And for my next trick...
Should be out toward the end of the year. Those of you with some concept of design and layout are free to critique.
Part One, Revised:
"You ever wonder why they call it Molly's Law?" Sorensen peered at his smaller crewmate from behind the latticework of scars where his face should be. Hill, the aforementioned smaller one, squirmed under the scrutiny.
Between squirms, he answered, “No."
"Sure you did," said Sorensen with a verbal flourish that said this tale would be told and to any available audience, willing or otherwise. "Everybody does."
"I already know why," Hill half lied as he pretended preoccupation with the stars creeping across their shared view of the galaxy. The great dome of visible light set against a backdrop of its own absence barely noticed the attention. The universe, stretching as it did from just beyond the cockpit of the Limestone Tremor to far beyond the reaches of human imagination, bothered him. Its indifference seemed a mask, a hoax wrapped like a wet blanket around warm unattainable truth. The universe, Hill knew deep down in his heart of hearts, was against him. It was out to get them all. There was no question about this.
"Really?" Sorensen leaned on a control panel and prodded. His action provoked two consequences. First, it produced the desired effect in Hill; that of a firmer bite upon tugged bait. Second, it brought his elbow down upon a cluster of controls. This in turn called up a handful of low level alarms. They beeped, soft electric cloisters ringing and demanding some attention soon, which they got from Hill, who switched them off and went on with the conversation.
"Sure," said Hill. Every kid from the ruling class on down to entry level waste extraction learned about the fundamental laws of society in their K-18 years, and Molly's Law was but one of many. Hill had learned the law like everyone else. He had now only the difficult pretense of having not forgotten it standing between himself and a remedial lecture. Wishing as he did to do more brooding and less conversing, Hill explained the law, recalling what he could and filling in elsewhere with alternating embellishments and awkward silences. Having delivered his rendition, Hill found his companion unconvinced and undaunted.
"You don't know," said Sorensen.
"I do so," said Hill. "If you'll just be quiet and pay attention you'll see."
"You're just regurgitating what they taught you in school," said Sorensen, "and you're getting most of that wrong."
"Alright," said Hill. "It's Molly's Law, named after the first documented time traveler, Molly Lynch. She argued in court that when her future self came back in time to warn her of some great mistake she was about to make, she was frightened and killed her in self-defense. Furthermore, she argued that what she did was legally only suicide, and there was no legal precedent for punishing someone who has successfully committed suicide. On top of that, she demanded a medal for possibly averting the creation of some catastrophic alternate timeline. Ever since then it's been legal to kill your future self if he shows up trying to change future history."
"Regurgitation," sighed Sorensen.
"So I know my history," said Hill, "so what?"
"Your history's wrong." Sorensen folded his scarred arms and leaned back in his seat, waiting for a cue that would only come reluctantly, when it finally did.
The ship hummed white noise through black space and pregnant pause, lugging ore from the asteroid belt mines to Earth, to make the return trip stocked port to starboard with food, water and porn. It wasn't just any milk run, but the kind of milk run that kept the gears of human society turning. The trip was relentlessly tedious and uneventful, a run through the calmest space known to man, woman and being alike, and it took months in each direction. Hill had spent those months coming to know a few of his fellow crewmen well. Some among them, and Sorensen was no exception, he knew better than he’d like. The mountainous mass of man and muscle with whom he shared the small bridge was a teller of tales, purveyor of parables, the man of a thousand anecdotes. He had more stories to tell than he did scars on his skin, and while Hill could tolerate to enjoy them, he had better things to do. As long as Sorensen was talking, Hill's brooding would go neglected, and as there was no known way to keep the man from making his speeches, tolerance of them was only a matter of getting him done as quickly as possible.
"Is there any way I can get out of hearing this?" Hill bit his lip, knowing the answer he was about to get was not his first choice.
"Nope," said Sorensen, a grin stretching across his face.
"Fine," said Hill, resting his chin in his hand. "Tell me."
"Well," Sorensen began, "from what we can tell, some time in the next few decades, people invent the time machine. True to form, we fail to make any good use of it."
