Memoirs of a Timelord (27 page)

       

       

       The building was dank and smelled of death.  Already there were dozens of bodies littering the floor in every direction.  The ethnic cleansing had been in effect for days now, with squads of Tipputh stormtroopers taking turns with the grisly business of exterminating the Euro.  Were I another kind of person, I might have marveled at how organized this assembly line of death had been.  At this rate the station I was standing in could murder ten thousand a day, as long as they can dig the mass graves fast enough.  That had been one of their few oversights of their system; no bulldozers or heavy equipment so the bodies were being stacked outside for the Volos to eat.

       I don't know how I stood it, how I was able to stand by and literally witness thousands of these executions.  Sometimes they'd march entire families into the killing room.  Then fifteen seconds later a crew would carry the bodies out the back door.  That was assuming that the executioners weren't sidetracked by an attractive Euro female.  Whenever that happened, they usually took a rape-break while the entire crew sexually assaulted her in turn, usually while the family watched.  Once they were done, she'd be stabbed to death, or sometimes even stomped to death.  All the while the Tipputh Stormtroopers would be laughing and carrying on merrily.  A few of these guys would laugh so hard that they'd get a stitch in the side; doubled over with laughter while butchering women and children.  

       But then, I'd seen this all before.  One of my first MoTi experiences had been the massacre at Vladistar.  I'd witnessed the death of the KuluMata, and watched Goarn tear itself apart during the Civic Revolution.  But even among these atrocities, the Tipputh really distinguished themselves today.  With hundreds of these killing factories set up all over the region, they would eradicate the last of their ethnic foes within a few weeks.  Oooo, they were laughing now, but those smiles would be gone when it was my turn.

       I blinked involuntarily as I watched them run a sword through a small child and the mother that clutched him.  Penetrating both beings through their lung sacks, there was no scream from either as they sagged to the ground in agony.  The Tipputh had preferred the edged weapons because it revealed less of their activity to the masses waiting outside for their own turn.  If the victims being held outside heard the familiar sound of blaster fire, they'd be harder to keep corralled, and that would hurt efficiency.  These fucking cocksmokes had thought of everything.

       I watch the light leave their eyes before I use one of the buffers in my pocket to harvest them.  Leaving an exact duplicate in their place while fully phased, I was invisible to the Tipputh as they went about their way happily.  

       There was one of them, the guy with the pigtails, who stood out even among this group of sociopaths.  DenGal Moc, Grand-sergeant of the 55th Infantry.  For him it wasn't enough that the victims died painfully.  This asshole would go out of his way to inflict pain.  If any prisoner ever looked him in the eye as he walked past, then that Euro was pulled out of line and beaten to death right then and there for all to see.  He was also fond of blinding the parents while their children looked on.  But the Grand Sergeant's greatest accomplishment had been six weeks earlier when they cleansed Dumbrusk.  He had ordered his engineers to build a massive machine called the Euro-processor.  Intended to speed up the job, the device was nothing more than a giant wood chipper.  Seriously, they were dropping people into a huge paper shredder.  Not only that, but it was written policy that Euros were to be dropped into the device feet first.  Yeah, he was that kinda guy.  The Grand Sergeant ran ten thousand screaming Euro through the Processor.  Their green blood ran like a river in the streets.  Luckily an enemy mortar finally landed on the giant woodchipper and destroyed it, killing the operator in the process.  

       I admit; I did help steer that mortar shell a little.

       You see, I was there to retrieve a stockpile of genetic material for future colonization.  This was something that Editors did all the time; harvest the dead.  I was about to begin working on my thesis and calculations showed that I would need a lot of material to work with.  To this end I would need to create my own library of biological specimens.  You never knew what kind of seasonings you might need down the road when you're making your galactic soufflé.  Every species has a different flavor to them, and it was good to keep a well-stocked spice rack. 

