Fantasy The Time War

The electronic map on the wall showed lines, emanating from the Soviet Union. The lines started to slowly move west, towards America.

Immediately an alarm sounded, and the control room was a babble of voices.

"Alert all commands-"

"Recheck those readings-"

"Get me the President-"

The lines moved over the Atlantic Ocean.

"I don't understand any of this," said Daniel. "There's no reason the Soviet Union would launch a preemptive attack."

"-the President has authorized a counterstrike. Launching now-" said a voice in the babble.

New lines started to appear, but they were lines launching from the United States, heading east towards Russia.

"This can't be happening," said Daniel. "It simply can't."

"We'll analyze what we've got back at base," said Reynolds. "I think we'd better be leaving now."

They left the control room and went looking for another supply room. Opening a gateway in a busy corridor would attract too much attention. Reynolds saw what looked like a storeroom, opened the door, and stepped inside. Daniel and Calle followed.

When they stepped inside, they saw a man standing there.

He was neither short nor tall, neither thin nor fat. But he had a fanatical look in his eyes, and he was staring straight at Calle.

"Hello, Mr. Calle," said the man, giving a wide smile.

Reynolds reached for his compression pistol, but the man was quicker. He lifted Reynolds by the neck and threw him across the room. Daniel was still fumbling for his weapon when the man threw him against the wall. He collapsed on the ground not far from Reynolds, who seemed to be unconscious or dead.

He is incredibly strong, Calle thought.

The man stood face to face with Calle. "Hello, John Calle," said the man, staring into his eyes.

"How did you know-"

"Sometime you go there, or there or there or there, but more often than not you go here," said the man, staring at Calle intently. "I've been waiting a long time to meet you, John Calle."

"Who are you?" said Calle. "What are you?"

"I am you," said Nigel Roman 1, smiling. "And you are us."

"Us?"

"Were you quiet as a baby, John Calle?" Nigel asked. "Didn't say much, didn't even cry the first few years, did you?"

Calle's face registered shock.

"And then there's the laughter, hahaha!" said Nigel. "Do you still laugh like that, John Calle?"

Calle shook his head. But he knew exactly what Nigel meant. He used to laugh like that, as a child.

"You can again," said Nigel, staring Calle in the eyes from inches away. "You think about Him, don't you?"

"Who?" said Calle.

Nigel moved his face so close that his nose touched Calle's, as his eyes bored into him. "Him."

Those glowing orange eyes.

Nigel moved back a whole two inches. "You've thought about the Great One all your life, haven't you?"

Calle nodded slowly.

"But you don't know what it means, do you, what he wants?"

Calle nodded again.

"He wants quiet, John Calle. Quiet for all of us. You hear the voices, don't you?"

Calle nodded yet again.

"They don't... but we do. It's time to quiet the voices, John Calle, to make it all quiet, so we can think again. So many people! So many possibilities! It is too much, John Calle, too much for all of us! He knows. He knows all. He wants us to quiet the voices, to make fewer possibilities. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

Calle found himself nodding a fourth time.

"I knew it," Nigel Roman 1 smiled. "I always knew. Come with us, John Calle. It's your destiny-"

Nigel Roman 1 suddenly staggered, and fell to the ground. Behind him, Calle saw Major Reynolds, sprawled on the ground, holding a smoking compression pistol.

Reynolds and Daniel painfully got up.

"Who is he? What is he?" Calle asked.

"There's no time for that," said Reynolds. He activated the recall device. The gateway formed. He checked for a pulse on Nigel Roman 1, picked up his body, and entered the Binochi Corridor.

And then, as they walked up the path back to the control room, the most amazing thing happened. Nigel Roman 1 suddenly woke up, pushed Reynolds to the ground, and got to his own feet. "No... no, not this way, not this possibility!"

Reynolds was partially off the path, his body was halfway gone into the mists. Daniel desperately pulled on him to bring him back to the path.

"No... no... too many choices!" Nigel Roman 1 yelled. "Too many possibilities!" And then he ran off the path, in the opposite direction, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Daniel helped Reynolds to his feet. "That was close, sir. You almost fell off the path."

Reynolds nodded.

They made their way in silence back to the control room.
​

********​

"What faction is he from, sir?" Calle asked. He was sitting in Colonel Strayker's office. Strayker was wearing a high collar beige suit today, reclining in his chair, smoking a nuclear cigarette as he stared at Calle appraisingly.

