Timecaster Read online

  Like most folks, Chomsky grew a lot of hemp. And like most folks, Chomsky often got stoned off his own supply. Smoking weed died out around the same time as smoking tobacco, due to various health risks. Some used a home pilling machine to make their own hash tablets. But the easier, and less expensive, way to get high was with an atomizer. Weed went in one end. Pure THC came out the other. It could be inhaled in a health-conscious, noncarcinogenic way.

  I’d seen Chomsky puffing on his atomizer many times. You might have thought it would mellow him out, but you’d be wrong. Even wasted, Chomsky was still a dick.

  I found his atomizer next to his lawn chair. It was roughly the size of a miniature dachshund, and in fact was painted to look like one. You put the pot in the dog’s mouth, then sucked on his ass.

  Boy, was this guy a dick.

  I also found a plastic garbage bag filled with marijuana buds. I sniffed one. White rhino strain. Good shit. I put the atomizer in the bag and slung it over my shoulder. Then I stared over at my roof.

  I was tired. Beyond tired. There was no way I could make the jump between our houses. Especially with a Santa Claus sack full of weed. But I wasn’t sure I had the energy to scale my wall, either. I could picture myself halfway up, just hanging there, exhausted, and the cops walking up and seeing me. It would be an inglorious end to my supposed crime wave.

  So I settled for jumping, once again. I tapped my eyelid, checking the cops’ position. They’d just reached the front of the house, which gave me about twenty seconds. Then I shoved the top of the bag into my belt, set my jaw, and sprinted for the edge of the roof.

  I jumped.

  I soared through the air.

  And once again, I realized I was going to come up short. Really short.

  I didn’t even make the edge of my roof. I missed it by about a foot, slapping into the side of my building, sticking there by my hands and knees as the gecko tape performed as advertised.

  Then I felt the garbage bag begin to slip. I peeled a hand off the wall and stretched down to grab it. The act jostled the TEV on my back, and the strap came off. It fell on top of the garbage bag, the strap catching on its circumference.

  I lifted it up, my fingers digging into the thin plastic, stretching it, and then breaking through. The bag began to tear, and I was in real danger of losing it, and the TEV. The buds would survive the fall. The TEV likely wouldn’t.

  Which was when the cops rounded the corner, heading my way.

  I was hanging about ten feet over the walkway. The bag was maybe eight feet above the ground, but the plastic was stretching thin, descending about an inch per second. With all the cool things science and technology have brought mankind, why couldn’t they invent a tear-proof garbage bag?

  It was dark, but not so dark the cops wouldn’t notice a man dangling over their heads. Especially a man dropping dope.

  They took their time, strolling slowly, locked in a deep conversation that luckily precluded them paying attention to their surroundings.

  “What would you do if you got the reward?”

  “I’m a public servant. I couldn’t collect.”

  They stopped directly under me. I tried to lift up the bag, but it was stretching faster than I could raise it.

  “The president said anyone can collect.”

  “No shit? Well, with ten million credits, I’d buy property. Serious property. Maybe even this house here.”

  He tapped the wall with his monadnock baton, and it gave off a little spark. I felt my sphincter squeeze closed.

  “It’s a nice place. Probably pays a fortune in biodiesel tax, though. And you meet his neighbor?”

  “I did. What a dick.”

  “I wonder if the wife comes with the house. She’s worth the ten mil, easy. Real redhead, I hear.”

  I managed to lift the bag up to my mouth. I held the plastic in my teeth, then reached lower for a better grip and watched in horror as a bud slipped out and began to fall. Without thinking, I peeled away my right hand and reached for the bud. I snagged it and wound up kneeling on the wall at a perfect ninety-degree angle. My legs, abs, and glutes burned like they’d been set on fire. I couldn’t hold this position for more than a few seconds.

  “I hear she’s an SLP. Maybe you can get on her waiting list.”

  “Chick like that? Couldn’t afford her.”

  “Maybe you should save your money, stop giving it all to El Stop Linda.”

