Pseudo Time - Original version circa 1983
Ian fired. The projectile moved slowly in pseudo-time. He released the gun and stepped around it, hanging in mid-air, frozen in real-time. Exerting every fiber of his body, he began to fight the inertia holding his body back. He began to fall forward and swing his arms. Motions that eventually began to translate into running, with the non-moving air becoming a roaring wind in his face. In real-time, his motion was a blur, a flicker in the corner of the eye. He pushed harder, pumping leaden legs to velocities exceeding sound.
Ahead of him the projectile appeared to slow then move backwards towards him. He could see the condensing stream of air behind the bullet. He forced his hand forward and out to open and then close in a tight fist around the bullet. His own hand formed an even larger stream of condensing air behind it. His motion would cause a small sonic boom in a real-time fraction of a second.
Now that he had the bullet, he had to dump his momentum and fast. He would rapidly run out of room at his speed. Even as his hand firmly grasped the bullet he was striving to reduce his speed with all his might. Only his special clothing and face mask kept the air friction from bursting his body into flames. He could feel the heat pressing agaist him through the suit. He was slowing down now, breaking forcefully, but carefully to avoid a slip and fall. A fall now, with his massive momentum could be fatal to say the least.
Ahead his target stood gripped in the frozen look of real-time. A frozen smile on her pretty statue-still face, her eyes half lidded in a real-time blink, making her look sleepy. If Ian had the time he could have watched the slow movement of her eyelids complete the motion in a minute of two of pseudo-time. He slowed more and was buffeted by his own shockwave as it passed him. He slowed and finally theatrically stopped with his hand extended, holding the bullet an inch from her chest.
He clicked into real-time. He familiar gut wrenching, dizzying feeling as he felt his perceptions slowed. Everything started to move slowly then rapidly, accelerating back to real-time. Ian’s sonic boom was echoing in the huge auditorium. Smoke from the pyrotechnics he’d triggered by firing, billowed around him and dissipated. To the crowd watching, he’d just disappeared on one side of the stage as he shot and reappeared on other side holding an otherwise fatal bullet. For a fraction of a second, the eyes of the audience had been deceived into seeing two of him. The applause was thunderous, naturally.
The roar followed them back stage where Ian dried himself with a towel. He was soaked from his cooling dip in the tank onstage. The crowd always loved to see the water flash to steam as his body plunged into the tank from the diving platform. Ian’s mascles had the warm exerted feeling that came from such vigorous workouts. Moving in pseudo-time, especially running, required considerable effort to acquire momentum.
Brittany patted him on the shoulder. “Nice touch, Flash,” she smiled. “Stopping like that as if you’d only just made it.”
Ian regarded his “target”. She was a stunning brunette clad in one of those typical scanty sparklely outfits so common at circuses. He’d been working with her for seven or eight months now and was starting to develop what he hoped would be a very interesting relationship.
“So, you’re finally starting to appreciate my true ability as a great dramatic actor.” He responded mockingly.
She laughed at his remark. “See you later for a drink?” She asked then cocking one eyebrow suggestively.
“You know I can refuse you nothing. I’d love it. Say in about thirty minutes?”
“Thirty minutes exactly,” she said and turned and walked away. Ian watched her appreciatively as she pushed by other performers and stagemen scurrying about their business. He shook his head. Man! What a doll! Ian looked back on stage where a clown act had just delivered a punch line and the crowd was roaring with laughter. He turned and, still drying himself, headed for his dressing room. Thirty minutes wasn’t much real-time. He had his suit to get out of still.
Threading his way through the crowded backstage hallways he wondered how he’d been so lucky to find a girl like Brittany. He stepped aside for a trainer with a Gerangi, a short haired gorilla-like beast almost as intelligent as a man. It was black and white striped like a zebra. The new ships brought odd creatures back from the stars now. Ian idlely swung his mask in one hand and toweled his dripping hair with the other while he walked back to his room. He arrived at his door and reached for the doorknob to open it when he heard noises inside.
He clicked into psuedo-time automatically. He cursed his habits, but if nothing else it bought him time to decide whether to enter. His room had been locked and no one should have been able to get in. The hallway in psuedo-time was now deathly still and quiet. Full of frozen statues of living beings that faded into the hazy slow-light that prevented a clicker in pseudo-time from seeing more than about fifty feet. He was aware of the noise in his room as a dull long low groan among the moans and groans of the other normal hallway noises. Pseudo-time did that to everything, stretching the wavelengths, blurring it, reddening light.
Ian reached a decision. He had to know who was in his room. He couldn’t just leave and run. There was a chance it was only a burglar. Ian dropped his towel, which stayed where he let it go, suspened in air, and placed his mask on his face. He threw himself into motion, not the exertion he used earlier, but still sending him through the door with enough momentum that the door was torn from the hinges by his not releasing it at the proper time. He cursed the tenseness which had caused his carelessness. The door became a slow moving missile sailing across the room. It had acquired a significant amount of his momentum during his brief contact with it.
Ian surveyed the room. Three statues were in it. One was frozen in a search of his dresser while the others were scattering his belongings about the room. A sickly feeling of fear hit his guts. These statues bore the unmistakable mark of the State. Their tight, neat gray suits and hats gave them away as the Police. Damn! They were skads! They had caught up with him again. There would be others somewhere. Clickers like him, ready to jump into pseudo-time. He could already be trapped. Ian’s fear was replaced by rage. They had followed him here, hounded him to the ground again! Enough! He would cost them more than they bargained for.
