Bless Your Mechanical Heart Read online

  “Oh no.” She shook her wrist, as if doing so would chance the display screen. “No, no, no. Why would I get this job?”

  Serendipity did not usually react this way to a mission.

  Rose pulled up the mission parameters on her HUD. Words flashed in the center of her vision.

  ASSIGNMENT:

  Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Ford’s Theater.

  Ensure Termination.

  Even with it coming to her internal uplink directly from command central, Rose blinked several times, just to make sure that she was indeed seeing what she thought she was seeing. The mission parameters remained unchanged.

  Serendipity set down the now empty snifter.

  “Well, Rosy,” Serendipity said, getting up from her La-Z-Boy. “I’ll need something mid-eighteen hundred, appropriate for the theater.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rose replied, and walked across the apartment to the staging room.

  The stark blacks and grays of the staging room contrasted with the apartment’s soft colors, soft lighting, and softer linens, all designed and arranged according to the foremost Feng Shui experts to project an essence of calm and serenity.

  As Rose set the device called the “wardrobe” to provide the appropriate outfit for Serendipity’s mission, Serendipity entered the staging room, shedding her silk robe as she stepped up to the rectangular black locker. She keyed in her passcode, and then gave her thumbprint, voice recognition, and retinal scan. The locker door slid open, at the same time as the wardrobe provided a perfect evening gown from the mid-Nineteenth Century.

  Rose hung the gown up, then went to help Serendipity gear up. In her first few missions, this process had taken them, on average, about thirty minutes. Now, after four years, three months, one week, and two days, they had reduced that time to between seven and eight minutes, depending on what specific gear Serendipity was taking on the mission and how much scotch she’d had before the mission call came in. Usually, the more she’d drunk, the faster she went. James was the opposite.

  “No need for the corset, Rosy,” Serendipity said. “It’s not an infiltration. I only need to blend in for a few moments before they pull me back.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Harriet Rose said.

  As Rose dressed the soldier, she noticed that the skirts and petticoats of her disguise were designed to easily tear away to give Serendipity greater freedom of movement should she require it. That was how Supply worked, always doing their best to make sure the soldiers had what they needed to complete their missions.

  With gear in place and disguise on, Serendipity glanced at her wrist again. Her mission parameters still flashed up at her.

  She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Sometimes even the best men have to die,” she said, letting the breath out slowly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Harriet Rose said, coming in with an outfit appropriate for the mission. “They do.”

  Just, before Serendipity pressed the button that would alert headquarters that she was ready for the assignment, Rose handed Serendipity a metal flask, which she slipped into hidden pocket in her left sleeve.

  Sometimes, even the very best of men had to die.

  Reality shifted. Memories of the last few minutes slipped in next to Rose helping Serendipity prep for the mission. Now Rose had a second mental image of assisting James O’Brien for the mission as well.

  Well… this was new.

  Rose couldn’t remember sending off two soldiers for the same mission ever before. That did not bode well for one of them.

  Centuries before soldiers Serendipity Jackson-Lin and James O’Brien prepared for their mission, John Wilkes Booth crept toward the presidential box. His gun hand shook a little more with each step as his pistol seemed to get heavier and heavier. Deep down, Booth knew he had a job—no, a duty—to do. The South would benefit in so many ways if the president, vice president, and secretary of state all died in the same night. However, this rational understanding did nothing to slow his heart, dry his palms, or wet his suddenly parched tongue.

  Booth didn’t see the rift open behind him. Had he noticed the swirling hole of pixelating colors about twenty feet back, it might well have destroyed what little resolve he still possessed—not to mention his sanity.

  Serendipity stepped through the time gate, lifted her flask to her lips, and took a healthy swallow of blended whiskey. The liquor burned like the worst kind of prostitute and settled in her stomach like a hot coal. Some soldiers of the Last Army developed an enjoyment for their work. Serendipity reinforced the unpleasantness with the bad booze. While good men had to die, she never wanted to develop a taste for this. Placing her foot on the floor of Ford’s Theater in 1865, she slid the flask back into its special pocket.

