《Experimental Western Novel》 A Long, Long Time From Now ¡°Come in base, this is recon team eff. We have found a seemingly habitable area, with no signs of intelligent life anywhere near the landing site.¡± ¡°Your use of the intelligent qualifier intrigues me. What sort of life are you located near? How have you determined it is lacking in that most necessary of qualities?¡± ¡°Master Grimfang, the indigenous population is a swarm of single celled life forms, which, despite witnessing and falling victim to an enraged shark, continue to eat and divide around the landing site.¡± ¡°But do they react to stimuli? Can they recognize themselves? If you stab them, do they flee in agony? Can they determine that the thing that causes them pain is a thing to be avoided at all? Get back to me once you¡¯ve tested it. Do the important one first. Let me know how they suffer.¡± ¡°Master Grimfang, the cells are unintelligent enough to attempt to digest a plant that was in the midst of absorbing them.¡± ¡°Bah! Another one, useless to me! Get on with your mission, I¡¯ll inform the rest that you¡¯ve arrived safely.¡± Flipping through stations on the wooden radio, a man with a zippered face stands in a metal meeting room, chrome covering ice, insulated and heated by the power lines running through and around the surfaces, as well as the super pressurized gas formed when the solid nitrogen sublimated from the extreme pressure difference. The rooms contained in the ice structure are inherently unstable, by deliberate design. By using a powerful electromagnetic field generator in each room, exposed patches of steel on the outside of the individual chamber are drawn to the exposed patches of whichever directed subsection of the base the occupant requires at the time. While metal, electricity, ice, and on rare occasions stone make up the primary ascetic of the rooms, an exception would exist in the vicinity of a number of the occupants of the establishment one of which being the man in question, utilizing relatively archaic technology to communicate through a temporal spiderweb with radio waves. He swivels around on his chrome plated stool away from the table upon which his ready rests, and calls for an attendant. ¡°Thirty one! Bring me a sarsaparilla, no ice.¡± As the man swivels back to turn the various dials on his radio, several buttons on a control panel mounted next to a horizontally sliding hatch style door depress, setting the electromagnets to attract the kitchen. With a hiss of nitrogen, the doors of each chamber align, and press the compressed gas away from the entryway as the steel plates slam into each other at speed. Noiselessly, the door opens to a chrome plated kitchen, where a clear plastic cup detaches itself from one of the stacks of identical containers and places itself below a generic looking soda dispenser, in the root beer slot, which also activates upon the completion of the cup¡¯s positioning, it''s tiny plastic handle pushing back without any physical pressure. Just as the handle for the liquid had depressed, so to does the one for ice, though only long enough for a single cube to fall from the slot. The solid material stops just before hitting the grate between the cup and trough, and floats up and into the drink, where it remains for several seconds. As the cube begins to melt, a small stream of less dense water rises from the surface of the soda, falling after clearing the rim of the glass and trickling off into the sloped surface below. Once the entirety of the cube had syphoned heat from the liquid and converted the energy into a state change before being pulled out itself, the situation repeated itself several times, with five cubes pulling energy from the beverage before the glass floats up to the conference room.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. It hovers next to the radio operator for a few moments as he continues turning dials on the face of the device, then notices his drink. Not turning from the radio, he extends a have toward the flying chip, and it obediently presses itself up against his palm. Upon taking a sip, the man says ¡°I¡¯m going to have to steal you away from here once one of these expeditionary teams find a suitable locale. They certainly are taking a while reporting in considering the temporal skipping effect between response times. Would you be able to provide insight on optimizing the transmission frequency?¡± Across the room, from a chair facing a wall of security monitors showing a number of chrome plated rooms, including the one the monitors were placed in and the kitchen, a voice responds, ¡°No, my creator hasn''t figured out the mechanisms of time before the end started. He kind of focused more on traditional transportation.¡± ¡°Blast. At least he managed to create a good sarsaparilla maker, if nothing else. It takes quite an effort to condense it myself.