HALF PAST THE MONKEY'S MOON - RELOJANDO CRONICOS

I look up through my skylight, while listening to the agony of mutants howling at the sliver of Moon, glowing white, with a fuzzy outline, through the molten dust clouds, hanging like a lounge chair, waiting for an archangel to swing on her in the night sky. Ad astra per aspera....I think to myself, considering my office, which feels like a dungeon. 

It was either mutants or howling wolves and I just relocated, preferring the former. Marcus Tempus, my new name.

I put a shingle out and stop in at all the joints. Places creaples go for gin, jolly, and juice. Some things hardly change and people never do. I put the word out and soon enough some lost soul will wander in looking for a savior.

On this evening it's a dame. Pulchra et obscura. Brown curly hair and green eyes, she's dressed for some UpWhen, a nostalgic age, more civilized than now, but with its own form of barbarity.

I chomp on a wooden pipe, a gift from Cicero before his hands were nailed to the Senate door. I offer her a toke but she pulls a pack of sticks, 20th Century, I guess.

"You're the new dick in town I hear." Her eyes burn into me like one of the night creatures crawling above ground among the wreckage of Reloj, looking for human flesh.

"That another name for a dark deed?"

"Call it what you want," she says, taking a long drag on the camel stick. "We all know by now there are no gods."

"Yet here we sit beneath Hades." I wait a minute while she smokes anxiously. "Momento mori," I mumble, hoping she'll be more forthcoming, but it rattles her even more. "I wore a cloak for the Consul and sometimes carried a spear," trying to instill some confidence.  I set my pipe down and lean forward. My best effort at selling myself.

"Why'd you leave?"

"Caesar was dead and soon enough someone was coming for me," I say, wondering if she might be the dick.

"You chose a hell of a place to move to," she says, glancing at my office and scrunching her nose, as if the stench makes her sick.

"The train was broken."

"Only on the forward track."

"Fortes fortuna adiuvat."

"Then you're gonna love what I have to offer," she says, beaming those glowing eyes at me a second time.

"What offer is that?"

"I need your spear. With or without the cloak."

"Trouble in the city?"

"UpWhen problems, but here."

"Wanna be more specific?"

She arches her back and I know the problem must be a man. Only not the drunk kind who throws punches or lays on the sofa all day without paying the rent. Men do a lot worse up-track. Given this dame is not only UpWhen but UpTown, the guy is probably more trouble than he's worth.

"Whatever bright minds came up with this whole thing didn't account for all the chaos that would come after," she finally speaks, but still hasn't answered my question.

"What makes you think they accounted at all," I say. "He's in Reloj?"

"Yes, but not now."

"When?"

"Up the track. Doesn't have the papers to go further but he'll get them."

"How's he gonna get papers to the twenty-second century?"

"He's a barbarian not an idiot. Everything is for sale."

She's right. And who am I to call him a barbarian, sitting in a bomb shelter five years after humanity saw fit to kill a billion people.

"So you want me to go back there and set him straight?" I ask.

"Something like that."

"When are you from originally?" From her hairstyle and demeanor I guess 1930's. European or American.

"I tell you that then I really don't have anywhen to hide," she says.

I nod. Smart dame. Most of these time wanderers fancy themselves masters of the universe, but they aren't smack outside the boundaries of the temporal city. Most places will burn her as a witch five minutes after she opens her mouth. Your HomeWhen is your only true refuge if things get too hot in the hood.

"What are you paying?"

She reaches into her purse, a kind of twentieth-century miniature suitcase, women hang on their shoulders. Maybe cause they're always planning to move out. She holds a small silver disk in the palm of her hand. A holographic image emanates from it moments later. A sort of swirling tornado of light, intermingled with images of time and space.

"What is it?" I ask.

"It's a Tempax," she says.

"No such thing." There are rumors from the nineteenth century onward about a small device that can do what the trains do, only better and with more precision. A Pax Temporal, or Time Harmony transporter, Tempax.

"It's real. Comes from the 3200's."

"Impossible."

"Why, cause the trains don't go that far?"

"That'd be one reason, yes."

"Why do you think they don't go that far dick? It's cause they don't want us there. They have this. That's why."

