Unhappenings (59 page)

I wandered, attempting to be discreet. Given my appearance, I would have guessed that to be tricky, but a surprising number of people were milling about the city dressed in rags. The ones who weren’t in uniform, anyway.

I spent my day trying to fit in, hoping I would figure out enough about my circumstances to survive them. And hoping even more that Athena would come to my rescue. But she was retired now. Without the resources of the Project, I wasn’t even sure she would be able to find me. And even if she did, my module didn’t work. I would still be trapped here, and perhaps she would as well.

A few dozen people were arrested and beaten right in front of me over the course of the day. It was impossible to distinguish their behavior or status from the people standing right next to them who avoided arrest, including myself. I witnessed two summary executions, the bodies left in the streets for the crows and looters.

At one point a dilapidated truck came through, and a few dozen people were pulled off the street and thrown in the back. There was no outward indication of the fate that awaited them, nor any reason to believe any of them cared one way or the other.

And then I saw myself. On the side of a building. Ten stories high. To my confusion, this portrait was the most flattering image of me I had ever seen. I looked impeccably groomed, decked out in lavish finery, with an almost comically rakish smile. I would have thought this man was the local hero, if not for the word WANTED printed diagonally across the entire image.

Despite every indication of horrible danger before me, I was unable to stifle a small laugh. Carlton had done this deliberately. I could walk through the city all day and all week without being recognized by this poster. He surely would know that. Like everything else, this was a taunt. A declaration that my freedom would be impossible, but my capture would never take place. Survival would be up to me.

Those were my thoughts the moment I was seized from behind. Before I had a chance to struggle, I felt a tingle in my left arm, and the world flashed. Athena and I materialized on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, some day, some year, in the dead of night.

“No one listens to me,” she said.

hat was that?” I asked. “That world?”

“That,” said Athena, “was l’Empire de la France Nouvelle. Vive l’Empereur!”

“What year is it?”

“Still 2149,” she said. “They’re a bit ahead of schedule, I’ll give you that. The financial meltdown wasn’t supposed to happen until two years from now. But, you know.” She shrugged. “Time travel. What are you gonna do, right?”

“What happened to my module?” I asked. “I tried to use it and it couldn’t respond.”

“Simple jamming,” she said. “That’s the first time he’s successfully interfered with you traveling, and he probably won’t stop now that he knows it’s possible. I uploaded a patch to your module’s OS when we jumped, so that particular attack won’t work again, but there will be others, I’m sure.”

“Why was my poster in English?”

“I’m pretty sure you already know why the poster was in English,” she said.

“Because it wasn’t for anyone to see but me.”

“Correct.” Athena sat down on the steps to the monument. “Do you want to get cleaned up first, or do you want to get this over with?”

I looked down at my disgraceful appearance. It reminded me of how out of place I was.

“Wait, where’s Helen?” I asked.

“Probably worried sick that you aren’t where she left you. If she’s smart, she’s keeping her head down and not getting arrested.”

“Or shot!” I cried. “Oh, God.”

“If it makes you feel any better, you two were still together, even in the middle of that Orwellian nightmare.”

It did make me feel better.

“Oh. Wait…”

“Yes, Father, in the interest of getting this out of the way, in this revised timeline, you two conceived me in that alley. I’m no happier about it than you are.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Not talking about it is good, too,” she said. “So, cleaned up? Over with? Your call.”

“Cleaned up,” I said. “It’s not like we’re in a hurry.”

Athena and I checked into a hotel. I took a shower and shaved while she went out and got me a change of clothes. We ordered room service. Steak. Lobster. I took my time eating to pull myself together. We would have to kill Carlton again. And again, probably. And again and again and again, until we caught up with and exterminated every version of him still out there. He had obviously figured out how to use his multiple frames of reference to replicate himself, but we had no idea how many of them there were. This was about to become just like our adventures cleaning up Carlton’s apocalypses, but we would be on the offensive, for as long as it took. I wondered if I would ever see Helen again.

“What about Baby Carlton?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“What if we kill him? Before any of this can happen? Will that end it?”

Athena drew the gun from under her jacket and placed it on the table with a bold
thud
. It was bigger than I remembered it being, and I remembered it being pretty big.

“Is that going to be you, then?” she asked. “Will you put the bullet in the baby while his parents watch? Did you see what this did to grownup Carlton? What do you think a slug from this thing will do to a soft little baby?”

“If I have to,” I said. I could feel the lobster having second thoughts about being digested.

“Well, you don’t.” She put the gun back in her holster. “Because, to answer your question, no. It wouldn’t end this. The versions of him still out there are still out there. He’s a traveler. You can’t undo a traveler that easily.”

Setting aside her description of infanticide as “easy,” I asked, “Then what do we do today?”

“Today we kill this version. Try to find a point in his history before he does any damage, and take him down. That’s what we do today.”

I took her hand. “Whenever you’re ready.”

The world flashed. We were back in Paris, but an earlier, less police state Paris. I could see Carlton across the street, talking to a boy of about ten. They were laughing. Carlton handed him something. An envelope, a package, hard to be sure at this distance.

“We can’t do this in front of a child,” I said.

“Wait for it,” said Athena.

They laughed again, and Carlton patted him on the head, then walked away from him. The boy walked idly down the sidewalk, inspecting the object in his hands. Carlton was moving pretty quickly now, and we were still standing there.

“Now?” I asked.

“Soon.”

I watched her keep a bead on Carlton for half a block. Then, Carlton was enveloped in an orange, crackly halo, and shrunk out of existence. Opportunity lost.

“Now,” said Athena, a hair too late, but she was already moving.

Toward the boy.

“Carlton!” she shouted when she was about three meters behind him. He stopped and turned, giving her just enough time to put the gun against his head. I was still catching up when I heard the shot. And the screams.

The boy was decapitated. Athena took the small packet from his dead hand. I felt her own hand on my wrist, slippery with the child’s blood, and we flashed out.

e materialized on my back lawn. It was the middle of the day. Assuming Helen still worked, she would be out of the house, which was preferable because I didn’t want her to see her daughter covered in little boy head fragments. Athena tossed the package away in one direction, the gun in the other, fell down and wept. I sat next to her, doing what I did best: feeling helpless.

When she finally pulled herself together, she asked for the package. I brought it to her, trying to get as little blood on me as possible. She tore it open with no such consideration.

“Plans. Money. A recipe for dictatorship. I wonder how long he was grooming that little shit for his rise to power.” She handed the packet to me. “Trash.”

We went inside. Athena took a bath while I laundered her clothes. She borrowed an outfit from Helen while they were drying.

“Now what?” I said.

“Now we spend the rest of our lives doing this job, or as long as it takes to clean up all the Carltons out there. Assuming we can do that faster than he can make more of them.”

“I’m not getting married,” I asked. “Am I?”