What Happened to Lori Read online

and came across something that looked like a ham hock with part of a thumb attached to it.

 
 

  Grim stood, walked a few steps away from the carnage, and pressed the gland against a plastiform wall.

  A door opened.

 

  He hefted the black ball energy weapon thingy and tried to squeeze the spongy trigger while stroking the bloody gland.

 
 

  But Grim wasn’t thankful. He was worried.

 
 

  He walked slowly but with purpose, heading for the purple light room, a terrible idea taking shape in his head.

  JAKE ○ 1:50+pm

  While the welding mask provided a strange feeling of security, Fabler’s actions more than negated the comfort.

  “This vehicle can outrun the energy bursts. Why are you driving straight for them?”

  “Talk louder. We’re both wearing ear protection.”

 

  Jake repeated it.

  “Just be ready to shoot when I say shoot.”

  Jake craned his head, scanning all directions. The greys, as Fabler called them, had formed a wide semi-circle around the Jeep. But rather than try to get away, Fabler headed straight for them.

  The closer the energy bursts got, the smaller the gap between them.

  “I’m hypothesizing those black balls are antimatter particles contained in electromagnetic traps. If any of them touch the vehicle—”

  “They won’t.”

  “I’m guessing your military background didn’t include any primers on antimatter. A nuclear weapon is perhaps 10% efficient, at best. A matter/antimatter collision is 100% efficient. That means the total mass energy equivalent is released as energy. Just one thousandth of a gram equals the explosive power of six thousand pounds of TNT. That’s a milligram. Do you know how much mass that is? The brain of an ant is a milligram. And if you know anything about arthropods, they aren’t known for the size of their brains.”

  Like everyone else, Fabler proved tough to read. But the fact that he continued to head into danger, rather than away from it, hinted that he wasn’t taking Jake’s warning seriously.

  “If we touch those antimatter pods, we’ll explode.”

  “Got it, Jake. I was there when your cop friend exploded.”

  “We weren’t friends. I don’t have friends. Aspies have a hard time forming close human connections because we can’t feel cognitive empathy. I can recognize clues to show you are in pain, and feel bad for you, but I can’t understand what you are thinking or why you feel what you feel. It’s part of my alexithymia, along with restricted imagination, and difficulty expressing myself. So I come off as aloof.”

  Fabler jerked the wheel, adjusting his direction.

 
 

  “I’ve gotten off topic. You’re still driving toward the antimatter pods.”

  “There is a ten second delay between every shot.”

  “It’s the most explosive substance in the universe. Even with their advanced technology, weaponizing antimatter is foolish. Plus, this doesn’t strike me as an effective military formation.”

  “It’s a terrible military formation. It’s like they learned combat watching Elmer Fudd hunt Daffy Duck. They’re going to shoot each other.”

  “So we should get far away and let them do that.”

  Fabler made no attempt to get far away.

  Jake recognized his own quickly escalating agitation. The overstimulation of the present circumstances had awed him, but since the extremely violent death of Detective Woo, Jake’s mind began to tip from intellectual curiosity to emotional overload.

  Interesting that the medical community viewed autism as a spectrum. It made Jake imagine a dimmer dial for electric lights, which allowed for a gradual, controlled journey from darkness to illumination.

  But Jake’s own emotions were more like an on/off switch. He had control, then suddenly he didn’t. There were precursors and warning signs that it would happen, but those were akin to yelling at the barn door just as the horse galloped out.

 
 

  Fabler kept the gas pedal pinned, the black dots surrounding them growing larger.

 

  Jake reached for the steering wheel, but Fabler slapped his hand away.

  “Don’t do that again. Get ready with the shotgun.”

 

  “NO! LET ME OUT OF HERE LET ME OUT LET ME OUT!”

  Jake couldn’t stop banging his forehead against the dashboard any better than he could control his own heartbeat.

 
 

  He reached for the steering wheel again, and this time jerked it hard to the right , and after the car lurched sideways Fabler shoved Jake away and slapped his face.

  In movies, slapping a hysterical person stopped the hysterics. It was a false trope, like the ease of knocking someone out with a hit to the head, or how the hero always beat the countdown timer by a fraction of a second.

  In real life, hitting someone on the head will piss them off, or kill them. Unconsciousness is nearly impossible to induce with a blow.

  Nothing ever comes down to a countdown timer. It’s an artificial construct used to inflate suspense in storytelling.

