s3.e13

Daemon-Tronics

           Sunday, June 30^th, 1996. The day had come when Wessy would drop a piece of paper into a box at Toys ‘R’ Us that would change his life forever. But that was going to happen in the evening, and there was a day to get through first. It was one where the rest of the gang had their own plans, so to kill time, Wes took the boys to a matinee showing at the megaplex of The Nutty Professor, another of the year’s moneymakers.

           The theater was crowded, and Wes, Warren, and Jace all had popcorn and soda in tow. Eddie Murphy in a fat suit got big laughs, especially during the scenes where he played other members of his character’s family. The flick had little to do with the Jerry Lewis original, other than there being a love potion that transforms the scientist into a very different persona—and in this version, temporarily shaves a few hundred pounds off, too. It had all of the typical 90s gross-out humor, sure, but it was fairly funny.

           Throughout, Jace kept an eye on his cousin and uncle as he sat between them. In something of a minor miracle, Warren actually let out a few chuckles across the runtime, though he looked guilty about it and would try even harder afterward to get back into his broody façade. On the other hand, Wes seemed to totally space out for minutes on end. Sure, he had seen the movie before, but today, his head was very much elsewhere.

           “Did you guys have some fun?” Wes asked once they were back in the hallway and past the theater’s exiting crowds. “Got no idea how much of a movie-goer you are, Warren. Guess I never asked. I mean, you have seen a few, right? And you got snacks.”

           “Yeah, yeah…” Warren sighed. “A few. Mostly… older ones.”

           “Wes, you didn’t even really ‘see’ the one we just went to,” Jace commented.

           “Huh? Oh.” Wes pocketed his hands. “I’m not exactly feeling it right now.”

           “Feeling what?” Jace asked as they went further back in the hall, towards the rear exit. “All your usual nostalgia stuff? I know that look, when you got a lot on your mind.”

           “I’m hyper-focused on the present. I mean, right now, not now-now, back in 2020. I feel like there’s a ton of things we forgot to do or wrap up. Yeah, I always feel that way when there’s a deadline, but… Ah, anyway, did you have anyone left to help out, Jace?”

           “I only have to talk to December. But that can happen at the park get-together.”

           Warren crossed his arms. “I still don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s just too big a target for anyone, or anything watching. I think you, er… we should just leave quietly.”

           Wes stopped at the exit at the very back of the corridor, a quiet and dark corner away from the crowds, lights, and theater entrances, and turned to Warren.

           “Kid, like I said, I’ll handle it,” he tried to reassure him again. “I’ll bail, go back in time, and cancel the plans if anything feels off. We’ll talk. Just… let me see myself submit that Toy Run ticket first, okay? I’ve been looking forward to tonight for so long.”

           “Yeah, um… About that… There’s something I have to talk to you—”

           Warren was interrupted by a time tear that had suddenly opened up right in front of the rear doors, blocking their way out. Not at all expecting the intrusion, the three of them jumped back, with Warren instinctively reaching for a sword that wasn’t there.

           “Damn it,” Wes exclaimed. “The daemon, again, here?”

           “D-do we run?” Jace stammered. “B-before it, you know, pulls us in?”

           Wes would’ve been fine with that, but he was cautiously curious about why the tear didn’t seem to be making a threat display, yet. For a moment, it simply hovered in place. But after a few more seconds, the glowing white miniature eyes and branch-like tentacles came out and reshaped into the words, “LAST CHANCE. LEAVE. NOW!”

           Warren said glibly, “Wow. You were right. It can form words. You two chat?”

           “Agh!” Wes exasperated, then turned around and started walking to the front entrance, without even checking to see if he was being followed as the boys joined him. “I am so sick of that thing! It’s going to come after us at the very end, I just know it.”

           “You don’t seem to be as scared of it as you used to be,” Jace noted.

           “Because I’m so done with it. And I won’t live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for some… temporal-techno-horror. Warren, you up for taking it down?”

           Warren was surprised by the idea, but replied, “What… do you have in mind?”

           “Guns. Lots of guns,” was Wes’ eventual answer, once they got back to the cottage and he had opened his case with the pistol inside. “I say I load up, and the next time that thing comes out of hiding, I fight back. And Warren starts slashing.”

           “Great plan, Neo,” Warren scoffed as he leaned against the dining area wall.

           “You got a better one? It’s not like you’ve tried taking it on yet.”

           “Because there’s no way I could do it alone, and I never figured you’d work up the courage to help me. And how do you plan on ‘loading up,’ exactly?”

           “We stick together and go to that store on the rough side of downtown, where all the pawn shops are… What was it called again? Um… Oh, yeah. Slug and Safe.”

           “Geez, Unk, you’re suddenly going all Rambo,” Jace remarked. “I don’t actually know about that character, that’s just something the kids on the playground would say when someone was getting really intense. But, like… aren’t there waiting periods and background checks? I don’t think you’ll be walking out of there today with an armory.”

           Wes, actually having forgotten all about that, let out a sigh before checking his firearm. “Riiight… Well, maybe there’s something I could get today. Not to mention, I could just go back in time and fill out the paperwork earlier. I only have two mags for this old thing, anyway. Least I can do is stock up.” He turned to the boys, both of whom were giving him incredulous looks. “I know. It’s nuts that it’s come to this. I’m not trying to join some militia here, guys—I’m just exercising a right to protect us. I grew up with water guns, laser tag, and first person shooters… so is this really a big leap from all that?”

           “I mean, yeah, kinda,” Warren replied matter-of-factly. “You sound like you’re ready to go to war with an advanced piece of tech that runs 24/7, fixing mistakes or crimes in the timeline. And you’re armed with, basically, a peashooter.”

           “I’m not stupid. I don’t plan on jumping through one of those portals and emptying out on it while shouting a battle cry. I… just need to be able to show it I’m not afraid anymore. Maybe blast away a few of its eyes or tentacles. Besides, you still have your cyberpunk sword, and Jace has the laser rifle you made for him.”

           Jace looked at Warren, then back to Wes. “If it’s only to defend ourselves… I guess that makes sense. We saw what a different one of those things did to a cyborg.”