In the tiny room Ian suddenly realized the flying door would soon bump slowly into one frozen figure. The consequences of that bump would probably be fatal. Ian snarled another curse. He had entered the room moving and now he pushed hard to gain more momentum and turn slightly to his right. He reached out his hand to poke the skad on the forehead with his index finger. It plunged on into the skull until his fist stopped its motion and jerked the head sideways at an awkward angle. Flecks of red scattered into the air. Dead two ways, thought Ian smugly as he continued pushing his legs, altering his angle towards the skad by his dresser.
The door began to touch the statue across the room. Out of the corner of his eye, Ian watched the edge of the door slowly crumple the figure in front of it. Spats of blood appeared on the front of the neat gray suit. The door splintered partially and skewed slowly off in a new direction.
Suddenly, Ian realized the last statue was beginning to move. Slowly at first then faster as the skad clicked. This guy must have heard him outside the door and started to click even as Ian had entered the room. Exerting himself more, Ian pushed with all his might to accelerate. He had to reach that skad before he fully clicked and could defend himself. The skads eyes began to show awareness. He fully clicked just as Ian’s fist touched, crushed, then punched through the chest and out the back. The skad tried to start moving, to gain momentum, unaware for an instant of pseudo-time that he was already dead. The skad’s face registered a last look of horror as he realized his fate and began to fade back into real-time and death.
Ian now had his own problems. His exertion had pushed his momentum too high for the small room. He braked desperately but was out of room. He put a foot on the metal bed frame which buckled. The skad corpse was still in his arms, carried forward with his momentum. The face still showed surprise, but now it was freezing into the rigor mortis of real-time. Ian thrust the body forward over the buckling bed at the wall to cushion the impending impact. I can’t slow enough, Ian realized thinking desperately.
The bed frame was bent in half now, the mattress moving off into the air and disintegrating. The corpse had reached the wall ahead of him, crumpled further as the wall bowed and cracked slowly sending pieces of plaster spinning off into space. Ian lifted both hands and his other foot to meet the wall. He tried to cushion himself, slow the impact, absorb it with his muscles. Plaster was everywhere now in a cloud. The wall shuddered, gave, and shattered. Ian, the corpse, and pieces of the wall half-fell, half-flew into the next dressing room.
Ian was falling. A mistake on smooth footing, let alone now. He rolled, trying to stay away from jagged timbers, and keep his momentum. A splinter caught his face, piercing the protective mask. He timed his push and shoved himself back up to his feet, jumping to clear the rubble. Then, he was clear. Ian took four dragging steps into the room before he slowed enough to glance around.
A woman stood, naked above the waist, immobile in real-time, dressing for, or undressing from, one of the acts. Ian was glad he didn’t recognize her. Pieces of the exploding wall were beginning to hit her. Ian turned his head away and moved to the door. He couldn’t reach her in time and he couldn’t bear to watch the flying boards and nails rip into her delicate flesh further. He opened the door, carefully this time, still moving in pseudo-time, and shut it behind him. Someone would probably hear a loud slam in real time long after Ian was gone. But to Ian it had closed gently. Of course the sound of the exploding wall would mask any noise the door made.
Ian carefully threaded between the statues. The time-momentum differences were such that the real-timer’s bodies were delicate as eggshells. Ian was panting from his exertion. Moving in pseudo-time took a great deal of effort to buck the momentum and resistance of just the air. Even staying in pseudo-time was a strain that took a toll on the clicker. But, he didn’t dare click into real-time and rest yet. He had to get some distance between himself and them fast. The place would be crawling with skads as soon as the noise was heard in real-time.
Pseudo-time twice in less than an hour! Ian was sure he’d be hurting tomorrow. If he lived to see tomorrow. They would know it was him now. If there had ever been any doubt. They’ll try to close the net. Ian reached the back door of the auditorium. It was blocked by an exiting person stuck in real-time half way out. Ian thanked God that he hadn’t had to try to move any real-timers out of his way so far. Moving a slow-timer without damaging them was hard. This one though…, he swallowed. There may be enough room to squeeze through. If he were careful… The alternative was to wait for the agonizingly slow moving real-timer to clear the doorway. There was no way he had that much time. As the sound waves of the exploding wall spread out behind him every skad clicker would click to pseudo-time and if that happened, he’d never get away. He took a deep breath and contorted himself to fit between the slow-timer and the metal door. He felt the brush of the door. He hoped he hadn’t moved it enough to make it slam open and back into the person. He couldn’t wait to find out.
The streets were crowded, as he came out of the stage door’s alley. Ian half-running swiftly threaded his way several blocks in the hazy slow-light before clicking. Before he did, he lifted a long coat off the back of a chair in a sidewalk café he passed and put it on to hide his own clothing. The familiar wrenching of thought, the swirling feeling, and he was back in real-time. The blurred distances became clear and sharp. His hearing was assailed by the noisy crowds and traffic as sounds swelled from the super-low ranges back into normal. It was early evening and, to Ian’s sweaty body, the air felt cool and good. He was panting as if he had ran a marathon.
