Out of Time by Ryan Matthew Harker (ebooks online reader txt) 📕

Actually the Moon colony is the only one I’ve been to. I’d like to go to the others but space flight would require me to be in one place for too long. As it is the Moon is tethered to the Earth by a space elevator. Theoretically impossible for so long for lack of a substance strong enough, when the crunch hit the world governments banded together and confiscated the planet’s diamond supply, both commercial and private. Then with the help of some kind of self repairing nano-polymer they slightly tweaked the molecular structure of the diamonds and bonded them together into what amounts to the strongest cable in the solar system. Using this cable a way was devised to transport people and goods back and forth between the surfaces of the planet and her satellite.

It only takes about nineteen hours to make the trip so I calculated my odds. In all probability the Gunman would track me, and kill me, but I decided a trip to the Moon was worth the risk… and it is!

The view alone is worth it and as I take a window seat in the Moon View Café I again consider the possibility of the Gunman making an appearance. So far all’s well and an attractive waitress in a tinfoil costume and square hat comes by to take my drink order.

“Long Beach Ice Tea,” I tell her and with promises to return momentarily she leaves me to my menu.

The menu, man is it something else, I’m looking at a variety of food with Moon themed names (not quite sure what most of it is) when a man sits down on the other side of the table from me. He’s dressed rather dapperly in the present style of the future. His coat’s not as nice as mine but his fedora matches it to a T.

He removes his hat as he sits, asks, “Mr. Jones I presume?” and sets it on the table next to him.

About as surprised as a man can be never the less I sit back and calmly observe my ‘visitor’. I’m more than half expecting the not so mysterious gunman to make an appearance but this guy I’ve never seen before. Hair the color of an arctic wolf with eyes to match the man has a vague alien vibe to him that I can’t put my finger on. Is it that his eyes are a little too far apart? Or maybe it’s how spidery long his fingers are? Maybe it’s his thin bloodless lips perhaps or that his ears are a touch too pointy? I know it’s absurd to actually think he’s an alien, in all my travels through time I’ve yet to encounter any actual evidence supporting their existence, but he does have some weird quality to him that’s for sure.

I decide since it’s next to impossible for anyone to know who I am it’s best to ignore his question and return to my menu. I lightly peruse some of the items while he sits patiently awaiting my answer. Lifting my eyes back to my mealtime intruder I ask him a question of my own, “So, what would you recommend to eat?” I flash my pearly whites good humouredly.

Wolfman looks genuinely amused by my evasiveness, replying evenly, “I recommend the Imbrium omelet. It’s to die for.” He shows me his own teeth and I notice his incisors are unnaturally long. Ut oh, I’ve been tracked through time and followed into space by a vampire. I contain my mirth as I feel the familiar tingle of hysterics threaten to overtake me.

“Imbrium omelet eh, all right, Imbrium omelet it is.” Sounds as good as anything, I shut my menu and lay it on the table in front of me. I’m quickly becoming unnerved by the fact that Wolfman isn’t blinking. He just keeps staring at me with those intensely intelligent and crafty looking jelly orbs of his. I need to keep a handle on this new twist in things and so fire another question of my own, “What’s your name old timer?”

The wrinkles around his eyes and in his forehead deepen, his smile sure is wolfish as well, I’m thinking but his next words blow every thought out of my head like a hydrogen bomb. “Oh I think Wolfman fits well enough,” and his smile grows ever more feral across his face.

My jaw drops. I wasn’t surprised before, merely startled. Complete surprise has me now, has me completely paralyzed in mind as surely as in body. Telepathy? Telepathy! Are you kidding me?! All I can do is stare at him, bore into him with my disbelief and break down his hold over me so that my incredulousness can help me once again regain control over my body. No way, telepathy’s impossible! It has to be a coincidence!

“Rare, I assure you Mr. Jones, but not impossible.”

I want to run. Every fiber of my being tells me to run but at the same time my muscles feel like jelly. With a cold sweat broken upon my brow I don’t think I can rise from my seat right now if my life depended on it. It very well may, if so I’m sunk.

“Rest assured Mr. Jones, I mean you no harm,” Wolfman lays each of his long fingered hands upon the table (man his nails are long too, like claws). “I’m unarmed and if you so choose you could easily pull your primitive projectile weapon from your jacket and kill me,” he looks meaningfully to my coat as if he’s looking right at the Colt in its shoulder holster. “But if you were to do so we could not talk about the SEAID you have possession of.”

I narrow my eyes and a denial rises to my lips but stops before getting past my tonsils. It’s pretty pointless lying to a telepath.

“Pointless indeed,” Wolfman agrees with my thoughts. “I’m glad you are the reasonable man you seem to be.” He lifts a hand and signals for my waitress to return.