¡± ¡°Were you going to inform the base of the recon team¡¯s safe arrival sir?¡± ¡°It¡¯s simply a matter of ticking a box on the sheet. Switch to camera nineteen, the terminal in the harvesting chamber should have the document open. Mark that Recon Team F landed on a planet without complex life forms, but with an environment suitable for the creation of them. Not exactly what I¡¯m looking for as my payment, but perhaps one of the other collaborators would be interested in starting their experiments over from scratch.¡± Deliberately not sighing at the fact that ¡®tick a box¡¯ had evolved immediately into writing a full on report across two layers of abstraction, the ¡®Thirty One¡¯ in the monitoring station obediently switches the kitchen monitor over to a camera overlooking a carmine space, with a number of tables jutting up from a concave basin, along with a similarly colored ATM-esk computer terminal with a splash of chrome on the side facing away from the tables. As the keys of the terminal displayed on the monitor depress themselves, the zippered man stops turning the dials on the radio when another voice comes through the tinny speakers. ¡°Recon team double yew coming in, requesting immediate evacuation from landing site. Hostile intelligences have enraged the shark, transportation vehicle¡¯s automatic stasis field has rendered it inoperable, and my forty-two has decided to climb a building to try and reach their atmospheric flying vehicles.¡± ¡°Recon team leader, please transmit your space-time coordinates. You will be put on the list to be rendered assistance at some point.¡± A screech of noises, like the booting of a dial-up internet connection, comes from the radio, followed by, ¡°Can you transport to five minutes before these coordinates? Air superiority belongs to the shark, but its handler was a casualty and it¡¯s coming this¡±, which itself was cut off. Spinning around on the stool, the man addresses the one writing a report. ¡°Good news! I¡¯ve found the world I¡¯ll be taking for my own.¡± Page 1: Problems Another time, another place, a city burns. A shark, swimming through the air like it was water, had been terrorizing the people for hours. At one point, an enormous ape had climbed city hall with it in hand, swinging it at the planes scrambled to shoot it down. Stretching back from the outskirts into the mesas, a trail of glass shines in the sun, evidence of the melting heat projected from the maw of the beast. Dozens of aircraft had burst into flames and crashed down to earth, few of their pilots able to escape with their lives, and fewer of the civilians anywhere near where the beams of disintegrating energy were directed. While initially a simple terrifying event to occur in one city, after a radio station on the scene transmitted an emergency broadcast across every frequency it had access to, a vast swath of land was informed of the fact an enormous tailed ape had challenged the military atop a building with hitherto unknown weaponry. An eyewitness brought in by the station in question likened the event to ¡®A bolt of God¡¯s divine wrath, spat through the mouth of a demon¡¯, and led to fierce debate over whether this was a sign that God had objected to the policies of the current administration in a most vigorous manner. Amidst several riots, ignorant pedagogy throughout the media, and silence from the government, one man decided to follow the trail of glass to its source. Spurring his horse to speeds unimaginable to the ordinary citydweller, who would regard the thirty five mile per hour maximum of the Model T as dangerously reckless and impossible to achieve except in ideal conditions, he rides across the sparse forest, slagged dirt etching a route around Savannah. Coming up to the end of the trail, the man slides off his horse, patting its side gently before giving it a slap. The animal gallops away from the area as the man kneels down and touches the oldest bit of glass trail he could find. ¡°Fulgurite. Looks like the CSIA is back in town. Hunter Army Air Force Base. This place is brand new, a perfect staging ground for those snake faced tyrants to hatch another of their schemes.