A Glitch in Time

by Gary D. Snyder

Chapter 12:

"Clones!" Ron gritted his teeth in revulsion as he squinted at the identical and unmistakable forms confronting him and Cindy. "I hate clones!"

"Clones?" Cindy took a moment digest this announcement, all the while keeping a wary eye on the figures on the other side of the chamber. "You mean like duplicate people?"

"Yes. Although the ones from Drakken that I've encountered aren't really clone clones. They're more cut-rate copies of the originals without much of a personality to speak of. They're vicious, and savage, and generally have a low opinion of everyone they meet…" Ron considered this. "Although, come to think of it, that really wasn't much of a change from the real Bonnie." He shuddered. "Be glad you haven't had to mess with them."
"Believe me, I have. Six of them. And, surprisingly, every one of them was more annoying than the original." She considered it. "Well, almost every one of them."

"How did you get rid of them?"

"Jimmy froze most of them with interplanetary ice. You?"

"Melted them with soda. Unfortunately we don't have either. It is funny, though."

Cindy risked a quick look at him. "What's funny?"

"Well, Shego was never thrilled about Drakken trying to clone her. I wonder what changed her mind."

"Couldn't say." Cindy motioned nervously towards the still images of Shego. "Why aren't they doing anything?"

As if in answer to Cindy's question, one of the figures spoke. "Identify Ron Stoppable," it said. "Attack capabilities, minimal. Defense capabilities, minimal. Overall threat assessment, insignificant. Subdue and return subject to Doctor Drakken."

When the first form of Shego had finished its analysis the other duplicate stirred and announced. "Secondary target unidentified. Attack capabilities, unknown. Defense capabilities, unknown. Overall threat assessment, indeterminate. Employ any and all measures necessary to subdue or eliminate potential threat."

It wasn't until the second duplicate fired another blast of green energy that Cindy realized that it had been speaking about her. For a split second she couldn't help dwelling on the irony of the situation, in which Ron in his Kim-mando suit was considered a negligible risk while she was regarded as a serious enough threat to be eliminated. Then she had no more time to think of anything but avoiding the potentially lethal onslaught of her attacker.

The situation was not lost on Ron, who decided to take full advantage of the error in judgment on the part of his assailant. Resisting the temptation to use the suit, he adopted a defensive stance and stood his ground, waiting for the overconfident doppelganger to move within striking distance. "Surrender, Ron Stoppable," the duplicate Shego intoned as it approached. "You cannot win. Resistance is futile."

"Good advice," Ron observed as his opponent reached the position he was waiting for. "Why don't you take it?" Before the image of Shego could move Ron dove forward, landing lightly on his hands rebounding forward again, completing a flip, and driving both feet hard into the face of his adversary and sending it staggering backwards. Without giving the copy of Shego time to recover Ron drove forward with a series of spin kicks to the body, concluding with a final smashing back kick that left his opponent slumped against one of the rock walls on the floor.

As Ron fell back into neutral stance, ready to press the attack or defend if need be, the form stirred and looked up with a familiar scowl but eyes devoid of emotion. As it passed a hand over its mouth, wiping a streak of blue ooze from its lips, Ron suddenly recognized what he had really been fighting.

"Oh, gross!" he said. "That's syntha-goo. We're fighting syntha-drones!"
Cindy rolled out of the way of a vicious swipe to her head. "What?"

"Syntha-drones. They're kind of like robots or androids but instead of wires and circuits they have this goo stuff inside that makes them operate." He paused for second to dodge a blast from the drone and retaliate with a well-executed combination of reverse punches. "All we have to do is puncture their outer casings to let the syntha-goo out and they'll kind of shrivel up."

Rufus, who had been laying low, poked his head out to chirp, "Uh-huh, uh-huh," before disappearing again.

Cindy ducked beneath her own and more cautious syntha-drone's attack to land two spirited, if largely ineffective, punches of her own on the drone's knee. The Shego copy's counter-strike, a vicious sweep of its forearm, caught Cindy on her shoulder and sent her sprawling on the floor. "Hey, great," she said listlessly, dragging herself back to her feet. "That's all we have to do, is it?" Had she been fighting the real Shego it was doubtful whether Cindy would have lasted this long, but the syntha-drone's inexperience and excessive caution had worked in her favor. Thus far Cindy's moves had been primarily defensive, but now that she knew of a weakness to exploit she altered her tactics in favor of a more aggressive, albeit riskier, strategy. Feigning slightly more disorientation and weakness than she actually felt, Cindy let her attacker move in for a final assault before suddenly somersaulting inside the syntha-drone's guard and driving her stiffened fingers directly into the drone's midsection.

