Memoirs of a Timelord (22 page)

       

       

       It had been a hectic schedule the last century.  Although I had mastered the ability to drop out of time and take a break, I worked like a madwoman nonetheless.  A shrink would probably say that I was compensating for my daughter by throwing myself into my work.  But that wasn't true at all, at least not entirely.  

       See, there's something you have got to understand about this profession, this calling, of being a Timelord.  I'm not studying to be an accountant; I'm studying to manage an entire galaxy and all of its inhabitants from inception to ascension.  I wasn't just dealing with countless lives, but the very soul of a future deity.  Do it wrong and I could spawn an axe murderer with infinite powers, then spend all eternity as a captive inside of that consciousness.  The colloquial term for that condition was known as Hell.

       So in a way I am compensating.  On one hand I am mother to a little girl on Earth, on the other hand I will be mother to an entire galaxy soon.  So all of the studying is just me getting ready for my next baby.  This one comes with an instruction manual that takes a couple hundred years to read.  

       But that being said, I think a lot of my motivation simply stemmed from my absolute fascination with what I was doing for a living right now.  You have to understand that I was learning the very secrets of the universe.  There I was living as a Kleet in Debnar, which is a beautiful little proto-gas giant, or baby gas giant I guess you could call it.  The atmosphere was so thick and mushy that you can flap your wings and soar under your own power.  Really it's halfway to swimming, that's how soupy the atmosphere is there.  Anyhow, I used to fly to school every day.  I coulda transported there quicker, but this way was a helluva lot more scenic.  There was just someting so theraputic about swimming to work in purple skies, it really helped get my head into the right place every day before I began studying advanced Causation and Factorization.  Aside from that I only had three other courses at that moment in time.  It was a little like being on vacation.  Life was good, and it was all fascinating as hell.

       Causation was the theory and philosophy of temporal editing.   But Factorization was all about actually going out into the field and making it happen.  Real hands-on stuff.  I loved that part the best.  Causation was all fun to discuss over a bottle of Merlot, but getting your hands dirty on a field-op was what really turned me on.  

       There are dozens of methods to manipulate a society. With every civilization you had to look for the social handles, the places that you could get the most leverage for guiding their cultural perspective.  Every species was different and you just had to get in there and see what made them tick before you could hope to effectively manage them.  For some it was money, others religion.  In a super-colony everything was a huge drive for the needs of the community.  In more than a few places I studied, drugs and spices were the handholds.

       I was assigned to so many different ops over the years.  As a student you were loaned out all over the place.  I musta worked for two hundred different Editors in galaxies all over the DuNai empire.  Anything from simple walk-on jobs where I just bumped into someone, all the way up to managing warlords and national leaders.  One time all I had to do was punch some guy in a bar for being an asshole.  True story; and I punched him well.

       These were huge operations, sometimes there would be ten people waiting in line behind you to alter the scene further.  Like I said before, we have to make the horse think it's leading itself to water.  So we use scene changes to herd you in that direction, so what?  

       I was back in class with Veena, and happy to be hanging out with my sister again.  You gotta understand that a lot of these courses were downright daunting.  I remember feeling a sense of dread every time I looked at a new syllabus.  Somehow having Veena there with me made it not seem so scary.  Even though m'girl was still only a student, she was already known to be a top rated operative, in constant demand for new gigs. It all made sense since this Factorization was bread 'n butter stuff for Korpahs, which is exactly what she was being trained for.  These were the people who managed your worlds.  They spent their days driving teams of cut-outs who nudged society in the right direction.  Veena had been chosen because the Boss saw that spark in her.  Not to be self flattering, but the old guy really had an eye for talent.  No matter how weird some of his people may have seemed, they were absolute professionals to the Nth degree, every single one of them.  Peter Graves woulda fit right in.

