Chapter 22: The Nick of Time (Patreon)

The long and short of it: Earth’s landmass got quilted onto another planet. It had been torn into bite size chunks, and placed wherever the ‘gods’ deemed appropriate.

Meaning the U.S. and every other major human government had just been broken into pieces and redistributed.

Even if they wanted to launch the nukes, the people upstairs would have to find them first. That and no satellites had made the transition, so comms were down across the globe, even if some genius hacker could map the new planet.

There was no possible way Jeb’s country could tolerate being torn apart like that. Just like that, Jeb saw the inevitable death of the U.S. on the horizon, seizing his stomach in an icy fist.

The second piece of great news: The fuzz was already on the way since the klaxon went off, and there was no escaping them. The control center for Jeb’s Tutorial was in a piece of pinched off spacetime, and there was no leaving until the shift was complete.

As much as it felt like it, the lack of exits wasn’t simply to make things harder for Jeb, it was so that the controllers could cover six weeks worth of tutorial in about eight man-hours. To these people, the tutorial started about six hours ago, and they had only two hours until they automatically clocked off.

There were some time shenanigans going on here.

The ‘fixers’ were men and women approaching demigod status, and it was entirely up to luck whether the one you got was a reasonable fellow, or a crazy bastard that pulled the wings off of flies.

There were more of the latter.

Reasonable people don’t accumulate power their entire lives.

“Here’s a very important question,” Jeb said, sitting across from the head operator.

“If I were to destroy this console,” Jeb said, patting the massive switchboard. “Would it shut the Tutorial down?”

The man shook his head. “The console is just for us to interact with the System’s bells and whistles. Nonessential stuff. Prizes and naming artifacts are mortal Keegan inventions to help inductees, but the test itself…that’s a higher power.”

“Huh. And how long do we have until the fixer joins the party?”

“Ten minutes, give or take.”

“Does he or she know what we look like?”

The skull-faced alien shook his head vigorously. “No.”

“Well, let’s keep it that way,” Jeb said, dropping a mystic trigger under his feet before grabbing the operator by the arm and leading him out the door, past all the soldiers leaning against the wall, glaring daggers at him. Jeb tried not to step in the brain of their bravest member.

As a precaution, he pinned the angry soldiers against the wall as the group passed through.

“You see those?” Jeb said, pointing at the platforms for delivering treasure. “Those deliver rewards to anywhere and any time It’s needed.”

“Yes…?” The head operator said questioningly.

“What happens if I say, jump in and transport myself into the tutorial’s very beginning? Are there any Time-Cop paradox Cronenberg cautionary tales I should be aware of?”

“What?” The gaunt alien asked, thoroughly confused by Jeb’s pop-culture studded question.

“Are there negative effects for creating a time paradox? Jeb demanded.

“We don’t handle paradoxes here.” The operator said, shaking his head. “That’s a higher power. All I can say is that there is some infrastructure in place to resolve it.”

“Can anybody read these symbols?” Jeb asked, pointing at the glowing labels above the platforms.

Jess, Casey, Amanda, Brett and Ron shook their heads.

“Ooh, ooh, I know, I can read them!” Smartass shouted, jumping up and down on his head.

“You brought a fairy in here?” the operator said, aghast. “You tamed a fairy?”

“Hey!” Smartass shot back. “Nobody tamed all this raw sexual energy,” She said, running her hands down her decidedly flat body. “We have a business agreement!”

The operator glanced back and forth between Jeb and Smartass, his lipless teeth rattling in confusion.

“You’re dismissed,” Jeb said, shoving the operator back toward the door.

“What’s the plan?” Brett asked.

“We’re going to pass the tutorial,” Jeb said, scanning the massive amount of treasure. Ron was visibly drooling as he looked at the sheer quantity of loot.

It was a sweet trap: they only had about five minutes until the ‘fixer’ showed up, and Jeb did not want to be around for that.

“Smartass, dial that platform for the last twenty-four hours of the safe zones,” Jeb said, pointing.

“The rest of you, put an empty chest on the platform and absolutely fill it with Ability potions, You’ve got two minutes! MOVE! One hundred nineteen! One hundred eighteen!”

Thank god. Jeb had fully expected them to spend minutes questioning his choice of timing. Instead they leapt into action, Jess and Brett throwing open chests at phenomenal speeds, tossing the potions across the room, where Amanda caught them and loaded them in the chest.

Ron was checking chests more carefully for targets of opportunity.

