City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis

  The first time I met Jack was the day before, day three thousand and twenty-seven since my being hired (or being abducted, not that is there any difference) by the Masters of Metachronopolis, also called the Time Wardens. I was sitting in the middle of the floor of my office, playing mumbly-peg with the switchblade I'd been given as a reward and a memento for tracking down the Serb. I had a two-pound cardboard carton of ice cream that I had given up trying to finish.

  He flung open the door and stood in the doorway. We looked at each other with some surprise.

  “Who the Hell are you?” I growled. Normally, I try to say heck, but not when people break in.

  “Your secretary is out,” he said.

  “I got no secretary. Penny is the ice cream man's daughter. She pretends she's my receptionist when I have an appointment with some chump. Looks more professional that way. Now who, I repeat, the Hell are you, barging in here without knocking? Also, do you want some ice cream? I can't eat it all before it melts and the carton is leaking. And I hate strawberry.”

  “Why are you eating it, then?”

  “This is my breakfast, lunch and dinner. The icebox is empty and the Anything Maker is broke. And I was hungry. So, who are you? This is last time I'll ask without a gun or a knife or baseball bat and painful but undetectable soft tissue damage being involved in some capacity.”

  “I am a chump.”

  “What?”

  “Your chump. One of your clients. You work for me. Or you will this time tomorrow.”

  I sighed. “Is this one of those cases where you hire me to solve a murder, and you end up being the murderer yourself? Or the victim? Or both?”

  He looked embarrassed. “Well, to be quite honest–”

  I stood up. “That would be a yes. Which means a no. I don't take cases from Time Wardens.”

  “I am not a Warden. Not yet. But I have prestige.”

  “Enough to time travel just a bit? Just a wee bit?”

  “That's right,” he nodded.

  “Like being a wee bit pregnant. You can time travel a wee bit at first, but sooner or later you'll end up eating yourself like a snake who swallows his own tail and is not bright enough to know when to stop chewing. Go away. You can commit anachronistic multiple-suicide by yourself without my help.”

  “Does that happen a lot?”

  “You'd be surprised.”

  “I can pay. Two cartons of cigarettes.”

  I circled the desk, and sat down in the chair with a sigh, wiped the ice cream off my fingers, straightened my tie, and ran my fingers through my hair. Now I looked like a professional. “In that case, welcome. Please take a seat, Mr, Ah?”

  “Kennedy. But you can call me Jack.”

  If I had been a dog, my ears would have stood straight up and quivered. “Jack 'Quail Hunter' Kennedy, outlaw and train robber? You were shot to death by half-a-dozen railroad agents and postal inspectors! You were the last! The last great train robber of the Old West!”

  “No, that's not me. I'm the President of the United States.”

  “President? Well, I guess you won't get shot to death, then. Glad to hear the United States is still around in the future. Now why are you trying to kill yourself and why the hell should I give a damn?”

  He pulled out an envelope, passed it to me. “Here are my references. Recognize the handwriting? This is a letter from you to you.”

  He sat quietly while I read the letter.

  I looked up. “When did I write this?”

  “After I shot myself. My older version shot my oldest version. He—the oldest one—just lay there on the floor, and he didn't–he didn't disappear. That means I can't—it means I won't be able—to stop myself. When the time comes. Even though I know I am going to die, I will still walk into it. Walk into it with eyes open!”

  I nodded. Time travelers never enter a scene unless they are satisfied with the outcome. “So, then,” I said, “From what it says here, you're not happy with the outcome of shooting yourself, so therefore you are going to hire me tomorrow to go shoot your prophet-self. Walk into it with eyes open, so to speak. Do I detect a modicum of irony here?”

  He shook his head. “It's not that simple.”

  “It never is.”

  “And there is this girl.”

  “There always is.” I shrugged. “So how did you get back here and what do you want from me? You're a double-dipper? I mean you came from your own future into your personal past?”

