The Orb had done me the courtesy of sending me off to join my new ‘apprentice’ without so much as giving me a chance to negotiate the terms of the contract. That’s the Orb, for you.
The CTCAHQ building melted way as the majority of human history played out before me. Some time travelers like to close their eyes, to look away, to pretend they step gingerly between one timepoint and another, ignoring the fundamental contiguity of the entire timestream. Believe me, it can be a lot easier on the stomach that way. Also, some are a little disheartened to watch as everything humanity has ever built inevitably crumbles and decays. Admittedly, that is a sobering image to take in. But that’s just life run at fast forward. If you don’t see that going down at normal speed, you’re in serious denial, and you might miss something important.
Not always, but sometimes, I catch some little detail, an artifact, a plant, a valuable fossil in the making, that I’ll be able to track down later. Usually, I like to dig them up at a point in time where I can make a tidy profit.
This time, however, I was too irritated with the Orb and his method of being a megalomaniacal control freak, that I was having trouble picking out the details. The best I could do was observe as the nearby tribe of homo habilis proto-people evolved before my eyes, crossed oceans and continents, fought wars and built empires, fell in love and fell to betrayal by their lovers, the whole human experience. I was caught up with a tiny group of them, that splintered off from the lines of kings and explorers, to fall through the cracks of civilization and arrive at the fallen state of grunge rockers crashed on a love seat and a couple couches in a crappy California apartment.
Larry’s crappy California apartment.
“Dude!” said Larry, “What a trip! Come on in, bro.”
I stepped through what was left of the screen door and into the fug of delayed pre-adult rock and roll lifestyle. To be fair, I’d seen worse dumps. When you travel the centuries and the continents you see some things. For instance, the place was quite a step up from anything you’d see on any given day in Haiti. However, considering this was one of the most privileged population demographics, the white male, in one of the most privileged habitats, California, during one of the most privileged decades, the 1990s, that humankind has ever known, the place was a total shithole. Whoever was actually held the lease on that apartment was definitely not getting their security deposit back.
Somewhere beneath a layer of cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, and empty beer bottles there was a floor. And on that floor was a carpet so badly stained it would take a team of chemical engineers to determine the color. There was a TV humming in the corner bathing the room in the cathode ray glow of Nintendo sprites dancing across its screen. Band flyers and centerfolds were stapled to lumpy walls that belied many a fist-sized dent. One dent in the drywall was actually a full body impression, embellished in sharpie with Mongoloid facial features and a word balloon calling ‘Who took my POGs, muthafucka?’
“Larry,” I said, “we need to talk.”
“When’d you get to the party?” he said.
“This is a party?” I said, looking at the five dudes gathered around a Super Nintendo.
“It was righteous, dude,” said the guy holding controller A.
“So many babes,” said controller B. “We had to, like, say, ‘ladies, please, three at a time’s all I can handle.’”
“And let me guess,” I said. “They all politely left about an hour ago so you sausages could play Madden ’93?”
“Sure,” said Larry. “These guys are the biggest frickin’ liars in the world. Jeff says he’s going to see Nirvana in Copenhagen. But we all know he’s really going to Yuma to dig his mom a new sewer pipe.”
“Don’t talk about my mom like that,” said Jeff. “And I’m going to Copenhagen.”
“I’d save your money,” I said.
“You don’t like Nirvana, dude?”
“Love ‘em. Just something tells me that leg of the tour’s not going to happen.”
“Fuck you, grizzled cob nobbler of little faith. I’m going to Nirvana.”
This asshole was spouting the fake grunge slang the New York Times had unintentionally reported as an actual thing when everyone was scrambling to get any kind of info on the exploding Seattle music scene. The paper had been punked by someone who picked up the phone at an indie record label. She blithely told the reporter whatever nonsense popped into her head. That Times article was one of my personal favorite artifact of pop culture history. I just didn't realize anyone had actually picked up the fake slang and started using it. These guys were going to be heartbroken come April 5th.
“Suit yourself,” I said. “If you want, I know a great travel agent. Cheapest flights around, but she only takes cash.”
“Let me get back to you,” he said.
I waded through the jetsam to where Larry sat. The loveseat didn’t quite fit in the same living room with the two sofas the rest of the crew were perched upon. By its position, obstructing the apartment’s hallway, it seemed a minor feat of athleticism might be necessary to hurdle the loveseat to get to the bathroom. And, from the dark, established stain on the arm furthest from Larry, I surmised that it was a feat often met in failure.
“Creeping Christ, you people piss on that thing?” I said.
“Dude,” said player A, “the water’s been shut off for a long time. What you going to do?”
“Right, when that happens it’s best just to lie in your own filth,” I said. “Larry, we got to get out of here.”