Something – maybe it was Jeb’s Myst – was telling him that the further toward the beginning of the tutorial he went, the more paradox would be created. Butterfly effect and all.

So if he swooped in right at the nick of time, the smallest amount of paradox would be created, hopefully allowing their ‘infrastructure’ to handle it.

God I hope we don’t turn into body horror as soon as we see our younger selves.

If Jeb’s plan worked, they wouldn’t have to.

Clink, clink, clink, one by one, Amanda caught and loaded the priceless Ability potions, quickly filling the chest.

In the meantime, Jeb put a Mystic Trigger on each and every one of the platforms, clomping along on his pegleg across the warehouse as he attached one to each of them.

Five Mississippi, four Mississippi, three Mississippi, two Mississippi, one Mississippi…

Jeb’s enhanced Nerve was easily able to keep time despite the distraction.

“Alright, that’s it, load up on the platform!” Jeb shouted, climbing up on the circular piece of magitech.

Jeb climbed up and looked down at them, hesitating to climb on.

“Why would we go back in there?” Jess asked, glancing at him, head cocked.

“Because this time we’re gonna win,” Jeb said.

*** Vresh, ‘fixer’***

“When they told me someone had escaped the Impossible tutorial, I was actually excited for a moment.”  Vresh said, surveying the devastated console. The switchboard had been torn to shreds by telekinetic Myst.

“I get here and they’re already gone.”

Vresh sighed. “I was looking forward to seeing a human firsthand. One capable of fighting back, I mean. I hear they look like super fat, fluffy versions of Keegan, with flaps over their grazing teeth.”

Vresh wrinkled her nose in amusement.

“So tell me what the human looked like. Any distinguishing features?”

“Well, he was missing a –“

Crash! A packet of Myst shot out of the ground and tore the console beside the head operator to shreds.

Mystic Trapsmith, Vresh mentally catalogued the information as the pieces of the former console settled to the ground around the cowering Keegan.

“Go on,” Vresh prompted.

“I don’t think I should. That seemed like a warning.” The operator said.

“There aren’t any more,” Vresh said, deliberately scanning the area for any more surprises.

“Are you sure?” the operator blanched as Vresh gave him ‘the look’.

“I-I mean, of course, he was missing a foot, walking on what looked like a carved piece of wood, he grew some kind of wool on his face, brownish.”

“A carved piece of wood?” Vresh asked, shaking her head and chuckling. “Why didn’t he just grow it back? Is it some kind of fashion statement? And wool on the face? I’ve gotta meet these people.”

Vresh had them guide her to the treasure room, where the operator gasped at the sheer amount of chests with their lids kicked open.

“By all the gods, we’ve been robbed! They took all the ability potions!”

“Uh-huh,” Vresh grunted, inspecting the platforms. Each and every one of them had been damaged beyond usability by an overwhelming amount of telekinetic Myst…except for one.

It was practically riddled with Mystic Triggers.

“Thank the gods they couldn’t destroy the platform they were sent in on. We can use it to send you after them,” the operator said, dialing the platform to deposit its payload a few hours before the humans arrived.

“Less intelligent creatures don’t thoroughly understand the ramifications of time travel, so they’re not going to expect you to be waiting for them when they arrive.” The dimwit said.

“Let’s try an experiment,” Vresh said, kicking one of the empty chests onto the platform.

“Hit the button.”

The operator might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he did what he was told.

A fraction of a second before his palm made contact with the button, the triggers activated, and the display flickered as the coordinates were altered to drop the package off the second before the wipe.

“Creative,” Vresh muttered to herself. Not even she could survive a wipe. A second later, telekinetic Myst reached up through the floor and tore the guts of the platform to shreds.

The operator gave a pained squawk. “Those are worth millions of bulbs apiece!” he whined.

“Well, my job here is done.” Vresh said, spinning on her heel and heading back to the break room. She’d seen Overpul tea, and she had a serious craving.

“Done? But you were sent here to-“

“To put them back in the tutorial. They went back in the tutorial. Even if I wanted to take punitive action, they’ve prevented anyone from following.” Vresh said, waving. “Sometimes I get an easy job.”

*** Jeb***

Jeb tried to land on his feet, but his pegleg slipped, forcing him into a superhero landing beside the chest.

Everyone else landed more or less okay. Baby Casey was laughing, even.

If Smartass was right about the destination, then we should have a good four hours to meet up with Freeman’s group right after Eddie betrays us.