"And we start coming back," said Hill, "trying to change history."
"You're getting ahead of yourself," said Sorensen. "That happens later, but first comes the test run. See, this Molly woman never met her father. Her mom got him killed in some data mining accident when she was still in the womb. Needless to say, she wasn't happy about that, so she hijacked the prototype and sent herself back in time to before dad took the data mining job. Now this was also before mom and dad met, and that only caused other problems."
"That's not what we learned in school," said Hill.
"That's my point," said Sorensen. "They'll teach you enough to make sure you kill an older version of you from the future on sight, you know, to keep future history happening the way it's supposed to, but the gritty details always get left out."
"Sure they do," sighed Hill.
"I'm serious," said Sorensen, "I'd cross my heart but you wouldn’t notice it with all the scars. Say, remind me to tell you about the mutant aorta I grew there.”
“Not if I can help it,” sighed Hill.
“Right,” Sorensen nodded. “Story for another time. The point of this story is she comes back, falls in love with him and ends up seducing the poor bastard."
"Sick," said Hill.
"Some parts of the system, it is," said Sorensen, "other parts it's common place. You know on Pluto it’s considered a rite of adulthood?”
“Incest?” Hill choked on the thought.
“I swear,” said Sorensen.
“Pluto’s only got, what,” Hill struggled to remember the exact census, and failed, “a couple of hundred inhabitants at most?”
“Couple dozen,” Sorensen corrected. “I guess that’s why they do it. Not much to choose from out there in the ass end of space. You'd think a book smart guy like you would know that.”
“I went to school for physics,” sighed Hill, “not civics.”
“Right. Anyways, you can't really blame them. He didn't know who she was, and he wasn't technically her dad, cause they never really met. All he was to her was some ideal male figure she never had as a kid."
"So she decided to have him," said Hill.
"Yeah, well," Sorensen said, getting his train of thought back on the proverbial track, "who knows what was going through her head. Maybe she tried every other way to keep him from taking that job and sexed him up as a last resort. Maybe she truly did fall in love with him on sight. Point is she got pregnant, failed to stop his inevitable death, had the kid and raised him up, surprisingly normal, given his conception. Her parents met and went on with having her, thus putting the whole cycle into motion."
"No flipper babies," said Hill. "That's unusual."
"Yeah," said Sorensen. "That's another point. This Lynch was an unusual girl. Legend has it she was born two months premature, but came out fully developed. Grew up strong and quick, too. Had a few mental issues, but nothing too serious. The doctors always chalked it up to the abnormal gestation."
"There's a point to this," said Hill, "isn't there?"
"Sure," said Sorensen. "Point is she had the kid, raised him up to manhood, and by now they're back in the future, around about when time travel gets discovered again."
"So she came back to warn herself," Hill assessed, "and somehow this all brought about Molly's Law. Do I really need to hear the rest of this?"
"Hold your turbines," said Sorensen, "that’s not how it goes. See, by now she’s grown all old and doesn’t think she can handle another trip through time, and even if she could, there’ll be no seducing her old man again. He’ll be half her age this time, er, that time. Um, in the past. Our present.”
“This is giving me a headache,” said Hill. “Can we just cut to the chase?”
“So she sends her son back instead,” said Sorensen. “Tries to give him enough time to get established in the past and then prevent the whole death of his father, or grandfather, or whatever the guy was. Can you guess how much earlier she sends him?”
“No,” said Hill.
“Come on,” Sorensen insisted.
“No,” Hill repeated.
“Two months,” said Sorensen. He followed this with a long silence, waiting for it all to sink in.
“That’s your worst story yet,” said Hill.
“That’s not the end,” Sorensen grumbled.
“Couldn’t we just pretend it is?”
“Don’t you get it? She sends him back and he falls for her mother. He seduces his own grandma, impregnates her with Molly Lynch, and by the time he realizes that he stuffed the very woman who was destined to get his grandfather-slash-father killed, he…”
“Plucks his own eyes out,” said Hill, “I’ve heard this one before.”
