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Suddenly Memories: Biogoonie
By Dac
He raises his eyes to the clouds above. They are not a white colour. They are a sickly dark brown streaked with grey, blue and black. No light tries to sneak through; the clouds are all-encompassing. The sky is covered with them, allowing nothing through. The sight of them makes him dizzy and he rubs his temples, trying to clear them. The landscape around him is bare and ugly. Rocks are scattered everywhere. No, not rocks. Rubble. The remains of buildings, shattered into pieces by a cataclysmic wave of destruction. He staggers around them. This is not the graveyard of one city. This is the graveyard of many. Debris. Wreckage. Over in one direction he can see a hollowed-out wreck blackened by fire. In another he can see trees burnt to ash. There is a car crushed under a boulder. There is destruction everywhere.
And there are the bodies.
Everywhere there are skeletal remains, long since stripped of their flesh and scattered to pieces by the wind of days long past. Scraps of clothing cling to the bones. He kicks a brown leather shoe away idly. Not all the bodies are human. He can see animals. There is a body of a young child, protectively huddled over a dog. Whether the child was a boy or a girl, he cannot tell. He considers it surprising enough that the remains have been untouched by the weather, hidden in the shadow of a bank that has been smashed to pieces. He crouches by the two skeletons and looks at them curiously. Who was the child? What was the dog’s name?
He looks up and continues walking around the war-torn streets. Some are blocked off by wreckage and rubble. Others are clearer, but still hazardous. He climbs on top of an overturned bus. The hideous clouds continue to mar his vision, and he curses them. As his breath escapes his mouth, something strikes him. It is not the ancient death and destruction surrounding him that horrifies him. It is the deathly quiet. It is unearthly. There are no engines revving. No car horns blaring. No people to shout, no tyres to screech. Even the sounds of carrion animals have long since fallen prey to the creeping silence. He holds his breath as he looks around, and he wonders if there is anything left alive in this world.
“What happened here?” he asks.
Even the wind is gone, unable to whisper a response.
***
He lay on his side, trembling in his sleep. Above him, Mars and Tiger watched him severely. Mars traced the line of his mouth with his finger, his brow creased with concern. Goonie kicked fitfully, restless but still exhausted. His figure had gotten rapidly thinner over time, and the others were worried. Tiger took his pulse, and looked up at Mars, shaking his head.
“It’s going nuts,” he said. “Even when he’s asleep his heartbeat is kicking into overdrive.”
“How bad is he getting?” asked Mars.
“Bad,” said Tiger grimly. “Look at this.”
He shone his flashlight over Goonie’s face. The sleeping man squinted, his eyes still firmly closed, and he moaned in his sleep as he squirmed backwards, trying to get away from the light. Mars peered closer and saw what Tiger was indicating.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
***
He will walk down the street. The sun will be shining brightly. The world will be so much different to what he will remember. The harsh colours and cataclysmic horrors will be gone, replaced by a world bright and pleasant. In a few minutes he will look down at his feet, enclosed by his heavy boots, and begin to walk forward. He will feel strange, as though this all should have happened before, but he is going to think that it has happened before. He will reflect on how it has. Everything he will see is not the future. It will be the past. The steps he will take will be steps he has already taken. This will be simple.
Tiger will be next to him. His friend Tiger will guide him over to a seat and order them two drinks, and they will sip them calmly as Tiger explains the situation.
“I don’t know about the Leader,” Tiger will admit. “But the others, we know them. It was the name Powerbomb that tipped me off. After that, the others fell into place.”
“I guess that is kind of a giveaway,” Goonie will say in response. “I still can’t believe it’s them.” His voice will sound so naive, so foreign to him. But that is only natural, since he will be younger.
“I couldn’t believe it at first, either,” Tiger will say. “But hey, after we met up, it doesn’t make any less sense. Why couldn’t the others be here as well? There’s no reason it should just be the two of us.”
“I guess,” Goonie will respond.
They will be watched, and neither will be any the wiser. The man two tables down with his tattered grey hood up will be listening to them as they talk, remembering when he sat at their table, saying the words Goonie will say. He will wonder what would happen if either Goonie or Tiger would look under the hood, and see another Goonie staring back at them. But he will know that they will not. It did not happen before, and it will not happen now. He will be safe, on this one indulgence, this one trek into the past, to remember what it was like before things turn into prison and fighting and being hunted.
He will inhale the aroma of his coffee, sigh and relax. He will listen to himself and Tiger a few tables away, having a conversation he will remember.
He will begin to have vertigo. This will be a strange sensation. He will remember why, no matter how often he bends time towards the future, he rarely bends towards the past. There is nothing among the past to help. He will remember, and he will feel the pain.