Jeb didn’t know what level of paradox would cause them to all stop existing, but maybe…just maybe, if he swooped in and killed the World Tortoise while he and his entire crew were unconscious, that key fourteen hours Jeb was knocked out the first time, they would be able to resolve the issue.

Jeb didn’t have any logical reason that would work, but he felt it in his guts.

“How many did we get?” Jeb groaned, pushing himself back to his feet.

“Fifty-Three ability potions. Roughly even spread,” Brett said, setting the potions out by color.

Let’s see, there’s six of us, not including Casey Jr or Smartass, so with fifty-three potions, someone’s gonna have to get the short end of the stick.

Still, nine potions is twenty-seven levels worth of stats.

“Nine each, minus one” Jess said, doing the same math in her head. “If you include Casey.”

“We include Casey,” Jeb said, nipping that shit in the bud. “I’ll take the eight. We’ll do an even split first, then you can trade with each other at your discretion. I don’t want to hear anyone bitching about getting the short end of the stick. We don’t have time for it.”

“Ron, what’d you get?”

“Boom,” Ron said, rolling back his sleeve to reveal three slave collars and an unidentified brass armlet, along with fifteen rings jammed onto his fingers like Christmas ornaments. The necromancer had several wands stuffed in his new, vaguely magical belt.

“I’m surprised you didn’t explode,” Jeb muttered, taking his eight potions from Brett. There were three Myst, three Body and two Nerve.

+9 Body

+9 Myst

+6 Nerve

Jeb didn’t have time to haggle for more Myst potions. He had something he needed to do, so he downed all the potions at once, suffering through their effects to get to the other side as quickly as possible.

As soon as the ache fled Jeb’s body, he picked himself up.

“Alright, I’m gonna go wake up Felicia, you guys wait until after every one of your doppelgangers has retired from the battle, then join up with Freeman. We’re gonna win this time.”

“Who’s Felicia?” Brett asked, frowning,

“The mountain, I think.” Ron said, eyeballing Jeb askance. “She did feel like a girl, but I didn’t catch her name.”

“What if we’re not where, or when we’re supposed to be?” Casey asked.

“Then we’ll figure something out.” Jeb said, taking flight.

Jeb rose into the air, and his heart leapt as he spotted the World Tortoise, back outside the forest, carefully avoiding the Safe Zones. He also spotted the Safe zone, where Freeman’s army of survivors were heading toward the Tortoise, flanked by a huge swarm of undead.

Excellent.

Jeb turned and headed toward the mountain at top speed, tearing through the air.

On the plus side, it only took him a couple minutes to reach the mountain. On the downside, the gate leading into the mountain was gone.

You mother- Jeb gritted his teeth and landed where the gate had been, and began running his hands across the smooth stone.

Maybe it’s some kind of illusion, or maybe I can cut my way through…

Jeb certainly could entertain the notion of tearing out chunk after chunk of stone, with his Myst, but how long would that take? He didn’t have time for a potential dead end.

What if…

“Felicia, I’m here to help. Open up.”

If there were any crickets on the barren mountainside, they would have been chirping at him.

Jeb raised his voice, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Listen up. Your enemy is right there!” Jeb shouted, pointing at the world tortoise in the distance.

“This is your one chance to get revenge for what’s been done to you!” Jeb shouted, throat hurting from the sheer volume. “There’s only one day left before it’s out of your reach forever, and to take that chance, you’ve got to let me in!”

Jeb stood there, looking up at the mountain, feeling like an idiot as he shouted to himself on the top of the soot-covered volcano.

“Alright, fine!” Jeb said, “Hard way it is.” He reached out his hand and channeled Myst from his core, infusing it into the stone. Jeb was right about to tear the first chunk of stone out when he felt something shift in the mountain’s demeanor.

The mountain gave a quiet tremor as the gate emerged from the plain stone façade, the hallway itself sinking into the darkness.

“Buy a girl flowers first,” Jeb muttered as the mountain’s slow thoughts echoed through his own voice.

Jeb picked himself up and flew through the hall, moving far too fast for any of the lurking lava squid to even react as he passed over them.

He had one thing he wanted to do before he woke up the mountain a second time.

*** Ch’goth, Master of the Hunt, level 32***

“After him!” Ch’goth bellowed, pointing his spear as they charged through the main hunting ground, the entire tribe chasing the strange fleshy creature that had kidnapped all of their grubs.

Why did this happen? HOW did this happen? Never in living memory had a creature from beyond entered their little world, and then one day one shows up and picks up all their children with it’s wicked magic, flying away with them dangling below it, waving the tasty grubs in the faces of the ‘Nugoth, practically inviting it to eat them.

