Now.
I could feel it moving.
"See?" the Hawking voice said.
Pointlessly, I braced myself and reached into the indicated pocket. And came out with a foldable sheet of digital paper. It must have been down to its standard one-inch square storage mode when I'd first realized it was there. The motion I'd felt had been its efforts to unfold itself.
Now, freed from its pocket prison, it snapped open like a spring-loaded umbrella. There were no words on the paper, no instructions on what to do next, only a single, constantly morphing image made up of several shades of red so similar to each other that the entire sheet seemed to be in deep shadow.
A shadow I instinctively knew I did not want to penetrate.
Except, I realized, I had had penetrated it, not once but many times. penetrated it, not once but many times.
I could remember it vividly, positively. Just as I could also remember with absolute certainty that I had not not ever seen it. None of which should have been surprising since Time had been converted into multilevel Swiss cheese. ever seen it. None of which should have been surprising since Time had been converted into multilevel Swiss cheese.
"Now, now, Eldred," said the Hawking Voice. "You're resisting."
I froze, realizing where I must be: In a massive Time Knot, trying to referee the countless pseudomemories that were assaulting my mind more harshly than ever before.
"Just relax," the Hawking Voice said, "Let the Knot sort itself out. This is what it was made for."
A Time Knot? Made on purpose? I shook my head, or at least I tried. Truth be told, I had no idea if my head was moving or not.
Or if it even existed outside my own imagination anymore.
"Don't concern yourself with trivia, Eldred," the Hawking voice said, beginning to sound more natural. "I won't let anything happen to you. Just relax and go with the flow."
Easy for him to say. His head didn't feel like someone had drilled a hole in his skull and was tamping the pseudomemories into it at a fearsome rate.
Then I began to remember things-which is very different from being on the receiving end of a painful torrent of images and sounds and thoughts-none of which had anything whatsoever to do with me. Except for this one little snippet: The current scenario was ending, it said, and the results were being compiled.
In my head.
Except I didn't remember having one.
I closed and opened my unseen eyes a few times and was relieved to discover that they really did exist.
And not just two. There were billions of them, each reading and storing a separate stream of data. In the head that, milliseconds ago, hadn't even existed.
The head that was was the Matiolin building. the Matiolin building.
"Good going, Eldred. You feel better now?"
I nodded, ignoring the sparks that were still stabbing randomly at what passed for my synapses these days.
And I did feel better. The roar of the data stream was still there, but all it gave me was a mild headache.
And even that would soon be over.
As soon as the data transfer was complete, I could begin the analysis. This time the process should be far quicker than last time. For one thing, the Scenario's complexity index had been lowered by a factor of two, but it still encompassed thousands of years and countless more timelines of all lengths.
Abruptly I switched to the search functions which, as usual, I hadn't known I had until I realized I needed them. The detailed analysis could wait. The cursory analysis the search function could provide would give me all the information I really wanted right now: Had this scenario, like all those that had come before, succumbed to the Styrofoam Syndrome?
"I take it you're ready to go, Eldred?" The Hawking Voice sounded almost human now.
As expected, it didn't take long to skim the timelines and snag the pertinent data. The only surprise was the disappearance of New Coke. Instead of digging in their heels, this last scenario's decision makers had given in to plummeting sales and consumer complaints and decided it was pointless to continue to resist. After all, they made the same profits no matter which label they used.
Unfortunately, the same good sense was not applied to the one problem that had helped to shoot down every scenario so far: the Styrofoam Syndrome.
In all other respects, the scenarios were typical. Similar amounts of violence and altruism, of cruelty and kindness. Similar streaks of insanity and brilliance, often in the same individual or group.
But sooner or later, the Styrofoam Syndrome always strikes. People in those scenarios begin defying common sense in any activity having to do with tomatoes, and we daren't release them into the general, forward- moving population for fear that this remarkable behavior would spread to other areas.
And it's always the same. At some point, one or more of the growers invariably seem to forget that the primary function of a tomato is to taste good, and they start making them prettier to attract customers' attention and begin making them firmer so they're easier to ship. They are of course violating one of their primary rules: that any successful operation must be one in which form follows function, not the other way around. I mean, what good is a tomato that can be shipped across the country without a single unsightly blemish but tastes like Styrofoam?
Once that point is reached, it's all over. The Syndrome is self-sustaining. As sales drop, fewer and fewer tomatoes are grown in the ground, and even fewer are grown in the kind of ground that produces good flavor, largely because by then no one believes the type of ground makes a difference. With growers interested only in shipability and experts blathering about appearance, real tomatoes are gone. Within another century, no one would recognize the taste of a real tomato, and they've gone from being the most delicious of vegetables to being a fading part of folklore.
Sadly, I made a few last minute changes to the waiting scenario and activated the Reset.