¡± Finishing his monologue to himself, the man considers whether or not to get another apprentice, so that his speeches wouldn''t go to waste. Shaking his head, he denies the urge. Not another one. Briefly considering using stealth, this was a United States air base after all, at least on paper, before discarding the notion at both cowardly and unlikely to have any actual effect, the man pulls a six shooter from his pants holster and walks in. Immediately he is assaulted by the smell of ozone and charred flesh, parts of people left behind after a ray of disintegrating energy passed over them. The man hears voices coming from a room up ahead, and he presses himself up against the wall, revolver held up toward the sky as he listens around a doorway. ¡°-But with the paradox generated from transporting to a temporal position before the message was sent, any action taken from that point on would be rejected from the timeline as an unnatural interference. As long as no one knows what¡¯s happening at any given point, they can act as they please without having to expend massive amounts of energy for the universe to accept the changes. With how static our timeline was, is, and probably will be again, the knowledge of how events were meant to go caused as sort of temporal stagnation, to my understanding, thanks to how many were able to look back into the past and comprehend that there was a chain of events leading up to their moment in time. Leaving that note of the coordinates is the most that would be possible if I were to keep from polluting the consciousness of whatever reinforcement happened to read the report and investigate where they point. And so, we come to a point after events have taken place, while leaving enough room for whatever will have happened without our intervention to take place without us learning anything about it.¡± That voice¡­ It couldn¡¯t be. The man rounds the corner, pushing his gun ahead of him and assuming a shooting stance. In the next room, a man wearing a black suit jacket with fabric that shone in the dim light generated from the bulb hanging from the ceiling stood facing away from the investigator, speaking toward what looked like a smaller version of the creature that had terrorized the city so recently in a bandolier. It was dragging one of the body remnants to a small pile of similarly charred corpses in the middle of the room, but froze when it caught sight of the man with a gun pointing into the room. ¡°Confederate clone, evil alternate reality clone, doppelganger, or prank? I''ve got my gun trained on you, so don''t try anything funny, especially if you¡¯re that last one.¡± Turning slowly, the man in the suit jacket faces the doorway. The clothes are different, as is the face, skin color, and general method of presentation, but the voice is the same. It was his own. ¡°William Slaughter. Such a surprise, seeing you here. In my recollection, this base had never been important. Evil alternate future self, by the by.¡± Knowing better than to allow a monologue to begin, Slaughter shoots his double in the chest, only for the suit jacket to briefly glow white at the point of impact. The alternate clicks his tongue. ¡°I won''t comment on rudeness, an abstract concept used only to lord power over those not inducted into the system of behaviors, but you should know better than to think that would work. It wouldn''t work on you, after all, and I am you. Thirty One, take injection six.¡± Nodding toward the suited doppleganger, the creature being used for manual labor gestures and one of the objects strapped around it flies off its mount. The syringe plunges itself into the back of the creature¡¯s neck, fluid injecting directly into the spine below. Anticlimactically, the creature falls over backward. Slaughter doesn¡¯t relax, however. He glances down toward his wrist, where his hidden weapon lay concealed under his shirt. It was getting difficult to use it now that the name it was giving him had been spreading throughout the channels of Lemuria, but even a future version of himself had a chance of not knowing a knife was hidden up their own sleeve, particularly when it was just an alternate version. He was only going to have one shot at using it though, and from what he had just witnessed, this ¡®him¡¯ had diverged quite a bit. Noticing the expression on his face, the suited man laughs condescendingly. ¡°Oh no, I¡¯m not all you¡¯re estimating me to be. This particular wonder of biological engineering is in fact a result of a collaborative effort between myself and several others. The axiom of control still doesn¡¯t strike my fancy, though you may wish to dabble in automata more quickly than I did. I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve been around to start to realize how utterly unreliable people are.¡± ¡°Making minions, you think of something new every day, don¡¯t ya.¡± ¡°Facetious though you may be, the concept is sound. There¡¯s a reason the Confederate States Intelligence Agency constantly used it against us. When they are programmed for obedience, you don¡¯t get the situations like the one with Hardy.¡±Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! Slaughter shoots his doppleganger again. ¡°Sore subject still, I see. That narrows down the timeline a bit. You¡¯ll get used to the betrayals soon enough.¡± ¡°Draw already. You introduced yourself as an evil copy of me, so you¡¯re not exactly here to plant flowers and free mind control victims.¡± ¡°Oh, how astute. You¡¯re almost intelligent. Such a shame your story ends here. Get up Thirty One.