Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds (4 page)

I take one last breath. The itching stops.

What I want, no matter what the cost, is for the world to know it’s alive.

~ ~ ~

Some futures are just too clean and tidy to be haunted by zombies…

Edward Landon Marcus Strevakoff closed his monocle eye
and stared with an unadorned perspective at the wall of his workstation. Like his fellow field workers, when he wasn’t planet-side and up to his elbows in a time traveler’s dirty work, his life consisted of the necessary “immersive history exploration” docudramas his access key monocle beamed into his left eye. If you wanted to blend into the past, you had to learn about the past.

But sometimes closing his left eye and squinting at the grain of the wood directly in front of his nose with his right allowed Edward to remember he had a functioning body.

When he applied, field worker positions on the
Flight Up The Center
had been his dream job—excellent pay, “adventure” on an interstellar ship running trade to the colonies but also jumping Back on return voyages. The
Flight
, like her sister ships, provided the worlds with necessary time stream hygiene services.

To this day, memories of his mother’s stiff lips, wide eyes, and constricted nose when speaking of the “natural” time stream always made Edward’s stomach knot up. His loving, caring mom, the woman who trudged through dirt and garbage to take him to the zoo, and to the park, and wherever else good parents took their kids, always looked as if she’d stepped in dog crap when his father ranted about “letting things be.”

She
understood the need for time stream hygiene, even if Edward’s father did not.

So Edward Landon Marcus Strevakoff took his job as a fixer field worker seriously, if, for no other reason, than to make sure he attracted a mate as wholesome as his sweet mom.

Still, sometimes he had trouble focusing. In twelve hours, he’d be standing somewhere in an early twenty-first century suburbia, automobile exhaust fumes swirling in his nose and the uncivilized screeching of over-medicated children piercing his ears, cleaning up some little mess shat out by the time stream.

His schedule said a quick and easy run to clear up some woman’s messy relationship. All he had to do was distract her for about two minutes, to keep her from meeting a scumbag who would ooze all over her life and destroy her good deeds. Her descendants had bought the standard Right Path package, asking that she be aimed in the correct direction. It would be, at least for Edward, a cake walk.

But if he wanted to do it well—and not get caught—he needed an era refresher, which meant he needed to pay attention to the flashing lights slapping his left eye like some screaming crazy clown.

He would, in a second. But right now, he stared at the wall of his cubicle with his non-monocled right eye. Six trips Out on the
Flight Up The Center
, five Back, and he understood why the company outfitted the entire interstellar fleet to look and smell like a late twentieth century billionaire’s yacht. The worker bees like him felt special. And it did add a touch of the organic to what would otherwise be the equivalent of a very long ride in a very big RV.

The unholy smell of burning popcorn wafted between the cubicles. He groaned, as did his fellow field workers on either side of him. He wouldn’t lean back and engage—his fellow field workers seemed standoffish anyway—because Sherry burned popcorn every single day, usually swearing at it from the kitchen in her sweet but terrifying feminine tones, as clockwork as the ship’s systems. They all groaned, and they kept their heads down, but the smell was strangely comforting.

As were, he had to admit, the turn of the twenty-first century docudramas his monocle snaked into his brain. The stories were modern-made, of course, full of color riots and brain-triggered phantom tactile brushes against skin and wind in his hair. The one he watched now must have been expensive because when he opened his left eye, the docudrama feed started up immediately, sniffing around in his real perception for something to blend with. A large entertainment complex flickered into his mind—one where people gathered to watch two dimensional vids on bay door-sized screens. Stale movie theater popcorn, complete with what the time locals called “butter flavor” dropped onto his tongue.

He’d been in a cinema once, on his last jump. How the people of the time dealt with the decibel levels of chatter and electronics, he still didn’t understand.

There’d been a target. He’d dropped the necessary capsule in the target’s brown slop the time locals called “soda.” But he remembered her friend better—a pretty young woman with copper-colored hair and skin so fine he thought her of his time. She’d been smoothly shaped, a well-groomed woman in clothes that celebrated her curves. He’d spent the entire “movie”—all two hours and ten minutes of jarring crash-cut edited stupidity—staring at the back of the friend’s lovely head.

Edward sighed. He tried to do his job well. Every day of his life, he tried.

His link beeped.

The monocle flashed over to communication mode and his boss’s nag-bot’s icon popped into his vision. Lancaster wanted to see him.

And the only words Edward Landon Marcus Strevakoff’s mind could feed him at that moment was
Oh
,
shit
.

***

Edward walked down the corridor of the
Flight Up The Center
for the what felt like the millionth time, feeling again, for the millionth time, as if he been called to the principal’s office. His stomach did all sorts of hops and skips, and for the first time today, his mind focused.

The ship seemed brighter and its edges more delineated, as if they were dangerous, like drop-offs. Or razors. The heels of his boots
swiffed
along the tight burgundy weave of the dirt-eating carpet but he still wondered what clung to his feet. A slight inward bow rounded all the ship’s passageways as if the designers wanted to take out the submarine feel but just couldn’t quite figure out how. It bothered the back of his brain, and now also the front. And he noticed, for the first time, the many stewards’ slight-but-necessary lean inward to conform to the curve.

His hackles rose.

The last of his midday meal clung to his mouth. Edward hadn’t had a moment to drink before Lancaster called him to his office, so he swished his tongue over his teeth instead, hoping to clear away any stuck bits. Cleanliness was important, especially when facing the boss.

He stopped in front of the Head Steward’s colossal office and ran his fingers through his dark mane of curly-but-kempt hair. Calls up from the cubicles were rare, and often meant new assignments. Edward tightened his abdominal muscles to relieve the stress in his gut, thankful he did his daily maintenance, and inhaled deeply.