When Strayker didn't immediately answer, Calle said, "I thought we've encountered all the factions. The Black White Supremacists. The Temporal Social Justice Warriors. The Luddites. This man wasn't from any of them. As far as I can tell... he was insane."

"Quite right," said Strayker, puffing a smoke ring. "I'm going to tell you a little story, Captain, but it must never leave this room."

Calle nodded.

"As you know, Carl Voidovich invented the Time Shaft. He had several assistants, chief among them William Bright. When Professor Voidovich... disappeared, William Bright took over. The work continued, until... the accident."

"Accident, sir?"

"As you may know, the Time Shaft is sealed by a force field, to protect us from random temporal discharges. One day there was a fault in the force field. The technician at the controls was a man named Mercury Jones. He was struck by temporal energy."

"Did it kill him?"

"No," said Strayker, nodding slowly as he continued to bore into Calle with those crystal blue eyes. "But it did drive him mad. Before anyone could stop him, he ran off into the Binochi Corridor. They all thought he was dead. They were wrong. Over time Mercury built his own Time Shaft, and gathered his own followers."

"But... what does he want?"

"To kill us all, of course," said Strayker, puffing vigorously.

"Why?"

"He's insane, Captain. Insanity needs no explanation," said Strayker "They call themselves Goodlife. I'm sure you see the irony. Suffice to say that his faction is the most dangerous you will ever encounter. You must use maximum force in dealing with them."

"Yes sir," said Calle.

Strayker nodded. "I've had a look at your after-action report, and correlated it with some data provided to me by Sarah. It appears that America was responding to a thermonuclear attack from the Soviet Union."

"Yes sir."

"But our own holoscanners show no first strike on American soil. We have determined that the Soviet attack was virtual. It was a scenario played out solely on NORAD computers."

"The attack wasn't real?"

Strayker nodded again. "But after the United States launched its attack, for real, so did Russia. Someone on that base manipulated the computers to falsely show a Soviet attack. You and Sarah have to go back to stop it."

"But... we've already been there," said Calle. "Won't we loop ourselves?"

Strayker stared at his nuclear cigarette. "It's a big base. We'll drop you off on the other side of it. Under no circumstances are you to go to the control room, where you'll find your other, earlier selves. That would lead to looping, and very unpredictable consequences. Instead, go to one of the many terminal stations, hack your way into the system, and find this computer manipulation before it's triggered."

"And what if these... Goodlife make another appearance?"

"I'm sending Major Reynolds and three men back with you. All combat veterans, no historians or interpreters," said Strayker. "They will be armed with blaster pistols, set at maximum. They will make sure no one gets near you."
​

*********​

Those glowing orange eyes.

John Calle had been dreaming about them all his life. He didn't know what they meant. But now he had met someone else who also had seen them.

Someone who had gone mad.

A lot of what Nigel Roman said made no sense, but Calle recognized patterns to the madness. Nigel had spoken of voices... Calle knew he was the only one to hear the whispers in the Binochi Corridor. Could it be that Nigel Roman heard the whispers, but louder? So loud they had driven him mad?

And where did the being with the glowing orange eyes fit into this? Nigel Roman had spoken as if this being was their leader... no, not their leader, but some kind of mythical being, who they almost seemed to worship.

Did these people have temporal psychosis? And was Calle on the road to getting temporal psychosis himself? Perhaps those with the Special Talent like him were like this--continually on the fence between sanity and madness.

Calle hoped he would never fall off the fence, or at least, not on the wrong side of it.
​

********​

Before they had left for the 20th century again, Calle knew the pressure on Sarah would be intense. She would be responsible for finding the computer virus in the NORAD computers. Calle and Sarah were in the control room, waiting for the Binochi Corridor to be activated. Calle realized Sarah looked beautiful. Even with no breasts, she looked sleek in her 20th century Air Force uniform. Girls in uniform usually did, he realized.

"You must be feeling terribly conflicted," he whispered to her.

"How so?" said Sarah, the strain showing on her face.

"Well, if you stop this computer virus in time, you'll save humanity," said Calle. "But on the other hand, you won't get to have a baby with me."

She raised an eyebrow. "We all must make sacrifices, Captain."

And then Naomi activated the Binochi Corridor, and they were bathed in the heat and light of it.

Their soldier escort went through first. Then Calle turned to Sarah and said, "Ladies first." She almost smiled at him and stepped up the ramp, allowing Calle to admire her long legs and short blue Air Force skirt.
​

********​

A half dozen operatives of the Continuity Service appeared in a storeroom inside of NORAD. But they had made sure this was a different storeroom, some two levels down and a quarter mile away from where they had first arrived. The time was an hour before the first Soviet "missiles" would be detected. Ideally, they would have arrived even earlier, but there was no guarantee that whatever computer virus had been introduced into the system had been put there before that.

