A Moment for Reflection

 It was a little after midnight.  The bartender sounded last call over an hour ago, but I stayed nursing my cup of tea.  It was as close as I could get to my favorite soft drink, Pepsi, which wouldn’t be bottled commercially for another twenty-three years.  It didn’t matter anyway. I’d lost my sense of taste, along with my sense of smell and my sex-drive, when I died.  Now that cup of tea was nothing more than 98.4% water, 1.2% hydrocarbons, and .04% miscellaneous organic compounds.  I only needed the deuterium in the water, but I thought it would be nice to have a cup of tea and try to remember what it tasted like.  I was wrong.

 I took my pocket watch out and checked the time.  My internal clock was a thousand times more accurate, but I still enjoy doing things the old-fashioned way.  We had one hour and ten minutes until our appointment with destiny.  I tried to console myself with thoughts of the importance of preserving the time-line.  That’s why I was here in the first place.  This was only a side trip.  It seemed like a good idea when I boarded the ship at Southampton, but now I was having doubts. Most people would never believe that an android could be depressed. Tonight, I was proving them wrong.

 “Whatever it is sweetheart,” a young Irish woman said from behind me.

“It can’t be that bad.”

 “Dear,” I said. “You don’t know the half of it.”

 “Buy me a drink, and you can tell me all about it,” she said.

 “Why not,” I said.

 The droopy eyed barman overheard us.  He perked up.  “The bar is closed,” he said.

 I reached into my vest pocket and took out a ten-dollar Indian head gold piece.  I slid it down the bar toward him.  “I just reopened it.”

 He picked up the gold piece and weighed it in his hand.  He put it in his pocket. “What will you have?”

 “Whatever the lady wants.”

 “I’ll have a sherry,” she said.

 The barman took out a glass and poured her drink.

 “Leave the bottle.”  I gave him a silver dollar.  He set the bottle down on the bar and walked back over to where he had

been dozing.

 “Now what’s got you so depressed?”

 “I don’t know where to begin?” I said.

 “The beginning is always a good place to start,” she said.

 “Well okay,” I said.  “What’s your name?”

 “Eileen McNamee,” she said.  “And yours?”

 I glanced over at her for the first time.  I already knew she wasn’t another android.  An android couldn’t mask its electro-magnetic signature if it got within fifty feet of me.  I just wanted to see what she looked like.  She had blue eyes and long strawberry hair.  It curled about her face offsetting her alabaster skin and giving it a warmth I found attractive.  I did an x-ray and infra-red scan of her.  I wanted to check her for weapons, but I also couldn’t resist peeking under that dress.  I admit that I still look at women.  I just can’t remember why.  She was carrying a wicker basket that contained a baby girl.  The child was sleeping peacefully.  Hidden underneath the child was a derringer. A bullet isn’t much of a threat to an android, since the only way to kill one is to remove its fusion reactor, but getting shot can still do some nasty things to my internal systems.

 “I’m Mark Aaron.”  I extended my hand, and she shook it gently.

 “So, what’s got you so sullen, Mr. Aaron?”

 “Something that has happened, and something that will happen.”

 “Two different somethings,” she said.  “The result of a torrid affair I hope.”  She smiled.

 “No.” I took a long sip of tea.  “They’re both the same something.”

 “You’re not making any sense,” she said.  Eileen took a sip of her sherry.

 “I rarely do,” I said.  “I feel like the leopard in Hemingway’s ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro.’”

 “I haven’t read that one,” she said.

 “I’m not surprised,” I said.  “It won’t be written for another twenty-five years.”

 She took a  gulp of her drink.  “You are an odd fellow, aren’t you.”

 “I’m sorry,” I said.  “I don’t get opportunities to really talk to someone very often.  And when I do, I screw it all up with a bunch of nonsense.”

 “That’s all right,” she said.  She flipped her skirt a little and let me see some of her leg.

 “So what brings you to America?” I asked.

 “My husband.”  She nodded toward a man playing poker in the back corner of the room.

 “So, this is a purely social drink,” I said.

 “I was hoping you wouldn’t mind,” she said.  “He’s been losing for the past hour and I can’t bare to watch.”

 “I don’t mind,” I said.  “But will he mind?”

 “He cares more for his cigars than he ever did for me.”  She took a sip of her sherry.

 “Bad marriage?”

 “It was arranged by my father,” she said.

 She told me in vivid detail about her husband’s drinking, gambling, and toilet habits for the next thirty-six minutes.  While I listened, I watched him play cards in the mirror behind the bar.  He was losing.  I thought about firing a burst of microwaves at him.  Not enough to hurt him, but enough to give him a headache and end the game.  I decided against it.  He would be dead in a few hours, so it didn’t matter how much money he lost.

