Anello DeVolta's further adventures through time, alternate universes, and an ever-changing doomsday.
By David Cocco
Anello stepped into the briefing room and found McKresky seated at the table.
“Sir.” Anello saluted McKresky.
He returned the salute. “At ease, boyo.” He shook Anello’s hand. “Good work on that last one.”
“Nothing to it, sir.”
“Well I’m glad you don’t think so. Going for slash on the next one, eh?”
“It’s a big day.”
“You got that right. I’ll be honest, Volt, this’ll be your hardest job yet.”
“Where to this time?”
“You’re to be deployed to 2038. This is wet work.” McKresky handed the file to Anello. “Tough one. Two targets. The first is Russell Stevens, head of Willowbrook Security. The second is Wilson Lengua, a programmer in the Health and Science Tech branch of MIT”
“What do they have to do with this shit show?” asked Anello.
“In 2045, Stevens creates Willowbrook Mercenary Drone Solutions, a way to retrofit your drone with basic weaponry. It’s like having an armed guard with you wherever you go. It’s a decent idea in theory, but it doesn’t pan out. So that’s Stevens.”
“And Lengua?”
“Well, Steven sets up the pins. Lengua knocks them down. Round about the same time, 2045, Lengua is finishing up his doctorate at MIT. He takes an old Willowbrook Hover Classic and loads a program intending to teach the drone how to perform emergency surgery. The drones up to that point only have basic targeting on them. He loads in every facet of the human body, every one of our weaknesses: every nerve ending and blood vessel. In order to react to complications during surgery he loads a basic sentience program to it as well.
“He doesn’t take into account the fact that these drones originally only had surveillance capabilities. Back when they were introduced they couldn’t do anything but call the police, so each one was constantly connected to the Willowbrook Hub. It’s like they have a hive mind.”
“Armed hover drones plus sentience plus detailed knowledge of human anatomy equals giant mess. I’m picking up what you’re putting down, sir.”
“Good. Lengua should be easy enough, but Stevens will be a tough one. He’ll have a security detail to end them all, and while he’s brainy enough to understand most of the science at work in the Willowbrook lab, He spent 4 years stationed in Sudan. Cliff Notes: The old war dog has a trick or two up his sleeve, and backup out the wazoo.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Good. I’d hate for you to have to frag in the middle of your slash job.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. How much longer until I’m back in the chamber?”
“You’ve got 72 hours.”
* * *
Every member of the coalition possessed some synthogenic parts. This was the only way that their bodies were able to withstand the timequakes. Most were ex-military like Volt; there were a few former intelligence operatives in the mix as well. If a member of the coalition was found out on assignment, they were instructed to self-destruct. The synthogenics were all wired with explosives. This was all covered in the orientation pamphlet when he joined the coalition before the Dallas Job.
“If I have to self destruct, won’t they be able to salvage my core? Wouldn’t that be, I don’t know, problematic?”
“Don’t worry kid, we thought about that when we designed the program. There’s a capsule of hyper concentrated sulfuric acid inside your SG that basically hollows out the mechanism and triggers the explosion. After detonation, there should be enough limbs and viscera lying around so your missing heart and digestive system, or what have you, shouldn’t raise any red flags. To them you’ll just seem like a suicide bomber.”
“Well… that’s good news… I guess.”
“Hey, you’ve already been blown apart once, right? This should be old hat to you.” McKresky gave him a sly wink.
* * *
“Sometimes I wonder though,” O’Shaughnessy was spooning lukewarm powdered eggs and a biscuit into his face hole as he talked, “why doesn’t one of us just go back to like the 1860’s and put a bullet in the back of Tesla’s head when he’s a kid?”
Anello had his head in his hand, still recouping from his headache and the vision of her under the umbrella. Both were pinballing within his skull.
“Put it this way, kid,” he said, “I’ve been alive for almost 150 years, and I’ve been blown up. Technology isn’t always bad.”
“But people clearly can’t use it responsibly, look at us. We’re in a freaking bunker because a bunch of idiots strapped weapons to their robot-slaves.”