           “All right, all right,” Warren grumbled and went for the door. “Let’s go before you start over-thinking it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll sell you a rocket launcher.”

           “Hold on, ninja boy. I’ve taken enough risks and made too many mistakes on this trip already, and I don’t want one last big screw-up at the end. We’re hunkering down until July 3^rd, and when we do leave the house, we’re going suited up and armed.”

           “You sound pretty serious…” Jace murmured.

           “I am serious. Now go make yourselves look dangerous.”

           While a vague command, the kids both got the idea. Within about five minutes, Warren emerged from the bathroom fully decked out in his ninja suit, his sword on the magnetic holster and his mask stuffed in one of his belt pouches. Coming out of the bedroom, the best Jace could do was to put on his bike helmet, along with knee and elbow pads. The modified laser gun on his back did add some panache, though.

           “Is… that really it for you?” Jace asked Wes upon returning to the living room.

           Wes was dressed in his 80s biker jacket that mostly covered his concealed holster strap, and the most rugged pair of jeans he owned. It was a far cry from some serious armor, but admittedly, the effort did put him in a classic American badass getup.

            “Yeah, I’m good,” he stated. “I’ve really been hitting the range lately. My aim’s gotten a lot better. Keep in mind, some part of me still hates all this. I’ll be just fine with never picking up a real gun again once we’re back home. Okay. Let’s go.”

           The three looking like they were about to rob a bank as they sat in their black station wagon, with Warren in the front and Jace in the back, Wes reversed out of the driveway and started down the block. Cautiously; five under the already slow limit.

           “Wes, I think we’re pretty safe in Desert Tree,” Warren remarked impatiently as he watched his dad look around in every direction outside the car. “If it’s not my jammers, then at least the daemon has never really seemed interested in the neighborhood.”

           “I’m taking nothing for granted.” Wes stopped at a stop sign for a beat, and with no other cars coming down any of the roads, looked back at Jace. “You got your quartz, right? Never know when we have to go back to fix a mistake at this point.”

           “Uh-huh,” Jace replied. “I’m getting pretty good with it, too.”

           “Um… How, exactly? I hope you’re not wasting charge, like, practicing with it. I swear, if you’re using it to undo deaths in video games or something… What, Warren?”

           Warren, who had been tapping incessantly on Wes’ shoulder, pointed forward.

           There was now a solid black time tear just ahead, parallel to the stop sign and massive enough to engulf the car. Despite his prior newfound bravado, seeing the abyssal entrance of that size sent Wes immediately into a panic.

           “Holy mother of…” he spat out, before putting the gear into reverse. “Nope. Nope, nope, nope!” he exclaimed and hit the pedals without bothering to look back.

           The car only moved a few feet in the opposite direction before an octopus’ worth of ferromagnetic tentacles erupted. They wrapped all the way around the vehicle with a near crushing ensnaring grip, and the tires began to screech as Wes floored it.

           “Is… is it trying to drag us in?!” Jace shouted.

           “Oh crap, oh crap,” Warren added and pushed himself deeper into his seat.

           Wes’ foot had hit the floor, but no matter how loud the poor car’s stressed engine revved, it was only winning a few inches a second in the tug of war battle.

           The end came when four more tendrils shot out and went under the car, which were enough to lift it off the ground entirely. Without any remaining resistance or asphalt to touch, the wagon was promptly dragged straight into the void.

           Everything went dark right away, aside from the mirrors that still reflected the afternoon past the rift—but that lasted only a moment more before it sealed up. Despite being surrounded by an inky midnight and floating in the air, Wes kept the car in reverse, not knowing what else to do. After a few seconds, the now unseen tentacles released their grip, and the vehicle dropped onto solid ground. It rocketed back right away, and nearly instantly, a subtle shift in gravity made it feel as if it had gone up over an incline. Movement only lasted for a couple seconds before the car felt stuck again.

           “Wes!” Warren’s voice came from the darkness, his form slightly illuminated by the dashboard’s glowing radio stack. “Ease off the gas, you’ll burn out the engine!”

           Once he got his breathing under control and realized they weren’t moving, Wes calmly raised his foot. He shifted into drive, but the car didn’t move. After pumping the pedal twice, he suspected that the now-angled and stuck front bumper had elevated the forward drive tires off the ground, and they wouldn’t be pulling the car anywhere.

           “Just keep it quiet for a minute,” Warren’s voice whispered. “The car should give us some protection from the daemon. Even if… we’re in its domain now. Shhh… it.”

           As usual, Wes was impatient, and he was soon feeling for the headlight dial.

           Before Warren had a chance to notice and tell him that it was a bad idea, Wes got the lights on and illuminated a small portion of what was ahead. The twin beams lit up a plain, canvas-like white floor that swept downwards to a basin filled with black liquid. Residing just above it was an enormous orb made of the same material—ferrofluid. The stuff comprised the layers of conical ripples undulating across the sphere, giving it the appearance of an inky sea urchin that was constantly shifting its appearance.

           “T-that’s the daemon…?” Jace shakily whispered as he stared ahead between the front seats. “It’s… huge. B-but… maybe my laser rifle could take it out…?”

           After a gulp, Wes replied, “Well… It has us trapped. I mean, is that it? Do we just wait in this prison for the cops to show up, or is it going to—” he was cut off by the sound and impact of tendrils on either side of the car smacking into the front windows, cracking them with one blow. “Shit! Get down!” He pulled the lever to drop his seat all the way back, far below the windows. “Warren! Get your seat down!”

           Warren did so once his searching hand felt the handle, mere seconds before the tentacles smashed right through with follow-up jabs. Covered in sprinkles of broken glass, Wes and Warren stayed low while Jace scrunched back into his middle seat and the tentacles wrapped themselves around the roof of the car. They squeezed tight, lifted the vehicle again, and tossed it onto a less inclined part of the floor, closer to the oozing sphere that housed the daemon. The impact was rough, and the tires either blew or were slashed by the pointed ends of the enormous grabbers, which retreated to their source.

           “Get out of the car!” Warren ordered, making sure his blade was still secure.

