The Time War Ch. 45

Chapter 45: The End of Humanity

Goodlife:

"The noise the noise the noise the noise THE NOISE!" Mercury shouted. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. But he couldn't silence the noises, couldn't quiet the visions. Everything that had happened, everything that would happen, and, more importantly, everything that might happen flashed through his head. He was constantly being bombarded by the possibilities, the possibilities of the universe, and it was driving him mad.

Driving them mad. All of them.

Oliver Wayfairer 1, 2, and 3 were rolling on the ground, screaming. Nigel Roman 1 was covering his ears and banging his head against the wall. Angie Moore 1 and 2 were staring each other in the eye in and yelling as loudly as they possibly could, to drown out the noise.

So many visions! So many possibilities!

Alina Sestacovika 1 was screaming so loud that Mercury whipped out his compression pistol and shot her dead. When Alina Sestacovika 2 saw Alina Sestacovika 1 fall to the ground, she laughed hysterically, making Mercury wince. So he shot her dead too. Then he turned, staring at the crowd, and shot Angie Moore 3 dead as well.

"Hey, why did you shoot her?" Angie Moore 2 asked.

"Why not?" Mercury asked, training his gun on her.

That was good enough for Angie Moore 2.

Something had to be done about the noise, about the screams of every reality in their heads. Finally, Mercury was able to block it all off, long enough to think of a plan.

He was going to end mankind once and for all. He told the others as much.

"But if you do that, I'll disappear," said Angie Moore 3.

"So will I," said Andrew Wyatt 3.

"Believe me, you'll be happier for it," said Mercury.

"How will this be accomplished?" Nigel Roman 1 asked.

"Come. I will show you!" said Mercury. He took the others down, down down down, to sublevel four.

SQUEEEEEAK! SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK!

They heard them before they saw them, the giant pits filled with rats. Hundreds, thousands of them. And beyond them was the sealed laboratory where the instrument of mankind's destruction was being bred.

Mercury Jones turned and smiled at his followers. "Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you the Black Plague of the 15th century. The gift that keeps on giving."

********

Marsha Kalinsky didn't talk much.

Calle had tried to strike up a conversation with her once or twice. The small, dark haired woman who looked very nervous avoided conversation like the plague, answering questions monosyllabically as often as possible. Calle had heard that she had been a prisoner of the Temporal Social Justice Warriors, and before that the Luddites, for many years, and could only begin to imagine how traumatized she must be.

So Marsha sat there and stared straight at her holoscreens, much like Sarah used to.

Sarah.

Calle still missed her. He wondered where... or when... she was now.

Suddenly Marsha cringed. "No... no... oh no!" she cried.

"What is it?"

Marsha got up and ran for the Commander's office.

********

"Humanity has been wiped out, once again," said Strayker grimly.

This had happened only once before as Calle could recall it, when Goodlife had started a thermonuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis. But at least there had been some survivors then, a few thousand in Australia and South America.

This time, it looked like there were no survivors. None. The Earth was a lifeless planet. If not for their Time Suppressor, built into the Time Shaft, they all would have disappeared too.

Calle felt a depressing weight on his shoulders. He had experienced this all once before, but somehow it was worse than last time. He remembered making love to Sarah, thinking they were almost the last people on Planet Earth. Sarah had whispered to him, imploring him to put a baby into her, to start to repopulate the planet. Calle had found that experience to be incredibly erotic and he often thought about it to help him fall asleep at night.

But there was no Sarah now. Mercy Kildaire had been giving him more than friendly smiles, and Naomi Zelden had been sending him flirtatious looks, but Calle hadn't been responsive.

And now they had a situation that required all their attention.

Naomi had determined that the Black Plague of the mid 14th century had been much more devastating than history recorded. Instead of killing millions, it seemed to have wiped out all life on the planet.

They had to find whoever was doing it and stop them. And so Calle joined a team led by Major Castleman, and, wearing appropriate dress, they went back in time to the Middle Ages to what eventually would become France.

********

There was a terrible odor in the air. Everything was dirty. There were corpses lying in the street. Not only that, but body parts and piles of shit.

Mercy Kildaire retched. The smell was incredibly bad. Some of the other operatives choked and started coughing.

The smell affected Calle, but he tried to drive it away. He closed his eyes and focused, focused on the only thing that was important, the thing that was changing history in such a radical way.

For once his talent worked immediately, and he sensed a place, an important place, and suddenly, he knew where it was. He started off at a brisk pace, and Major Castleman signaled for the others to follow.

After nearly a half hour of walking they came to a morgue, abutting a graveyard. The stench was even stronger here. Calle looked at Major Castleman and nodded. Castleman nodded back.

They entered the morgue. What they found inside was... vats. Vats filled with hundreds of screaming rats, contaminated with the black plague, awaiting distribution.

Everyone looked at each other with horror and fear in their eyes. This must be one of the distribution points. All they had to do was wait until-

"SO GOOD TO SEE YOU, MR. CALLE!" a voice cried.