  And slapping a hysterical person makes them more hysterical.

 
 

  Jake hadn’t suffered a full-on out-of-control tantrum since his preteen days. But being surrounded by time travelers with antimatter guns while stuck in a car with a psychopath who wanted to start an interdimensional war made Jake so enraged he lost his ability to think.

  No reason. No words.

  Just emotion.

  He screamed, and thrashed, and became so caught in his own head that Jake had no awareness when Fabler slammed on the brakes, tugged him out of the passenger seat, and then wrapped an arm around his neck and squeezed.

  When Jake opened his eyes, back in his seat and surprisingly calm, he had no idea what had just happened.

  “Did I just time travel again?”

  “No. You threw a fit and I choked you out.”

  “That knocked me out?”

  “That’s how it works.”

  “Is it easy to do?”

  “Just weight and leverage.”

 

  Jake glanced out the front windshield, and saw a hundred black basketballs, like a floating minefield, speeding at them from all directions.

 

  Once again, the panic switch primed to flip—

  —and Fabler did some insane power drift, coasting past a bunch of antimatter pods, turning three-hundred and sixty degrees, then clipping one of the greys, who wore armor similar to Fabler’s.

  Not a full-on hit; that would have totaled the vehicle at this speed. Just a side-check, transferring kinetic energy, sending the grey sprawling into the light.

  Fabler whipped the car around, heading back, and the Jeep bounced on its shocks as Fabler rolled over the time traveler’s head.

 
 
 

  Jake pointed. “Three more to the right.”

  “On it. Use the shotgun if I miss.”

  Jake found the gun resting between his feet, and he picked it up and opened the side wind
ow.

  “Make sure the butt is hard against your armpit, or you’ll break your nose when you fire.”

  Jake snugged the gun in, hard, like he’d seen in a hundred movies, and then aimed at a grey as they approached.

  The shotgun kicked hard, and the noise hurt Jake’s ears even with the ear protection, to the point where he wanted to throw it away.

  “Good shot. Killed him.”

  Jake turned to see.

 
 

  “I’m not sure if that makes me grateful to be alive, or sick that I took a life.”

  “It does both. Save sick for later. We got a lot more killing to do.”

 
 

  “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Your whole life, people told you what you can’t do. Right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Don’t be one of those people, Jake. Don’t get in your own way.”

 

  “How many bullets does this hold?”

  “Six shells in the tube, six in the holder on the side. Got more in back.”

  “How does it load?”

  “Push them in, one at a time, plastic side first.”

  Fabler swerved, fishtailing into two greys, sending them flying.

  Jake racked the gun back and forth, ejecting the spent shell and loading a new one, and took aim at the next grey coming up.

 
 

  “It’s difficult for aspies to express gratitude. But… thank you for choking me out, Fabler. It worked better than any therapy, or any drug, I’ve ever tried. I wonder if I can invent some kind of noose to do it to myself, in case I get overstimulated again.”

  “Bad idea.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s how David Carradine died. Coming up on your right.”

 

  Jake racked and fired.

  Third in a row.

  Then the explosions began.

  One BANG! at first, an antimatter pod hitting another pod, or a grey. But it had a ripple effect, each pop of released energy setting off the pods nearby until a chain reaction took over and everywhere he stared, Jake saw fire.

  Fabler, incredibly, managed to steer through the hellstorm, and by the time the flames died down—it only took a few seconds—only a few greys still stood.

  “That’s right, assholes. It’s duck season.”

  Jake had no idea what that meant. “What next?”

  “Look to your right.”

  Jake turned his head, saw nothing but light.

  “Your other right.”

 

  At first, Jake assumed the black dot was just another antimatter pod. But it grew too big, too fast.

  “A singularity?”

  “What do you mean?”

 
 

  “The term singularity can mean many things. In math, it is an object that is undefined or not well-behaved. In technology, it is the name of the moment where an artificial intelligence becomes self-aware and ultimately uncontrollable. But in this case, I’m referring to a Penrose-Hawking black hole.”

  “Whatever you call it, it’s weird. Get ready to take your welding mask off.”

  “We’re going into it?”

  “We’re going into it.”

 

  THE WATCHER ○ 1:53+pm

  “That was an impressive cock-up. How many homo provectus are left now?”

  The Watcher ignores Mu and tries to focus.

 
 

  “MR. PILGRIM HAS EVADED US.”