 “You must think me an awful bore,” she said.

 “Not at all,” I said.  “It’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

 “I was hoping to cheer you up, but instead I think I’ve made you feel worse.”  She poured  more of the sherry into her glass.

 “No, not at all,” I said.  “Your problems don’t begin to compare to mine.”

 “Really,” she said.  “How much trouble could a fine gentleman like yourself be in?”

 I told her everything.  I told her that I was an android.  I then had to tell her what an android was.  I told her I was constructed on Mars by a terrorist named Karl Romaji intent upon altering Earth’s history. I told her I had the memories of a forty-two-year-old environmental engineer who was killed in a plane crash.  My body was preserved by a company in Arizona called Alcor for a hundred and forty years.  Then it was stored in a museum for another eighty years, before my neural pathways were copied and placed into this body.  I was one of twelve androids sent to alter history, but through a human error, I was allowed to retain my humanity.  I told her how I began hunting the others down before they could do any damage to the time-line.  I decided not to tell her that I was armed with a microwave emitter that could fry her brain,

nor did I tell her that I could morph my face to resemble anyone I chose.  I could have told her though, because she didn’t believe a word of it.

 “I knew Americans told some tall tales about Davy Crockett and such,” she said.  “But that story sounds like something out of Jules Verne.”

 “Doesn’t it,” I said.

 “Why are you here?” she asked.  “Is there some evil machine waiting to kill us all?”

 “No,” I said.

 I had told her everything else, and I didn’t see a reason to stop now. This mission wouldn’t change history, and she would be dead in just over an hour anyway.

 “I’m here for a Bible,” I said.

 She smiled.

  “I’ve got one down in my cabin,” she said.  “I’ll lend it to you.”

 “It’s a Gutenberg Bible,” I said.  “It was the first printed work in history. Yaohan Gutenberg was voted the most important person in this millennium.”

 “Really,” she said, “When did this happen?”

 “December of nineteen ninety-nine,” I said. “It was a big T.V. special.”

 “Teepee?” she said.

 “Forget it,” I said, “It’d take too long to explain.”

 I got up from the bar, and I excused myself from the young lady.  I wanted to make my way to the hold and get the Bible before the ship began to flood.  I may not have to breathe, but even with my enhanced strength, I can’t open a door that has two tons of water behind it.  Leaving the room, I noticed the ornate carvings on the walls and ceiling.  The wooden sculptures, the crystal chandeliers, and the plush carpet that would soon be consigned to the bottom of the ocean, not to

be seen for eighty-six years.

 The Bible was being stored in a hermetically sealed box inside the cargo hold on the Orlop deck.  It would take me about five minutes to get down into the hold.  As I started down the stairs, the ship shuttered.  It felt like the lurch a train makes as it pulls away from the station.  Through an open porthole, I could see the iceberg passing slowly by.  Twelve minutes early, I thought.  The historical record is never completely accurate, but I thought they’d at least get the time right.  I quickened my pace down the stairs.  The hold was toward the bow of the ship, so it would flood right away.  As I neared the engine room, the electromagnetic output of the generators began to interfere with my high-band sensors.  I was about to turn them off, when I detected a more  organized pattern hidden among the background noise.  I dismissed the noise as spillover from the radio, coming through the electrical system.  In a few moments radio traffic would increase greatly, and I wasn’t interested in listening to the radio operator’s pleas for help.

I turned all of my high band sensors off.  I walked down six flights of stairs to the Orlop deck.  I stepped through a water tight doorway.  A crewman was standing on the other side.  I turned my back to him and morphed my face to resemble First Officer Murdoch.

 “Excuse me sir,” he said.  “The baggage hold is off limits to passengers.”

 “I’m not a passenger,” I said turning around.  “I’m Officer Murdoch.”

 “Sorry sir,” he said.  “I didn’t recognize you without your uniform.”

 “That’s all right,” I said.  “I was walking through the Verandah Café and that daft American woman, Molly Brown, spilled a pint on me.  I’m making do with this until the steward fetches me another clean uniform.”

 “Very good sir,” he said.

 “We struck an iceberg and the Captain wants a damage report.”

 “All is secure here sir,” he said glancing around the hold.

 “Good,” I said.  “Why don’t you go aft and check the next compartment? I’ll look around in here, just to be safe.”

 “Very good sir,” he said.  He walked across the hold and left through the other door.

 I spent the next ten minutes searching through the hold.  I found the crate I was looking for and opened it.  Inside was a hermetically sealed tin box.  I did an active x-ray scan of the box to be certain it contained the Bible.  It did.  I put the lid back on the crate and pushed the nails back in with my thumb.  As I put the box on my shoulder, the crewman returned.

