Curiouser and curiouser. “Where are you now?” Vicki asked. I adjusted my footing. “I just caught a train.” “Where?” “I can’t say, Vicki. They could be monitoring our head
phones. I just wanted to make sure you’re safe, and to tell you I love you.” “I love you, too. How are we going to get out of this, Talon?” “I’m working on it.” “Wait a second. You’re on the TV. Some naked woman with green hair is talking about you.” “Yeah. About her. She’s a BHV, and she helped me out.”
“Now there’s that disgusting friend of yours. Harry somebody.”
“McGlade.” I could only imagine what McGlade was telling reporters. Rather than imagine it, I dug out my DT and flipped to CNN.
“So I’m tied down, vulnerable, and he’s having sex.”
Thanks a lot, McGlade.
“You had sex with this woman?” Vicki said.
“It’s complicated, Vicki.”
“And then two other women joined in,” McGlade said.
“You’re on the run and you had time for sex with three women?” Vicki said.
Her tone put me on the defensive. “Didn’t you say it didn’t matter who I slept with?”
“It’s not the sex, Talon. It’s that I’ve been worried sick about you—”
“I’ve been worried about you, too, hon.”
“—and apparently you took time out for a gangbang.”
“Technically, they gangbanged me. And it wasn’t consensual.”
“You’re incredible.” She didn’t say it in a nice way.
“He was like a fucking stallion,” McGlade said, “going at it for at least an hour.”
I muted him.
“An hour?” Vicki asked.
“What’s the problem here? Are you jealous?”
“Of course not. Sex is a natural—”
“Biological function. I know. She said the same thing. Are you guys taught to say that when you test for your licenses?”
“These women were SLPs?”
“Yes. And they acted like consummate professionals. No kissing at all.”
“So you paid for this?”
“No. I was tied to a table. And I owed them because they saved my ear. And you have no right to be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous, Talon.”
“Are you sure?”
Vicki didn’t answer.
“Look, Vicki, I need to call Sata and find out if he made—”
“Talon—”
“—any headway with…What, Vicki?”
“Talon…did you do this?”
“Do what?”
I looked at the DT. The graphic read, Boise, Idaho, and showed an empty crater that had to be ten miles wide.
The next graphic read, Death toll estimated at 500,000. It was followed by a video of me—well, the alter-me—standing on a hill overlooking the city, some sort of device in his/my hand.
“Bye-bye, Boise,” Alter-Talon said.
Then he pressed a button, and the city—
Well, it just…imploded.
Within two seconds, everything that used to be there got sucked into itself, stretching and shrinking and eventually disappearing into a singularity. There wasn’t a trace of anything left. Only a giant crater.
It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. Half a million people, murdered in an instant. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Couldn’t comprehend death on such a huge scale. The number was staggering.
If someone read a list of the names of the dead, it would take an entire month to finish if the person didn’t stop to sleep or eat. And each of those names represented a life. A person. Mothers. Fathers. Children. Brothers and sisters and cousins and friends and neighbors. Half a million of them, snuffed out of existence.
It was the biggest tragedy of this century.
And for what purpose? Why would someone do that? What could the motive possibly be for something so monstrous?
“Oh, Talon…” Vicki was whispering.
“I…I didn’t do this, Vicki.”
“Don’t you remember talking about Boise this morning?”
“I talked about moving there. Not destroying it.”
“But…”
“Vicki, I have to call Sata. That wasn’t me. I’ll call you soon.”
“Talon, I—”
I cut her off. “Hang up. Call Michio Sata.”
A moment later, Sata came on the headphone.
“Talon?”
Freaked-out as I was, it was a relief to hear his voice. “What’s going on, sensei?”
“Where are you now, Talon?”
“I’m not near Boise, if that’s what you mean. What the fuck happened to it?”
Sata paused. I could picture him, forehead bunched up in thought. “Watching the video, it looked like it was sucked into a black hole. Do you remember the media backlash when some scientists postulated that timecasting could create micro black holes?”