And suddenly, they were overwhelmed. A half dozen crazy, screaming people were in their midst. They were too close for the CS operatives to fire their weapons, and they were incredibly strong. They tossed Major Castleman aside like he was a sack of potatoes. One of them grabbed Calle from behind. In front of him, Calle saw a gateway opening.

"GET READY TO TAKE A LITTLE TRIP, MR. CALLE!" his assailant yelled.

"No!" Calle cried.

The man holding him cackled, and pushed Calle headfirst into the gateway, and all went black.

*********

"Hello, John Calle."

Calle opened his eyes. He was in the control room.

No, he was in a control one. One with comfortable couches. One of which he was lying on. He saw maniacal faces grinning at him.

"Who... what....?"

"When?" said Mercury. "Where?" he smiled again. "Why?" he added, just for good measure.

Calle sat up. His pistol and recall device were gone. "Why are you doing this?"

"To silence the noise, John Calle. We must have quiet, so we can hear again," Mercury Jones explained.

"And you can only get quiet by murdering all life on the planet Earth?" Calle asked.

Mercury touched the tip of his nose, and Angie Moore 2 giggled hysterically.

Calle frowned. "What do you want with me?"

"You are one of us, John Calle."

"Oh, no I'm not," said Calle, sitting up.

"Oh yes you are," said Mercury, in a mocking tone that imitated Calle's voice. "The laughter. The childhood catatonia. The eyes, John Calle. Have you seen the eyes?"

Those glowing orange eyes.

"Yes," said Calle guiltily.

"We all have," said Mercury. "We all have been marked by the Great One. That is how we found you, how we found all of us, searching through the web of time."

"You must join us, John Calle, said Angie Moore 2.

"Oh no," said Calle, his back stiffening.

"Oh yes," said Nigel Roman 1.

Calle watched as Oliver Wayfairer 1 went over to the controls for the Time Shaft and deactivated the force field around it.

"Bring him!" Mercury Jones commanded.

"No!" Calle cried. Andrew Wyatt 2 took one of his arms, and Andrew Wyatt 3 took the other. They dragged him to the Time Shaft. Calle knew what they were about to do.

"You're going to make me touch that... and drive me crazy... so I'll hear the voices... so I'll want to wipe out mankind?"

"Exactly, John Calle," said Mercury. "You understand SO PERFECTLY!"

"You're insane," said Calle. "You all are!"

Mercury paused for a long moment. Then he said, "Insanity. Sanity. Madness. Calmness. Reflections in the water. It all depends on which side you're looking at it from." He gestured to the Andrew Wyatts. "Do it."

"No!" Calle cried. He struggled as they brought him closer to the Time Shaft. But they were both incredibly, maniacally strong. Calle saw the Time Shaft now, pulsating blue energy, energy which soon would be coursing through his body, through his mind. In his final moment he turned and looked at Mercury Jones, and saw the gleam of insanity in his eyes, the frightful look of inhumanity, and for Calle, in that moment, that was the scariest thing of all.

And then Mercury started to mutter. "No... no.... NOOOOO!" he cried, grabbing his head.

He stiffened, and involuntarily raised his arms above his head. Then he clapped his hands together loudly.

Suddenly, his body began to transform. His arms and legs became huge, tremendously muscular. Calle could see the muscles glowing, under his skin, as well as his internal organs. Mercury's face was transformed now; he was wearing thick goggles, with glowing orange eyes inside of them, and a mask over his mouth.

The Bioman had returned.

Everyone stood frozen, until the Bioman walked over to Calle, and then gradually took Andrew Wyatt 2 in his arms and threw him across the room. He did the same with Andrew Wyatt 3 a few seconds later.

That broke a spell of immobility, and suddenly everyone charged the Bioman. Nigel Roman 1 screamed as he punched the Bioman right in the heart. The Bioman simply looked at him, grabbed Nigel Roman's head, and snapped it off with an awful cracking sound.

Oliver Wayfairer 1 charged him, and the Bioman grabbed him, and twisted his neck until it cracked. Air bubbles could be seen rising from the Bioman's mouth mask and vibrations in the liquid air around them as he dropped Oliver Wayfairer 1's lifeless body to the ground.

Then Oliver Wayfairer 2 charged him along with Angie Moore 2, from opposite directions. In a tremendous display of agility, the Bioman grabbed both their heads and knocked them together so hard that they were both pulped.

And then Andrew Wyatt 2 was up again, and he screamed as he punched the Bioman in the face. The Bioman grabbed him and put him over his knee, and gave a mighty karate chop, and Andrew Wyatt 2's body broke in half. Both halves dropped to the ground with a thud. The top half screamed wordlessly for a few seconds until it realized it was dead.

There was the faint sound of a compression pistol being fired, and the Bioman looked down and saw compression energy spattering against his internal organs... and coming out through his body behind him. He looked up and saw Andrew Wyatt 3, firing his pistol at him. The Bioman charged Andrew Wyatt 3, and for the first time Calle saw the Bioman move fast, incredibly fast, and he grabbed Andrew Wyatt 3 and threw him upwards so hard that his head got lodged in the ceiling. His arms and legs flailed, creating liquid vibrations in the air, but only for a few seconds.

