Timecaster: Supersymmetry (11 page)

Oh… shit.

It was a chickula nest.

I’d only seen real-life chickulas once, at the hyperzoo, with Vicki after we first got married. Unfortunately for us, it had been feeding time. The hyperzookeeper had dropped a live cat into their nest (the cat population skyrocketed in the 30s due to a sandwich craze known as the PB&T) and the results were ugly.

A chickula was only slightly bigger than a
felis catus delicia
, but twice as agile, a hundred times as dangerous, and, as far as I was concerned, much tastier. It looked like a large, feathered, gray spider, with six eyes, large wings that extended from its thorax, and eight thick, tender, juicy drumsticks, each ending with a three fingered claw. Between its spider-like mandibles it had a chicken-like beak, which could snap o to make sureat. “Good luck.”Gff a man’s finger while also administering a large dose of paralytic.

Chickulas accounted for several hundred deaths per year in the USAC, but that number was low considering the number of unreported deaths in dissy communities. They were ugly, nasty, deadly little bastards, and by the size of the nest I guessed at least five had taken up residence on Sata’s greenroof. If Sata was indeed trying to escape his house, this explained why he hadn’t gotten out this way.

I paused, watching for movement.

The only thing I noticed was the swaying of several dozen animal corpses in the light breeze, hanging from Sata’s bamboo and hemp plants like dried, unappetizing fruit. I had no weapons, and it was well-known that a handful of chickulas could take down a man. One or two bites, a quick mummy wrap, and then painful feeding until dehydration or exsanguination, which could take days.

But that was really a small price to pay for those delicious drumsticks. They practically melted in your mouth. I’m talking falling-off-the-bone goodness. They were so tasty, it almost made up for the number of casualties they caused.

I waited, flexing my toes to get the circulation going, and then spotted the first chickula. Brownish gray, it was crouched under a yellow forsythia so coated with webbing it appeared to be dusted in snow. The creature’s six beady black eyes were locked onto mine, its delectable legs tucked against its body, feathered wings folded over its abdomen, ten centimeter mandibles opening and closing like garden shears.

Yeech. How could something so creepy taste so good?

I stepped onto the greenroof—

—but my right foot couldn’t support me and I fell to my knees, then onto my chest.

No!

I instantly swiveled my neck around, checking in every possible direction to see where the attack came from.

But nothing happened.

I pushed up onto my knees, sticky web coating my palms, my heart rate doubling, which speeded up the progression of the nanopoison in my bloodstream.

The only chickula I’d spotted remained in place, watching me but not moving.

Maybe this would be easier that I thought.

Keeping my eyes on the creature, I regained my footing and headed to the center of the rooftop, the likeliest place for a drain. The thin layer of webbing over the dead lawn made the grating hard to spot, but when I tapped the metal with my toe I knew I’d found it. I dropped to a knee, did another scan around for chickulas, and then reached down and pulled up the gate on its hinges.

Almost immediately I felt a pinprick on my hand.

It was followed by two more.

Then a dozen more, all before I even looked down to see what was happening.

My hands appeared to be wearing furry, brown gloves.ed tachyon emission visualizered to THE RIGHT TO REMAIN…G

Furry brown gloves, that
moved
.

Babies.

Chickula babies.

Thousands of them, scurrying up my arms.

The drain was their nursery.

I beat my hands together, indulging in some warranted, high-pitching screaming, and then began to brush the little monsters off me just as their parents sprung out of the foliage to attack.

The first one landed on my back, hard as a punch, and I immediately flopped onto the ground and fell on top of it. Two more pounced onto my chest and pelvis, as the one under my back—not completely crushed—tried to scurry away.

The creature on my chest hissed at me, mandibles opening wide, its beak clacking and snapping. I made my left hand into a claw and poked five of its six eyes, digging the digits in up to the first knuckle. It leapt away from the attack, soaring through the air, smacking directly into a stiff stalk of bamboo.

Pinpricks continued to travel up my arms, hundreds of tiny chickulas biting me, and my right hand freed the spork handle and slashed at the bovinsect on my waist just as its mandibles pinched through my shirt. The one beneath me continued to squirm, and I rolled to the right—

— face-first into the drain.

