“This was not a win for you,” The Cleanser argued. “My girl was the one who
actually rescued all the people from the boat.”
“My team provided the cuff necessary to complete the task,” The Warrior
volleyed. “Your girl would have failed without us.”
“Uh, without us,” Mateo jumped in.
The Cleanser and the Warrior looked at him like he was even more of an idiot
than he was.
Mateo held firm. “More specifically, without Leona.”
“Just so I can understand this,” Leona began, “are you two fighting over who
manages to save the most people?”
Zeferino laughed. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”
“Ha, yeah,” Anatol agreed.
“Anyway, we agreed no mixing,” Zeferino said. “We’re supposed to be
operating within different timelines.”
Anatol shrugged. “I’m still getting a handle on my new powers. I honestly
didn’t realize this wasn’t a different reality. You normally do that for
us.”
Zeferino seemed content with this response. “Then we’ll call it a draw, and
move on to the next one.”
“Okay, but I don’t like your chances with this one,” Anatol said. “She
seems...green.”
“I am green,” the young woman agreed.
“Well...” Zeferino began.
“You wanna split the teams again,” Anatol figured.
“I’ve already worked with some of these people,” Zeferino said. “It could be
fun.”
“So, what? Three against three?”
“There are seven of them.”
Anatol shrugged again. “I don’t really know why this Olimpia person is here,
or what she contributes.”
Olimpia didn’t seem bothered by this remark, and no one wanted to come to
her defense, because all it would do was lead her to being just as much of a
pawn in their chess game as the rest of them.
Leona cleared her throat pointedly. “There aren’t seven of us, there are
six.” There had been this unspoken agreement that everyone would pretty much
stay quiet while the gods fought with each other, but Leona hated bad math,
and she couldn’t let it go.
Anatol looked around. “Wait, where is Dalton?”
“I didn’t use him for this one,” Zeferino explained. “These two haven’t met
yet.”
“What are we doing with the numbers?” Anatol questioned. “Are you bringing
him on, or what?”
“Let’s do boy versus girls,” Zeferino suggested. “I have a fourth man to
bring on who could be on your team, and that will make them even.”
“Hold on,” Anatol said. “I have to take the guys? They’re all morons.”
“D.B. isn’t that dumb, Anatol.”
“You have Leona and Angela. That’s crazy.”
“You have the primary cuff,” Zeferino returned.
“Well, it doesn’t work without it, does it?”
“You do have two to spare, according to my maths.” Zeferino looked directly
at Leona.
“I do. But you still have the dream team,” Anatol reasoned.
“I’ll tell you what, your team can have any powers you want them to have. My
team can have none.”
They both thought over the proposal, to make sure there weren’t any issues
on either side.
“Deal,” Anatol said.
“Deal,” Zeferino echoed.
They both looked over at the group. No one was preparing to argue or
complain. Mateo was smiling.
“What are you thinking?” Anatol asked. “You believe this will give you some
kind of advantage?”
Mateo’s smile widened. “Not as of yet, but it will present itself. That’s a
major lesson that I don’t think I realized I learned until now. You see, you
are so powerful that you can think ten steps ahead. But you always miss one
thing.” He used hand gestures for emphasis.
“What’s that?” Zeferino asked.
“You always miss at least one forking path. We’ll play your game. We’ll let
you break us up, and compete against each other across two timelines. While
we’re doing that...we’ll wait. Despite your immortality, you both possess an
obscene amount of impatience, and regularly demonstrate a high capacity for
boredom. I give this...nine missions before it all falls apart.”
Zeferino and Anatol smirked, and simultaneously said, “deal.”
Leona, Angela, Olimpia, and newcomer Siria went their own way with the
Cleanser. Mateo and Jeremy, meanwhile, went off with the Warrior to meet
back up with Dalton, as well as meet some guy named D.B. Mateo was surprised
to find out that they were talking about the D.B. Cooper; famed plane
hijacker and folk hero. He reportedly made off with $200,000 in 1971, though
according to Anatol’s introduction, this was just a ploy to get himself to
altitude. His time traveling ability only worked when he was falling from a
great height, and he was actually just trying to get home. The Cleanser
apparently screwed with his attempt, and forced him so far in the past that
this goal would be impossible. He recently spent some time working with
Mateo’s once-mother, Laura Gardner, and her partner, Samwise Bellamy. Even
though he was still centuries in the past, being in 1608 was sort of a break
from that harsh life. There was a reason that most travelers didn’t spend
too much time before the 20th century. Toilet paper was a pretty big factor.
“All right,” Anatol began. They were in some kind of salon, or meeting room
for rich people, who didn’t want to spend too much time with the less
fortunate. Everything was made of leather, or wood. “Now that everyone knows
each other, it’s time to begin. Today is May 31, 1608. You are in Timeline
One. The ladies are in Timeline Alpha. Most of the time, these timelines
won’t be running concurrently, but access to The Parallel has given me the
ability to keep one from collapsing under the weight of the other. For now.
You’re in a competition. Not only do you have to complete the missions we
set before you, but you have to do them better than the other team.
Whichever team ends up with the best timeline will get to live on in their
timeline. The losing team, on the other hand, will remain in the defunct
timeline until such time that it finally does collapse.”
“Wait, what?” Jeremy questioned. “You didn’t say anything about that before.
“Oh, it didn’t need to be said,” Anatol joked. “Zef and I knew that was part
of the deal all along. Don’t worry, we’ll be all right. Only the four
regular people on the team will die. He and I will get out and survive no
matter what.”