As the new scenario enveloped me, I could hear the Hawking Voice sigh.
"Good luck, Eldred," it said. "Try to get it right this time."
Bruck in Time Patrick McGilligan
Patrick McGilligan has been a senior editor of the Dragonlance Dragonlance series of novels for nearly twenty-five years. He has written numerous books about motion pictures including, most recently, series of novels for nearly twenty-five years. He has written numerous books about motion pictures including, most recently, Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only, a biography of the pioneering African American novelist and filmmaker.
The sound of gunfire zinged all around Bruck as he splashed across the knee-deep shallows, pretending to be heavily burdened by the pack he was carrying on his back. It wasn't heavy at all. He toted some kind of weapon that was jammed or broken or something. Again and again he pointed it at the enemy on the opposite bank, and every once in a while one of the blue suits fell over-but it wasn't because of his weapon, which only made bang noises and fired puffs of smoke.
Everyone shouted and screamed-nothing distinct or intelligible-it was all one loud roar punctuated by gunfire and cannon explosions. Bruck waved his useless weapon in the air excitedly, yelling "Double knuckles!" for some reason he couldn't explain, when he accidentally swung his rifle into the face of the gray suit galloping through the water next to him, knocking him into a daze. The soldier sank to his knees before pitching forward with his eyes rolling up.
Bruck plunged ahead in seeming slow motion, blood spattering him from all around and running dark red in the water. He slipped on some rocks that were blood-slick. But none of it was his blood. He was unhurt and in fact barely winded as he reached the opposite shore, and, joined by a mass of others close around him, slammed into a wall of blue suits, cursing and punching and grappling.
Many gray suits stumbled back into the water with long gleaming blades stuck through their bodies. The soldier running closest to him suddenly clutched his head, dropping his bugle. He was very young, like most of the soldiers. Bruck caught a glimpse of the soldier's face clamped under a gray cap-startled blue eyes, lanky blond hair. The soldier careened away, head spurting blood. Bruck had a curious flash; he recognized the blond soldier as one who had died yesterday too.
Now the bullet zinging and cannonfire faded into the distance, replaced by loud clanging swords and the close clash of grunting and wheezing bodies. The yelling had almost died out. Epithets and groans were more common. Across a brown field the gray and blue armies met and mingled and fought against each other in a furious commotion. The air was filled with smoke and dust.
A veteran mercenary, Bruck felt his bloodlust stir as he swung his empty rifle like a sword, effectively clearing a path before him as a wide-eyed enemy lurched aside rather than face a seeming berserker. Bruck sniffed the air joyously, frowning to realize that although surrounded by dead and dying he missed a familiar scent.
The smell of death.
That was about a minute before the battle and everything else stopped.
If only he could remember. He was a fighter, he remembered that much, a damn good fighter who had fought in hundreds of battles. The details escaped him. The memories seeped away. Well, memories didn't mean much to soldiers anyway. If a soldier lives long enough for memories, the saying went, he's lived too long.
In his time, which was long ago and somewhere else, he would sign on for any campaign, any war, any fight, if paid in good coin. He had even fought, on occasion, without payment of any kind, because fighting is what he did and sometimes the fight was more interesting than the pay. Sometimes he just didn't care about the pay.
He was best at fighting with his knife and his sword. That certainly felt like the truth of what he remembered. But he was also growing accustomed to new and unusual weapons.
The last thing he remembered plainly was he had been drinking in his favorite tavern, the Bull's Bollocks. The place was crowded with rowdy patrons, shouting and laughing and singing. Bruck had been drinking at a table alone for some time, watching the chaos and merriment swirling around him with increasingly glazed eyes. People tended to give him a wide berth, noting his bare muscled arms, the weapons slung at his waist, and the apparent glowering expression on his face.
In fact, Bruck was in a buoyant mood. He had been paid well for a raiding party across the border just last week. Someone had to be taught a lesson. Bruck and other mercenaries had torched a barn and house. A foolish man had come running out of the burning barn, waving a knife. He ran straight into Bruck's sword.
The sour mead came in huge bubbling pitchers at the Bull's Bollocks, and the serving girl knew to keep them coming. Bruck was on his sixth or seventh pitcher when the tall barrel-chested stranger came over and asked if he would care to join him as his partner at the gaming table. Bruck didn't mind at all-indeed he liked the fact that the tall barrel-chested stranger had picked him out of the crowd in such a friendly fashion. He took to the stranger right away for some reason, as though they were kindred warriors. Something about the way the fellow winked at him every time he said something, but also just spoke with his eyes when he wasn't saying anything at all, like they were old friends in on a conspiracy. The stranger, who was dressed in peculiar clothes that were soft and formfitting, brought Bruck to a gaming table in the back where a pair of men waited.