I think about it for a moment. Makes sense. Still, I'm not going to trust some snot broad with a savage boyfriend problem. Caveat emptor.  "I wanna see it work."

She shuts the hologram and puts the disk back in her purse. "It only carries one person. I could demonstrate on myself," she raises her eyebrows as exclamation marks for her proposal.

"Maybe I was born yesterday.....two thousand years yesterday, but I'm not falling for that. You could have a cloaking device. I know about those things."

"Fair enough. Then we find an appraiser. A techno rat. One that you trust. There's hundreds of them in the city now. They come here to study mutants and radiation aftereffects on temporal distortions."

A trick maybe, but too tempting to discard. A Tempax would be a powerful tool.

"Alright, but one more question first," I ask. "Why are you willing to trade something so valuable to get rid of a nuisance you can simply hide from? This guy must be something more than a nomadic marauder."

She glances down. I know she's thinking up a lie. I'm ready for it and she must know, cause when her eyes return to the level she tells me the hard shaky truth.

"He's a Shifter," she says. "I don't know how he learned but he did. He can't do it all the time but he's getting better. Once he figures it out he won't even need papers."

A Shifter, or as some call them, Revisionists. The original temporal meditators, the one's that traverse the continuum a millennia before Reloj and the subway network, are still out there, though they are few. There's about as much credibility in the Shifters' existence as there is in the Tempax, and now this woman is claiming to have one in her possession, and another that wants to possess her.

These temporal nomads, temporal raiders some of them, don't just cross timezones, they walk between raindrops, slide into parallel realities, and can ruin more than just one of your days - or lives.

"No thanks," I say.

"What does that mean?" She taps ash onto my floor.

"Your translation bud broken? I said no."

"Why the hell not?"

"Praeteritum non tangere, in futuro intentus."

"Too good for your roots, huh dick? Got news for you, Marcus Ridiculous, but you ain't kid'n nobody with that modern-day costume. You're one of us. You road here on the train, same as me."

"Not a costume, it's for the radiation," I stammer, pointing to the lead fabric fedora, pulling it tight around my chest.

                                              &

I invite her to return in a few days and then send her away. Find a techno rat named Squiggley. Some think he's a mutant but I'm pretty sure he's just ugly. His left eye looks like an undeveloped twin brother, the way it searches the room, even while the right one maintains a respectful connection. The man's nose looks more like an illegitimate child.

The dame comes back with the Tempax and Squiggley does his rat thing, turns it over in his hands, examining it with some strange device that crackles like popcorn. Then he shrugs and snorts. Like people know what that means. Takes his payment in gold bars and leaves.

"Well, seems you're for real," I say, now seated on the sofa with my new client. "Or at least this is," I turn the Tempax over in my hands. "Now tell me more about what I'm getting myself into."

"Can't say for sure," she lites a smoke and blows it in my face. "He's been hanging out with some religious sects. All the big ones and a few nobody's heard of. Most recently it's a Catholic pope from the 10th Century."

"Maybe that's good news. Wants to get himself right with his creator."

"Non-sense. When he comes from he already thinks he's a god. Why bother with someone else's?"

"You think it's a power play of some kind?"

"Missionary work maybe, but that's what I'm pay'n you for."

"Thought you were pay'n me to get him off your tail? Rough him up a bit."

"He can't be roughed up. At least not by you. Best thing is to find out what he's up to."

"Well, I've dealt with plenty of hit squads sent to kill Peter, so got some experience in this sort of thing."

"Peter?"

"The first Pope. Usually priests from Apollo's temple."

"Thought you were a Caesar's man."

"Turns out Jesus pays better. Or his descendants do. Anyway, what does your boyfriend want from a 10th Century Pope. Kinda late in the game isn't it?"

"Do you have an android? I'll show you." She sets her burning cigarette on the arm of my sofa.

"You mean one that looks human and tries to kill us?"

"I mean one that fits in your hand and makes calls."

"Internet won't work again for another twenty years. I have a library." I point to a wall of books on the other side of the room.

She reaches in her purse and pulls out a glossy photo, a picture which looks like an old painting of religious figures. "That's him there, standing next to the Pope."

