Timecaster: Supersymmetry (13 page)

I sat up, gingerly feeling my neck. “What happened to the byter?”

“I believe it’s dead.”

“How?”

“I’m not an entomologist, but my guess is the nanopoison in your blood. It weighs less than you, and has an accelerated metabolism. So it the poison acted much faster in the byter.”

That was as good a guess as any.

“How do you feel?” Sata asked.

“Perfectly fine.” Which was convenient, considering all I still needed to do. “Am I cured?”

“You should be. But if the symptoms return, take another dose.” Sata handed me an autosyringe. “Now we need to figure out how to escape the house.”

I removed the men and duo, dripping byter essence onto the floor of the lab. It had soaked into my underwear, and which was squishy. After a few steps, it dripped down into my socks and filled my shoes, making a sploshy sound when I walked.

“Can I get a change of clothes first?” I asked. “Maybe a shower?”

“I would insist on it.” Sata held his hand over his nose. “That’s a rather pungent odor.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And such a copious amount. Sort of a
bugkake.
” He put extra surroundingEI heardetemphasis on the Japanese pronunciation, so it left no doubt I was hearing a bad bukkake pun.

“Is the shower where it always was?” I asked, remembering we were both on an alternate earth.

“Through the dojo. I have extra clothing in the closet. And Talon…”

“Sata?”

He bowed. “Thank you for saving my life.”

I bowed back. “You are very welcome, Sata-san.”

• • •

I used most of a bar of soap, half a bottle of shampoo, three towels, and when I finished the shower I still didn’t feel clean.
Eau de bed bug
stuck to every hair of my body like the world’s grossest glue. Worse yet, when I closed my eyes I could imagine I still felt the gentle rocking motion.

Yuck. Female bed bugs had my heartfelt condolences.

I found a pair of khakis and a synthetic cotton shirt among Sata’s workout gear that fit okay. But my feet were too large for any of his shoes, so I had to put my gooshy pair back on. I’d just finished lacing up when I heard talking coming from the living room.

Two men.

One of them was Sata.

The other was me.

I quickly looked around the dojo for a weapon. But Alter-Sata, when imprisoning Sata here, hadn’t left him anything to defend himself with. His
shinai
—kendo swords—were missing. I looked around for a floor lamp, a table, anything at all with heft, and then a third voice spoke, cutting straight to my core.

My wife. Vicki.

I’ve never been an overly emotional person, but hearing her made my whole body clench like a fist. I almost let out a hysterical giggle, but that was quickly overtaken by a cool, ugly calm.

If that son of a bitch so much as touched her…

Moving low, sans weapon, I crept through the doorway and peered into the living room.

Sata was on the sofa, sitting next to Vicki. She had on wrist restraints, and her left eye was black and puffy. Standing before them was Alter-Talon, his hands in latex gloves, blood dripping from the wrists. He had one Tachyon Emission Visualizer hanging from his shoulder, and another strapped across his waist like a giant belt.

“Please don’t,” Vicki said, tugging on Alter-Talon’s arm. “Talon,
please
. He’s a good man.”

He reared back and slapped her, and I felt like I was being slapped twice as hard.

“Don’t you
ever
touch me unless I give you a direct order to. And as for you…”

Alter-Talon glanced at Sata, whose shoulders were slumped in defeat. surroundingEI heardet

“…I’m going to use one TEV to destroy this world, and the other to escape it. But I’ll need one more. You’re going to build it for me.”

Sata stared up at him, his face solemn as a marble statue. “No.”

Alter-Talon stared for a moment. Then he nodded slowly. “I respect your decision, and respect you enough that I know I won’t be able to convince you.”

Then he pressed a button on his belt, and time stopped.

But it couldn’t have actually stopped, because I was watching it happen, and my thoughts were still going forward in real time even though the scene before me froze like a still photograph.

Sata’s mouth, opening in surprise.

Vicki’s beautiful green eyes wide with fear.

Something black—blacker than the darkest night—spraying out of the TEV, frozen in mid-air.