           “Is that a worse idea?” Wes asked him. “I-I’m genuinely asking here.”

           “Those things will be right back! If we’re outside, at least I can move my sword and cut them down!” His seat sprung back up, and he turned back to his cousin. “Jace, I know this is really messed up, but get out of the car. Right now!”

           Trusting him, Jace nodded, opened the left door, and rolled out. With the tires flattened, there was very little space under the car for the tendrils to go, and as he was between the curving wall of the strange chamber and the vehicle itself, he felt some sense of safety. At least he was behind a barrier, and the daemon couldn’t see him.

           Wes and Warren crouch-shuffled over, right as more tendrils went into the car in search of prey. They rummaged, shaking it as the trio sheltered in place.

           The wagon was also partially turned towards the chamber wall, so its lights bounced off of a large enough area to actually provide the three with some general illumination; dim, but more than sufficient to let them see the scouring tendrils above them, still feeling around the windows. After several seconds, they retreated again.

           “I don’t think it can see us back here,” Wes said very quietly. “We could just… wait until it, I dunno… gives up and reopens the portal?”

           “Uh-huh,” Warren scoffed. “It’ll totally let us go. Damn thing probably went agro because it knew we were arming up. And what happened to all that tough talk earlier?”

           “Guys, where are we?” Jace wondered as he felt the cloth floor, which had no give—it was like solid smooth rock surrounded them just past the fabric. “It dragged us through a tear, so does that mean that this is, like… the distant future? Or…” He once more thought of the story in Chrono Trigger. “Is this the… end of time itself?”

           “Guess we can check,” Warren said, and reached for his pouch holding a quartz.

           Before he had a chance, they were startled by the sudden sound of industrial machinery warming up, like the ominous hums and hisses of the waking tripods in the modern version of War of the Worlds. Hesitantly, all three peeked over the car windows.

           “Is the daemon… stirring?” Wes muttered. “But I thought it was awake already.”

           They could barely see anything in the darkness, except spots on the ripply surface of the sphere that reflected the car’s headlights. But seconds later, LED arrays started to flicker to life and glow dully high above. The light panels themselves were curved, covering the top third of the chamber, and they came on one row at a time. Gradually, the entirety of the demigod machine time keeper they were trapped with came into view.

           Dozens of tendrils stemmed off the central orb, each of them reaching into individual time tears that were projected a few meters away from the daemon, all across the sphere. Its appendages seemed to operate within each one, like they were tapping at the holographic displays of a sci-fi control room system. Here, though, those screens were instead portals to other time periods, and each tendril was doing precision work to make small corrections through history, many times a minute. Some of the portals stayed open for only a few seconds, and after they closed, another one nearby would sprout right away, and the machine’s diligent work continued.

           “So… it fixes errors caused by 29^th century time travelers?” Wes recalled.

           “That’s my best guess, yeah,” Warren replied. “Cleans up after the cops, reverses mistakes time criminals—like us—make. And I don’t think we have a chance of taking it on. I say we try to get through one of those tears it opens and get out of here.”

           “Well… maybe that could work,” Jace said. “It doesn’t seem to have eyes on us.”

           With perfect timing, several portals opened up in the space between them and the daemon, and within seconds, a swarm of small red glowing eyes “swam” across the fluid surface of the machine. Frightening as it was, none of them seemed to actually be looking at the three as they stayed in cover behind the car. Tendrils then sprouted from the sphere, stretched outward into the space-time tears with immense speed, and proceeded to do their busywork on the many other sides of the chamber.

           “I have to admit…” Wes whispered as they watched all of this, almost entranced. “It does seem to be an efficient system. It’s like it just sits there all day, managing files.”

           The daemon finished its latest round of temporal corrections and redactions, and the tears closed, right before another series opened up on a different side of the sphere. The eyes moved away like a school of HAL 9000-fish to guide the arms… all but one of them. A lone small eye lingered on the blackness, its position in line with the trio.

           “I… I think that one’s staring at us…” Jace stated the obvious.

           “No sudden movements,” Wes warned them. “Maybe if we—”

           “Alert,” a kind of calming voice said over unseen speakers, sounding like the distant future’s version of Siri or Alexa. “All personnel, vacate area. Intruders detected. Initiating watchdog protocols. Defense Mode Code Sigma will engage in ten seconds. Prepare for local temporal reset. Ready subject acquisition teams.”

           “Ah, hell!” Wes exclaimed and covered his ears to dampen the ridiculously loud alarm’s blaring. “You mean it wasn’t even in ‘defense mode’ already? Warren! Do we make a break for it?” he asked, while trying to spot the nearest portal himself.

           “We’ll never make it, those tears are too far away!” Warren shouted back. “Damn it, our quartzes have to be able to get us out of here somehow! Think!”

           “What if we—”

           Wes was interrupted a second time by a loud hum, lowering in pitch until it turned into a deep bass. A shock wave-like sphere of distorted air then came from the daemon and spread across the chamber. And suddenly Warren had simply vanished.

           “Kid? Warren?!” Wes shouted in a panic after his heart stalled for a moment.

           “Right here,” his suddenly ragged voice replied.

           It was like a glitch in reality seeing it happen; one moment, he had been crouched at Wes’ right side. The next, he was running in from the left, rounding the car with his mask on and sword out, looking as exhausted as a masked ninja could. Tendrils were following right behind him, and he had to turn around and cut them down like grass.

           “Warren, what the hell just happened?”

           “I’m… I’m sorry, okay?” he huffed while battling ferrofluid tentacles and trying to protect a confused Wes and Jace. “I… I thought I could do it alone.”

           “Alone? What do you…” It quickly hit Wes. “You tried to take it on by yourself?”

           “No! Not exactly. I just tried… I tried about thirty times, maybe more… to…” He cut down one more tendril, and the rest retreated to rebuild as the inky ‘blood’ all over the floor slithered away towards the dark pool under the daemon. Given a brief respite, Warren was able to focus on his response. “I thought if I made it through one of its portals, I could jump back and keep us all from getting pulled into here in the first place. But I never got to one, not even close. I reset so many times, and I’m worn out.”

