Indeed, I’m certain if he ever had the slightest inkling of my true intellectual capacity, he’d have sent Pelt to slit my throat in the night.
However, I learned to read, no thanks to him. Poor dearly departed Goldilocks took care of that on the sly. I was ripping through college level lit by the tender age of fourteen. Eliza Doolittle, eat your heart out.
The procedure hasn’t been without unexpected complications, however. You wouldn’t believe my psychedelic dreams, and if I’m ever caught and placed on trial for crimes against humanity, I’ll get an insanity pass on the descriptions alone. Genetic memory? I dunno; all I know is that in dreams I go for a ride on an astral carpet to a high desert wasteland that spreads under a wide carnivorous sky. The tribe kills with rocks and clubs; it assembles in caves and lays its feasts upon the dirt. They haven’t invented fire, thus meat and skin is crushed and smeared on rocks, like finger paint and wet clay. The brutes, my people, see my apparition, doubtless grotesque in its familiarity, and hoot in alarm and outrage, jam-red mouths agape. Then, the large males, the killers, snarl and snatch up their clubs and their stones, and hop toward me with murder on their minds.
Nine times out of ten, I jerk into wakefulness, alone in my dingy cell with the television screen full of snow. The tenth time out of ten, I come to in a field, naked and covered in scabs of blood, with no memory but the dream memories.
* * *
Even the Doctor isn’t quite mad enough to do what I’ve done. He’s a lunatic, yes indeed. He’s also a survivor. Better than most, he understands that one screws with the infinite at one’s own peril. I’m sure the meticulously recorded results of those Victorian experiments with peasantry cooled his jets.
I , on the other hand, am a desperate sort.
Those nights the good Doctor and his toady spent drunk off their asses, I took the T&S Machine for joyrides. The calibrations weren’t difficult—I simply plugged in the various sequences from Doctor Kob’s logs. The wild part is, the machine goes forward and back and to any physical location in the universe, provided one has the coordinates. The places I’ve gone, weirder and more frightening than those Technicolor nightmares.
After Doctor Kob and Pelt murder me in that squalid alley, I give them a moment to wonder at my dying words. But it’s only a possible me, a shadow. Travelers exist in duplicate during collocation. It’s complicated; suffice to say, each of us unique snowflakes, aren’t. We exist as a plurality. That old saw about meeting yourself…it’s only kinda true. The universe didn’t unravel when I skipped ahead and met one of my future selves, an inveterate alcoholic and aimless wanderer, one bound to run afoul of Dr. Kob’s plots of revenge. If she’s anything like me (haha!), she won’t mind making the sacrifice to even the score.
Pelt knows something’s wrong, but even as he turns I tap him with the prod and he’s gone in a belch of gas and flame. The Doctor takes it in stride. He’s a hobbled shell of a man, yet arrogant as ever. He commands me to drop the weapon and submit to my well-deserved punishment. I slug him and he falls unconscious. That feels so good, I’ve revisited the moment a dozen times.
This is how it ends for Daddy dearest: I strap him into the machine and send him to the land of my ancestors, and once he’s evaporated into the abyss of Time I take an axe to the machine. I’ve gotten my kicks. That conscience I’ve been incubating stings like hell. Who knows what havoc I might wreak on material existence were I to keep dicking around with the timestream.
I sent the Doctor with a mint copy of Frankenstein , a dozen bottles of wine, and the prod with a full charge. It’s the least I could do. The very least.
* * *
I track the Banning Circus to a show in Wenatchee. The owner, the great, great grandson of Ezra
However, I learned to read, no thanks to him. Poor dearly departed Goldilocks took care of that on the sly. I was ripping through college level lit by the tender age of fourteen. Eliza Doolittle, eat your heart out.
The procedure hasn’t been without unexpected complications, however. You wouldn’t believe my psychedelic dreams, and if I’m ever caught and placed on trial for crimes against humanity, I’ll get an insanity pass on the descriptions alone. Genetic memory? I dunno; all I know is that in dreams I go for a ride on an astral carpet to a high desert wasteland that spreads under a wide carnivorous sky. The tribe kills with rocks and clubs; it assembles in caves and lays its feasts upon the dirt. They haven’t invented fire, thus meat and skin is crushed and smeared on rocks, like finger paint and wet clay. The brutes, my people, see my apparition, doubtless grotesque in its familiarity, and hoot in alarm and outrage, jam-red mouths agape. Then, the large males, the killers, snarl and snatch up their clubs and their stones, and hop toward me with murder on their minds.
Nine times out of ten, I jerk into wakefulness, alone in my dingy cell with the television screen full of snow. The tenth time out of ten, I come to in a field, naked and covered in scabs of blood, with no memory but the dream memories.
* * *
Even the Doctor isn’t quite mad enough to do what I’ve done. He’s a lunatic, yes indeed. He’s also a survivor. Better than most, he understands that one screws with the infinite at one’s own peril. I’m sure the meticulously recorded results of those Victorian experiments with peasantry cooled his jets.
I , on the other hand, am a desperate sort.
Those nights the good Doctor and his toady spent drunk off their asses, I took the T&S Machine for joyrides. The calibrations weren’t difficult—I simply plugged in the various sequences from Doctor Kob’s logs. The wild part is, the machine goes forward and back and to any physical location in the universe, provided one has the coordinates. The places I’ve gone, weirder and more frightening than those Technicolor nightmares.
After Doctor Kob and Pelt murder me in that squalid alley, I give them a moment to wonder at my dying words. But it’s only a possible me, a shadow. Travelers exist in duplicate during collocation. It’s complicated; suffice to say, each of us unique snowflakes, aren’t. We exist as a plurality. That old saw about meeting yourself…it’s only kinda true. The universe didn’t unravel when I skipped ahead and met one of my future selves, an inveterate alcoholic and aimless wanderer, one bound to run afoul of Dr. Kob’s plots of revenge. If she’s anything like me (haha!), she won’t mind making the sacrifice to even the score.
Pelt knows something’s wrong, but even as he turns I tap him with the prod and he’s gone in a belch of gas and flame. The Doctor takes it in stride. He’s a hobbled shell of a man, yet arrogant as ever. He commands me to drop the weapon and submit to my well-deserved punishment. I slug him and he falls unconscious. That feels so good, I’ve revisited the moment a dozen times.
This is how it ends for Daddy dearest: I strap him into the machine and send him to the land of my ancestors, and once he’s evaporated into the abyss of Time I take an axe to the machine. I’ve gotten my kicks. That conscience I’ve been incubating stings like hell. Who knows what havoc I might wreak on material existence were I to keep dicking around with the timestream.
I sent the Doctor with a mint copy of Frankenstein , a dozen bottles of wine, and the prod with a full charge. It’s the least I could do. The very least.
* * *
I track the Banning Circus to a show in Wenatchee. The owner, the great, great grandson of Ezra
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