“No, you idiot,” said Sorensen. “He gets killed on his way to intercept Molly - the onr from the first time jump - and fails to stop her from getting the whole mess started in the first place. Run down by a runaway courier drone with a faulty gyro.”
“He fathered his own mother,” said Hill.
“Yeah,” said Sorensen, “and died before he could do anything to prevent it.”
“I’m confused,” said Hill.
“I can draw you a timeline,” Sorensen offered, “and a family tree if it helps. Of course it’ll be more like a family pea pod, but still.”
“It’s not that,” said Hill. “I don’t understand how that could lead to a law allowing you the right to kill your older self if you run into him.”
“Not just the right,” said Sorensen. “In some parts of the system it’s a legal obligation. Take the Jupiter Moon Colonies for instance…”
“No,” said Hill. “No more tangents. Either finish your story or be quiet. Every time you go off on a side note, it adds another hour to your ranting, and I’m off shift in half that time.”
“Fine,” sighed Sorensen. “The point is we all have an inescapable destiny. The whole mess with Molly Lynch proved that. Once things were set in motion, they couldn’t be stopped.”
“So we get to kill our future selves to avoid altering our inescapable destinies.”
“Exactly,” Sorensen concluded with an unmistakable air of satisfaction. “It keeps the universe working just like it was meant to, or so the theory goes.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Hill. “If you’re going to travel back in time to warn your younger self of some impending tragedy you’ll already remember that your younger self killed you when you tried. Why would you even bother if you already remember failing?”
“Maybe some people are just so bad off in the future,” Sorensen speculated, “maybe they figure it’s worth the risk of trying to alter history to change whatever it is that’s so bad for ‘em.”
“Maybe,” Hill added, “but maybe only for a handful of people. Hundreds of people report killing their future selves every year. That many people can’t be willing to risk death just to fail at something they already know they’ll fail at.”
“Maybe things are bad for everyone in the future,” said Sorensen. “Maybe some great calamity befalls the human race and these people are the sole survivors. Maybe they’re just desperate enough. You ever think of that?”
“I guess not,” said Hill. An eerie, contemplative silence crept in at the lull and lingered longer than its welcome.
“Hey,” said Sorensen, breaking the silence at last, “you think your future self will ever try and get back to warn you?”
“No way,” said Hill. “If I… If he could, he would have done so years ago. I wouldn’t be on this ship now.”
“Oh,” said Sorensen.
“No offense,” Hill offered.
“Too late,” Sorensen countered. “Sometimes I forget how you think of yourself as superior because you got all educated before you joined the ranks of us poor working slobs.”
“Superior!” Hill spat the word. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. You don’t know anything about me, Sorensen. Not a thing.”
“Course not,” Sorensen sulked. “Ain’t smart enough to know anything about the likes of you now, am I?”
“What about you,” asked Hill, desperate to revive his comrade’s incessant rambling in lieu of his indignant judgment, “you think you’ll ever come back to warn yourself of some great mistake?”
“Doubt I’d be smart enough to work the time machine,” said Sorensen.
“Isn’t there any way I can convince you to drop this?” Hill wanted to know the way, were there one. He needed to know the way. He needed there to be a way. He wanted and needed these things only just less than he wanted and needed the one way not to be the one it was.
“Prove it,” said Sorensen. “Prove to me you don’t look down on the rest of us in labor. What have you ever done that can back that up?”
As he was about to give up the goods, the beans of his sordid past poised to spill, Hill was saved by the proverbial bell. Just outside the bridge door, hidden behind the sign proclaiming Uniforms Are Required On The Bridge At All Times, under which someone had scrawled But Casual Wear May Move Freely Throughout The Ship, a motion sensor had been installed by the crew. Whenever anyone came within a few steps of it, a signal was triggered and transmitted to the bridge, where it resonated within the bridge crew’s chips.
Their temples produced a brief, faint rattle and hum of warning, and then went silent again. Hill and Sorensen straightened up, made busy, and waited for the door to open, for their captain to enter and perform one of his trademark surprise inspections. They did this, and then they waited some more. When that was done, the waited a little longer just for good measure, before each looked at the other expectantly.