What really worried Ch’goth was the nagging sensation that they were being played. The creature was just barely fast enough to outrun them, but never quite seemed to escape their sight.

They were being led somewhere.

It didn’t matter that Ch’goth understood that. His warriors were in a blood frenzy, and telling them this was a trap would be like spitting on the wall. All he could do was keep them as angry as possible so when the trap was inevitably sprung, they tore it to shreds.

“It’s taunting you!” Ch’goth shouted, stoking the rage. “N’geth, it’s got your grubs! KILL!”

“RAAA!”

They found themselves charging down a hall they had never seen before, and a moment later, charging out into the searing light of day.

“Gah,” Ch’goth grunted, mandibles clicking in pain as the light in the ceiling of this cave hurt his eyes.

Here’s the trap, He thought, hunkering down and holding his spear in front of himself defensively.

Unlike what he was thinking, nothing happened. Ch’goth’s eyes gradually adjusted, and he let out an involuntary click of surprise. The cave they were in was bigger and wider than anything he had ever seen. The entire range they had lived in all of their lives would only fill a tiny corner of it.

The concept of outside, while not fully formed, was beginning to manifest in their minds.

“There it is!” one of the warriors shouted, and they sprinted after the creature, still taunting them with its antics.

Half an hour later, when they finally caught up, they found their grubs wiggling in a shallow depression in the ground, their kidnapper nowhere to be seen.

“Ch’goth, look at this,” N’geth said, showing him a ruby Z’nei…a very familiar one.

“Is that my…” Ch’goth patted his belt and pulled out an identical Z’nei, perfectly the same, right down to the wear and tear on the handle.

“What’s going on?”

A moment later, they heard the cries of females being attacked, shocking them to their core. they raised their spears reflexively ready to kill whatever threatened their mates.

Out here though? but…

Before Ch’goth could finish the thought, the creature appeared out of the sky, dropping an invisible bowl full of the village’s women into the clearing.

The fleshy creature waggled it’s forearm at them, said some strange, guttural words, then flew away at a speed that defied belief.

“Let’s go after it!” one of the warriors shouted, to the enthusiastic agreement of the others, the beginnings of a blood rage.

“Shut up!” Ch’goth shouted, quelling the mounting enthusiasm. Now was the time for deliberation, not running madly through dangerous terrain.

“You couldn’t catch it then, you’re not going to catch it now. It just moved the entire village out of our home in a quarter-sleep. With ease. If it wanted to kill the grubs, it would’ve killed them. If it wanted to kill the women, it would have. What it wanted was for us to be…here.”

Ch’goth glanced around the strange area, with disgustingly soft ground. It felt like walking on dead flesh, and the things that grew out of the ground…couldn’t be natural.

“We need to do a head count and make a safe place before the warriors run off again,” Ch’goth said, eyeing the spot the creature had disappeared into, pondering its intentions.

***Jeb***

“Was that really necessary?” Smartass asked, kicking her toes against Jeb’s scalp.

“It was necessary for my self-worth. I’m not a big fan of genocide.” Jeb said. “I can’t imagine they would survive all the tunnels being filled with lava.”

“How do you know they’ll survive the outside, then?” She asked.

“I don’t,” Jeb said, flying down the halls. “But they’re an intelligent, tool-using species. They’ll figure something out.”

“I think I detect a little racial arrogance there.” Smartass said tugging lightly on his hair.

The next stop was curing Felicia’s case of heartworm, which was as simple as waiting for enough void butterflies to manifest out of Jeb’s lantern, then siccing them on the creature’s face.

About an hour of waiting, and five seconds of combat.

Once the crystal heart started beating again, Jeb packed up his shit and flew. Without having to match pace with, or carry any of his teammates, Jeb was able to get out of the titan before the passageway even began swelling shut.

“You’re welcome,” Jeb muttered, feeling the malicious anticipation radiating off the stone as he flew into the sky, looking down at the trembling mountain.

He gained a few hundred feet of height, orienting on the World Tortoise before locating Freeman’s group cutting a path through the woods to the creature’s tail.

That’s not necessary.

The last thing Jeb wanted was for the survivors to be close to the World Tortoise for the next fifteen minutes or so.

Almost as though they’d heard Jeb’s thoughts, the group of people veered to the left, nearly reversing course entirely. Likely Freeman taking them the luckiest direction.