¡± From the ground where it had fallen, the constructed thing stands with a smooth motion at the edge of human possibility. A gun floats from one of four holsters strapped to its sides, two on each, and into its right hand. On the other side, another follows suit into its left, and the creature¡¯s tail snakes its way into one of the two remaining holsters, dexterously sliding around the grip and onto the trigger. The final weapon simply floats up to point toward Slaughter, now at the receiving end of four separate guns. Speaking for the first Slaughter had heard, the creature directs a question toward his double that makes his heart sink. ¡°Master Grimfang, wouldn¡¯t killing him generate one of the paradoxes you mentioned?¡± ¡°That is a most interesting edge case! Indeed, if this were in fact a past variation of myself, to even make contact with the my past self could have catastrophic consequences. Not to mention the headaches just from being in the same time, changing my personal timeline can destroy my mind, ironically murder any I attempt to save, and in the best case scenario leave me trapped in a reality with no memory of a ¡®me¡¯, where the differences become maddening and impossible to keep abreast of. However, with the shattering of the computational model of the universe into a function multiverse, that allows for non-maniacal actual alternate selves. I could warn this self of all the terrible things about to happen, and have a chance of affecting the future because of it. That leads to the question of whether my information would even be accurate for an alternate reality-¡± Another bullet, well spent for cutting off a monologue. If anyone knew how he could drone on once he got started, it was Slaughter himself. Grimfang, the moniker attributed to him by the Lemurians he fought, after his usual drink and his secret weapon. If the new version of himself had a similar identifier, it meant he knew not to get close already. Slaughter usually tried to draw attention to the fact he had a gun, and was a fair shot with it, to bait out whatever trick the other person had brought to the fray. Usually the one to play their hand first would be at a disadvantage, but with himself he couldn''t rely on the element of surprise, whereas the same couldn''t be said for working against him. ¡°You''re running out of bullets, I''m afraid. Such a shame I never advanced through the axiom of Katastrophi. So sad that you will be unable to do anything effective before your inevitable death, and my rule of your world. I''ll start with raising the temperature. Five degrees of increase adds four percent to the suicide rate, and seventeen percent to crime, so I will simply advance the ecological clock a few years. You haven''t found out yet, but it''s not even people like us that are in the process of killing all life on the planet! Alternate planets like this one, sure, but in non-bardo, non-time-splinter, non alternate reality Earth, extinction events are common thanks the common man. It''s even more depressing than you ever thought.¡± As the Grimfang in a suit begins to laugh, Slaughter considers his options. He had already fired half of what this gun could hold, which left three bullets to escape. Fighting down a wave of self loathing about not being smart enough to have prepared told useful in this scenario by drowning it with another type of self loathing, he focuses instead on the accomplice, still standing there waiting on confirmation about paradox prevention. That was a potential avenue. ¡°Messing with your past self is among the stupidest things you can do with time travel, other than the same with a part self that is also time traveling. I''d expect that kind of myself, especially after living long enough, but you seem like the type of minion that doesn''t want to kill their boss, even indirectly.¡± Not even wavering in its aim, the creature scoffs at the assertion. ¡°I am able to make inductions based on incomplete data. Master Grimfang hasn''t finished his monologues yet, so his audience is not shot. Simple enough rationale.¡± Nodding at the statement, Slaughter considers for a moment, then books it for the entrance of the base. Either he got away or¡­ He was shot in the back four times. His future self had been right about at least one thing though. Regular bullets being shot from regular gun wouldn''t be enough to take him down. Still hurt though. Flat out running toward his horse, Slaughter breaks right as soon as he passes the doorway to remove line of sight and fire. Raising his toes as he steps, he drags his spurs along the ground, building up a charge in the mechanisms he had built inside the boots. The moment he passes the outside entrance to the base, he jumps up and stomps one foot on the ground, jarring loose a latch in the sole of his shoe and releasing the pnuematic hammer within to launch himself into the air. Bullets pass beneath