And then they were all alone again, just the Bioman and Calle. Calle still couldn't move. He watched helplessly as the Bioman stood right in front of him, face to face. Calle stared into those glowing orange eyes, inside those big thick goggles, and somehow knew he was going to be next. The Bioman would carry him away, just like the others, and he would never be seen or heard from again.

The Bioman stared at Calle, his goggles only inches away from Calle's eyes, for what seemed like a long time. Perhaps an eternity. Perhaps only a minute. It was impossible to say. Perhaps he could have somehow measured the passage of time by the number of air bubbles which slipped through the corner of the Bioman's mouth mask.

And then the Bioman took a step back, and raised his hand over Calle's face. Bursts of brilliant white light shined from his open palm.

Nude women, suspended in mid air, with their legs spread... a confrontation in a control room... Bright white lines, expanding at an enormously increasing rate.... The time shaft, pulsating and pulsating again and again.... And those eyes, those glowing orange eyes....

And then the Bioman lowered his hand, creating vibrations in the liquid air, and he changed in front of Calle's eyes, and he became Mercury Jones again, or seemed to, but this was a different Mercury Jones, a Mercury Jones with no hint of smile or madness in his eyes. And then Calle watched out of the corner of his eye as Mercury Jones walked into the Binochi Corridor, which somehow had been active again, and he vanished.

When Calle found he could move and breathe again, he found himself surrounded by dead, shredded bodies in an empty control room.

********

Once they had access to the Goodlife control room, ending the plague was a simple matter. The computer records clearly showed when and where the Goodlife first started spreading the plague; the Continuity Service simply went back a day in time before the project began, and blew up the lab. The problem was solved, a grossly understated way of saying that the entire human race had just been saved.

********

With the Goodlife eliminated, and the Luddites destroyed, and the Black White Supremacists vanquished, and the Temporal Social Justice Warriors defeated, Calle should have been happy. But he wasn't.

He was lonely.

He continued working for the Continuity Service. He continued going on missions. It seemed there were other factions to fight, though they were smaller and less well organized than the ones they had already destroyed. Calle did what he was called on to do, but the joy was gone from his life.

And then one day, several weeks after his last encounter with the Bioman, when he was on a mission in 1970's New York City in a rainy day, he passed by a coffee shop and happened to look in the window.

Marion.

She sat there, looking straight at him.

Calle turn around, and ran into the coffee shop. But incredibly, by the time he got there, she was gone.

Calle cried out in frustration, attracting the stares of the other patrons. He looked where she had been sitting.

And then he saw it. On her half-drunken coffee cup.

New Paltz Café. Twelve Noon. Two days.

*********

It wasn't hard to persuade Colonel Strayker to let Calle take a vacation. With the major factions destroyed, and the traitors within the CS located and liquidated, the tension in the Continuity Service eased visibly. Calle was even startled to see Strayker smiling at him at times, which for some reason unnerved him. And so Strayker readily agreed to let Calle take a few days off. "You've earned it," he said, clasping Calle on the back. "Do you have any plans?"

"I was thinking of going to New Paltz, New York," said Calle quietly.

Strayker nodded knowingly.

********

New Paltz was much as Calle remembered it, the last time he had been there. The World Government had resettled thousands of the followers of Laquinta in the small town, and the streets were filled with big burly bearded men in turbans and women covered from head to toe in black, with only small slits for eyes. The few locals who were left walked fearfully on the streets, careful to give the newcomers the right of way.

Calle was relieved when he entered the New Paltz Café to still find some Americans there sipping coffee and looking subdued. It was like a small oasis of normality. And then he saw the back of a woman, a woman who could only be-

"John!" said Marion, flying into his arms.

Calle hugged her, tears streaming out of his eyes. It was her. It was Marion. Not a surgically altered operative. It really was her! He was certain of it, down to his bones.

"I missed you so much!" Calle cried, hugging her tightly.

"I missed you too," said Marion, though there was a strain, a tension to her voice that even Calle in his excited state markedly noticed.

They sat down in a booth. "Marion... what happened to you? How are you alive?" Calle asked. He winced at the blunt way he asked it, but it was the question that most needed asking.

Marion smiled. She didn't seem offended in the slightest. She put her hand over his. "I have a lot to tell you, John."

"Yes!" Calle cried.

Marion looked around. "But not here. Somewhere quieter... more intimate."

Alarm bells started to ring in Calle's head. "What did you have in mind?" he asked.

She reached out and touched his hand. Calle jerked, as he felt something prick him. He pulled away, and saw a droplet of blood between his thumb and forefinger.

"Somewhere we can talk," said Marion. He could see her looking at him with concern, even as her face grew more hazy. Calle felt incredibly sleepy. As his head fell forward on the table, the last thing he remembered were gentle hands, there to catch him, and then, still partially awake, hands stroking his hair, and then... nothing.