Grand Theft Planetary & other stories

  ***

  The next day, Daniel and Aaron were overseeing Raphael’s latest execution. “Here we go,” said Aaron, puffing away on a sweetstick, “execution number 50! Let’s hope this one cracks him.”

  Raphael was standing against the glass, his eyes looking about wildly. He was starting to break, his conversations more haphazard and strange.

  “Where am I going?!” yelled Raphael as the tube started to rotate.

  “The Titanic,” called Aaron. “Drown you bastard!”

  Then came the usual whining of the machine, the thump, and then the blast of cold air as the tube sent Raphael hurtling back in time. In the Receiving room next door, medics were removing a rather confused naval officer who had – originally – died.

  On the monitor, Daniel watched Raphael live out the last minutes of the naval officer’s fate; he was trapped in a cruise ship bedroom, water seeping in from underneath the door. With surprising calm, Raphael turned out all the drawers, found a screwdriver, and started to unscrew the room’s porthole. “Raphael’s been acting strange,” said Daniel out loud. “Yesterday, he actually ran towards a volcanic eruption! Who would do such a thing?”

  “He’s searching for a way to survive,” replied Aaron, “He’s trying to escape by doing something we haven’t checked for. Even if he did escape his death, we would bring his body back anyway.”

  “Why his body? Why not just his soul?” asked Daniel.

  “The body’s got to die before the soul can be returned,” answered Jeremy, who had appeared with his trolley. “Look at that – the tube hasn’t even started to rotate back yet,” he huffed.

  Daniel ignored him and watched the screen; with the porthole now removed, Raphael leapt out and splashed into the sea. He started to swim towards a large lifeboat a few feet away.

  “Is that right?” said Daniel to Aaron and Jeremy, who were busy unbagging the clone on the trolley. They stopped and watched the screen; Raphael had managed to get aboard the lifeboat and was making a silent speech to the occupants.

  “Bring him back now!” cried Aaron, just as Raphael killed the first person on the boat with a vicious stab of his screwdriver. An officer pointed a gun at him but Raphael disarmed and killed him easily.

  “There’s no time for the clone! Help me load the ballast!” They ran to a locker against the far room and lifted a man-sized block of ice onto the trolley. They raced to the now-empty Receiving room and heaved the ice into the tube. “Hopefully this will be about the right mass,” panted Jeremy as they slammed the tube door closed. “If not, then it's going to get very cold next door.”

  A blue light started winking frantically on the computer console. “What's that?” asked Daniel.

  “That means bad news,” replied Jeremy. “The computer has detected changes in history, probably from all the killing Raphael’s doing in the past. I'm going to start the return sequence. Go next door, and when you hear me yell, press the emergency over-ride!”

  The guards ran back to the Mess room, Daniel reaching the over-ride button on the back of the tube first. “This is serious, right?”

  “It's never happened before,” puffed Aaron, sweating from the modest exercise.

  There was a muffled shout from Jeremy, so Daniel pressed the button. The tube started to whine and tremble, then a klaxon added its noise to the din. “Run!” shouted the faint voice of the tech, “There's not enough ice to counter-balance Raphael's mass!”

  “Go!” shouted Aaron, pushing Daniel into the corridor and slamming the bulkhead just as the time machine thumped Raphael back to the present. The bulkhead door immediately turned white with frost.

  “Wow,” panted Aaron, “that was close. We were almost turned into - ”

  There was a smash, then a scream from the open door of the Receiving room. The guards glanced at each other, then drew their barb guns and entered with caution.

  Jeremy was dead, a screwdriver sticking out of his face like an obscene marker. The tube’s window was smashed and the door was open. “Our prisoner must have brought that screwdriver back through time with him,” said Aaron, feeling the tech's neck for a pulse. “That's why the mass didn't balance out and we were almost frozen - there was more than just Rabbit coming back though.”

  “Where is he then?” trembled Daniel, his gun shaking slightly. He’d never used a gun before, let-alone dealt with the possibility of shooting someone. He noticed wet footprints that snaked around the floor and towards the only other exit. “He went through there,” whispered Daniel.

  “That door leads to the shuttlebay! He’s trying to escape!” Before Daniel could follow, Aaron lumbered out in pursuit. There was a slap of flesh hitting flesh, then a grunt, and finally the screech of a barb gun. Aaron reappeared, his arms and legs stuck out, mouth gaping at Daniel like a fish, then he toppled backwards. A long silver bolt was sticking out of his chest.

  His murderer stepped into the room and threw the depleted gun onto Aaron’s body. “Hello again Daniel,” said Raphael, smiling. “Please put down your gun. We both know that you are not going to use it.”

  “You stay away!” cried Daniel, his voice lacking conviction.

  Raphael stepped up to Daniel and, very slowly, removed the gun from his grasp. “That’s better,” he said, rendering the weapon ineffective with a couple of quick twists. “I apologise about your obese colleague’s death, but he has been rather unkind to me during my incarceration.”

  “I’m…sorry,” said Daniel feebly. “What are you going to do now?”

  Raphael smiled. “I am going to kill a handful of people, and that will be it. My mission will be over.” He took Daniel by the arm and led him into the huge shuttlebay, where several wasp-like ships were ready for take-off.

  “You’re going to kill a couple of people? Who? Why?”