           “And now you need time to recover! Damn it, kid, you should’ve asked—”

           “I know!” Warren snapped. Needing fresh air unconstrained by his breathing apparatus, he pulled up his mask and stared at his dad. “You two kept trying to help anyway, and each time you did… It… it always stung you both. Petrified you, just like the rogue cop did to the others. Wes, Jace—if it gets all three of us, there’ll be no one left to go back and try again, to save ourselves… or get out of here on their own.”

           “Wait a minute, Warren,” Jace spoke up. “Can you, like, only go back to right now or something? No earlier, when we first got here?”

           Warren groaned. “I’ve told you both this over and over already, but of course, you don’t remember… Look, we’re in some pocket dimension with its own flow of time. And that thing reset the clock here. Check your quartz. We can’t go any further back than just seconds ago! It’s like the 1990 time horizon; we are stuck here.”

           “Seriously?” Wes replied and took a look at his blue crystal’s current detected local time. “January… Oh, you’re kidding me. January 1^st, 1970? That freaking thing is running Unix? System’s got staying power if society’s still running it eight centuries—”

           “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Warren impatiently cut him off. “I’ve heard it all already. I fill you in, we have this talk, and then I try again. But I’m not getting anywhere. I… need you guys to really help me. And I don’t mean just staying back and shooting. It’s not enough to get me to a portal. Jace, your rifle’s still in the back of the car. And, Wes, don’t waste your ammo on the red eyes! I swear, if I hear one more time that they look like a boss’s weak point in Zelda, I’ll let that thing stab you full of nanites!”

           “Just out of curiosity, then…” Wes muttered. “What happens if I shoot them?”

           “Their glass is too tough. You don’t even crack it. To tell you the truth, your pistol is pretty worthless against this giant bastard of a machine. Keep it stowed.”

           “Oh, great, so you’re saying I’m useless.”

           “No more than usual. There is something I can give you.” Warren yanked off the magnetic slab from his side that he used as a sword holster, and handed it over. “Use the strap, wrap it around your left arm. It’s electromagnetic, and it repels the ferrofluid. The range isn’t great, but it does work like an invisible shield. One more thing—”

           The daemon let out another mechanical roar, and the temperature continued to rise in the chamber, as did the sound of a powerful electrical hum. Warren exhaled.

           “We’re running out of time. Its focus on us goes up more and more as seconds go by. It’s like it’s… closing work files before dealing with a nuisance. That’s us.”

           Wes tried to surmise, “Its scripted quick-kill on us didn’t work, so now it’s—”

           “Shut up with the game metaphors and look, both of you,” Warren barked, and held up his right hand so he could show off his quartz, which he had secured against his palm by wrapping it up with one of his side bag straps. “Get your quartz in your hand like this, so you don’t drop it—and can use it as soon as you need it. If anyone gets stung, jump back and save them. And don’t bother memorizing patterns. I think it detects time travel and randomizes the portal spots and tentacle attacks in each new timeline.”

           Wes took off his belt and used it to wrap his quartzed right hand before checking that his new magnetic shield was secured on his left arm. Meanwhile, Jace shuffled over to the hatchback, which had popped opened when the car was tossed about.

           After arming himself with his King Arcade laser rifle, he got a glimpse at the awakening daemon and asked Warren, “So… what’s the plan?”

           “On my signal, we make a run to a portal. You shoot the tentacles, Wes repels.”

           With no better ideas, Jace reached down and pulled off a sock while waiting for Warren’s signal. He slid it snug onto his left hand, keeping his quartz safe inside.

           It was just another second after that when the daemon finished its preparations, and fired out a huge surge of branching tentacles, which forked like slow-motion lightning—which was still pretty fast. Wes looked ready to go as dozens of the black tendrils homed in on their position behind the car, but Warren kept the group planted until the very last moment. Just as the swarm appeared overhead, he flicked his wrist.

           “Now!” he shouted, and the three broke formation right before the pointed ends of the ferrofluid appendages plunged into the floor, which smooshed them to puddles.

           A path to several time tear exits had opened, but more tentacles quickly erupted from the daemon to stop the group from reaching any. Showing only a little bit of fear, Jace fired off laser streams to cut them apart just as effectively as his cousin’s blade. Whatever got separated from the rest of a branch fell like globs of heavy ink onto the ground, and Wes used his magnetic shield to bat away jabby things that got too close. Without really thinking about it, the three had skipped right into good teamwork, and Wes understood how Warren would’ve been overwhelmed trying to do the run alone.

           “Standby. Purging intruders…” the system’s digital voice repeated. “Standby.”

           “Like hell you are,” Wes grunted, and reached out for the closest portal—which disappeared right before he could touch it, after its tendril suddenly retracted. “Damn!”

           “It’s okay, aim for that one, just ahead!” Warren replied. “It just appeared!”

           Indeed, the tear a mere twenty feet away seemed perfect. It was at ground level, and the limb set to do some work through it hadn’t sprouted yet. As Jace and Warren cut down other encroaching appendages, Wes took the lead, shoving aside several more that had moved in to block their progress. Freedom felt so close.

           As soon as he reached the space-time doorway, knowing its destination had to be better than this place, Wes nonetheless came to a stop instead of going right through. He still couldn’t see what was on the other side, so he first brought his hand up to it.

           “Wes! Just go!” Warren urged him as he and Jace arrived at his side.

           Wes nodded, and pushed his hand in. Or rather, he at least tried. It was solid.

           “Shit!” He banged on an impermeable tear with a fist. “We can’t use them!”

           Now truly trapped, the three turned to see tendrils coming from all directions.

           Darkness converged as a pitch-black briar patch, which had already surrounded them and blocked any hope of escape. It was only a matter of seconds before the tendrils wrapped around them like a monster of the deep and took them out.

           At the last moment, Warren pulled out a battery bomb from his biggest pouch and detonated it. The pulse that accompanied the smell of ozone caused the magnetic fluid to lose all coherence, and the tentacles broke up and splashed across the room. The nearby useless portal disappeared as well, and the three ran off to the chamber edge before any daemon limbs regenerated, Warren tossing the dead battery on the way.

