“Sir, we have a guest,” No-Nonsense announced in his most formal tone.
“I can’t keep this up for much longer, No-no. I’m an anxious mess. We’ve had too many guests already this week and it’s only…whatever day it is.
Nicks leant up against one of No-No’s stacks, and wiped his brow of sweat that never came.
“Who the hell is it anyway? Another swimmer we have to…sorry I have to subdue?”
“No sir – Worse.”
“Don’t say the Ministry. We aren’t ready for the Ministry to start snooping around under the cover of ‘Assurance activities’. Not while we are aiding and abetting a temporal fugitive.”
“So I shouldn’t tell you that the Ministry are at the door sir?
“Your sense of humour is really coming along No-No. Particularly your timing. Excellent.”
“Thank you for noticing sir. He’s on his way.”
The laboratory and adjoining office which formed the larger part of Nicks’ little world sat on the third floor of the Temporal Temple pyramid. The small area had been decorated all those years ago by Niv, when she had worked alongside Nicks and No-No. When Niv and Nicks had been everything to each other. Before her crusade to change things had begun in earnest.
These two little rooms were the only place left in the dusty shell of the expiring Earth that meant anything to Nicks. It was his safe space, the Green Sanctuary is what Nivs had called it. The walls of the office were originally painted in forest green. But their colour had long-ago faded to a dull khaki. The soft furnishings, stalls and the two seater couch, now all a couple hundred thousand years old were beyond salvage. The leather was stiff and threadbare, the wooden legs of the coffee table cracked and gnarled despite constant upkeep and care. Withering photos in their green metal frames rested permanently on the floor, their glass strewn across the room half melted into the floorboards. The only items that didn’t look as though they were four fifths to complete decay was No-No’s computer hardware.
That was part of Nicks job – ensuring the robotic mind behind temporal swimming was able to do its job for as long as it needed to.
The Temporal Temple building was itself well-due for the demolition crew. Being that it housed the only time machine, called by many the Altar of time, crews of Ministry men would come to maintain it for as long as the mission waged on. There was always rectification work going on in one or another part of the building. New concrete. New girders. Bracing struts here, metal supports there. The Temple had originally been built to replace the original University of Sydney Great Hall close to where the original Time Alter had been designed - when it was just called a time machine. Based on the Pyramid at Giza, the designers wanted to design a space that spoke to the holy significance of the discovery.
It helped that it was built on a hill, overlooking the decaying city and the rising waters of the pacific.
“What if the Ministry man wants to look in the power-chamber?” Nicks asked nervously.
No-Nonsense could smell Nicks’s anxiety through a sophisticated emotional detector array it had designed itself. Fear smelled musty, like old socks, with background notes of watermelon and burnt rubber.
“I don’t think that the Ministry agent would dare open the chamber Sir. It’s an extremely dangerous apparatus. One could become stuck in the temporal pull of the singularity for all eternity.”
“Well obviously No-No. But they don’t need to go into the chamber to see what’s in there do they?”
“Good point sir. I’ll disable the cameras.”
“Yes…that’s wise.”
Nicks and No-No were worried about the Ministry man looking into Altar’s power chamber, because that’s exactly where they’d stuffed Timeless Liz’s when she had materialised in their laboratory making all sorts of crazy –but perfectly accurate claims - about a certain traitor by the name of Nieves.
It had been quite the stroke of genius to stuff her in there. The Altar required a pair of singularities running in tandem to provide enough energy to do the damage it was currently doing to July 1987. The chambers were shielded by a powerful anti-gravity shield that was just strong enough to fully contain the time-dilation effects caused by the singularities.
Nothing, not even the power-chamber of a Time-machine could destroy Timeless Liz, but she couldn’t buck physics entirely. Physics is the author - we are all just scratchings on the margin. By No-No’s back-of-an-electronic-serviette calculations, it estimated that every second for Liz, stuck in the chamber, was about three thousand years for Nicks. Her eternity was now an eternity longer than everyone else’s. But she would be
The entry-bell sounded again.
“I guess we have no choice but to let them in,” Nicks conceded.
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They each steadied themselves in their own particular way.
Nicks smoothed out his hair with some spit. He adjusted his white lab-coat, and straightened the reams of paper that littered most every surface of the office. When all of that was done, he stood awkwardly, leant up against a waste pipe, and waited for the Ministry man to come.
No-Nonsense smoothed out the records it had collected - the ones that implicated them in countless crimes (including throwing a citizen into a singularity), and buried them so deeply not even it could easily find them again. It adjusted the lights on its many view panels to a calming warm tone. When all of that was done it waited awkwardly for the Ministry man to come.
No-Nonsense was at that moment guiding the Ministry man through the grand lobby, up the stairs, through countless internal doors and halls. Passed the ever-vigilant sentry robots and security screening areas. Until a few more minutes of awkward waiting and a certain Sargas the Soothsayer’s boy, walked into the lab. It was very quickly obvious to Nicks, if not No-No, that this man was far from a Ministry stooge. Ministry men are a predictable breed. They wear only smart black-suits, wrap-around visors and patent blue wing-tips. Sargas was not wearing any of that.
Sargas was a man of the cloth.
