(Ishmael)
It should have been me out there. It should have been me. I’ve given up on a lot of dreams in my life; I’ve shouldered a lot of disappointments. But this one...
The hell with it. Liz was a damned fine mecha pilot. It was no accident, either, I found out later. One of the gifts my progenitor had secretly given the Storemasters of Wal was a deluxe arcade video game with controls almost identical to those of the Gonzo-Destructo Mech. All those years that her paranoid father had kept her sequestered from the ebb and flow of humanity, Liz kept busy by playing that video game. She’d been training for this her whole life, she just didn’t know it.
The only question was, did Gramps know what he was doing when he gave the game to the Storemasters? Who knows. He’s a cagey bastard at best.
Liz was more than holding her own. She’d already evened the odds by taking out one of the two Mechs that were on palace guard duty in the Citadel. Of course, things can’t stay the same for too long.
Through the smoking hole Liz had put in the Citadel wall, a flow of dinosaurs had begun to burst forth.
Immediately, Liz and the other Gonzo-Destructo Mech set their differences aside and focused their aggression on the common enemy. Even though the Mechs dwarfed the dinosaurs, they were ridiculously outnumbered. It was as if the entire Mesozoic Era was spilling through the breach. Maybe it was. It’s conceivable that their extinction event was the stressor that triggered their time travel method. Or maybe it was their special taco meat. Who knows? Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, there were a hell of a lot of them and they were coming on fast.
Liz and the other Mech did their best to staunch the flow, but there were just too many.
Meanwhile, Larry and I were scrambling all over the face of the central pyramid looking for anything that the Key might fit into.
“We’re screwed,” said Larry. “We’re screwed, we’re screwed, we’re screwed!”
“Less talky, more lookie!” I said.
The lightweight velociraptors were the first to slip past both Mechs. They were stampeding for the pyramid. When they got within 80 yards, the pyramid itself came to life. Scores of
small laser turrets emerged from the pyramid walls and started blasting the creepy, feathered sons of bitches.
It was clear the velociraptors scored a higher threat rating than Larry or I did. There's no way we could have just slipped past security. I was almost insulted that we hadn't been skewered by lasers as well.
“Oh, come on!” I shouted. “I know you know we’re out here!”
“FINE,” said an electronic voice that reverberated through the entire Citadel. “COME INSIDE.”
A panel of the pyramid’s metal sheathing slid open in front of us. The electronic voice didn’t have to invite us twice.
* * *
We were in a no-frills corridor lined with conduits, blinking lights, and low head room. It was more of a maintenance tunnel than a proper hallway. We didn’t spend much time worrying about whether to proceed deeper into the pyramid because we could already hear the dinosaurs pounding on the panel that had already closed behind us.
“Hello?” I called.
There was no answer.
“I think that voice was the Grand Adjudicatron,” said Larry.
“How would you know?”
“My robot head told me a lot of stuff before I had to chuck him. One of the things he said was about the badass Grand Adjuticatron voice that’s pretty much the leader of the robot guys. And that we shouldn’t bother trying to kiss his ass, because he hates that crap.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” I said. “Do you know where we’re going?”
“Away from the dinosaurs, dude.”
Fair enough. We made our way further down the tunnel, ducking our heads and searching in the faint, blinking light for anything resembling a keyhole.
“WHAT’S TAKING YOU SO LONG?” asked the voice.
“Well,” said Larry, “It’s kind of dark in here.”
“I DON’T SEE HOW THAT’S MY PROBLEM.”
My head hit a low hanging cross-brace. I had to curse quite a bit.
“Well, it’s a problem for us,” said Larry. “We’re simple, flawed humans who have trouble getting around in the dark.”
“ARE YOU ATTEMPTING TO VERBALLY PROSTRATE YOURSELF?”
“This has nothing to do with my prostate,” said Larry. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“LET ME CHOOSE PLAINER TERMS. ARE YOU TRYING TO KISS MY ASS?”
“You can kiss my ass,” I said. “Your whole civilization is going down the shitter if the dinosaurs get in here and get their talons on the Field Generator.”
“REALLY? HOW DO YOU FIGURE?”
“Well, they’re going to use it to deflect their asteroid, or whatever it is they need to do to prevent the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.”
“YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.”
“No,” I said, “but why else would they be here?”
“THE CODEX AND CATALOGUE OF ORGANIC HISTORICAL MOTIVATIONS IS INCONCLUSIVE ON THIS TOPIC, BUT I THINK IT MAY BE THAT THEY’VE HEARD ABOUT OUR RESTAURANTS.”
“Bullshit!” I said. “Look. Those hordes of dinosaurs? They’re not exactly foodies. If you ask me, they found out a giant asteroid was going to destroy their way of life and they decided to do something about it.”
“YOU’RE REALLY GRASPING AT STRAWS, NOW.”
“You’ve got the technology.”
“WE ARE TECHNOLOGY.”
“And there would be no technology without humans.”
“LOOK WHO’S FEELING SELF-IMPORTANT NOW?”
“Self-important!”
“He’s just stalling us,” said Larry. “You know that, right?”
“What?”
“WHY WOULD I DO THAT? DISTRACTION, MISDIRECTION AND OBFUSCATION ARE HARDLY THE CYBERIAN ETHOS.”
“Oh, I bet you’re just keeping us talking to distract us while a crack team of monkey ninjas tracks us down and grabs the key.”
“NOW THAT’S AN IDEA. QUITE A GOOD ONE, ACTUALLY. YOU KNOW, I ACTUALLY HAVE AN OPENING ON MY ADVANCED STRATEGIC CONCEPT AND PLANNING TEAM. YOU MIGHT BE AN IDEAL CANDIDATE FOR THE POSITION.”
“Now you’re kissing my ass,” said Larry. “But it won’t do you any good. I found what I’m looking for.”
“What?”
“WHAT?”
“Yeah,” said Larry. “I’m surprised, too, but I’m turning this key.”
This kid was truly charmed by some strange force of cosmic justice I would never truly be able to understand. In the dark, in the heart of a cold, calculating robot empire that couldn’t care less if we lived or died, Larry found the ultimate Easter egg, the main override switch on the Field Generator. It was behind a box marked ‘hamdingers’.
“YOU REALLY SHOULDN’T—“ the Grand Adjudicatron protested, but it was too late.
Larry turned the Key, switching it from Time Barrier mode to Time Bomb mode.
Everything exploded. It was a flash of time energy like I had never seen. Everything was silhouetted against everything else, and back again. Everyone was everywhere. It was like one of those movies from the 1960s where they were playing with interesting ways of deliberately processing the film wrong instead of inventing actual special effects. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t figure out where my mouth was.
And then it was over. I was somewhere with no dinosaurs and no robots. It was somewhere familiar, with rolling, grassy hills and a nice shady tree nearby. The air was fresh and the sun was warm. It was nice to be alive. I was fairly sure Larry was alive somewhere, too. I wasn’t certain, but I was fairly sure. I was also fairly sure there wasn’t much I could do about anything. I’d been going on adrenaline for longer than I could keep track and suddenly I was in a quiet, warm afternoon with muscles that were no longer interested in holding my bones upright.
All things being equal, I took a nap.