Major Reynolds had picked three ex-marine and special forces operatives to be backup on this mission, and all had blaster pistols set to maximum. There would be no interpreters or historians awkwardly wielding weapons this time.

They found a room full of computer terminals. Major Reynolds and his three trained killers stayed outside. "Nobody is getting past us," said Reynolds firmly.

Calle nodded. He and Sarah entered the room. There were rows after rows of terminals. There were three Air Force technicians typing rapidly on them, and none of them paid the slightest attention as Sarah sat down by a terminal.

She started typing rapidly. In moments, she hacked into the system. "It's an enormous database," she breathed.

"Try to look for the program which show incoming missiles."

She glared at him, as if he had just stated the obvious, and got to work.

As Calle watched her work, he was aware of time passing. Five minutes, then ten then twenty than thirty, and before long their hour was almost up.

"Sarah?" he whispered.

"I think I'm on to something."

"You think?" said Calle. "We only have nine minutes left."

"I know."

"Sarah-"

"Shut up and let me work." She started typing almost more rapidly than Calle could see.

Calle took a deep breath. Whatever would happen would happen.

He started to wonder if maybe it would be a good idea to settle down with Sarah, regardless of whether or not they saved the human race. Calle felt guilty thinking about such a narrow, personal concern while the fate of humanity hung in the balance, but he couldn't help it. As he stared at Sarah's beautiful face as she worked the old fashioned computer, he asked himself, "Why not? Why not Sarah?"

Because of Marion.

It had been more than three years since Marion had died, and he still felt it every day. He knew it was time to move on, but he couldn't. He just couldn't give her up. He loved her too much. But maybe he should-

Suddenly, the door to the terminal room opened with a slam. "HELLO, MISTER CALLE!" said Nigel Roman 1, in a loud voice.

How did he get past Reynolds and the other-

Nigel Roman strode confidently into the room, followed by another Nigel Roman and another after that.

"GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN, MISTER CALLE!" Nigel Roman 1 practically yelled, his eyes blazing with blue sparks of madness.

Nigel Roman 2 pulled on Sarah, yanking her from the terminal.

"No!" Sarah cried.

"We can't have you interfering with destiny, can we, Mr. Calle?" said Nigel Roman 1. He glanced quickly around the room. The three Air Force technicians were sitting in stunned silence by their desks. And then one hit an alarm.

"Naughty, naughty, we can't have that!" said Nigel Roman 3, walking forward and throwing the Air Force technician across the room.

Sarah got up and ran for the terminal. But Nigel Roman 2 grabbed her.

"The world is about to be destroyed, Mr. Calle!" said Nigel Roman 1. "You wouldn't want to miss that, would you?"

Calle looked at the doorway. He had to assume that Reynolds and his men were injured or dead. He reached for his blaster pistol, but Nigel Roman 1 was quicker, plucking it out of his hand and throwing it across the room.

He moved his face right next to Calle's, so they were eye to eye. "Come, Mr. Calle. Come and witness the final destruction of mankind!"

There was perhaps eight minutes left. They were running out of time. Calle thought rapidly. What could he do?

And then, suddenly, one of the Air Force technicians stood up from his terminal, lifted his arms in the air, and clapped his hands above his head, and time seemed to slow to a crawl....

The Air Force technician began to change. His arms and legs got thicker, much thicker, much more muscular. Suddenly, he had the arms and legs of a champion weightlifter. And then his body started to glow, brighter and brighter until it was orange.

A bright orange.

His clothes and skin became transparent. Suddenly, his muscles and organs became transparent, backlit somehow by a strong orange glow. Calle could see the brightly lit heart, beating in the man's chest, and his liver and stomach and intestines and all his other organs, all equally well lit. And he could see the man's arm and leg muscles, also well lit. They were huge.

The man's face had changed. Suddenly, he was wearing thick round goggles. And inside them, Calle could see glowing orange eyes.

Those glowing orange eyes.

The man also seemed to be wearing a mask over his mouth, almost like a breather that underwater divers wear, with a tube emerging from it that went somewhere on his back.

It was a good analogy, because suddenly the room seemed to be under water. Calle found he could breathe, but he felt like he was trapped in a viscous fluid. He couldn't move.