           “Damn, that was close,” Wes huffed. “You got any more of those, kid?”

           “I only made one,” Warren answered. “Crap. The tears it opens block light, but I didn’t think they’d block us, too. Guys. I think, somehow, we have to destroy the thing.”

           One of the daemon’s many red eyes watched its ferrofluid crawl back to the pool underneath it. Then it shifted its gaze toward the group, who stared back as they rushed to the car and stuck to the slightly-safer outer boundaries of the arena.

           The machine’s AI perhaps realizing that it was facing a bigger than anticipated threat, the daemon abruptly closed half of its portals and withdrew the limbs working in them. It blared a horn, brightened the lights in the chamber further, and gathered eight of its many eyes into a single area, all of which tracked the trio’s movements at different angles. Its preparations concluded with another temporal wave and an announcement.

           “Security now at Level Two. Sixty percent defensive focus. Purge in progress.”

           “Ah, hell, it just reset time again,” Wes reported, realizing it before giving the quartz strapped to his palm a glance. “Be careful, it probably just got meaner.”

           “Move!” Warren shouted from a quarter the way across the chamber’s edge, having teleported there the moment the reset hit. “You have to keep moving!”

            One of his goggle lenses now cracked, the teen ninja was running at full stride as a plethora of tendrils followed him around the room, nipping at his back and sometimes his front and sides as well, forcing the kid to react in time to jump or sharply swerve.

           Others appeared like giant spikes, shooting out and threatening to impale him. There was something unnatural about their appearance and speed, and it was quickly apparent why. The tenta-tips were separated from the daemon’s main body completely, firing through time tears that opened a full second after the appendage itself showed up.

           “W-Wes…?” Jace stammered as he watched his cousin being overwhelmed, and trying to do it all on his own again. “What k-kind of attack is that?”

           He grumbled back, “I think its arms are going back in time—maybe just a couple of seconds, but it means that we can’t even predict where they’ll appear.”

           Jace looked up at the empty spot over the car, now wondering if something nasty was just about to pop out from thin air and try to give him a nasty sting.

           “Come on, kid!” Wes yelled out to Warren. “You can make it!”

           “No, I can’t!” Warren shouted back as he barely avoided another striking tendril. “Other versions of you told me I’ve tried this a bunch of times already! I never make it!”

           “Still hates asking for help…” Wes mumbled. “Jace, give him cover fire!”

           His gaze transfixed on the space above, Jace limply raised his rifle, and his trigger finger only twitched. Time ran out to help Warren before he even got a shot off. Wes and Jace had to watch as he tripped over a low tendril like it were a tree root, fell to the floor, and flipped over in time to grab onto one of the inky spears that had plummeted straight down at him. But seeing as how it was a fluid, he couldn’t get a grip on the stuff, and it simply extended downward, its tip remaining just as pointy.

           “Jace!” Warren, helplessly struggling, cried out. “Shoot it! Shoot—”

           His body had been petrified in an instant, frozen in place by thousands of nanites injected into his bloodstream. Wes gasped in disbelief while Jace remained almost just as still, too jolted to move after having watched his cousin fall victim to the daemon.

           Adjusting to a new target, the swarm of appendages turned towards the two, then retracted as quickly as they had appeared, with the portals they came through closing just after they did so. They reemerged immediately only a few meters away, coming at them like javelins thrown by a professional athlete. Luckily for Wes, the muscles in his hand reacted seemingly on their own before he could waste time thinking about what to do.

           He jumped back in time in an instant, still behind the car. Jace, meanwhile, was back across the room again, and started running as soon as he saw Warren being chased.

           Like Warren had surmised about its time travel detection abilities, the daemon’s attacks had changed, so it was possible that Warren had just been given an easier pattern to avoid—or a harder one. In any case, Wes couldn’t take the risky RNG at play lightly, and assumed that the kid would game over a second time if the script didn’t change.

           “Jace!” Wes shouted to his nephew, who looked over at him while running at full speed. “Help Warren! Cut apart those things with your laser rifle! You can do it!”

           “How’d you get all the way over there?!” Jace yelled back.

           “This fight’s in four dimensions, buddy! You just have to wrap your mind around it. Now do what I tell you—he needs your help, and he needs it now!”

           Wes was hoping that by encouraging Jace to act sooner and seeing that he could save someone, he wouldn’t suffer the confidence loss he did in the previous time branch after watching Warren get in trouble in the first place. Instead, he might gain confidence, and that could make all the difference. The next problem: keeping lessons remembered.

           With his uncle’s encouragement, Jace worked up the bravery to stop, turn around, and take proper aim at the tendrils about to snag his cousin. He exhaled and fired, the powerful yet recoilless rifle emitting a streaming laser pulse that sliced clean through the many pitch-black spiny legs like a hot knife through ink. He kept firing in short bursts, until there were only a few tendrils left chasing Warren, which he quickly cut down on his own. As the boys caught their breath and ran over to Wes, the daemon retreated all of its stumpy legs back through its portals and returned them to its spherical body for restructuring—their distant halves still lingering in space a second longer.

           “Good work. Seriously, nice aim,” Wes told Jace once he and Warren had rejoined him behind the car. “And Warren, no more of the lone wolf routine! I just watched you get petrified and almost bit it myself before jumping back to that new reset point!”

           “But we can’t stay together,” Warren argued. “It makes it too easy for it to take us all out at once! We have to split up. What if… we form a moving triangle, so we can always see the other two?” He peeked over the hood. “Crap, it’s about to attack again.”

           “We will figure out a way to beat it. But we have to keep re-syncing our crystals—if we keep taking turns jumping back to second zero, we’ll never retain knowledge.”

           “What do you mean, exactly?” Jace asked, keeping his eyes on the daemon.