“What’s the rush?” he said. “I’m about to crash.”
“Right there?” I said. “You’ve got a couple of couches, and you sleep on the piss loveseat?”
He shrugged.
“Larry,” I said. “We need to get someplace with indoor plumbing. I’ve spent enough time in the 19th century for one evening.”
“What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” he said.
“The Orb has decreed, Larry.”
“The herb has decreed?” he said. “Why didn’t you say so? Let’s jet.”
Larry was obviously hearing what he wanted to hear. I didn’t mind taking advantage of that.
What I did mind was that, as soon as we stepped out from the apartment and into the courtyard, I was face to face with Cross-Time Coordination Agent Hastings.
“Good evening, Ishmael,” Hastings said, with the particularly smarmy grin that puts one in mind of the sort of person who enjoys watching others eat feces. “Long time, no see.”
“Speak for yourself, Hastings,” I said. “I just saw the Orb boot you from his office not more than an hour ago.”
“How unpleasant for you,” said Hastings.
I surmised that more time had passed for him, relatively, because his cerulean unitard was no longer adorned by epaulets. And the white piping had been replaced by triple stripes like you’d see on an Adidas track suit. CTCAHQ’s standard protocol was to continually update their uniforms so people like me could never be quite sure when the hell they were coming from.
“How’s the babysitting job going?” Hastings asked, smiling like he was the one helping himself to a spoonful of turds.
“Unpleasantly,” I said. I choked back bile as it occurred to me that twice that day I’d been coerced into unpleasant chores on account of Larry. I mulled over which was worse, shoveling coal like a galley slave or chaperoning an oblivious newbie time traveler. Either one was way outside my preferred job description.
“This the guy with the herb?” Larry asked.
Hastings, you gotta love his charm, talked right over Larry as he said, “splendid. Let’s walk and talk. This neighborhood gives me hives.”
“Whatever you say, officer.”
I wanted to put some quick distance between us and that 400 square-foot urinal Larry’s friends called an apartment.
“This guy’s a cop?” asked Larry.
“In a manner of speaking,” said Hastings.
“This is a harsh realm,” said Larry. “I thought we’d be swingin’ on the flippity-flop, and now you go and narc on me.”
“Relax, Larry,” I said. “He’s not that kind of cop. And I didn’t realize anyone actually ever said ‘swingin’ on the flippity-flop’.”
“Absolutely,” said Larry. “I read it in the New York Times, and they don’t make stuff like this up.”
“Spoken like a true lamestain, Larry.” I turned to Hastings. “You can’t be checking up on me already. What are you here for?”
“An adjacent investigation,” he said, as we walked further from the land of two story, stuccoed apartment complexes and into a light industrial area closer to the waterfront.
“Hey,” said Larry. “I know this place. That taco guy is around here.”
“That taco guy,” said Hastings, “has been flaunting his disrespect for the Laws of Time.”
* * *
The Laws of Time are a funny set of limitations on time travel. Some of them are natural laws, and some are more like a gentleman’s agreement among a select set of time travelers. A gentleman’s agreement rigorously forced onto the rest of us by the boys and girls in cerulean, otherwise known as the Agency.
Or, as I like to call them, CTCAHQ. It’s a simple anagram for Cross-Time Coordination Headquarters and every time I say it I get a chance to clear my throat and spit at the nearest one of them. I love these guys that much. Especially Hastings. One or two of them are all right. The Orb scares the living bejesus out of me with his creepy beach ball head. Then there’s Agent Lovejoy. Let’s just say a visit from Agent Lovejoy is never altogether terrible. She may be a timecop, but she’s actually a decent human being. And she knows how to rock a cerulean unitard.
More about her later. We’re talking about the Laws of Time, remember?
There are some Laws of Time that you just can’t break no matter how hard you try. Like, you can’t accidentally set in motion a chain of events that results in you never having been born. It’s part of the Law of the Conservation of Time. Time is somehow part of living things, or living things are part of time, and the life cycles just don’t wrap around themselves like that. It’s like trying to push together the north poles of two very strong magnets. Try as you might, you can’t get them together and they just flip themselves around the right way. There’s actually some very intimidating looking mathematical equations that back this up. I’ve seen them, I don’t understand them, but they are definitely some serious math.
Then there’s the Law of the Conservation of Personality, also known as Marty’s Law. This is one of the gentleman’s agreement variety. In a nutshell, you don’t cross your own timeline to give yourself privileged information about the future. At the inaugural meeting of the Cross-Time Coordinating Agency, this law was agreed to unanimously and without much discussion. Almost everyone at that first meeting had tried, at least once, to cross their own timeline in order to arrange complicated, and doomed, sexual liaisons for their younger selves... or even with their younger selves. It turns out that the human brain just isn’t built to be able to objectively observe its own naked body doing naked things that said brain is not directly involved in doing, even if that brain is already engaged in doing other naked things with the naked body it’s currently residing in. The difficulty of even trying to parse a sentence like that, let alone utter it in a public setting, prompted the Congress to move for an immediate vote with no discussion.
