Even fifty more types of time

Strange time; launch time; waiting for your ride home time; first time; a lack of time; improbable time; gestation time; air time; hang time; trance time; optical time; time for the truth; flow on time; tax time; waiting for the bell at school time; lap time; crying time again; terrible time; bath time; nap time; forgotten time; ironic time; time for a fresh sani-liner; time stream; almost every time; any time; awkward talk time; voyage thru time; ochre olive time; what's the time; high time; zen time; burn time; nietzeian time; finding time; look at the time; single time; flying time; wonder time; dvorkian time; thinking up fifty more types of time time; phaze time; sample time; run away time; homeostasis time; time for it; time to remember; slippery time; biblical time; surprize time; plot twist time; time to set the timer; upgrade time

Grant Parachor
Interviewed by question bot at :

https://www.smashwords.com/interview/grantparachor

THE LESSON has action

We left the safety of the ditch and ran a zigzag gauntlet through withering laser fire to the short skinny trees. Beyond them the bulk of the Marines mustered up for a briefing.

Michele, the slight tiny Librarian with the little girls voice climbed onto the bubble top of a Handicab and faced them.

“Marines I am First Class Librarian Michelle Post. It is my duty by the power of the Public Library Board in the present circumstances to declare a state of Limited War upon any hostile forces at Saturoid 2I2I also known as I Buacentaurri. Downloading to everyone the Rules Of Engagement now. WAR! I can promise Medals and Promotions to all Veterans of today! In the name of the Library …ATTACK!” A very loud adrenaline laden cheer went up from the ranks as fire teams and explosive support teams and assault squads ran with little Michele the Librarian at their head toward the rocky walls of the Vorax estate.

“Shoot them in the butts!” I called as they stormed forward. “The butts!” Johnny gave me a weird look. “If their brains are in their butts…” I tried to explain. He didn’t look convinced. Johnny and I followed them cautiously, carefully. After all he is about a hundred thirty years old.

“Come on Paul! Let’s go! You don’t want to miss it do you?!” It’s hard to run to war with a squirming terrier in your arms.

“We aren’t supposed to get that involved as Researchers ya know Johnny.”

He had picked up another brace of weapons from a fallen fighter.

“They need us man! They aren’t that many for a frontal assault. Defenders advantage old boy. Take this Laser pistol.”

“Don’t forget aim for their butts. Robot heads are empty.”

The thump of combat was growing louder as we reached the hunkered down Librarian and her command team. They were behind an overturned agri-vehicle. Tiny military aircraft zipped by overhead.

“We are taking heavy fire from the mansion. They want to wait for the artillery.”

“They might try a counter attack before we can bring up the heavy stuff Ms. Post.” The Marines are usually prudent.

“Tell your troopers to dig in.”

“Artillery! My team is in there!”

“Can you contact them?”

“Their suits are only taking messages. They are probably all dressed up fancy for dinner.” Johnny been spam calling them off a wrist lami.

“Who else is in there? Gustav Vorax, Carla Manhiem. Who else? Where’s the other Librarian?” I had to ask. I knew as soon as I asked it that it was one of those questions that even as I ask I regret the asking.

“Counterattack!”

The low dim false sky was lit by flares and at the head of the counterattacking force could be seen a huge giant of a man in shock armor leading the charge of the Philip Wilson’s. I could in the bright light of the flares make out his face. “It’s Ed Delaney!” Casualties fell at either side of him. The attackers rushed forward suicidal and overran our front line. Fighting rages. Blasts and corpses fell all around us. A body fell across our legs launched by the force of a chemical rocket impact.

“Look at him! It’s Wilson Phillips!”

“Who?” I realized that I’m the only one here who knew. It looked like the Wilson Phillips’s were being led by Philip Wilson’s led by a seven foot tall Ed Delaney.

“He’s not bleeding! He’s not human! He’s full of goo!” Smelling faintly of scorched lilac. Here’s an up close look at a partly disassembled quadra BCP bipedal combat platform robot as a now arm-less and legless Wilson Phillips. “He’s still moving!” Even without his bipeds this now limb-less Wilson Phillips unit combat version continued to attack at us until Johnny vaporized it’s lower half in a cloud of electron Plasma. All the ones I had met before this had not seemed that dedicated to their work.