 “Everything is secure there sir,” he said.

 “Grand,” I said.  “I’ll make a report to the captain.”

 The crewman stroked his mustache.  I started toward the watertight door.

 “Can I carry that for you sir?” the crewman asked.

 It was very unusual for a senior officer to be carrying baggage.  No doubt the crewman was curious.  A refusal would arouse too many questions I didn’t want to answer. I could hear the water seeping into the lower Orlop deck.   This deck would begin to flood in less than five minutes.  I didn’t want to hang around.  The real Officer Murdoch would be closing the water tight doors any second now.

 “Thank you,” I said.  I handed him the case.

 “What’s in here?” he said.  “If you don’t mind my asking?”

 “A Bible,” I said.  “It was sent to the hold by mistake.”

 “Right sir,” he said.

 On our way back upstairs, we passed close to engine room number six.  I could hear the men on the other side of the bulkhead singing.  I paused for a moment to listen, while the crewman continued up the stairs.

 “This is the steamer’s pit.  The ovens like dragons of fire.  Glare through their close-lidded eyes. With restless hunger desire.”

 Hearing that song put a lump in my throat.  The men in the boiler room kept the boilers operating until they were submerged.  I wished there was something I could do for them.  As the crewman reached the next deck, a bright flash filled the stairwell.  Even with my sensors switched off, I could tell that the flash was visible across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.  It blinded everything except my infra-red sensors.  If I had been any closer to the flash, the pulse would have overloaded my system.  The crewman dropped the box and thrust his hands to his face.  A man darted through the stairwell door and struck him with a steel pipe.  The crewman’s skull was split down the middle. I haven’t seen that much blood on the ground since the siege at Antietam.  He fell to the deck like a puppet that had its strings cut. The Bible bounced down the flight of stairs to land at my feet.  The assailant examined the body with keen interest.

 I switched to battle mode.  I increased my processing speed and reset all my systems.  I even charged my microwave emitter, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to use it.  He would shut down all of his unprotected systems, so hitting him with microwaves would just be a waste of energy.  When my advanced sensors came back on line, I detected them looking down at me.

 I sent it a high frequency burst transmission.  “Didn’t I kill you in 1861?”

 “Took me twenty years to tunnel out of that well,” it sent back.  It flung the bloody pipe at me at around three-hundred miles an hour. I dodged it.  The pipe buried itself in the bulkhead next to me, leaving a bloodstain on the wall.  Three jumped down the flight of stairs and came at me with a front kick, followed by left hook and right jab to my face.  I blocked its jabs and landed a sidekick of my own.  The kick knocked it down the stairs.  I snatched up the Bible and ran through the door.  I slammed the door shut and bent the lock just enough to keep it from opening.  I ran through the empty corridors at close to thirty miles an hour.  A few seconds later, I could hear Three breaking through the door on the other side.

 We were too close together.  As long as it could get within fifty feet of me, I couldn’t hide.  I couldn’t go overboard like I’d planned with it chasing me.  Eventually it would work out a way to kill me.

 It sent me a message, “You can run, but you can’t hide.”

 I ran up the grand staircase to “B” deck.  I slowed down when I reached the top of the stairs.  The ornately carved wooden sculpture on the wall had a mirror where the clock should have been.  I looked in the mirror and realized I was still wearing Officer Murdock’s face.  I reverted back to my own.

 The Café Parisen was almost empty.  I was walking through the tables, when I realized I was reacting to my fear.  The one thing I learned from the Civil War was that panic got people killed.  I sat in one of the wicker chairs, and I took a moment to reflect upon my situation.  Three must have been using the magnetic interference from the electrical turbines to mask its signature.  The turbines weren’t the only thing on the ship that created a field strong enough to hide in.

The radio also produced a fairly strong magnetic field.  Right now it was probably systematically searching the ship, hoping to reacquire my electromagnetic signature, or it was heading for the radio room, because I may be hiding there.  Either way, it wouldn’t take it long to figure out where I was.

 I was operating at peek capacity, and it was probably at around eighty percent.  I had this Bible to lug around, but Three was unencumbered. Neither of us can do anything that would arouse too much interest among the surviving passengers.  Romanji knew that if time traveling androids became common knowledge, his goal would be defeated, so all his androids

were programmed for discretion.

 It sent me a message using the ship’s electrical system as an antenna, that way I couldn’t localize the transmission.  “This ship isn’t very large.  I’ll find you eventually.”