  “Don’t knock El Stop Linda. She may not be much to look at, but she’s got the vibrating tongue implant.”

  “She looks like a guy.”

  “You wouldn’t care, once she starts licking.”

  Gravity began to beat me down, my upper body starting to sink. Getting caught wasn’t the only threat anymore. If my ass touched my heels, I had no idea how I’d ever get back up.

  “You know who she looks like?” The voices were fading. They were finally walking away.

  “Who?”

  “Stan, in accounting. Except El Stop Linda has more facial hair.”

  “I’d call them about even. Stan’s got bigger boobs, though.”

  I watched them round the corner. Then I dropped the bud, adjusted the TEV strap, and grunted in agony sitting up into a vertical position again. I couldn’t hold the bag anymore, so I tossed it onto my roof, hoping no one would hear. Then I painfully climbed the two more feet to the edge, hooking my arms over the top, dragging myself onto my lawn.

  If I lived through this, I was going to buy a ladder for the side of my house.

  After half a minute of rest and recuperation, I fished out my DT and did a quick calculation figuring out the air volume of my home and the parts per million of atomized THC needed to get someone high.

  I crawled over to one of my hemp plants and began harvesting buds. When I finished the plant, Chomsky’s garbage bag was full. I dug out the atomizer and moved in a crouch over to my air-conditioning unit, the fan humming. I didn’t bother with unscrewing the top, instead using the Nife to remove the outer housing and hepafilter. Then I placed the ass end of the atomizer above the spinning fan and began feeding it marijuana.

  It took fifteen minutes to empty the bag. I waited another five, cutting the hepafilter to mask size and taping it over my mouth and nose. I tapped my eyelid and viewed the infrared. The four cops were still in my house. They all appeared to be sitting down or reclining, two in the upstairs living room, and two in the downstairs den. Hopefully, the pot had put them to sleep, or at least made them so loopy they’d forgotten why they were there.

  I slid open my patio door and crept inside, powering up the TEV, which was still set to Teague’s Tesla account. Vicki said a listening device had been found in the kitchen, so I set the lens for a wide angle and got started. It took only a few seconds to tune in to the eighth membrane and less than a minute to find the octeract point and pet the bunny. Once I had a decent image on the monitor, I did a speedy rewind and watched, viewing back in time from an hour ago.

  I saw cops, lots of cops, moving in reverse. I went further back, before they arrived, and I saw the skinny, elderly face of Barney the dentist, one of Vicki’s clients, sticking his nose in my refrigerator. I slowed it down, got a close-up. He was eating an apple, the same smug/satisfied look on his face every man wore after being with my wife. I highly doubted he was the one who had set me up, but I followed his movements anyway to see if he planted any bugs. I trailed him, in reverse, out of the kitchen, down the hallway.

  I paused, hearing a noise coming from the living room. Peeking around the corner, I saw two cops slouching on my sofa. My projector was on. The cops looked dead, except every few seconds one of them would giggle. I looked at the wall to see what they were watching.

  Extreme Hobo Deaths 11.

  I snuck past, peeling the gecko tape off my hands and knees as I tiptoed to my wife’s bedroom. I never went in her bedroom. It was her place of business, and none of my business. But a bug had been found in her bedroom as well, and I needed to see
if it was one of her clients who had planted it. I opened the door.

  Then I whirled around, hearing someone behind me, and stared right down the barrel of a Glock Taser.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The cop holding the Taser had droopy eyes, the whites completely bloodshot.

  “Dude,” he said. “You got any chips?”

  I cleared my throat. “In the kitchen. Cabinet next to the refrigerator.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “You want me to hold your gun for you?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  He handed it over, giggled, and stumbled off. That was some good weed.

  My eyes dropped to the monitor and I followed Barney into my wife’s bedroom.

  Vicki was standing next to the bed, taking her clothes off in reverse. I paused it, wondering if I should continue. Vicki was entitled to privacy. And I really didn’t want to see her making love to another man. I should just skip past this, and keep searching for bugs.

