The Ant Returns - Chapter II (651 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: The_Ant
Rating: 1.71 on 18 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2005-01-30 14:54:32 EST
(Prologue - http://www.ubersite.com/m/57985)
(Chapter I - http://www.ubersite.com/m/58042)
==CHAPTER II - A Confusion of Robs==
Rob saw Megan coming down the path with a blue box of Morton's salt in one hand. He saw her stop and stare as she recognized Schroedecker. She was carrying the salt in the crook of one arm, and Rob thought that she looked just like the Morton's Salt girl. Except she didn't have an umbrella. And it wasn't raining. And she was really angry.
The old man looked behind him, and together they ran into the kitchen.
"This is crazy," Rob said, "What the hell are we doing?"
"Hiding?" Schroedecker looked generally afraid.
Rob made a face. "Look, Doc, I can handle Megan."
"Men labored under similar illusions back in the time of Henri Collison. Some things never lose their power. Things such as female wrath." Schroedecker began hitting keys on the timebelt display.
"Hey, you gonna leave me holding the bag?"
Schroedecker looked up, wide-eyed. "She slapped me once, Robert. And pushed me into a wall. I am too old for such treatment."
"But—" Rob was talking to an empty room.
Megan came into the kitchen. She seemed to be restraining herself until she slammed the container down on the counter by the sink, splitting one side, salt grains quietly hissing out of the ruptured cardboard.
"Hey, babe," Rob said, forcing a jovial tone, "What's—"
"Was that Schroedecker?" Megan's tone when she mentioned the doctor's name was acrid, disgusted, as if describing something so vile that stepping in it would make you want to throw your shoes in the trash.
Rob nodded. "I didn't invite him. He just showed up."
"Where is he now?"
Rob shrugged. "Hiding?"
Megan crossed her arms, and looked at Rob as if she wanted to pull his head off and give it to the cats as a toy.
"I'm going to make a run to the store. I'll be gone about twenty minutes. If Schroedecker isn't gone by then, I'll kick his ass so hard he'll spend the next month picking his underwear out of his teeth."
Rob had briefly considered telling Megan what the doctor had told her; that his bloodline and his timeline were in danger. He knew she'd never buy it though. He was still having a hard time believing it.
"Okay," he said.
Her expression softened a little, and she kissed him on her way back out the door. "Don't get involved with him again. I don't want to lose you."
Rob heard the car door slam shut, and when Megan was roaring down the down the road in the old Falcon and nearly out of sight, Schroedecker suddenly appeared beside him.
"I'm sorry, Robert," he said. "She does not leave us much time. Fortunately, time is the one thing we can to a degree command."
"Look," Rob said, exasperated, "even if what you are telling me is true, how can I do what I need to do and get back without Megan realizing anything?"
Schroedecker looked startled by the question. "In the long term, the passing of days and weeks, we must act or the past will be changed forever. In, however, the short term, we can bend time to our will, and you can return from your task the moment after you leave."
Rob looked at his feet. "I don't know. I mean, that was a nice trick with the pinecone, but I haven't seen any proof of other timelines or other... Robs, so how can I believe—"
"Aha!" Schroedecker said, his eyes glinting with mischief. "This I thought you might say. So! Proof I have arranged. One moment."
The old man disappeared again. And reappeared the next second, breathing hard, mopping sweat off his brow with a handkerchief. He rushed forward and moved Rob back into the doorway.
Rob's ears popped as the air in the kitchen was displaced.
"No," he said.
"Yes," Schroedecker said with a little nod. "Meet Robert. And Robert. And Robert..."
The house was filled with a milling, murmuring mass of Robs.
There were clean-cut saintly Robs (at least two priests and a couple of choirboys), and grungy gang-banger Robs.
There were college-boy Robs in polo shirts and khakis, and Hell's Angels-type Robs (with inexplicable names like Demonic Hellshits and The Piss Rockets on their jackets) decked out in leather and chains.
There were CPA Robs wearing contemporary ties and utterly strange neck adornments, carrying bulky briefcases, slim laptops, and cell-phone-sized PCs.
There were athlete Robs wearing a variety of team uniforms (most of which represented teams and sports Rob had never heard of— the Scranton Bolsheviks, the Lapierre Benchmen, the Hog City Dusters), carrying Louisville Sluggers, hockey sticks, and artfully curved wood and steel contraptions that looked more deadly than sporting.
He heard a noise from the bedroom and ran upstairs.
There were four different Robs fast asleep in the bed and another half-dozen standing beside it. One of the sleepers awoke and groggily wandered downstairs while the standing Rob closest to the bed got under the covers and began to snore.
Rob stepped forward to wake them, when a Rob dressed like a Buddhist monk grabbed his arm and said, "With all due respect, honorable dude, I most humbly ask that you wait your motherfucking turn."
Rob cursed, and went back down to the kitchen, noticing a group of disfigured, mutated Robs huddling under the stairs.
The bathroom door was open, and Rob could see a Rob in a paper hat and polyester uniform (wearing a big red button that read 'Hi, I'm Rob! Welcome to Nurkleburger!') squatting on the john, reading a battered Heinlein paperback.
In front of Nurkleburger Rob was a Rob in a tux, gritting his teeth and hissing, "C'mon asshole, finish up and beat it!"
Beyond Tuxedo Rob were three Robs in orange, sky-blue, and blood-red coveralls, pissing in the woods.