Jeb flew down, blowing through the swarm of monsters surrounding Freeman’s group like a cloud of gnats.

A winged creature smacked off of Jeb’s windshield a moment before he dropped down in front of Freeman.

The skinny old Cajun looked a little worse for wear, dripping blood from cuts and scratches all over his body. He wiped a bit of blood away from his eye and did a double take when Jeb arrived.

“Jeb! T’ell you ben!?”

“Long story,” Jeb shouted over the din of combat, spotting Brett, Amanda, and Jess hard at work holding the line against the World Tortoise’s unending waves. Jeb could understand the decision to leave Ron behind.

The people in the army might not be so happy to see him after the zombies went berserk.

Fucking Eddie. Jeb had been tempted to murder him as soon as they arrived in the past, but he wanted to maintain maximum continuity.

“We’ve gotta go southwest!” Jeb said, pointing a little further west. “It’s about to get messy back there!”

“Tha’swat ah tot!” Freeman said, “But ‘dese baddies ‘r slowin us down sumthin fierce!”

“I can help with that,” Jeb said, putting his Myst threads up into the sky to lacerate unsuspecting creatures and take some of the pressure off.

Not used to running on my stump, Jeb thought, grimacing as he did his best to run alongside the rest of them whilst picking off the fliers swarming above.

The monsters gradually lessened, but the rumbling in the earth grew more and more intense as the mountain to the east climbed to its feet.

“GADDAM!” Freeman shouted, glancing over his shoulder as the titan rose to its feet. “Dere’s sumthin you don’t see er’dey!” Freeman grinned with a toothless chuckle as the flaming mountain charged forward and bowled the turtle over with a solid shove.

The impact sent aftershocks and a violent gust of wind all the way to where they were standing, thrashing them with loose branches and detritus.

Like someone flipped a switch, the hundreds of creatures swarming around them turned tail and retreated back to their home at full speed.

The sudden relief gave everyone a chance to sit and catch their breath while they watched the World Tortoise get squished into paste.

Crack!

Boom!

The massive landmass of a shell cracked under the titan’s furious blows that drove the tortoise deep into the ground.

Please. Please…FUCKING KILL IT THIS TIME!

Jeb’s knuckles went white as he clenched his fists, hoping with everything he had.

Let us out of here, you sick bastards.

The titan kneeled down in front of the motionless turtle and began driving its skull into the ground with two-fisted overhead blows.

Ding!

The boss of Impossible tutorial number 3773 has been defeated! Congratulations!

“YES!” Jeb pumped a fist hard enough to hurt his shoulder as news of their victory scrolled through his mind.

Tallying individual contribution…..0.4%

Closing tutorial…

ERROR.

Spacetime in conflict.

Attempting resolution…ERROR.

Attempting resolution…ERROR.

Attempting resolution…ERROR.

Attempting resolution…ERROR.

Attempting resolution…ERROR.

Attempting resolution…ERROR.

Jeb’s heart sank as the error messages kept rolling past, dozens, hundreds, thousands of error messages. Each time it said the same thing he grew a little less hopeful.

…

…….

Paradox instance overflow.

Higher Power invoked.

“HEE!” Freeman grunted, a wave of causality-bending Myst spreading out from him.

“Wha-“

Jeb’s ears popped as the air pressure shifted, the scenery subtly shifting around him. Jeb didn’t have any time to wonder why though, as a brilliant light blasted down, nearly blinding him.

“Gah!” Jeb covered his eyes and tried to get his bearings. His stomach was leaping up into his throat as he spun lazily through the air, seemingly in zero-G.

Jeb realized he was floating above the treeline, the rest of Freeman’s group looking up at him curiously. He could faintly see five other beams of light in the distance.

Jeb’s stomach lurched as someone hit the accelerator, launching him straight up into the sky.

He channeled Myst and tried to hold himself in place, pull himself out of the alien abduction beam, but his Myst was shredded the moment it left his Core, leaving him twirling through the air like an unwilling aerial acrobat. Jeb felt like hurling.

The hundreds of Mystic triggers on his person unraveled and flowed behind him in a trail of magical confetti as he was sucked upward.

Are they removing the paradox? Jeb thought to himself, heart hammering in his chest. The most obvious way to resolve the issue would be to remove Jeb from the equation and rewind a little, to before the stunt with the treasure sphincters.

If I were an alien overlord, would I leave the monkeys who broke my software alive? Probably not. Fuck me sideways.

He saw a gaping orifice for an instant before everything went black.