Folks openly killed one another in this day and age. But things had to be clean. There had to be respect. Leaving Gabel there to be obviously found wouldn’t have done. The cliffs of Dover would recycle him. Bit by bit. Even something so wretched as an American politician could eventually serve some good. A family of mollusks could be fed.
“Daniel,” said the man behind the bar. He didn’t tend bar. He was Mr. Fabulous, named on account of how hideously inept he was at mechanical matters, and so named was all the explanation one needed for why he was behind the bar. He held a tin under a spigot for an extra few seconds, took a drink, then set a separate cup for Syndell.
“Everything feel all right to you, Fab?” asked Syndell. The drink went down like it did every time: brush fire.
Fab nodded.
Daniel Syndell remembered growing up. Remembered being recruited. He gave the impression of slightly wincing whenever anyone used his first name. The two names were almost an insult, because he surely wasn’t Daniel Syndell, not in his soul anyway, not some boy grown poorish and unremarkable along Rhysham Way to be looked back on with vague discomfort. Syndell’s father had done the unremarkable thing that most fathers do: he’d gone away. It was the cataclysmic break in life that signals what was to run far away from what’s to be. Best that way.
“Praises to the Ages then,” said Syndell. Claudette hated that expression. He grinned a bit watching her peruse the day’s specials.
It felt odd to Syndell to have grown up in a time when industry ruled with an ironclad commercial fist and to actually remember it. Memories of it in this age felt antiquated.
Only a few clairvoyants even knew the timelines were being jimmied. They’d wake up vaguely remembering dreaming about someone named Hitler, whoever the hell that was. Or knowing that horses had been used for something else before the mounted police turned to neutered velociraptors.
This bar, by the consent of all agents inside, and, by extension, of the Difference Machine was effectively off-limits from time alteration. Mr. Fabulous kept watch on that.
“A new agent, Daniel,” said Mr. Fab. Every agent inside knew the others. A new face showed up, they knew that too. Fab, annoying as he could be with his questions about what had changed and what didn’t, felt out new minds and intentions to be sure they belonged. Agents weren’t beyond summary dispatch if need be. “The guy. Something wrong with the guy,” said Fab.
Of course there is, thought Daniel. I’m on tap duty this week. Bloody hell. “How many drinks has he had?”
“Two.”
“Give me another. Hard. Claudette?”
Claudette positioned herself at the bar in clear but inconspicuous view of the newcomers’ table, eyes practically peering through her ratty paperback.
Syndell went directly to their table, giving a nod to the retrievers sitting there but placing a drink beside only one. “Pleasantries,” said Syndell.
The female agent, whom he knew as a friend, pushed her seat out her own inconspicuous tad. Claudette caught her eye and gave a slight shake of her head.
“We won’t waste time. My job to feel you out, lad,” said Syndell sitting, hand on the butt of his gun under the table. “What’s your overriding theory on this circus?”
The man seemed prepared and eager for this. Syndell hated eager.
“So, Edison tries to screw Tesla, ends up electrocuting himself and winds up in an institution, Tesla gifts free power to the masses but wants nothing in return except for a houseful of books, and tea, and solitude. Maybe a cat.”
Daniel Syndell looked from the man to the woman, who was looking at the man as though acutely, albeit resigned by duty, aware he was made of snot.
“And you think one of us engineered that?” said Syndell.
The young man shrugged. “Dunno. Don’t much care.”
“We’ll never know how this started, will we?” said the young man’s partner, her clipped Somali accent about the most real thing in the entire exchange. “I mean, we’re the gods of history sitting in this one bar, right?”
“For the moment,” said Syndell. “Till somebody wipes us out. Enjoy your drink, lad,” he said and returned to his barstool beside Claudette. Two tiny brown women at a table nodded at him as he passed.
“Corrective measures?” Claudette said, still reading her paperback. It was a good book.
“The team from Sri Lanka signaled me that they’ll keep watch on him. He’ll behave. I’m off to sleep, luv. Big day tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow never comes, Syndell,” said Claudette, the official joke of the agency. She held her cheek out for his kiss. He obliged.
“Don’t see why you never date me in that case,” he said. “Good night, Claude.”
Sleep rarely came easily. The mind turned and turned. Possibilities were like compost in a barrel…which made the universe a huge dirt plot. About right. Agents were to remove problematic roots. Who made agents gods? The Machine. Orbiting, networked supercomputers the size of small countries calculating and recalculating a billion times a billion times a second courtesy a far future minus the greed of ninety-nine percent of human history. Perfection was not attainable. Neither was order. Trust, however, they could create that. The system worked. Time flowed. Constantly. No one atrocity was ever allowed to define the Earth, and for that the death of a homophobic senator intent on funneling financial backing to underground hate groups was a small thing, particularly as it prevented him ever becoming president of that backwater country U.S.A.
Just another idiot rolled into the drink.
What do you get out of this, Syndell? the question posed as he stared upward, fingers laced behind his head. He knew why sleep rarely came easily. Time was a trap. Always ready to drop a body somewhere a body, no body, should have been. Wasn’t the devil people needed to fret over. Was never the devil.
Nothing. What do I get out of this? Focus your question, lad. It’s what I get to put into it. Syndell sighed deeply into the darkness of his bedroom.
I am a god.
He rolled over.
Nice work if you can get it.
Claudette woke him up early the next day.
“Hell’s all that pounding?” he bellowed. “I know it’s a big day but contain your enthusiasm.”
He opened the door. She said, “We got big troubles,” and moved inside. She was not alone. Two more agents were with her: the Somali, Arliyo Gaal, and one of the elders of the group, a redhead with more stories to tell than there was time in the sky, Fiona Carel.
“Existential or physical?” he asked. That’d be helpful in deciding which guns to pack.
Claudette held out a folded three-by-five card. “This was on the bar at breakfast.”
Someone had written HT on it.
“That guy was American,” said Syndell. The ladies watched him and waited for him to catch up.
“HT,” he said.
Claudette snatched the card back. “Harriet Tubman.”
“No frikking way.” Son of a bitch. “If they were going after Tubman, they were crazy. No way would the Difference Machine let them anywhere near her,” he said.
Clearly this gathering thought otherwise.
“The Machine does weird things sometimes,” said Claudette.
“But it never tries to commit suicide. Arliyo, Fiona: you think this means Ms. Tubman?”