Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
He’s sitting in the car waving without a clue as to what’s about to happen. Below me, the repository window opens and a man who only wants to make a point by scaring the most powerful man in the world is about to make history.
I manifest the wormhole with a wide entry funnel because he’s not a great shot. The bullet enters the funnel just off-centre. It whips down the hyperdimensional tube, momentarily everywhen and nowhere. For years to come, veterans passing this place will duck as they hear a bullet going by. My concentration slips and the suction from the wormhole pulls his head backwards after the bullet hits. That’s going to get me a reprimand, but does handle the one event aspect our projectionists couldn’t explain.
Time to be elsewhere before the grey on the grassy knoll realises he’s been pre-empted. Affairs route me automatically while an indirect delivers my brief into mind.
Herr Hitler is raving again, his high-pitched diatribe audible over the U-boat’s engines as it flees for Argentina. Herr Muller is trying to calm him down while Herr Brunner is making love to Fraulein Braun in the aft torpedo room. The vessel is stuffed with art, gold and enough war criminals to make Weisenthal sing hosannas. The entire crew are all hardened Schwarze Sonne. Given the amount of stuff on board, making this vanish with everything is going to take some ingenuity. Scuttling it as planned will not work. Too many bits of crap to crop up at inopportune moments.
I run a direct to my disc, high above me. It routes my suggestion uptime and passes permission back within moments. No delays for decision making when you can monkey with time. I push the disc into a stable high orbit and have it charge and push a locus attractor through an in-system warp. Now for the wet bit.
The water ahead and just abeam of the sub is cold, dark and crushing. I manifest the wormhole as soon as the shock of the water registers. I feel unconsciousness pull at me as U-3531 vanishes into the tunnel along with some surprised fish and several million gallons of Atlantic. With the last of my will I iris the tube closed. Three hundred thousand kilometres above Sol, a U-boat appears in a brief cloud of steam before starting a searing fall.
Time to be elsewhere before I drown.
I appear somewhere dusty and hot. Orientation yields New Mexico but no brief. I’m just starting to dry out when a direct initiates.
“Ten, we have a problem.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“We’re not omnipotent. To prove it, Eleven has just frisbee’d a grey dropship. Made a mess of him but ruined them. Need you to fetch him and finish any survivors.”
“You don’t sound too upset. Has he unravelled another unknown event aspect?”
A chuckle comes over the feed: “He’s way ahead of you now. This one is a whole unprojected event. You’re fifteen clicks outside Roswell in June forty-seven. You have carte noir to completely mayhem the event. As a consolation prize, One says that you can take the gloves off and just have fun.”
Somedays I love my job.
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