I examine the painting. Her boyfriend is an anachronism, pre-Mesopotamian ponytail, post millennial raincoat. There's a ceremony happening in the background, a trial of sorts, a witness dressed elegantly, but his flesh is rotting away. The title on the top of the picture reads Cadaver Synod.

"Only one way to find out what he's up to for sure," she says, interrupting my examination.

"What's that?"

"Poke around."

                                             &

 

As I walk through one of the tunnels toward the travel agency the floor and ceiling shake like an erupting volcano. The lights dim and dust fogs the air. Another 'lost bomb.' One of the nukes still in orbit that didn't come down as programmed. Once in a while they re-enter the atmosphere and detonate over one of the old targets, which are now mostly rubble. The word on the network, none of them would hit Reloj again. Even still it will be another seventy-five years before Reloj returns to its former glory.

A woman called Marla meets me at the agency, a bunker hole like mine but with holographic images projected on the walls. Mostly exotic locales in the twenty-fourth century.

She gives me the option of a microfiche reader or a nasty smelling virtual-reality helmet to view images from 980. I put the helmet on and hope I don't get lice.

There's some decent imagery of dress code, customs, language particulars and possible legal entanglements. Religion and politics are no-go discussions. Just like everywhen else, except in the tenth century, you'll likely get more than a ruined friendship out of it.

"And what about protection?" I ask, taking the helmet off.

"Mostly calfskin in that era," she says.

"I meant heat."

"Illegal to traverse weapons," she looks at me with a scolding glare.

Of course, but nobody pays attention, and an easy bribe will cure the sweet if they do. I know I'll find more than swords and arrows when I get there. Things had a way of being smuggled back.

Guy named Fab meets me at the door of the local armory.

"What you need dick?"

"Protection, defensive, offensive."

"What you use'n now?"

"Short sword and a dagger. Just got here and haven't had a chance to grab much else. Anyway, heard the city was pretty safe except for the radiation."

"That's for sure. People around here are sick of violence. Of course the radiation never gets tired."

"Anyway, I'm taken a little trip so thought I'd take something with me."

"When to, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Backward," I say. I did mind him asking. I'm supposed to be the sleuth but everyone in this city has a bigger nose than me.

"Yeah, of course. No one going forward for at least another twelve months, from what I hear. Give me a hint though. Mainline or a parallel track? If it's pre-1800 on one of the tangent lines you gotta be careful. New directive on modern weapons beyond that era. Bribes don't work no more. They'll lock you up when they find you and it won't be pleasant."

"Didn't know about the new directive," I confess. "Didn't know about the tangent lines neither. Thought there was only one rail. There anything I can take with me?"

"Synthetic fabric is fine, so long as its part of your clothing. That'll repel most of what you'd find there anyway. And yes, the parallels are expanding now. The mainline is still orthodox but that could change at any moment. Anyway, could give you a musket pistol."

"A musket pistol? Are you serious?"

"A plasma rifle too pal, but ain't my fault if you end up doing time in a dungeon. Besides, thought I was talking to a man up until now armed with a dagger."

"You're right, maybe I should learn a little more about when I'm going before I get myself into anything," I consider out loud.

"Got some old history books in back, but most of it is wrong. You plan'n to kill your boss's great grandfather or some'n?"

"What if I am?"

"I'd reconsider. People been trying to change the NowWhen and future too, even win wars, all by deleting some'n from before, but it never turns out the way they think. Can't right the wrongs of the future by changing the past, anymore than you right the wrongs of the past by changing the now. What's done is done."

"Thanks, but I don't have plans to change anything. It's a simple man woman spat. Hide under the bed, take some photos."

"Your woman? Leave it be, friend. No go'n back in that space neither. My advice? Live in the present. You can choose any NowWhen you want. If you can imagine it there's a parallel when it's happening. Trains might not go there, but there's other ways. You ask me, only reason to study the past is to learn it ain't any different then than it is now, and won't be any different on the forward track neither."

"Grass is always greener, huh?"

"Some'n like that."

"Well, I don't know if that's optimistic or cynical, labor omnia vincit, and nobody pays a dick to poke himself."