For a brief moment, it was like my face was being gently caressed by a super-soft pillow.

Then the pillow began to bite me.

I screamed again, baby chickulas swarming into my open mouth, biting my tongue and inner cheeks. I quickly clamped my jaws together, shaking my head side to side, chewing hard, and was somewhat surprised by how good they tasted. Why didn’t fast food places serve the babies? They were a lot like chicken-flavored popcorn, but crunchier and with a bit more salt.

I reached my free hand down into the darkness, finding the damp bottom of the drainage tube, which, as expected,was large enough for a man to fit inside. I slid through the opening, pulling my whole body after me, scrambling into a few cent
imeters of water. It was dark. Dark and scary. But the chickula offspring seemed to be biting me less and less—perhaps they were in retreat mode—and I did a double-time low-crawl toward where I guessed the pump to be. I found it by banging into it with my forehead, a metal wire grating covering the hatch. I used my spork to pry off a hinge, pushed the grate back, and then slid under the drainage pump and to a plastic panel. It opened with a palm strike, giving me access to the dry—and chickula free—crawlspace.

I climbed through, shutting the panel behind me, sweating and heaving and swallowing the tasty remains of the babies still in my mouth. A sliver of light winked at me a few meters to my left, and I pulled myself across the aluminum ceiling and found a duct for the air conditioner. Two kicks and it was detached, allowing me to drop down onto a sofa in Sata’s living room.

I brushed the remaining chickulas out of my hair, wiped the dead ones from my clothing, and then took in my surroundings.ed tachyon emission visualizered to THE RIGHT TO REMAIN…G

I’d recently been in Sata’s home on my earth, and it looked a lot like this home, save for one huge difference: this house was a pigsty. The furniture was ripped up, dirty, ruined. There was garbage and filth covering everything. All the foliage had died, or was in the brown near-death stage.

“Your hands aren’t bleeding.”

I spun, noticing Sata had snuck up behind me. But rather than the formidable bodybuilder I had expected, this Sata looked like a shell of his former self. He was still short, and Asian, but the Japanese kimono he wore was stained and torn, and it hung on a bony, pale body. His hair, like his features, was limp. The Sata I knew would never let himself go like this. It was as if he’d become a dissy.

He took a step toward me and stumbled, falling to one knee.

“Are you the Talon-kun I knew from the parallel earth?” he croaked. “The one I trained?”

“I don’t know. But I’m not from here.”

“Neither am I. I was taken here, locked away, while my doppelgänger committed crimes against humanity in another dimension. He worked with an alternate version of Talon to send Boise, Idaho to a dinosaur planet.”

“That sounds a lot like what I’ve been dealing with.”

“If you are he, maybe there is hope.”

He began to cough, and I heard the rattle in his lungs.

“Sata-san, you… I mean that alternate version of you… gave me a nanopoison.”

He nodded, slowly. “I know the poison you speak of. I was threatened with it. There is an antidote in my doppelgänger’s laboratory.”

I remembered where the lab was, and headed for it.

“Wait!” Sata commanded.

I halted.

“That’s where its lair is,” he said.

“Whose lair?”

I didn’t think it possible, but Sata’s face got even paler. “The byter.”

Alter-Sata
(who thought of himself as the original Sata because on his earth he
was
the original Sata, even though this wasn’t his earth) lead Talon’s ex-partner Teague through the streets to his rental apartment, where earlier that day he had sent a dissy to the dinosaur planet. Half an hour ago they’d gone to Alter-Sata’s favorite tea stand for two cups of oolong. The tea had been excellent. The conversation, not so much. Like the Teague Alter-Sata had known, this Teague was also one of the dullest knives in the drawer. Repeating the same points, over and over, was giving Alter-Sata a headache. surrounding sci?” I asked“Yes.”

“So you aren’t the Sata who trained me?” Teague asked, for the fifth time.

“No.”

“But you trained an alternate version of me?”

Alter-Sata rubbed his temples. “Yes.”

“Does this alternate version have both of his hands?” Teague raised his stump.

