“I opened the door for you.” Ellis found even his new lungs didn’t work so well when he was drowning in stupidity and humiliation.
“Might have been able to get in there without you, just would have taken longer. The Geomancy Institute was the ball-buster. Those bastards take their work seriously. And they’re smart too. We tried getting inside by talking to one, but that geomancer noticed something—got all antsy. Luckily the poor slob just blurted out his suspicions. Hal was the one who knew the most about geology and stuff. The only one who could hope to pass for a real geomancer, and I had conditioned Hal, like I did the rest of them—like I have Rob reeducating Yal. I call it desensitivity training. They’re never gonna be real men. Don’t have the killing mentality—the advantage of the Y chromosome, as Dex puts it. Hal took care of Geo-24, but by the sound of things, our bald Einstein did a pretty piss-poor job of killing you and Pax—not that I wanted him to.” Warren held up a hand, warding off a rebuttal. “Hal was acting on his own with that.”
Ellis was fitting the puzzle pieces in place, and a picture was finally taking shape. Warren in a bar beating up strangers; Warren’s wife being so clumsy she fell down flights of stairs; Warren’s desire to play quarterback—to be in charge—when his real talent was as a fullback.
The trio in hazard suits at the far side of the room had ignored them, but then one turned. It could have been anyone’s eyes peering out of that shielded hood, even Pax.
“Two are already set—just got this last one. Having trouble with the timer or something, I guess. Not really needed, but I like to be thorough. Operation New Dawn is about to commence.” Warren looked at the clock on the wall. “About three hours, I figure—Dex has the bombs set to blow precisely at 14:54 Hollow World core time, which translates to sunset here. So in the morning, this village will be all that’s left of humanity. Just think of that, Ellis, the whole world cleaned, reset, and ready to sprout anew from our two seeds. And after I dropped out of high school, my mother never thought I’d amount to anything.”
“This is insane!” Ellis’s voice rose in volume and pitch more than he expected. He sounded a little hysterical, a man on the brink, but maybe that’s what Warren needed to hear. Ellis had to convince his friend just how bad an idea this was, and calm conversation just wasn’t going to cut it. “You know that, right, Warren? I’m talking totally off-the-fucking-hook nuts!”
Warren shook his head with that same condescending you-just-don’t-understand smile. “Ellis, why do you think you and I are the only two people to travel through time? If we could do it, don’t you think everyone else could have too?”
“No—not really. Hoffmann’s equations were wrong. His idea wouldn’t have worked at all if I hadn’t figured out the mistake, and I didn’t tell anyone. You were only able to do it because you had my notes.”
“Oh, so you’re the only one in two thousand years who could have figured out that error? We’re the only ones here. You don’t find that a bit strange?”
“Perhaps, but…well, maybe there’s a minimum jump threshold, and that’s why we traveled two thousand years instead of two hundred. More people might have tried but haven’t showed up yet. Not to mention it’s not the kind of thing you try without a really good reason. The high probability of death is a pretty big deterrent. Heck, even the most devout people who are convinced they’ll wind up in heaven aren’t taking the leap of faith to the afterlife. Even after Jesus came back and said the water’s fine, people are still terrified, and in the case of time travel, no one can go back to assuage their fears. It’s no coincidence that both of us had terminal illnesses. Neither of us would have tried otherwise.”
Warren smirked. “You know what I think? I think no one else has done it because it isn’t possible.”
“Huh?”
“C’mon, Ellis, milk crates and batteries? Seriously? Do you think that would actually work?”
“But it did.”
Warren shook his head. “Divine intervention, buddy. The Almighty picked us both up and chucked us into the future to be a pair of Noahs. And when the sun sets, we will be.” He looked out the window again and chuckled. “It’s Friday—did you know that? Gives a whole new meaning to TGIF, don’t you think?”
“I can’t let you do this. If this isn’t some joke—if you’re serious”—Ellis looked at the crate and the three people in hazard suits working over the table—“and it looks like you are…Shit, Warren, there’s no way I’m gonna let you kill millions of people.”
“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it, buddy? They aren’t really people, now, are they? I’m doing this for us, and the world. You can’t tell me you like the idea of humanity living like Ken doll moles. Mankind got off course, slipped the rails, and skidded right over a cliff. We have the chance, right now, to put the old Lionel back on the metal. We can fix everything, and maybe this time God will approve and usher in the end of days.”
Ellis was shaking his head in broad swings. “Sorry, Warren. This isn’t going to happen.”
Warren looked at him sadly. “Already has, pal.”
“I’m going to put a stop to it.”
“Really?” Warren chuckled, a sound that made Ellis cringe. “How? Bombs are already in place. We’re just running out the clock. Besides, you seem to have misplaced your pistol. Or do you plan on fighting me and the rest of the Firestone Farm?”
Warren put up his fists like he was John L. Sullivan and laughed.
Ellis glanced at the three working at the table.
Warren noticed the look. “Trust me, everyone here—everyone on the farm—is in this one hundred percent. You’re not going to change their minds. They’ll do anything to stop being the five hundredth or ten thousandth of someone. After the bombs go off, they’ll each be one of just a handful, and after some plastic surgery, they’ll each be unique. They’ll each be special.”
Pax was right. Warren was planning on doing something much, much worse.
Ellis took a step toward the door and stopped.
“Where you gonna go? You don’t have a portal. Weather is getting colder, and not as many baldies are coming up here this time of year. There’s nothing but wilderness beyond this village. Trust me, I know that well.”
Ellis hesitated.
“I’ll tell you what,” Warren said in his old, barfly-friendly voice and clapped him on the back. “I’ve been working with Yal to build a still. We’ve made a few quarts of this awful moonshine from corn—you know it’s not just for fructose syrup anymore.” He winked. “Tastes like gasoline, but does the trick. What do you say the two of us go get loaded like that time when we snuck the Kool-Aid rum punch into the Bob Seger concert at Pine Knob. They don’t need me here. We can take a few bottles and hike up to the old Rouge River. I know a spot, a hill that looks down so that you can actually see old Detroit. The city ain’t there no more, but you can see where it used to be. You can see the Detroit River and a smidge of Canada where the Ambassador Bridge once was. We’ll get hammered on corn juice and remember the old days when we used to be rusted gears bound for the trash bin. C’mon, Dex has a book around here of pattern variations. It has pictures. We can pick out what we want our future brides to look like.”
Ellis felt boxed in. Warren was right—what could he do?
Fact is, people aren’t the same. You’re smarter than I am. I’m stronger than you are. These are facts.
Ellis couldn’t argue with facts. Warren had aged about a decade beyond Ellis, but he’d had work done too. Maybe a lot of work. With his broad chest, thick arms, and a neck the size of Ellis’s thigh, Warren looked like the football star he’d once been. And even if he could subdue him, Warren was right, Ellis was outnumbered. If they all joined forces, and there was no reason to think otherwise, they would overwhelm him easily.