Then time sped up, and Sata was enveloped by the blackness.

An involuntary “No!” was ripped from my mouth, and I charged at Alter-Talon, going in low for the tackle.

He spun to face me, the black beam shooting over Vicki’s head and shoulders, taking out the ceiling and part of the roof.

I caught Alter-Talon by the hip, going in under the TEV, and then driving him into the couch. Except most of the couch was no longer there. It, and the floor beneath, had vanished like someone took a giant ice cream scoop and carved them out.

I adjusted my direction so we didn’t fall into the newly created dirt hole beneath the home’s foundation, and Alter-Talon pivoted to his right—

—toward Vicki.

What happened next wasn’t in slow motion, although it burned itself into my head frame by terrible frame, seeming to take forever to finish.

The black beam cut across Vicki’s chest and head.

Her panicked eyes caught mine.

I saw fear. Surprise.

Blame.

Then it sliced through her, blackness erasing her from the ribs up.

Her arms, and
lower body, remained in place for an excruciating eternity, and then flopped onto the floor, streaming blood.

Vicki…

Not Vicki…

Alter-Talon and I fell to the right of the hole where the sofa used to be, me at his side, the black beam now pointing at the ceiling. I reached for his belt, tugging with all I had, and the TEV broke free. Crying out in rage, I threw it across the room, and it spun like a heliplane blade, erasing walls and sections of the house, which then began to collapse around us.ed tachyon emission visualizered to d at the same time.

G

It hit the floor, hard.

But rather than stop, the blackness widened. Instead of a narrow beam, it was now spraying out blackness in a full half-sphere.

As the world around us began to dissolve, Alter-Talon grabbed my neck, screaming in my face.

“You dumb son of a bitch! You fuct us! It’s sending this entire planet into another dimension where the universe is a million degrees!”

That was fine with me. Without Vicki, my will to live was gone.

I grabbed his left hand, which felt like squeezing a raw steak. Putrid-smelling blood leaked out from his latex glove.

Rather than fight back, Alter-Talon closed his eyes.

Making peace with himself before death?

No. In that hectic moment, with everything disappearing around us in a roar of surreal silence, I recognized that he was concentrating.

I knew what he was doing.

He was petting the bunny.

In order to tune in to the imploded eighth dimension, a timecaster worked by feel and instinct. Once properly calibrated, the TEV connected two points in time, allowing them to be recorded. For some bizarre reason, reaching the octeract point of the at the center of the spacetime eighth-dimensional hypercube felt a lot like petting a bunny between its long ears. Sata (or perhaps some alternate version of him) found a way to connect not only spacetime, but alternate universes. This opened a wormhole doorway that allowed matter to travel throughout the multiverse.

Just as he had sent the Boise, Idaho of my earth to a dinosaur planet, he had just sent my friend Sata, and half of my wife, to a million degree earth. The way the beam was eating up matter—I took a glance behind me and it was biting so deep I saw the orange glow of magma kilometers into the earth’s crust—it seemed only a matter of moments until this entire earth was subsequently destroyed.

I checked Alter-Talon’s free hand, and saw it was on the knob of his second TEV, the one hanging on his shoulder.

There was a flash, and I knew he’d opened a wormhole to a parallel universe.

A nanosecond later, the landscape changed.

Once again we were in Sata’s house. But everything was intact. The black beam dematerializing the planet was gone. I looked to the left, and the sofa was still there, but neither my wife, nor any pieces of her, were.

Then something hit me in the throat.

I released Alter-Talon, gasping for breath, both of my hands going right to my neck. I watched, bug-eyed, as Alter-Talon scrambled to his feet and beelined for the front door. As my vision dimmed, he flashed his wrist across the lock and it opened up.

Then I noticed peripheral movement. I turned my head and the last thing I remembered was Sata’s fist flying at me, right too much woman for that.”

“Y3 seconds

I , which p before it connected with my head.

Stroke. Kick. Stroke. Kick.

After a hundred meters, we didn’t see any more salmonsters.

