‘Right, Gary.’ Rama stood over Danny’s trolley, holding a second pair of earphones. ‘I’m attaching these to your head. You’ll feel a little giddy but that should soon pass.’
‘Will this kill me?’ he asked feebly.
‘The console I’m linking you to is a mind-reading machine.’
‘Mind-reading?’
‘I’m going to project my memories onto the screen. That way you’ll be able to see what’s been going on round here. I’m connecting you up as a neutral counterbalance to ensure everything that appears is true. That means you’ll be able to trust the evidence of your own eyes. Normally, I wouldn’t be able to use this device. My intellect would overload it instantly. However, as I have an idiot handy – ’
He had a feeling she meant him.
‘ – I can use your mental functions as a handbrake to damp down the effects of mine.’
‘Then will it kill me?’ he asked feebly.
Rama returned to the console, again fiddling with dials. Danny strained to see.
The console whined, a low throb almost too deep to be heard but then rising beyond human audibility. The screen crackled, settling down before replaying Teena Rama’s memories …
… Two weeks after the completion of her house, Teena Rama, new to Wheatley and still delighted by its second-hand possibilities, backheeled the front door shut. She’d returned, empty-handed but content, from a day at the tip. She slipped off her camouflage jacket. ‘Hello, Doors. I’m home.’
No reply.
She watched the camera suspended from the ceiling. Its light was out.
‘Doors?’
Still no reply.
Hanging her coat on the stand by the door, she headed for the lounge.
‘Doors? You okay?’ Teena strode in, stopping at the room’s centre.
A magazine lay open on the coffee table. She suspected pornography, having recently half-completed the task of teaching him human anatomy.
From his ceiling camera, a narrow tractor beam scrutinized the magazine, lazily turning pages. ‘Oh. Miss Rama. I was just reading.’
‘Reading what?’
‘A vigorous narrative incorporating recurring iconographie themes to provoke a Nietzschean allusion to …’
Knuckles on hips, eyelids slowly lowering, she interrupted.
He turned another page. ‘The Hormonal Fifty, to be precise.’
‘Doors, did I spend thirty-five minutes last Saturday programming your culture chip just so you could use it for comic book appreciation?’
‘Yes, Miss Rama.’
‘No, Doors; I did not.’
‘Oh.’
‘Have you not considered Joyce, Conrad, Dostoevsky? I have a library crammed with the world’s most challenging books – many authored by me.’
‘Yes, Miss Rama, I’ve done all those. And most enjoyable they were – even yours. But this is much better. Larry Hormonal, enigmatic leader of the Hormonal Fifty, has finally completed his Xeta Gun.’
An eyebrow arched.
Doors continued. ‘He’s built it to punch a hole through to Anti-Space, a strange and bizarre world where no one has super powers. The Hormonal Fifty’s other members can’t believe such a place exists but he insists his fiancée – Vanishing Woman, her powers confound friend and foe alike – may be there. Vanishing Woman hasn’t been seen since Issue 2’s foiling of Captain Bladderwrack’s seaweed exploits. The Fifty are having a proper confusing time of it.’
‘You mean it’s a world like this one?’
‘That’s right. Miss Rama.’ He read on, too engrossed to grasp her implication.
‘Exactly like this one.’ Her foot tapped impatiently, waiting for his electronic thought processes to catch up with hers.
‘That’s right. Miss Rama (chortle).’
‘I mean exactly like this one.’
‘Why, Miss Rama, you’re correct. It’s precisely like this world. But how?’
She scooped comic from table and greedily scrutinized its gaudy pages. ‘Doors, you may just have given me an idea.’
(‘Okay, now eat your pie, Gary.’
‘No.’
‘Do it,’ she insisted.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It might be poisoned,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing wrong with this pie. I made it myself.’
‘That’s some recommendation.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Guess.’
‘Just eat it, Gary.’
‘Herbolt Myson wouldn’t.’
‘You are not Herbolt Myson.’
‘I only have your word for that.’
‘You want me to prove it’s safe?’ she said.
‘Now what’re you doing?’
‘Eating it. I’ll prove this thing’s harmless, if it’s the last thing I ever do. For God’s sake, why does no one ever trust me?’
‘I can’t imagine.’
Meanwhile the image on the screen moved on …)
… Two weeks after Doors’ comic book discovery.
‘More light please. Doors.’
The anglepoise brightened.