“You felt it,” asked Sorensen, “didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why ain’t he coming in?”
“Maybe it malfunctioned.”
“Maybe.” Sorensen glanced around the room, presumably in search of inspiration. “Maybe he knows about it. Maybe he set it off and he’s just sitting out there waiting for us to come and check on it.”
“You’re paranoid,” Hill told him dismissively. “It was probably just a surge in life support. A sudden gust from an air vent would set it off just like a person.”
“Yeah,” Sorensen played along. “Probably nothing at all, just a surge in life support.” He smiled satisfactorily for a moment before realizing there might be a fate worse than the captain's berating. “Wait, shouldn’t somebody look into that?”
“I’ll beep the engineers,” said Hill. He touched his screen and the screen saver switched off. In its stead appeared a display of options, from which he selected communications, then engineering. He pressed a finger upon his selection and waited. Just as had his last endeavor in waiting, this too left him only waiting more.
“Looks like it’s down again,” he said at last.
“This ship’s falling apart,” Sorensen mourned. “It’s nothing but a great big death trap drifting in hard vacuum.”
“Relax,” said Hill. “They’re probably working on it already.”
“Lots of good that’ll do us when life support fails,” Sorensen muttered.
“Life support is not going to fail.”
“You want to bet?”
“Sure,” said Hill. “I’ll bet you our wages for this entire trip it doesn’t.”
“You’re on,” said Sorensen. “If we get back to Earth in one piece, you can have my pay for the round, and if we all die out here, then I get… wait…”
“It was just a glitch,” said Hill. “It’s always just a glitch with these old cargo runners. They’re like old houses and cheap cybernetics. They creak and moan for no good reason.” Hill went on reassuring his crewmate. He didn’t want Sorensen scared, at least not while they shared bridge duty. If there was one thing that nearly all people did when frightened, it was talk, and if there was one thing Sorensen did more than anyone else Hill had ever met, it was more of the same, so keeping him calm meant keeping him quiet, or at least relatively so. The silence, however sweet, was soon broken by the buzzing in each man’s temple as their chips responded again to the triggered motion sensor outside.
After another wait to discern whether the alarm was merely crying wolf or the captain was inbound with imminence, the former was settled upon and Sorensen exaggerated a sigh as he assessed, “Persistent glitch.”
Hill slid the door open and peered down the dim corridor. Sorensen glanced likewise from just behind. He squinted into the darkness, looked to his left and right, then to his left again, and mumbled indignantly about the time it would take to troubleshoot the alarm system, not to mention the likelihood that it might be discovered in the meantime. He tilted his neck to look above the door where he'd placed the electronic eye as inconspicuously as was still functional and, as he reached to dislodge it for closer inspection, he spied a flutter across his peripheral. The flurry of motion, its wake an invisible swirl in the shadows overhead, was gone as soon as it had appeared.
“Maybe it's not a glitch after all,” he sighed.
“What do you mean,” Sorensen demanded, “what's up there?”
“I don't know,” he said. “Probably nothing. Space rat or something.”
“Rats are nothing but trouble,” Sorensen hissed.
“Don't worry. They're more afraid of us than we are of them.”
“That's not the point. Rats on long range ships are deadly. I used to work R&S out of the Mars docks. We had this freighter drift in one night flying a distress flag, and when we got out and boarded her, there were nothing but rats left alive.”
“Killer rats?” Hill let the sneer sound loudly in his voice as he pulled the eye from its housing. He held the small contraption, a twisting maze of circuits wrapped and molded around the edges of a lens, up in what passed for the light and made a closer inspection. The rat, or similarly sized unseen lurker, was the only likely suspect, but Hill wanted to entertain the possibility that the alleged rodent had been nothing more than a trick of the light, the effects of dust in darkness on eyes too long trained on a static field of stars. If he examined the sensor he might find a flaw, a glitch or a bug. He hoped that was the cause he'd find, for if there really were rats in the hull, whatever yarn Sorensen was about to spin would have him waking up in cold sweats until the next docking, and that was months away. “There's no such thing as a killer rat. This is a cargo run, not a monster story.”