“Another wave is coming from the mansion!” Johnny blasted one with a plasma burst aiming now carefully above the legs. In the bright white flare light to our left I could see the silhouette of the gigantic Ed Delaney kill and toss a Space Marine away like it was a doll. Then they were on us. The battle raged among us. Marines of Michelle’s bodyguard fell left and right. I through my ringing ears hear the Space Marine com line squawk…squeak “squeak Fall Back! Regroup! Point Gama!” And the flow of battle moved again behind us. The attacking wave carried them beyond our sight, Marines fought their way to the rear or held on in pockets. We were passed by and left amid the debris of battle. There were no living Marines in sight. Michelle and I dirty and covered in goo appeared to be unscathed.

“How ya doing Johnny?” He’d run out of plasma for his blaster and was trying to get the gear off a nearby corpse. Michele was talking on the com lines of the defeat that surrounded her.

“They’ll be back through to mop up in a minute or two we gotta hide or get outta here or something.” That’s when I noticed the smoking stump where Johnny Bongard’s lower left arm had been.

“Geez! You’ve been hurt! Here… No...” Even though it wasn’t bleeding much, apparently cauterized by the laser burn, I tried to tie a tourniquet on him from a weapon strap. He wouldn’t hold still. He clutched the weapon he had with his right hand.

“Leave me alone! I’m not hurt! That’s nothing! I’ll kill them all!” He was shouting. He had gone berserk. His shouting brought them toward us. They came fast shooting wounded Marines as they found them. “Come on you Bastards! I got something for you right here!” he jumped up from us and ran towards them firing and shouting. There was a crescendo of shots and explosions and then quiet. The battle had moved to a distant place. We could hear it but the explosions were beyond the curve of the Saturoid, we could see the flashes reflected on the inside of the shell above us.

“They’ll send an assault team for us soon as they regroup.” I think she means the Marines (?). “It’s not that bad. The Bush is landing reinforcements and another cruiser is on the way. They want to blast a hole in the shell and let the place decompress into space to stop the fighting but I don’t think that’ll work against robots.” Plus we’d die without EV suits.

“We can’t stay here…”

“No you can’t.” The voice made me almost jump out of my suit! Those words…they sounded so calm. All I had heard for the longest time has been shouting and shooting and explosions.

“You must come with us now.”

THE LESSON has Paul Dvorak's travels to Mars with Gutav Vorax

I had configured an overstuffed style recliner oriented to a particularly interesting section of space sky, I even gave it leather colored sides to help it have a stronger sense of solidity, so power lounging on the verge of a nap I noticed an unusual area of lami ware band running past my raised feet. It glowed the soft blue of the house keeping systems. I followed the strip by eye to the place where it intensified around a doughnut shaped depression in the hull about 6 cm in radius. A misty vaguely hyperbolic cone spun above the spot. I leaned over off the seat and like a good ape descendant I stuck in my left index finger. It could not be pulled back out. Yup my finger is stuck in the hole which sucked it gently further in up to the knuckle. It was like a Chinese finger cuff. My finger was being clenched tight like by an angry asshole. I pulled. The joints in my finger popped. It hurt. I yelped. I could feel my heart rate rise. What the hell! I panicked a little.

This amused Gustav greatly.

"She’s got you huh! I caught you with your finger in my womyn eh! You pig!”

“What do I do? What do I do? Do something! Do something!”

“Didn’t your mother teach you to keep your fingers out of strange holes?”

“Come on!”

“I should leave you to keep you from pushing any more lami tabs!” He mocked me in his version of my voice: “Oh what does this do eh?…I’ll just push it and see….” His accent makes it barely an imitation. “Then we fly into the sun like bugs into a flame! You idiot!” He narrates the moral of his mocking as himself.

“Come on, come on, it’s getting numb!”

“You weenie, you sissy girl! Our Government pays you? You figure it out!”

I looked closely. Ah! Lami tabs in feint blue colors. I press the closest, nothing, the next nothing. Press all. My finger was free! It came out with a champagne bottle corks “pop” covered in hair and dust and crumbs and lint. Yuck and ugh! I tried wiping it on my suit and it stuck to my fabric. In fact it wouldn’t brush off. Highly electrostatic stuff. Still there today I suppose.

“What the hell?”

“That’s the belly button.”

“Huh?” typical Dvorak progressive query.

“The belly button.” He pulled open the Velcro to show me his. The hole now made sense to me weirdly and I was strangely reassured by that fact that he actually had one too, it meant that somewhere he had a mother.

