Memoirs of a Timelord (21 page)

       The long and short of it was that I passed with good marks.  There had been a few things I missed, little technical details mostly, but I had performed well enough that I was advanced to the next stage of my training.  After years of toiling in the spice mines of Kessel, I was ready to begin the mind-bending phase of my training; Causation and Factorization.  And I'd do it simultaneously while completing medical school.  Couldn't be any worse than galactic law school...at least I hoped.  Legal Practices had been a decade-long snoozer.  

       

       I watched him monkey about on the sidewalk as he sold his newspapers.  He couldn't be much more than 17 seasons old (about 20 Terran years).  Dark brown shell and this goofy smile that came from having the left side of his exoskeleton crushed, he would clomp around that corner like he was king of the roost.  Mickey Finn knew everybody, and everybody knew Mickey Finn.  He was the paperboy that made everyone smile.  He had been working that patch of rock for so long he had become somewhat of a local institution.  

       The first time I saw him, my heart went out to him.  He was just such a nice kid to have been saddled with disfigurement, partial paralysis, and brain damage that resulted from a childhood accident.  When you looked at him you couldn't help but think of what he could have been were it not for his injuries.  The mother in me wanted to take him in my arms and tell him it was all gonna be okay, and make him all better.  It just tortured me to think that he had grown up this way.  And I wasn't alone; lots of his regular customers didn't even read newspapers.  It was like charity with dignity.  People saw him all busted up, but with that crazy-stoopid grin, and they felt compelled to drop a shell or two into the jar. 

       "He is your next project." The Boss nodded towards Mickey.  

       "I thought Timelords managed entire civilizations." I was surprised at the assignment.

       "Let us see what you can do with one soul before you are trusted with billions." DorLek raised an eyebrow.

       So immediately I started studying his life from every aspect.  Research is a big part of the job.  In fact most Editors won't implement a change to the temporal stream without years of study and mebbe even do some poking about in alternate timelines.  Me?  I was years away from fifth or sixth dimensional travel.  At that point in my development I had a rudimentary control over linear, fourth dimensional travel.  I could go forward and backwards.  When I travelled, the whole thing had to be preset with time and location coordinates locked down before I jumped.  My accuracy was for shit, delivering me at my destination somewhere within a six hour window.  Sometimes I jumped in the wrong direction, or rematerialized in odd places.  It was like learning to drive stick, but without seatbelts.  One time I forgot to account for orbital mechanics and found myself sitting in the empty space previously occupied by the target planet.  I felt like such a putz.

       So I got to know a lot about little Mickey Finn.  His father took off about five minutes after he was conceived.  Then as a baby they were in a connar accident and he was thrown free of his mother's arms and one side of his exo-skeleton shattered in the landing.  Basic poverty kept the mother from seeking better medical treatment, so any chance of improvement was gone.  Elsor was a tough world, tougher still if you were broke.  

       And things only got worse.  First Mom lost three legs in a factory accident, and then the rat-bastards fired her.  With no other way to make money, and living in a one room shack, she turned to the universe's oldest profession and became a nearly-legless hooker.  I can't even describe the amount of emotional damage it did for little Mickey to sit in the corner while Mom serviced what few customers she could drum up.  Finally when he was five seasons old, one of the Johns beat her to death, stole what little food and cash they had, and fled.  All while little Mickey Finn hid behind a footlocker watching.

       Now back on Earth there'd be some department or charity or group of concerned church people who woulda taken an orphan like Mickey in. But like I said, this was Elsor; the last place in the universe that you'd wanna be poor.  It was practically legal to kill the indigent.  If you hit one with your connar, it was a ticket, a civil fine like speeding or a California rolling stop.  With that in mind you can see how they might not give half a shiny turd for some busted up orphan living in a refrigerator box.  So I can say with pride that little Mickey Finn's survival was a story of true intestinal fortitude.  He crawled his broken ass outta that box and begged wherever he could.  When that didn't work, he fought the dogs for scraps at the dumpster. The kid simply refused to give up.

       His big break came when the guy who managed the paperboys threw him a bundle of newspapers.

