Samantha Smart (33 page)

Smythe’s orders were firm and deliberate. Suki and Brianna did as they were told, abandoning their respective tasks and searching for the footprints through the haze. Samantha fidgeted nervously with her trigger finger. Then the doors opened.

An immense wall of water poured in from three directions, almost knocking them all off their feet. Samantha planted hers wide and braced herself for the impact of thousands of gallons of extra liquid, standing her ground with much difficulty. She only weighed around a hundred pounds, if that, though the NEPTUNE-60 probably added another forty, which helped her to stay put.

The other girls, equally small, were knocked over, and began swimming to get back to the footprints. Marvin, who was fairly heavy for his age and was out of the direct flow of the impact, had little trouble maintaining his position. Polly, of course, took the worst of it. She was practically washed out one of the chamber’s doors, but fortunately was washed back toward the center of the room by an opposing wave. She swam with all her might toward the stone platform in the center of the time machine’s ring of stones.

The water level now stood at just under two feet deep, thanks to the recent addition of thousands more gallons from outside the chamber. Samantha figured that some other windows or walls somewhere in the base must have cracked in the quakes–
They must be bigger holes,
she thought, on the edge of panic. She did not relish the idea of drowning with her dog and all her friends, faces pressed against the ceiling as they gasped for the last two inches of air. There would be no escape. They were miles
beneath the surface of the ocean.
Hurry up, Marvin,
she prayed silently.

Her attention was diverted quickly, though, albeit not by anything happy or reassuring. Through the haze of steam she could see dorsal fins moving through the shallow but rising water. She wiped the sweat from her brow and hefted the NEPTUNE-60.
Steady... aim... fire.
BOOM! Water and shark flesh flew into the air.
Aim... fire.
BOOM! Another one went to meet its maker, or at least the wall. Samantha kept going.

It was like one of the video games that her brother played. One was going for Suki and Brianna and–BOOM! Two went after Marvin, perhaps sensing the importance of his actions or somehow alerted to them by their more evolved masters. BOOM! BOOM! Two more splatters on the wall. Another went straight for Polly, sticking its nose and open jaws up out of the water and about to snap her up like a bite-sized morsel of chocolate and cheese. BOOM!
Don’t mess with my dog,
Samantha’s voice sounded in her head. The shark exploded all over the time machine’s stone platform as well as Polly, who calmly licked some of its fishy remains from her own face and gave a little dog smile, panting. This caused Suki and Brianna to make disgusted faces and sounds of great distaste.

This went on for several minutes, sharks almost reaching Alpha Team members and Samantha picking them off with the NEPTUNE-60 until what looked like a special, much larger shark appeared in the doorway closest to the time machine. She fired at it but missed–it moved like lightning–and the spear exploded part of an internal wall, further weakening the structure. She jerked her head up for a split-second as another chunk of window broke away, and then the entire window. There was now a huge, high-pressured stream of ocean water pouring into one side of the room, which no doubt would have filled the chamber in minutes if its three doors had still been shut. As it was, the water level was now rising by an inch a minute. The huge super-shark morphed, changing into the handsome young image of Jordan Anderson/Slane, and stood, clothing-free, in two and a half feet of water. He was... beautiful.

“Hello, Samantha,” he smiled, his flexing muscles in an unfair assault on her hormonal response mechanisms. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” he said gently, raising a hand and glancing nervously over at Marvin. “We can figure out a way to share the world, if we must.”

“Sharing doesn’t seem to be in your nature, Jordan,” she sneered at him, keeping the NEPTUNE-60 leveled at him. There were only two spears left.

“It’s my father,” he said almost pleadingly. “It’s not me, Samantha! I don’t–I don’t really care if we share the planet with humans–all I ever wanted to do was sing, and live, well, as normally as someone like me could live. I know I’m different,” he continued emotionally, “I’ve–I’ve always been
different,
but I wanted to–to
fit in,
to be
human,
to be
loved
and to
love
... to love... somebody like
you
... ” His hands fell to his sides in a gesture of symbolic surrender, a perfect specimen of humanity who wasn’t even human. Samantha’s heart was torn.

A few months ago, she would’ve been in heaven to have heard Jordan Anderson of Heatwavvve
say those words to her. Every fiber of her being ached, wanted to believe him. Was he just another pawn in this game, dominated by a powerful, abusive father who was more likely the real villain here? He had a genuine air about him, the air of someone who was lost and was just looking, indeed searching desperately for meaning, for a home or a purpose. Samantha looked at Suki and Brianna, who stood in a similar state of confusion. They had all been Heatwavvve
fans, and looked equally uncertain as to what the best course of action would be at this point.

She looked back at Jordan. Beautiful, naked, helpless-looking Jordan, hardly an adult himself and begging for forgiveness, direction and any sense of belonging that someone could give him. She stared, closely, at the iris of his eye–it was as black as the obsidian beads that Marvin was moving around on the time machine’s control panel. He stared back. A minute passed, another inch of water filled the room. She bit her lip. He shot a quick glance toward Marvin, who had almost completed his task. Something gleamed through the haze, a reflection of a tooth–a very sharp, pointy tooth.

“Jordan,” Samantha smiled at him calmly. “Your band sucks.” With this she squeezed the trigger of the NEPTUNE-60, firing a spear straight into his incredibly toned, tan abdominal muscles. He tried to avoid it, half-morphing back into a shark and making an awful, loud, inhuman sound of anguish and evil, but it caught him right in the gut before he could react and exploded, blowing a massive hole in his half-man, half-shark torso and throwing what was left of him back against the wall behind the time machine. He floated there, not moving. Everyone stared with mouths open at what had just happened. Samantha wiped a tear from her face and sniffled, turning abruptly toward the stone platform.