“It’s for sucking in dirt and shmutz and Researchers. Must be working good today! Ha ha! Look what it sucked up! Yes it knows its job. Don’t get your dick near it!” And on and on for hours…

“Gustav.”

“What?”

“Gustav explain to me the gravi-drive again. Please?”

“I told you no more questions until you pass your algebra exam.”

“Look I’m finished! Here see!”

“Hhhmm eh well ah…a sixty seven percent. You missed number eleven! The answer was in the lesson! It was an open book exam and you still missed number eleven! Ha! You didn’t learn anything! Multiple choice even!”

“I passed didn’t I? Didn’t I pass?”

“I bet your watch lami asked your suit half these questions. Number twenty seven! Just the sort of answer a shuttle suit would give! Well it’s…a sixty seven is a D!”

“D!”

“Still you passed I guess. A “D” is not total failure. Algebra is hard for an imbecile. You did somewhat better than a monkey with a lamipad”

“Oh. What praise! You’d make a great dog trainer.”

“So you want to see the motor?”

“Yes. How’s this giant ping pong ball fly?”

“Look down there below your feet and I will show you. You see the crystal margin, the space beyond? Above that oriented there…to make it easier for us to tell us what is up, is the gravi-gyro. In a field that reacts to mass a known mass is spun very fast; so fast it is invisible.”

“How come I can’t see the container of antimatter?”

“Because nobody has seen antimatter! I’ve never seen antimatter. It doesn’t exist long enough to be seen. You can only see what it does, and here it is surrounding the neutron mass spinning in the dark matter. As long as that down there…”

“That I can’t see…”

“Yes. Keeps spinning so we can accelerate ahead of the waves of gravity.”

“Like sailing.”

“No. We are not pushed by the photons and particles of the solar wind. We skip over waves of gravity, we bounce off ripples. Like surfing. Except for our food it needs no fuel because it generates no thrust kinetic energy. The crystalline structure gives us enough electric power for systems and to keep the neutron grapefruit spinning and the dark matter in the bottle.”

“What would happen if it stopped spinning?”

“What?”

“What if it stopped?"

“The explosion would vaporize us and everything within twenty kilometers.”

“Wow!”

“But nobody would see it!”

“Huh?”

“Nobody has ever seen a dark-matter explosion. Not like anti matter! That explodes with fireworks! You see the results of the explosion with anti-matter. Dark-matter you don’t see nothing!”

The lami printer flashed it’s chameleon colors. Like a moody squid its hued spectrum deepening to red. Then with a hum it spit out a steaming fresh sheet of lami. It hung there waiting to be torn away and pressed somewhere into place.

Even the lami printer is hard to see in its dormant state against the translucent hull backed by the dark of space. Above and below of each lami adhered to the hull streamed bands and strips like ribbons made of multicolored strands. When touched by a hand anywhere along the hull a four times the hand sized area would illuminate. The brightened areas reveal all within the crystal matrix by color according to purpose. Certain areas are broad and brightly colored membranes that function like tanks. Certain areas are streaked with many colors at opposing angles to make, I assume, antennas. There are amorphously colored parts that look transparent tie dyed. Some places were not to be touched ever and the place itself would make this clear with recorded warnings or mild electric shock. I found this out the hard way. Gustav got in the habit of locking off control tabs for all but the most local environmental systems.

Gustav keeps busy tearing off and then aligning and pressing up the lami sheets as they arrive at the printer slot though he was falling behind the printer by several sheets and one long strip. His frenzied obsessive genius pace slackened momentarily.

“Hey you want to see something my printer can do?”

“What?” I asked in innocence.

“Look! It’s you!” The next lami torn from the printer was a transparent 3D framed portrait of me. My portraits eyes rolled comically as the curve of the lami got straightened out. The holo eyeballs twitched back and forth in my face.

“Hey! It’s me!”

“Here Let’s stick you up somewhere.” Over to the gravi-plane couch he sleeps on, that faces away from the inside of the Spor, he tabs up a virtual surface for the back of the seat with pink light borders then presses the lami against this area. My nose mush’s. He makes a seat next to my picture. Its looks little like he is conversing with my disembodied head.

“You know…” he says to my portrait “you really are a son of a bitch arrogant bastard over inflated over important piece of fly shit.”

“What!?”

The holo head speaks: “I’ll research you until I get something. I’ll get the dirt on you Gustav.”