The crowds were everywhere, bustling, churning. It was Carnival. The very thing that had brought the circus and lured him to this trap would now cloak him. The gaily costumed crowds were filled with weird beasts, gods, demons, and clowns, romping all about. Most were seriously drunk. His odd clothing and facemask would hardly make him stand out. Ian felt safe, at least for the moment, in the crowds. He had not seen any of the tell tale gray suits. Skads were never out on the streets in uniform once Carnival got into full swing. Too often gay crowds had gleefully torn them to shreds. With all the participants masked there was no one to easily identify as guilty.
Ian removed his mask and surveyed himself for damage. His cheek was gashed where a splinter from the wall had speared through the face mask. He idlely pulled the offending splinter from the mask and dropped it on the sidewalk. His speed suit was chalky from plaster and a few small tears showed from his trip through the wall. The blood from the skad was all over his chest and one arm, but it was black and smoking. He had forgotten about the air friction from traveling in pseudo-time. It had turned the blood into scorched char. He was as hot as a poker fresh from a fire. He needed time to cool, but also needed to put more distance between himself and the circus. Ian moved away from the direction of the auditorium, trying not to appear too hurried.
He had scarcely gone a block when a drunken reveler fell against him with a bottle in each hand. Ian pushed him brusquely away, afraid his heat would give him away. The drunk laughed, shouted something unintelligible to Ian, and reeled away into the crowd. He let out a sigh of relief. Good thing the fellow was drunk since his clothes were smoldering as he staggered away. Ian reminded himself to watch out for other drunks. Liquor and hashish would be available everywhere.
Ian kept moving. Over the next hour or so he managed to avoid all but the most casual of touches. He was leaving the area that contained most of the revelers. He was cooler now, though he was beginning to limp from a sore leg. He hadn’t felt that much, at first. Hopefully that was all he had injured. Ian saw another of the small sidewalk cafés ahead. Favoring what he hoped was only a bruised leg, he stepped inside a low wrought iron railing and found an empty table. It wasn’t hard. This area was a good distance away from the festivities. A smiling, portly waiter bustled over to him, almost before he had sat. Ian ordered a beer which swiftly appeared. He paid the smiling waiter with slightly scorched bills he found in the coat pocket and said, "Keep the change". The waiter never noticed. He just bustled away to wipe down a table for a couple who had just came in.
Ian looked at the remaining bills. He didn’t have much on him. Oh, well. A clicker pickpocket could get all the cash he wanted. He just had to be gentle to avoid injuries to his prey. He settled back to rest and watch the people walking by. He was miles from where he’d done his magic show. By now things must be pretty well settled down. He hoped the woman in the dressing room next to his had died quickly. That always disturbed him. The “accidents”. The innocent victims of clicking around slow-timers. It was like having pedestrians in the middle of the track at Indianapolis Speedway during a race with cars going two hundred plus miles an hour. Gruesome.
Damn skads. He cursed them again for the millionth time. He remembered the “incident” again in spite of his resolution. He had been on the south coast at a concert, playing the bohemian. He smiled. That had been fun for a while… Till then. He’d gone to the concert with some of the friends he’d made down there. Everything was great. Some booze, and girls. Then, he’d noticed at the crowd’s edges the tell tale skad grays. He been nervous, but they were common enough at concerts though. Soon enough the wild gaity and screaming music alleviated his tension. He forgot his worrys until part way through the concert he realized something was happening.
Some man on a pole platform was pointing at him and speaking into a cell phone. The skad clickers came from the outskirts of the crowd pushing bodies from their paths roughly. Ian had a fraction of a second’s impression of lines shooting through the crowd towards him headed by blurs when he clicked. It was the thickness of the crowd that saved him. Even in pseudo-time the skads couldn’t move at top speed. As he clicked, the blurs became gray suited men walking rapidly towards him, shoving the frozen bodies out of their way in their haste to reach him.
Panicked, Ian began to look around for a way out. He saw that back behind him to his left, there was a wide gap between the skads. He began to move away from his friends and between the groups of statues. He brushed a statue lightly and knew that they would feel like they’d been hit by a two by four, hard. Everywhere he looked were more bodies. His way ahead was blocked. Frustrated he desperately cast about for some way to avoid the people all around him.
He could see that some of the nearer skads realized that he had clicked. They began to try and rush and run between bodies. In their haste they became careless of both themselves and the crowd. Ian watched in horror as several statues were either knocked apart or had limbs ripped off or torsos crushed. For an instant, he was frozen himself, shocked at the complete disregard for life. Then he shook himself free of his stupor. Hide first. Get low and stay down he thought. He dropped to his knees and scurried forward trying as best he could to not touch the delicate statues. His skin was burning as he pushed forward as fast as he dared. In spite of his attempts at care several statues would eventually collapse in real-time, their legs shattered out from under them.
Eventually he had reached the edge of the crowd. As he got up from his knees, he looked behind him and was instantly sorry he had. The skads were ripping the crowd apart in a frenzy, looking for him. They were still convinced he was still in the crowd. The carnage of the clickers among the delicate statues was ghastly. Ian had been softer then. He screamed at them, shouted and waved for them to stop, that he was here. The shrillness of his cries would only be heard by dogs in real-time. As the slow speed of sound reached the murderers, they stopped and then turned to rush towards him wreaking further havoc among the helpless victims. Their new renewed frenzy to reach him was even more horrible than before if that were possible.
