The Donut Effect Read online

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  “How can I help you this morning,” asked Milly Menkin. It was 2:43 in the AM, as when customers tended to show up, early, a few or more hours or so after they were late for something, or made some mistake, and had time for the repercussions to sink in or be foreseen as they lie awake in bed unable to sleep.

  In other words, it was not nearly early enough.

  Milly loved her job as a time mechanic, the hours weren’t good but the living was easy; there weren’t many customers and they were usually agreeable. She spent her days, and most nights, an on-call arrangement whenever, in a lushly appointed office, befitting the class of the usual customer.

  This was not the usual class of customer, as just walked in, at least not the usual lushly appointed class of customer. It was telling that the first thing they didn’t ask was how far back they could go ahead.

  “We need to get to Spokane, Washington at 1:00 PM. Yesterday.”

  “Can you be more specific?” she asked.

  “1:00 PM exactly. Not specific enough?” asked the unfamiliar looking of the two Asian gentlemen, maybe sounding a little rude because he didn’t know what was going on, nor did he believe it was. Nor did he believe in was.

  And, frankly, he was being rude about it.

  The other, the familiar looking one, had said his name was Mr. Sun, last time. Fine, that was then, his bill was squared away, but something wasn’t quite right. Not exactly right from the start, looking at him now, Milly could tell he had been righter then than he was now.

  “I could use an address,” said Milly. People who didn’t know about addresses were usually willing to travel coach. Less money. Still scads, but not scads and scads. And money was only a small part of it, when it was. It was really - was or wasn’t - no in-between. Usually not even any part of it when it wasn’t - OH, that’s brilliant - at least at this end, when this was still the beginning. Maybe more the second beginning Get what I’m saying?

  Anyone taking a time trip leaves from and returns to the same address, with everything left unscathed, ‘til the point of return, which was certainly a big point, hard to miss. Ultimately it was all sort of about money, the power of money, at least that power once it was extricated.

  Warning, extrication can be a bitch.

  Just consider the time travel element involved. It’s time to start if you hadn’t.

  Well, d’uh.

  And money might be the wrong term. Money is simply a tool and let’s not take exception to it. Perhaps commercialization was more on track, as representative of a sort of essence being pursued, even if artificial, but perhaps as replacement for a faulty essence.

  This re-start may be turning into a death spiral, which is no way to get anywhere but dead. There are mechanics working on the issue. We’re not going to start over or back up again, so buckle-up.

  A big part of being a time-mechanic was working out how those traveling coach could supply compensation, at least if you ran the service desk, which was as sweet as it got. There were a lot of things that could be done while a traveler found their way back to the present, if that’s how you wanted to look at it. I wouldn’t, but hey, I’m impractical. I wouldn’t even go unless I could drop and roll back.

  Impractical? Yes.

  Easy? More so.

  Planting seeds to ease - ease - in the acquiring of future time power was a big part, financed by out-of-time Syndicate bonds bought and sold on the want-only night market. They were called such, or might have been were they actually termed and not just hinted at, since no one knew what the return would be on their investment - return as in the form, or where and when it would appear and how it would be collected. A huge crap shoot.

  Of course for the traveler this tended to require, to demand, proof they had making and taking capabilities, and that they were desperate, and reckless. Proof they were power junkies who would do anything. Not that they trembled for power in the processed by-product form ready to be used to be manipulative or manipulating - manipulative, covering the scope from tickling with a feather to dropping a nuke to manipulate someone into a soup of syrupy complacency - but rather the pre-power juice, its energy and fuel, if considered alphabetically, hi-jacked in pursuit of full-ness, and then more-ness. Really, it was even less about the juice than the addiction to it, coming with it the willingness to junk anything. Everything.

  Thus, proof that they had an everything goes song and dance philosophy.

  Perhaps, needless to say, there was one hell of a reality check involved with this.

  Heaven knows, everything goes.

  And Milly was a hard-ass that couldn’t be fooled.

  She had to be.

  |m|*

  Don’t look now, but you have just left Kansas, or so said the water tower. That would be Dave talking, Dave the water tower. “Keep up the good, Dave. Be back soon. See ya.”

  Might be the time to load up on some carbs. Go ahead, nothing’ll happen ‘til you get back. Go go go.

  When it came to Nemesis Motion, or when one came to Nemesis Motion, which is where Millie could be found, the biggest question was - why? Baaaq travel came with limited reasons, and micro, psychological results, like more readily and easily accessible memory in play. Or maybe even less results, such as fused memories maybe making one less intelligent, as in creating trust that defied fact. Frankly, someone coming for fused memories was most likely brought in psychologically bound and gagged, doped up like there was no tomorrow, as long as there was a forecast of tomorrow.

  One might have a long, complicated, drawn-out explanation of what they hoped to achieve, but it boiled down to two possibilities - witnessing something, or being witnessed. Remembering a little or a lot of something or something else, or being remembered via deceit. Deceit might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it most definitely was a source of pride for experts at divining it.

  Maybe pride’s the bad thing.

  Maybe not. There are people out to abolish pride that are dad’gum proud about their abolish-ments.

  So, uh, I don’t know. And that, trust me, is knowing you can bank on.

  The easiest witnessing to accomplish was to re-witness something you already witnessed, for shallow and/or happy good times, shallow as in not too deeply back in time, or for the bottling of memory in the old memory bottle. In this instance we’re talking about memory which is accurate and on time. Truly, going boom even just once saved memory better than re-reading something ten times, which was not such a blessing when it came to something you could barely read once. If you call that reading.

  * A * P *

  For those of you experiencing your first flat time trip, maybe pause here and take a photo of this commemorative Ann Payne over-worded paragraph break, in reverse. Per her wishes.