       "Sell those and I'll give you another stack.  Give you fifteen kee for every stack you sell." Oddly enough, he only did it to get rid of the kid.  It bothered the newspaper vendor to see the little retard there, slurring when he spoke and dragging that leg. By his logic, as soon as Mickey sold the papers he would have a hundred kee.  But if he were honest then only ?15 would belong to him.  Most people in Mickey's situation would just keep the whole ?100 and vanish to another part of the slum.  To a rat like Mickey it would be a fantastic amount of money, irresistible to theft.  The newspaper vendor was sure that he would never see the young bug or his money again.

       But the very next morning, there was Mickey, money in hand to buy another stack of papers.  The newspaper vendor rubbed his antennae as he gave it a thought; his first inclination was to keep the whole purse and just run off the little cripple with his belt.  But it suited him to short Mêling the Grocer. The chubby proprietor of that store had been rude on his last visit, and the newspaper vendor felt it appropriate to tax the shop keeper for his insolence.  Taking a bindle from Mêling's delivery, he tossed it down to the young bug that waited eagerly.

       So the next day rolls around and there's Mickey Finn with a fist full of change.  He had actually made more than just ?100, but he was sure to pocket the extra lest the newspaperman claim it for his own.   But what really surprised me was that despite driving hunger, he had passed the marshmallow test.  

       It was a study I remembered hearing about back on Earth.  They took these kids into a little room and placed a marshmallow in front of them and told the kids that if they didn't eat it for five minutes, then they would get another marshmallow.  Some kids would eat the damned thing right away, but others would delay gratification for the increased payout.  The latter being the more developed thinking.

       So when little Mickey Finn got that money in his hot little hand he didn't go out and gorge himself.  Nope, instead he combined his fifteen kee with the money he had earned begging, and continued to eat out of dumpsters until he had enough money to buy two stacks of papers outright.  Within a month he was up to buying 3 bundles of papers a day.

       So this little bug, half crippled, shunned by the world, and left to die, crawls his way up out of the gutter by selling papers at the corner of Ynx and Xon.  For the first year or two he would drag the papers to his corner in a little red wagon.  But once he reached seven bundles he qualified for delivery, just like the newsstands.  Every morning he would be there waiting for his papers.  Then he would spend the day sitting on a shortening pile of periodicals.  Other times he would fashion himself a throne from the blocky stacks.  As the day wore on his seat would slowly disappear until there were none, and then he would start his lonely trek home.

       It was during a morning rainstorm that he was caught out of doors with almost his whole inventory of papers.  A friendly truck driver threw out an empty shipping box for Mickey to climb into and out of the rain.  Within a day he had cut out a big window where he could talk to customers while his papers were kept out of the elements.  He felt proud of his little corrugated cardboard office.  Like one of the real businessmen that he admired and looked up to. 

       As if the kid needed any more problems, some guy with a bulldozer ran over Mickey's home while he was at work.  The asshole just mowed down the whole shantytown so he could clear a plot for the new sewage treatment plant.  No warning, no eviction notices, because that's how they roll on Elsor.  On Earth we care more about pigeons than the Elsonians care for their poor. 

       Mickey had no place to live but his box downtown, so he quietly moved in.  He had this big flap that he used to close over the window when he was out of papers, and he'd use that when he went to bed or was changing clothes.  It was illegal to camp downtown, the bulls would club you in the thorax if they caught you.  Actually, his little newsstand was illegal as well, but the local cops took a shine to the kid who was always funning with them.  Really, the little guy was always making some kind of hilarious sound, or doing really bad impersonations of people who were assholes to him.  For a kid with only three quarters of a functioning brain, he really knew how to entertain people.  

       And as the years slowly ticked by, Mickey sorta became an institution around there.  He was always there with a paper to sell and something funny to burp out, or mebbe a joke someone told him.  But you could always count on him being there nine days a week, except Lunar day; he used to donate time down at the soup kitchen, helping the less fortunate.  Did you hear that?  Less fortunate?  The kid was some kind of a fucking saint.  He deserved better, and he could have been so much more if he had ever had a chance.  