He watched one gray-clad man rushing towards him shove half through a body and come upon a pole behind it that he hadn’t seen. He had plenty of pseudo-time before he hit to realize his mistake. Ian watched him struggle against his momentum, unable to stop. The pole bent, but the skad disintegrated into large chunks that slowed redly into real-time. Ian was grotesquely pleased. Nor was the example wasted on the other pursuers. They became abruptly more cautious.
Ian turned to flee again, but his skin was red and burning. He snatched a blanket from under a group of picnicking statues near the rear edge of the crowd. He almost laughed as he did so, it was like jerking a table cloth out from dishes on the table. He was amazed that it had worked. Wrapping himself in the blanket for protection, he began to run as fast as he could in pseudo-time. As his speed increased, his time sense of even the other clickers slowed more. The slow-light effect made a fog that drew in closer and closer as he ran faster and faster, picking up momentum like a train. Luckily, all the clickers among the skads had apparently been in the crowd, not waiting for him as he left the arena. He ran half way across the city before he had to stop and throw the now openly burning blankets into a trash can. Gasping, he continued at a slower walk in pseudo-time for several more blocks unprotected.
He stayed in pseudo-time the whole time moving as fast as he could with what little energy he had left. When he finally stopped, he was in an alley in a skid row district. As he clicked back to real-time, he doubled over gasping as a wave of dizziness passed over him. Real-time hit him hard then When he opened his eyes, he found himself sitting with his back against an old cinder block wall. He looked down at himself at the scorched remnants of his clothing. He discovered by feeling that he’d also burned off every bit of his hair and had the equivalent of a bad sunburn. His lips had blistered from the heat. That may have saved him in the end. The last person he resembled right then was the hairy bearded hippie he’d been only minutes before on the other side of town. As a bald sunburned stumbling bum (dressed in some ragged old clothes he pulled out of a dumpster) even the State’s best had missed him. One skad even pushed him out of the way and stared hard at him threateningly as they swept the entire city for him. It took him another week to slip out of town on a rail line, and, even then, they were still searching for someone he no longer looked like
“No,” Ian chuckled thinking, “Accidents don’t bother me like they used to.” He looked around, coming back to the present. Several new faces sat at tables around him and the lights were coming on now, soft and dim. Now the evening rush had filled the place. Ian looked up at the sky. A crescent moon and a few paltry scattered stars shown through the support lattice of the dome above the city. That dome not only controlled the weather for the city, but effectively jailed him inside. There were only a few exits and all would be carefully guarded now. Getting out was certainly going to be difficult.
He was out of beer. Ian looked about for the waiter, but he was nowhere to be found. He stared down at his empty mug. Where to now? Ian asked himself. He couldn’t go back and he only had about twenty bucks on him. Usually, he’d have a local cache. But, this time he’d taken too long to set one up. He’d been lulled by the security of the circus. Plus, the circus had just arrived last week and there had been no time in the busy schedule of a new city for him to sneak away. He hadn’t had time to even get to know the city well enough to decide where to set up his cache. Ian swore under his breath. He’d gotten sloppy while traveling with the show, he shook his head disgusted at his neglect. Well, where to now? He wondered again.
A shadow crossed his face and Ian looked up startled. A pretty young woman was just sitting down across from him He tensed, waiting for gray. He almost clicked.
“Hi.” She smiled sweetly. “The place is full. Can I share your table?”
Ian stared blankly for a second, then he laughed in relief. “ Sure. Sure. I’d be delighted.”
“Buy me a drink?” Oh, Ian thought. A hooker picking up her mark. This may be a good way to get off the street for the night.
“Sure.” He looked around, found the waiter and waived him over. “I was just going to get myself another drink. What’ll you have?”
“Scotch on the rocks, a double,” she said with a slight half smile. Seeing Ian’s look, she laughed prettily. “Oh, I know, not a very lady-like drink. That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah. I have to admit, it wasn’t quite what I thought you’d order”. Ian smiled back at her. The waiter walked up and Ian turned to order their drinks. The waiter looked knowingly at the girl with gave a wink to Ian. Ian smiled and ordered her drink and another beer for himself. The waiter took the order and was gone again, off to another table.
“Thanks. You really don’t need to pay for my drink, you know. You don’t even know me.”
But I’d like to, Ian thought, turning back to take a good long look at her. He looked her up and down, appraising the slender, well-formed, body. An athlete? he wondered. She was a cute blonde with medium length hair. Dark roots, could be bleached he thought. She was only marginally shorter than himself. She struck him as more of a working girl than a hooker. Well, could be. Maybe she just wants the company. I just want off the street tonight and a place to hide, Ian thought. I wonder if she’d be offended that my main attraction to her has nothing to do with her looks or a good time?
“No problem. I’d like to buy your drink. Here for Carnival?” He asked trying to start some small talk after the lapse caused by his appraisal of her.
“Not really,” she answered setting her handbag on the table. “I’m actually from out of town. I’m here on some business for my company. But I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another night in the room with Carnival going on outside.”
“Have you been wandering around long?”
“A while. I was enjoying the costumes and watching the people. They are so caught up in it all. But alone it’s better to watch from a distance. Too many rowdies.”
“Rowdies. That’s a funny old term to be using. I didn’t know people used that word any more.”
She seemed a little taken aback, at his comment. “I guess my company keeps me busy in a pretty provincial area. I …I did say I’m not from around here.”