him, traveling the paths he would have taken without his wondrous invention, left, right, center, and down. Glad he had strung his horse a fair distance away, Slaughter inspects the route around him for potential cover, and finds none. Trees in the distance, flat ground, and little else. Thinking quickly, he decides to temporarily cannibalize his hidden surprise. Using his utmost focus he pulls the venom sack from the rattlesnake head hidden under his sleeve, taking care to not accidentally set off the spring trap and have it bite him. As he falls to the ground, Slaughter reaches down and puts the snakemeat into his boot. Specifically, into the valve that compresses air into the mechanisms. Distracted by his attempt at cleverness, the man fails to stick the landing and smashes into the ground at the speed of gravity. Fortunately, he manages to limit the damage to his body, and keeps from setting off his boot. In the doorway, the minion steps out into the light, glaring at the grass ahead of it for daring to exist. As though it was a tangible malevolent force, the grass nearest the creature begins to wilt and brown, dying from what appeared to be hate alone. Slaughter decided he would rather not be next, and yells out at the base. ¡°Too bad for you, I¡¯ve got a snake in my boot!¡± It wasn¡¯t the best line, but as he smacks the shoe into the ground, the pressurized blast of air vaporizes the condensed venom into a massive cloud of poisonous mist, blocking the man from view of the entrance. It wouldn¡¯t last long, and wasn¡¯t exactly dangerous, but the unknown was the greatest advantage Slaughter had going for him. Cursing himself for having tied his horse to a post, the man charges to the wooden outcropping gun drawn. Bullets follow him, but none hit his steed, and that was the important part. Fanning the hammer, Slaughter launches his remaining three shots into the rope, severing it from the hitching post, and throws himself onto the saddle. Halfway over the horse, head on one side legs on the other, he grabs the reigns with his left hand and kicks with his left foot while pulling right, hoping the horse would understand it was time to run away from the bullets. Thankfully, the beast of burden had already been fairly spooked from the loud noises and was ready to bolt even before Slaughter had fired three chambers right next to it. The last he sees of the base as he rides away is the creature firing wildly after him after having walked through the poison cloud, the three physically held weapons going in almost random directions, likely due to the effects of the venom, while the single floating gun repeatedly strikes near the fleeing duo of horse and man. This wasn¡¯t going to be something he could handle on his own. Slaughter was going to have to do something he hated. He was going to have to find people for a collaborative effort, and convince them that he was dangerous enough that it was worth dealing with each other long enough to kill him. If there was one thing he knew, it was that everything that could go wrong over time would, and that since a him who managed to survive all of that existed, they were dangerous. The Peerage was going to be getting a new bounty, and it was going to be for William ¡®Grimfang¡¯ Slaughter. Page 2: Gathering Several minutes of riding later, Slaughter managed to get seated in the saddle. That had certainly been degrading, and he was tempted to slip into a depressed fugue for a few hours, simply crawling into a dark hole and sleeping for a while instead of pretending to be some sort of semi-heroic figure. But, no. He had to let someone know there was a maniac on the loose, and that it was an alternate reality version of himself. There was still going to be a good chance someone was going to try and shoot him in the face to solve the problem through Paradox, but at the very least he could get some of his saner peers to not make the attempt. His first order of business was to make his way into the dark hole he used for all his sleeping and storage purposes to use his radio. It was a beautiful device, lacquered wood over electronic components, able to produce some sort of esertoic signal, far beyond his understanding, to reproduce anything he said into the receiver. Any of the similar devices up to miles away would hear his words. Sure, there had been individual devices that served the function produced by both sides of the secret wars by talented genii, but this had been made entirely by modern science. It was a shining example of why Slaughter couldn''t just give up and sink into despair when everything continued to go exactly as he anticipated. Sometimes, something would go right. Sometimes, a hint of brilliance untouched by the insanity of everyone around him would fall into the light of day, and not be rejected. Swinging off the horse, Slaughter ties the animal to a post and lifts a