           “Remember all those game emulators I showed you way back? How they let you play the classics, and you could make save states to go back to so you can fix mistakes? That’s what we’ll do. Every, I dunno, thirty seconds or so that all three of us survive, we re-sync; we make a save state to fall back on. That way, we keep learning; we don’t forget how this… ‘boss’ works. Get it? Warren, if I need to explain—”

           Having such experiences with his dad from his own timeline, Warren stopped him, “Don’t need to, it makes sense. Better than starting over at the point where each… I guess you’d call it ‘boss phase’ starts. Wes, you should do the syncing, since you got the useless weapon and less to think about. Jace, set your quartz to its slave mode.”

           “Uh, y-yeah… I think I remember how to…” he replied and rolled up the sock on his left hand so he could tap at the crystal’s tiny display. “We should make a ‘save state’ right now, before it attacks again. It… looks about ready to.”

           Wes affirmed things with a nod, and once Jace fixed his sock back, he fiddled with his quartz to sync all three of them to some sort of January 1^st, 1970 at 12:03 A.M..

           “Okay,” Wes huffed and gave his neck a crack. “Let’s figure out a way to—”

           “Look out!” Warren shrieked, a moment too late.

           Jace, still in hiding and semi-safe behind the car’s engine block, witnessed both his cousin and uncle meet sudden, horrible fates when four tendrils shot through portals that had just appeared over the wagon and stung them. They hardly had time to react and bring up their defenses. They might as well have been struck by lightning coming from a cloudless sky. Jace sat there, frozen, as the two fell like knocked-over statues.

           Still, he did manage to squeeze his quartz right as the dark pointed tips turned in his direction, and jumped back a few seconds just before they got to him.

           “Okay,” Wes huffed and gave his neck a crack. “Let’s figure—”

           “Get down!” Jace shouted out, only needing a second to orientate himself.

           Wes and Warren did so, and Jace fired off his rifle a fraction of a moment before the time tears opened over the car. With the laser beam already in the air, he was able to swipe it downward and through the tendrils at the very instant they appeared, cutting them down into formless fluid that splashed all over the Honda’s roof.

           “Holy…” Wes exhaled, and then grinned at Jace. “Nice going, buddy!”

           Feeling proud of himself, Jace smiled back—and let his guard down. Within its territory, the daemon was relentless, and another tear opened right by him, its tendril giving him a poke in the shoulder. Wes’ expression turned into horror and rage upon seeing his precocious nephew become frozen in a victory pose, gun still in hand.

           “You bastard!” he cried out. Without thinking, he whipped out his pistol and dumped a mag into the daemon, some fifty feet away, to no visible effect. “Die! Die!”

           “Friggin’ hell…” Warren sighed in disappointment. “He never learns.”

           Having seen what he needed to, Warren was the one to travel back this time.

           “Okay,” Wes huffed and gave his neck a crack. “Let’s—”

           Warren shut him up, “Quiet. Jace, tendrils, above! I got the one coming for you!”

           “W-what?” Jace stammered, but aimed his rifle upward just the same. As soon as the tears opened, in freshly randomized spots, he fired off his beam again, cutting them down just as he had in a now forgotten branch. “Whoa, Warren, how’d you—”

           The quickest of the bunch, Warren had already leapt on top of the hood where he sliced up more tentacles, one after the next. It turned out that a total of five had been gunning for Jace, and now that he was safe and sound, Wes’ outburst had been delayed a little longer. But for Warren, who’d seen the most branches so far, this was getting old.

           “Guys!” he exclaimed as soon as he got a brief respite amid the assault. “We need to make that three-point formation, right away. I’ve seen this play out too many times already! We always last longer when we aren’t bunched up! So get moving!”

           Surprising Warren a little by not arguing, Wes replied, “Okay, Jace, you heard the ninja. Let’s split up and divide its attention. Maybe it’ll even give us time to think up a plan of attack. As soon as one of us takes a hit, you go back and warn—or help them!”

           With Wes behind an electro-shield and on re-syncing and strategizing duty, Jace as the long-distance protector with his rifle, and Warren as the speedy hack-and-slasher, they formed a wide, rotating triangle around the temporal guardian, and the plan soon proved viable. The daemon’s many eyes let it track and keep focus on all three, but its number of attack portals and tendrils aimed at any one of them was cut by a third.

           “This is more manageable, definitely!” Wes bellowed after about a real minute of running, gunning, and a few jumps back for rescue operations. “I think we can do this!”

           What followed after that proclamation were, for Wes, twenty-six minutes of hell, and the hardest workout any of them had known. Running while ducking, jumping, and sidestepping petrifying jabbers for so long was strenuous and exhausting—and going back in time did nothing to help with bodily wear and tear. The daemon’s movements, sporadic as they were, had become predictable, but machines could easily beat organics, who didn’t have unlimited power and had to worry about physical strain. It was only a matter of time before limits were reached. Worse, very little time had actually gone by.

           “Damn it, we’re getting nowhere!” Wes shouted from his point on the triangle, as he repelled several tendrils with his shield. He gave the quartz on his palm a glance and added, “I feel like I’ve been at it for a half hour, but only two real minutes have gone by!”

           “More like an hour for me!” Warren exclaimed while flailing his blade about. “Ya know what that means, right? I’m staying alive much longer than you! Step it up, man!”

           “Don’t give me that!” Wes yelled back, and wiped more sweat off his forehead. “I’ve seen you die over a dozen times already! You keep messing up my best runs!”

           “I thought it was only putting us into stasis!” Jace got in after a laser burst.

           Warren replied, “Blah, close enough. You see any cops waiting around to collect us? If we get stuck in here for all eternity… might as well be dead!”

           “You’re scaring Jace!” Wes chastised. “He already has confidence issues!”

           “And you have bad decision issues! I’ve lost count of how many good chances you’ve thrown away because you got pissed and dumped your ammo on this freak!”

           “Why is it so important that I save the bullets you keep calling useless?”

           “Because maybe they can be useful in the right moment. I don’t want you wasting one of our options! You always end up stung when you start blasting, anyway!”

           “Can you blame me? I never get to see just how ineffective my gun is, ’cause I only use it on branches I don’t see. Of course I’ll keep pulling it out in desperation!”

           “Well, stop already!”

           “Yeah…” Wes puffed out as his running pace slowed. “Good chat. Maybe we shouldn’t have that one again,” and he set a new fallback point with his quartz.