Funny girl. From assured to nervous so quick. “So”, Ian prompted her. “What company do you work for and what do you do?”
She seemed relieved, like she was back on safe ground. “I work for the The ... ...
I wrote another few chapters of this original version. I wrote this back somewhere around 1983 I believe.
Ahead of him the projectile appeared to slow then move backwards towards him. He could see the condensing stream of air behind the bullet. He forced his hand forward and out to open and then close in a tight fist around the bullet. His own hand formed an even larger stream of condensing air behind it. His motion would cause a small sonic boom in a real-time fraction of a second.
Now that he had the bullet, he had to dump his momentum and fast. He would rapidly run out of room at his speed. Even as his hand firmly grasped the bullet he was striving to reduce his speed with all his might. Only his special clothing and face mask kept the air friction from bursting his body into flames. He could feel the heat pressing agaist him through the suit. He was slowing down now, breaking forcefully, but carefully to avoid a slip and fall. A fall now, with his massive momentum could be fatal to say the least.
Ahead his target stood gripped in the frozen look of real-time. A frozen smile on her pretty statue-still face, her eyes half lidded in a real-time blink, making her look sleepy. If Ian had the time he could have watched the slow movement of her eyelids complete the motion in a minute of two of pseudo-time. He slowed more and was buffeted by his own shockwave as it passed him. He slowed and finally theatrically stopped with his hand extended, holding the bullet an inch from her chest.
He clicked into real-time. He familiar gut wrenching, dizzying feeling as he felt his perceptions slowed. Everything started to move slowly then rapidly, accelerating back to real-time. Ian’s sonic boom was echoing in the huge auditorium. Smoke from the pyrotechnics he’d triggered by firing, billowed around him and dissipated. To the crowd watching, he’d just disappeared on one side of the stage as he shot and reappeared on other side holding an otherwise fatal bullet. For a fraction of a second, the eyes of the audience had been deceived into seeing two of him. The applause was thunderous, naturally.
The roar followed them back stage where Ian dried himself with a towel. He was soaked from his cooling dip in the tank onstage. The crowd always loved to see the water flash to steam as his body plunged into the tank from the diving platform. Ian’s mascles had the warm exerted feeling that came from such vigorous workouts. Moving in pseudo-time, especially running, required considerable effort to acquire momentum.
Brittany patted him on the shoulder. “Nice touch, Flash,” she smiled. “Stopping like that as if you’d only just made it.”
Ian regarded his “target”. She was a stunning brunette clad in one of those typical scanty sparklely outfits so common at circuses. He’d been working with her for seven or eight months now and was starting to develop what he hoped would be a very interesting relationship.
“So, you’re finally starting to appreciate my true ability as a great dramatic actor.” He responded mockingly.
She laughed at his remark. “See you later for a drink?” She asked then cocking one eyebrow suggestively.
“You know I can refuse you nothing. I’d love it. Say in about thirty minutes?”
“Thirty minutes exactly,” she said and turned and walked away. Ian watched her appreciatively as she pushed by other performers and stagemen scurrying about their business. He shook his head. Man! What a doll! Ian looked back on stage where a clown act had just delivered a punch line and the crowd was roaring with laughter. He turned and, still drying himself, headed for his dressing room. Thirty minutes wasn’t much real-time. He had his suit to get out of still.
Threading his way through the crowded backstage hallways he wondered how he’d been so lucky to find a girl like Brittany. He stepped aside for a trainer with a Gerangi, a short haired gorilla-like beast almost as intelligent as a man. It was black and white striped like a zebra. The new ships brought odd creatures back from the stars now. Ian idlely swung his mask in one hand and toweled his dripping hair with the other while he walked back to his room. He arrived at his door and reached for the doorknob to open it when he heard noises inside.
He clicked into psuedo-time automatically. He cursed his habits, but if nothing else it bought him time to decide whether to enter. His room had been locked and no one should have been able to get in. The hallway in psuedo-time was now deathly still and quiet. Full of frozen statues of living beings that faded into the hazy slow-light that prevented a clicker in pseudo-time from seeing more than about fifty feet. He was aware of the noise in his room as a dull long low groan among the moans and groans of the other normal hallway noises. Pseudo-time did that to everything, stretching the wavelengths, blurring it, reddening light.
Ian reached a decision. He had to know who was in his room. He couldn’t just leave and run. There was a chance it was only a burglar. Ian dropped his towel, which stayed where he let it go, suspened in air, and placed his mask on his face. He threw himself into motion, not the exertion he used earlier, but still sending him through the door with enough momentum that the door was torn from the hinges by his not releasing it at the proper time. He cursed the tenseness which had caused his carelessness. The door became a slow moving missile sailing across the room. It had acquired a significant amount of his momentum during his brief contact with it.
Ian surveyed the room. Three statues were in it. One was frozen in a search of his dresser while the others were scattering his belongings about the room. A sickly feeling of fear hit his guts. These statues bore the unmistakable mark of the State. Their tight, neat gray suits and hats gave them away as the Police. Damn! They were skads! They had caught up with him again. There would be others somewhere. Clickers like him, ready to jump into pseudo-time. He could already be trapped. Ian’s fear was replaced by rage. They had followed him here, hounded him to the ground again! Enough! He would cost them more than they bargained for.
