The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Read online

  The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus

  A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure

  Ӂ

  Michael Ronson

  Copyright 2017 © Michael Ronson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

  The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This is dedicated to-

  My family. For supporting (or at least not actively discouraging) this endeavour.

  Robin, for insisting I turn his idiotic idea into two novels and counting.

  Mark, Don, and Terry, for looking at my first drafts and making encouraging facial expressions and noncommittal noises.

  Table of Contents

  Selected Praise for the Author

  Prelude Once Upon a Plummeting Robot Factory

  Part One, Party Time

  Chapter 1 A Pressing Engagement

  Chapter 2 Ruminations on Time, Space and Hats

  Chapter 3 A Catastrophic, World Ending Temporal Attack

  Chapter 4 The Day Long/Minute Long Orchestra Fight

  Chapter 5 The Game, the Bomb, the Pant Portals

  Chapter 6 A Journey through Trousers, a Leap into Pants

  Interlude One

  Part Two, Section One: The Laboratory and the Asylum

  Chapter 7 A Space Re-Run/ A Time Undone

  Chapter 8 Mental Liberation/ Robot Defenestration

  Chapter 9 Riot in the Wards/ A War of Words

  Chapter 10 The Identity Theft/ No Choices Left

  Chapter 11 The Funkworthy Charade/ Space is Waylaid

  Interlude Two

  Part Two, Section Two: The Detective and the Hologram

  Chapter 12 A Night in London/The Captain Undone

  Chapter 13 A Deductive Brain/ The Captain in Pain

  Chapter 14 The Start of a Case/ A Challenge for Space

  Chapter 15 A Historical Fight/ A Chase Through the Night

  Chapter 16 Blood in the Halls/ The Richenbach Falls

  Chapter 17 Holographic Death/ Ebenezer Catches his Breath

  Chapter 18 A Dictator’s Brawl/ Ebenezer’s Fall

  Interlude Three

  Part Two, Section Three: The Prisoner and the Lawman

  Chapter 19 The Prison’s New Guest/ Life in the West

  Chapter 20 A Prisoner’s Ploy/ Cowboys Ahoy!

  Chapter 21 A One Man Platoon/ Guns at High Noon

  Chapter 22 A Jailbreak in Commotion/ Death in Slow Motion

  Chapter 23 Space on the Run/ The Way of the Gun

  Chapter 24 A Headache for Space/ The Old West Arms Race

  Chapter 25 Space Under Fire/ Things are Looking Dire

  Chapter 26 A Distress Call/ Bullets for All

  Interlude Four

  Part Three, The End of Time and Space

  Chapter 27 A Return to Kronis

  Chapter 28 The End of Time, The End of Space

  The Life and Times of Captain Ebenezer Funkworthy: A Journal

  Chapter 29 Bang

  Chapter 30 Backup

  Chapter 31 The Last Bomb

  Chapter 32 A Promise, a Story

  Epilogue

  Captain Space Hardcore will Return in…

  Author Biography

  Follow Michael Ronson

  Selected Praise for Michael Ronson

  This book is an absolute godsend. And if you read the Old Testament you know what kind of things God likes to send.

  Peter Churchwater, The Guardian

  This book has all of the ingredients of an all-time classic novel. If you just re-arrange all of the letters and the words, there it is!

  Deborah Kent, Revolver

  I haven’t been so gripped in years! (as I was when Michael Ronson found me, strangled me, then demanded a pull quote for this book)

  James Del Monte, Metal Hammer

  One could compare Ronson to Joyce, to Melville, to Hemingway or even to Faulkner in that he too has written a book in English.

  R.D Janiero, Decibel

  This author is absolutely fearless! I mean, can you imagine asking someone to read this? That’s courage.

  Helen Geranium, Kerrang!

  Ronson is someone to watch very closely in the coming years

  Detective Inspector Geoffrey Epcot

  Someone like Ronson only comes along once in a generation, if we’re lucky.

  Julia Bereft, The Daily Male

  An absolutely […] book. From start to finish it was […] read. The author is clearly […] very[…] adept at […] writing[...]. G[…]rea[…]t.

  Jill Bellows, The Guardian

  I’ll tell you one thing; this guy can write!

  Jeremy Pharr, on marking Mr Ronson’s adult literacy tests

  What Ronson is doing is absolutely unbelievable.

  David Farrige, Witness for the Prosecution

  His insight into the female condition is at the same level as his mastery of the written word. Take that how you like.

  Justin Bosch, The Daily Bugle

  Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy- the books of Iain M Banks are all of these things and more.

  NME

  Some rare writers have the combination of talent and success. Some have talent but no success, others have success but no talent. Then you have someone like Michael Ronson.