“I believe he does.”

“So I could find the other me, and take his hand.”

“What if he doesn’t want to part with it?”

Teague smiled. “Then I kill myself.”

Alter-Sata almost wished he would do that right now just to stop this inane conversation, which had been going in circles since they’d left the tea stand.

“Can you explain the whole dark version thing to me again? If you don’t mind.”

I do mind,
Alter-Sata thought.
But this idiot might be useful, so I need to humor him.

“There are infinite alternate universes with infinite versions of you—”

“Including a Dino Teague on the Dino Earth.”

“Yes. Please don’t interrupt. There is—”

“Sorry.”

“You just interrupted again.”

Teague opened his mouth, but blessedly stopped himself from speaking.

“There is also,” Alter-Sata continued, “dark matter in each of these infinite universes, and using the TEV, I’ve been able to make that dark matter visible. Through my genius I’ve managed to illuminate, and exist alongside, that dark matter, and discovered another hidden universe within each universe that directly corresponds with ours.”

“Sort of like an opposite land.”

“More like a superpartner land, where ever particle has an exact counterpart which directly corresponds to ours. Oddly enough, this dark matter universe is several hours ahead of us. What happens there eventually happens here.”

“So there’s a Dark Teague.”

“Yes.”

“Could I take his hand? Or if I touch him, will I explode?”

“You’re confusing dark matter with anti-matter.”

“Is there an Anti-matter Teague as well?”

“There might be.”

“You don the antidote for the nanopoisonm ” Phin saidG’t know?”

Alter-Sata sighed again. “I invented a device that records the past, then tweaked that device to travel to other dimensions within the multiverse, then tweaked it again to discover a dark world within our own universe. I think I can safely leave the discovery of
Anti-matter Teague
to someone else.” He mentally added,
you gigantic moron.

“So let’s get back to this infinite universes thing again,” Teague said.

“You don’t grasp it yet?”

“If there are infinite parallel worlds, with infinite variations, anything I can dream up must exist.”

“Yes.”

“So there’s an earth where I’m king of the world, being constantly serviced by SLPs who have four boobs.”

Alter-Sata shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”

“So how can I go there?”

“That’s the difficult part. I’ve been trying to tweak UFSE to search appropriate worlds, but it takes a while to search infinity.”

“How long does it take?”

“Forever.”

“Maybe there’s a world where UFSE is able to search infinity faster.”

And maybe you’re an idiot.

Alter-Sata forced his voice to remain steady. “Let’s assume the laws of physics are universal, even though they may weigh differently in alternate dimensions. But even if there were a dimension where gravity were stronger than, say, electromagnetic force, I’m pretty sure infinity is infinity no matter where you go.”

“Is there a world where gravity is stronger than electromagnetic force?”

“I don’t know.”
But there must be a world where you’re not this stupid. Maybe I shall kill you and visit that world. And then possibly search for that planet where women had four boobs. It certainly has possibilities…

“Sata-san? Did you hear me?”

“Hmm?”

“Isn’t that us?”

Teague pointed with his stump at two men on the greenwalk. And Alter-Sata was surprised to see it was, indeed, another Sata and another Teague, walking at a quick clip toward them.

“Well, isn’t this interesting,” Alter-Sata said.

A byter
. That accounted for Sata’s disheveled appearance.

Along with the chickulas and the salmonsters, bytersed tachyon emission visualizerow watch for me“Yes.” were the biggest “We Fuct Up” moment in modern genetic science. Decades ago, in an attempt to control the exploding bed bug population, an ingenious solution was devised: accelerate their growth so they would die of old age before being able to reproduce.

You can guess what happened next; it’s straight out of a cheap science fiction ebook.

Those microscopic, bloodsucking parasites became giant, armored monsters. Some weighed as much as forty kilos, with carapaces so thick an ax couldn’t penetrate them. But even though they were formidable in battle, as evidenced on one of the top rated TV shows,
Man vs. Byter
, they retained the habits of their genetic forbearers and struck while people were asleep. Their razor-sharp suckers administered an anesthetic, so they could bleed a few pints from you without ever waking you up.