The Complete Short Fiction (2017, Jerry eBooks) Read online

  Then they all stepped into the Travelling Room.

  Mitch reclined in one of the dentist’s chairs, while a technician lowered the chair’s dome-like headpiece over his face.

  Tad Ellis proclaimed, ‘Our patented non-invasive headpieces beam microwave signals directly into the client’s cerebellum, disrupting cortical activity and slowing the synaptic pulse-rate, inducing a quasi-coma. We then replace real-world sensory inputs with our own constructed ones: convincing the client that they are in another world.’

  A journalist asked, ‘What do you say, Mr. Hughes? How’s it feel to be going back to World War II?’

  ‘I shall reserve my judgment.’

  Another reporter called to Laura: ‘Hey Laura! What’s your uncle think about you participating in this?’

  Laura turned. ‘My uncle has always supported American innovation. He’s thrilled. As for me, I’m ready to be a superstar.’

  ‘Okay, everyone!’ Ellis called. ‘It’s time for our celebrity guests to head off on their journeys!’

  At that moment, the technician standing over Mitch switched on the headpiece—and for a fraction of a second, Mitch felt a strange buzzing in his head. He felt instantly tired, drowsy. Then darkness overcame him.

  Land of the Dinosaurs

  When he opened his eyes, he was in another place, another time.

  He was standing on a modern helipad on a hilltop overlooking a verdant river valley. A hovercopter stood beside him, rotors turning.

  A polite (computer-generated) pilot invited him aboard.

  ‘Hello, Mr. Raleigh, I am PI-5A26X, and I shall be your guide and pilot program for today.’

  ‘Great. What was your name again? PI-5A2 . . .’

  ‘PI-5A26X. My programmers have not yet given me a formal name yet.’

  ‘How about I just call you Pi.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Within moments they were zooming low over the treetops, scanning the plains and riverbeds. Plains and riverbeds that were filled with—

  Dinosaurs. Lots of dinosaurs.

  ‘Mother of God . . .’ Mitch breathed.

  Global Superstar

  Laura stepped out of the limo onto the red carpet—and was instantly assaulted by a lightning storm of flashbulbs.

  The red carpet led to the Odeon Theatre in Leicester Square in London, and her face was on every poster in the square. People everywhere were shouting her name.

  Photographers: ‘Laura! Laura! Over here!’

  Journalists: ‘Laura! How does it feel to have the number one movie and the number one album in America!’

  Awesome, Laura thought. Just awesome.

  Austin, We Have a Problem . . .

  As the media watched the monitors in awe, a technician came alongside Tad Ellis and whispered,

  ‘Sir. We might have a problem.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’re getting some strange synaptic readings on Mr. Hughes’ monitor.’

  They came to the computer monitoring Humbert Hughes, where they saw him in a command room, directing Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe in World War II.

  The tech said, ‘Have a look at his synaptic pulse-rate. It’s slowed to sub-normal levels.’

  ‘He’s going into a deep-state coma . . .’ Ellis said softly.

  ‘He’s going into a very deep-state coma, sir. Mr. Hughes must have taken some kind of sedative before he went under, and a large amount of it.’

  ‘He drugged himself? Why?’

  ‘I have no idea. But with his synaptic pulse operating as such low levels, we can’t extract Mr. Hughes from the program, not without causing serious brain damage. He’s essentially locked himself inside the program—’

  Suddenly, insistent beeps began trilling all around the room.

  ‘Holy shit! Laura’s synaptics are dropping . . .’

  ‘So are Raleigh’s . . .’

  ‘Oh my God! Everyone’s pulse-rates are dropping! They’re all going into deep comas!’

  Humbert Hughes’s Note

  The police would find the note in Humbert Hughes’s apartment the next day.

  It read:

  Dear World,

  You weary me. Nay, you have finally worn me down . . . with your astonishing adoration of the mediocre.

  Great art is ignored. Great literature is overlooked.

  What is Beethoven when you have American Pie. Why appreciate the opera when you can have Jim Carrey doing fart jokes. The world has become a utopia for cretins.