 It was trying to spook me into doing something stupid.  The ship had been sinking for eighteen minutes.  That meant I had about an hour before things began to get ugly.  Three was probably hoping to catch me on the boat deck and kill me there.  Then we’d only be two gentleman fighting over a lifeboat.

 I carried the Bible outside and threw it overboard.  The box would protect it, and I could recover it later.  Now I only had Three to deal with.  I decided not to play its game.  Trying to run would only waste energy, and looking for Three without a plan of attack would be foolish.  I walked back into the Café Parisien.  The first class passengers were being roused from their beds.  They were walking up the grand staircase toward the boat deck.  I slipped around the corner into the kitchen. The door was locked, but a sharp push opened it.  I went through the cupboards until I found several large knives and a

cleaver.   I put them inside my trousers along the belt line.  The kitchen had a walk in cooler, filled with spirits of all varieties.  The inside was lit with electric lights.  The floor was pine, but the walls of the cooler were pine bound together with horizontal steel bands.  Using one of the knives as a screwdriver, I pulled a light out of its fixture. I attached a wire to each of the steel bands at the rear of the freezer.  Now all I had to do was back Three into the cooler, and push it into the metal bands.  The current passing through the wire was about two hundred volts at sixty amps.   The current wouldn’t be enough to kill it, but the shock will cause it to reset its systems.  That would take five or six seconds.  A lot of things can happen in six seconds.

 I left the cooler door open and went back to my table at the Café Parisien.   I sat down and pretended to read a copy of the “Southampton Pictorial.”  The outside door to the promenade deck opened.  Some of the passengers came down from the boat deck.  There was a problem lowering the lifeboats, so they came in to warm themselves until they were ready.  The stewards were doing their best to keep the passengers calm. A steward went into the kitchen.  He didn’t notice the door had been forced open.  A few moments later, he was circulating around the room with a tray of sifters of brandy.   The ship was beginning to slope toward the bow.  The slope was only about five degrees now, but it would increase exponentially until the ship broke in two.

 “W...o...u...l...d........y...o...u.......l...i...k...e. . .” 

 A steward was standing in front of me.  I reset my processor speed, so I could talk to him. “some brandy sir?” he asked.

 “No thanks,” I said.

 “I’ll take one.”

 I heard a familiar voice behind me.  I turned to see Eileen take a glass of brandy off the tray.  She had the basket in her other hand. She sat down at the table across from me.  My sensors detected Three on the deck below.  No doubt, it was aware of me as well.

 “I suppose this is the something we were talking about earlier?” she said.

 I laid the paper on the table.  “Yes,” I said.

 “You cold blooded Cromwellian bastard,” she said.  “Why didn’t you stop it?”

 “Yes,” Three said.  “Why didn’t you stop it?”

 Three walked in from the grand staircase.  It had taken Three twenty-two minutes to find me.  It had changed from the White Star uniform to a gentleman’s suit.  I x-rayed it and found it was carrying a knife in its jacket and the steel pipe in its pants leg.  It sat down next to Eileen.  In keeping with the proper etiquette of the day, I introduced Three to Eileen.

 “Eileen McNamee, this is Mr. Three,” I said.  “He’s a member of the organization I spoke of earlier.”

 It took a moment, but I saw the fire in her eyes turn into understanding, then fear.  She smiled warmly and tried to be  social.

 “Hello, . . . Mr. Three,” she said.  “What kind of business are you in?”

 “Let’s just say that he and I are competitors,” Three said.

 It turned to me. “Why don’t you answer the lady’s question?”

 “You are the last person I’d justify myself to,” I said.  “I’m not the one trying to alter history for my own personal gain.”

 “Mr. Romanji’s vision of the future is better for everyone,” it said.

“Even you can see that?”

 “Romanji is an idiot,” I said.  “There is no way to predict how his changes  will affect history.  There are too many variables involved. He’s not creating a utopian society.  He’s only creating chaos.” I looked over at Eileen, then back at Three.  “Besides, you could have stopped it too.”

 “I tried,” Three said.  “I put a magnet on the ship’s compass last night.  It should have taken us two degrees off course.”

 “And we still hit the iceberg!” I said.  “Oh man, I’d love to be able to tell Romanji that you caused the event you were trying to prevent.”

 “That changes nothing,” Three said.  “My programming still stands.  I have to eliminate you.”

 “You’re conflicted,” I said.  “That’s why we’re talking instead of trying to tear each other apart.  You can’t reconcile the discrepancy between what your programming tells you should be happening, from what is happening.”

 “Will you two speak English,” Eileen said.  “If you haven’t noticed, this ship is sinking!”

 “We’ve noticed Eileen,” I said.  “Why don’t you get into one of the lifeboats?”

