No Time

by submission | Aug 13, 2011 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Andrew Bale

He stared at the body on the ground. He felt like he should be crying, laughing, raging at the universe, something other than just sitting there, but all he could do was sit there and stare. The belt pouch was new – he had never seen it before. Reaching over the corpse, he opened it, pulled out a cigar, a lighter, a flask of whiskey, a grenade. He already had a bad liver, bad lungs, had sworn off drinking and smoking years ago, but it hardly mattered now. He was a dead man, just waiting to die.

It had been a simple plan. His stolen time-belt gave him a big advantage in the stolen antiquities market, and the Mongol battlefield below would yield artifacts worth millions to the right collectors. He didn’t know how they saw him, or why they came after him, but he had had no choice but to fight – the belt had not cooled yet, jumping again would have killed him. Besides, he wasn’t really afraid. A millennium’s worth of technological advantage had overcome his substantial natural cowardice.

He had cut down a few with his beamer before he saw a figure appear behind them, just as in a dozen past skirmishes. Two guns made short work of twenty charging horsemen, and he had just started to swagger over to loot the bodies when he saw it at the edge of the impromptu battlefield. One body that was not that of a Mongol, but of a time traveler. His body.

The Time Patrol forbid it, but when you were out on your own, illegal already, why not? You get attacked, you have no backup, so you become your own. Survive the battle, then jump back in time later, prepared, and help yourself win! It had worked before, and it wasn’t any greater of a risk – no matter how his personal timeline looped, he could still only die once. Besides, the big risk was the initial contact, any later incarnation that had come in to help would know exactly what was happening. He was a little unsure about the continuity of causality, but he was no theorist and it worked!

But now he knew his future, not his past. An ancient blade, an unseen attacker, perhaps a straggler. The horse-amplified cut had come up under his arm, bypassing the armor entirely and cleaving through his armpit into his chest. He had staggered, crawled, writhed before he had bled out. It would have been, would BE agonizing.

He touched the wrapping on his shin, stared at the partly-healed matching wound on the body before him. A gouge sustained finding his overlook was now the measure of the rest of his life. A few days, a week or two at most? Long enough to scab over, not long enough to become skin again. At least he had, or would have, the decency to wear shorts, leave that marker exposed.

He pulled out a pad of paper, began making lists. A 20th century Cuban cigar, a 22nd century Bourbon, a cheap lighter, an incendiary grenade, a belt pouch, his gray hiking shorts. A fight at the Coliseum, Sinatra at the Desert Inn, Lunapalooza 23, the grassy knoll, that place with the strawberries.

The belt pinged, cool enough to jump. He stubbed out the cigar, dropped the empty flask, set the grenade on the body, and pulled the pin. No time to waste on a funeral, he only had a little time left to be living. Time to jump.

Proto

by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 12, 2011 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Geff opened and closed his eyes. The darkness was absolute, so neither state made a difference. He could feel rather than hear the thin air screaming past his projectile encasement, launched as it was from near the edge of the atmosphere at a target halfway around the globe from where he strapped in.

If the engineers had missed one calculation, if the production crew had misaligned one scrap of material.

Now was not the time to think of such things.

Geff gauged the time from the insertion and readied himself for braking and impact, for it was the time to think of those things.

Anyone at the airfield looking at radar would see nothing, his vessel entirely organic. No metal, no electronics, a bernoulli laser guidance system lit the target and optics and thermally activated flaps course corrected on the way down.

It was the highest tech brute force incursion vehicle Geff had ever seen.

As pressure marked a set altitude, explosives deployed flaps and chute panels, slowing the multi mach decent rapidly, Geff feeling the crush of deceleration. Seconds ticked by, then the pressure eased as the panels disintegrated into dust, lost in the late evening cloud cover.

Geff bit into his mouthguard and let his body relax.

The missile struck behind hanger three, puncturing the ground and digging in nearly thirty feet. Inside the vessel, Geff decelerated the length of the capsule itself, the material beneath his feet collapsing into the crumple zone, gradually slowing him to merely a jarring thud as he reached the bottom and stopped.

For a long moment there was silence. Geff flexed. Feeling no broken bones, he relaxed.

“That was the easy part.”

Pushing at the capsule panel in front of him, he set off a series of charges around the outside of the craft, then pushed around until part of the shell broke away, finding himself with a rough access point into a maintenance tunnel. Uncanny precision.

Pulling himself through the opening and finding the tunnel empty he unholstered his Glock and set off along the route he’d been memorizing for weeks.

