The Bester of Both Worlds, chapter 7
Alfred Bester came to his senses a while later and found himself lying on a metal folding cot, with a plain white mattress. He was in some sort of holding cell. He sat up and looked around the cell curiously, in a vain attempt to figure out just where the hell he was. He heard a very soft hum of a force field at an entrance. Wherever this was, they were obviously using twenty-third century technology to keep him caged up. He heard a virtually undetectable panel open in the featureless white wall above the cot, revealing a viewing screen, nearly identical to the com link in his quarters on Babylon Five. He found it was agreeably warm in this place, and his hands were starting to sweat. He was tempted to take off his gloves, but he was too well indoctrinated in Psi Corps policy. He was more than a little upset that he had been tricked and abducted, but, in a way, he also felt grateful to get out of the icy cold of a Russian winter. He watched the viewing screen change from a bright blue color to that of a man's face. The man looked at him with interest, trying to determine, no doubt, just how pissed he was. He spoke in a soft, gentle voice, which did nothing to calm Bester's irritation. He glared at him as he spoke and stroked an unusually lovely black cat. It meowed, and he spoke to it, calling it Isis and saying he knew she wanted to be let down and telling her that she did a good job at abducting their "guest". He looked back up at the Psi cop.
"Greetings, Mr. Bester. I apologize for sending my shape shifter associate to abduct you, but we did it for your own safety. There is a dangerous non-corporeal entity on the loose in the year 1974, and we didn't want you to be harmed by it."
"Where am I and who are you?" Bester asked unhappily.
"You are in an undisclosed location in the United States in the year 1968 in another reality from your own on your space station. You have apparently switched places with your identical counterpart from this universe. His name is Chekov, and he is from our twenty-third century." Bester started at the name and remembered that it was the same one the young girl on the street used. The man continued. "I am Supervisor 194, code-named Gary Seven. I am an intergalactic secret agent, here on this planet to prevent the Earth from destroying itself before it has the chance to develop peacefully. Our organization will someday be known as the Men in Black. We would like you to be as comfortable as possible. Since we know too little about your universe, we must use security precautions. I hope you understand. We will let you go if you prove you are not a threat to that security. Are you hungry?"
Bester blinked in surprise at that question, and realized it had been a while since he had anything to eat. Then, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
"Don't tell me. Let me guess. You are really an alien and you are going to fatten me up and eat me."
The man named Seven chuckled.
"This isn't a Twilight Zone episode, Mr. Bester. I'm not a Kanamed. Turn around and observe. Just tell it what you would like and it will replicate it for you."
Bester heard another soft hum from behind and did as he was told. A food dispenser unlike any he had ever seen seamlessly appeared, along with a flat surface where he could place his food. He stared at it in astonishment for a moment, then shrugged and ordered chicken soup. It looked like he was going to be here for a while.
***
The slatternly desk clerk had not seen Ralph Offenhouse, but Roberta was undeterred. It was late afternoon when she settled in to her equally shabby accommodations. She locked the door, of course. Feeling a little more secure, but still on edge, she sat on the edge of the sagging bed, nearly falling backwards when it sank with her weight. It was a foregone conclusion that she wouldn't get any sleep that night. There was an old black and white television set on a pedestal and chained to the wall. She did not want to watch it, for she felt she needed to have her wits about her. Hearing noises through the paper thin walls, she realized that she might have made a mistake in choosing this hotel. The people next door sounded like they were having rough sex. Suddenly, she heard a blood curdling scream and squishing sounds, as if someone was being stabbed repeatedly. She froze in terror and they ceased. She could smell the strong odor of fresh human blood, and she was still frozen with fright. She heard a body fall to the floor, and then another. She got up from the bed and fumbled for her servo, tempted to set it to kill, and then thought again. Her mission was to find Offenhouse and stay alive, not to do any killing. There had been enough of that with the Ripper entity. She set it on heavy stun and aimed it at the locked door when she realized that someone was trying to gain entrance to her room with a key.
Her eyes were as wide as saucers as the desk clerk stepped in, a long bloody knife, probably from the hotel kitchen, dripping in his equally bloody hand.
"Hello, Roberta Lincoln." The man said with a creepy leer. She hadn't told him her real name, and she gasped in sheer terror. "I am going to rape you and then I'm going to kill you, like I did with the whore in the next room."
"You're Jack the Ripper!" She gasped in horror. She then realized that the latest victim was victim number five, recalling that Seven had told her that the entity had killed five women in this time period. She hoped that he was right, and that she didn't become victim number six. She aimed her servo at him, her hands shaking, but he just smiled and nodded in the affirmative. "Don't come any closer. I will stun you!"
"Your puny little ray gun is no match for me, girlie." He tried to grab it out of her hands, but she pressed the trigger. He fell to the floor, still conscious but unable to move. She swiftly went for her wrist communicator on the night stand. She screamed in utter panic, unable to reach it in time as she felt the possessed man recover and grab her. She struggled for a moment or two, then suddenly, she felt her fear being drained out of her, along with all her other emotions. She fell in a dead faint, dropping her servo, which slid under the nightstand.
Ralph Offenhouse came to his senses and gasped in dismay as he saw the mangled remains of the hooker he had seen alive moments before. He heard another scream of sheer terror. He knew what he must do now. He had in his possession a Swiss Army knife, that he had acquired from an antiques dealer when he was still in the twenty-fourth century, and he took it out of his pocket and opened it. He was not going to let any more women get killed tonight. He quickly made it into the next room in time to see the deranged clerk undressing an unconscious young girl. Without a sound, he swiftly plunged the blade of his knife into the back of the slovenly clerk and went to help her, thinking that she didn't look like a hooker, and wondering who she was and what she was doing here.
The Ripper entity had had it's fill of feasting on the fear of the four people he victimized that night. It had lost energy when Roberta fainted, and realized that it would do it no good to rape her now. The clerk gasped a last breath as the Ripper exited him for parts unknown. The former businessman pulled the corpse off of the girl. Ralph thought that the mysterious young lady was extremely lucky to still be alive. He saw her two-way radio which was now lying on the floor next to the dead bellhop. He thought it looked quite sophisticated for a communications device from this era before wireless cell phones. He picked it and the poor girl up in his arms and pressed the only button he could see on the small device. He watched in puzzlement and then in astonishment as moments later both he and the girl were surrounded by a blue mist. He then found that they were no longer in the hotel but in a high-rise apartment.
