(Ishmael)
Larry and I have been laying low for a couple months. There are too many questions about the night Hastings died that I do not want to know the answers to. So far, so good. None of our friends from the CTCAHQ have peaked in on us since the Borgia Incident, which is just fine.
In the meantime, we’ve been poking and prodding around the edges of Larry’s time travel method. And poke and prod as we may, whenever he goes I go. There’s no fighting it. So I’ve resorted to teaching him some of the tricks of the trade.
I haven’t worked with a partner for a long time. A long time. I don’t necessarily like it, but I don’t like resting on my laurels, either. There’s too much to do, especially when you have the means to stop by any point in history to do it.
Today was a lesson in Chronocaching 101.
“It’s like geocaching, except with time,” I explained as we slipped through a gap in the cyclone fencing.
“What the fork is geocaching?” said Larry.
“Right,” I said, “I keep forgetting you’re from about ten years before technology really starts being worth a damn.”
We were sneaking onto the construction site for a mixed use building, retail and condos. It was a still a few years before meth would become all the rage and any sort of loose copper would disappear job site before the foreman closed his lunchbox for the afternoon. It was quite possible that something useful to a certain someone I know in a later century might pop up.
“What are you talking about?” said Larry. “You saw my buddy’s Super Nintendo.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” I said. “That thing’s not worth a damn.”
My flashlight swept over the trenches lined with rebar that were destined to soon be entombed in concrete. This was going to work. Now to find the MacGuffin, the thing I could parlay into something personally worthwhile a few hundred years down the road.
“What are we doing here?” said Larry.
“We’re trespassing,” I said. “And we’re looking for some durable goods with a minimum of moving parts. Tools of some sort might be good. Drop forged wrenches, maybe?”
“Oh, so we’re stealing something?” said Larry.
“How can we be stealing?” I said. “Nothing we touch is going to leave this site for centuries.”
“Really?” said Larry, kicking at the dirt. “That’s kind of disappointing.”
“That’s just the first part.”
“Ow!” said Larry, his foot connecting with something in the dark.
I swung my flashlight beam around to reveal a case of fourteen inch diamond saw blades. They were an off-brand, but even so they were something I could definitely barter with the Storemaster of Wal. Whatever idiot left them out in the open deserved to be fired.
“This is what we’re looking for, Larry.”
“Saw blades?”
“I know a guy. All we have to do is place them somewhere we can find them later on.”
I took three of the blades and wrapped them in a metalized mylar bag. I tossed the bag at Larry. He almost fell into the rebarred trench next to him.
“Cheesus Crust, dude! Give a guy a heads up, why don’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. “Wedge that under some of the iron down there and throw some dirt on it.”
Larry did a half-assed job of it, but, in truth, half-assed was all that’s required.
“What’s the point?” asked Larry.
“In a couple days it’ll be covered in concrete, not to be disturbed until long after the collapse of civilization as you know it.”
“Bullshit,” said Larry.
“Watch your language,” I said. “And watch this.”
I hit the jump toggle on my great-great grandfather’s pocketwatch.
* * *
Time travel can be a nice thing to watch when you have the luxury. Too often I find myself too pumped with adrenaline because I’m on the run from something. Dinosaurs. Robots. Stalin. It’s always something. But this was one of those lovely moments at the start of a job where everything was going just right, and I could sit back and enjoy it.
The time jumps where you move chronologically, but not spatially, are the best. For just one moment everything happens at one time. Cities rise, collapse, and remake themselves. Forests recede and then reclaim the countryside. Concrete highways build themselves, then collapse, then are replaced by nothing but flowers. If you travel far enough, everything wrong that humans have done to a place gets erased. At first it’s a little sad as the buildings crumble, but then it feels like a definite victory. And for the last part of that moment, where everything is everything at the same time, you definitely feel like the Buddha.
Unless you go through a stretch of volcanic activity. That pretty much rattles the nirvana out of you.
This time there were no volcanoes, only a significant swath of suburban Michigan reverting to boreal forest. I probably should have told Larry to bring a jacket.
* * *
It was autumn. Chill and crisp the way autumns used to be. It was nice to know that only a couple hundred years after the Crash the harshest effects of global warming would run their course. The years of the Crash itself are a very scary place to go in very much the same way as you wouldn’t want to visit London during a plague year. But afterwards, it’s truly a new world. You need to watch out for dogs, though.
“Ishmael,” Larry whined, “why didn’t you tell me to bring a jacket.”
“Because you should always bring a jacket. And you don’t listen to me very often. Now, do you see where you stashed those saw blades?”
“Hunh?”