But when the man moved, however slightly, there were ripples in the air around him, like water being disturbed. And from around the edges of his mouth mask, Calle could see what looked like air bubbles.

Those glowing orange eyes.

Somehow Calle instinctively knew it: this was the mythical Bioman.

Calle tried to move, and found he couldn't.

But the Nigel Romans didn't seem so inhibited. They ran towards the Bioman, screaming. Calle had thought they worshiped the Bioman, but somehow being in his actual presence seemed to trigger a different reaction.

Nigel Roman 3 charged the Bioman. The Bioman lifted Nigel Roman 3 with his giant arms and threw him against the wall.

Nigel Roman 1 and 2 attacked next. The Bioman effortlessly deflected their blows, as if they were flies. He sent them spinning across the room. They got up and attacked again, as did Nigel Roman 3. The Bioman swatted them like flies once more. Suddenly he seemed to develop an interest in Nigel Roman 2, who was either dead or unconscious on the ground. Even as the Bioman knelt down by his body, Nigel Roman 1 jumped on his back, and the Bioman flexed a massive arm, sending him flying again.

And then the Bioman picked up Nigel Roman 2 like he was a rag doll, and threw him over his shoulder. He held something in his hand which looked remarkably like a recall device. He pressed it. But instead of a gateway forming, The Bioman and Nigel Roman 2 simply grew brighter, and vanished.

Time suddenly returned to normal. The air was no longer apparently liquid. Nigel Romans 1 and 3 matched gazes, and each pressed their own recall devices. A gateway appeared, and they ran into it. And then the gateway disappeared.

Calle checked his chrono. There were still eight minutes left. Perhaps a single second had passed in the interval. He ran to Sarah. "Are you all right?"

She nodded, and ran for the console.

They heard the sound of alarms, the same alarms they had heard when the Russian "missile attacks" had been detected. They were running out of time.

Sarah started typing rapidly on the keyboard.

"Can you do it, Sarah?"

"I don't know," she said, typing rapidly. "That offer to have kids with me is looking mighty tempting."

"Sarah!"

She kept typing rapidly. "If I do this, if I save the world, will you make babies with me?"

"Sarah!"

"Will you?" she asked, glancing up at him.

"Maybe," said Calle.

Maybe, Sarah mouthed, as she continued to work.

Calle, knowing he could do nothing to help, went out in the corridor, where he found Major Reynolds and one of his men rubbing sore necks. The other two men were down. Calle looked questioningly at him.

"Dead," said Reynolds bluntly. "They moved incredibly fast. Sarah?"

"She's working on it."

Reynolds followed him to where Sarah was working on the terminal. There were only four minutes left.

"Sarah?"

She shook her head.

"Sarah?"

She shook her head again.

"Sarah!"

She pressed a key triumphantly, looked up at Calle, and said one word, in a monotone.

"Yes."

A few seconds later, they heard an announcement over the internal comm system. "Alert canceled... there has been a system wide malfunction... Repeat, the alert has been terminated."

Sarah stood up and stood face to face with Calle. "I've just saved all life as we know it on the planet Earth. Shall we start making babies, as you promised?"

Calle responded, "I said maybe."

"Maybe can mean yes."

"It can also mean no."

Sarah pouted.

"Why don't we go back to my place and... talk about it?" Calle asked.

Sarah stuck out her lip, shrugged, and nodded.
​

********​

Later, Sarah was lying in bed with Calle at his apartment. "It's nice to have an apartment again, instead of a burned out crater, isn't it?" she asked, as she snuggled up against him.

"It's nice to have the human race existing again," said Calle.

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Sarah. "Humanity is vastly overrated." She frowned. "What are you thinking?"

"I asked Colonel Strayker about those men. The ones who looked alike."

"And what did he say?"

"He said they were clones, that the Goodlife use cloning technology to compensate for their small numbers."

"And what do you believe, John Calle?" Sarah looked up at him with such innocent brown eyes.

"I don't know," said Calle. "All my life I've seen something with glowing orange eyes in my dreams. And now I finally see the mythical Bioman, and it has the same glowing orange eyes. Who is it? What is it? What does it want? Why did it carry that man off?" He turned to Sarah. "Those... Goodlife talked as if they worshipped the Bioman. But when they saw him, they instantly attacked him."

"They are insane. You cannot understand insanity," Sarah said, taking his arms and wrapping them around her.

"But the Bioman isn't insane. What did he want?"

"I don't know," Sarah said, shivering slightly. "And I hope I never find out."
​