       Today Veena and I were sitting in the office of High Dresdar Mali Comovich, dictatorial ruler extemporaneous.  Having just recently wrestled control of the world government by means of a ruthless coup, he was only just realizing his long standing dream of building a better world.  I had studied his multivolume collection of philosophical works, and it all read like Mein Kempf.  I had downloaded the historical information, his biographical data, and studied the aftermath of his dictatorial rule.  While he was a man of the people now, I knew that this Kurda would far surpass Pol Pot for his villainy and murder.  The purges he would one day inflict on his own people were beyond holocaust.  The Guf showed me his true mind, and it was nothing like the attractive exterior.  I truly felt as if I was looking Satan in the eye.  He wasn't just a bad man inside, he was surrounded by evil.  

       I remembered something I had been taught about the Guf.  Many people can hear it, though most have no idea what it is.  Did you ever know that cop with a natural gut instinct that kept him one step ahead?  They were probably an unwitting sensitive.  Lots of people can hear the Guf, but very few can talk back to the Guf.  Even less still could manipulate it. 

       But what I was looking at was a being of limited influence over the Guf.  He wasn't a true prophet, he could hear but not communicate...yet the amplitude of his pure hatred drew in certain forces native to the Guf.  He wasn't just a bad guy, he attracted lots of other bad souls as well.  As I sat there in his office I could not help but sense the rate at which he was collecting this negatively charged ethereal effect.  Already I was calculating how long before this guy had sympathetic control over enough of the Guf to own an angel or two.  Keep in mind that this was a galaxy in its early stages of development, so the Guf is comprised of a large portion of fairly crude beings.  This isn't Rainor at Ascencion; this Guf had a lotta un-enlightened souls in it that came from theocratic societies who believed in sacrifices to appease their Gods.  Primitives, and easily swayed.

       Veena was busy negotiating a multi-state nation with a state carved out for the Neeta in the North.  He's totally agreeing to everything she demands, which shoulda made her suspicious.  But then Veena doesn't have insight into the Guf, so she just knows what she has studied about the guy.  He's engaging and clever, and he isn't bad looking for a Kurda.  But I can look into his mind and see he is agreeing to everything because it makes his job so much easier than rounding the Neeta up at gun point.  While Veena was seeking to carve out a safe haven, he was smiling at how convenient she would make it by herding them into a ghetto.  

       "I believe we could go one farther, my dear," He kissed Veena's tentacle graciously.   "I would be willing to send moving vehicles to assist the citizens of Neuvo-Braveria to their new homes.  I know that relocating is such a burden, I am sure I could earmark some fiscal appropriations for this endeavor." His smile included the classic Kurda nod to let her know he was flirtatious.         Veena was about to close the deal when I stood up and shook my head.  All around him I could feel the dark souls.  They were drawn here as if by magnetic force.  All of them swirling around this one asshole seated across the desk from me.  In life or death, this guy would be a focus point for the darker energy of the Guf.  Rather than these forces being safely dissipated throughout the Well of Souls, he would bring them together into a single cancer.  Such a unification gave them power within the Guf.  I realized there was only one possible course of action.

       "What are you doing?" Veena asked subvocally, her question ringing in my ears. "I am the assigned project manager for this event.  Stand down!" She instructed me firmly.  My sister only looked like a kitten on the outside, on the inside she was made of some pretty sturdy polymorphic stuff.  

       Reaching down I touched her shoulder and revealed to her what I was seeing, so she could witness what the Guf was telling me about him.  I know it was a little much for her to take in all at once, but I gave her the whole picture before I disconnected.  Leaving her to process the download, I turned back to High Dresdar Mali Comovich.  Already he was rising from his seat, no doubt the darker souls of the Guf had warned him of me.  I could tell that although he had the ability to attract energy, he had no idea what he was doing with it yet. Unconscious incompetent.  Most likely he just had a gut feeling that I was gonna do something.

       I had the blueprints for millions of devices stored in my memory banks, so it was no mean feat to turn my fists into quark cannons. With a grunt, I unleashed two massive blasts into the dictator with such intensity that I completely and utterly obliterated him in both body and spirit.  The flash was blinding as every atom of his existence was inverted into antimatter.  The resulting explosion was like a supernova as I used a containment field to trap most of the blast.   Still, I think I singed Veena's hair. 