What happened next was both surprising and nauseating. Rather than puncturing the syntha-drone's outer casing as she had expected to, Cindy merely succeeded in pushing the drone's flexible external covering in and burying her arm up to the elbow in what felt like very rubbery dough before extracting it and back-flipping away. For a moment the Shego duplicate stood there with a deep impressing of Cindy's punch in her stomach before the indentation slowly filled in again.

"Eww! Gross!" Cindy objected.

Ron had also discovered that puncturing the syntha-drone's artificial skin was much harder than it sounded. Despite his enhanced speed and agility his most powerful blows showed no signs of damaging the syntha-drone's tough sheath. Worse, the syntha-drone had apparently re-assessed his combat abilities because it had increased the ferocity and intensity of its own attacks, forcing him to spend much of his time in purely defensive action. "This is not good," Ron called out. "Why do scientists always have to improve things? Why can't they just leave things alone?"

Although Cindy shared Ron's complaint she was far too busy defending herself again to reply. It was only a matter of time before her synthetic opponent broke through her defenses and left her open to a final, decisive attack. The moment came when Cindy, misjudging her distance from the chamber wall while backpedaling, found herself penned in on one side by one of the rocky folds and without any avenue of escape. The syntha-drone moved in for the kill as Cindy threw up her arms in a last instinctive and desperate gesture to protect herself.

"No, I haven't seen them today, either," she heard Libby say. "But I can't say I've actually been looking."

"Libby?" Cindy asked in astonishment.

"Okay, maybe I was curious about what Sheen was doing, but just because I was bored," Libby amended. "Don't be reading anything into that."

Cindy looked around, confused. She and Libby were sprawled on Libby's bed, a half-dozen fashion and teen magazines strewn between them. Cindy peered closer at one of the vaguely familiar magazine covers, realizing with a shock that it was one that had come out months ago. As she thought on it she recalled having spent a Saturday afternoon with Libby in just this way, with these magazines and discussing just this topic. What was she doing here?

The next instant she was back facing her foe, awaiting its final, devastating attack. Cindy stood there, frozen in her defensive posture, as the seconds dragged by like hours. When nothing happened, she slowly relaxed and peered closely at the syntha-drone. The drone still wore the same savage expression with her arms poised to strike, but otherwise seemed totally immobile. A quick glance in Ron's direction showed that he was very much in the same situation.

"Like, totally weird," Ron muttered, waving a hand in front of his syntha-drone's face. "It's like they shut down or something."

"And at just the right time," Cindy observed. She hesitantly poked her adversary and immediately backed quickly away. When there was no response, Cindy inched closer and poked it harder. "I wonder what happened?"

"Beats me. I was just getting ready to try another combination on this one and had another one of those flashbacks. When it ended this drone was just standing there. Do you suppose they blew a fuse or something?"

With the immediate danger over Cindy's attention immediately switched back to the mission. "Whatever happened, we can worry about it later. Right now we're here to find Neutron and Kim. I say we take advantage of the situation and press on."

Ron nodded. "Good idea. Although…"

"What?"

Ron looked uncomfortable. "Don't you think we should try to deflate these things, or whatever? Since we don't know what shut them down there's no telling what might start them up again."

Cindy had to admit that Ron's idea had merit, but it quickly became apparent that she had nothing with which to puncture the syntha-drone's tough hide. "I don't suppose that fancy suit of yours has a knife or something, does it?"

Ron consulted with Cyber Wade and shook his head. "Nope. No knives. Strictly non-lethal technology."

Cindy sighed. "Then I guess we leave the Shego wannabes here. It we run into them again, well, we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. Let's get moving." And with that she and Ron crossed to the portal on the other side of the chamber, disappearing through it to move deeper into Drakken's lair.

Back in their cell, Shego was fuming. "That is getting really annoying!" she proclaimed loudly. "How many times are we going to have those stupid temporal interphases?"

Jimmy, who was thinking about the experience involving the Encyclopedia of Infinite Knowledge he had just relived, shook his head. "I don't know. Until I can figure out the common factor there's no way to be sure how many more are coming, or when. But I have to admit," he added, "that I'm impressed that you remembered what they were called."

"Well, there must be something they have in common," Kim said. "What was happening when the first one hit us?"

"Well, you were in this cell, and I was with Drakken checking over the temporal complosion device, and Shego was…" Jimmy stopped and asked, "What were you doing?"

"I was in the little assistant's room, if you must know," Shego replied sourly.

Kim sighed. "Doesn't seem like much common ground there, unless hanging in this cell has some special significance."

"If this affects all of existence none of us may be the common factors," Jimmy pointed out. "But I'm almost positive that there has to be a connection."

"So what if there is?" Shego demanded. "What good would that do us?"

"I'm not sure. But considering our circumstances we need any advantage we can get."

"I don't suppose you can blast your restraints, can you Shego?" Kim asked.