  “Yes. No. I mean I did come back, or I will, but I'm not the me who did. I just talked to him. To me.”

  “Start from the beginning.”

  “A time traveler came to me. He wore a hood and I could not see his face. I sent my men away, and he shows me that he is me, myself from the future. He tells me this story, of the version of me from tomorrow, my tomorrow, hiring you to help me kill the older me. He said the story does not have a happy ending.”

  “Stories involving time travel never do.”

  “He said after he killed the old man, and he did not dissolve, he realized that retaliation was not enough. I would still turn into him, despite seeing the future with my own eyes. The self-murder did not fix anything. It was empty. The version of me in the future is still committing the crime, and the version of Norma Jean who exists now was still… attacked last week. I don't want revenge. I want to change the past. To stop the rape from ever happening.”

  I said, “Put a pistol in your mouth and pull the trigger. Bang. Old you is gone. No future.”

  He shook his head. “Suicide is a sin.”

  I blinked at that. People are odd. “So is cheating on your wife,” I said blandly. “And hiring a hit man. Not to mention a few other things I could name.”

  He said, “I won't pull the trigger on myself. I just won't.”

  “But stepping in front of another version of you who you know will kill you, that's okay? It's the same as stepping in front of a speeding locomotive. And it is still you killing you.”

  “It's different. Future me is not me now.”

  “So it's not you, you don't give a damn? Never mind that. I don't need the excuses, just the facts. So how did you get back here?”

  “I didn't. I am the version from here and now. I just have not come to see you at your office yet.”

  I blinked again. Hate this city. I can never keep track of who is which and when is now. “Start from the beginning again. And this time, from the beginning beginning.”

  “It's easier if I start at the end and work backwards.”

  “I usually do it that way myself,” I admitted. “Go ahead. How does the story end?”

  “The oldest version of me is the bad one. The attacker. The tomorrow version of me, you might say the middle one, comes to see you, hires you, and the next day the two of you go to stop the oldest version of me in the room where I keep Norma Jean. Middle me shoots the old me, but old me does not turn into mist. That means the rape still will happen, and that I will still turn into him. Turn into the evil old bastard. Even seeing my own dead body was not enough! So what is enough? There was a shower stall in the suite, and it was actually a door through time. It is set to three points. One is thirty years from now, where old me-to-be is squire to the Time Wardens, and is set to be elevated to be a Warden. Soon. The second anchor point is set the day after tomorrow, in the evening, when old me comes to repeat his crime. Tomorrow is when middle me, vendetta-me, comes and hires you to exact revenge on old me. You go with him, but he pulls the trigger. But then the body does not disappear, as he expected. He asked you for help. You wrote that letter, and sent him into the hidden destiny glass in the shower, so he goes ahead thirty years, where he is a Time Warden, and has access to all their machinery, all their powers. Are you following this?”

  I nodded. “I've had practice. Around here you hear a lot of stories like this. So what happens next? Middle Jack finds you five days ago, the Young Jack, and explains what is about to happen?”

  He smiled his charming sm
ile. “No. The time traveler who came to me is not from our timeline at all. He is the me I should have been, the one who never committed any crimes in the first place, any of them. The better version of me. An innocent Jack. The one I want to make real.”

  That struck me as suspicious. “I've never heard of anything like that.”

  “That does not mean it is not true. Listen. Innocent Jack told me the plan. There is a moment in time where old me is not protected by this body guard thing, some sort of mechanical man with no head. You ran out of the door with me, and the bodyguard followed us, trying to stay in the way between you and me.”

  “Makes sense. Old Jack has to protect Middle Jack from being killed, or else Old Jack gets erased.”

  “This guard, whatever it is, Innocent Jack told me said it had a five-minute time range. If it is kept away from old me for five minutes, then there is the time where old me can be killed. Oh, and this is the important point: you have to shoot the bathroom!”

  “What? Why do I have to shoot the bathroom?”

  “Because I told you to.”

  “When?”