“Not monsters, just plain ordinary rats.” Sorensen eased away from the doorway. There was a sudden comfort in being within the bridge. Somehow, no matter how mistakenly, Sorensen was more at ease among the ship's controls, as if control over velocity, lights and life support were tantamount to control over anything. Once back within the comfort conferred by the confines of the cockpit, Sorensen continued. “They came in on a food shipment, lived quietly in the hull and just nibbled away at the cargo until it was gone. That's when they got into the crew rations, and by the time anyone discovered them, they were through those too. The crew sent out the distress flag, but they all starved to death before they got close enough to anything that'd pick it up. Once there was all that fresh meat just laying around the ship, the rats dug in on that, too.”
“Point taken,” said Hill. “I'll log this with Dylan as soon as I'm off shift. AHe'll have the ship purged before dinner.”
“Damn things,” Sorensen suppressed a shudder at the thought of his corpse being picked at like scraps upon bone. “Live in our walls and make our lives miserable. The way they act, you'd think we built ships just for them to live in, and the rest of it was just useless space in between.”
“I'm sure they don't think that,” said Hill, “or anything for that matter. You needn't assign attributes of intelligence to simple, mindless rodents.”
Another motion from a small distance away caught the men's attention and they both turned to see their captain's silhouette taking shape in the shadows. Captain Ledding appeared at the dark end of the long corridor as if he'd been cued by name. He made his way toward the men and, once upon them, leaned through the open door and peered past Sorensen at the room's interior. After some assessment, he concluded that he and his two lackeys were the only people close enough and capable of carrying a conversation. He then assessed that what he'd thought he'd heard said must obviously have been said about him. Poised to punish the insubordinates, he began his interrogation with a, “Who's that then?”
Ledding was a tall man, overly so from a puberty spent in weak artificial gravity. His skin hung loosely from his lanky frame, an effect of an adulthood spent planetside immediately following said puberty. He moved more slowly than most, even with his great stride, and his crew often joked behind his back that his slowness was due to wind resistance, for his great sheets of flesh hung from his frame like sails from a mast, or so it was presumed, given what could be seen of him despite his pressed and primmed captain's uniform.
“Rats, sir.” Hill looked sheepishly away as he came under the tall man's scrutiny. “We thought we saw a rat in the corridor.”
“And that,” the captain deduced, “is why you're out here in the hall when you should be at work on the bridge?”
“Nothing to do on the bridge,” said Sorensen.
“Don't give me that tired old everything's automated excuse,” the captain bellowed. “There's a whole checklist of jobs to keep you busy on bridge watch.”
“Come on,” Sorensen protested. “That's all useless busy work.”
“Yeah?” The captain challenged.
“Yeah,” Sorensen added. “Top of the list is dusting. Who needs to dust in space?”
“You think I'm paying you to sit around and do nothing?” The captain observed a pause for dramatic effect, not to be confused with a pause in anticipation of an answer. He never asked a question that wasn't rhetorical, as in, “Why don't I just throw my money out the airlocks? That's just as good a use as paying you to sit around.”
“Where are we gonna get dust?” Sorensen went on obliviously. “Our air's months old. Life support doesn't just create dust while it recycles atmosphere.”
“Better yet,” the captain hinted at an epiphany, “why not just burn my money in the ship? Starve us all of oxygen. That's perfect! You're all suffocating me anyway, so why not turn it around?”
“Sir,” Hill reasoned, or tried to. “Maybe you should check in with Benway. From the sound of it you've got a bad case of hull fever.”
“I was born and raised in ships like this, son,” the captain steamed. “I'll know hull fever when I see it, and I don't.” He glanced around the corridor, looking for an opportunity, any opportunity, to shift the topic at hand to another, any other, and found salvation hanging from the ceiling. He reached up and plucked a fresh, sticky cobweb from its corner and rolled it between his finger and thumb. “And speaking of what I see and what I don't, I don't see my ship staying clean.”
