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

“Curator!” Sammi attempts to bellow her grief but I anticipate her cry and clamp a hand tightly over her mouth so that my fingers muffle her wail. She struggles against me briefly, but only halfheartedly, and then slumps into my comforting arms. I remove my hand from her mouth in order to hold her. “Curator,” she sobs into my collar.

As I watch the scene below I’m glad that Sammi isn’t looking. The Curator’s assassins step around his cold, still, metal corpse and, along with their comrades, turn their deadly fingers on the crowd. The screams of the refugees reach our ears and Sammi shudders in my arms, snuggling in tighter to drown out the cries of her friends and family in the comfort and safety of my coat. All I can do is shut my own eyes and pray the people of Cocoon Town die mercifully.

“What do we do now?” Sammi whispers as we huddle in the dark.

I’m not sure what to think after the massacre of Cocoon Town. I just sit in the dark and relive the screams of children as their parents are put to death in front of their tearful eyes. Sammi’s question, a validation that I’m not alone in this dark, damp world beneath the world, shakes me loose of the shock that grips me.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. In all my travels I’ve never seen such atrocity. Violence, yes, death, yes, but never such blatant disregard for human life. They killed the children last. “But Ras has to pay for what he did today!” My whisper grows fierce.

I hear Sammi rustle beside me. A flame sparks to life, illuminating the tear stains on the young woman’s face, and she touches a lit match to the tip of a cigarette. I stare as my eyes adjust to the sudden light as she puffs the smoke to life. I didn’t even know she smoked.

“Do you have another of those?” I inquire hopefully.

Sammi rustles again, this time her movements are dimly visible by the glow of her cigarette. She removes a wrapped package from somewhere with the folds of her attire and passes it to me. I unwrap it and find cigarettes and matches within. Selecting one of the hand rolled cigs, I put it in my mouth and touch off a match of my own. Inhaling rich tobacco smoke deep into my lungs, I sigh and exhale contentedly.

“Thank you,” I mumble gratefully, handing back the package of smokes and take another pull from my own. I’m starting to feel a little better. Amazing what comfort the little things can bring.

We sit and smoke in silence, watching the cherries of our cigarettes chase their way to our fingers. I feel the warmth of the ember reach my skin and try for one last drag. I burn my fingers though, and quickly put the cigarette out. Sammi laughs at the curse the burn dislodges from my lips. It’s good to hear her laugh and I smile in the dark.

What do we do now? The question drifts through my mind. What to do? Ras Davison has to pay for his crimes, that much is obvious. And even if he didn’t, he knows me, somehow, from somewhere, or somewhen. I have to confront him, before I kill him, I have to confront him about me, about TRU, and about him. I need to know these things. I need to know why he’s after me and how he knew I’d be here, in this Time. He was definitely waiting for me, him and his Zenociders.

“We have to disrupt the balance of power,” I muse out loud. “We have to do something to stop the tyranny your people are living under: Ras’ dictatorship.”

“There’s little we can do with the Zenociders at his beck and call,” Sammi says.

“Hmm,” I stroke the thickening stubble that’s covering my face. An idea is forming. “The Zenociders are cyborgs, right? Half man, half machine?”

“That’s what’s said,” Sammi confirms. “But I think they’re less than half machine. From what I understand the Zenociders used to be people, men and woman. They weren’t normal though, not that they are now, but they started off gifted.”

“Gifted?” I ask. “How so?”

“Supposedly they’re psychics,” she tells me.

“Psychics?”

“Yeah,” Sammi lights two more cigarettes and hands one to me. “Like telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, stuff like that.”

“Telepathy? Like they can read minds?”

“Well, maybe originally but not now. At least not all of them anyway,” she says. “I think it’s more the power of these sixth senses Ras wants, to harness that energy, channel it.”

“How does he do that?”

“With technology,” Sammi’s face glows with light from her smoke and I see from her facial expression that she’s dredging up this info with difficulty. After all, she’s no scientist or technician. “I think they got some kind of something put in their heads.”

“A microchip?” I interrupt.

“That sounds right,” Sammi exhales smoke. “It’s something to do with electronics.”

“Microchips, I’m sure of it,” I stroke my prickly beard again. This future may not have quite what my idea of microchips are, but I’m sure that it must have an equivalent of. “And Ras uses this technology to brainwash the Zenociders?”

Sammi frowns at the term then tries it on for size. “Brain... wash, brainwash...,” she savors the word’s nuances on her tongue.

“Mind control,” I say. “To make people do what you want against their will.”

“Brainwash,” she repeats. “Yes, I understand, it’s a good word. But there’s more to it than that, I don’t think they have much of a mind left to control after Ras is done. Their powers are also focused, refined down to their essence, this is how they can shoot people with their fingers; it’s really with their minds.”

“But what about when I shot them? Sure it was all pretty hectic but when I shot them they weren’t entirely human, not ones merely encased in armor anyway. It was more like they were a part of it, that it was somehow bonded to them.”