door set into stone next to a public building. So far, it had served as security by obscurity, with people working in the building not having any reason to investigate what they assumed was a cellar, and people similarly assuming that investigation on their part would be trespassing. Rather, the door opened to a space carved out entirely for one man, squatting illegally under a courthouse. It wasn''t the best, but William found it hard to care about his accommodations at the best of times. Most of the time, he wasn''t even able to care about himself. Still, he had an obligation to humanity. Turning dials on the radio box, Slaughter tunes the device to the frequency used for the kind of broadcasts, and delivers his message. ¡°Calling for an assemblage of peers at the Watershed Down, in regards to a potential Beyond-Confederate threat. Codename Grimfang to all available non-hostile catalyzed.¡± With that on the airwaves, word would get around somehow. William would go over to the meeting place momentarily. Any minute now. Well, that had probably been enough waffling around. He gets up from the cot and straps the iron plate back onto his chest. Sliding the rest of his gear on as he walks and bringing the radio in a small bag around his hip, William pushes open the door of his sanctuary and comes out into the day fully in the persona of ''Grimfang¡¯. It was a way to go to get to the speakeasy, so Slaughter mounts the horse once more. He had a key to get down to the underground establishment, solely for this specific type of meeting. The location was neutral ground, and all agenda were to be put aside while within the grounds of the alcohol serving establishment. While he could see the usefulness of the existence of such an established locale, Slaughter considered the entire illegal enterprise to be a potential liability. For some reason, his efforts to deter the traffic of prohibited materials had gotten him primarily ire, not only from the expected avenues of those who would have otherwise profited from the sale of drink and the consumers of the product, but also from the very members of society that had come to join the ranks of elite through their platforms based upon harsher punishments for those that would disregard the Constitution. It was getting to the point that he was starting to suspect the politicians might have some sort of connection to the organized underground trade. Regardless, the main members of society to make most of the profit from rumrunning and the like would be the ones hiding in the shadows controlling everything, and that would mean Lemuria. If he could ever get a few peers to join him in following the trail up the ladder, they could cut off a significant revenue stream from the Bahrims that kept a stranglehold on humanity. That was higher tier planning than he needed right now, as what Slaughter was using this speakeasy for right now was far simpler. To destroy himself, he would need a posse. Here, he ties the horse to a post away from the street, so as to not have the animal spooked from a passing automobile, and walks into the bookstore. Nodding to the bookkeeper at a desk aft of the door, he produces a pewter key and places the object on the wood. While the man went into the back to test the validity of his entry token, Slaughter began reading the spines of the books for sale. It was rare that he had an occasion to take advantage of this locale''s distractions, so most of the tomes on offer showed to be new to him. There were all the standard schlock novels, adventure stories glamorizing the lawlessness of the west for a few cents per copy, but if one dug deep enough they could find something truly interesting in this particular shop. As befitting a place of neutrality for enlightened citizens, the local would also serve as a repository for schematics, blueprints, and occasionally books of useful information regarding what schemes of Lemuria they had managed to uncover. No such luck today though. Slaughter picked out a schematic for some sort of electrically powered death ray written by ¡®N.T.¡¯ to read over when he had time, and headed through the opening that had swung open while he was browsing the stacks. Behind a bookshelf full of tax law, an unobtrusive door hid the passage down to the Watershed Down. Most speakeasies would only require a passphrase, but this was a somewhat more secure dispensary of liquids. Once the key was given to the bookkeeper, the man on duty would use it to unlock the mechanism that allowed the bookshelf to swing out, at which point they would drop the key down a chute to a secure storage area under the establishment, by the coat check. Walking down the stone steps to retrieve his key, Slaughter hears the bookshelf swing back into place and lock with a click. He would have to go through with it now, and go out through the actual exit. Slaughter handed his duster to the checkman, getting a slip of paper in return. He smiled a bit as the guy nearly dropped the leather coat, not expecting the iron plate sewn into the back. Discretion was the better part of valor, so it paid to armor one¡¯s backside. Past the coat check, the room opened up into a smoke filled bar, with booths to the right and drinks on the left. If he were to continue onward, Slaughter could get to the exit across the room, but no. There was at least the first person he would have to talk to in the second booth. ¡°You better make it quick Slaughter, there¡¯s a picture showing tonight that I want to see. ¡®Giant Monster¡¯. Apparently there¡¯s a monster, and it¡¯s giant.