The Exploding Detective (12 page)

I’d been to the
future before, of course. I’ve been all over the space/time continuum at one
time or another, though never, as near as I can recall, on purpose. But I’d
never been to this particular era.

The whole place
was Lincoln crazy, that was the first thing you noticed about it. Practically
everybody was wearing Lincoln hats and Lincoln style beards. There were statues
of Lincoln everywhere. Sometimes the statues seemed to be looking at you, even
calling up people about you. It was all a bit much, if you ask me. I mean, I
kind of like Lincoln myself, but come on!

The other obvious
difference from my time was that everything was so small now. It was
miniaturization gone wild. In an average citizen’s pocket you could find
virtually everything he would ever need, including his house and his grave. And
of course, all of these essentials were very inexpensive, since they were so
completely worthless.

The only place
you could find anything big was in the museums, where there were all kinds of
displays of “ancient” 21
^st
century handicrafts, like comically big hats that covered your whole head. And
microscopes you could see without a microscope.

How this all came
about is anybody’s guess. It was hard to get any solid facts about this time
period or what led up to it, because of the miniaturization craze. All books,
newspapers, magazines, and so on, had all been long ago converted to digits and
placed in digital information storage systems, which over the years had gotten
smaller and smaller until finally they were gone. So nobody knew much of
anything anymore. They knew what they liked, but that was about it. And they
liked Lincoln.

Since I was in
the future, I expected to find some of the things George Orwell had predicted
in his prophetic novel “1984.” I didn’t like to think that Orwell had just been
shitting us. But I needn’t have worried. A few of his prophesies were right on
the button. There were Thought Police roaming the streets, most of them dressed
like William H. Seward, for some reason. But it was relatively easy to deal
with them. They would say something like: “You there! What are you thinking?”
And all you had to say was: “I’m thinking about how great the government is,”
and they would say: “Very well. Carry on.”

The language had
been tampered with too, as Orwell predicted. You couldn’t say “tax refund”
anymore, for example. No such word. I didn’t mind. The fewer words there are,
the smarter I sound. If we ever get down to just one word, I’m sure I’ll be
able to say it as well as anybody.

As I walked
around, I was surprised by the obvious lack of a population problem. I was
always told back in the ignorant past, where I came from, that eventually there
would be too many people. This plainly hadn’t happened. If anything, there were
fewer people in the streets than there were in my time. I wondered why. An old
guy who couldn’t move fast enough anymore to get away from me said it was
because of the Equality Movement. Mankind had always been striving to make
everyone equal. Once the government had finally succeeded in making us all
equal in every way, it started wondering if it needed so many of us. That’s
when the liquidations started.

I was also
curious, and growing increasingly so, to know where a guy could get something
to eat around here. I tried buying something at a restaurant, but they only
took “Credits,” whatever those were. I held out some dollar bills, but they
said those weren’t credits. I held up a button. That wasn’t a credit. I shook
my fist at them. No credits there either. Eventually I found out a “credit” was
a screwdriver. I checked my pockets, but I didn’t have any “credits” on me. I
went to a hardware store and they had a screwdriver all right, but they wanted
a shitload of screwdrivers for it. Kind of a Catch-22 there.

Fortunately, I
knew where I could find some food. I spent the rest of the day digging up time
capsules all over town and eating anything that was still edible inside. The
chocolate bars and cookies were still good, though the TV dinners had thawed
and gone bad long ago. There were other examples of 21
^st
Century culture in the time capsules,
of course, but I tossed all that stuff aside. It was the food I was after.

I knew where all
the time capsules were, because I had helped bury them. After my first trip
through time, I had talked the city fathers into burying dozens of them all
over town. Time Capsule Week in Central City was my idea. I didn’t care about
preserving our stupid culture for halfwit future generations or anything stupid
or halfwit like that. I just wanted to make sure that the next time I traveled
through time I would have some food stashed somewhere.

I didn’t have
anyplace to stay, so I made myself comfortable under an overpass and whiled
away the time drinking time capsule wine and singing songs of my fathers.

After I’d been
there awhile, I noticed I wasn’t alone. I was surrounded by a half a dozen
young punks who were dressed at the height of teen fashion. They were laughing
and smecking and govreeting at me. I looked up at them.

A half hour later
we were driving along in our Durango 95, playing hogs of the road. Those kids
of the future sure know how to have a good time, I’ll say that for them.

It was during one
of our Surprise Visits – this one to the home of a writer of subversive literature
(the bastard) - that I was hit on the head with a milk bottle by one of my
droogs and woke up in a cell at the police station.

I was holding my
head and cursing the deceitfulness of future youth, when I noticed I was not
alone in the cell. Fred Foster was in there with me.

We were still
fighting the next morning when an important looking individual entered our
cell. We let go of each others’ entrails and looked him over.

“The President
wants to see you, Mr. Burly,” he said. “You and your little playmate.”

“Are you the
President?”

“No.”

I digested this
information. “Then it sounds like we’ve got some work to do.”

“Yes.”

An hour later we
were in Washington. The Lincoln motif was even more prevalent there, I noticed.
There must have been at least a hundred Lincoln Memorials scattered around
town, and all the streets had been renamed Lincoln Avenue.

“Hey, what’s with
all the Lincoln stuff?” I asked the man who was escorting us.

He didn’t answer.
I guess he was thinking about something else. Lincoln, probably.

We were escorted
into the White House and led up to a large door, which slowly swung open for
us.

We walked
cautiously through a huge hall towards a flickering light that was visible at
one end. When we got closer to the light, we saw that it was a huge ball of
fire shooting forty feet up into the air, with Abraham Lincoln’s furious face
in the flames.