***
How his ability works is not something he has ever been entirely certain of. He knows he can distort time. Sometimes he slows it down. Sometimes he speeds it up. He recently discovered he can remove himself from it and re-emerge in the past or the future, although this gives him considerable migraines. The past is worse. He likes going into the past, but stepping backwards makes the pain worse. The future is bearable. Something about the future is less painful than the past.
He does not notice time slip away from him when he performs any of these tasks. To his mind, stepping from normal time into time slowed down feels as natural as walking on the road. There is no difference to him, beyond a slight ache in his muscles. It does not feel strange to see everything around him moving slower, or faster. It feels normal. It is normal; he does not know why. He knows it should be strange, but it is not. He feels calm as he walks past the hero hunters levelling their weapons at him. He walks calmly as they take what should feel like hours to bellow a command. Beside him, Mars is perpetually frozen in the act of tripping over a loose rock. Tiger is rushing to grab his friend’s hand. Goonie watches with mild curiosity. His mind feels idle, bored even. There is nothing here strange to him. Time has simply felt the need to alleviate its aches and take a rest, and the rest of the world with it. He does not mind. He can wait for time to catch up.
Slowly, he walks over and steadies Mars. He takes both Mars and Tiger’s wrists and pulls them forward, walking casually as he does so. There is nothing to worry about. The hunters will resume when time does, and he knows time will begin moving swiftly when it wants. He smiles serenely and continues walking, pulling his friends forward.
“I wonder if I can freeze time?” he wonders aloud.
***
Mars stared at the grey in Goonie’s hair, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. He had never really paid attention to Goonie’s hair colour before, but he knew it was never silver. Mars peered closer at Goonie’s face, paler than he remembered, tightly drawn and tense, and more and more pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.
“He’s getting worse, isn’t he?” asked Mars tentatively.
“Yeah,” replied Tiger. “You know what’s doing it, too.”
“He’s jumping again.”
“Not just jumping,” said Tiger. “Even the usual things. Slowing it down. Speeding it up. His body just progresses normally, as though nothing is wrong. When he slows things down, he stays normal. What do you think that does to a man?”
Mars nodded. “Seconds to us can be hours to him.”
“And that’s just when he slows it all,” said Tiger worriedly. “What about when he jumps? When he comes back, he’s right where he left, or close enough. But how long is he ever gone for? We don’t know, and I don’t think he does either.”
The two of them stared at their sleeping friend and listened to his breathing. It comes in sporadic, wheezing bursts. His frame was close to emaciated, pale and weak. His eyes, if they were open, would be bloodshot and his pupils dilated. They both thought about the past few weeks of travelling with him. He had gotten progressively weaker, his strength drained. Neither knew how much he has eaten, or slept. He had been away in the past and future so much, neither knew if he had done either while he was gone. They did not know how much of anything he had done. They did not know how much he had lived.
***
The battle is fierce. He watches from the shadows as the fast man, Brodie, speeds past and seizes the thunder goddess Thrud and drags her away. They are moving too fast to see properly and he blinks to clear his eyes. He has read about this battle, heard stories, but to see it is something else. He watches the titanic clash between Captain Liberty and Elite, observing as Elite’s broken form is hurled into the distance. Behind him he hears Thrud scream as Brodie obliterates her, but it is the metal-coated man he is interested in. Alloy howls with rage as he flew towards the Leader of the Hero Destruction Ministry, the man Goonie knows as Data.
He wasn’t here before, and he shouldn’t have come back.
The thought barely has time to form before buildings are erupting all around him. The battle is growing intense and all perception of what is going on has vanished. He can’t see. There is an explosion of glass nearby as whatever unfolds between the Leader and Allow shatters some window panes. A shard of glass glances off Goonie’s brow and he falls backwards with a cry of pain. Dragging himself back among the shadows, he wipes at the blood gushing from his brow and releases the effect, stepping back into the present. It feels like someone has kicked him in the head where the glass has cut him.
He frantically wipes at the blood, and eventually it clots, but as he ties a bandana around his head to hide it, he knows it will leave a scar. One that he will have to explain. A scar from the past. His two friends will love that.
***
He will stand in the light beneath those ugly clouds, looking around at the decimated landscape, trying to make sense of it. He will see fallen buildings, he will see car wrecks, he will see skeletons. He will see a child lying over a dog, and he will wonder if the child was a boy or girl. He will not understand what he sees, and he will wonder what happened to cause the destruction he will see.
He realises he already knows all of that.
He will wonder how he knows. He will wonder if what he sees is the past, the present or the future. He will wonder if it is his past, but the world’s future. He will wonder if it’s the other way round, his future but the planet’s past. He will wonder which way he will step into time. He will wonder what is the past, if he can access it so easily? What is the future, if he can step there easily? What is the present, to which he must return? He will not be sure of anything. He will not be sure if his friends, Tiger and Mars, are dead or if they have even been born. He will recall coming to this world, and he will recall being present at events before that. He will wonder where he belongs, and when he belongs. When will he be in the present? When is the present? Will he be in the present as he walks beneath the shattered buildings, as he wonders all of this? His brain will begin to hurt from the possibilities, but the pain will dull, as though some part of him will already know the answers. Some part of him will know.
