Time's a Bitch

by Reffster

Tid stomped into his office, dumped his keys and wallet in a drawer, slammed it shut, tossed his time-orb onto the desk and then threw himself into his fire-engine red office chair. "Stupid cow," he muttered, before pulling a silver flask from his jacket and taking a hefty swig.

He fired up his PTC, drumming his fingers on the desk as he waited for the OS to load, took another swig, and then swore lengthily and vehemently when he entered his password incorrectly, before finally managing to log onto the Time Bureau's portal. "It's not you, it's me," he snarled. "Yeah, right."

Viciously, he stabbed a handful of search parameters into his keyboard, before impatiently scrolling through the results. "It's just that I need more excitement," he mimicked, in a moderately ridiculous falsetto. He found the entries he was looking for, and grinned mirthlessly as he cross-linked them, clicking the mouse so hard that he broke it. "You want excitement, you heartbreaker? Try this." He drained the flask, wondered for a brief moment when he'd gotten a second monitor, and then passed out, collapsing face-first onto the desk, so hard that his head actually bounced.

####

"Tid Memento!"

Tid screwed his eyes more tightly shut, reasoning with perfect drunken logic that if he couldn't see whoever it was that was yelling at him, then they wouldn't be able to see him.

"Open your freaking eyes right now, Memento, or I'll send your arse to the middle ages and the rest of you to Trump-era America."

Reflexively, catastrophically high blood-alcohol level notwithstanding, Tid's eyes flicked open. You could say what you liked about Mr Chronolina (and Tid frequently did) but when he threatened, he threatened like a boss. Which made senses, given he was one. Specifically, he was Tid's boss.

Groggily, Tid peeled his face off the desk, licked his lips with a tongue that felt and tasted like a rat that had been lightly sauteed in lighter fluid, and smiled at his superior. "Hello"-despite his pounding headache, and the world of pain that his boss' thunderous expression portended, he couldn't help continuing-"Mr Chronalina, Mr Bob Chronalina."

Somewhat unbelievably, Chronalina's expression grew even more thunderous. In fact, it would be fair to say that it now bordered on typhoonous. "You just lost three of your weekend-doubling bonuses, Memento. Keep it up and I'll start docking lifespan extensions."

With a conscious effort, Tid reassembled his features into an expression he felt would portray a winning combination of complete attention and abject contrition. "Yes, Mr Chronalina. Sorry, Mr Chronalina."

His boss' ferocious scowl softened ever so slightly. "Right, that's better. Now, what the hell do you think you're playing at, illegally crossing disparate time-streams? I should confiscate your orb right now, and sack your sorry arse."

Crossing time-streams? Slowly, laboriously, Tid's vodka-sodden synapses sorted through the events of the previous few hours, in reverse order. Right back until the moment that Lily had dumped him. He grimaced. "Oh, right. Um, see, it's just that there was this girl. . ."

Chronalina shook his head. "I might have known. Another bloody four-oh-two."

"A four-oh-two?"

"Yes Memento, a four-oh-two. The old junior-chronologist-starts-banging-a-client-and-then-falls-for-said-client-who-eventually-dumps-said-chronologist-due-to-them-having-nothing-in-common-owing-to-the-fact-they-inhabit-separate-planes-of-existence. That old chestnut. It's the bane of the bloody Bureau."

Tid's jaw dropped. "You mean this has happened before?"

"Of course it bloody has, Memento. Did you honestly think you were the first Bureau recruit to spend their coffee-breaks slumming it in the mortal realm? Oh, please. We all go through that phase, in our first century or two. We just don't usually screw it up as badly as you have. And we also learn pretty damn quick-smart, that we should stick to looking after clients' time-streams, rather than jumping on board of them."

Tid rubbed his eyes. "The clients, or the time-streams?"

"Both, Memento, both." Chronalina sighed. "Look, you're barely into your second century, so given you're new here, I'm going to cut you some slack. Pick up a weapon from the armoury, get your drunken arse down to that screwed-up mess of an intersection you've created, and clean the bloody thing up. I'll give you an hour. If you're not done, I'll have to chrono-bomb the place out of existence."

"But. . .but, what about Lily? Surely you can't erase her? Won't that create all kinds of paradoxes?"

"Of course it will, Memento, you stupid arsehole, not to mention a tonne of paperwork. But we can't very well leave things as they are, can we? The consequences would be catastrophic. So, if you want your ex to have ever even existed, and if you want to keep your job, get your sorry carcass down there, and get tidying."

####

Tid was a little fuzzy on the details of what he had actually done, but was already in the chrono-chamber before it occurred to him that he probably should have printed out a copy of his terminal's log. Ah well, how bad could it possibly be?

