July 1, 2014. Tuesday.
It was midday, when John and Sandy walked back to George's house together with a young couple, wearing most uncommon clothes. With green reflective t-shirts and shorts, they radiated intense light whenever they were under the sun. Four of them chatted and laughed for a short while. Then, the couple put their helmets on and vanished.
Max rushed out of the house. Passing Sandy and John, he strode towards the direction of the train station without saying a word. He carried a large, heavy bag on his shoulder. Zoop followed him. With the short legs, he had to run to keep up.
The door of the house opened for the third time. It was Sally wearing her uniform with a burned out hole on the back. Before walking away, she gave both her tranquilizing guns to John and Sandy and said, "George will explain," then ran off to the direction the first two time travelers went to, shouting, "C'mon, Max, slow down, let us help, those things are heavy!"
The two friends were almost on the stairs when George walked out with his trademark white shirt and white shorts on. Contrary to others, he kept his cool. He yawned and pick his long nose before talking. "Hey," he greeted his friends.
"Hey," said John.
"Many things had happened while you were away."
"I see." John glanced at the chair leg lying on the ground.
"These are for self-defense." George pointed at the guns in his friends' hands. "I will ask you to take shifts and stay in the cellar twenty-four seven starting tomorrow. We will use dissaperator to bring people, including Alfonso to you. I want them shot down and constrained. Use two or three darts, just to be safe.
"Zoop insists you do the same to Dang or other gray people who wear no sunglasses. We met an evil guy in a scuba suit today; then there is that weirdo who tortured Sandy, the guards at the mansion. You never know what we might meet. Just shoot anyone you don't know who appears out of thin air. You can find some rope in the chest in the cellar."
"Ok. We won't let you down." John knitted his brows, Sandy did the same.
"Why so serious? Everything will be fine, you'll see. Jim is off the leash, I'm sure he will help if you get into trouble." George gave them a smile and added, "Oh, and..."
"Yes?"
"Did you receive anything of value today? I took a little gold bar from Max, grabbed the coins we got from the old couple. I'm heading to Hill's to cash it out. We will need all the money we can get in Crossroad."
"Here you go," Sandy said. She put five shiny yellowish coins into George's palm. They were identical to the ones left by the old couple.
"Thanks. See you soon, John, Sandy." George nodded to them both, as he walked away.
"Bye," they replied together.
When George turned round the corner and disappeared from his friends' sight, he ran off towards the Hill's pawnshop.
———
Catching his breath, George was happy to see that the shop was still working. The fence and the 'keep away signs' had disappeared. Everything had returned to normal. However, a lack of cars parked outside indicated a decline in clients. George remembered the place swarming with people bringing, buying junk, sometimes even trading it in the doorway.
A hanging doorbell jingled above his head when George stepped in. Not much had changed since his last visit, only the shelves looked emptier and no people in creepy suits were there to make him leave.
Sitting by the cashier was Mr. Hill himself. All alive and well, looking a little worried, a little upset. There was not a single hair on the top of his head. The absence of hair, on itself, George thought, was a decent reason to be upset for any man. The old man hummed a tune, mimicking the classic music being played on a stereo lying on the shelf behind him and wrote in another word into a crossword.
"Hey. How are you doing, sir?" George asked.
"Nice to see you again, George. Not so well," Mr. Hill tapped his bald head. "Brought any stuff?"
"Yeah, got some." George put seven gold coins and a small shiny gold stick on the table.
Mr. Hill took a device from under the shelve behind him. It was painted in bright yellow, had a shape of a brick. A microphone was plugged into it. On its top, under a wide round glass, a thin indicator was in its zero position. He pointed the microphone at the gold coins and turned on the box. The indicator did not move.
"Don't want to take chances with you kids," Mr. Hill said. Inspecting the coins with his wary eye, he continued, "They said that if I'd get exposed to the same stuff that John's silver contained. My arms might fall off next. Some gray guy came here, trying to push the same stuff as John did. Had no choice but to call the people who gave me questions back in the hospital."
"What people?"
"Government suits. They told they were from some place 51." Mr. Hill counted the money, then put them on the table.
George tucked the cash in the back pocket of his shorts, said, "Sorry Sir, but I'm in a hurry. Hope you can tell me everything that happened to you the next time," and went for the door.
"Of course."
———
George stopped running and approached his friends inside the train station. They were sitting in front of the ticket booking office. Max's face was all red.
George asked, "Hey. Did you get the tickets?"
"Nah, Giarge, we just came here. You see, we got lozt a little. We were terrible at reading the picture you gave uz. And the muztache man over here." He pointed at Max. "Iz terrible at listening to Zoop. Even if zometimes Zoop knowz better. And the tickets he bought are wrong. Are they not?"
Max gave George the tickets. On them, in black and white was written 'Milltown – Core City. 15:30, second class.' He said, "Sorry, George. I tend to make small mistakes when in a hurry."
"Not a big deal. They give the refunds. Be right back."
George walked to the end of the line of a dozen people waiting by the booking office.
Max stared at George, at the line, at the departures board, then back at the line and said, "It would be nice if the line disappeared, didn't it?"
"Yes, it would," Sally agreed loudly, then ducked in front of Zoop and attempted to repeat the words with her eyes, but had to give up soon and spell them out. "How 'bout you make it happen?"
"But it'z some ritual Giarge needs to complete before he gets the itemz we need." Zoop stared at the line. "Won't he get upset if we interrupt the ritual?"
"No, it will be fine," Sally comforted him.
"If you zay so... Where do I put them?"
"Here there, anywhere you want."
"Ok." Zoop walked to the far corner of the station, pushed a few buttons on his weapon and came back.
