City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright Read Free Book Online

destiny! Become a Time Warden! It must still be a possibility, or else you would not still see me!”
    For some reason, at that point, I glanced over at D'Artagnan.
    There he stood, still looking calm and amused and aloof, watching us with a remote disinterest, like a scientist observing an experiment in whose outcome he has no particular stake.
    Why so calm? I thought this guy was the brain-slave of the Time Warden, or else another version of the Time Warden himself. An earlier version, I supposed, because, as blurred and as uncertain as the smoking skull in front of me was, there didn't seem to be any future versions forthcoming.
    Was he looking at his own future dissolving? Or was he…
    Or was he not related at all?
    Seeing my eyes on him, he nodded politely, and opened his hand, the same hand which, earlier, I had seen blur in a timeshift.
    He held up a destiny card in his fingers. It twinkled like black ice when he turned it over and over in his fingers, toying with it, making sure I saw it.
    Then, with a smile, he tossed the card so it tinkled to the floor to one side of the pile the Time Warden had thrown.
    It was entirely black with no images at all in its depths. There they lay. On the one hand was a pile of flashing white cards, glittering like diamonds, with all the kingdoms of all the ages shimmering in their frozen hearts. On the other hand lay a single blank black card.
    I looked up at the Time Warden. There was nothing but a trickle of mist hovering in the blind sockets of his eyes. His hair was floating weightlessly. He was already caught up in the mist, already falling through the endless end, cut off from reality, more dead than a ghost.
    His voices: “I do not hear a response!”
    Many other candidates, huhn? I didn't see anyone else around but me. So I spoke up: “If I were a nice guy, I'd wish you to go to hell. That'd be warmer than where you're going.”
    Even up to the last moment, he did not seem to recognize that what was happening to him was irrevocable. He kept shouting at me, and there were dozens of other voices shouting slightly different versions of the same sentences in a cacophany. "It matters not! I have always relied on the weakness of mankind to do my work for me! They will always want to elude the burden of reality! I promise them action without reaction, motion without consequences! Everything done can be undone again! And... as soon as I am whole again... I will go back... not recruit you... this time... different... Destroy you! ... I will never die... I can never die... Destroy you all! My power is endless... I...”
    He went on like that for a moment, talking over himself, ranting about how great he was and stuff. And whatever his last words were supposed to be, they trailed off into a pathetic whisper of garbled noise as his lower jaw dissolved. Silence fell. His helmet was filled with only mists and shadows. Then, nothing.
    Empty armor clattered to the floor, full of hollow noises and echoes.
    While he had been ranting, I had stooped over and picked up the Final Destiny card. Maybe that was the turning point. Maybe once it was in my hand, the percentage chance that I would change my mind and become a Time Warden finally wound down to zero.
    “He made me a Paradox Man," I said, straightening and turning. "Am I going to fade away too, now that he never did that?”
    “No.” D'Artagnan answered me and smiled. “It's much more likely that you'll be shot. That bullet manifests itself soon, and you know your smartgun's shields can't deflect it. The bullet's hunter-seeker program will chase you however you try to dodge. Better use the black card.”
    “You're one of the anti-Time Wardens?”
    “Of course.” He reached up and pried the false skull-box off his neck. It was only the back half of a box, held against his neck with a traction field, or maybe just epoxy. When he tossed it aside it clattered on the floor, hollow, with a noise that sounded like cheap plastic.
    “And him?