           “Thanks for that,” Warren replied. Trying hard to stay optimistic, he added, “We just have to keep going. We’ll get an opening of some kind, if we just… survive.”

           Wes wasn’t about that strategy. Even while sprinting and repeatedly putting his shield in the right place, gears began to turn and he tried to think of anything that they hadn’t considered yet. He looked at his quartz, and then felt the pistol under his jacket.

           “If I could get more bullets…” he murmured to himself. “Maybe… glitch time?”

           He watched some of the attack tendrils. To keep them unpredictable and fast, the daemon sent them through portals it created just feet away from its body’s spiky fluid coat. The legs that extended from the central mass had almost no travel time to the first tears, and instantly appeared through distant exit portals, a second or so from the past.

           What hadn’t been instant were the closures of the outer portals. The openings the tendrils retracted through would linger there a bit, a second and a half longer than their inner halves. And if those were two-way, then, just maybe, it might be possible to…

           “Hey, Warren! Think we can get something through the attack tears it opens?”

           “What?” he yelled back from his spot in the chamber, while chopping away at more ferrofluid. “I mean, I guess so?! You can see through them, if you squint.”

           Looking at his quartz again, Wes added, “And the Slipflash module on these blues—you told me that they reset what we’re carrying? As in, I’d get my bullets back?”

           “Uh, yeah, but if you go back in time anyway, you undo any pathetic damage you do to it! So what’s even the point? If I thought that feature was useful, I’d’ve said so!”

           “Right…” Wes formulated things a moment more, and then set up the Slipflash program on his crystal so that it’d take him back ten seconds on each use. “I’m going to field test something, kids—don’t freak out.”

           Having objections to him ‘trying things out,’ Warren shouted, “Wes, what are—”

           No longer fearing the recoil or sound of his sidearm after his time at the range, Wes fired all ten bullets into the daemon. They impacted on the hard-to-miss coat of the beast, albeit doing little more than splashing off some fluid and generating ripples across the sea of black. Wes heard the shell casings hit the floor, and saw the look Warren was giving him even behind his mask. For Wes, this was his first time opening fire, but the ninja had seen it enough times to reflexively squeeze at his quartz and erase the folly.

           Wes knew the reversal was coming and had readied himself, so he was able to send himself back in time ten seconds first. After he started running once more to avoid tentacles and returned to his spot in the rotating triangle, he felt the weight of the gun in his hand. Its mag certainly seemed full again, and the shells on the sterile chamber’s floor were nowhere to be seen. But would his plan actually work? Could he duplicate bullets?

           He took careful aim at several open tears, and as soon as some of the daemon’s arms retreated through them, he dispensed a full magazine into the openings just before they closed. With Warren already yelling at him, he went back ten seconds once more.  

           His finger trembling with anxiety, he tapped on his blue quartz to activate the portal reset function, hoping that if it were used in tandem with ‘Slipflashing,’ he could trick the local space-time into multiplying his otherwise pitiful damage potential.

           As soon as he triggered the portal purge, hundreds of them opened up across the chamber, floating in space both near to and far from the daemon—its eyes taking notice that every single tear it had opened up so far had suddenly reappeared. Warren and Jace saw the cluster of saucer-shaped anomalies too, and stopped moving as curiosity took over. Among all of the portals near the daemon were a few that spat out bullets, which Wes only barely noticed, as they were without sound or muzzle flash. Rather, it was the splashing of ferrofluid and the ripples they made that guided his eye to his success.

           “Guys!” he shouted excitedly. “I just found a way to—”

           Without warning, the daemon let out another howl just after the tears vanished, and it shut down all of its “work portals” that it had maintained in the background. The trio watched as the daemon’s eyes separated and divided evenly across the sphere, and a singular massive red glowing eye emerged from the fluid in the center of the rest.

           “Shit!” Warren cursed. “Wes, I don’t know what you just did, but it looks pissed!”

           “Security at Level Three,” the system voice ominously announced. “Engaging Guardian Mode with one hundred percent focus. Prepare retrieval teams.”

           “Ah, hell,” Wes muttered, realizing without any doubt that he had just made it take the group seriously. “Run! Don’t stop! It is not playing around anymore!”

           The temporal shock wave hit again, resetting the chamber to another starting point for a third time. And phase three of the fight went straight to nasty.

           “Jace, Warren! Look out!” Wes shouted. But it was in vain, and he felt powerless.

           The tendrils the daemon could employ at once doubled, as did their strike speed. Given that they already came out of thin air at any moment, they had just become nearly impossible to avoid. They sprang out in brutal chain attacks, blocking off escape paths and making any minor misstep fatal. They struck so fast, and in such numbers, that the kids were taken by complete surprise and stung by three or four tendrils at once.

           Even in shock, Wes was able to go back before being hit himself. As usual, the daemon changed its pattern, but Warren and Jace lasted just as long. Strikes erupted from all directions, cracking like whips. Wes went back again and again, and kept doing so every few seconds. From his perspective, the boys were always petrified instantly without getting a chance to adapt to a new, devastating wave. This no longer felt like a game; it had turned into a nightmare on repeat, and it was breaking him.

           “Wes!” Warren finally managed to get out as he rolled and ducked to avoid being hit, on the twentieth or so iteration of his attempts. “You have to move! You always just stand there and watch! You are getting frozen, too—you just don’t see those branches!”

           “We’re going back, just like you!” Jace emphasized, firing his rifle to slice apart a burst of tendrils that nearly took out Wes. “This is insane, but we’re lasting longer!”

           Before Wes could respond, Jace and then Warren were both stung in their legs in quick succession. By now, it was all muscle memory for Wes, and he went back again, and again, and again, sometimes even before either kid had been hit. He was stuck in a loop; his traveling reduced to a nervous tic, with his psyche on the verge of snapping. How many times would he have to see two of the people who meant most to him get hurt? Because of his selfishness and mistakes? A hundred times? A thousand? Forever?