“Polly!” she yelled, “come here girl!” Polly ran in circles on the stone platform, whose surface was now only an inch or two above the waterline. She looked around, disoriented in the haze, and whined.

“I’ve just about got it,” Marvin snapped back to the present, then screamed a blood-curdling scream. The creature that had been Jordan Slane was still alive, though barely. It’s still half-morphed body had swum, bleeding, over to Marvin and bit his leg with whatever strength it had left, letting out some gurgling sounds of evil satisfaction.

“Marvin!” Samantha yelled, almost in concert with Brianna and Suki.

“Stay!” Marvin winced. “Samantha–get in your footprints! It’s done!” He struggled to release the dying shark-man’s jaws from his leg. In the next few seconds, several things occurred:

Polly, sensing her friend and favorite dog-walker in pain and in need of help, dove from the platform, landing on Jordan’s mortally wounded man-shark body and sunk her teeth into his flesh. He hissed-howled-gurgled in pain and released his jaws from Marvin’s leg. Marvin ran for the footprints (as well as an injured boy can run in almost three feet of water), grabbing Samantha on the way. The time machine began to glow blue and crackle. Their footprints glowed quite clearly despite being under a good bit of water, and they planted their feet in them, next to Brianna’s and Suki’s.

“Polly!” Samantha screamed, her eyes searching the hazy middle distance for signs of her dog. “Polly, hurry!” There was no time. The time machine was producing an expanding bubble of blue energy, the likes of which they had never witnessed before. It would reach them in seconds. “Damn it!” Samantha cried, wiping tears from her face as she pressed the talk button on her wrist-communicator, weeping into it “now, Professor.” It was a split-second decision - no one else would have done it–they probably would have waited for Polly, and probably would have all died or been sucked into a timeless oblivion. She was the team leader, Alpha Prime. She had had to make the call. And she did. It crushed her with guilt as they dematerialized, appearing soaked, injured and exhausted back at the Montreal dome. They had, miraculously, accomplished their mission and made it back alive. Polly had not. Samantha dropped the NEPTUNE-60 onto the stone platform of their familiar time machine and collapsed to her knees. It must have been hours that she cried.

Samantha stared at the gift-wrapped package in front of her, her face devoid of emotion. It was January 19, her twelfth birthday and probably the worst birthday she had ever had. Todd had given her a gift from their dad which he had brought back with him from the west coast, a deluxe “Bratz” doll which was her favorite toy–three years ago. Now it seemed childish and irrelevant.
How little my father knows me now,
she thought sadly.
How much of my growing he has missed.
It made her even sadder than she already was.

She opened the package in front of her at Suki’s insistence.

“It’s from Professor Smythe,” Marvin indicated. Samantha nodded.

Inside the package was, wrapped in a piece of paper, a beautiful silver pocket watch, probably a hundred years old and still ticking. She made a weak smile at the irony of the gift, then unrolled the piece of paper around it. It was a poem, or a statement of some sort, written in The Professor’s handwriting:

Time is like a river

Flowing

Sometimes fast

Sometimes slow

Diverging

And Converging

But all of its being

Including we who make it

And are made by it

Come together

At the sea.

It was signed “A.E. Smythe.” Samantha choked on a sob. She missed her dog so much, her best friend, her constant companion. It had been almost a month since Alpha Team had returned that same Christmas day that they had left, and they could not go back. Double-occurrences were still one of the biggest no-no’s in time travel, creating paradoxes the complications of which might not be evident for centuries. And they couldn’t chance screwing up the mission that they had, barely, achieved successfully. It didn’t make her feel any better; she had betrayed the trust of the most loyal creature she had ever known, to save herself and her other human friends. She still wondered sometimes if the Slanes had been right, if the world would be better off without humankind. Perhaps Boston terriers should run the world–she didn’t know.

She had been forced to lie to her mother once again, something which she was growing tired of. Polly had “run off into the park” and not returned, frightened by some “stray rottweiler” who had attacked her down in the athletic fields. They had also used this imaginary incident to explain Marvin’s badly injured leg. Cindy had been very compassionate and had even offered to get her another dog for her birthday, but Samantha had declined. She wasn’t ready. Polly was not easily replaced–she died a hero in Samantha’s mind, and Marvin’s and everyone else’s as well. She deserved to live on in memory, unchallenged, for quite some time as the sole object of Samantha’s love, respect and admiration.

“Hey, Samantha,” Suki said in a hopeful, cheery voice, “is your laptop plugged in?”

“Yeah,” Samantha responded, wiping a sniffle away. “It’s in my bedroom. Why?”

“C’mere, we should check something out.” Suki took Samantha’s hand and led her into the bedroom; the rest of her friends followed. “I got this weird email the other day–from
myself.
I don’t remember writing it at all. But the weirdest thing was, it was dated November 23, 1967. That’s almost thirty-five years before I was born! Anyway, it was just a quick note, to myself I guess, that said to tell you to check your email from me on your birthday–that is, your, uh,
special
email.” Suki was referring to the ‘agent’ account that The Professor had set up for her (and all of Alpha Team). She hadn’t checked hers since Christmas day.

She did so now, her friends gathered round, and indeed found one message waiting, with a picture attachment, from Suki, aka
[email protected]
.
The message was brief. “This never happened,” it said. She looked at Suki, who only shrugged. She double-clicked on the attachment and opened the picture file. Indeed, it was a picture that was very mysterious.

It showed them all together, the inside of the massive “Bucky Ball” headquarters apparent in the background. They were grinning, and the picture made them giggle, with its added text that spelled out “Alpha Team” in dramatic, comic book cover letters and Marvin giving some rabbit ears to Suki behind her head. Not one of them remembered the moment ever having happened. It was bizarre.