  About three meters ahead, a man snuck toward a door at the end of a hall. He had a gun in one hand. The other was empty. The digital reader on the cybernetic heads-up-display on Serendipity’s retina outlined the man with a red light and flashed: BOOTH. The upper right of her HUD displayed the numbers 2:13.

  First things first, Serendipity attached a concussive sound dampener against the wall. This was standard procedure on the likely chance the enemy also sent soldiers to intercept her and keep her from maintaining the timeline. The dampener made the walls denser, making any projectiles less likely to puncture them and injure innocent bystanders. It also made it nearly impossible for vibrations to penetrate, ensuring that no one would come and investigate any noises made by combat.

  A door opened—not the one from the president’s box. A woman came into the hall wearing a silk and velvet evening gown. Booth hid his pistol behind his back. She looked first at Booth, then to Serendipity. Serendipity met the other woman’s eyes and blinked three times in rapid succession. Her retinal HUD scanned the other lady and gave nothing in return.

  2:07

  Hologram? New upgrades in the enemy’s masking technology?

  Well, well, no matter how fancy schmancy technology was, sometimes breeding and conditioned response were harder to hide than physical features. Serendipity bared her teeth and stretched out her neck as far as she could while scrunching up her shoulders.

  At the noise, Booth glanced back over his shoulder. Seeing Serendipity, his brow furled and his lips pulled back in the disgust Serendipity had grown used to receiving from southerners who felt she shouldn’t tarnish a fine establishment like this with her dark skin.

  Any normal lady—that is any human lady—attending Ford’s Theater in 1865 would, at best, have been taken aback by such a display; at worst, she would have cried out or possibly fainted. Instead, she mirrored Serendipity’s expression. Booth glanced back at her when she did this.

  2:01

  A moment later, the creature who wore a very convincing human disguise recovered from the instincts of its species and cried in a thick Georgian accent, “Sir! Save me from that darkie she-devil! I owned her before the war, and she’s come for revenge.”

  Serendipity almost laughed that the enemy still attempted this tactic to set an important figure from history against the agent. Then again, to this particular enemy agent, it might be a new tactic. One of the funny things about warfare and espionage across the time streams, you never knew what the enemy knew, when they knew it, or for how long.

  1:51

  As Booth turned and lifted his gun like a club, Serendipity slipped a pair of neural inhibitors out of her sleeve pocket and into her hands. The one in her left hand was set for humans; the one in her right wasn’t. She flicked her wrists. The enemy agent threw something as well, so small or otherwise camouflaged that Serendipity couldn’t see it. She ducked as two disks about the size and color of an old US silver dollar arced through the air. Coming up, she saw that each of her inhibitors had hit its mark. Booth froze in place. The other woman crumpled to the floor. A moment later, her body shimmered and lost focus before fading. When the hologram around her faded completely, in her place lay a creature that was best described as a reptilian orangutan.
/>   1:39

  Timelines shifted. Past, present, and future adjusted to align with the changes. Serendipity blinked out of existence.

  Booth struggled to move. He couldn’t. Only his eyes seemed capable of movement, and he shifted his gaze to the dark woman. Then she vanished. Right before his eyes, the woman was there one second, and then the air shimmered like a heat mirage, and she was gone.

  A moment later, a man appeared in the same place the woman had been. He wore the uniform of a Yankee cavalry officer, though he carried a gun unlike any weapon Booth had ever seen.

  James O’Brien blinked a few times, to acclimate himself to his new surroundings.

  1:37 flashed in his retinal HUD.

  “This cannot be good,” James said. He’d never come back from the warping and warbling of the time streams mid-mission before. He followed that up with, “Mission parameters.”

  ASSIGNMENT:

  Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Ford’s Theater.