Lancaster was fond of the scent of fresh tobacco. Not the burned stuff—nothing that caused air pollution—but the natural smell of a plant the entire crew associated with a romantic historical time period. One full of grime and social slime, but an un-automated grime and an easily identifiable social slime.

Perhaps, if Edward was lucky, he would leave Lancaster’s office today with quick jaunt into the pre-Industrial Age, with its swirling organic sensations and its easily subdued behavior, and all his hackle-raising would turn out to have been silly overreaction.

He tapped the door.

Lancaster leaned forward over his vehicle-sized oak desk—real oak, much like the wood paneling sheathing the entire insides of the
Flight
—his thumb and ring fingers pressing into his well-maintained flesh, and heaved a massive exhale of a man burdened.

Edward’s back straightened so fast it cracked. He neck tightened as tight as Lancaster’s shoulders appeared to be—all bunched up and stressed into hard cords.

At that moment, that very moment, he knew his hackles had been right.

“You are a fit specimen, Mr. Strevakoff, are you not?” Lancaster looked up and his hand combed through his obsidian black hair before moving to the equally obsidian-shiny top of his massive desk. An entire family could live under the damned thing.

“Yes, sir!” Edward clasped his hands behind his back. He adhered religiously to the strict maintenance routines dictated by the field worker’s manual: A hour and a half of regular, rotating exercise a day, only low-glycemic, nutrient-dense foods, and eight and a half hours of sleep a night. He had good skin and a strong jaw, like most of his coworkers. They were, on average, a handsome group here on the
Flight
, Edward included. Handsome always calmed the time locals.

Lancaster nodded as his finger slowly moved the documents around on his desk top monitor. “And charming, Mr. Strevakoff?”

Edward frowned. They were all
charming
. Charming is what kept them out of trouble. Handsome may make them memorable, but charming got them their way. If they couldn’t
charm
, they couldn’t perform their hygiene tasks.

“So why is it, Mr. Strevakoff, that Research found evidence of brawls? And of…” Lancaster sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, his eyes narrow. “…a
police record
?” His voice dripped with the held back nausea one would expect a person to have when speaking such a foul term. The corner of his lip curled like he’d smelled a bubbling mass of decaying dead rat.

“
Excuse
me?” The accusation in Edward’s tone popped out of his mouth before he could catch it, leaving a very sour taste on his tongue. No one accused another person of having a police record. Not your mother. Not your friend. Not even your boss.

He had no
police record
. How
untidy
.

“You know what this means, don’t you, Mr. Strevakoff?” Lancaster leaned forward again, and steepled his fingers. He stared at Edward, his eyes remarkably blank for a man about to destroy another man’s life.

Edward had been on the
Flight
for six trips Out now, five Back. He’d never had problems, except that one time when he stayed too long because he’d been staring at the pretty young woman in the movie theater, but that was beside the point. The pay here was good. Quite good, actually. Enough to improve his grooming substantially.

How the hell was he going to find another job like this one?

“I don’t have a
record
!” He spat it out, which probably wasn’t helping his case.

Lancaster sniffed but didn’t answer. Instead, he waved his hand and the document appeared in the space right in front of Edward’s face: A record, complete with a less-than-flattering mug shot and a long list of bad behavior, from the early twenty-first century.

Lancaster stood and slowly reached out his hand, palm up, fingers rigid. “Your access key monocle, Mr. Strevakoff.”

***

Lancaster’s nag-bot flicked new steerage orders into Edward’s clipboard. He held the damned thing, staring at its annoyingly huge size, and watched the words scroll over its surface.

He had to curl his fingers around its
edge
to hold it. How did the stewards work with these damned things? If he held it in front of his face, it would block another person’s view of his entire head.

“Mr. Strevakoff, sir?” Edward’s mind snapped back to the kid in front of him whose name he did not remember. Lancaster had sent the kid to make sure Edward found his new apartment in the lower decks of the
Flight Up The Center
. And to make sure he cleaned out his cubicle.

The kid currently paced Edward down the now-overly dark-seeming corridor toward the field workers’ staff offices. Why the hell did they think the dark, orange-ish wood was a good idea? They were in a damned
space
ship.

Lancaster gave him no options. No paths to recourse. Just an “out you go.”

Edward stomped along. Out where? The
Flight Up The Center
had dropped into twenty-first century orbit three hours ago. It’s not like he could go home. They were in the wrong era.

Good thing he’d remembered his maintenance routines and hadn’t become emotional. A good field worker does not become emotional under any circumstances. It interferes with the job. But holding the damned clipboard was making his hand cramp and his fingers turn white.

“Mr. Strevakoff?”

Edward waved the board around. “I know how to follow directions. Go away.”

“I have my orders, sir.”

Edward stopped and the kid almost slammed into his shoulder. The kid was lanky by anyone’s standards, though he obviously did his routines. Like all of them—except Lancaster—he was a handsome young fellow.

“What’s your name again?” Edward squinted with his right eye,
real-looking
at the kid, even though he no longer wore a monocle. Some habits die hard.

“Bart, sir.” The kid stood tall, seemingly more proud of himself than having a random name should warrant. “Just moved up to Access Steward, sir.” He tapped his own monocle.

The desire to punch the kid and steal his monocle welled up from Edward’s gut and he almost gave in. Almost let it out. But he
did not
have a record and by all the wandering gods of every single stupid and vapid civilization the
Flight Up The Center
had dropped into for a little time stream hygiene, he wasn’t going to get one
now
.