“It must be old, sir,” said Sorensen. “We probably picked up a spider at the Jupiter Mines.”
“It’s been five months since we left Jupiter,” said the Captain. “How long does it take to get around to cleaning up a cobweb?”
“Fine,” sighed Hill. “I'll get right on it.”
“Not you, Joseph” said Ledding. “You're the grunt knows engines, right?”
“No, sir,” he said. “I'm the engineer you hired as a grunt, and it's Joe.”
“What?”
“My name is Joe Hill,” he said. “I've asked you about a hundred times to call me Joe.”
“It said Joseph on your application. That's your name.” Captain Ledding, it seemed, could remember the minutest detail on a readout he'd seen just once, nearly a year ago, but couldn’t be bothered with contrary details, of which he'd been reminded every day since. Such was the way of the man. His initial impression was always the right one, no matter what any overwhelming available evidence suggested otherwise.
“I need you down in engineering,” he went on, punctuating with the full name for effect.
“Why,” asked Hill, “what's wrong that the night shift can't handle?”
“Nothing yet,” said the captain, “but the night shift's missing and I need someone filling in.”
“Missing?” Both Sorensen and Hill asked at once.
The captain asked, “Did I stutter?”
“You check the lifepods?”
“Of course I did,” Ledding growled. “Airlocks, too. They're just gone, and left no sign of leaving. Now, unless you have any further questions, would you kindly make your way down to my engine room before we crash into a moon?”
“I'm on it,” said Hill, eager for a chance to prove his engineering prowess. If he played his cards right and, God forbid it but if the night shift weren't found, he'd work his way back into the ranks of his calling. No more humping crates and boxes if everything went well.
Sorensen and Ledding watched Hill fade into the shadows of the dimly lit corridors until what was left of him rounded a corner and left their field of view. The ensuing silence, unbearable as such silences tend to be, lingered longer via each man's knowledge that the first to speak after just such a pause was the first to betray his fear of the other, and neither of them wished to commit such a betrayal. In lieu of speech, Sorensen finally let go his hold over an awkward, uncomfortable squirm, and in doing so lost the unspoken standoff. The captain, sufficiently satisfied with his victory, allowed himself to speak next.
“Your shift ends in two hours,” he said, “right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Were you planning on sleeping off shift?”
“I was,” said Sorensen. “That's usually how it works. I thought maybe if the freak was free I might...”
“Well don't,” the captain ordered him. “Once day shift comes on, I'm calling all hands for a meeting. Anyone refuses to show, I'll have the freak sniff 'em out. Maybe buzz their chips for an hour or two. That ought to turn 'em up.”
“Yes, sir,” Sorensen nodded. “If you really think the freak is necessary.”
“Of course she is,” said the captain. “I'm not the type to just jump to conclusions before I've thought them all the way through. Now you're dismissed.” Sorensen shifted uneasily from one foot to another and scratched his head before he spoke.
“I'm on shift, sir.”
“Right,” barked the captain. “I meant you were dismissed to the bridge.”
“Of course, sir.”
“You thought I meant you could leave, didn't you?”
“Never occurred to me, sir.”
“Better not have.”
“Didn't.”
“Good.”
“Guess so,” and so on went the back and forth, until each man had exhausted his arsenal of aggressive ways to agree with the other, and they went their separate ways. The captain went off into the depths of his ship, perhaps to hound his proxy engineer, perhaps to rouse the ship's psychic, perhaps to do some third thing about which only captains knew.
Sorensen, on the other hand, returned to the bridge, rested his chin in his hand and his elbow upon a console, and stared into the infinite void stretching before him. If he squinted and strained his eyes, he thought he could almost make Earth out in the distance. It was a tiny blue speck in among infinite brighter white specks, dead center of the sky. It wouldn't be long before the ship's cargo was dropped and his pay collected. Soon enough, and his back would be turned to the Limestone Tremor forever. There was better work waiting aboard better ships and, failing that, he still had room to grow organs. There were still parts of his body, inside and out, upon which nary a scar was yet to be found. Even if he did run out of space, the procedure to remove and regrow unscarred tissue was quick and cheap. He could replace half his chest, or back, or muscular system, and sell space on the fresh new real estate of flesh just the same as he had on the original equipment. He'd had enough of life under the command of Captain Ledding. It was time to move on to better and brighter things.