“There is a level of...,” Sammi struggles to find the proper word. “Integration. It’s more than just the stuff in their head that just gives them control of their powers, their suits allow them to channel that power. I guess they act as a conduit.”

“I see,” I say.

“Of course this is only what I’ve heard through gossip. I don’t think anyone really knows for sure. Except for Ras that is.”

I stub out my second smoke and contemplate this new information. I don’t contemplate for long.

“Oh!” Sammi startles me. “One more thing! The Chronicler controls the Zenociders.”

This twist makes me sit up straight, “The supercomputer that scans Time for the refugees?”

“Yes,” she nods her head. She knows I’m on to something but she doesn’t get what. “Why? What is it?”

I clap her on the back, “That’s it, Sammi! All we have to do is break into the DTA building and shut down the Chronicler. If we do that all the Zenociders will go offline and Ras won’t have his army anymore!”

A huge grin spreads across her face and Sammi jumps into my arms, hugging me fiercely and saying, “That’s it, that’s it! That’s a great idea!” But then she pulls back from me and asks, “But how are we going to get into the DTA?”

“Didn’t the Curator say that the Chronicler was located in the basement there?”

Her grin reappears. “He did!”

“And are there any tunnels down here that connect to the DTA basements?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “We can find out!”

“Then let’s do it,” I tell her.

Sammi surges to her feet, rearing to go, and I reign her in. “Not yet,” I grab her arm and her pull down beside me. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day. I think we should get some rest, and then go.”

Sammi nods in slow resignation. “Ok,” she agrees and snuggles in next to me. “I am a bit tired.”

I close my eyes and pull her in tighter, enjoying the warmth of her next to me in this cool, damp place. We don’t say much else and after ten minutes we’re both sound asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ACT FOUR

I awake feeling very uncertain of myself. I don’t feel Sammi lying next to me, the air is no longer cool and damp, and- from the very confusing signals I’m getting from my body- I think I’m floating.

I open my eyes.

Yep, I’m floating.

What? I close my eyes and open them, again disbelieving the facts of my surprising, new and startling situation. My eyes are telling me I’m floating in the center of a white room with the shape of an egg’s interior.

As I assimilate my new surroundings a familiar voice suddenly issues from the very air in which I float. “Ah, I see that you’re awake,” it says.

“Wolfman?!” I gasp through my rising tide of confusion. “What the hell is going on here? Where am I? Where’s Sammi?”

“Do not worry Mr. Jones, your companion is here, on the ship with us.”

“Ship!” the word ejaculates abruptly from my mouth without thought while my mind races. Sammi is here, where ever here may be at this moment. Well, that’s a relief. And while my last encounter with Wolfman brought no good tidings he did not appear to be very threatening in his own right.

“...we are currently nowhere within Earth’s vicinity,” my ears tune back into Wolfman’s lecturing tone. “Having left orbit approximately twenty-two hours ago, we shall be arriving on Mars within the hour.”

“Mars,” again my mouth is ejaculating words without the benefit of first consulting with my brain. However, my brain only takes a fraction of a second to catch up as I realize Sammi and I have been shanghaied. “Why the hell are we going to Mars?”

“Mr. Jones, I warned you that further pursuit along your present course would prove disastrous for the human race, and still you remain inclined to continue to fulfill your foolhardy ambitions. I regret to inform you that while our previous encounter was a courteous warning, you have now reached a critical point in temporal existence in which, if we do not act now, the proposed extinction of your species will become inevitable. We are taking you to Mars for reprogramming.”

Ut-oh, reprogramming, I don’t particularly like the sound of that. “Reprogramming!” I object. “You can’t do this to me! I’m not some faulty computer, I’m a human being!”

“I’m afraid we can, Mr. Jones,” Wolfman’s voice sighs throughout the atmosphere of my egg shaped cell. “What’s more is that we don’t want to, but you have left us with no other alternative, we have no choice at this injunction. We cannot allow one man’s irresponsible behavior condemn an entire race to annihilation.”

“Believe me, bother, you’re not going to get away with this!” I adamantly declare to the empty space around me. My protestation seems to fall upon deaf ears though, as Wolfman fails to reply. At least I get no response verbally. What I do get is an immediate restoration of gravity and my backside meets the floor with bruising effect.

I stand up grumbling and gently rub the ache out of my tailbone. What a mess I seem to be in now.

With most of the ache massaged out of my rear I begin to pace. There are so many unanswered questions in my life at the moment that my mind balks at doing any real musing, and though I try to concentrate on this new predicament, no bright ideas on resolving my plight are forthcoming. So all I do is pace, and pace, and pace some more.

Presently I grow weary of the monotony of pacing and sit down. I’d much prefer to have a wall against my back but the peculiar shape of the room doesn’t afford me such comfort and I take my seat in the center of it. Hunched over and cross legged, with my elbows on my knees and my eyes closed I lose myself in an almost sublime state of doing nothing. It’s all I can do, but it doesn’t last