It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the fueling tanks buried beneath the hanger floors, by which time he imagined a large contingent of soldiers would have gathered at the hole he created top side. He hoped the hole would have caved in on itself, masking the true nature of the impact.

Up a ladder into a brightly lit hallway. Geff worked his way carefully towards the pilot’s ready rooms without seeing anyone. Inside he secured a helmet and gloves which mated perfectly to his suit. Again, the depth of the intel and the precision of his engineering team was commendable.

Weapon stowed, gloved and helmeted he stepped out onto the hanger floor, walking purposefully towards the shimmering craft that rested on pedestals at its center. He couldn’t tell if he was being observed, as any look away from his target would show uncertainty and invite unwanted attention.

Geff reached the entrance to the craft without any resistance at all.

“This is almost too easy.” The thought troubled him, but he climbed inside, and with a brief struggle deciphering the glyphs and the Cyrillic translations tacked up beside them, he closed the outer door.

Geff moved quickly to the cockpit, studying the control surfaces and the scattered notes of the local engineers. Engrossed as he was he was startled by a voice inside his head.

“You intend to remove me from this place?”

“Yes, I certainly do.”

“Good. I wish to leave. What did you bring to free me?”

Geff stopped fumbling at the controls. This was a warplane he was stealing. Wasn’t it?

“What do you mean, you should be equipped with every weapon we need to blast out of here, that’s kind of the plan.”

Geff could feel a flood of disappointment and resignation in the voice inside his head as it spoke again.

“I suppose that means you’re a prisoner now too.”

Coup

by submission | Aug 11, 2011 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Cesium

Andelie stands atop the Fisher Building, gazing across miles of open air at the Monolith. It is formally the Colonial Administrative Headquarters, but it is always called the Monolith. Its imposing black form towers over the rest of the city. Fisher is the only building that comes close.

The Fisher Building is nominally the future corporate offices of Fisher Insurance, an immensely profitable and perfectly unremarkable corporation of which Andelie is also nominally an employee. It has risen story by story into the sky over the past decade. It is now only weeks from its official opening. Its unofficial opening will come significantly sooner.

Andelie adjusts her goggles, zooms in on the base of the tower. The motorcade is just pulling past lines of rippling flags into the entrance. They are later than she expected, but not behind schedule. The schedule is theirs. Andelie can afford to wait.

A scudding wisp of cloud obscures her sight for a moment. She looks away, touches a finger to her phone. The countdown starts.

Beneath her feet, illicit machinery moves into position. Industrial-grade fabbers complete the final stages of years of preparation. Surplus construction materials left deliberately unrecycled in the basements are covertly loaded onto high-speed lifts.

Careful deceptions and generous bribes have kept the Fisher Building’s true purpose hidden since its inception. The Monolith is well defended against terrorist attacks and armed siege alike. To decapitate the irredeemably corrupt government in an appropriately spectacular fashion requires a more innovative approach.

The clock ticks down to zero.

Down the face of the building, windows lift open and retract. Rail cannons extend, locking into position. The first salvo comprises kinetic and incendiary shells, fabricated from innocuous raw materials. Wind speeds and atmospheric conditions are known; angles and tolerances have been calculated precisely. Andelie watches the guns fire, perfectly synchronized.

The side of the Monolith bursts into plumes of dust and flame. Automatic turrets are already returning fire, but the Fisher Building’s active and passive defenses, which are overengineered for mere earthquakes and storms, adequately shield it. The architects of the Monolith, however, did not anticipate that it might face a skyscraper bristling with hostile guns.

Flying drones approach, but veer away before coming into range. The automated safeguards against colliding with tall structures are hardcoded even into military aircraft. They can be overridden, but it will take time.

The second salvo of explosive rounds shatters the weakened skeleton of the lower floors. The Monolith sways, bleeding acrid smoke, then collapses in on itself with an elegant rapidity. A cloud of dust enfolds its base and blossoms out through the city.

Just like that, it’s over. Time has run out.

The ultimatum to the armed forces, Andelie knows, has already been broadcast. She does not expect significant resistance. The weapon she stands upon should be intimidation enough. “Good work,” she says into her phone. A new age has begun, she thinks.

A stiff breeze ruffles her clothes and exposes the ruined stump of the Monolith. It was the Colonial Administrative Headquarters, but now it is only the grave of the old regime. The Fisher Building’s imposing silver form towers over the rest of the city. No other building comes close.