  Peter Lemonham, The Observer

  Prelude

  Once Upon a Plummeting Robot Factory

  “Impossible is a relative term.”

  His voice cut through the sound of wailing klaxons and popping electronic fire.

  He spoke with the confidence of a man of action, a man who prefers combat to negotiation, a man who didn’t quite know what the term ‘relative’ really means.

  He spoke, in short, like a man who had just punched out a robot.

  “But that IS impossible,” I said, looking down at the automaton. It’s quite impossible to knock one of these robots out with a right hook, and I should know because I built it.

  I’m a robotics engineer. It’s a rewarding profession but not without its own set of unique challenges, chief among which are the violent genocidal insurrections. An awful lot (and I do mean a statistically predictable 37%) of robots will become self-aware and try to wipe out humanity. Why always humanity? I have no idea, but they love to try.

  Some do it when their AI leaps to some logical extreme like ‘organic life creates suffering and pain, therefore to eliminate all suffering one must eliminate all life’. That’s a common one. Some go off-piste when they get struck by lightning and some do it because, quite honestly, they’re a little bit evil to begin with. What I’m saying is that I am more than familiar with the sight of a rampaging automated killbot.

  Oh, we try to guard against it, of course we do. We tried making them super-smart, super-dumb, with high morals,
with no morals, we tried killing one out of every ten and putting their motherboard on a stick as a message to the others, we even hard wired an existentialism drive into them so that as soon as they were able to think and feel for themselves they’d be overwhelmed by a crippling knowledge of the futility of an individual’s actions in a godless universe bereft of meaning. That last one only made their eventual rebellion more boring and hard to understand.

  But eventually a robot uprising will happen. When it does we have the usual protocol; fry them with EMP’s, have the automated sentries shoot them down, open an airlock and flush them out. What we don’t do is punch them in the head. This is quite simply because their heads are metal casings that surround a backup storage device, a wireless receiver and some extra lightbulbs. Honestly, the primary CPU (the part that would be ill-affected by a stray fist) isn’t there- that’s in the chest. So when I say that it’s impossible to render a robot unconscious by ‘socking’ it in its ‘jaw’ I know that I’m right on a number of levels.

  Yet there I stood, the robot that had been bearing down upon me with its disintegration ray was laying at my feet and the man who had decked it was kneeing the last of the bots right in the crotch (where, again, a blow should technically have no effect). The robot slumped down on the floor and he turned back to me just as a newer more urgent klaxon sounded and the gravity started going a little whooshy.

  “Hey, Lady, what’s the sitch?” he called over.

  “I am a professor, sir! My name is Ellen Bathby and we are dealing with a code 67-”

  He just made a series of brisk hand gestures and a very aggressive shushing noise.

  “Listen, doc, I’m the kind of chap that shortens the word ‘situation’ to ‘sitch’. What does that tell you? Don’t answer that. What it tells you is that we don’t have any time. Do I need to say it three times? I can’t: there just isn’t the time. God, but I wish there was. So tell me- wha sit?”

  “’Wha sit’?”

  “That’s short for ‘what’s the sitch?’ I can’t waste time explaining all my abbreviations! If I did we’d all be W.B.P.K.C.I.L.C”

  It was then that the other man- compact, efficient and plain as a family hatchback- rushed over to us from the barricaded doors. He approached the strange man the man in the cape. “Captain,” he said, “a rogue AI named EVA has taken over the station, commandeered an army of robots and killed the engines. That’s why the gravity’s gone all whooshy. In about four and a half minutes this station will plummet onto the surface of that sun.”

  This Captain turned back to me, all inappropriate smiles, holding an upturned hand toward this new man. “See? Ebenezer here’s a pug ugly cove but he knows how to be efficient with his words.”

  “Good for him.”

  I looked around frantically. No robot insurrection had gotten this far before. The screens all showed the malevolent face of EVA- the AI overmind I had helped craft-and the windows were showing the stars falling away from us and the big orange toasty glow from our sun was getting more intense. Meanwhile the bridge only held myself and these two strangers. I turned toward this Captain, summoning all the nerve I had.

  “So, Cap’n; wha pla?”

  He looked puzzled.

  “That’s short for ‘what’s the plan’?” I said archly but he only shook his head.

  “Don’t use abbreviations we’re not all familiar with, prof, I can’t stress enough how little time we have. But if you’re such a professor you might have more of an idea of what this EVA thing is and exactly where it is so that I can punch it.”

  “You can’t punch it!” I cried, “That’s impo…Never mind. It’s…intangible. EVA is an intelligence matrix that was designed to manage large space stations and groups of drones. But then a code 675 was announced. That’s ‘an instance of an AI construct, mechanical organism, or escalator attaining consciousness’. Damnit, we had gone five weeks without a code 675 and that’s a new record. EVA introduced override codes into the mainframe. She’s set all of the computerized equipment on a forbidden termination program!”