The ride in the chamber was bumpy, but thankfully for his pounding head and uncertain stomach, reasonably brief. Arriving at his destination, he dry-swallowd a couple of painkillers, cocked his gun, and stepped outside, blinking in the bright sunlight.

In his short career as a chronologist, he'd learned that expecting the worst was generally a solid tactic, as that way you tended to avoid unpleasant surprises. Unfortunately, it looked as though today was going to be an exception.

Dinosaurs. He sighed. Of course it had to be bloody dinosaurs. His drunken self must have thought he was so clever, scouring the trillions of timelines to find one of the handful of in which dinosaurs had survived until their equivalent of the 21st century. And now they were in Lily's 21st century. More specifically, they were in her backyard.

If there was one thing that basic training had taught Tid, it was that he was no marksman, so the plasma shot-gun was generally his weapon of choice - maximum damage with minimum aimage. And as the brains of the third and last velociraptor splattered Lily's backdoor, he could find no reason to fault his selection.

Hangover forgotten, and feeling very much the action-hero, Tid manfully kicked in the back door. Or at least, that was his intention. What actually happened was that he manfully kicked the back door, which remained resolutely shut, and quite badly sprained his ankle. Cursing under his breath, he fell back on the tried and true method of turning the doorknob, and limped into the kitchen. "Lil?" he called. "It's OK, you're safe now."

"'And what exactly do you mean by 'safe', young man?"

Tid whirled towards the voice, and goggled at the elderly man standing in the doorway to the living room, clutching a cigar and resplendent in a three-piece suit. "Holy crap! You're Sigmund Freud!"

"Indeed I am, young man. And tell me, why is it that you find excrement to be sacred? This is very curious, ja?"

No, it can't be. Surely I can't have been drunk enough to set up a cross-century linkage? Yet the depressing proof was standing right there in front of him, puffing cigar-smoke and psychoanalysing Tid's sorry arse. Drunk-me must've thought Lil was crazy to end our relationship, and that the Freudster could sort her out. He was tempted to give Siggy the dinosaur treatment, but unsure what kind of effect that would have on the timelines, not to mention his chances of a Christmas bonus, he knocked him unconscious with the butt of his gun, instead.

"Lil!" he called again, as he made his way into the living room. "Siggy and the raptors are taken care of. You can come out, now."

"Achtung! Wer bist du?"

Slowly, Tid turned towards the speaker, seated on the couch. Wow. Drunk-me has a real mean streak. I think I might need some sessions with Siggy, once he wakes up. This time, he didn't hesitate to shoot. He didn't think anybody would miss Hitler, irrespective of which timeline they inhabited.

Wearily, he climbed the stairs. "Lil! Where are you? It's OK, Hitler's toast." Surely drunk-me can't have organised any more surprises? Arriving at the bedroom, he took a deep breath, and using the barrel of the gun, nudged the door open.

He was relieved to see that Lil was safely tucked up in bed, but as his eyes adjusted to the bedroom's dim half-light, his relief turned to consternation. Instead of Lily's blonde tresses, the head resting on the pillow had black hair. As he approached the bed, a floorboard creaked, and the woman rolled over to look at him. "Tid! What are you doing here?"

"Jane!" Blinking in shock, Tid stopped in his tracks. He'd been expecting to find an ex-girlfriend - just not this one. "Why the hell are you in Lily's bed?"

A disheveled head emerged from beneath the covers. Lily smiled at him. "Because I invited her."

"I. . .but. . .what. . ." Vague recollections began to reassemble themselves in Tid's mind. That's right. Drunk-me found a timeline where I was still with Jane, and then sent her here, to make Lil jealous. Hmm - doesn't seem to have gone quite as I planned.

Instead, he'd clearly put the final nail in the coffin when it came to him and Lil, and done who-knew-what to Jane's timeline. Not one of your better day's, Memento. Still, as the last of the timeline anomalies, he had to get Jane out of there. The only question was, how? In the circumstances, he decided honesty was the best policy.

Two minutes later, he was finishing up the super-summarised version of his story. "So you see, if Jane doesn't come with me, so that I can put her back in her own timeline, then this section of spacetime will get chrono-bombed and everything and everybody in it will never have existed."

Lily sighed. "Oh, Tid. You always were such a bullshit artist. But this takes the biscuit."

"But it's true! If you don't believe me, go downstairs and check out Hitler's corpse. Or take a look out the window, and you'll see the backyard is full of dinosaurs."

Jan gave him a thoughtful look. "OK, time-boy. Even if all that bullshit is true, you've still got half an hour left, right?"

Tid checked his orb. "Thirty-eight minutes, to be precise."

"Well," said Lilly, "fortunately Jane and I both know that in your case, that's more than enough time. Put that stupid gun down, and get in here. One more, for old time's sake, hey?"