In the tiny room Ian suddenly realized the flying door would soon bump slowly into one frozen figure. The consequences of that bump would probably be fatal. Ian snarled another curse. He had entered the room moving and now he pushed hard to gain more momentum and turn slightly to his right. He reached out his hand to poke the skad on the forehead with his index finger. It plunged on into the skull until his fist stopped its motion and jerked the head sideways at an awkward angle. Flecks of red scattered into the air. Dead two ways, thought Ian smugly as he continued pushing his legs, altering his angle towards the skad by his dresser.
The door began to touch the statue across the room. Out of the corner of his eye, Ian watched the edge of the door slowly crumple the figure in front of it. Spats of blood appeared on the front of the neat gray suit. The door splintered partially and skewed slowly off in a new direction.
Suddenly, Ian realized the last statue was beginning to move. Slowly at first then faster as the skad clicked. This guy must have heard him outside the door and started to click even as Ian had entered the room. Exerting himself more, Ian pushed with all his might to accelerate. He had to reach that skad before he fully clicked and could defend himself. The skads eyes began to show awareness. He fully clicked just as Ian’s fist touched, crushed, then punched through the chest and out the back. The skad tried to start moving, to gain momentum, unaware for an instant of pseudo-time that he was already dead. The skad’s face registered a last look of horror as he realized his fate and began to fade back into real-time and death.
Ian now had his own problems. His exertion had pushed his momentum too high for the small room. He braked desperately but was out of room. He put a foot on the metal bed frame which buckled. The skad corpse was still in his arms, carried forward with his momentum. The face still showed surprise, but now it was freezing into the rigor mortis of real-time. Ian thrust the body forward over the buckling bed at the wall to cushion the impending impact. I can’t slow enough, Ian realized thinking desperately.
The bed frame was bent in half now, the mattress moving off into the air and disintegrating. The corpse had reached the wall ahead of him, crumpled further as the wall bowed and cracked slowly sending pieces of plaster spinning off into space. Ian lifted both hands and his other foot to meet the wall. He tried to cushion himself, slow the impact, absorb it with his muscles. Plaster was everywhere now in a cloud. The wall shuddered, gave, and shattered. Ian, the corpse, and pieces of the wall half-fell, half-flew into the next dressing room.
Ian was falling. A mistake on smooth footing, let alone now. He rolled, trying to stay away from jagged timbers, and keep his momentum. A splinter caught his face, piercing the protective mask. He timed his push and shoved himself back up to his feet, jumping to clear the rubble. Then, he was clear. Ian took four dragging steps into the room before he slowed enough to glance around.
A woman stood, naked above the waist, immobile in real-time, dressing for, or undressing from, one of the acts. Ian was glad he didn’t recognize her. Pieces of the exploding wall were beginning to hit her. Ian turned his head away and moved to the door. He couldn’t reach her in time and he couldn’t bear to watch the flying boards and nails rip into her delicate flesh further. He opened the door, carefully this time, still moving in pseudo-time, and shut it behind him. Someone would probably hear a loud slam in real time long after Ian was gone. But to Ian it had closed gently. Of course the sound of the exploding wall would mask any noise the door made.
Ian carefully threaded between the statues. The time-momentum differences were such that the real-timer’s bodies were delicate as eggshells. Ian was panting from his exertion. Moving in pseudo-time took a great deal of effort to buck the momentum and resistance of just the air. Even staying in pseudo-time was a strain that took a toll on the clicker. But, he didn’t dare click into real-time and rest yet. He had to get some distance between himself and them fast. The place would be crawling with skads as soon as the noise was heard in real-time.
Pseudo-time twice in less than an hour! Ian was sure he’d be hurting tomorrow. If he lived to see tomorrow. They would know it was him now. If there had ever been any doubt. They’ll try to close the net. Ian reached the back door of the auditorium. It was blocked by an exiting person stuck in real-time half way out. Ian thanked God that he hadn’t had to try to move any real-timers out of his way so far. Moving a slow-timer without damaging them was hard. This one though…, he swallowed. There may be enough room to squeeze through. If he were careful… The alternative was to wait for the agonizingly slow moving real-timer to clear the doorway. There was no way he had that much time. As the sound waves of the exploding wall spread out behind him every skad clicker would click to pseudo-time and if that happened, he’d never get away. He took a deep breath and contorted himself to fit between the slow-timer and the metal door. He felt the brush of the door. He hoped he hadn’t moved it enough to make it slam open and back into the person. He couldn’t wait to find out.
The streets were crowded, as he came out of the stage door’s alley. Ian half-running swiftly threaded his way several blocks in the hazy slow-light before clicking. Before he did, he lifted a long coat off the back of a chair in a sidewalk café he passed and put it on to hide his own clothing. The familiar wrenching of thought, the swirling feeling, and he was back in real-time. The blurred distances became clear and sharp. His hearing was assailed by the noisy crowds and traffic as sounds swelled from the super-low ranges back into normal. It was early evening and, to Ian’s sweaty body, the air felt cool and good. He was panting as if he had ran a marathon.
The crowds were everywhere, bustling, churning. It was Carnival. The very thing that had brought the circus and lured him to this trap would now cloak him. The gaily costumed crowds were filled with weird beasts, gods, demons, and clowns, romping all about. Most were seriously drunk. His odd clothing and facemask would hardly make him stand out. Ian felt safe, at least for the moment, in the crowds. He had not seen any of the tell tale gray suits. Skads were never out on the streets in uniform once Carnival got into full swing. Too often gay crowds had gleefully torn them to shreds. With all the participants masked there was no one to easily identify as guilty.