       Standing there looking down at the mess I had made of the office, I considered the sin I had just committed.  I'd made the extremely rare act of disincorporating him.  He was not just dead, he was completely extinguished from all existence, present and future.  I erased his soul.  

       The whole time this was going on, Veena was holding the two armed guards in complete stasis.   Hanging stunned in midair, the soldiers had no idea that we had even deviated from the script.

       "What the shit did you do?" Veena was pissed, like the time I stole that Engineer from her.  Just livid.

       "You saw the data.  If I left him he would unbalance the Guf." I was undeterred as I looked at the smoking hole where the fearless leader had sat just a few seconds ago.  "Replace him with a cutout." 

       "That's not the point of the exercise, I was supposed to impose my will upon the guy and keep the Neeta from extinction, now I'm going to get lousy marks on this course." She was irritated.  My sister was a consummate professional, and it bothered her to have a mission go sideways.

       "I don't think you were the one being tested just now.  The mission parameters were bullshit, we were just herding the Neeta into death camps. That smoking hole right there was the real test today." I spoke the words in a quiet voice as I tried to keep from thinking about the soul I had just destroyed.  You think it's hard to kill a man?  Try killing him for all existence.  Still, the whispers in my brain were all telling me that I had done the right thing.  I could feel the relief all around me as the shadowy souls scattered to their corners.  Without a dark prophet to unify them, they were of no consequence.  Just random thoughts that haunt the mind of a god. 

       "Always about you." Veena scowled before snapping her fingers.  With a squirt of polymorphic material from her index finger, she had the room repairing itself at the atomic level within seconds. The last of the details were straightening out by the time my sister had another agent in the newly rebuilt dictator's chair.  Satisfied that she had everything right, she released the armed guards as I resumed normal temporal flow.  All around us the world just continued on as if nothing had happened.  I had to marvel at her mop-up abilities.  M' girl Veena was a real wizard with field ops.  She would be a great Korpah some day.

       "Maam, the Neeta are safe here in our world.  Rest assured." The replacement dictator agreed.  The new guy would do exactly as instructed.  Like anyone who worked for a Timelord, you either followed orders or the Boss would put you back where he found you.  Getting fired in this line of work is a big deal.  

       "You will get passing marks." I reassured my sister.

       "Hmmmpht." She grunted, knowing I was right, but refusing to agree just yet.  Veena had control issues.

       

       

       It was the first time I had ever seen the old man sitting in a rocking chair and doing nothing.  I was home from Causation and Factorization, taking a year off before medical school.  Even though I had dozens of places I could go, something made me feel like going home.  So I was surprised to walk into the mansion and find that the Boss had replaced the living room with Monument Valley, Utah.  And there he sat with a cowboy hat, rocking back and forth in that big chair.  His feet barely touched the ground.  I would have stopped to laugh at the sight, but the sunset over the buttes was awe inspiring.  As I stood there feeling the warmth of the last sunlight, with his chair squeaking beside me, I felt like I was really there.  Back on Earth, that is. I'd never been to the real Monument Valley, just seen it in movies.  But his recreation was so breathtaking that I had to stop and admire it.

       It was odd for us to be there for so long in silence.  Normally I would have been pestering him with questions and queries.  But there was just something so calming about the scene that I shut my big mouth.  It was only after the last of the sun had disappeared behind the mountains that he finally broke the silence.

       "You have a beautiful world.  Your people should not take it for granted the way they do." 

       "True dat." I agreed readily.  

       "Have your days begun to blur yet?" He asked with a smile.  

       I knew what he was talking about.  It was a term that described how your life became once you removed the demarcation of sleep and other normal bodily functions.  It was so easy for you to lose track of time and work for years straight, literally.  You didn't get up in the morning, you didn't go to bed at night.  There was no Five O'clock whistle telling Fred to slide down the Brontosaurus' back and drive home to Wilma.  You worked on a thing as long as it took, then moved onto the next thing.  It was disconcerting at first, but after a while you don't even notice.  All days blurred into one.