  “No, I mean I am telling you now. This me version of me is telling the you version of now-you to shoot the door. Now. This is me telling you. I am telling you because the innocent parallel version of me told me to, and the older version of you told the middle me to tell other me to tell now-me to tell now-you.”

  I rubbed my temples. “I don't even like talking to time travelers.”

  “Because of conversations like this?”

  “No. Because conversations like this start to make sense.”

  “So are you following the sequence of events?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Except for how middle-you got to talk to other-you, who you say is innocent, even though he is telling you how to commit a suicide-murder. And what happens to him? Middle-you him, I mean?”

  He said, “He appears in the room when you shoot the shower stall door in the bathroom. You did not do it last time, in the first run-through version of the scene, because middle me uses the unbroken door sometime after the shooting to travel into the future and makes contact with other-me, who came back and gave me your letter.”

  I said, "So the destruction of the door forms an endpoint, which pushes anyone passing down that particular artificial spacetime continuum path back into the real timespace. It is a way of forming an anchor point where there is not supposed to be one. I shoot the door to force a time traveler back into timespace in that bathroom, at the point in time a few seconds before the door fails. And apparently that's you–namely, late middle you.”

  “No, that is going to be me, me. This version of me. I have a destiny card attuned to the shower stall door that other me got from middle me in the future. The youngest possible Jack has to be the one in the room. When I die, it has to wipe out everyone after me in the timestream.”

  “You lost me. How did he fool the people thirty years from now? Middle you, I mean. How did he explain that he was fifty instead of eighty?”

  “Old me has a walking stick with an age-adjuster built in. Middle me took it, and turned himself into an old man. Then he realized that the old man turned himself into a young man to be strong enough to, ah, do the, ah–”

  “Do the girl?”

  “I was going to say do the deed. The cane also has a stunner in it that numbs you if it touches a hand, or puts you into a delta wave sleep if it touches your head. Do you know what that is? Magic sleep. I am going to step out of the bathroom once you and early middle me leave the scene, then use it to stun Norma Jean so that she does not wonder why there are two of us in the room. The plan is that I beat old me to death with it, don his medical cape, twist the knob once to turn him into thousand-year-old dust, and twist the knob again to make me look like him…you see?”

  “Um…I think I lost track of the order of events.”

  “A version of me comes by tomorrow to hire you. You take the case and make sure to shoot the bathroom door to form the anchor point so that I can get into the scene. I kill me and take his cape and his age, and put her gently to sleep so she does not see me. You bring me, the tomorrow version of me, middle me, back into the room. He kills his own past version of himself, me. And you don't interfere. I get erased from the timeline.”

  “What prevents middle you from remembering this conversation? I mean early middle you, the one who hires me tomorrow. Since that scene is in your personal future. It's tomorrow.”

  “I have a selective amnesia induction field helmet late middle me stole from one of the palaces of old me. A Forgetting Helmet. I was shown how to use it. Tomorrow when I come to this office again, I will bring it with me.”

  I frowned. “I think there is a screw loose in this plan somewhere. Aren't you dead at this point tomorrow? You get shot while lying on the floor pretending to be old you?”

  “No, the plan is perfect! Tomorrow when I visit you, I will shoo my men out, program the helmet, put it on my own head, and forget everything that came from any visit from later-time versions of me, and I'll forget this conversation. All you have to do is shoot the door and watch me evaporate. Everything will be wrapped up in a nice, neat, Gordian knot.”

  I sighed, and leaned back, and stared at the dark gold ceiling, running my tongue over the sickly sweet taste of strawberries sticking to my teeth.

  “So will you take the case?”

  I leaned forward again. “Absolutely not. Look, you are already going to kill yourself, and you have already killed yourself, but the version of you who is in front of me now has not done anything yet! You are the innocent one!”