“What!”

“How much? How much to buy you off you corrupt parasite?” Gustav pantomimes counting out money. He holds up some imaginary stack of bills..

“One dirty dollar.”

“No way. Maybe you could blow me.” Mirage money gets folded away.

“Ok.”

“Shut up you!” I lay a quick hand over the lami mouth creating another glass smooshed me face. 

“You know you’re insults and jokes are getting hard to put up with!”

“Please don’t hurt yourself. Let the poster breath.”

“Hey I can’t peel it off!”

“No. your face is there till it runs out of energy and fades. Then eventually you will flake off to end up in the navel with the lint.”

THE ANSWER has narrow escapes

The old guy shook his shaggy gray mane.

“We’ve been a skateboard making family for eight generations. SurfSkate Incorporated is the oldest existing California corporation. SurfSkate!” He shouts at me waving his hoary hand with thumb up and middle and ring finger curled in, pinky finger out like an exuberant tea drinker.

“Hang loose!”

“SurfSkate!” answer his heavily armed minions as a punk howly guitar music rises. Not my suit this time, which I have muted for the benefit of our negotiations. Good fast drum line has me tapping my foot. Space takes a defensive poise. I see by the red flashing lami on his collar that he has armed his defensive systems. Watch out skaters he’s been known to attack rolling objects.

“We’ll help you dude…” he pauses in his spray painting a camera node, “We can get you to tera.”

His creaky beach drawl makes me guffaw: “On Skateboards!” I’m vaudeville aghast.

“Sure dude for this wave set, but we’ve a bus stashed nearby.” He implored. His Hench-dudes glanced back to the smoky corridor, met eyes, turned imploringly.

“Dudes! Surfs up!”

“Lets skate this city!" Drums pound, guitars roar.

Space leaps into my arms which have gone automatically into my: “Hey Wait a Minute!” mode.

“Minute! Too late!” A spray of flaming plastic particles accompany a boom and a concussion wave that snuffs the bright drippy smoky shrapnel.

“Wipe out you hodads!” Precedes a three gun return salvo that collapses the overhead and service walls exposing the compress luniment structural rock face.

Two more skaters roll up fast sliding to a stop at either side of surf granddad, they whispered to him in jargon. I hope our suits are recording so I can amplify that later. Space has his ETACS armed so there is certainly full field holo video. The Moon lawyers insisted on permanent full field vid holo after the legally ambiguous testimony Space gave in court during the chicken bits incidents, I got it lowered to ETACS active only with a hefty fine. If he hadn’t jumped up onto the judges desk and ate exhibit C there would be no record of what my doggy’s been doing these last eight years. When he’s with me and armed for combat he’s part of the research archive of permanent history.

“Lets skate!” Is the call to action. The two new arrivals have a double long, double wide model and I holding space in my arms am pulled upon it.

“You must put your feet on the board dude!” I am commanded.

“I haven’t rode wheeled plywood in thirty years. How could I brodie on this giant?”

“You mean an Ollie? A brodie is to land on your face.”

“No. Yeah a brodie.”

“We’ll do all the work. It’s a two dude cargo board!” I’m the cargo. I crouch and assume my surf board stance which is a reverse goofy foot cringe.

As they plant their feet to kick us into motion Space wriggles free, jumps down immediately to hairy our wheels.

“Up dog shields.” Murmurs the paramilitary beach bum behind me. Obviously Captain of this ship. A close look at the board reveals it’s mostly lami’s on top of more lami’s. It’s systems’d out. The edges lined with rocket nozzles.

A fine blue spark meets Space’s latest lunge. “YIPE!” He circles back for a rear attack. Good thing I’ve removed the propellant from his missiles.

Five of us and angry yapping dog weave away from the destruction. We pick up speed beyond the debris. Moon gravity makes for excellent skating. We three, gunner-dude, cargo-me, pilot-guy, undulate gently as we go smoothly zig-zagingly down the wide corridor. They go upward, I go downward, burst of jet thrust. I go upward, they come down, burst of jet thrust. I try to lean the corners but a hand on my shoulder keeps us from a low-G tumble.

“The boards got us dad. It calculates our turns. We’ve got Autofoot 3000 technology. Hang on.” Hang on to what?! We clear a eight step down stairway by not the side ramp. We jump some trash as two more security surfers on sleek boards with turned up ends join us.

