The Neutron Show

by Gary D. Snyder

Chapter 12:

Jimmy and Goddard, again using Goddard's Flycycle Turbo Mode, returned to the lab where Jimmy immediately set to work with a will. As he assembled the various components and tools he would need Eustace and the cigarette-smoking man watched him on one of the main screens in the monitor room. Although the man maintained an attitude of wary vigilance Eustace seemed openly disdainful of Jimmy's efforts.

"Go ahead and try, Neutron," he sneered. "There's only one way out this, and I'm it. None of your gadgets will help you this time."

The man next to him said nothing, inhaling the smoke with almost studied care and letting it out just as deliberately. The man's manner, much as did everything else he could not fully control, irritated Eustace.

"Well?" he finally demanded when the man remained silent. "Why do you think I'm wrong?"

The man removed the cigarette from his mouth and flicked ash into the overflowing ashtray. "I didn't say anything."

"But you were thinking it, weren't you?" Eustace stared suspiciously at the man. "You think that he'll find a way, don't you?"

He's smarter than he looks, the man conceded to himself as he stubbed out the spent cigarette and pulled a pack from inside the jacket of his suit. "Like I said, he's not a monkey. He wasn't supposed to figured out what was going on the way he did either, but he did."

Eustace steamed at the reminder. "Thanks to his girlfriend, Cindy Vortex. We should have removed her from the scenario much earlier."

The man heaved a sigh and extracted a fresh smoke from the pack. "There was no way to know what she was doing until it was too late. We were monitoring Neutron, not all his associates. They were all part of the scenario and were under our control – or should have been." He snapped open his lighter and paused as he lit his cigarette. "The engrams you modified them with introduced factors we couldn't control."

"It was necessary. And none of the others deviated so radically from the operating parameters. Why should she have done so?"

The man shrugged indifferently. "For whatever reasons, she has apparently has deeper and stronger feelings for him than the others. Although Subject Wheezer's feelings for Judy -" He was cut off by Eustace's scornful words.

"You mean Vortex is –" Eustace made tick marks in the air with his fingers. "- 'crushing' on him."

"Maybe. But I'd say that's a pretty simplistic view." He let a stream of smoke escape into the already hazy air.

"What does that mean?"

The man, who had been so taciturn before, seemed unusually willing to communicate now. "Did you ever see any of those black and white movies from the '30s and '40s?"

"Huh?"

"You know. Tracy and Hepburn. Stewart and Reed. Bogart and Bacall. Gable, Lombard, Flynn, De Haviland, Colman, Bergman…all the greats." He paused and solemnly considered Eustace, who was staring blankly at him. "Strike that. You never have." He puffed easily on his cigarette. "That's too bad. They were great films. Classic romances. And smoking was glamorous then." He leaned forward, his words for Eustace but his eyes glued to the monitor on which Jimmy was still busily at work. "When you watched those movies you just knew that the two leading characters were meant for each other. Even through the fights and misunderstandings at the beginning of the show you knew that, when the final reel faded and all the women were sobbing into their handkerchiefs, that the two would be together in each other's arms."

Eustace tried to understand and failed. "I don't see it."
"Probably not. Maybe if this really were a television show you would." The voice suddenly became cold and objective again. "He's just about finished."

In the lab Jimmy finished soldering the final wires and tightening the last connectors on the frame. To an impartial observer the two devices looked like door frames ringed with Christmas tree lights. Goddard tilted his head, first to one side and then to the other, in an attempt to determine the purpose of the strange structures.

"What do you think, boy?" Jimmy asked. Goddard simply shook his head in reply. "I know they don't look like much," Jimmy admitted, "but I didn't have a lot of time to waste making them pretty. But if I'm right, these should get us – I mean, me - out of here." In answer to Goddard's quizzical look Jimmy explained, "I simply combined the technology of my quantum replay and the transdimensional vortex generator that I used to send you to Timmy Turner's world for a while. These should create a bridge between this portal -" He pointed to one of the doorways. "- and this other portal 5 minutes in the future." He took a deep breath. "Well, here I go. I'll see you in 5 minutes."

As Eustace and his accomplice watched, Jimmy stepped through the first doorway. There was no apparent effect other than a flash of light as Jimmy immediately stepped through the other. Eustace seemed puzzled as Jimmy walked over to the first portal and stepped through again, appearing as before in a flash from the other doorway. "What on Earth is he doing?" he said aloud.

The man leaned back in resignation. "He's found the fifth protocol."