They looked to be brothers. The one Bruck took to be the younger had narrow eyes and a pockmarked face. He nodded suspiciously at the newcomer. The older brother had curly red hair and a bristly beard the same hue; he glared at Bruck, making an impatient gesture. Bruck took his weapons off and sat down.
The three had been drinking and playing games for hours. The tall barrel-chested stranger said he had been winning steadily. But his previous partner had quit and gone home to his wife. Bruck ordered a round of pitchers, and they opened up a new game.
Bruck remembered all of that, and the tall barrel-chested stranger winking at him as they started up the game, and the brother with red curly hair and bristly beard still glaring at him.
That was how many days . . . weeks . . . months ago?
Funny how often the battles were between blue and gray suits. The first time Bruck had fought on the side of the blue suits, and then a month or so later he had worn a gray suit. Only about a week ago he found himself outfitted for action in a blue suit, and just yesterday there he was, yet again, charging across the river in his gray suit.
Gray suits, blue suits. It didn't matter to him what uniform he wore.
Different types of fighting each time, of course. Climbing hills. Slogging through swampy forests. Little hand-to-hand skirmishes. Big sprawling noisy battles.
Gray, blue. Didn't matter.
Bruck was brooding over a beer as he sat, people watching with the Marquis in the Bar None. The place was loud with electrified music and crowded with folk jumping up and down and wiggling rhythmically. It maybe was Bruck's tenth beer. Piss weak beer, and it came in so many types and colors he couldn't keep track of the choices. He sure did miss The Bull's Bollocks, as much as he could recall of it anyway.
This was the Marquis' favorite place. The Marquis was not a real marquis, but that was the name he used when introducing himself to women at the Bar None. Bruck stared at the Marquis, who was staring at some of the dancing women, his eyes riveted. The Marquis liked to boast about all the wars and battles he had fought in, and women liked to listen. He had the look of a fighter, strong and tough like the tall barrel-chested stranger, but it was mainly a look.
Bruck recognized the fact that the Marquis was a pretend fighter, not a real one like himself. That was okay; the Marquis was his friend, his only friend.
In a fight or a battle the Marquis needed Bruck to watch his back, though he pretended he didn't. Bruck always tried to fight on the same side as the Marquis and as near to him as possible, though it didn't always work out that way.
The Marquis needed Bruck, and Bruck needed the Marquis too. The Marquis explained things to Bruck he wouldn't have understood otherwise. And the Marquis was the only other person who knew about Nestor-the tall barrel-chested stranger. Bruck always forgot the tall, barrel-chested stranger's name unless the Marquis was around, saying stuff like, "Just you be patient, little buddy. Pretty soon Nestor will be back . . ."
Funny, the Marquis calling him "little buddy" when the Marquis was a short, solid guy and Bruck was maybe an inch or two taller than him. Always winking, though, just like his friend Nestor, the tall barrel-chested stranger.
The Marquis got up from the table, swaggering away toward a dancing girl with braids, throwing a wink over his shoulder at Bruck. One night the Marquis got into a heated shoving match with a brawny lout, and Bruck had to step in and shoulder the Marquis aside. The brawny lout took a swing at Bruck, and Bruck ducked under the fist and slammed his head into the lout's stomach so hard the guy crumpled on the spot. The other people in the bar applauded. The Marquis winked and grinned.
"Thanks, little buddy."
A waitress came by with another beer. Bruck disconsolately handed her his empty. Looking across the room, he saw the braided-haired girl feeling the Marquis' muscles, giggling.
He didn't have the heart to tell the Marquis. Bruck wasn't sure exactly what he knew or remembered anymore, but one thing he was pretty sure of was Nestor would not be coming back soon.
Bruck took a long, slow drink of his beer, nearly draining the tall glass, still straining to remember. He patted his pocket-something valuable in there, he dimly recalled. His thoughts were cloudier and cloudier. He signaled for another beer. He drank too much these days, always drinking when he wasn't fighting.
Staring across the room he thought he caught a glimpse of a man with curly red hair and a bristly beard, but then people shifted around and the man melted into the crowd. Or was he imagining things?
The waitress brought him another foaming beer. He looked around for the Marquis, but his friend too had melted into the loud, smelly, shouting, dancing crowd.
At night he dreamed of playing double knuckles with the tall barrel-chested stranger against the two brothers, one younger with narrow eyes and a pockmarked face, the older one with curly red hair and a bristly red beard.
The game had been going on for hours. It was long after midnight, and the tavern had all but emptied. The only people left were the four players, the proprietor who sat on a stool behind them watching stoically, a groggy serving girl with her arm stretched around the proprietor, and two or three die- hard regulars who stared with goggle eyes as the pile of coins rose higher than ever before at the Bull's Bullocks.