¡± That was James McGraw, or Jim to people who liked him. Thin, irish, short, and angry, the man tended to be abrasive, especially towards the workers of the post office. He at least limited his anti government employee rampages to when someone uncovered an actual plot by Lemuria, at which point he would ¡®volunteer¡¯ to make sure their communications were ¡®disrupted¡¯. Slaughter figured there was a story in there somewhere, but would rather not be on the receiving end of firepower that would render his personal armor little more effective than a plank of wood against ordinary bullets. As he approached the booth, another familiar face came into view. Across from James was Heather Davenport, who has caused a bit of a stir to the east when the Confederate Federation Intelligence Agency had their plot to infest Savannah''s people with intelligence sapping parasites through tainted grain stopped by her, when after sneaking through their site, terrorizing some of the agents for intelligence and proof, followed by turning the individuals against each other with her subtle whispers inciting them into rage against their fellows, she confronted the agent in charge and eventually picked up the silo and smashed him with it.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Slaughter made a mental note not to get on her bad side, and went right into it. ¡°I followed the trail from that shark and giant monster from earlier today-¡± ¡°You''re telling me there was an actual giant monster today, and I missed it!?¡± interjected McGraw. ¡°Calm down sweetie,¡± purred Davenport, ¡°it didn''t even rate a radio call, it probably wasn''t even that interesting.¡± Slaughter cleared his throat. ¡°Ahem. In any matter, the creature had glassed a trail leading up to the new Air Force base, where I found something worse than the Lumarian agents I was expecting. Apparently the culprit is an alternate reality version of me.¡± Sitting up straight from his relaxed lean against the booth''s cushion, McGraw picks up his empty shot glass and waves it in the general direction of the bar. The bartender lifts a thumb without turning toward the booths, steadfastly wiping a single mug with a rag while facing away from all the patrons. James looks toward Slaughter, giving him an appraising look. ¡°You don''t look so tough. I could take ya.¡± ¡°Probably,¡± Slaughter acquiesced, ¡°but the alternate me seems to be far more advanced than I. He claims to be from the future, and at the very least the fact he has a minion who isn¡¯t incompetent speaks to that.¡± Davenport glances over from her whiskey to Slaughter. ¡°Someone competent, here? In Georgia? Surely you jest sirrah.¡± ¡°I''m going to draw attention to your insult to everyone here by pointing out my lack of response to it.¡± She rolled her eyes. ¡°Present company excluded of course, which should go without saying amongst company this allegedly intelligent.¡± Great. He had managed to narrow down the insult to only himself. Why did he even bother? This always went the same way. A waitress slid her way past Slaughter to pour a dark liquid into McGraw''s glass, glancing at him unsmiling. She looked familiar, but he couldn''t place her. Probably just someone he had interacted with at some point and alienated, like he did. Maybe from his anti speakeasy stance, or from talking about his hobbies, or just his personality. Casually making people dislike him was a William specialty. McGraw took a sip of the black liquid, coughed, and continued on with the conversation. ¡°Auwk, but that stings. Good stuff. You want a sip ¡®a this before I set yer clone or whatever on fire?¡± ¡°Thank you, but I''m afraid I must decline. I don''t drink alcohol. Might I ask for patience while I at least let you know what wonders my future self brought back with him?¡± Eyes narrowing, Heather jumps on Slaughter''s statement. ¡°If one weren''t fluent in the vernacular, one might guess you are singing your own praises in the form of a threat greatly related to yourself. Does this man actually exist, or are you seeking to build up your reputation more, Grimfang?