Among the cluster of Robs in front of the TV, one Rob was completely naked and wielding a hard-on that was turning blue. He tried dry-humping one of the gang-bangers, who turned, put on a pair of brass knuckles, and then shouted something nearly unintelligible ("FYI, Smurf-dick! Ah'm goan' show you some real fuckin' wif mah righteous knucks!") before studiously beating the shit out of the naked guy.
Standing close together by the kitchen table were a half-dozen Robs who looked exactly like him, and Rob found them the creepiest of all because they were the only Robs who looked as shocked and concerned as he did, and Rob's mouth dropped open when two of them simultaneously asked, "What are all these fuckers doing in my house?"
More fights started breaking out. Rob watched in fascination as an accountant type Rob held his own using his laptop as a shield against the assault of a Hog City boy wielding what looked like a fancy tree-trimmer, a pair of snapping blue-steel jaws at the end of a length of heavy dark wood. Two of the altar boy Robs knocked a Piss Rocket onto the floor and literally started jumping up and down on him.
Schroedecker waded into the middle of the mêleé and cried, "Halt!" He looked furious. "This effort of keeping you all here together, takes tremendous energy. Time is short! Tell him! Convince him!"
The assembled Robs turned their attention to Schroedecker.
The old man put his hand on Rob's shoulder and said, "This is the one I have told you about. This is the Robert, the only Robert, who can go back and restore that which has been corrupted. His only problem is that he is finding difficult, all of this, to accept."
The Nurkleburger Rob was doing up his pants just as the Tux Rob pounced on the toilet seat, and he had to raise his voice to be heard over what sounded like detonating depth charges lifted from the soundtrack of a WWII subs vs. destroyers flick. "I'm not supposed to slinging fast food for a living. Something changed. I don't know exactly what changed, but something did."
The Robs in coveralls spoke up next. Each of them stated that they were not where they were supposed to be either, and as they turned so that Rob could see their backs, he realized that they were enjoying the benefits of various penal B&B services, one Rob wearing now-familiar L.A. County orange, the Rob in blood-red from the Fairbanks Open Tundra Minimum Security Facility, and blue-clad Rob from the Pennequoimak, AO, State Penitentiary, wherever and whatever Pennequoimak, AO, were.
A half-asleep Rob stumbled down the stairs, saying, "Up until the catnap I just had, I haven't slept for ten days." The dark circles under his eyes were so dramatic they looked like stage make-up.
Humping Rob was hiding behind the TV. His face was a bloody mess, but he still had his purple warhead at the ready. He spoke in a strong twangy accent, Kentucky or Tennesee. "Ah cain't stahp fuh-keen, ah juss cain't!"
One of the malformed, damaged Robs huddled under the stairs whispered, "We used to be like you... normal, healthy, unafraid..."
"You see?" Schroedecker's voice was gentle, but stern. "For all of them, something is different. Some fundamental thing has changed, but they know not what it is. Only you are as you were, Robert. The uneven nature of time. These Robs have already been affected by what will soon be the removal of your timeline, leaving only ripples and eddies of distortion in its wake."
A Rob that Rob couldn't see said, "You have to go back."
Another took up the call. "Hell, yeah! You have to go back!"
More Robs picked up the call, and suddenly they were all chanting as loud as they could, the little house vibrating with the rise and fall of their voices.
"You have to go back!"
"You have to go back!"
"You have to go back!"
Rob gave a weary sigh. "I guess I have to go back."
Schroedecker gave him a thin smile, clapped him on the back, and was gone.
The assembled Robs broke into raucous applause even as they winked out of existence, and all that remained of them was the echoes of their voices.
User Reviews
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-08-03 11:52:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Supreme Overlord damage control...
Submitted by Supreme_Overlord (user info) at 2005-07-21 22:23:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
shite
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2005-02-16 13:55:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Reading on...
Submitted by Mitchapalooza (user info) at 2005-02-16 04:11:49 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
yawn.
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-02-08 14:52:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
ahahahaha
best one yet!
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2005-02-03 22:08:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-02-02 22:45:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Still good. Still leery of time travel.
The alternate-Robs scene went on a bit long for my liking.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-02-02 15:37:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I hope all these +2s don't go to your head...
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2005-01-31 13:50:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
There were four different Robs fast asleep in the bed and another half-dozen standing beside it. One of the sleepers awoke and groggily wandered downstairs while the standing Rob closest to the bed got under the covers and began to snore.
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Sounds like a game of the Sims.
I'm trying to get past the rejection, I really am. *sob*
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2005-01-31 11:43:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
as always +2
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-01-31 08:29:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by ellsmall (user info) at 2005-01-31 03:01:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
x-ell-ant!
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-01-31 02:42:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Remission (user info) at 2005-01-31 02:28:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 die!!
I mean... You rock!
Submitted by horse87 (user info) at 2005-01-30 23:43:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Excellent.
I'm always wondering what new method of extermination you have in store for me when I read a story of yours.
When I really do kick the bucket, it probably won't be anything as interesting as you could devise. (...unless it's you who offs me, I suppose....)
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-01-30 21:24:39 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I've killed you off so many times I've lost count.
I think the only time you survived was in a story where you got folded like a pretzel and were left in a wheelchair.
Don'r sweat it though. As long as I keep writing there will be plenty of opportunities to kill you again.
Submitted by horse87 (user info) at 2005-01-30 21:14:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Hey, I forgot...
Do you kill me off in this one at all?
It's been a while and I don't seem to remember....
Submitted by tlozoot (user info) at 2005-01-30 17:38:50 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Auto-Ant +2