There were hundreds and hundreds of coins in the pot. Bruck had wagered more of his earnings than was wise, and several times he had been tempted to fold his cards and walk away. But he was still enjoying himself, and each time he had been tempted to quit, the tall barrel-chested stranger had winked at him and he had stayed.
He was a fighter, not a gamesman, but the tall, barrel-chested stranger proved very, very good at double knuckles, and the brothers were losing and falling farther and farther behind. The young brother grew even more silent and peevish, while the red-haired and -bearded one glowered nastily as, finally, he emptied his pockets and pushed his last few coins into the center of the table.
The tall barrel-chested stranger seemed to savor the drama of it all. He hesitated before he reached into his purse and found the right number of coins, flipping them carelessly onto the pile before reaching for his final card.
Bruck and the younger brother played their hands. The unremarkable result made the serving girl yawn. The two looked to their partners for the climax.
The red-haired bristly-bearded brother defiantly slapped his cards down, a smirk on his face. For a moment the tall barrel-chested stranger looked surprised, then winking at Bruck, he gracefully spread his cards to show a hand that vanquished his opponent's.
Even before the grin on Bruck's face had started to widen, the place exploded. The younger brother shouted an epithet and stretched a long arm across the table toward the coins. Bruck reacted in a blur, reaching down and grabbing a long knife from his cache of weapons on the floor and bringing the blade up and down in one fluid whirl, plunging it hard into the table and cleanly slicing off the man's outstretch hand.
The hand appeared to scuttle away and slide off the table as the younger brother screamed and fell back from the table. But then, with a sick feeling, Bruck realized the brother's screams were mixing with the loud groans of the tall barrel-chested stranger, who had been knocked back in his chair by a thick dirk hurled by the older brother. The blade was stuck in the broad target of his barrel chest. Bruck quickly found his sword and stood, waving his weapon in the air, anxious to avenge his partner.
There was no more opportunity for violence, however. The red-haired bristly-bearded brother had draped his arms around his shrieking brother and, with a baleful look over his shoulders, dragged him and his bloody stump away. The proprietor and handful of observers shrank into the shadows. From somewhere in the room, Bruck could hear the servant girl sobbing. Perhaps, he thought, she'd been sweet on the pockmarked loser, who was now bleeding grievously.
The tall barrel-chested stranger was still alive and strong enough to reach down and yank the dirk out of his chest and toss it on the floor contemptuously. The effort took a lot out of him, though. He gestured weakly to Bruck, who swept the mountain of coins into a sack and then scurried around the table to catch his partner just as he began to slump to the ground. The tall, barrel-chested stranger whose name was Nestor-yes, Nestor, Bruck recalled-pointed to a narrow stairway at the rear of the room, and Bruck half walked, half carried Nestor upstairs, blood wetting both their clothes.
Inside a small sparse room was a pallet, a wooden chair, and a dressing table with a mirror. Bruck helped Nestor to the pallet. Nestor refused to lie down, instead sitting with his legs outstretched, his head propped against the wall, still winking and chuckling despite his wound and shallow breathing.
"I've seen worse," grunted Bruck, after examining the wound, and it was true-he had. But this wound was bad enough that it might kill Nestor if not treated. Bruck would make sure Nestor was settled and comfortable, he wanted to check the winnings, and then he would go and bring a doctor.
Spotting a small flask on the dressing table, Bruck took a sip of foul liquor and handed it over to Nestor, who drank from it several times until it was emptied and he tossed it on the floor, laughing. First things first: As Nestor watched him with glittering eyes, Bruck dumped out the coins and counted them, dividing the haul into two piles.
Whether because of how much he had drank or the shock of his wound, Nestor was beginning to babble. Bruck, almost done, wasn't listening closely, and Nestor, still laughing, raised his voice insistently. Clutching his bleeding wound with one hand Nestor dug through his pockets with the other and, after arduous effort, produced a rolled parchment and a polished triangle of stone that he thrust at Bruck, urging him to pay attention.
Rising from the floor, Bruck deposited his share of the coins in his sack and put Nestor's in his purse, which he tossed onto the pallet next to the wounded man. He then sat down at the dressing table, staring at the two items he held in his hand and listening to Nestor's babble.
The stone triangle had a row of numbers along one edge that changed as Bruck rotated them with his thumb. As Nestor called out numbers in a precise order, Bruck rotated the numbers one by one into the sequence being urgently dictated by his wounded partner.
Slumped against the wall, his bleeding still copious, Nestor talked nonsense about fighting good fights and traveling through time. Yes, fighting and traveling through time-that was the strange thing that he kept saying.
This was the best trip ever, Nestor said.
Bruck listened more carefully now, fingering the numbers on the stone triangle, following the sequence dictated by Nestor, even as he wondered if Nestor was dazed and hysterical or crazy or dying.