  And I have finally tired of it.

  So, today, I go to a better place, where the world is mine, to shape as I please. I’d apologise to the President for stealing his niece, but the President is an ass.

  Good-bye cruel world. Wallow in your own filth.

  Humbert Hughes.

  Several empty sleeping-pill bottles lay alongside the note . . . and a wine-bottle-opening device that had been used to open and then re-seal the cork on a bottle of 1932 Dom Perignon.

  The Sleeping Guests

  Ellis had the media removed from the display theatre, then he turned to his team of programmers and scientists: ‘Okay. Why would Hughes drug the other guests?’

  No one knew.

  ‘What the hell . . .’ another technician said from his computer console.

  ‘What now?’ Ellis said.

  ‘Sir, it’s Mr. Hughes. He’s, er, done a deal with the Germans.

  He’s ended the war in Europe and united all forces under him.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘The program allows it. As the commander of Operation Overlord, he just called up his opposite number and did a deal: decided to share France with the Germans and they agreed. But that’s not the biggest problem.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘He’s just brought his combined invasion force to London, to Trafalgar Square.’

  ‘Trafalgar Square, but that’s one of the—’ the chief tech froze.

  ‘Good God. He knows about the portals. He’s going to take his invasion force into another world.’

  The Portals

  ‘Remind me about the portal structure,’ Ellis said.

  The chief tech explained, ‘The six virtual worlds of Time Tours are all actually connected—rather like a six-storey car park with ladders linking each floor.

  ‘In effect, the master program lays six identical “Europes” on top of each other and connects them with these virtual ladders, which we call portals. The portals are located in the same spots in each world: Trafalgar Square, inside the Sphinx—’

  He pulled up a screen on a nearby computer:

  Ellis said, ‘So they’re all in the same spot in each world?’

  ‘Yes. They’re like ladders between floors—you could conceivably climb right down from World War II to Dinosaurland if you wanted to. It was inserted into the program as a stabilising feature.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ someone asked.

  Ellis bit his lip. ‘Get Mr. Black.’

  Mr. Black

  Mr. Black was Nathan Black, formerly a Marine, now head of ‘Rescue and Recovery’ at Time Tours.

  In the early stages of Time Tours, the company had experienced some unexpected problems with their virtual worlds.

  The worst was known as ‘Lock-In’ and it had first arisen when a staff member had come to work stoned and subsequently experienced a psychotic episode while inside Superstar.

  He had refused to come out.

  And due to his psychosis, they couldn’t extract him without inflicting serious brain damage on him. It was soon discovered that the same thing happened when a guest went into a deep-state coma: they became psychologically ‘locked’ in the world.

  So Mr.. Black had been sent in to get the man. To reason with him, inside the world, and get him to come out by his own will.

  That, in the end, was what mattered. To avoid brain damage in such a situation, exit had to be voluntary.

  In that case, Black had successfull
y guided the man out via an

  ‘Emergency Exit Portal’ (an EEP was located in a central place in every world, usually a major landmark: in Superstar, for example, it was atop the belltower of Westminster Abbey in London).

  While Black came, Humbert Hughes’s progress was monitored.

  ‘He’s taken his entire army through the Trafalgar Square portal,’ a young tech reported. ‘He’s bypassing Submarine Odyssey, Monaco and Egypt . . . wait! He’s stopping. His army is moving out of the portal . . . into Superstar.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ Ellis said, realising. ‘He’s going after Laura.’

  Superstar

  Modern London had never seen anything like it.

  Hordes of 1940s-era German and Allied troops stormed out of Trafalgar Square, guns blazing, shooting anyone in their path. In their midst, their Supreme Commander: Humbert Hughes.

  And since there was no armed force of any kind in this world, nothing and no-one could stop them.

  They headed directly for the Odeon Cinema.

  The Rescue Begins

  Mr. Black arrived in Lab Two, a working lab.

  He strode casually into the lab, tall and fit, and slid into the lone dentist’s chair. ‘All right. Who’s the target?’

  He was informed of the situation.

  ‘I don’t give a shit about Humbert Hughes,’ Tad Ellis said.