“Yeah, we were worried about that,” Mateo said sarcastically. “I guess it’s
okay now that we know you two will live.”
“Quite.” Anatol was just going to pretend they were all being genuine. He
handed Jeremy a slip of paper. “This first one is pretty straight-forward,
just to dip your toes in. They’ll get more complicated as you level up. That
is the address of a young boy. Rescue him from his abusive uncle, who
ultimately accidentally kills him today. I’m not even gonna give you access
to my time power library, because I don’t think you’ll need it. In fact,
I’ll be suppressing both Dalton and D.B.’s powers, in case you get any ideas
about escape.”
“Thank you,” Mateo said. “You can go now.”
“Very well.” Anatol disappeared.
The four of them looked around at each other. Then they all sat down.
“Obviously we can’t do this,” Jeremy decided.
“No, we can’t let them die,” Mateo concurred.
“I don’t understand how this works,” Dalton noted. “When it kills us, will
we go to the afterlife simulation?”
“I don’t think so,” Mateo guessed. “The simulation is in whatever timeline
wins out over the others. That is, it’s not like it exists outside of time.
Every version of it that exists in a collapsing timeline should collapse
along with it. Otherwise, everyone would have infinite alternate versions of
themselves in there, and I don’t think that’s how it works. We won’t even
really die, it will be more like we never existed.”
D.B. nodded understandingly. “What is the afterlife simulation?”
They explained it to him.
“So, if we don’t save the boy,” D.B. said afterwards, “we just have to hope
your friends on the other team do? Our version of the boy will be erased
from history regardless, but one of them will live on?”
“That’s the way I understand it,” Mateo said.
“I feel a little weird letting him die even though it won’t matter,” D.B.
lamented with airquotes.
Mateo nodded. “He said you’re a time traveler. You’re not a time looper,
though, right? You create an alternate reality every time.”
“Yes, I see where you’re going with this. I’ve killed an infinite number of
people already. I suppose it’s just that I’ve never been asked to save a
particular person. My God...” He reached over, and took the paper from
Jeremy. “We know his name.”
“The answer is..don’t think about it,” Mateo instructed. “He will be saved.
There’s no way Leona doesn’t figure out how to do it in the best way
possible.”
Meanwhile, in Timeline Alpha, the girls were sitting around in their own
salon, but it looked more island tropical than stuffy cigar club. They were
getting to know their new member. Siria was like Angela in that she didn’t
have powers, but she knew about it all. She worked at a special place that
was simply called The Time Clinic. People with time illnesses were sent
there to be treated, or just made comfortable. Her job was primarily that
second part, as she didn’t have any medical training, but she also seemed to
have a knack for coming up with permanent solutions that helped the patients
lead semi-normal lives. Many of the illnesses were the result of the
Cleanser’s petty retaliations, which was how she ended up on his shitlist.
They too had decided that they couldn’t let their friends die in the other
timeline just to save themselves. Unlike them, though, they realized that
the guys would come to the same conclusion, and that the boy would not be
saved in any timeline. They sat there for about an hour before someone
knocked on the door. When Leona opened it, she didn’t find a person, but
there was a movie theatre on the other side. That was about three hundred
years too early, so they all walked through, and took their seats. The guys
came in from the other entrance shortly thereafter, and found their own
seats.
“Did you win?” Mateo asked his wife.
“I didn’t play.”
“Me neither. I was hoping you would. Were you hoping we would?”
Leona shook her head. “No.” She didn’t elaborate.
The house lights dimmed, and the curtains moved. An image came on screen. It
turned out to be a trailer for a movie that featured most of the people that
were in the auditorium right now. It was about a team of time travelers who
very specifically found themselves on a planet a hundred and eight light
years from Earth. They had a ship that could only take them a light year at
a time, so they had to have adventures with crazy alien cultures in the
meantime. It sounded more like a TV show, but either way, the audience
couldn’t tell if this was prescience, or a joke. Once it was over, the
feature presentation began, but it was shorter than the trailer they just
watched. A drunk man was beating a young boy in his room, and ended up
taking it too far with a lamp. This was the boy they were meant to save, but
didn’t. These were the consequences.
The house lights came back up, and Anatol and Zeferino climbed on stage. “As
part of this sneak preview,” the former began, “my co-director and I are
hosting a Q and A session. Ask us any questions about...oh, I dunno, why the
hell you should agree to participate, and what’s going to happen if you
don’t, and...how many innocent people are gonna die?”
They waited. “No?” Zeferino asked. “No one wants to know those things?”
Leona stood up. “I don’t know what you thought you would accomplish by
forcing us to become complicit in each other’s deaths, but good people don’t
do that. We don’t choose to save ourselves. And if you can’t understand
that, you shouldn’t be in charge of an outhouse, let alone all of reality.
We’ve all asked you to help us save lives, and in exchange for that, you’re
asking for us to kill each other. That’s not a thing, that’s not a thing!
You can play it straight, or you can watch us sit here and do nothing. You
have the power here, so either do the right thing, or perpetuate this macho
psycho-killer bullshit reputation that you’re apparently so afraid to lose,
you can’t see that all of your sadistic games are completely goddamn
pointless!”
The two of them stood on stage for a moment. Then Anatol reached over, and
placed his hand on Zeferino’s shoulder. They disappeared for a second, then
returned in different positions. “All right, no games,” Anatol agreed. “One
team, one timeline. Save the people we tell you, don’t ask questions, and
we’ll let you know what the point of it all is in the end. This is our final
offer. Either take it, or we’ll make you wish only half of you had been
erased from existence.”
No comments :
Post a Comment