"What?" Eustace glared at him, not understanding the words but recognizing the tone. "What does that mean?"

"The monkey had four ways out of the cage and he found a fifth. So did Neutron. He's beaten you."

Eustace looked back at Jimmy, who was continuing the odd ritual of passing through the doors. "What do you mean? He's not really going through time. The holographic generator is merely creating a new simulation that makes it appear as thought he's jumped 5 minutes into the future."

"I know that. So does Neutron. That's the whole point."

Eustace refused to believe that he'd been bested yet again. "Would you mind explaining it to me?"

The main pointed to the two doorways on the screen. "If he'd created just one portal there would be no problem, as the system could have discarded the old simulation and created a new one. But every time he passes through the first door he arrives in a simulation that's linked to the previous simulation through the second door. Each time he makes a new 'time jump' the system has to save all the old simulations that came before. It can create a hundred Retrovilles, but that won't be enough. Eventually the number of levels will overload the system and it will crash." He ground out his half-finished cigarette and couldn't keep an edge of admiration out of his voice as he spoke. "The system was built to create a virtually perfect copy…and that's exactly what's going to beat it."

As the ghastly truth sank in Eustace let out a scream of frustration and pounded the console in front of him. "No! I won't allow it! I won't be beaten again by Neutron! Not again!"

"You have no choice." He glanced at his watch. "I'd say you have about ten minutes to salvage what you can."

Eustace stopped his tirade, breathing heavily as he regarded the man. "What do you mean?"

"We still have positive control of the system. We can manage a controlled shutdown and restore Neutron to Retroville on our terms, or we can let the system crash and let it all hit the fan when it does. He wasn't lying about the kidnaping laws."

Eustace stared in undisguised fury at the man but knew the game was over. "All right," he finally said. "Begin shutdown." As the man turned to a phone on the wall and began quietly speaking into the mouthpiece Eustace turned to the video screen again. "That's twice now, Neutron," he muttered savagely. "And someday, I'll make you pay. By all I hold sacred I swear I'll make you pay!"

The man finished speaking and replaced the receiver on the hook. "And speaking of paying, I'll be in contact someday to collect."

Eustace started at that. "What? I paid you for the facilities and technicians and time. What are you talking about?"

The man simply lit another cigarette. "You paid for all that," he agreed, "but not for the opportunity. Agreeing to deal with you at all was a favor, and my business depends heavily on having favors returned. I'll be around to collect someday. It might not be anything big, but you never can tell."

"You can't be serious!"

"When you dance to the music you have to pay the fiddler," the man went on in an almost bored tone, as thought this were a wearily familiar topic of conversation to him. "And sometimes it's Old Scratch playing the tune."

Despite his situation Eustace tried one last time. "And if I don't agree?"

"Your choice," the man replied as he headed for the door. "But remember what I said."

"And what's that?"

The man paused at the doorway to take a deep lungful of smoke and exhale it. "Nobody lives forever," he replied. As he disappeared from the room Eustace suddenly wished that he had a glass of water. The smoke, he told himself, had suddenly made his throat very dry.

It's not unusual for people, when first waking up, to experience a limited form of amnesia about certain things, such as where they are, what day it is, or their plans for the coming day. When Jimmy awoke the next morning he had such an experience, albeit in a different form and more strongly than usual. He was, so far as he could tell, in his bedroom where he should have been, but it seemed to him that he should be somewhere else. Where exactly he felt he should have been escaped him, and as he dwelt more on the subject he suddenly realized that he could not remember coming home at all the previous day. He could remember taking his class pictures, having the spat with Cindy, and leaving for home, but everything between then and now was a blank. This in itself was unusual, as Jimmy had a photographic memory and could recall with ease virtually anything that had happened to him since before he had been old enough to talk.

His mother's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Jimmy! You'd had better get up or you'll be late for school!"

At these words Jimmy sat straight up in bed almost as though he'd been shocked. "Wow," he said. "Déjà vu."

End of Chapter 12.

Author's Notes:

In this story I'm not going to divulge any details of how Jimmy got to or from where he was, or even where he was, as from Jimmy's point of view the very nightmare of the situation was not knowing where he was. It also lends more of an "X-Files" feel to the story where not everything is completely revealed and the viewer (or in this case reader) has to draw his or her own conclusions. Things are always more sinister when kept in the shadows, and based on the speculation in the feedback for this story I'd say some of the ideas people will come up with would be far more inventive than anything I can devise.