       So right away I get the kid adopted at birth.  Mom got enough money that she didn't have to work in the factory anymore, and Mickey got himself a pair of upper-middle class parents who loved him.  Safe from his disfiguring accident, he was free to live a normal life, far from the hellish ghettos.   He had friends and girlfriends, and graduated from college when he was twenty seasons.  Off into a career in business, he soon picked up a wife and three children.  It was idyllic, it was perfect.  I felt like I was five years old and playing with my dollhouse.  I could actually hear Crosby, Stills & Nash singing Our House in the background.  No really, with the Onkx I can play music in my head without earphones.

       Anyhow, I was really proud of what I'd done when I presented my finished project to the Boss.  I was sure that he was gonna tell me some gooey stuff like how I was the best apprentice he ever had the pleasure to instruct.  But instead he hardly even looked at Mickey, or so I thoughtlessly assumed.

       In truth, the Boss is a Master Instructor of Timelords, he didn't need to look because he had been watching all along.  DorLek, or one of his cutouts, had been shadowing me since the start.  Every decision, every move, every implementation, he secretly evaluated them all.  I just didn't know it at the time.  It certainly never occurred to me that he could keep tabs on me through the Guf.  

       "Are you sure about your work?" The Boss gestured to Mickey as he left for work in a suit.  "Because all I see is a man who cheats on his taxes, cheats on his wife, cheats his customers, and lives in an egocentric cocoon.  In a few years he will develop an addiction to Zenor.  His wife will leave him, his mistress will leave him, and his children will abandon him when he brings home a new mate.  After a bout with Leukemia he dies alone and dejected in MiJa city, on Florr day."

       I was so surprised that I just stood there stupid-like.  I had not bothered to follow the timeline all the way to his demise, which turned out to be not that far.  But I was stubborn so I didn't believe what I was hearing.  I decided to show the Boss just how wrong he was by dropping out of fully phased state and stepping into their world.  Morphed as an elderly bug with thorax problems, I hobbled down the sidewalk on my wooden walker.  Pausing to greet Mickey as he drew near, I called to him by name.

       "Piss off!" He gave me a shove to one side as he passed, intent on the vehicle parked down the way.  "And keep your hands off my new connar!" 

       So there I am laying on the ground, looking like a half broken beetle and he just drives away.  I was so shocked I almost forgot to make his connar stereo play Mexican polka all the way to work...real loud. Seriously? He just shoved a grandma, what kind of asshole does that?

       "I can fix this!" I said before jumping out of there.  The last few years of editing Mickey's life had made me an expert on 4th dimensional travel, or I so thought anyhow. By that point in my new life I could jump on the fly, and even do some navigation enroute.  I knew exactly where to start, and in seconds I was making changes.  I had been up and down his timeline so much that there were threadbare spots.  A few tweaks here, a cockblock there, and I had his infidelity issues all hemmed up.  Then I scared him into paying his taxes and  taught him to quit cheating his customers, but he still wasn't the Mickey Finn who had inspired me in the first place.  Actually he was kinda a jagoff; mean to his kids, lousy husband, one of those guys who always took up two parking spaces everywhere he went.  Even his aura had a tint to it.

       So I went back in and tried again, and again, and again.  But while I was at it I started to notice other things that had changed since I started editing Mickey's timeline.  Not only was my project a big asshole, but so was everyone else.  Had I done my research properly, and followed the original timeline all the way to the end then I woulda known that the little guy spawned a new era of charitable organizations, all aimed at helping the less fortunate.  Before his inspiration there was no social safety net.  People starved to death in plain sight on Elsor.  Once I 'fixed' his life, Elsor was no different than before he was born.  Actually, that's not entirely true.  Within sixty years the planet went Soilent Green to solve their population issue.  The homeless and indigent were the first victims to find their way onto the Elsonian menu.  That never happened in the original thread, so technically I made things worse. 

       So after spending years of my life on this quest, I felt like Don Quixote attacking windmills.  What in the hell had I done?  I had managed to mold Mickey into a quasi-decent being finally, but still a bit of an ass...at least not a philandering tax cheat anymore.  Yet despite this, the community as a whole was at a loss.  They would continue to be a shitty species, and their contribution to the Guf would be substandard.  Think about it, would you want to live in a mass consciousness for all eternity with the Locai?  Hell no.  At least not the way they were now.  Mean, selfish, little bugs.  They really were.