  “I do not know their names.” They walked in silence, Daniel’s fear starting to subside a little. “I only created that tsunami so I would be brought into Time and Punishment and re-killed.” Raphael stopped by the nearest shuttle’s thin engine and pulled a release handle. The glittering fuel core emerged from its housing. “I needed access to a time machine, but needed time to escape it too. Therefore, I killed millions of people to ensure I was given a long sentence.” He took the delicate fuel cell and led Daniel back to the Receiving room.

  “You were willing to go through a million deaths?”

  “I was hoping it wouldn’t take a million deaths to escape. Time is inherently unstable, my friend.” Raphael let go of Daniel’s arm and motioned for him to go sit on the floating trolley. “Even if the past has already taken place, re-running it will cause tiny variations in events. I had to simply wait until chaos gave me an opportunity.” Raphael bent over Aaron’s corpse and searched his pockets until he found the guard’s cigarettes and lighter. “Awful habit, although quite fitting it should all end because of one.”

  “What are you on about?” asked Daniel, getting irritated at the cryptic behaviour. He should have shot him; could he repair his gun, or reload the one used to kill Aaron?

  Raphael lit one of the sweetsticks and pulled open the tube’s console. “Mankind is poisoned, Daniel. Rotten in the core. There is no cure for mankind’s illness, yet mankind will never succumb to it. Science ensures that. You could say that mankind is the illness.” His fingers skimmed over the keyboard quickly, then took a long drag of the sweetstick and taped it to the fuel cell, the ember end sticking up like an aerial.

  Daniel stepped off of the gurney and quietly retrieved the bolt from his broken gun. He shuffled slowly over to where Aaron’s body lay, all the time watching Raphael busying himself with the fuel cell. Please don’t turn around, please don’t turn around…

  Raphael placed the cell in the time tube and slammed the tube closed. “The fuse will give us about two minutes,” he called out, “but I’m afraid the broken widow will irradiate us once the t
ube is activated. It is largely irrelevant, though.” There was a click and a whine. He turned slowly; Daniel was pointing Aaron’s loaded barb gun at his head. “You do surprise me,” said Raphael carefully.

  “Get on the floor,” growled Daniel through gritted teeth. “Do it now!”

  With inhuman speed, Raphael lunged sideways and hit the green button on the tube’s console. Too slowly, Daniel fired the gun at Raphael, hitting him in the chest. Electricity and poison ejected from the metal barb, and Raphael convulsed wildly before dying with a scream of pain. Daniel watched the activated time machine rock backwards and forwards, unable to stop it. There was a thump and a blast of heat from the broken window. A silence fell over the room.

  Daniel looked at the death and damage around him, then looked at the tube’s broken window. He would probably die from the radiation, he thought. From the tube came a sliding sound, then a surprised grunt. Slowly, Daniel opened the door to find a hairy man looking at him, a flint in one hand and a large bone in the other.

  A Neanderthal. With a growing sense of panic, he realised where Raphael had sent the bomb.

  And then there was nothing.

  Farming

  Despite the absence of apocalyptic thoughts, sleep escaped Frances. In his bare unfurnished quarters, he stared at the concrete ceiling and thought about the sheer responsibility on his shoulders, the expectation, and what failure could mean. Even success meant accepting some small measure of failure, and Frances found that hard to swallow. When that failure resulted in the death of living things... Frances turned on his hard thin bed, his eyes settling on his new gold Rolex timepiece. Two months ago, he may have been excited about owning such things, but now, with the cold hard truth of his situation firmly in his conscious thoughts, he couldn’t settle. Dragging his weary and lean body to the tiny kitchen area, he made a cup of Kopi Luwak, concentrating on the taste and trying to ignore his racing thoughts. It didn’t work. His clock alarm blared at him, informing him that another day in control had started, another day without sleep.

  Later, Frances slammed his fist on the keyboard in frustration, and watched the mortality rates start to soar. The virus had somehow skipped across the quarantine areas, re-igniting the outbreak once again. A vaccine was still lacking, despite serious resources being allocated to the research of one. Frances had called R&D as soon as the first case of this new pandemic had been confirmed, but their answer had chilled his blood; uncurable, they had whispered, but promised to devote more men and time as soon as possible.

  Booting up his universal messaging program, he hurriedly sent out directions to the various operatives on the ground; no transportation of the herd anywhere unless dictated by himself. That would slow down the rate of infection for the moment, but it was a delaying tactic at best. The word "cull" appeared unbidden in his mind and he shook it away; that was not an option. Not yet.

  His cellphone buzzed; It was Paulie. "Frances, has that infection started again?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Huh. My financial plans aren't looking as good as they were last week. I think the word is meltdown." Despite delivering such news, Paulie sounded breezy and unconcerned.

  "Sorry."

  "What for? Not your fault. It just means I have some extra work to do this week." There was a pause. "Again, if you're having problems, I can help you out."

  "Thanks, but I should have it under control," replied Frances, his pride preventing him from accepting Paulie's offer. "RAND should be coming up with a cure soon," he lied.

  "Right, sure. Fancy going out for a spin at dinner? My new Ferrari got delivered earlier."

  "Why not?" Frances tried to emulate Paulie's breezy demeanour in the light of impending doom, but failed.