He aimed at the people standing in line and they disappeared one after another. Seeing this, George took a step back and showed Sally an angry face. The people from the line reappeared in the same corner Zoop had walked to. With wide eyes, they would stay there for a while, then return back and line up behind George, who now was talking to the ticket seller.
After changing the tickets, the party strode to the train platform, where they managed to catch the first train going to Crossroad.
During the journey, George learned a lot of new information about Max, who turned out to be his distant descendant. George was amazed to find out that people holding his surname were valued in the future, especially in the community of the time cops. There was something around Bottlemores. A magic or a curse that helped them to bend time to their will with ease. Max also told two stories about the cases he had to solve. The secret behind the magic, it seemed, was hard and thorough work. And then he told about one more mission, the only one he had failed.
———
Max jumped out of a portal in a brightly lit place. It was his fourth mission on the field. The digital clock on the wall in front of him showed 04/02/2781. He knew all the people in the room standing by the different devices. One device, called the time variance detector, projected a hologram with a thick vertical line stretching from the floor to the ceiling; there were a few smaller lines spinning and bending around the thick one, then intersecting and merging into it. Transparent cylinder engulfed the image; it was greenish in the center, then got yellow and turned red towards the outside. All lines were inside the green zone. A similar picture he remembered seeing two weeks in the future.
No one asked a thing and Max did not say a word as he left the room and got outside through a long curvy corridor. His eyes for the duration of the walk were stuck on the ground. There was always a chance he could meet his younger copy. That incident was best to be avoided. The job of the time cop was to fix the main timeline and not to mess with it. Often it was the case that time criminals tried to contact younger themselves and ended up in prison before they could achieve such feats. Of course, there were cases where two copies of the same individual, only different in age, have met. Often such meetings ended in bizarre accidents, where the time traveling copy died. Time, it seemed, did not like to have two of the same in one spot.
Different theoretical anomalies have been tried out, especially in the first age of time traveling. A scientist once went back to tell himself lucky numbers of a lottery. The old copy did tell the numbers but choked on a candy in seconds after doing so. His young self did win a huge amount of money, but used his winnings to support different foundations and soon ended up in the place he had been. The small rippled he created, in the end, did not change a thing.
One crazy scientist even went so far as to go back in time and try to shoot himself in the face, just to see what was going to happen. But because his younger copy was not less crazy, it had many funky theories in mind and was prepared for this. Perhaps the old man had forgotten that in his youth he always carried a gun, who knows. And so it happened that it was not the young man who got shot in the face. You know the world is a strange place when someone is burying his own body in the backyard at night. The time, had not once, proved to be human-stupidity proof.
Max walked down the stairs of The Core City Time Police Department ignoring everyone on his way, checking his memory for discontinuity or holes about the mission at hand. As he stepped on the pavement he had understood that nothing was missing, no memories were blurred. He knew what was needed to be done.
He was to bring home a dangerous criminal, who came back in time to sell information about the future, about the bets and market prices. The perpetrator had not once escaped the clutches of the time cops. The real identity of the man was unknown. In the underground world, he was nicknamed 'the Monk'. He had earned the name because of the donations he had made for the poor living in the most polluted ground level of the city.
According to the briefing, the time criminal was active in the station area. Three locations were provided for possible leads.
He found the criminal after a half of a day of interrogations. He crooked a few noses, broke a few bones during the process and made many people upset. "The most fun part of the job," Max explained to George.
Max found the Monk in some dark, spooky betting center, down in the slums. It was the place where Max had learned the hard way that the authority of a time cop did not work in all places and time instances. Resisting arrest and beating the time cops, especially beating the time cops, were considered to be most punishable crimes. But that did not stop twenty or more people from giving Max a beating while the Monk escaped. And what a beating it was. Max showed the three listening fellows a few scars on his back and a scar just below the ribs, where a broken bottle had pierced him quite badly. There was a scar on his shoulder where his hand was not only cut, but dislocated with a use of some unsophisticated rough object.
"Go get him, Tiger," said the crowd after throwing Max outside.
But for Max a failure was not an option. All battered, he found a dark alley in which he fixed himself and sewed his wounds. Partially he had not yet failed since the information sharing was compromised and he had succeeded in tagging the Monk with a tracking device. When he felt he could, he followed the criminal using a map projected from his cube.
It was one of his first missions and he did not dare to go so low as to call for assistance from the time cops of the current time. If the threat level of a mission was not red, the time cop was considered to be capable of handling the situation on his own. Someday Max wanted to become the greatest time cop there ever was. In no way, he would ruin his reputation by making the call.
Max tracked the Monk to the middle levels of the city, where he found the man sitting on a bench in a square full of people. Wearing a baseball cap, he was eating hot dogs. The moment Max approached the Monk and was about to tranquilize him, a hard end of a barrel rammed his back.
"Don't even think about it." A male voice spoke from behind. "You will die here, or go home and say that I'm dead. You and your friends are going to forget about me and I will never resurface again."
Max turned his head only slightly and saw an identical copy of the man he had chased. It had with more facial hair and wore no cap. He then looked back at the bench. It was empty.
"Fine," Max spit out.
"No matter how clever you are, there are always people cleverer than you, time cop. Remember that."
A hand touched Max's belt and the space around him swirled and twisted. He was back in the base of operations.
Back home, he had shamefully lied that the Monk had accidently met his end as he tried to run away. And the Monk held his end of the bargain. He never resurfaced again.
———
Max said that he had never told anyone this story and it was a pleasure to take the stone off his chest. Failing was what he hated the most.
The four heroes left the train. As they walked towards the exit, George saw Alfonso's agent stare at them from a distance. George extended his hand towards the agent and formed a shape of a gun with his fingers. He said a silent "Pow." And the agent disappeared.
"He he," Zoop snickered while others smiled.