An hour passed before anything stirred on the bridge and Sorensen ignored the signals he got from the motion sensor outside. With the uninvited scavengers aboard ship, he assumed the buzzes were merely more of the same. Rats in the walls, he thought, were biding their time until the meat of the crew was ripe for dining. In his self-imposed ignorance, he was taken completely by surprise when the bridge door opened, and even more so by the man who stepped through.
“Thank God,” said the visitor. “I found you in time.”
“You, uh,” Sorensen tried to speak, but there was a certain shock tying his tongue. There was much about the visitor that could be said to be noteworthy, but above all was the scarring that criss-crossed his exposed flesh, blending into deep natural wrinkles in some parts, contrasting or accenting the same in others. The future was before him, looking him in the eye, and it was ugly. “You sure aged... er, what's the opposite of gracefully?”
“There's no time for that now. Listen carefully.”
“You're here to warn me,” Sorensen said, “but you listen to me. You know better than that. I already know what this will do to me. I don't care, and there's nothing you can say to change my mind. I don't care how ugly I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be rich enough to buy a new face, so why don't you just turn around and slip out of here, and I'll pretend this never happened.”
“Idiot,” said the older Sorensen to the younger. “I'm not here to talk to you out of organ surrogacy. It's because of that that I'm even alive. I wouldn't be talking to you if...”
“Stop right there, um...” Sorensen hesitated, not knowing the proper way to address his older self. “What do you say in the future when you're talking to yourself?”
“Don't worry about niceties,” said the older of the two. “Just listen to me, and don't give me that Molly's Law crap. The fate of the human race is in your hands.”
“You've said enough. I'm giving you once last chance to leave quietly.”
“Just pay attention,” said the old man. The younger Sorensen, however, was not prepared to pay any such thing. His older self should know better. He should know not to try this. He should remember Molly's Law. He should remember that he failed. Most of all, he should remember when to duck, but he didn't. The old man soon fell silent, the end result of a collision first of face and fist, then of skull and floor. Sorensen stood over the injured old man, the injured old him, and let out a disappointed sigh.
“I warned you.” He shook his head sadly, having nothing more to say, and prepared himself mentally for the next task at hand.
Checking the automation to be sure all operations would continue while he left the bridge, Sorensen dragged his aged unconscious double to the nearest airlock and fulfilled his civic duty. He loaded the limp body with ease through the inner bulkhead and sealed it inside. The old man's shallow breaths fought to draw air as the outer hatch cracked open and the atmosphere rushed out. Within mere moments, the body was pulled toward the ever-increasing opening. The void tugged hard from beyond the hull as it wrapped around the sacrifice and pulled it away. In the blink of an eye, the ordeal was over. The body squeezed out through the opening still too small to accommodate it under normal conditions. Like space food through a tube, the offending party slipped into the darkness and was gone.
As he watched his future self float helplessly into the cold, dark clutches of the universe around him, he wished briefly that he had considered hearing the old man out. Buying into Molly’s Law always always brought on a little buyer’s remorse, or so it was said, but the law was law regardless. Sorensen knew enough to know the consequences of challenging the reigning social order and he wasn't about to bring those consequences down upon himself. He would be, apparently, in his old age, but that time was yet to come again, and until it did he had orders to follow. He returned to bridge where he resumed his watch over the universe before him. His older counterpart, now a frozen and mangled sack of broken bones, could be seen floating into the distance. He watched it fade away and resolved not to mention this to anyone.
The Limestone Tremor, her captain, crew and uninvited stowaways, continued to drift toward Earth, and the universe stifled a silent chuckle at yet another thwarted attempt to alter its course.
© 2007 Rob Callahan