¡± From the bag around his waist, and from the general seating of his two associates, Slaughter is assailed by questioning from the radios themselves. ¡°I''ll have to second the question. If an alternate self of yours was behind this most recent destruction, was coherent enough to allow you to come to understand his culpability and the capability of his beholden, while allowing you to gain knowledge of his creations, how then were you able to make your way back to town with your information if he were simply more powerful than you? It is not outside the bounds of reason that this new threat is not sourced from you, and following your supposed leads would allow for the true culprits to escape while we hunt snipes.¡± ¡°I''ll have you know I caught that pest. I just don''t have any evidence because snipes are flammable,¡± said McGraw. Ben Grimes, Slaughter figured. He was an expert in communications technology, endlessly fascinated by anything moving through the airways. If no one else, he was the one that would have noticed the transmission he had sent out. Apparently it hadn''t warranted coming out in person, but tapping into the radio frequencies to listen in was almost as good. Slaughter was going to have to remember to speak all his arguments clearly, without relying on gestures or other methods of nonverbal communication. ¡°It was only through application of every bit of equipment I had at my disposal that I''m sitting here today. If I hadn''t left it at the check, I would show you the bullet holes in my coat. As it is, I am drastically short on material with which to operate my secret weapon, and haven''t finished resetting my escape devices,¡± Slaughter supplied as vaguely as possible. There was deflection of suspicion, and then there was giving away trade secrets of the sort that might save his life when the collaboration inevitably fell apart. He was banking on that taking at least a few minutes though. Admitting he was currently almost completely defenseless was quite off-putting, and he would need to put in the effort soon to correct the flaws he had uncovered, possibly stealing designs from the future. Now that he thought of it, ¡°I would also appreciate a first claim on items appropriated from a version of myself, particularly when said devices would overlap with my current designs. You surely understand the potential liability of having copies of one''s designs spread out without any control over the distribution, particularly regarding the potential for crimes not of one¡¯s own being committed with evidence leading to the inventor¡¯s door.¡± McGraw nodded. ¡°That was enough to convince me at least. Far as I''m aware, Grimfang here isn''t known for planning things out far in advance, and it takes a bit of effort to shoot yourself in the back.¡± Davidson lightly slaps at the man, retorting, ¡°You haven''t even seen the evidence yet!¡± ¡°Aye, but it''d be right stupid to order up something so easily disproven while suggesting a team up that would have the statement tested immediately and several times further over the course of the collaboration.¡± ¡°I suppose you have a point.¡± ¡°If I may,¡± Grimes spoke through the radios, ¡°worrying about a criminal tarnishing one''s good name using technology associated with the person in question is a fairly ridiculous thing to bring up in conversation, barring a Klagen worrying about every possible thing going wrong, which would imply the person in question regards the threat to be real enough to think about in such a manner.¡± Stood to reason that a person obsessed with communications would read deeply into every aspect of a conversation. At least this time it had worked in Slaughter''s favor. ¡°Supposing that this man is real, and is dangerous,¡± followed Davenport, ¡°What logic if there in making an enemy of him?¡± William frowned. This kind of social engagement was never his forte. How exactly was he supposed to say that the man was already an enemy of his, and then convince the other people to take on the same dangers with no real tangible benefits? Oh right, the Confederate threat. ¡°I haven''t had a chance to go into it yet, what with all the suspicion flying around, but the man is a maniac. He spoke of raising the world''s crime rate by percentages linked to the degree of action, and believed what he was saying like it was properly reviewed science. The CFIA may not have been bankrolling this one particular attack, but if this copy combines forces with the intelligent agency we could have an entire region of Lemuria knowing everything I know and would ever have learned about every rogue fighting against them. Also, he had his minion shoot me.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± acquiesced Heather, inviting similar muttered affirmations of ¡®collaborate¡¯ from James and Benjamin. With the general question of whether action was going to happen answered, the group sat back with drinks, though only presumably on the part of Grimes.