           “I’m sorry…” he muttered spiritlessly, his palm squeezing the quartz each second without purpose—nearly freezing time around him. He looked out at Jace, stuck in a strange dance of many poses. “I just… wanted to have a nice weekend with you…”

           He dropped to his knees and faced the floor, feeling utterly defeated.

           “Need help, pal?” a raspy voice sprang out from nowhere. “Yeah. Thing’s mean.”

           Wes looked back up. Either the orb’s fluid was playing tricks on his eyes, or he really was having a psychotic break. A vaguely familiar duster was ahead, flapping in the windless air. It belonged to a tall man in boots, a comically oversized revolver at his side.

           “W-who…?” Wes replied, his hand still impulsively squeezing time into a single moment. “I’m losing my mind. Have to be. You aren’t real. I… made you up, years ago…”

           “Yeah,” the man’s gruff voice belted out. “Ya did. Don’t mean I’m not real. I was there when you felt alone, angry. Saw me in the high school bathroom mirror when you sought some sanctuary on a bad day. Even pretended to be me in the worst of times.”

           “Zeff… Come on. You’re a joke. An edgy, cringe-inducing product of a troubled teen’s mind. A sad little way of dealing with confusion and a dying childhood.”

           “Maybe to a jaded adult. But I wasn’t that to ya back then. Just because you put me away, don’t mean a part of me ain’t still kicking around up there. If you don’t got the guts to do what ya gotta do, maybe this old ‘joke’ can do it for ya instead, one last time.”

           Zeff looked back at his creator, showing off his eyepatch and the toothpick in his mouth. His left hand, now visible, rested atop the hilt of a post-apocalyptic sword.

           He was the ultimate loner, an uncaring wanderer of a world that had abandoned him. And yet, he remained an intricate persona Wes made in his youth to work through his problems. He had lingered, waiting to take the reins once more should a moment of desperation arise again. Such a moment had come, and Zeff smirked ever so slightly.

           “You know what to do, bud. Bullets, portals. More times than you think it takes.”

           His form faded into the ferrofluid past him. Suddenly, the bad trembling in Wes’ hand stopped, and he felt the pistol in his grip. He got up, feeling… different.

           “Warren, don’t reset unless something happens to me or Jace,” Wes said in a grungier tone than usual, his tenor harsh like he was holding back great anger. “I’ll draw some of its attacks away from you,” he continued, while he changed the Slipflash jump setting to only take him back five seconds on each use. “And then… I’ll take care of it.”

           “Why are you talking like that?” Warren called out. “You go off the deep end?”

           “This fight’s against time itself. The great destroyer,” he replied nonsensically. “Got one last trick up my sleeve. Too bad you won’t get to see the buildup. I need you two to keep those things off me. Jace, cut them down at the root. Warren, cover Jace.” He raised his weapon. “Confidence… Very angry confidence… Hey! Asshole!” He took aim, and fired twice at the daemon’s biggest of glowing red eyes—dealing no damage.

           But he did attract its attention, and the menace shifted its focus onto the one person in the chamber that dared attack it directly. Right away, it withdrew most of the portals and tendrils on Warren and Jace to a few at a time, redirecting nearly everything toward Wes. He only needed to sacrifice two bullets and wait six seconds after firing.

           Running at full speed to avoid an onslaught that began chasing him down, he steeled himself and got ready to put his quartz into overdrive. He evaded the tendrils long enough and hit the six second mark, at which point he traveled back five.

           Moving like an illusion, he skipped ahead in the chamber in the boys’ eyes. They saw him advancing a dozen meters on each of his resets, further away at first, and then closer as he rounded the arena. They sheltered on top of the car, where Jace fired off laser streams as Warren sliced tendrils that went after them. They didn’t know what Wes was doing; they only ever saw five seconds of it. At this point, they just had to trust him.

           Adrenaline, rage, and a forgotten parental instinct drove Wes as he kept moving in every next small part of his plan. Soon, he had no need to count to five in his head.

           The process became routine, and he fell into a trance state. As he ran, tendrils came out of the air, and Jace pruned them. When that happened, the stumps retreated back into the portals. And therein was the exploit. Wes fired into those tears in that brief window in which they were vacant, two or three slugs each. Some shots missed, but it didn’t matter; he would make absolutely sure to get far more than ‘enough’ through.

           The daemon was tough, but only code; no more than script. Games could be beaten, just like it could. Only here, the controller doing the precise inputs was the big iron at Wes’ hip. He avoided everything thrown at him, memorized patterns, and for once, never quit. He lost count of his jumps, and didn’t attempt to tally the number of times he pulled the trigger. The gun couldn’t overheat, yet he fired it so many times that the vibration of the recoil never left his hand and wrist. Over and over, more and more iterations. A hundred times was a start. A thousand was better. His quartz was draining.

           At some indiscernible moment, he hit a point of exhaustion and realized maybe he had done enough, so he stopped skipping when he reached the wagon once again.

           “Behind the car!” he ordered, and the boys obeyed without question. Once they were hunkered down, Wes folded in the nearby sideview mirror so that he could see the daemon… and purged all local portals, blurting out, “Eat mad hacks, you big ugly bitch!”

           Every tear the daemon had opened in every rendition of the last few seconds then appeared at once, all around it. As if there was a twenty-one minigun salute happening on the other side, a torrential bullet rain pelted it from all directions. Wes watched via the mirror as the slug storm first blew off its protective fluid layer, and then heard the machine groan as its composite shell was dinged relentlessly. Before long, the gunfire pierced its insides, and the red eyes went dark as strange blue smoke puffed out. Amid sounds of machinery powering down, the heavy sphere dropped lifelessly into the basin.

           When the rain finally let up, Warren went over to investigate—and as soon as the central red eye’s light flickered, he panicked and planted his blade right into it.

           “System error. Initiating rollback failsafe. Restoring previous temporal gateway,” the voice announced—and sunlight flooded in as it reopened a doorway to Desert Tree.

           “Wes…” Jace murmured as they gazed at the smoldering corpse. “Holy crap. How did you…” He saw that the hand his uncle held the gun with was shaking. “You okay?”

           Without turning to him, Wes ordered in a dad voice, “Get in the car, Jace.”