On a specially installed bar stool, Teena Rama sat at a worktop, early hours, fixing the circuitry of an atomic battery made from a drinks can found outside a takeaway. Her screwdriver probed its innards, tightening the final screws. Behind her hung the dark bulk of the near complete Xeta Gun. Two weeks’ work, the longest she’d spent on anything, but it would be her crowning achievement, until her time machine.
Larry Hormonal had built a time machine, in order to meet his past self, in order to instruct it on building a time machine, in order to instruct his future self on building a time machine, in order to instruct his present self on building a time machine.
It had culminated in him travelling forward in time, to accidentally kill his grandfather. Or was it backward in time, to kill his grandson? Or was it sideways in time, to kill himself? Or was it Man’s primitive ancestor he’d killed? It had been hard to tell; his grandfather having been Reptilius, the puny dinosaur man; his grandson having been Lizardus, the reptile weakling.
Paradox or pseudo-science? Only Larry Hormonal knew, and he was saying nothing to the chickens who now ruled his world.
It was a mistake Teena Rama would not be repeating with her own time machine.
‘But, Miss Rama,’ Doors asked. ‘How can this possibly work? Surely the Hormonal Fifty are purely fictional.’
She twisted tight the penultimate screw. ‘Space is infinite, right?’
‘So you taught me, though I must confess to having drifted off somewhat towards the end of your last attempt to explain that.’
‘Time is infinite,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Therefore possibilities are infinite. Give an infinite number of restaurant lobsters infinite time and space, they’ll reproduce the works of Shakespeare. In fact they’d produce a greater canon than any single writer could ever manage, churning out masterpiece after masterpiece, flooding the market, devaluing all plays, making all playwrights redundant, and – with any luck – destroying the theatrical profession.’
‘But, Miss Rama, that hasn’t happened.’
‘What’s your point. Doors?’
‘Doesn’t that suggest there can be neither infinite lobsters, space nor time?’
‘Do you think you’re cleverer than me. Doors?’
‘No, Miss Rama.’
‘Then why are you arguing?’
‘I’m sorry. Miss Rama. You are of course correct.’
And she made yet another mental note to adjust his faulty programming.
She resumed screw tightening. ‘Now. If there’s endless time, space and possibilities, there must be an infinite number of worlds, including one inhabited by the Hormonal Fifty. In fact there must be an infinite number of worlds inhabited by them, just as infinite numbers of worlds contain versions of us. Ergo, there must be a world in which Larry Hormonal’s Xeta Gun brought him to this one.’
‘Carry on. Miss Rama.’
‘I believe Dick Dicksley, the strip’s creator – far from being a sad geek with a tree fixation, as popular belief would have it – in fact met these people upon their visit to our dimension. He then recorded subsequent events in his comics, much as Mary Shelley fictionalized real events in Frankenstein.’
‘And,’ realized Doors growing excited, ‘by copying Dicksley’s “imaginary” device, you can punch a hole through to that other world and bring Larry Hormonal to this one.’
‘Well done. Doors.’
‘And he can show you how to build a time machine, saving you much time and effort.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Why, that’s brilliant. Miss Rama.’
‘Well,’ she shrugged coyly, ‘I don’t like to blow my own trumpet but …’
‘But wouldn’t such a device be unbelievably dangerous?’
‘No more so than nuclear fusion.’
And, the night after that…
‘Okay, Doors, prepare to fire up the Xeta Gun.’ Teena flicked three switches on the wall.
‘No, Miss Rama.’
‘What do you mean, “No, Miss Rama”?’
‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘It’s not in the least bit dangerous. Now start it up.’
‘No, Miss Rama.’
‘Start it up. Now,’ she demanded.
‘No.’
‘I mean it. Doors.’
‘And I mean it too. Miss Rama.’
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake.’
‘Miss Rama, I really must pro …’ His voice ran down like a suddenly unplugged record player, and ground to a halt on the last letter of the last syllable.
She tossed aside the fuse she’d yanked from his control panel. Computers, who needed them? Not Einstein. Not Newton. And what were their intellects compared to hers?
Kneeling, she reached beneath the control desk and pulled out a long, steel box with a handle on top; her tool kit. She threw back the lid, rattled around inside, and retrieved the perfect thing to put Doors in his place.
A crowbar.
She flipped the lid shut. Standing, she kicked the tool box back under the console then headed for the wall.
She inserted the crowbar’s end into a vertical slot and, with a grunt, broke open a hatch, letting its cover hit the floor with a clang. She’d revealed a secret lever embedded in the wall.
She took a firm hold.
And Teena Rama pulled her Xeta Gun’s manual control …