This is the End 2(61)

“Got any dip?”

I glanced at the cop, and pointed to the fridge. Then I continued rewinding.

I stopped at four days ago, seeing a man in the kitchen next to the stove.

Barney again. And he was bending Vicki over the stove, his flabby old hips a blur, gripping her waist and driving into her like a jackrabbit.

I glanced at the stove—the stove where I made my eggs every morning—and seriously wanted to kill this old bastard.

“Dude! You got Jell-O! You mind, man?”

“Help yourself,” I told him.

He took the bean dip and the Jell-O mold. Two steps away from the fridge, he fell onto his face. I pulled his head out of the Jell-O so he didn’t drown, and decided I’d try planting some white rhino next season. Maybe, if I atomized enough of it, I’d be able to forget the image of Barney the Fucking Machine, which was now permanently burned into my cerebellum.

More rewinding. Vicki making breakfast. Me cooking dinner. Coming and going, going and coming. I slowed down whenever I saw one of Vicki’s clients, but none of them planted any bugs, and thankfully none of them bent her over the stove.

As time raced backward, I was getting close to the two-week cutoff. The TEV couldn’t go more than two weeks into the past. If the listening devices were older than that, this was a dead end.

But then, at thirteen days and seven hours ago, I got lucky. Neil, my old friend who led me to Aunt Zelda’s and started this whole mess, opened up the utensil drawer, but didn’t take anything out. He followed that up by opening the cabinet under the sink, sticking his head inside, and then standing back up, hands empty.

I checked the utensil drawer, finding nothing but sporks and knives. Then I ducked under the sink, tapping my eyelid three times for night vision. Besides the dishwashing detergent, plunger, and various cleaning chemicals, I spotted something round and metallic, roughly the size of a hyperbaseball, under a box of sponges. I brought up my DT and took a picture of it, then ran the picture through uffsee.

I got zero hits.

“Hey, man, don’t hoard all the Jell-O.”

Another cop stumbled over, snagging the bowl. He brought it to his lips and slurped.

I ignored him, studying the object. It obviously wasn’t a listening device, because the cops would have found it when they did their transmitter sweep. A bomb?

I flipped the air sensor on my DT, letting it have a digital sniff. It analyzed the air around the object, finding standard atmospheric gases, traces of cleaning agents, and a decent amount of atomized marijuana. But nothing caustic, flammable, or potentially explosive.

So what was this thing?

Then I scanned it, revealing the interior guts. Circuits and servos, unrecognizable to me.

I threw caution to the wind and picked the ball up. It was smooth, heavy for its size, and in the light of the kitchen it appeared to be many colors all at once, like an oscillating prism. I turned it over in my palm and noticed a panel, along with a button. Next to the button were the engraved words press me.

That didn’t seem like the wisest idea. Especially after watching Boise implode. This didn’t look like the device Alter-Talon had used, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Cool! Hyperbaseball!”

The cop snatched the ball from my hand. I reached for it, slipping on green Jell-O, falling onto my face.

“Hey! A button!”

Before I could yell, “Don’t press it, you fool—you’ll kill us all!” he pressed the button.

It didn’t kill us all.

In fact, it didn’t do anything. The cop stared at it, puzzled, and then looked at me. “You got any cereal?”

“Last cabinet on the left. Milk’s in the fridge.”

“Thanks. Trippy ball, man.”

He tossed it to me. I caught it. While the ball looked exactly the same, I noticed the prism effect had sped up. There was also a very faint buzzing noise coming from inside. But other than that, it didn’t seem to be doing anything.

I went to my TEV, and saw Vicki boffing somebody on the kitchen table. Where I ate my eggs every morning. I really needed to tell her to keep her clientele in her bedroom.

I got ready to fast-forward to see where Neil had gone, when I noticed Vicki had a black eye and was sobbing uncontrollably. The sex was violent, and hardly looked consensual.

I clenched my jaw, panning left to see the face of the son of a bitch doing this to her.

The son of a bitch turned out to be me.





THIRTY-FOUR



The Mastermind listens as Talon watches the timecast. The incompetent cops hadn’t found all of the bugs. He wishes he could see Talon’s face, wishes he’d used video cameras instead of listening devices.

Watching half a million people disappear with the press of a button was a heady experience. But they weren’t real to him. They were numbers. Statistics. The first hash mark of many.