Ian removed his mask and surveyed himself for damage. His cheek was gashed where a splinter from the wall had speared through the face mask. He idlely pulled the offending splinter from the mask and dropped it on the sidewalk. His speed suit was chalky from plaster and a few small tears showed from his trip through the wall. The blood from the skad was all over his chest and one arm, but it was black and smoking. He had forgotten about the air friction from traveling in pseudo-time. It had turned the blood into scorched char. He was as hot as a poker fresh from a fire. He needed time to cool, but also needed to put more distance between himself and the circus. Ian moved away from the direction of the auditorium, trying not to appear too hurried.
He had scarcely gone a block when a drunken reveler fell against him with a bottle in each hand. Ian pushed him brusquely away, afraid his heat would give him away. The drunk laughed, shouted something unintelligible to Ian, and reeled away into the crowd. He let out a sigh of relief. Good thing the fellow was drunk since his clothes were smoldering as he staggered away. Ian reminded himself to watch out for other drunks. Liquor and hashish would be available everywhere.
Ian kept moving. Over the next hour or so he managed to avoid all but the most casual of touches. He was leaving the area that contained most of the revelers. He was cooler now, though he was beginning to limp from a sore leg. He hadn’t felt that much, at first. Hopefully that was all he had injured. Ian saw another of the small sidewalk cafés ahead. Favoring what he hoped was only a bruised leg, he stepped inside a low wrought iron railing and found an empty table. It wasn’t hard. This area was a good distance away from the festivities. A smiling, portly waiter bustled over to him, almost before he had sat. Ian ordered a beer which swiftly appeared. He paid the smiling waiter with slightly scorched bills he found in the coat pocket and said, "Keep the change". The waiter never noticed. He just bustled away to wipe down a table for a couple who had just came in.
Ian looked at the remaining bills. He didn’t have much on him. Oh, well. A clicker pickpocket could get all the cash he wanted. He just had to be gentle to avoid injuries to his prey. He settled back to rest and watch the people walking by. He was miles from where he’d done his magic show. By now things must be pretty well settled down. He hoped the woman in the dressing room next to his had died quickly. That always disturbed him. The “accidents”. The innocent victims of clicking around slow-timers. It was like having pedestrians in the middle of the track at Indianapolis Speedway during a race with cars going two hundred plus miles an hour. Gruesome.
Damn skads. He cursed them again for the millionth time. He remembered the “incident” again in spite of his resolution. He had been on the south coast at a concert, playing the bohemian. He smiled. That had been fun for a while… Till then. He’d gone to the concert with some of the friends he’d made down there. Everything was great. Some booze, and girls. Then, he’d noticed at the crowd’s edges the tell tale skad grays. He been nervous, but they were common enough at concerts though. Soon enough the wild gaity and screaming music alleviated his tension. He forgot his worrys until part way through the concert he realized something was happening.
Some man on a pole platform was pointing at him and speaking into a cell phone. The skad clickers came from the outskirts of the crowd pushing bodies from their paths roughly. Ian had a fraction of a second’s impression of lines shooting through the crowd towards him headed by blurs when he clicked. It was the thickness of the crowd that saved him. Even in pseudo-time the skads couldn’t move at top speed. As he clicked, the blurs became gray suited men walking rapidly towards him, shoving the frozen bodies out of their way in their haste to reach him.
Panicked, Ian began to look around for a way out. He saw that back behind him to his left, there was a wide gap between the skads. He began to move away from his friends and between the groups of statues. He brushed a statue lightly and knew that they would feel like they’d been hit by a two by four, hard. Everywhere he looked were more bodies. His way ahead was blocked. Frustrated he desperately cast about for some way to avoid the people all around him.
He could see that some of the nearer skads realized that he had clicked. They began to try and rush and run between bodies. In their haste they became careless of both themselves and the crowd. Ian watched in horror as several statues were either knocked apart or had limbs ripped off or torsos crushed. For an instant, he was frozen himself, shocked at the complete disregard for life. Then he shook himself free of his stupor. Hide first. Get low and stay down he thought. He dropped to his knees and scurried forward trying as best he could to not touch the delicate statues. His skin was burning as he pushed forward as fast as he dared. In spite of his attempts at care several statues would eventually collapse in real-time, their legs shattered out from under them.
Eventually he had reached the edge of the crowd. As he got up from his knees, he looked behind him and was instantly sorry he had. The skads were ripping the crowd apart in a frenzy, looking for him. They were still convinced he was still in the crowd. The carnage of the clickers among the delicate statues was ghastly. Ian had been softer then. He screamed at them, shouted and waved for them to stop, that he was here. The shrillness of his cries would only be heard by dogs in real-time. As the slow speed of sound reached the murderers, they stopped and then turned to rush towards him wreaking further havoc among the helpless victims. Their new renewed frenzy to reach him was even more horrible than before if that were possible.
He watched one gray-clad man rushing towards him shove half through a body and come upon a pole behind it that he hadn’t seen. He had plenty of pseudo-time before he hit to realize his mistake. Ian watched him struggle against his momentum, unable to stop. The pole bent, but the skad disintegrated into large chunks that slowed redly into real-time. Ian was grotesquely pleased. Nor was the example wasted on the other pursuers. They became abruptly more cautious.