  But I didn’t. The TEV still paused, I zoomed in on Vicki’s face. She appeared businesslike, perhaps even a bit bored. Not flushed or smiling, like she did after we had sex.

  How did I feel about that? Should I even be feeling anything? Vicki had been telling me, for years, that jealousy was a useless emotion, and that I acted like a caveman whenever I brought up her job. Just because I married her didn’t mean I owned her body, or could dictate what she could do with it.

  But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t want to fully possess Vicki. Nor did I look down on her profession, or think less of her because of it.

  So what was my problem?

  My problem was I had an emotional connection with sex, and I didn’t want her to have that emotional connection with anyone else.

  Looking at her face, it didn’t appear she had any emotional connection at all to skinny old Barney the dentist. It was just business. It wasn’t intimacy.

  I unbunched my shoulders, feeling like a great burden had been lifted off my back. All of my petty jealousy vanished. Earlier, I’d had sex with three women, with zero attachment to any of them. Apparently, it was the same with Vicki. Like she said, this was no more personal than a massage.

  Sighing with relief, I let the TEV play in reverse, watching as Vicki and skinny old Barney undressed, watching as they climbed into bed, watching as they switched to doggy-style, then standing up, then her on top, then him on top, then sideways . . .

  Skinny old Barney was a stallion. He was also a few inches bigger than me in an area that mattered.

  I paused again, zooming in on Vicki’s face as she was getting fuct silly. She was flushed, sweating, her mouth open in a scream.

  It didn’t seem businesslike at all. Not one little bit.

  I kept rewinding, and Barney kept humping. When he put my wife’s legs up over her head and executed a pr0n-star position called the brass clown, I had to turn it off or else smash the TEV against the wall. Then I left, resolving to never go into my wife’s bedroom again.

  “Dude! Thanks, man!”

  The cops were shoving chips into their mouths, missing at least half of their attempts. They both waved at me. I walked into the kitchen and tuned in to spacetime once again, starting over.

  Once I pet the bunny, I adjusted the speed and buzzed past the argument I’d had earlier with Vicki. I stopped and let it play out, syncing the sound to my headphone.

  “If you love me, you’d quit,” I said. I looked angry when I said it.

  “I shouldn’t have brought anyone here while you were home.” Vicki also looked angry.

  “You could have gone to his place.”

  “You don’t let me go to my clients’ homes. You don’t trust any of them.”

  “And why would that be? Maybe because they’re nailing my wife?”

  “It’s my job, Talon. Nothing more. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. You promised you’d stop doing this.”

  I paused, zooming in on her face.

  Her eyes were tearing up. I’d been so into winning the argument I hadn’t even noticed.

  Okay, so I was an asshat. In a way, that was good, because being angry at myself overrode any feelings of jealousy I had. I loved her. She loved me. We’d make it work. In fact, once we got through all of this, I would actually mention my issues to my therapist. Vicki was right. I was acting like a Luddite. Jealousy was so twentieth century.

  “Got any dip?”

  I glanced at the cop, and pointed to the fridge. Then I continued rewinding.

  I stopped at four days ago, seeing a man in the kitchen next to the stove.

  Barney again. And he was bending Vicki over the stove, his flabby old hips a blur, gripping her waist and driving into her like a jackrabbit.

  I glanced at the stove—the stove where I made my eggs every morning—and seriously wanted to kill this old bastard.

  “Dude! You got Jell-O! You mind, man?”

  “Help yourself,” I told him.

  He took the bean dip and the Jell-O mold. Two steps away from the fridge, he fell onto his face. I pulled his head out of the Jell-O so he didn’t drown, and decided I’d try planting some white rhino next season. Maybe, if I atomized enough of it, I’d be able to forget the image of Barney the Fucking Machine, which was now permanently burned into my cerebellum.

  More rewinding. Vicki making breakfast. Me cooking dinner. Coming and going, going and coming. I slowed down whenever I saw one of Vicki’s clients, but none of them planted any bugs, and thankfully none of them bent her over the stove.

