Strange New Worlds 2016 (38 page)

“Get moving before you are discovered. That’s an order, Captain.”

I had to at least walk into the bathroom, just once. No one could begrudge me that.

“Where are you going? You need to disable the electronic monitoring devices or risk
discovery.”

The bathroom was everything I could have hoped for and more. And it had running water,
running hot water and scented soap, just lovely. And to keep the voices in my head
silent, I went over to the security station and quickly typed in a nasty virus. The
shutdown happened a heartbeat after my fingers left the keyboard. The monitors went
black, allowing me to move freely.

“Take the stairs. No time for the lift.”

There had to be a way to make the voices in my head stop talking. I made it to the
stairwell and closed the door just as soon as the guard returned. I could hear him
cursing over the crashed computer system and talking to someone named Tech Support.

“Proceed to the twenty-fifth floor. Hurry.”

“You have to be kidding,” I said. “Twenty-five floors!”

“Keep your voice down. The guard’s coming this way. Get to the top of the first flight
and exit on the second floor. Don’t let the door slam.”

Time was short and a cat-and-mouse game with a security guard was a luxury I could
ill afford. I turned left down a hallway and entered a large room filled with separate
work stations and row after row of computers.

I ducked into a darkened closet that contained, among other things, discarded technology.
The one device looked like a cryotube with a flashing red light. In the dark, I listened
for the door to open and close and for approaching footsteps. After several minutes
of nothing, I ventured back out.

There were so many empty stations, and the walls were painted a drab color of beige.
The low hum of ceiling illumination stirred the silence. Flowing air rumbled through
the overhead vents. I followed the carpeted footpath and passed another empty office.
I became startled when the lights came on automatically. There must have been a motion
detector I accidently tripped.

The only other sound I heard was the tick of a wall clock that was twenty minutes
behind the time. I nearly panicked when I turned the corner and there was someone
working. Fortunately, her back was to me and her ears trailed some type of wires.
Perhaps she was hearing impaired. She remained oblivious to my presence and continued
to push the waste barrel with wheels down the hallway.

“Head toward the exit, take the west stairwell, and ascend.”

“Keep an eye on the security guard,” I said.

“We’ll keep tabs on him. You retrieve the computer and wipe the hard drive.”

I wasn’t the confident young man I used to be. Staying psychically fit took a backseat
to staying alive these many years. My legs throbbed after the first few flights of
stairs. I decided to take the elevator the rest of the way up.

“Stop! What are you doing? You’re going to alert the security guard to your presence.”

“Look, I’m not going to make it to Starling’s office in time without some mechanical
assistance. Unless, of course, you’d like to beam me to the twenty-fifth floor?”

“We’re getting too much interference. And even if it were possible, we don’t want
to leave a trail of bread crumbs for those thieves.”

It took me a moment or two to work out the controls, but I got the lift moving. The
most wretched music issued from its internal sound system. I endured the sonic barrage
until the doors dinged open upon arriving at the twenty-fifth floor. I made for Starling’s
office, thirty years too late.

What I would have given to be inside this building before I became a vagrant. A chance
to rewrite history and reclaim my future by avoiding this mess altogether. Every knot,
no matter how complicated, can be unraveled. It just takes time and patience, and
armed with a new operational timeship I would have all the time in the universe.

“Wait while we turn off the silent alarm system.”

The door clicked open, and I stepped inside. The man’s office was just as gaudy and
tacky as the man himself. This man-child littered his workspace with toys: a train
set, a model Ferris wheel, and a pinball machine. I didn’t think I could despise him
more. Again, I was proved wrong.

A high-backed throne sat at a marble-topped half-circle desk. The green wall behind
had a bookcase overstuffed with nonsense Starling had written, multiple copies to
fill the shelves. Awards and photos of himself with dignitaries and the like adorned
the walls. He even displayed a trophy cup on his desk. I didn’t bother to read the
engraving. More nonsense, I was convinced.

This whole room was like a pharaoh’s tomb, a monument to the oversized ego of a corrupt
little man. I wanted to smash everything in it. He wrecked my life, it only seemed
fair.

I was chuckling over a bronze monkey statue when I noticed the world map window broken
and taped over. Through the cracks, I saw the room beyond. It was a hastily constructed
hangar bay with a smashed pane-glass window covered in plastic. That’s where he flew
the
Aeon
out over the city and the ocean beyond before heading into deep space to die.

My ship was imprisoned in these very same walls. He probably tortured the ship’s computer
to free his secrets. I wouldn’t put it past that snake Starling. Recursive algorithms
and a worm virus that slowly eroded his firewalls and safety protocols. Those same
invasive programs ate away at his higher functions, making him more docile and compliant
to that barbarian’s wishes.

I thought of the A.I. as a friend and a shipmate. His quick thinking saved both our
lives on numerous occasions. Even if he was programmed to act independently when circumstances
warranted it, like the time I was exposed to Thalaron radiation on Gamora V. The ship
beamed me back aboard and plotted a course through time to the nearest Federation
hospital.

“Well, where does he keep the computer?” I asked.

No reply. No chirp from my combadge. No voices in my head. Nothing.

Was this all fantasy? Did I break in here out of some misplaced feelings of revenge
and concoct this whole scenario to protect my sense of right and wrong? Had I finally
lost my feeble grasp on sanity?
These thoughts crossed my mind. No, I decided that my imagination hadn’t gotten the
better of me. Someone beamed me out of the police car. That was real.

Where would Starling hide his latest creation? Where else, but in plain sight.