He sighs in relief.
***
Something explodes to his left, and he rolls over, moaning. Mars scoops him up as Tiger frantically tries to find a path away from their attackers. Goonie is of no help, his feet dragging behind him as Mars carries him after Tiger. Another mortar shell whistles and the ground beside them vaporises. Mars gives a cry of panic. Goonie does not even notice it. The sound of yells behind them get closer as the hero hunters approach. Mars drops Goonie under the embankment where Tiger is crouched, and Goonie gives a dull groan of pain. The other two look at each other, panic evident on their faces.
“I can’t do anything,” says Tiger. “It’s broad daylight. There’s nothing for me to take in.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” replies Mars. “Give me a few minutes.”
Goonie’s ears prick up as Mars looks out above the embankment. Goonie puts a hand on both Tiger and Mars’s shoulders and smiles, shaking his head. They look at each other in confusion, when the sounds seem to go dead still around them. The wind is slowed to a crawl. Not far away, the current of the river has stilled. All three look up at their attackers and stare. The hero hunters are sprinting towards them, victory written over their faces, but it takes almost a full minute for each one to complete a single pace.
Hastily, both men put Goonie’s arms around their shoulders and begin to move.
“Hold it as long as you can,” Tiger cautions him. “We’re dead men otherwise.”
Mars looks up and spots a mortar shell, descending with all the speed of a feather caught on the wind. He struggles not to snigger as they haul their friend upriver. For several minutes they carry him, while the world around them is stilled. They find a small crossing and walk over it. Tiger pauses on the bridge and watches a butterfly, flapping its wings in slow motion. He stares blankly at it, so unnatural but so captivating. Mars shakes his arm and they press on just as Goonie’s strength gives out.
The roar of the river makes them all jump as it resumes its normal speed. The butterfly flaps away as though nothing has changed. Far behind them they hear the victorious shouts of the hero hunters turn into confused ones, and the mortar shell lands. Still they press on, dragging the unconscious Goonie between them, as they leave their pursuers behind.
***
“He’s like an addict,” said Mars. “He can’t stop.”
“He has to,” said Tiger, staring down at Goonie’s body. If it were for the occasional spasm and grunt and snore, he might have been unconscious. “If he doesn’t, he’ll die. Look at him. He’s about ten years older than when we broke out. How much has he done in that time? How many times has he slowed things down, or jumped into the past? Meanwhile, his biological clock functions the same.”
Mars turned to Tiger, a panicked expression on his face. “What about the times he’s kept us on his level when he’s slowed things down?” he exclaimed. “What if it’s happening to us?”
“He hasn’t dragged us along anywhere near enough for that,” Tiger assured him. “We’ve probably only aged an extra day or so. Him, though...how much has he jumped? How much has he put himself through? No wonder he’s so exhausted all the time. When he should be sleeping, he’s exerting himself, so he’s always nearly catatonic when we need to move.”
“What can we do with him?” asked Mars. “We can’t help him. We can’t stop him.”
Tiger paused, taking a deep breath. Mars knelt beside Goonie’s limp form, taking his pulse and brushing his silver-lined hair back. He saw a scar on Goonie’s brow he’d never noticed before and frowned, but before he could mention it, Tiger spoke again.
“We need to find the Family,” he said. “They’re working with those other people...the Outcasts. They might be able to help him.”
“How the hell do we find them?” asked Mars.
Tiger shrugged and shook his head. They sat on the ground, illuminated in the moonlight as they thought about their lack of options. The only other things they could think of – a normal hospital, Data – were out of the question. They argued the merits of the latter, but the risk wasn’t worth it.
“It has to be the Family,” concluded Tiger. “That’s all there is to it.”
“But we don’t know where they are,” protested Mars.
Tiger opened his mouth to reply when another voice, weak and wheezing, spoke up. “Miami,” it said. “They’re gonna be in Miami.”
They looked over at Goonie, weakly smiling up at them, but even as they did his eyes went dark and closed again and he drifted off to another restless sleep. They stared at him, but he did not wake up again. Unable to question him, they had to turn to each other in confusion as the sky began to lighten in the east.
***
He feels lighter. He wonders what else is waiting for him in the past, whenever he chooses to visit. He knows the Family will be there. He has seen them, under the mountain and in the city, spread out everywhere. He knows the Guardsmen will be there. And there are other things too. Beings incomprehensible to most, but Goonie sidesteps their illusions and omnipotence and goes back and forth along their timelines. He knows what they are, and he knows what they can do. He is, in his own way, just as powerful as them, and the thought comforts him as he coughs up another mouthful of blood.
The future will be good to him. He knows that.
1/9/2012 2:48:10 AM
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