Space is flanked by hostile rolly jet powered things. He notes their approach as he scampers attackingly to launch a full multi-target missile strike to their wheels. But the rockets skitter from the little silos ineffectually to error trajectory self-destruct along the deck behind us. No room along the floor for fireworks and so many skaters so our four escorts skate up the walls kicking and dropping back down to shoot up the other wall, dodging protrusions, jumping hatchways, painting ID panels and camera clusters, covering from above every corner with dull black ACA-ZAPS force packet launchers.

Space now indirect fire disarmed leaps onto the moving cargo board to settle between my feet with a growl and a dirty look up at me.

“What?” I play ignorance of the multiple missile failure. He growls a little louder. I know how much he loves his missiles. “I’ll reload you later. These guys are friends I think.” He seems to accept this. No alien or robot smells from these guys, definitely human. My lami sleeve analyzes his dog-suit smell data. One or more of our new companions has marijuana cigarettes in his pocket.

Quickly we run out of corridor into a large long plaza with several open stories of balconies. I see heavily armored police lurking behind improvised cover. It is the edge of the combat zone. Beyond the police lay normality. We are up to them fast.

“Halt! Stop! Tomare! Alto” And thirty seven other languages all in one sound. There was then a flash of dark. Deep solid dark. Some one must have tossed a dark matter grenade. Those are very expensive. A million monets just went up in dark. Before it disperses you can’t see at all with concentrated dark matter loose in the room unless you have hyper-quantum infrared goggles. I have to check by reaching up and grabbing for gunner dudes head. Then, I have them in my hand! Goggles! Putting them on I get to see our board with lift from the left side of the barricade fly across the obstruction bouncing a few helmets to land with a tremendous oscillation and take off ripping away through their assorted police and emergency vehicles. These skateboards are perfect for weaving through people and obstacles which we do now as we slow down a pace or two. Our follower catch’s up to us in the crowds of the long plaza, which I know even in infrared, to be the mid ring promenade shopping district. They aim to cross the dome.

“You can loose the gogs now man.”

“Still dark back there?” I ask the outrider.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?” He lies with a down dude frown as he peals the IR’s strap from my head by hooking the lens with his tanned manicured fingers.

On through the crowds of shoppers they gleefully skate the promenade and then the esplanade crossing over and over the boulevard. Upon the boards we ride the grill-work and the ramps, the moving sidewalks, the rest bench’s, the planter garden margins, across the no skateboarding placards, the platforms and concourses, the esplanade went by again, led by a cackling shaggy headed gray bearded ancient bandy legged palm tree bordered shorts wearing flowery shirt waving crazy straw hat topped madman. When did he change clothes? In the dark? They all look like they just got back from the beach! Their suits must change. But where did the hat come from?

“Cowabunga!” Is the call to charge the police cordon lines this time from behind them. Across the tops of their vehicles we descend. Every one of the police that I can see is facing opposite towards the front lines with hyper IR goggles strapped firmly in place. This makes the tossing of the flash grenade seem sensible I’m sure. We stopped eventually far beyond the wild blind firing response and my eyes began to refocus.

“What are we doing back here?” Our headlong flight from battle had led us right back into the combat zone. We have stopped at the hub arterial tunnel turn off that is plainly marked in illuminated lami’s one meter tall as Crater View Estates Earthrise Lane B! We began this all at Earthrise Lane A! “Why the hell are we back here?” Their surfer suits were all dark again. Fine pixel scatter camo.

“We gotta meet the bus, dude, we’re a little early.” To high fives and back-slaps. “SURFSKATE!” They shout. They take their places as any LZ perimeter security professional would have recommended.

“Why did we have to go all around the third dome if we were only going here? Twice!”

“It was fun.” “Fuk’n A” “Yo dude!” “Sweet sweet ride!”

“Dude, we’re here cause they think you’re back there in mooner world.” Everybody we went by certainly got a good look at me and Space going up and down on this huge skate board. With cameras everywhere it’ll be old ENT news by now. “Those holy rollers’l never think you’d like come back to where they almost had you! And we can cut a big hole in the place and like not get billed. They’ll hit the Mormons up for it.” Almost all of them audibly snicker at the thought of that. To reinforce this plan two of them spray paint polygamist slogans over convenient surfaces: “Deseret now!” and “Hear the Horn!” “Ski Utah!”, “One is not enough!” just leaving the section above where the dust and sparks begin to fall.