“I’m sorry sir,” she removes my menu and puts my drink in its place. “I didn’t realize you were expecting company. I should have asked.”

“No worries sweetheart, neither did I,” I tell her red lips as they smile down on me. I look towards Wolfman. “I’ll have the Imbrium omelet and you better bring me some water with it.”

“Of course sir,” she smiles prettily and looks to Wolfman, “And what would you like sir?”

“Water please, if you would my dear?” Wolfman’s smile is a little less severe when he flashes it her direction. “I have a feeling I won’t be here too long.”

“Of course sir,” she smiles once more, departs to give the chef my order and then returns promptly with Wolfman’s water.

He sits silently while she does this and takes a long drink as she walks away again, slurping noisily at the straw before speaking.

“You cannot possibly understand the chaos you will unleash Mr. Jones,” he begins. “The SEAID is far more dangerous than you realize. TRU technology was never meant to fall into your hands and yet somehow not one but two Temporal Reconfiguration Units have found their way to humans. Of these two the SEAID is much, much more dangerous; unpredictable even. The technology is unique, untested, immature. Perhaps unstable?”

“You hear that TRU? The man thinks you’re crazy,” I tell my coat.

“I am anything but Davey, as you well know. Nor am I immature,” an offended female voice from within my coat tells me back.

I look Wolfman dead in his unblinking eyes. “I guess the cat’s out of the bag,” I tell him. “Why don’t you elaborate on your involvement in all this? Maybe tell me how such a sweet gal as TRU could be so dangerous?”

“Thank you Davey,” TRU tinkles happily.

“This is most unexpected,” Wolfman doesn’t look pleased as he stares at me over the rim of his water glass. “Most unexpected indeed.” He acts as if he’s not accustomed to surprises. Being a telepath maybe he’s never been surprised. Well surprise you weird ol’ SOB.

I can tell my thoughts strike a nerve when he actually frowns at me but, other than this small slip on his part, Wolfman only sets his empty glass on the table. “Very well,” he starts. “It’s very apparent you intend to be difficult unless I comply with your request. I suppose a part of me even understands. The SEAID must be quite the temptation for you.”

My lips twitch into a slight frown of their own. I guess that must be what he considers a jibe. I’m honest enough with myself to know he’s right though, TRU is a HUGE temptation. Probably the biggest I can imagine. Knowing my vain attempts at controlling my body language stem completely from habit I twitch my lips back into a neutral position.

“Let me start, Mr. Jones, by telling you that I am from the future. A future far removed from you and your timeline. You are familiar with the known Physics of this time?” I nod and he continues, “Well they are incorrect, almost entirely, except for a very basic level. But, all you are to know this moment is that what you consider to be the time trunk is only a branch. If there were to be a time trunk it would be immeasurably incomprehensible for you. As it is our timelines are each separate universes, about as far removed from each other in linear time as the Jurassic is from now. In the universe of my own time my present is the year 495,420,637, the sun is beginning to heat up as its life cycle comes to an end. Mankind, fearful of burning up from the increased solar temperature, is near extinction. Not something uncommon or unheard of throughout man’s long and colored existence, though this could be the last time.”

If he’s expecting sympathy he’s barking up the wrong tree. I had a hard enough time relating to my fellow man before TRU came into my life and three years in the company of an artificial intelligence sure doesn’t help that. If the people of the very fa-ar future look and act like this joker I sure ain’t gonna be able to muster much. Now I’m no expert but I have to say mankind has done pretty well for itself to reach such a ripe old age and probably deserves a dignified retirement after all those millennium of scrambling about trying to stay alive while killing each other.

Wolfman’s steady grey eyes bear into mine and I’m sure he’s soaking in every drop of mental energy I’m producing but I’m getting to the point I don’t care. I’ve never been one to hold my thoughts far from my tongue anyways and this encounter is like any other. The smartass in me says, it’s like no other as well, but I ignore him and pour my concentration on Wolfman as intently as his is on me.

His grey eyes narrow but still don’t blink and he drops a bomb on me, “It’s unfortunate you feel so little remorse for your fellow man, considering you are the one responsible.”

“What!” I explode along with the bomb. “Are you trying to say I kill the human race?”

“Not trying Mr. Jones.”

“Now just wait a cotton pickin’ minute here, just how the heck do I become responsible for the extinction of the human race?”

“You stole the SEAID,” he answers emotionlessly. Come to think of it he hasn’t said anything with any emotion. And he calls me unattached.

But I think his level stare has just unnerved me.

“Can you be a little more specific?” My palms are becoming clammy and I suddenly need to use a restroom. I grab my neglected drink, the condensate on the glass soothingly cold to the touch, and drain half of its potently intoxicating goodness in hope of curing the sandpaper clogging my throat. Goodbye sandpaper, hello instant buzz; another platinum idea from