  The Watcher waits for his own mind to return to his control. “FIND HIM!”

  “THERE WERE CAUSUALTIES.”

  “HOW MANY?”

  “TEN. AN ANTIMATTER WEAPON DISCHARGED.”

  “HOW MANY CAN BE RESUCCITATED?”

  “ZERO.”

  The Watcher beats his fist against the monitor.

  “That leaves what… one hundred and thirty-seven of your people left? Hardly a sustainable population, Watcher, even with all the incest. Maybe you should be using the void to return to a few thousand years ago and abduct some of your own species. Oh… wait. You’ve done that. Your inbreeding is one of the causes of your genetic abnormalities. Remind me again why your people have faith in you, when you keep making one bad decision after another.”

  “ENOUGH!”

  The Watcher addresses Mu, but in his anger sends the message to all of his people. Then he reaches for the button to eject them back to their own time.

  “You’re giving up already, Watcher?”

  “I have nothing to discuss with you, Mu. I gambled, I lost. I am not—as the expression goes—throwing good money after bad.”

  “But you have the trump card, Watcher. Fabler came for his wife.”

  “You want to me turn Lori over to him?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  The Watcher hovers his finger over the button.

 
 
 

  “Wouldn’t his head look good on the Experiment? Isn’t that what you wanted, Watcher?”

 

  “If I use Mrs. Fabler, what are the odds Mr. Fabler will give up?”

  “One hundred percent. There is no other future outcome in this timeline. Threaten her, and he will bow before you.”

  The Watcher makes his decision and announces it to his guards.

  “BRING LORI TO ME.”

  LORI ○ 1:56+pm

  By the time Lori noticed the guard at the door, he’d already activated her supplication collar, the pain jerking her off the bed. Either her collar’s intensity had been turned down, or Lori had gotten used to tolerating the agony, because it took almost ten seconds for her to lose consciousness.

  She awoke entwined with a gurney.

 
 
 
 

  Twice, since her arrival, abductees had been shuffled around. Maybe so no one got to know anyone else too well. Maybe for some other reason, known only to the Watcher.

 

  While being pushed through a corridor, scores of troops marched past Lori, armed with weapons she’d never seen before.

 
 
 

  The lighting changed, becoming deep red, and Lori guessed her destination.

 
 

  She’d only encountered the Watcher twice. The day she’d been abducted; a terrifying experience that overlapped with the exhilarating possibility that she’d gotten pregnant. And once for a fetal scan, to ensure her baby had the genes the Watcher and his people needed to survive.

 
 

  Lori closed her eyes, slowed her breathing.

  Focused inwardly.

 
 
 
 
 

  Lori was vaguely aware they’d brought her into the lab, but kept her eyes
closed.

 
 

  “Please open your eyes.”

  She refused.

  “Open your eyes, or I’ll take your eyelids.”

  Lori knew there was a thin line between being obedient and being broken. This place wallowed in cruelty, but it always had purpose.

 
 
 

  The urge to disobey, to fight back, to not be complicit in her own subjugation, remained strong in Lori. At the same time, losing her eyelids would be horrible, and if she had a chance to avoid that, she needed to act.

 
 

  Lori opened her eyes.

 
 

  “I have something for you.”

  The Watcher glided over to her, Lori’s severed hand floating in front of him in a transparent plastiform shell. He used the laser scalpel to free it from the container and fuse it back to her hand.

  No pain, just tingling. Then a huge sensation of relief as she wiggled her fingers.

  “Are you hungry? I am cooking aurochs steaks.”

  The Watcher rubbed his gland and the wall opened, a glorious smell filling the lab.

 
  Against her own will, Lori began to salivate.

  “Would you like a plate? I know the cockroach pellets contain all the nutrition you need to thrive, but they do not tickle the taste buds.”

  A plate of steak floated through the hole in the wall, stopping right beneath Lori’s chin. It appeared cooked to perfection, complete with char marks.

 

  “Aurochs are ancestors of your modern cattle. Modern for you, at least. Did you know that after your time, cattle became self-aware? They destroyed over half the surviving homo sapiens population. Raised the humans on ranches, and ate them. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose. I myself am descended from a group raised as livestock.”

  “A group of humans? Or a group of cattle?”

  The Watcher smiled, an ugly thing. “You have retained your sense of humor. That is admirable. Would you like some steak or not?”