“We’re in a bunker because someone tried to create something he thought would help the human race, but he didn’t think through all the consequences. Simple as that.”
“Well, how many more times are we going to have to go back?”
“That’s above my pay grade, Kid.” Anello shoveled the vaguely egg-like slop into his mouth. Food usually helped adjust the body.
“But like… everyone talks about Hitler, why don’t we go kill Hitler. For, like, ever, all anyone has talked about is how evil Hitler was. Let’s kill him.”
“If Hitler were successful, we would go back and kill him. It wasn’t an Extinction Level Event, so we don’t play around with it. I mean, look at what we do. I just went back and moved some papers from one side of a desk to another and changed the course of human history.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Trust me, I am. We’ve got a hard enough time fixing the E.L.E’s. It’s in our best interest not to start fucking around where we aren’t needed.”
* * *
“We’ve got a problem.” Doctor Wideman (who was skinny, ironically enough) turned off the scanner and let Anello out.
“What’s up, Doc?”
“Nothing major, your brain is just in advanced stages of decay,” he said, matter of factly.
“That sounds pretty major.”
“I suppose you’re right; major, but not unexpected. If you were a regular Joe, your brain would be about 150 years old, but you’ve timequaked 4 different times going back beyond the year 2000, so yeah… your brain is almost 700 years old at this point.”
“So…”
“So you’ve got brain rot. That’s not the technical term, but basically your brain is going to be more or less useless once you return from your slash job. Wherever you wake up, I will almost definitely have to give you a synthogenic brain before you can be revived.”
“Am I going to make it that far?”
“As long as you survive your mission, there’s no reason I wouldn’t be able to repair the damage to you once you arrive.”
“Okay.” A pang of relief went through Anello.
“No guarantees, you understand,” said the Doctor. This should have upset Anello, but he was more overcome with the general piss-poorness of the skinny Wideman’s bedside manner. “I wouldn’t worry about it though. I’m clearing you for your mission.”
“You sure about this?” asked Anello. All at once the cinderblocks shook from an unholy boom out in the unseen world.
“Don’t have much choice,” said the skinny Wideman. He signed a slip of paper on his clipboard, tearing it across a perforated edge and handing it to Anello.
“Godspeed Soldier.”
“Thanks Doc, you really know how to put a guy at ease.”
* * *
Anello prepared to enter the chamber. The old girl was like an iron lung, if an iron lung could have nightmarish consequences for use and smelled vaguely of body odor and vomit on the inside. The chamber didn’t have to be set up like the Ritz because it was a one-of-a-kind miracle of Science, and regardless of how many times they used the damn thing, nobody had stayed in a Ritz since the before the Crater Wars almost 18 timelines and 170 years ago, so there weren’t many people qualified to use that descriptor with anything close to authority in the subject.
He punched the date from his file into the machine and leaned back. This leg of the trip was typically easier. There was no headache at least, no changes in the fabric of time to become acclimated to. A guy could get used to that.
Anello tried to get used to the idea of his new synthogenic brain. It wasn’t a huge deal, practically speaking. He had seen Bronson after he got his new SG. He drooled for a couple of days and had to wear a diaper for a week or so, but he was more or less normal by now. Of course he had to learn everyone’s name again. The SG brain was like resetting the hard drive of a person back to factory settings. The problem he was having was simple, he already had titanium guts and an SG heart. How much more of himself was he going to have to sacrifice so he could keep cleaning up people’s mistakes? Anello liked his brain just the way it was and-
Auburn hair, and raindrops and her body held close to his under an umbrella… He was close. Something about being closer in the timeline made his brain light up with sense memories. The chamber whirred to a stop and Anello knew it was time to get to work.
He climbed out of the old girl and into the dark and musty barn. There was an old station wagon parked outside. The night was thick with humidity and the stars shone overhead with no ambient light to blot them out. Anello sucked in the fresh air through his nose; every now and then, his job had some perks.
DAVID COCCO likes grimy hip-hop, Kurt Vonnegut books and cooking risotto. CoccoBeware
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