       So under instructions from the Boss, I was taking advantage of the situation and harvesting souls while they were on sale.  Timelords are always drawn to these mass-death scenarios because it makes our job easier by allowing us to gather volunteers en masse.  The only downside is standing in blood for three days with a buncha mass murderers.  Once I reached ten thousand harvested, I decided that was all I could take.  After that I loaded them all into a sub-space depository I'd built.  The device would hold them in stasis and free from any molecular degradation for thousands of years.  It might be a while before I need to use them, so they'd need to be properly stored if I wanted viable samples.  But there I go thinking like a flatlander again. In the temporal scheme of things, they'd probably be picked up by a future-me in two minutes.  The event is bookmarked in my Onkx so I'll just come right back to that exact spot in time and space when I need colonists.

       Anyhow, once I was done harvesting, the next step was to follow the timeline and go find those sumbitches of the 55th once history had forgotten about them.  It took a few weeks, but finally I tracked 'em all down, including the Grand Sergeant himself.  I looked forward to harvesting them.

       So what'd I do with them?  For starters, I modified their skin and lungs to make them fireproof, but I left their central nervous system stock.  After that I threw the whole lot of them into a coliseum I built, way in the back of the Boss's house.  With them standing down below like gladiators in a ring, I took a few minutes to monologue to them about the severity of their sins and why they were here.  I even imparted some MoTi memories so they would know I wasn't gonna fall for their claims of mistaken identity.  Ooooh, I was enjoying it.  These guys were gonna feel the wrath.  I waited until the Grand Sergeant started talking his racist trash, and that's when I set the ring on fire, all of it.

       Now, it's true that with my abilities at that point, I could just as easily have made the whole event occur in their mind and saved the effort of building all this stuff.  Yep, I coulda, but then what would I watch while I ate my popcorn?  Mmmmm.  Extra butter.  It felt good to watch them squirm in the flames below.  The pain would last as long as the fire, but they would never burn up or die from it.  They each deserved a thousand deaths, or more.  Really I just lost track of time as I sat there munching on popcorn and watching the assholes of the 55th being boiled in plasma.  After spending days in their company, and having witnessed their wanton cruelty, it felt almost therapeutic to see them writhing in agony.

       I was halfway through my popcorn when I realized that the Boss was there, sitting in the balcony right next to me.  As soon as I noticed he was there, I sat bolt upright.  I'd been so pissed off at these guys that it never even occurred to me that what I was doing may not be right.  But the minute I looked at DorLek's expression, I knew he was gonna have some kind of objection.  The DuNai do not issue a fully enabled Onkx' to sociopaths and axe murderers.  Apparently they also frown on deep frying.

       "But they murdered thousands!" I tried to defend myself and sent him the images that had been rattling around in my brain for the last month.

       "There is no dispute that they are evil men." DorLek nodded understandably as he looked me in the eyes.

       "I am not gonna let those guys into my Guf unless they have paid some penance.  They got off Scott-free." Even though I knew it was a losing battle, I kept at it hoping that the Boss would at least allow me a few concessions.  I could tell by that look in his eyes, I knew there would be a lesson in this somewhere.  With a wave of my hand I shut down the fire, leaving the men writhing on the ground. 

       "Examine the equation." He directed me.  "So you take these horrible men, torture them until they are stark raving mad, then release them into your Guf?  If their presence bothers you that much then erase them, but never resort to this.  As an Editor you must take every precaution to keep yourself from becoming corrupted."

       "But they deserve to be punished for what they did.  Erasing them is too easy, just ffffftt and they're gone from all existence.  They deserve to feel what all those people felt, those thousands of people, standing in line with their children and their parents, these assholes need to feel every bit of that." I moped as I felt tired right down to my bones.  When the Boss put a hand on my shoulder I could feel his mind in mine as he helped me gain control of the memories that were running rampant everywhere.  As he worked, slowly boxing up each of those images, I could feel the calm wash over me.  I had been unable to see it myself, but my own absolute recall had taken me into a processing loop as thousands of memories flooded my active memory.  I felt like a home computer with a virus or unresponsive program.  I had just experienced the downside of absolute recall; if you failed to manage it properly, it could drive you stark raving mad.