  ‘It’s Laura Bush I care about.’

  Indeed, it was the danger to Laura Bush that terrified them all.

  For if Humbert Hughes captured and killed Laura inside Time Tours, it would cause a paradox in her heavily-sedated brain.

  Hughes hadn’t been trying to drug all the celebrity guests—just her. He just needed her in a deep-state coma. The others were collateral damage.

  At which point, like an overloaded computer, her brain would freeze up and go into meltdown. Brain death. She would become a vegetable, or worse, suffer a cerebral aneurism.

  And that was Time Tours’s worst nightmare.

  Black was set to go.

  He said, ‘Send me into Dinosaurland. I don’t want to go directly into Superstar and bump into a divison of Mr. Hughes’s Nazi troops. The EEP in Dinoland is identical to Superstar’s—plus I can also pick up some heavy-duty weaponry from the hunters’ armoury. I’ll sneak into Superstar from there.’

  And with that, the domed headset was lowered over Black’s head and within moments his eyes closed . . .

  Dinosaurland

  . . . and he found himself standing on the low hilltop overlooking Dinosaurland. The River Thames lay before him snaking through the primordial forest.

  On his hilltop sat a concrete structure, with a helipad and a shed on it. In the shed were racks of superweapons used by tourist-hunters to bring down dinosaurs: Remington mega-shotguns, plasma-based RPGs, Steyr pulse rifles. Black took one of each, plus boxes of ammo and a few sulfuric acid grenades.

  A noise disturbed him.

  He spun—shotgun up—to see the Dinosaurland hovercopter landing on the helipad outside.

  It was the author, Mitchell Raleigh, with his computer-generated pilot, returning from their scenic tour of Dinosaurland.

  Raleigh got out of the hover-chopper, saw Black.

  ‘Hey there! Geez, this is awesome—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Raleigh,’ Black said quickly, ‘but a situation has come up. I need you to come with me and exit Time Tours right now.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Black told him as they walked.

  ‘He drugged us all . . .’ Mitch said. ‘Is there any way I can help?’

  ‘The best way you can help me is just by going home.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Mitch, Black and Pi made their way to the meadow that would one day house Westminster Abbey. There they found a small steel cabin the size of a telephone booth: the Emergency Exit Portal. Near it was another weapons shed.

  Mitch said to Black, ‘Go. Go and save Laura. She’s a friend of mine. I can get back from here. You need to hurry.’

  Black nodded, then he stepped into the steel booth, pressed a button and—ZAP!—the booth blazed with white light and he was gone.

  Mitch shrugged, turned to Pi. ‘Thank you for the tour, Pi. You were great.’

  ‘It was my pleasure, Mr. Raleigh. I shall endeavour to have one of your books downloaded into my program files, so that next time we may converse about it.’

  ‘Cool.’ Mitch stepped into the booth, saw a wall-panel with a button for each world plus a large red button marked ‘EMERGENCY EXIT’.

  But then he paused.

  He was worried about Laura, and he wondered if one man, Black, was enough to save her from Humbert Hughes’s super-army.

  Surely it couldn’t hurt to take a look . . .

  He pursed his lips, and made the call.

  And stepped out of the booth. ‘Hey, Pi. Got any more of those big-ass dino-guns nearby? I think we should visit Superstar.’

  Entering Superstar

  Blinding light. Then normal vision returned . . .

  . . . and Mitch Raleigh found himself standing in a silver booth positioned in the uppermost chamber of the belltower of Westminster Abbey, not far from the Abbey’s ten-foot-high bell.

  He peered out the doorway of his booth—

  —just in time to see a joint of Nazi paratroopers emerge from the stairwell and shoot about a million bullets into Nathan Black.

  Black shuddered and convulsed under the hailstorm of bullets before he fell, dead.

  Mitch stared, horrified.

  Back in Austin

  Nathan Black instantly awoke. Since he had only been in a light coma, his death inside Time Tours had simply woken him up.

  ‘Shit!’ he growled. ‘They got me. They’re guarding the portal.

  There’s no way in.’