  Young Jack looked stricken, but tried to control his expression. “Actually. Uh…”

  “You can't truly want to go through with this! This plan? This stupid, crazy plan? You're wearing a crucifix, and I heard beads rattling in your pockets. Aren't you a good Catholic boy? We have Catholic priests here. A guy named Maximilian Kolbe, we call him Father Max, lives two levels down and just around the corner. And Joan of Arc runs a revival meeting on the roof. Go say confession, or get baptized, or do whatever you guys do. Clean yourself up. Then marry your damned chippy. If you love her. Don't you love her?”

  “Did I explain who she was?”

  “Sure. Helen of Troy. One of them.”

  He looked surprised. “She is the most famous actresses of all time! Hollywood actress, I mean.”

  “Not in my time. Silent or talkie?”

  He said, “I thought everyone in Metachronopolis had heard the story. The Time Warden Ceuthonymus drew the film actress Elizabeth Taylor back in time and created an alternate history where she was Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen. It was a joke. So, to top him, the Warden Menoetius drew Marilyn Monroe into a timeline where she was Helen of Troy. And she proved to be a prettier Helen than the original, so other Time Wardens made copies of the time line. Then the Wardens got bored, as they do, and Marilyn was sent to do waitress and hostess jobs, or dime-a-dance gigs. Or worse. After I was drawn in scooped up by the Warden Iapetus, he gave me one as a spare.”

  Something very cold and very dark entered my heart then. “Gave?”

  “As a reward. She's not really my—not what you would call a sweetheart or demimonde—she did not volunteer, you know.”

  “Is concubine a better word?” I asked softly. “The Wardens gave her to you as a harem girl. A slave.”

  “Hey, I treat her right! She doesn't act like she minds very much.”

  “Then she is a good actress. Sexual knowledge without consent is still rape. Why are you still using this girl? What has she ever done to you? To deserve you?”

  He did not say anything, so the silence hung over the room exactly like the thick cloud of smoke from my nonexistent cigarette would have if I had one.

  “Never mind,” I said, “I know the answer. Have you ever wondered why you were chosen by the Time Wardens to join their ranks?”

  It was pretty obvious he had, because he looked like he was being crushed in
ward, as if his spine were squeezing and pulling all his internal organs inward into a smaller and smaller knot.

  I said in a louder voice, "That is why they are giving you their little gifts? They want you to get used to the idea of using time travel to evade your problems rather than solve them.”

  “I am not evading anything! I'm trying to fix it!”

  “No. Time travel makes men lazy. If the sweet, sweet worm were not wriggling on the hook of time travel, the fish of your guilty conscience would not rise to the surface to swallow the bait. If it wasn't an option, you would not try to change the past, you would just make amends now, free her now, beg forgiveness from her now, and now straighten out your life. If you could not travel back in time and erase the moment when you dove into the sewer pond, then you would have to clean yourself up, scrape the sewage off your damned soul one painful day at a time.”

  I drew a breath, a little surprised at myself at how angry I was. He said nothing, but he lowered his eyes, troubled. It seemed I had said something that struck him right in the middle of his soul. I paused to let it sink in.

  “Free the girl,” I said. “Or marry her. Instead of taking everything in her life away from her, give her everything in your life you can give her. Clean yourself up!”

  Not looking up, he said in a whisper: “I thought of doing that. I've tried. But it won't work. I know I don't have whatever it takes, I don't have the willpower.”

  That annoyed me. His excuse for his behavior was that it was too hard to be decent? “Well, buddy, there is no one else you can turn to for help. In this life, the big fish eat the little fish, and the Time Wardens are the biggest fish there have ever been.”

  “You're wrong,” he said softly, still looking down at his hands.

  “I ain't wrong. Listen! I have a friend who is a cannibal, an actual maneater. He looks at people just as slabs of meat to be consumed. Men are not souls to him, they are things. Things to eat. How are you better than that?”

  He straightened his spine and looked me in the eye, “I can set things right.”

  “How? By more time travel? Time travel is cowardly. It's futile. For one thing, if the girl has an even slightly hardened memory, she'll still remember you and what you did to her.”