  Ensure Termination.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” James groaned. At least this wasn’t as bad as the Dealey Plaza assignment.

  He took in the enemy soldier lying face down in the hall and the man paralyzed with his gun raised like a club.

  “Access visual records,” James said. “Subject, John Wilkes Booth.”

  A picture flashed in James’s HUD, verifying his suspicions that the man was, in fact, John Wilkes Booth.

  1:31

  Well, time to get down to business.

  The Yankee officer walked up to Booth.

  “I know you’re scared,” the Yank said in an Irish accent. Great. Irish. Booth had heard tales of the Irish cruelty during the War of Northern Aggression. He almost wished for the colored lady to come back. “I also know you’ve been having second thoughts. Unfortunately, humanity needs you to do this. The War of Northern Aggression may be over, but there’s another war going on. It’s us against them.”

  The air next to the Yankee shimmered. A moment later, the negro woman reappeared.

  “Well,” she said, looking the Irishman up and down, “This is new.”

  “Right,” the Irishman said. “James O’Brien,” he said, holding out his hand. “Have we met before?”

  “I don’t think so,” the negro girl said as they shook hands. “Serendipity,” she gave a slight pause, and added, “Jackson-Lin.”

  “Good to meet you, Miss Jackson-Lin,” the Irishman said. “Want to handle him,” he pointed at Booth with his thumb, “while I watch for enemy reinforcements?”

  “You just don’t want to have to be the one to put Lincoln down,” the negro girl said.

  “You’ve got it all set up,” the Irishman said. “I’m loaded for high combat.”

  She sighed, said “You’re right,” and then turned to Booth.

  Booth tried to flinch away from the darkie touching him, but he still couldn’t move. She turned him. Instead of seeing that other woman, he saw a strange sight of something that looked like a giant monkey, only with extremely elongated arms and scaly skin. His stomach churned. He didn’t know if it was a blessing or curse that he couldn’t vomit. The darkie gestured toward the thing on the floor.

  “If you don’t go in there and kill Lincoln, all mankind will turn out like that. You kill Lincoln, you’ll be a hero for centuries.”

  The darkie touched the silver dollar stuck to his chest. Booth felt some of the rigidity holding the rest of his body leave his neck. He worked his head around, just because he could.

  “Can you do that for your species?” she asked.

  Booth nodded, insomuch as he could.

  “Good.”

  1:15

  Serendipity released the neural inhibitor’s hold on Booth and backed away slowly, just in case this whole situation was too much for him. He looked around at everything but Serendipity and the body of the enemy, took a deep breath, nodded, and continued toward the presidential box.

  With Booth setting out to fulfill his role in history, Serendipity reached under her bustle as she knelt down next to the enemy soldier. She retrieved a temporal locator from its pocket in her dress, attached it to the enemy soldier, and hit the transmit button. The alien vanished in a shower of pixelated light.

  1:09

  Plenty of time. It seemed like this mission was good to go down without any more hitches.

  “We’ve got problems,” James said.

  Serendipity glanced back toward James as Booth began to hurry toward the president’s box. Three enemy soldiers appeared, their strange weapons flashing, sending projectiles down the hallway.

  Serendipity dropped to the floor.

  Something thumped in the hall behind her.

  She sighed, rolled her eyes, and smacked herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand. The enemy didn’t need to do anything to either her or James, just to Booth… and that only long enough to keep him from killing Lincoln.

  :59

  “I’ve got these,” James called back to her. “Take care of Booth.”

  She rushed over to Booth. She blinked the code for medical diagnostic. Her HUD flashed, and a few seconds later words flashed across the screen: MUSCLE INHIBITOR. TOTAL MUSCULAR SHUTDOWN IN PROGRESS. COUNTER WITH STANDARD ANTIDOTE INJECTION.

  :53

  At least it wasn’t too serious. Serendipity slipped her universal syringe out of the top of her left sleeve, clicked two dials to the proper setting, and gave Booth the injection.