There are other laws, like the Law of Anachronistic Technology and the Law of Nondisclosure, that actually deserve to be enforced sometimes. Sometimes they can be discreetly and harmlessly skirted. Why not bring a Taser to a sword fight? If it can save you some time, and you’re dressed like a crazy wizard, I say, go for it. Myths and legends come from somewhere, right? And if it helps you turn a tidy profit with minimal impact to historical events, what’s the harm?
CTCAHQ is inclined to disagree with me on that one, but that’s no surprise. It suits me to disagree with them most of the time.
At the moment, though, the question foremost in my mind was which of the Laws had the taco guy violated? And could these violations be redressed? And, if so, once these offending tacos were out of the equation, could CTCAHQ quickly establish a non-traveler status for Larry so that I could go back to my primary business of turning a tidy profit while discreetly skirting the Laws of Time?
* * *
“Why are you letting us tag along on your bust?” I asked Hastings.
“We need to set an example for our new colleague,” he said, almost chewing the word ‘colleague,’ into some sort of shape that might fit into his sentence. It didn’t quite work, but I was at a loss to figure out a better descriptor for Larry, myself.
“Sure, sure.” I said. “But what good’s that at this point? The kid has no idea he’s a time traveler.”
“Guys,” Larry butted in, “I hate to break it to you, but Comic-Con isn’t for another six months. Nice Starfleet uniform, by the way.”
He slapped Hastings on the shoulder, bro style.
“See what I mean?” I said.
“It’s never too early to learn the consequences of trafficking in extinct animals,” said Hastings.
I didn’t buy it. Hastings disliked me equally as much as I disliked him. The Orb was probably putting him up to this, but why?
“Whatever,” said Larry. “I see my taco guy. You two want something?”
In the parking lot of a corrugated steel warehouse, a solitary street lamp shined down on an old travel trailer and a picnic table. The trailer was decorated with the usual neighborhood graffiti and a menu board. An A-frame sign declared the special of the day: plesiosaur. I had been way off with my earlier assumption that the secret ingredient in Larry’s special tacos was coelacanth.
“How does that work?” I asked Hastings.
Hastings, being a dick, didn’t answer.
“I mean,” I continued, “my watch can barely provide the method for moving myself and my clothes.” (A deliberate understatement.) “If this taco guy managed to bring back an entire aquatic dinosaur, his method must draw a considerable amount of power.”
By this time Larry had already made his way up to the window of the trailer and was ordering.
Hastings was still being a dick. He shoved Larry out of the way and started at the guy in the taco cart.
“Cease cooking and come quietly! You are under investigation for violating section 4.3 of the Laws of Time regarding the transport of foodstuffs across established epoch barriers!” Hastings was always one for sticking you with the letter of the law, if not the sense of it.
“What the fuck are you talking about, pendejo?” said the man in the taco truck.
Hastings pulled out his CTCAHQ credentials and barked, “where are you keeping your dinosaurs? Don’t make me come in there!”
“Your friend’s pretty intense,” said Larry.
“He’s not my friend,” I said. “But, yeah. He could take it down a notch.”
Larry and I were quite happy to watch the events unfold. We could both agree that Hastings was making a total ass of himself. He spent a good fifteen minutes trying to convince the taco guy that the CTCAHQ was actually a valid law enforcement agency. I was tempted to point out that Hastings, himself, was on the verge of flagrantly violating the Law of Nondisclosure when a new voice came out of a darkened corner of the parking lot.
“Put down your badge, Agent Hastings,” the voice said. It was not a pleasant voice. “That man’s only crime is not using separate cutting boards for meat and vegetables. Hardly your jurisdiction.”
“And I should listen to you because?” said Hastings.
“Because,” said the hulking, inhuman silhouette that belonged to the voice. “I get to decide how quickly, or how slowly, you die.”
The silhouette was familiar to me, not because I’d ever traveled that far back in time, but because, as a kid, I’d spent hours poring over books on paleontology and begging my parents to take me to natural history museums. I knew all your major prehistoric megafauna and how to spell their multisyllabic names long before I entered the second grade. But still, there were obviously a few things I did not know about those fabulous thunder lizards. Like their conversation skills. I did not know that one.
“Would you fucking believe that?” said Larry. “A talking allosaur.”
“No,” I said, “I would not fucking believe that. But there it is.”