 “I want to know something before I go,” she said.

 “Well, I’m just a tad busy at the moment,” I said.

 “Am I going to die?” she blurted out.

 Three got up from the table.  “Go ahead tell her,” it said.

 I got up from the table.  I looked Eileen in the eyes and shook my head no.

 “Your body is found floating in the water three days from now.  It will be picked up by the R.M.S. Oceanic a few miles South of here,” Three said.  “You’ll be buried in Halifax Nova Scotia.”

 “There was no need to tell her that,” I said.

 “There was no reason not to,” it said.

 I stopped the steward who was circulating with the brandy.  I put a ten-dollar gold piece in his pocket.  “Take this woman to the lifeboats,” I said.  “Make sure she gets on.”

 “Twelve,” it said.  “I’m shocked.  Changing history are we?”

 “Maybe a little random chaos is good for the time-line,” I said.

“Shall we?”  I pointed toward the kitchen door.

 Three followed me into the kitchen.  It came at me with the pipe, and I defended myself with the cleaver.  I could tell what its strategy was early in the fight.  Three kept swinging the pipe at my head, hoping to hit me hard enough to knock my sensors offline.  Then it could rip my fusion reactor out of my chest with little resistance.  My plan to trap Three in the freezer was ruined when the steward closed the cooler door.  I tried to work my way around to open it, but Three must have realized my plan, because it side stepped all my attempts to push it toward that corner of the room.

 The fight lasted for six and a half minutes, which is an eternity to an android in battle mode.  I had managed to cut Three several times with the cleaver.  My left arm was beginning to show signs of stress from the repeated blows it was taking blocking Three’s shots to my head.  We both  knew it was only a matter of time until one of us made a fatal mistake.

 The door from the restaurant opened.  Eileen stepped through, derringer in hand.  She took careful aim at three and fired at point blank range. Three swung the pipe at her, striking her at the same instant the bullet hit.  Three snapped her neck at the T1 vertebrae.  Her death was instantaneous.  Her bullet struck Three in the left eye, knocking Three’s balance control and most of its sensors offline.  I pulled the large knife from my belt and drove it deep into Three’s chest.  I felt a surge of hot plasma spew from the wound.  The knife had severed the case of its fusion reactor.  I decided not to take the time to rip the fusion reactor out by hand.  The damage to its systems was severe enough to keep it down long enough for me to escape.

 I drove the knife deeper into its body, as I pushed Three over to the cooler.  I opened the door and shoved Three inside.  I  leaned it up against the rear wall, with its back against the bottom electrified steel band.  I turned to leave.

 “What’s wrong?” it asked.  “Don’t have the guts to kill me?”

 I reminded myself that, even in its damaged state, it was still dangerous.  Part of its motor control system may still be functional.

My goal was to escape with the Bible. Containing it in the cooler would insure that.

 “You’ve got one consolation,” it said.  “When I killed the bitch, I didn’t alter history.”

 “Shut-up,” I said.  I pulled the top wire down and stuck it in its mouth.  The shock overloaded its systems and shut it down, at least temporarily.

 I closed the cooler door and locked it.  The ship was falling apart around me.  The slope was up to thirty degrees and the bow was completely under water.  Outside, people jumped overboard and fought for seats on the last few lifeboats.  I sat down next to Eileen’s body.  I could hear the musicians on the deck above me playing “Autumn.”  I sat there staring at her lifeless face, wondering why she came back.  I heard the first funnel collapse and the radio fell silent, yet I sat there staring at her, thinking of the songs of spring.  When the domed skylight over the grand staircase collapsed, the room began to flood.   I heard a cry outside, but it wasn’t the crying of the passengers.  This was much closer.  I got up and found Eileen’s basket floating near the door.  I picked up the basket and checked the baby. Her blankets had gotten wet.  That’s why she was crying.  I went back into the kitchen and found a pickle barrel and emptied the pickles onto the water-covered floor.  I put the baby, along with some dry tablecloths, into the barrel.

 I pulled some cord off the curtains and tied it to the barrel, and I swam out through the open skylight.  I located the Bible drifting about fifty yards to the stern.  I recovered it in time to see the ship break in two and plunge to the bottom.  The cries from the passengers became unbearable.  I had seen death on this scale many times before during the Civil War, but I still hadn’t grown used to it.  I turned my audio sensors off, and I swam toward a small boat I had waiting five miles to the North.

 I had rescued a piece of history and preserved the time-line, but that didn’t make me feel any better.  We both tried to change history.  We both failed, so saving the baby made some kind of strange sense to me. Besides, I’d always wanted a daughter.

Email: Alfred Taylor

Return to Table of Contents