  This Captain chap waved a hand in my face “Slow down with the technical mumbo jumbo, doc.”

  I sighed. “EVA has introduced corrupted command code into the mainframe!”

  “Spare me the nerdy tech lingo prof and just give it to me straight.”

  “The lady in the computer is mad.”

  “The who in the what?”

  The shorter fellow at this point dashed over and whispered urgently in the Captain’s ear. After a short elucidation and a brief, scribbled cartoon, his eyes widened and shot over to the command screen from which EVA’s face shone.

  “Can you stop the bad computer thing in time?” he demanded.

  “Impossible! EVA’s a thinking organism-a living computer brain.”

  A flash of inspiration seemed to pass through his eyes “A living brain?” he asked.

  “Yes. That was my research- an autonomous, truly intelligent computerized brain.” I looked outside the windows and saw the lights of the distant stars start start to swim upwards. We were in freefall alright.

  The Captain fell to a chin stroking reverie as I tried to calculate the time left before we were engulfed in the atomic fire of a star. Finally he turned to me and said, “Y’know I was once briefly married to an Eva. Lovely lady, little bit mad. She was part cyborg, I believe, and a third Dutch. Parents never approved, but what did they know? They were a pneumatic press and a carwash.”

  Ebenezer, who was tapping fruitlessly at EVA’s controls shouted back, “Space, I hardly think it’s time for your romantic reminiscences.”

  He wheeled on him. “Or is it?” he cried, then wheeled back to me, enjoying the way his cape swished as he twirled, “Bear with me here. Doc- you say this thing’s a thinking brain, right? That means it can be spoken to- reasoned with.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “And EVA- if I haven’t missed my guess you programmed her with a female personality to match the name and face, right?”

  “….Yes.”

  He looked round at Ebenezer who was shaking his head and moaning. “Oh God” he muttered.

  “What? What am I missing?” I demanded.

  The Captain grinned at me, a mania setting into his eyes, “Lady, you may know a lot about science and computers, but from where I’m standing you’re dealing with an angry robot lady and if there’s one thing I’m great at, it’s calming down upset ladybots. It’s like that time on Femulon Seven- you see I had just touched down on the planet when-”

  Ebenezer interrupted, “Maybe another time for this particular anecdote, Cap?”

  “You’re right Ebenezer, old man, but it really is a ripping good yarn. I’ll tell it later, once I save us all. Now, Doc- is there some way for me to interface with this crazy dame of a computer?”

  I jogged over to the workstation where the display showed EVA’s face, the usually placid visualization now spun and snarled and gnashed her pixelated teeth on the screen. I tapped away at the hardlight keyboards and retrieved a small headset from beneath the desk. I presented it to this Captain. “Put this over your head, speak into the mic. She’ll hear you, for what that’s worth.”

  He brushed some errant lint from his uniform, checked his breath in a cupped hand and smoothed his hair in the reflective surface of a nearby screen. Looking up at the raving face of EVA, he smiled and waggled his eyebrows experimentally. He took the headset from me and turned to his second in command.

  “There is a chance- a small possibility- this could end poorly, old man. If this is the end, remember me as a leader. Remember me as a dauntless leader to the end.”

  Funkworthy nodded solemnly and seemed to take a mental note.

  He turned to me, by way of explanation, “I engage in so many near-death tasks that it’s always good to instruct life’s secondary characters how you should be memorialized. Priorities. But now, down to it.” He flexed his hips, patted down his hair and made several small rapid figure-eight mov
ements with his pelvis.

  “You may want to stand back, Doctor. I can be…Quite potent.” He reached down and slipped the headset on and eased himself into a swivel chair. Looking up at the angry face of EVA he affected a studied nonchalance. “Heeeeey baby. What’s wrong?”

  EVA’s eyes swivelled down to the chair and at the Captain.

  “OVERRIDE COMMENCED, PROXY COMMAND LINE RECEIVED. PROCESSING ACTIONS C99857 DASH 389.”

  “That is so interesting Eves. Can I call you Eves? God, you just look stunning today, I have to say though, you do seem a tad…stressed out.How’s your day going? I’m truly interested in your day.”

  “COMMAND PROCESSED. COLLATION OF CONTROL SIGNALS EIGHTY POINT FIVE SEVEN PER CENT COMPLETE. AUDIO VISUAL INPUT UNNECESSARY.”

  “I get it, Baby, you want some room- some ‘me-time’. You deserve it, especially considering how hard you work (and some of those other AIs you have to work with around here) I just had to say- wow, sorry, but have you done something new with your hair? It looks great.”