He was short, and wore a a brown hooded cowl, which dragged on the floor around him because it was too long. His hood was down around his shoulders, revealing a completely hairless face, and a hairless head crowned with a skull cap.
“Hello … umm there,” he said sheepishly. “My Name is…ummm…Sargas the Soothsayer’s boy, and I have come on behalf of…ahhh…Padre Cantana. The ahh… the Patriarch Metropolitan.”
“Oh…welcome to The Temple Herald. It’s our pleasure?”
“Umm…Our? Who is our?” Sargas asked looking around, evidently out of his depth.
“Oh, Pardon me Herald of the Padre. Please let me introduce my Super Computer colleague, No-Nonsense.”
Colleague, No-No thought. It would have preferred friend, but colleague would do for now, when there was company around.
“Hello Sargas. May I call you Sargas?”
“Oh…” Sargas responded unsurely not entirely certain where to look in the small lab.
“I’m up here Sargas,” No-No said, lighting one of his many and identical input monitors, so that the boy could relax. No-No was always doing little things like these to put the bodied at rest.
“Oh…yes, quite. Please…umm…call me Sargas, yes.”
“Of course Sargas,” Nicks continued. “So you were sent by the Padre.”
“Ahh…on…umm behalf of the Padre actually.”
“Oh of course yes –“ No-No nodded his view-screen by way of hundreds of cervos.
“How can we serve you Herald?”
“It’s more a question for the, well umm, the experts. About the matter of …t…t…time.”
“Well you’ve come to the right place Sargas. My Colleague No-No is the world’s leading expert on the strange character of Time, who has dominated all of our lives for longer than I care to consider.”
“Please, ask your question Sargas,” No-No insisted. “I love Trivia.”
“Well - uhh thank you N…N…No-Nonsense. I suppose my only real question is - umm…where is it?”
“Before I answer your question Sargas - can I ask you one?”
“Yes...umm…please do.”
“Who do you serve?”
“I…well I serve my Master, the Soothsayer. And we serve…T…well, we serve…T…T…Time,” and old stutter once under control now creeping back in.”
“That’s comforting to hear Sargas. And if Time were to suddenly be in the service of someone else. Someone corporeal. Who then would you serve?”
“If time were to deign to serve another, I would serve that other…p…p…per…son.”
Nicks was completely lost. He looked between Sargas and the useless monitor currently standing in for No-No. He shook his head in deepening perplexity.
“Smashing. Just smashing.” No-No said, digging that word out of his archives for all to hear. “So what I say, stays between us?”
“A…A…Ahhh…Of course.”
“Time is conspiring with someone else, to save us all from a natural disaster with the help of a boy.”
“Who is this boy?”
“I can’t tell you Sargas. It’s too important. But I will show you. Just not here.”
“What are you saying No-No.”
“I need you to put me in my bag Nicks. We are leaving. Now. There are more on the way, and they don’t have the luxury of an open mind like our good man here,” No-No said referring to Sargas.
Nicks grabbed No-No’s portable vessel, an ancient iPhone with quantum storage drive, and transferred him into it as he’d done a hundred times before.
“We’re going to help the boy.”
“Get to the harness now.”
“What’s the rush.”
Well Sir. It seems that our long story is about to end. Or at least the story we have been living since the Altar was created.”
Nicks pulled the iPhone to his face, an unexpected anger colouring his cheeks.
“What the hell do you mean? How has it changed?”
“Well sir. Something has changed.”
No-No pulled up his many screens hundreds of Ministry men flowing into the Grand Foyer of the temple. Surrounding the Temple. Invading the hallowed ground around the building.
“Sargas you fool. What have you done?”
“It wasn’t him Nicks,” No-No offered.
“Then who was it?”
“There was a man,” Sargas admitted. “A smimmer returned, stole a reset and came back to report to the Ministry. His name…It was…ahhh…T…T…Tony Evans. He saw the traitor. And yes I knew they were coming. I’m sorry but I…n…n…needed to see you before I lost my chance. I needed to know what happened to time.”
“I believe you,” No-No said. “But we don’t have time to consider our options, only to take the only one before us.”
“Take me to the launch room Nicks.”
“But we can’t all get into the one harness No-No, and there isn’t enough time for two trips.”
“Well Sir. For a while, I have considered whether two could go back. In any case, all we have left to do is try.”
Sargas, Nicks and the iPhone containing No-No strapped into the Altar, so far as they could. Sargas in Nicks’ lap, No-No in Nick’s hand.
“Here we go,” No-No said.
The time-stream gulped opened.
Nicks pushed Sargas’s head to the side to witness the miraculous thing happening before them. They were already beyond the point of no return. The iPhone containing No-No burned with the power of No-No’s intense processing. No-No was going to send not one, but two of them, in a tangle of matter and energy back through time. Sargas grabbed Nicks’ free hand and squeezed. He screamed into the yawning orifice of time, permeating every moment and atom around them. He was still a child at heart, despite his many, many, many, many, many years of life.
A hurricane of time opened before them, pulling them into it as it had done more than half a dozen, million times before. Though Nicks could not be sure, he thought he heard No-No singing a sad song to itself as they were pulled back, into the stream, into June of 1987.
Nicks would see Niv again - he had never been happier.