Newspaper clippings and magazine advertisements of his latest technological terror
had been gathered in a folder on his desk. I now knew what the computer looked like,
but that was no help. The boxy hardware was just an empty shell. The program hid in
the software of his workstation computer right in front of me. It had to be the answer.

I sat in the king’s chair and began my slow decryption of his passwords, malware,
firewalls, and ghostings. The keyboard slowed me down considerably. I was accustomed
to a more direct interface, a conversation between man and machine.

“You’ve got mail,” an automated voice announced.

I looked around the room and realized the computer had spoken. That wasn’t good. I
clicked on the paper icon and the message popped up on the screen:

From: [email protected]

Sent: Today, time unknown

To: [email protected]

Subject: Mission

You’re not alone anymore.

My verbal answer elicited no response. So I typed my reply:

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Mission

What does that mean? And why aren’t you using comm lines?

From: [email protected]

Sent: Today, time unknown

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Mission

Too much interference. Finish the decryption. You’re running out of time.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Mission

I’d be further along if I didn’t have to keep responding to these infernal messages.

From: [email protected]

Sent: Today, time unknown

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Mission

Look for a break in the code. Something like this:

001001XXXXYYY0101

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Mission

I know what to look for and stop interrupting me.

From: [email protected]

Sent: Today, time unknown

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Mission

Keep typing and don’t look up.

You should never tell a person not to do something, because invariably they will.
And I was no different. I looked up to see two hazy outlines, humanoid in shape, struggling
to break into this reality.

Another message marked urgent popped up.

From: [email protected]

Sent: Today, time unknown

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Mission

I told you not to look up. Keep typing you have seconds.

Seconds until what? I didn’t bother to type that, but instead thought it. If I stopped
answering maybe he’d stop sending stupid messages. I kept the search engine going,
combing through terabytes of data seeking out the elusive code.

“Take your hands off the computer,” a voice commanded.

Vorgons. The time-traveling thieves were a pair of Vorgons.

They had beamed into the outer office. Purple-pink-skinned humanoids with rows of
gills between eyes and mouth and a tapered mound of flesh like a mohawk atop their
heads. They had golden cybernetic implants carved into the sides of their skulls,
a low-tech, twenty-seventh-century recall device easily available on the black market
for the right amount of credits. With a touch of a flipper, the Vorgon could be pulled
back to his or her timeframe.

At the moment, the male leveled a red crystal in one outstretched flipper directly
at my chest. The female began to slowly move toward me.

Another message popped up making an absurd sound.

From: [email protected]

Sent: Today, time unknown

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re: Mission

Click this hyperlink. Hurry.

“Step away from the computer,” the male said.

He was prepared to make good on his threat, but the mission came first, even before
my own life. The hyperlink probably hid an overwrite virus of this century. No sense
leaving more advanced code behind.

I used the computer to screen my hand moving left to right and clicked the mouse and
icon floating on the computer screen. That one small click sounded like a gunshot.
The Vorgon gave me a slight grimace before firing.

A blue energy blast lanced out. The beam bloomed against my chest, drove me into the
bookshelf, and I spilled out of the chair and onto the carpeted floor. The female
quickly stepped over me to get to the computer. The weapon had been set to stun, thank
goodness. I was alive, but groggy. I could hear what they were saying through my fogged
senses.

“This human has damaged the hard drive of this device,” she said. She looked down
at me and waved a small handheld device over my body. It had to be some kind of tricorder.

“Boratus, he is not of this time, perhaps this world,” she said. “I’m reading low
levels of chroniton radiation.”

“We agreed not to use names, Ajur,” Boratus said. “He’s probably a temporal agent.”

“Everybody freeze. Hands in the air.”

Although the speaker remained hidden from view, I recognized that voice. It was the
same voice that sought out help from a person named Tech Support. The security guard
had followed me to the top floor.

“Get up and disconnect the wires from the back of the data storage unit underneath
the desk. Do it now while the guard distracts the two Vorgons.”

What he meant to say was do it before a gunfight erupts between a twenty-seventh-century
antique and a twentieth-century artifact. Best not to think too much about orders
and just carry them out. My vision blurred and doubled, but somehow I managed to grab
all the yellow and blue cords and yank them out of the back of the device without
arousing suspicion.

“Good. Now pick it up, walk three meters to your left
, and toss it through the world map window.”

“In the middle of a standoff?” I asked. “Are you crazy?”

Fortunately, no one paid any attention to me or my outburst whatsoever. After thirty
years in this wretched century, I expected nothing less from its inhabitants or visitors
from another place and time.

I stood up with my back to the antagonists, shielding the computer tower in my hands.
The guard and Vorgons were too preoccupied intently watching each other for provocative
movements to worry about me, at first. When my intentions became clear, all eyes and
weapons were trained on me.

My Vorgon was a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure he called me a Denebian slime devil
and sprinkled a few curse words as both nouns and adjectives. Their grammar structure
is fluid to say the least, worse than Federation Standard.

The guard spouted the same droll consequences of disregarding his dire warnings. Something
along the lines of “Halt or I’ll shoot,” though I can’t be one hundred percent sure
of that. At the time, I was more focused on crossing the few short meters that felt
like kilometers.

Strange how time slows down in some moments and speeds up in others. The perception
of time passing can easily be influenced by half a dozen different catalysts. While
I waded through the swampy morass of what could have been my final moments, all I
could think about was tossing this data storage device fifteen meters down to break
open like a cybernetic melon on the gantry floor below.