if he did, would that lead to a dimensional paradox?

Lost in thought, Alter-Sata barely noticed when both Teagues drew their tasers on each other and fired at the same time.

But then, it really wasn’t the same time. Technically, the dark matter Teague fired his taser three point four hours before the Teague Alter-Sata had been talking to, even though it happened at the same time.

However you wanted to describe it, both Teagues got a million volts of Tesla electricity, and each flopped over, unconscious.

“They’re superpartners,” Dark Alter-Sata said, “so they lost opposite hands. Each must have decided he wanted the other one’s hand.”

“They won’t be helpful if they keep doing that.” Alter-Sata frowned. “How about we kill one, take his hand, and give it to the other?”

“Which one?”

Alter-Sata considered an eenie-meenie-minie-mo, but that seemed like too much work. So he discreetly checked the alley both ways for witnesses and then stomped hard on the nearer Teague’s neck. It took three strikes before the spine cracked.

Dark Alter-Sata knelt down, using a scalpel to quickly removed the dead Teague’s hand. He also cut out the corpse’s ID chip and snapped it in half. Then they slapped the other Teague until he awoke, and headed for the nearest hospital to have the hand attached.

Alter-Sata wasn’t sure what would happen next.#m Talon Ace Avalon,G

But he was the most excited he’d been in years.

The bogu was claustrophobic
, making me feel like I was being smothered. The helmet, called a
men
and constructed of faux-leather and steel mesh, was so warm that my head had begun to sweat, matting down my hair.

Or perhaps that was from fear rather than heat.

I opened the lab door cautiously, then entered the room crawling.

The byter was perched on a countertop, nestled atop broken pieces of equipment, not even bothering to hide. Its black, beady eyes stared dispassionately into mine.

Shit, that thing was scary. It made the chickulas look like plush toys in comparison.

The bed bug’s shell was a deep brown color, over a meter and a half long from proboscis to tail, and near a meter thick. As it watched me, there was a soft
CLICK-CLICK
sound of its front claws opening and closing.

I moved slowly, on all fours, barely able to feel my fingers due to the nanopoison, or the chickula bites, or both.

When I reached the middle of the room, I stopped. The byter didn’t move. I knew, from watching the TV show, that draining your blood was only one way a
cimicidae giganticus
could kill you. Those claws could snip right through a rib cage, and have done so many times in the show’s history. I once saw an episode where the bug clung to someone’s chest and jammed its feeding tube—a wicked, pointy proboscis known as the
stylet fascicle
—down the poor sap’s throat, choking him. And then there was the most famous event in
Man vs. Byter
history, when the contestant brought a taser as one of his three items and the super intelligent insect took it from him and somehow learned how to work it using its flexible antennae. The bug tazed that poor bastard for days before finally killing him.

But, AFAIK, no one had ever tried what I was about to try. It had every possibility of ending badly.

Very badly.

Forcing my numb hand into a fist, I began to tap on the fauxwood floor. Three quick taps. Five slow ones. Two quick ones. Four slow ones. Repeat.

After a minute of tapping, sweat stinging my eyes, my breathing getting shallower with every heartbeat, the byter still hadn’t moved.

I increased the tempo, willing this dumb idea to work. My eyes were getting droopy, and it felt like a noose was tightening around my neck, making it harder and harder to suck in air.

I kept at it, varying the pattern, until the byter crawled off its perch and slowly approached.

It stopped within half a meter, giving my face a small tap with its antenna.

I immediately grabbed the antenna—

—and began to stroke it. too much woman for that.”

“ri glanceabl“Yes.”

Its other antenna also poked me, and I shifted my weight to my knees and began to pump both of them, as if I was milking a cow. At least, that was the analogy I preferred over other decidedly more sexual one.

After another minute of byter foreplay, I eyed its abdomen, and watched its pointed, hypodermic penis extend out like a spear.

A long, sharp, very hard spear.

What happened next was ugly.

Bed bugs, though some twisted quirk of evolution, mated via traumatic insemination. Rather than using her functional reproductive tract, instead the male stabbed the female directly through the abdomen with his pointy peter and injected sperm into her bloodstream.

That’s what this byter tried to do with me, jamming his erect, dirty business into the chest plate of my armor. Thankfully, because the duo was thick and bulky, he didn’t pierce my skin.

But he did begin to fill my armor with warm, sticky, gooey, yucky, bed bug spunk.

It smelled like spoiled fruit.

It was awful.

I had my eyes closed through most of it, which made it even worse because his pumping, thrusting motions were almost gentle, almost soothing. Like being softly rocked to sleep by a giant bug rapist. When I did dare to peek my peepers open, I saw Sata sneak into the lab and head for a cabinet in the far corner of the room. He caught my eyes and gave me a thumbs up.

I didn’t give him a thumbs up back. Instead, I closed my eyes again and waited for it to end.

But it got worse.

Apparently body-cavity violation wasn’t enough debauchery for this species. As the byter celebrated humptoberfest, his blood-sucking proboscis also extended, seeking out my neck. The hairy, pointed appendage slid up between my duo and men, tickling my chin. I grabbed it, but my kendo gloves only protected the outside of my hands, leaving the palms bare. The pointy little hairs stuck into me like cacti needles, and I couldn’t keep it from connecting with my bare skin.

I considered screaming to Sata for help, but I had an irrational fear that the byter would jam its stylet fascicle down my throat.

Then again, maybe the fear wasn’t so irrational. This was one freaky insect. But it could have been worse. There was a giant flatworm species that also copulated via traumatic insemination, except they were hermaphrodites, and the animals engaged in a terrifying courtship dance called
penis fencing
. Loser got speared. Winner didn’t fare much better, IMO. So I was at least somewhat grateful for not having to yell, “En garde!” while playing cock hockey.

I didn’t feel the proboscis pierce my flesh, but I could tell it had begun to suck blood, because I suddenly became very light-headed. My hands flopped to my sides, and I tried to keep my eyelids open but they kept fluttering. It didn’t hurt—the byter’s saliva contained an anesthetic, plus a mild tranquilizer, so its victims didn’t feel anything. Still, I could sense my heartbeat fading, and my med tachyon emission visualizered to d at the same time.

Gind struggled to latch onto a final, salient memory before I was fuct and suct to death.

I ultimately chose Vicki to be my last thought. I tried to take some final comfort from the many wonderful times I’d spent with her, tried to feel lucky that we’d met and had all those good years together.

But instead, I thought about her with Alter-Talon, who was no doubt doing horrible things to her.

And it was my fault, for not being able to save her.

“I’m… so… sorry…Vicki…”

And just as my eyes closed I heard a high-pitched hissing and the byter climbed off me.

I rolled onto my side, warm spooge sloshing around inside my armor, and watched as the bug skittered right into a wall, backed up, and did it again. Then it spun in a quick circle, like a dog before it lay down, and suddenly flipped onto its back, all six legs curling up into its body.

WTF?

Sata-san came rushing over, kneeling next to me with small, white box—an autosyringe. He placed it to my shoulder, and I felt the spring-powered needle pop out and inject me.

“This is the antidote. You should feel it work immediately.”

I felt it work immediately. My thoughts cleared. My energy returned. I was like my normal self again.