(Ishmael)
Say what you will about the Orb, and I say my share about that silken voiced, beach ball headed freak of nature, he always comes prepared.
"I took the liberty of bringing you a change of clothing," he said, distributing to the three of us the trademark cerulean jumpsuits of the Cross-Time Coordinating Agency. These happened to be devoid of any piping or epaulets or any other ridiculousness CTCAHQ likes the tack onto them. This suited me just fine.
"Much obliged, Orb," I said. "But just because I'm dressing like a timecop, don't think you can put me on the payroll."
"Of course,” he said, “I would never be so presumptuous."
As though he ever needs to presume anything. The nature of that uncanny cranium of his gives the Orb the power to see directly into any time point he might consider jumping to. Sometimes, when you know too much about where you’re headed, you change your itinerary. So it’s not surprising that the Orb hardly ever leaves CTCAHQ stronghold he’s built for himself in the Time of Chimpanzees. But the very fact that he was here to greet us at the complete other end of the anthropocene meant serious happenings were afoot.
Larry, true to type, had found himself on the other side of his rare moment of heroism and right back into his natural state of being slow on the uptake. After several stunned, seemingly timeless, moments in that blue and nondescript non-scape, staring at the Orb, trying not to stare to the point of turning his body sideways, twisting his head around, hunching his shoulder up, putting his hands before his face and peeking through his fingers, he finally managed a sharp whisper.
"Ishmael," He said. "Who the fu- fudge is that guy?"
"And what witchery's be-fuggered his head," said Lizzabits.
"Forgive me," I said. "I didn't realize your ears were turned off when I introduced you. This is the Orb, head honcho of CTCAHQ and the guy who bound your taco fueled time jumping to my watch. And, Liz, I have no idea what ‘witchery’ befuggered that giant time head of his."
The Orb cleared his throat.
"Take a moment to dress yourselves, and then we shall begin our debriefing." The Orb took a step back and practically dissolved into the indistinct mists of that non-place non-time time-place. Those stupid jumpsuits were perfectly camouflaged for the locale.
Larry, Liz and I formed an outward facing modesty triangle and squeezed ourselves into the timecop uniforms. The outfits were kinder to my younger companions. They looked sleek, like greyhounds preparing to co-teach a yoga class. Me... I don’t care to comment too much on the shape of the form my suit was fitting. Needless to say, I would’ve felt a lot more comfortable with my trench coat over the top of it.
It would have been really nice if I could have had that trench coat before Lovejoy showed up.
“Ah, Ishmael and company,” she said, stepping out of the blue. Literally. It was some damned good camouflage, so maybe, just maybe, my gut wasn’t as noticeable as I feared.
“Glad you could make it,” she said.
“Of course,” I said. “When an invitation is written with letters made of dinosaurs and ninja monkeys, how could we refuse?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” said Larry. “We were pretty much kidnapped.”
“It seemed to me more of a rescue gone very strange,” said Liz. As Lizzabits spoke, she considered Agent Lovejoy standing there, sizing up the way her cerulean unitard tended to cling to her form in those exciting, custom-tailored ways in which Liz’s didn’t. “We may have been brought here against our will,” Liz continued, “but I much prefer this place to the last place we’d been left, bound and bekindled to Christmas torch trees.”
“You didn’t just grapple with a velociraptor,” Larry said.
Lizzabits smiled at him, moved herself a little bit closer to him, placed herself between him and Lovejoy.
“That you did,” she said. “And you didn’t run off at the first sign of—“ She turned to face the time agent with the tighter fitting jumpsuit. “What was it again? Lovejoy? Why did you leave us behind in Wall? Oh, right. I wasn’t important enough.”
“And you’re still not, as far as I know,” said Lovejoy. “But here you are. Come on, now. All of you. The Orb is waiting.”
Lovejoy led us through the blue, that maddening blue the exact same color of the veins throbbing across the Orb’s freakishly large head. It wasn’t long before I began to think that’s where I was, not some washed out temporal stasis field at the closing chapter of human history, but inside the Orb’s head itself. There was no frame of reference, nothing to separate the ground from the sky. Nothing to happen to make it feel like any time was passing. And yet it felt like all time was passing. It might have been weeks. It might have been seconds. Every now and then there was the faint indication of motion that my eyes could not focus on.
Velociraptors? Monkey ninjas? Who knew?
Suddenly, there it was.
We might have only traveled ten steps. I couldn’t tell.
But now there was something to focus on in the fields of blue: an information desk. A goddamn hotel concierge desk. Not a cheap La Quinta Inn jobbie, but a quality museum piece. Mahogany. Hand-crafted. Difficult as hell to chronocache without losing it to bugs, fire, or antique pickers.
Beyond the desk there was something else. It was a freestanding archway with a sign posted next to it. The arch was about three feet tall, and, curiously, revealed a small slice of rust spattered decking. The sign beside the archway bore a legend that was impossible to ignore. It read:
No one taller than this archway may pass this time point. We thank you for your cooperation. –the Future
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“My dear Ishmael,” said the oily voice of the Orb from uncomfortably close to my left shoulder. “That is the absolute farthest into the future any of us can travel. It is the very end of the human era. We simply aren’t allowed to exist beyond it.”
“That archway holds us back?” I said.
“Oh, no,” said the Orb. “There’s an army of robots just the other side of it that turns anyone who slips through into a rather sticky red paste.”
“No kidding.”
“No kidding,” he said. “You can see a bit of it there under the archway.” The spattered rust. It wasn’t rust, after all.
“What are we doing here?” Larry asked.
“That’s what I’ve come to find out,” said the Orb. “The Observers have brought you here for a reason. You’re special to them. Why are you special to them?”
“Special to whom?” said Larry.
“The Observers,” repeated the Orb.
“Is that a band?” said Larry. “College rock from Atlanta, or something?”
“You really don’t know,” said Lovejoy. “The little buggers practically took you by the hand and brought you here to get you out of the way of the talking dinosaurs.”
“Oh,” said Larry, “the robot monkey ninjas.”
“Who are these Observers exactly?” I said.
“They are the forward reconnaissance agents of the aforementioned robot army.”
“Why is there a robot army poised to kill anyone that sets foot in any future further than here?”
“Really, Ishmael,” said the Orb. “You’ve seen what people are like. A line had to be drawn somewhere.”
“Well,” I said, “I have to admit that makes sense. But why would Larry be special to them? And what do the dinosaurs have to do with this? And why the hell is everyone messing with my town?”
“Your town?” said the Orb.
“Your town?” said Lizzabits.
“My town,” I said. “While all the rest of you CTCAHQ pukes were holding up your precious Laws of Time and playing grab-ass, I built a town and saved it from the worst of the horrors of the Crash. It might not be much, but it’s a hell of a lot better than anything I’ve seen your lot do on that end of history.”
“I hope we can agree to disagree,” said the Orb.
“What the hell are we getting at, here?”
“Indeed,” said the Orb. “I suppose it’s time we called for some service.”
The Orb flopped one of his flappy little hands out to the info desk and rang the little brass bell on top of it. A patch of the blue behind the desk turned around and faced us. At least that’s what it looked like. It also looked like one second there was nothing, and the next there was a robot concierge to go with the desk.
“Welcome to the Edge of Forever,” it said. “How may I be of assistance?”