“The saw blades, Larry. It’s time to retrieve them.”
Larry looked around at the trees with in their fall colors, their trunks ripping asunder the blacktop of the parking lot that once spread at our feet.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re in the exact same spot we were before I hit fast forward on the world,” I said. “You remember where you left the saw blades, don’t you?”
“Shit,” he said. “I don’t know. I guess...” In front of us was a pile of rubble covered in decades’ worth of decayed leaves and organic matter and looking not unlike a lovely mound of dirt. “Over in that, I guess.”
“Here’s a shovel,” I said, handing him the collapsible camping spade I keep in my trench coat.
“Seriously?” he said. “They got buried in concrete. You think I can dig them out with this?”
“They were buried in concrete that’s since sat out in at least a hundred years of acid rain with a couple hundred years of regular rain on top of that. It should be as easy as digging a cat turd out of the litter box.”
* * *
I lied. It wasn’t. It took Larry about half an hour to dig out the chronocached diamond saw blades. While he was busy with that task, and trying very hard to stretch his expletive vocabulary beyond the confines of the f-bomb, I took a survey of our surroundings.
I’d been through this neck of the woods on other occasions. Fishing trips, mostly. There were some epic Nick Adams style fishing adventures to be had, even in the Lower Peninsula. Sure, you might want to check the fish for extra limbs, and the River Rouge was still a mess, but for the most part it was quite pleasant. So long as you bugged out by sundown.
A four lane stretch of pulverized Interstate highway lay in a mound that stretched from one break in the trees to another. Following it for a few miles would put us in range of the fortress-town of Wal. That’s where we’d be doing some business. The locals were friendly, and they new quite a few ingenious ways of preparing venison. And they spoke a fashion of English that you could almost understand.
“Jeez, these are heavy,” said Larry as he dragged the metalized mylar bag out of the trench he’d dug. The package truly hadn’t aged a day. “Anything else need digging up?”
While Larry did have a number of negative qualities, he was a champion shovel man. I was a little amazed that he hadn’t complained during his excavation. The kid deserved a reward.
“Larry,” I said. “Have I told you about the amazing craft brewing tradition they have in Wal?”
“You mean, like espresso?” said Larry.
“Yegads, man,” I said. “How narrow is your window on the world?”
“I went to public high school, dude,” he said.
“I’m talking about beer, Larry. The kind of beer heroes drink in legends.”
“I usually go with Coors or Rolling Rock,” said Larry.
“I’m sure you do,” I said. “Let’s get moving. We want to get to Wal before sundown.”
* * *
We’d been following the decayed highway for about an hour before I noticed we were being followed. It was hard to tell at first whether our shadow was man or beast. Then I caught a furtive glimpse of him when the road crossed a meadow and his cover was scarce. He was definitely a man, although there was something about his posture and his gait that belied a wildness reminiscent of the hominids who loiter near the CTCAHQ building in the time of chimpanzees.
He was probably harmless, I figured. Plus, we had saw blades and a collapsible camp shovel. We could do some damage if need be.
* * *
It was another hour before I realized we’d been going the wrong way. I would have cussed myself a blue streak, but I didn’t want to let on to Larry that I’d made such a rookie move.
We stopped for a break while I considered our options. Doubling back while we had a tail on us could be fatal. The last thing you want to do when you’re being followed is to give the appearance that you have no idea where you’re going.
“Hoss,” said Larry. “I gotta take a dump.”
“Can it wait?” I said.
“For what?” he said. “A rest stop? We’re in the forking woods at the end of the forking world.”
“Fine,” I said, keeping my eyes on the patch of greenery I’d last seen our follower lurking near. “Keep an eye out for dogs.”
“uh,” said Larry, “you got any T.P?”
* * *
Larry was taking an uncomfortable amount of time taking care of business. At least he was making a lot of noise doing it, so I knew he was all right. I concocted a plan to cut cross country and circle back to the highway in order to put us back in the right direction. The mild subterfuge probably wouldn’t shake our tail, but it was sure to keep Larry from noticing we’d been going the wrong way.
When Larry emerged from his shit break I announced my intention to take a shortcut.
“Sure,” said Larry. “So long as we’re heading in the opposite direction from my turd mound.”
As soon as we trekked ten yards from the highway, our tail revealed his scrawny, leather clad self. He practically jumped on top of us screaming and waving his arms madly.
“Murder! Murder and foreclosure! Evil freight-men there! Dogs over other there! And no Ditch Witch! Lies! Crud! Crud! Crud! Go no further! You’re befucked!”
Like I said, the locals spoke a kind of English.