  Even with the antidote, time was growing short. Not waiting to see if he’d be able to make it himself, Serendipity grabbed Booth under his arms and dragged the assassin toward the president’s box.

  :42

  When they reached the door, Booth could manage minor movements, but not enough to carry out his mission. Serendipity placed the neural inhibitor on Booth’s neck and pulled the remote access from her pocket. She tapped buttons, making Booth’s muscles compliant, as if he were her own private doll. She told herself that it didn’t feel good to control this man who fought for the right to keep her people as slaves, but she didn’t really believe herself. She fitted an army knife into one of Booth’s hands and made sure he had a good grip on his gun with the other.

  :24

  Serendipity took a healthy swig of the vile scotch in her flask.

  This was Serendipity’s least favorite part of the job. The mission had been so much easier with Booth being the actual assassin, rather than just another part of the weapon. Lincoln was a good man, one of the greatest men. So much good would come to the United Sates and the entire world for the next two hundred and fifty years if he lived. However, if allowed to live, Lincoln and his wife would have another child, a daughter this time. In the middle of the Twenty-Second Century, a direct descendant of Lincoln would come along who would make Hitler seem like a spoiled Sunday school student.

  :15

  Serendipity glanced back over her shoulder. James was walking toward her, a bright, wide grin on his face. Behind him, she saw no sign of the enemy agents. Good. Just a few short moments before meeting the mission parameters.

  :10

  The air shimmered right next to her. A silver sphere about the size of a golf ball dropped onto the floor.

  “Crap,” Serendipity said, as she tossed the neural inhibitor’s remote access to James O’Brien.

  “No!” James cried as Serendipity threw herself on the bomb.

  :05

  James caught the remote access as the bomb went off. Serendipity rose off the floor a few inches. James blinked back tears and stepped next to Booth.

  :02

  James pressed buttons, forcing Booth to kick open the door to the president’s box.

  :01

  Clenching his teeth, James pushed one last button.

  :00

  Booth shot Lincoln in the back of the head.

  Before the pandemonium that would surely follow, James pulled the inhibitor from the back of Booth’s neck and shoved him through the door. Booth stumbled. James slam
med the door shut behind him. That should be enough to get him going in the proper direction to satisfy history.

  By now, the antidote would have worked its way through Booth’s system, giving him enough power to leap to the stage below.

  James initiated a stealth field as he knelt down next to Serendipity. He wished, not for the first time, that stealth fields could do more than cover a fixed point. People rushed passed them in a panic as James rolled Serendipity over. Injuries covered her body. She’d be dead already if not for the body armor she wore in place of a corset. Still, she probably didn’t have long. Her breath came in ragged gasps.

  “We… ” She coughed, looking up at him. “We get… it done?”

  James nodded.

  “Hurray for the good guys,” she said.

  He pulled out a flask, opened it, and set it to her lips.

  “Drink this,” James said. “It’ll warm you until medical picks you up.”

  She swallowed the whisky.

  “Damn, that’s good,” she said.

  “It better be for fifty-year-old-whisky,” James replied.

  “If I live…” Serendipity coughed. “I’ll… never serve… in… in the… war again.”

  James leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You never know, darling. They may find another way for you to serve.”

  A moment later, she vanished in a shower of lights.

  James raised the flask and took a swallow of the fifty-year-old whisky. “Godspeed, Miss Serendipity Jackson-Lin.”

  Nodding and focusing his thoughts on having completed the mission, James stepped through the time gate and into his staging room. It was full of butler and maid robots, each pointing a gun at him. The weapons were old enough to be archaic, but that didn’t make them any less deadly.

  “Bloody hell,” James said, the poet in his soul appreciating the bond of irony he and Serendipity shared in this last mission.

  Then reality lurched. James O’Brien winked out of existence.

  Serendipity opened her eyes. Light shone down on her from above, nearly blinding her.