  As time raced backward, I was getting close to the two-week cutoff. The TEV couldn’t go more than two weeks into the past. If the listening devices were older than that, this was a dead end.

  But then, at thirteen days and seven hours ago, I got lucky. Neil, my old friend who led me to Aunt Zelda’s and started this whole mess, opened up the utensil drawer, but didn’t take anything out. He followed that up by opening the cabinet under the sink, sticking his head inside, and then standing back up, hands empty.

  I checked the utensil drawer, finding nothing but sporks and knives. Then I ducked under the sink, tapping my eyelid three times for night vision. Besides the dishwashing detergent, plunger, and various cleaning chemicals, I spotted something round and metallic, roughly the size of a hyperbaseball, under a box of sponges. I brought up my DT and took a picture of it, then ran the picture through uffsee.

  I got zero hits.

  “Hey, man, don’t hoard all the Jell-O.”

  Another cop stumbled over, snagging the bowl. He brought it to his lips and slurped.

  I ignored him, studying the object. It obviously wasn’t a listening device, because the cops would have found it when they did their transmitter sweep. A bomb?

  I flipped the air sensor on my DT, letting it have a digital sniff. It analyzed the air around the object, finding standard atmospheric gases, traces of cleaning agents, and a decent amount of atomized marijuana. But nothing caustic, flammable, or potentially explosive.

  So what was this thing?

  Then I scanned it, revealing the interior guts. Circuits and servos, unrecognizable to me.

  I threw caution to the wind and picked the ball up. It was smooth, heavy for its size, and in the light of the kitchen it appeared to be many colors all at once, like an oscillating prism. I turned it over in my palm and noticed a panel, along with a button. Next to the button were the engraved words PRESS ME.

  That didn’t seem like the wisest idea. Especially after watching Boise implode. This didn’t look like the device Alter-Talon had used, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Cool! Hyperbaseball!”

  The cop snatched the ball from my hand. I reached for it, slipping on green Jell-O, falling onto my face.

  “Hey! A button!”

  Before I could yell, “Don’t press it, you fool—you’ll kill us all!” he pressed the button.

  It didn’t kill us all.

  In fact, it didn’t do anything. The cop star
ed at it, puzzled, and then looked at me. “You got any cereal?”

  “Last cabinet on the left. Milk’s in the fridge.”

  “Thanks. Trippy ball, man.”

  He tossed it to me. I caught it. While the ball looked exactly the same, I noticed the prism effect had sped up. There was also a very faint buzzing noise coming from inside. But other than that, it didn’t seem to be doing anything.

  I went to my TEV, and saw Vicki boffing somebody on the kitchen table. Where I ate my eggs every morning. I really needed to tell her to keep her clientele in her bedroom.

  I got ready to fast-forward to see where Neil had gone, when I noticed Vicki had a black eye and was sobbing uncontrollably. The sex was violent, and hardly looked consensual.

  I clenched my jaw, panning left to see the face of the son of a bitch doing this to her.

  The son of a bitch turned out to be me.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The Mastermind listens as Talon watches the timecast. The incompetent cops hadn’t found all of the bugs. He wishes he could see Talon’s face, wishes he’d used video cameras instead of listening devices.

  Watching half a million people disappear with the press of a button was a heady experience. But they weren’t real to him. They were numbers. Statistics. The first hash mark of many.

  But Talon . . .

  The mouse is personal. Being able to see him suffer will be a treat for the Mastermind.

  Not now. But soon.

  The Mastermind is interrupted by a knock at his door. The cops? Did they know?

  No. It’s reporters. They want him to comment. He declines with a smile.

  Later, when they realize how close they were to the real Butcher of Boise, they’ll want to hang themselves.

  If they aren’t already dead by then.

  He resumes listening to Talon. It has taken the mouse longer than expected, but he’s followed the trail of crumbs.

  Soon the trail will end. And the cat and mouse will meet.

  Watching half a million vanish from a distance won’t be nearly as much fun as watching one man die up close.