Ian turned to flee again, but his skin was red and burning. He snatched a blanket from under a group of picnicking statues near the rear edge of the crowd. He almost laughed as he did so, it was like jerking a table cloth out from dishes on the table. He was amazed that it had worked. Wrapping himself in the blanket for protection, he began to run as fast as he could in pseudo-time. As his speed increased, his time sense of even the other clickers slowed more. The slow-light effect made a fog that drew in closer and closer as he ran faster and faster, picking up momentum like a train. Luckily, all the clickers among the skads had apparently been in the crowd, not waiting for him as he left the arena. He ran half way across the city before he had to stop and throw the now openly burning blankets into a trash can. Gasping, he continued at a slower walk in pseudo-time for several more blocks unprotected.
He stayed in pseudo-time the whole time moving as fast as he could with what little energy he had left. When he finally stopped, he was in an alley in a skid row district. As he clicked back to real-time, he doubled over gasping as a wave of dizziness passed over him. Real-time hit him hard then When he opened his eyes, he found himself sitting with his back against an old cinder block wall. He looked down at himself at the scorched remnants of his clothing. He discovered by feeling that he’d also burned off every bit of his hair and had the equivalent of a bad sunburn. His lips had blistered from the heat. That may have saved him in the end. The last person he resembled right then was the hairy bearded hippie he’d been only minutes before on the other side of town. As a bald sunburned stumbling bum (dressed in some ragged old clothes he pulled out of a dumpster) even the State’s best had missed him. One skad even pushed him out of the way and stared hard at him threateningly as they swept the entire city for him. It took him another week to slip out of town on a rail line, and, even then, they were still searching for someone he no longer looked like
“No,” Ian chuckled thinking, “Accidents don’t bother me like they used to.” He looked around, coming back to the present. Several new faces sat at tables around him and the lights were coming on now, soft and dim. Now the evening rush had filled the place. Ian looked up at the sky. A crescent moon and a few paltry scattered stars shown through the support lattice of the dome above the city. That dome not only controlled the weather for the city, but effectively jailed him inside. There were only a few exits and all would be carefully guarded now. Getting out was certainly going to be difficult.
He was out of beer. Ian looked about for the waiter, but he was nowhere to be found. He stared down at his empty mug. Where to now? Ian asked himself. He couldn’t go back and he only had about twenty bucks on him. Usually, he’d have a local cache. But, this time he’d taken too long to set one up. He’d been lulled by the security of the circus. Plus, the circus had just arrived last week and there had been no time in the busy schedule of a new city for him to sneak away. He hadn’t had time to even get to know the city well enough to decide where to set up his cache. Ian swore under his breath. He’d gotten sloppy while traveling with the show, he shook his head disgusted at his neglect. Well, where to now? He wondered again.
A shadow crossed his face and Ian looked up startled. A pretty young woman was just sitting down across from him He tensed, waiting for gray. He almost clicked.
“Hi.” She smiled sweetly. “The place is full. Can I share your table?”
Ian stared blankly for a second, then he laughed in relief. “ Sure. Sure. I’d be delighted.”
“Buy me a drink?” Oh, Ian thought. A hooker picking up her mark. This may be a good way to get off the street for the night.
“Sure.” He looked around, found the waiter and waived him over. “I was just going to get myself another drink. What’ll you have?”
“Scotch on the rocks, a double,” she said with a slight half smile. Seeing Ian’s look, she laughed prettily. “Oh, I know, not a very lady-like drink. That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah. I have to admit, it wasn’t quite what I thought you’d order”. Ian smiled back at her. The waiter walked up and Ian turned to order their drinks. The waiter looked knowingly at the girl with gave a wink to Ian. Ian smiled and ordered her drink and another beer for himself. The waiter took the order and was gone again, off to another table.
“Thanks. You really don’t need to pay for my drink, you know. You don’t even know me.”
But I’d like to, Ian thought, turning back to take a good long look at her. He looked her up and down, appraising the slender, well-formed, body. An athlete? he wondered. She was a cute blonde with medium length hair. Dark roots, could be bleached he thought. She was only marginally shorter than himself. She struck him as more of a working girl than a hooker. Well, could be. Maybe she just wants the company. I just want off the street tonight and a place to hide, Ian thought. I wonder if she’d be offended that my main attraction to her has nothing to do with her looks or a good time?
“No problem. I’d like to buy your drink. Here for Carnival?” He asked trying to start some small talk after the lapse caused by his appraisal of her.
“Not really,” she answered setting her handbag on the table. “I’m actually from out of town. I’m here on some business for my company. But I couldn’t stand the thought of spending another night in the room with Carnival going on outside.”
“Have you been wandering around long?”
“A while. I was enjoying the costumes and watching the people. They are so caught up in it all. But alone it’s better to watch from a distance. Too many rowdies.”
“Rowdies. That’s a funny old term to be using. I didn’t know people used that word any more.”
She seemed a little taken aback, at his comment. “I guess my company keeps me busy in a pretty provincial area. I …I did say I’m not from around here.”
Funny girl. From assured to nervous so quick. “So”, Ian prompted her. “What company do you work for and what do you do?”
She seemed relieved, like she was back on safe ground. “I work for the The ... ...
I wrote another few chapters of this original version. I wrote this back somewhere around 1983 I believe.