  Tad Ellis went white. ‘What are we gonna do now?’

  ‘Wait a second . . .!’ the tech at a viewing console called.

  ‘There’s someone else in there. In Superstar. At the EEP. But it’s not a computer entity. It’s . . . it’s a guest signature. It’s Mitchell Raleigh.’

  Mission: Superstar

  Mitch peered out from his booth, eyeing the body of Nathan Black, dead at the top of the stairwell.

  Suddenly, a fat figure stepped into view, and all the WWII troops immediately stood to attention.

  It was Humbert Hughes. And with him was—

  Laura.

  Her face was tear-stained, her eyes red.

  She was still dressed in her glittery opening-night dress.

  Hughes growled at her: ‘This was the man they sent to rescue you and to abduct me.

  Not to be.’

  He threw her to one of his men. ‘Take her the Tower. 24-hour guard.’

  Laura was hustled away.

  Then Hughes said to his paratrooper captain: ‘Keep two squads stationed in this chamber. Cover the portal. Kill anyone who comes out of it.’

  Hughes swept out of the belltower.

  Those paratroopers who remained there never noticed the two tiny figures dangling by their fingertips from the parapet of the belltower, three hundred feet above the ground.

  Mitch Raleigh and Pi.

  The Rescue Part I

  ‘They’re taking her to the Tower of London,’ Mitch whispered, still hanging from the belltower. ‘Once she’s there, we’re screwed. We’ll have to snatch her en route.’

  ‘But how?’ Pi asked.

  Mitch peered down the side of the belltower. After a few minutes, he saw the tiny figure of Laura emerge and get shoved into an open-topped Army jeep. Hughes followed shortly after, climbed into a limousine. Both cars were surrounded by a motorcade of several tanks and a few turret-mounted Allied and Nazi jeeps.

  ‘You got a parachute?’ Mitch asked.

  ‘I am required to wear one at all times.’

  ‘Directional?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Room for two?’

  ‘Of course.’
/>   ‘Then let’s do some rescuing,’ Mitch said, swinging over and grasping Pi around the waist. ‘Bombs away.’

  And with that, Pi let go of the parapet.

  In the Control Room

  ‘Oh, Christ! Raleigh just fell from the top of the belltower . . .’

  Everyone in the control room froze in horror.

  The Rescue Part II

  Mitch and Pi plummeted down the side of the belltower, the building’s vertical wall rushing by them in a blur of speed, before—WHACK!—a square-shaped parachute blossomed above them, issuing from Pi’s backpack.

  And suddenly they were gliding downwards at a steep angle heading for—

  Hughes’s now-moving military motorcade.

  The gun-turrets on two of the escort jeeps opened fire, but Pi fired back with his (far more powerful) pulse rifle, and with one shot, blew one of the jeeps to kingdom come. A second shot sent the other jeep careering off the road and into a shop window.

  Then a Nazi Panzer tank swiveled its canon turret, readying to fire, but this time it was Raleigh who responded, awkwardly shouldering his rocket launcher and firing it at the beast.

  The rocket lanced through the air before it slammed into the tank, incinerating it.

  Pi then zeroed in on the jeep carrying Laura, guiding the directional parachute toward the fleeing car.

  The parachute came over the speeding jeep and while Pi took out the two men guarding Laura with two brilliant headshots, Mitch then leaned down and kicked the driver clear out of the jeep. Then he dropped into the passenger seat while Pi released the chute and landed in the driver’s seat and took the wheel.

  Pi spun them around, and headed back for Westminster Abbey, the rest of the motorcade in hot pursuit.

  They skidded round a corner, shot past Parliament. Big Ben towering above them.

  Mitch turned to Laura, ‘Hey there—’

  He cut himself off, disturbed by a shocking sight in the distance.

  An entire army of Allied and Nazi troops was crossing the Parliament Bridge, coming right for them!

  It was at least 40,000 men: on foot, on jeeps, in tanks and on motorbikes.

  ‘We need to buy some time,’ Mitch said, thinking fast. ‘Pi, what’s the most powerful RPG you’ve got?’