       "Look," he changed tone once I was in a better place, "There are ways to deal with these types.  You could blank them, make them start over as infants and do it right this time."

       "Why would I give a new life to a guy who ended so many lives prematurely?  Seriously." I wasn't sold on that idea at all.

       "Then do this." With a touch, the Boss converted me to a Tipputh Stormtrooper.  Then in a series of flashes, I saw him down in the arena changing each of the soldiers into something new.  When I got down there myself I could see clearly what he had in mind.  With a smile, I agreed to the Boss's plan.  

       The sentry stopped us as we reached the perimeter of the death camp.  With its walls of wreckage and smashed vehicles, the area was really just a containment area for prisoners.  

       "We are here with a fresh load of those filthy Eurotrash." I scowled as I gestured to the mass of ethnic prisoners behind me.  The three dozen guards that herded them at gun point were all me, pulled out of the timeline and morphed to look like Storm troopers.

       "Good!" The gate guard replied happily.  "The engineers have built a device to speed up the process.  It will be exciting to watch it being used, no?  Welcome to camp Dumbrusk." Opening the gate graciously, he bid us entry with a smile.

       As my duplicates herded the prisoners past, I gave a smile to the short man who shepherded his wife and children along fearfully.  Until about an hour ago, he had been a Grand Sergeant.  I could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew exactly where he was.  Wearing the skin of a Euro, he also knew what was in store for him.  It pleased me greatly to know that the only people who would be sent through the Grand Sergeant's Euro-chipper would be the murderers themselves.  Once that was done the machine would be destroyed by a stray mortar round.  Maybe stray is the wrong word...

       Now the parents in the audience will immediately point out that I also sent their wives and children into the wood chipper too.  Seems like a pretty awful thing, right?  Well don't get your boxers in a bunch; Meesha played the role of women and children.  Her new design allows her multiplicity.  One Meesha can be nine separate beings.  I took the extra time to drop her in dozens of times just to really round out the whole experience for the Sergeant and his men.  I wanted them to know what it was like to be beaten, tortured, and butchered with their families by their side.  Though it was cruel, it met the DuNai standard for karma.   Technically they would execute themselves.

       "It's just an attitude adjustment," I sang the words to an old Bosephus tune my Daddy used to play all the time.

       "Just one appointment straightened him right out." One of my other selves grinned as she strolled past with her Shock rifle at the ready.  In the distance the first lucky Euros were being selected to test the new killing device dreamt up by the regiment's senior NCO.  Soon their green blood would paint the streets.

       

       

       I think it started when I was standing on that rogue moon, out near Acus.  I'd been there a long time just looking up at the night sky with my enhanced eyes and wondering if maybe one of the globs of light I was watching couldn't be home.  I remember seeing an artist's rendering of how scientists thought the Milky Way looked, but who knows how accurate that was.  Honestly, would you know your own galaxy if you saw it from the outside?  Prolly not.  Besides, it didn't always look the way it did when I was alive.  Most likely it started out as a fast spinning irregular galaxy, pulled in a few proto-galaxies, globular clusters, and dwarf galaxies, stretching them into long radial arms until it was the pinwheel I would have been used to seeing.  I could be anywhere along that timeline.  Still, what would it hurt to check out a few...

       So I jumped to a couple of the spiral galaxies, just to see what they were about.  No other reason, just jumped in and talked to the Guf for a few minutes.  The first was too big, the second too small, but the third...never mind, none of 'em were my bowl of porridge.  So I went back to work.

       I was engineering a societal shift towards a pure democracy in the Elgin system when I caught myself staring skyward again.  At maximum magnification, I could make out three spiral galaxies.  Instinctively I made the three jumps, each time coming up short.  They were some fascinating places, but they weren't mine.  More than once I was met by the regional Timelord who had detected my wake as soon as I entered his domain.  None were surprised; they had all made the same quest themselves, once upon a time when they too were apprentices.