Maggie
fired several shots into the darkness. Spent shells ejected from the
gun and danced on the floor around her.
Angst
was still reloading another clip into the uzi. Her cheerleader outfit
ripped and torn and splattered with dried blood and what looked to be
brain matter as well.
"So
you think you got the hang of it?" Maggie asked her. "Because
if you're looking for more pointers, it will have to wait."
Angst
looked at Maggie, with a look of bewilderment in her eyes. She
couldn't believe that she had stepped into a chapter of the twilight
zone.
Izzard
smiled. He always smiled when he knew something the others didn't. It
made him cocky that way.
"What
is it?" Aqua questioned. She leaned forward on the table to eye
the device more clearly. "Is it a clock of some sort?"
The
device was in the shape of an alarm clock, with gears on the outside
rotating round and round. It looked like some high school kid's
perpetual motion machine project.
Dexter
eyed Izzard carefully, reading his body movements. Gestures and
facial expressions. They were entrenched skills he had developed over
the years he had served on the NYPD. He wasn't sure that he really trusted
that bum in the first place.
"Be
careful," Dexter warned. "For all we know it could be an
explosive of some kind."
That
made Izzard's smile grow more. Dexter hefted his bat up to have it
ready to send that mechanical device flying.
Aqua
touched the object and it seemed to shiver. Her eyes opened up in
surprise. "It's alive."
"You
okay, Max?" the fellow asked him. Max's head was still swimming,
lost in a fog of thoughts and memories which seemed to be in a swirl
of dreamlike spools.
"I
think so," he asked, his voice husky as if coming from an
antiquated stereo system. "What happened?"
The
fellow looked over at Max and a smile spread across his lips. Max
couldn't place where he had met this man before, though the eyes had
that haunting familiarity about them; but in the Metaplex anything
was possible.
"Don't
you remember anything?" the man asked. "The snake men? The
giant robot? The enchantress?"
Max shook his head no to each question; his brain seemed to be blank much
like a switchboard after the operator had gone for a coffee break.
"Not really. Though I do have a vague dream-like deja vu about
it."
Max's
eyes were adjusting to the dim light around him. He could tell they
were inside someplace vast and dark, and that he was lying on a hard
cold stone floor.
He
brought up his hand to rub his eyes and that's when he noticed his
fingernails, and that's when he realized he had breasts.
"Surprise," the man said and Max could tell with the hint in the
voice that it was Maggie.
Max
just wanted to have a cup of coffee and a smoke; he didn't want to
get into fight, but damned if he was just going to sit and let
something like this go unchecked.
"Oh
look the old timer is getting upset," Hood said mockingly.
"What's the matter old man? You want me to get off your lawn?"
Hood
had turned back to give a wink back at his other two buddies, which
gave Max the second he needed. His hand reached up and grabbed
Hood's earring and tore it from its once secured place.
Hood
screamed out in pain. Max stepped forward and brought up his right
hand and connected with Hood's jaw, sending him spinning around like
a lopsided top.
Hood's
two young friends started to come forward but stopped dead in their
tracks.
Kelly,
the waitress, had appeared over the counter holding onto an axe
handle and told them point blankly, "I would turn around and
walk out that door now."
Hood
staggered away from Max, giving Kelly the evil eye as he passed her.
He made a detour around her as he did so.
"You
want another mug, Max?" Kelly asked of Max as the door closed
and the thugs ran off.
"I
would like another cup if you don't mind," Max said as he took
out his cellphone and hit a speed dial number; he knew well enough by
now that those bangers would be back in full force. It was time to
fight fire with fire.
President
Mallory Morphus smiled as she stood up from behind her desk and
walked over to sit on the chair beside him. It was a move
designed to impose. "I guess you are wondering why I summoned
you here."
"I
was beginning to wonder, Madam President," Max replied. He
showed his cool, calm ease. Much akin to a superspy facing a
superior. He had faced many dangers on many worlds, and he was
hardened from it.
The
President had seen fit to call Max from one of his many tasks of
trying to correct some of the rippling mistakes that have occurred.
But, Max knew this was going to be a first contact meeting, for
all she knew was that Max was sort of a "dirty tricks" man.
President
Morphus was impressed that this fellow didn't flinch or seem to be
bothered by her presence at all. She leaned forward, violating his
airspace but he didn't seem to budge.
"Mr.
Cube, I summoned you here for a reason," she said with an air of
command and confidence.
"And
that reason is?" Max asked with a pique of interest.
"After
reading through your file I've decided that I'm invoking Section 13,
Paragraph 11A, Line 14 of the Patriotic Contract that you signed,"
she told him.
Max's
jaw dropped; here he was a hero of the nation who fought off several
alien hordes of the invading Taglidites at Bunker Square, he thought
nothing could faze him at this point of time... "I'm being
Traded?"
I,
Mar Hallow, Librarian of Past Futures Division do hereby acknowledge
this entry to be significant data. It is at the request of the
council that I dictate this;
Scanning
through the past, I have noticed seismic ripples which have occurred in
the latter part of the 20th Century, notable from Tangent Vector
Region and washing out to many other lines. Not just contaminating one
or two other lines, but by my calculations if they are correct, about a
million. And it's infectious as well, spreading like a viral
intruder.
It's
my civic duty to chronicle these ripples in the water of time and to
see what is causing these disturbances. Since the human civilization
at that time didn't have the means to slip in and out of other linear
tracks, it has been a great concern of the council to understand what
the cause was of these effects.
I
am sending a research team into the prime infectious regions to
collect data and transmission, trying to locate the true source.