Shego rolled her eyes. "Don't you think I already considered that? If I do any blasting it's going to be straight up. The shock might jar the shackles in this cell open but more than likely the ceiling would also collapse…on me."

"That's a chance I'm willing to take," Kim replied.

"Oh, that's great," Shego snorted. "Don't give up your world-saving day job, Princess, because as a comedian you definitely wouldn't cut it."

"I'm not joking," Kim retorted instantly. "All of existence is at stake here. It's time to take some chances and possibly make some sacrifices if we're going to save it."

Shego nearly laughed at that. "And you expect me to make the sacrifices? Puh-lease."

"Well, considering all the problems you've caused in the past –" Kim answered hotly.

"And considering I'm in this mess only because I tried to help you – " Shego shot back.

"Wait a minute! That's it!" Jimmy cried. "The past!"

Kim and Shego spoke together. "What's it?"

"Jinx! You owe me a soda!" cried Kim.

Shego gave her a cold look. "As if."

"Can I have your attention, please?" Jimmy put in.

"Go ahead," Kim said. Under her breath she added, "Soda cheat."

"I heard that, Princess."

"As I said," Jimmy continued in a loud voice, "I think I know what's going on. Kim – you remember when I said that the singularity might first be affecting things that were somehow outside of the time stream?" Kim nodded and Jimmy went on. "Well, it might be affecting destabilized past events from the time stream."

Kim blinked. "Say again?"

"I mean that the common element to the interphases may be what happened in the past. The temporal interphases we've been experiencing all involve events when the time stream was unstable. The first interphase involved when I was using my quantum replay device that eventually threw me and my friends back 200 million years. The second one, just now, had to do with when I used my time booth to alter the past. In both cases the time stream was being manipulated. Apparently it loosened those slices of the past enough for the singularity to pull them through our time."

"Wonderful," Shego said dryly. "And where does that get us?"

"It means that we have at least one more interphase headed our way. Unless either of you have been doing any time manipulation."

"Nope," was Shego's answer.

Kim shook her head. "Not me."

"Okay, then. The one other time I messed with time was a fairly big event. I used my time pincher to pull Thomas Edison into the present to prove that Guglielmo Marconi didn't invent the wireless receiver until the year 1902."

"You know, I'm beginning to think that you and Drakken aren't so different after all," Shego commented as she gave Jimmy an odd look. "Did you ever think about maybe just using a dictionary?"

"I'm nothing like Drakken," Jimmy objected. "Besides, dictionaries are old school and I needed incontrovertible, authoritative proof."

"To do what?"

"To prove that Cindy's class report was all wet!" Jimmy declared vehemently.

Shego shook her head. "Oh, yes. You are nothing at all like Drakken. He's someone who's totally obsessed with the most insignificant, meaningless trifles, whereas you focus on…what was it you were using that time pincher thing to do again?"

Before Jimmy could reply Kim spoke up. "Okay, Jimmy, we know that we can expect another temporal interphase. But as Shego said, how does that help us?"

"I don't know yet," Jimmy answered. "But I'll think of something."

End of Chapter 12

Author's Notes:

Some astute readers have objected to Jimmy's statement that "you can't go into the future" and that moving things from one point in time to another doesn't destroy it. At the risk of starting a debate on temporal mechanics I'll try to elaborate on these items.

As Jimmy pointed out, when you move an object in time the object continues to exist from the point of view of the subjective present (that is, as far as the person who has the object and is traveling through the time is concerned). But as far as everyone else in the Universe is concerned, from the time the object is taken to the time it reappears it is outside the time stream and has ceased to exist. There has been net decrease in the overall amount of time and energy in the Universe.

As far as traveling into the future goes, I would like to differentiate between traveling forward in time and traveling into the future, where the "future" refers to what will be just as the "past" refers to what has been and the "present" refers to what is. I would also point out that the episodes cited prove my point. The "futures" that were visited, including that shown in "The Tomorrow Boys (which happens after this story), were completely undone and will (so far as we know) never happen. In the case of "A Sitch in Time" the entire sequence of events after Kim and Ron left school never even happened, as the destruction of the Tempus Simia caused everything that Shego had tried to do to be undone and never come to pass. Consequently neither Shego nor Kim (nor Ron) recall ever having traveled through time before in this story. Even classic movies about time travel (such as "The Terminator" series and "Back to the Future" series) emphasize that the future is not fixed and that there is no fate but what we make. This is pretty much in line with the Heisenberg Principle, which states that observation inherently affects the situation being observed. I maintain that you can't travel the time stream without affecting it, hence Jimmy's well-placed caution about time travel.

This is horribly long and undoubtedly tedious, but I felt I owed it to those curious readers after taking forever to finish and post this chapter.