We went from a sprint to finding our natural rhythm. Alter-Vicki, like my wife, was in excellent shape, and managed to keep up even though I had longer arms and legs.

After two hundred meters I actually saw shore.

My legs and left arm were getting that pins-and-needles sensation, the nano-poison doing its job, but I kept them going even as I lost feeling.

After two hundred and fifty meters, I really began to believe we were going to make it.

“Almost… there… sir.”

“Talon,” I said, huffing. “Call me Talon.”

“Talon,” she said, stopping.

I stopped too, wondering what the problem was, and realized my feet could touch bottom.

We stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, staring at each other. Then Alter-Vicki began to laugh.

“I can’t believe we made it, sir… Talon. I can’t believe it.”

I joined in, wondering if the laughter was hysteria or just pure joy at still being alive.

Alter-Vicki reached out and held my hand. “You remind me of my Talon. Before the accident. Maybe, when this is all over, we could—”

Alter-Vicki and I turned just as the man broke through the surface of the water and screamed, “MOVE!”

He held a large stalk of bamboo, its end sharpened into a point, raising it up to jab Alter-Vicki.

I had no time to think. I just acted, getting between him and her, holding up both my arms in a futile attempt to not get stabbed.

But he didn’t stab me. He stabbed the salmonster that had breached the surface only half a meter from us.

The creature’s tentacles curled around the spear and it thrashed mightily, slapping onto its side, spraying water in all directions. Then it jack-knifed and its enormous tail came around, hitting me in the chest with a solid blow. It swam off, taking the spear with it.

“Talon!”

But Alter-Vicki wasn’t calling to me. She was calling to the man who had too much woman for that.”

“Y3 seconds

I I checked the time on my DTTB just saved us.

Who was also me.

Alter-Talon!

I made a fist, digging my feet into the mucky bottom, exhausted and thrumming from the nanopoison but ready to end this right here and now.

“Look at my hands!” he yelled, spreading them out before me.

I stopped.

His hands were bare, properly attached, no scars or blood or sloughing of skin.

WTF?

“I’m on your side,” he said. “Look to the shore. Sata is there. The good version of Sata, the one who trained you. We want to help.”

I chanced a quick glance, and saw the unmistakable form of my mentor standing on the sand, waving at us.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Let’s get to shore first. There could be more salmonsters.”

We hurried, my apprehension rising with each step. I’d been through a lot in the last few days, and while seeing another version of myself wasn’t as shocking as it had been the first time, it was still disconcerting as heck.

This version of me, call him Talon 2 for the time being, reached out for Alter-Vicki’s hand and helped her keep her balance as the waves broke. I switched my attention to Sata, who looked pale and underweight, but had the same steady eyes and peaceful countenance of the man I remembered. He had a bandage around his arm, and I guessed he’d cut out his chip ID and left it back at his house, so when Alter-Talon pinged the chip it would show he was still there.

Before I had a chance to ask questions, Sata broke the silence.

“You’re familiar with dark matter, Talon-kun. This Talon,” he gestured to Talon 2, “is part of a quantum entanglement of the dark matter in our own universe.”

“Quantum entanglement?” Alter-Vicki asked before I could.

“In laymen’s terms, for every particle there is a corresponding sparticle. They are connected. What happens to one, happens to the other, but with a slight deviation. Spin, position, momentum, or polarization in the case of particles. With larger structures—at least in this case—there is a spacetime differentiation. That Talon is your superpartner. He’s your corresponding mass. He isn’t from a parallel universe. He’s from this universe. He’s a dark matter version of you.”

I knew a bit about dark matter. It couldn’t be detected sensually, but was responsible for much of the mass in our universe.

“I’m three hours and change ahead of you,” Talon 2 said. “That’s how I knew about the salmonster. On the earth I just left, what you’d call a
dark earth
, Alter-Vicki was eaten by the creature I just speared.”

I was trying to keep ering pizzas.”

ed to d at the same time.

Gup with this, but my legs were getting wobbly. Talon 2 seemed to read my mind, and he reached out and steadied my shoulder.