“Four score!” It
thundered. “Four score!”

Foster seemed
unnerved by the sight. He tried to hide behind himself, somehow ending up with
his head stuck in his back pocket.

I wasn’t
frightened. I had seen the Wizard of Oz a thousand times. I walked across the
room to a small curtained area that was off to one side and pulled the curtains
open to reveal a much smaller Lincoln. But when it spoke, it wasn’t in Lincoln’s
voice.

“Pretty
neat setup, eh, Burly?” asked Overkill.

I was surprised
to hear Overkill’s voice for a number of reasons. For one thing, the last time
I had seen him he was dead. And that was 200 years ago. And he had looked a little
like Edward G. Robinson then, not a lot like Abe Lincoln.

“Welcome to the
23
^rd
Century, Frank,” he said.
“It’s been a long time. The last time we met, let’s see when was it? Oh, yes, I
remember now, it’s when YOU KILLED ME.”

“I’ve been
meaning to apologize about that.”

“That was the
last time I met anybody, because I was DEAD.”

“I’ll never
forgive myself.”

“Nor will I.”

“I wish I were
never born.”

“We all wish
that.”

My apologies
weren’t going over very well. I decided to give up on them. “Go on with what
you were saying,” I said, with a small wave of my hand.

“But I didn’t
stay dead,” he continued. “A strange thing happened. I would call it a miracle,
but I don’t think God gets involved in stuff like this. It’s not His area. I
was suddenly conscious again, lying on an operating table, with doctors working
on me and comparing my face to a picture of Abraham Lincoln they had on a five
dollar bill, and scratching their heads.

“I didn’t know
what was going on at first. I was a bit disoriented. I mean, one minute you’re
in Heaven, the next…”

“Wait. You were
in Heaven?”

“Yes.” He saw my
look. “I sent someone a Christmas card once.”

“That’s all it
takes?”

“Yes. Now will
you let me finish my story?”

“Oh, okay.
Sorry.”

“I didn’t know
why they were going to so much trouble to bring me back to life. But I
gradually pieced it all together. It seems the world had lost its way in the 23
^rd
Century, or thought it had, and decided
it needed a complete makeover. Somehow the copy of ‘The Life of Lincoln’ from
my library had turned up here, as well as my copies of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and
‘1984.’” He looked at me. I didn’t say anything.

“All other books
had been lost for years, thanks to miniaturization, and my three books were
avidly read by everybody. Gradually it began to dawn on them that the future
they had created wasn’t nearly as interesting as the future that had been
prophesized. All anybody was doing around here was just sitting around watching
TV and bitching about things. The future was supposed to be more interesting
than that. They felt like they had really dropped the ball.

“They began
patterning their present on the prophesies of the future they found in ‘A
Clockwork Orange’ and ‘1984.’ And the Lincoln book told them who they should
get to run the place right. They used a time scanning device to locate Lincoln
in the past. The last place his body showed up was on my island. After you
killed me, by the way, where did you stash my body?”

“In that room you
had Lincoln in. It was empty, so I figured it would be a good place to put you.
Under the bed. With some old clothes piled on top of you.”

He gave me a
look.

“Your body didn’t
fit in with my plans,” I said.

He grunted, then
continued: “I guess that explains why they thought they were getting Lincoln
when they pulled me forward in time. They were a little confused when I didn’t
look like the pictures of Lincoln they had. In fact, my face didn’t look like
anything. It was mashed to a pulp.” He looked at me again.

“I got upset when
I realized I had killed you,” I explained.

He grimaced. “But
they knew I had to be Lincoln. Their scanning devices did not make mistakes,
the manufacturer insisted, or your money back. So, using old photographs and
hearsay, they rebuilt me to look as much like Lincoln as they could. Then they
turned the world over to me. Gave me absolute power. Told me to fix the place
up right. And I have fixed it up right. It’s a perfect world now. For me,
anyway. And everyone is happy. Or they’d better be. South Carolina seceded, but
I expected that.”

I stared at him,
impressed. He was actually ruling the world, just like he’d always said he
would. And I had thought he was crazy. I could tell him that now. Though I
guess I shouldn’t have, judging by the look on his face, and the distance he
spit out his coffee.

I decided this
might be a good time for me to be toddling along. I didn’t like the way his
head was elongating. “I am glad everything turned out all right for you,” I
said, shaking his unresponsive hand. “And now, I’ll be saying goodbye.”

“Stay awhile.”

“All right.”

He looked up at
the boiling ball of flaming gas that now showed he and I chatting amiably.
Foster was furiously fighting with it, but getting nowhere.

“Who’s your
friend?”

“That’s Fred
Foster, the secret agent. But he‘s not really my friend. He’s just been
following me around through time and space trying to kill me.”

“Foster, eh? I’ve
heard of him. He can be dangerous when he’s sober.”

He snapped his
fingers and several guards ran up.

“Put Mr. Foster
in the Blue Dungeon. I’ll deal with him later. Make sure he has plenty to
drink.”

The guards
saluted, quickly apprehended Foster and dragged him, singing, out of the room.

Overkill turned
back to me. “Now let’s go to my Revenge Room.”

“Lead on.”

“I built it just
for you.”

“Sounds great.”

He led me out to
the elevators. As we walked, he glanced at me approvingly. “I see you quit
smoking, as I advised.”

“Yes, but only
because nobody seems to make cigarettes anymore. The only cigarettes left are
in museums, and I’ve smoked all of those.”

We took the
elevator down as far as it would go, then he graciously escorted me into the
bowels of the building.

I felt I should
keep complimenting this dangerous man. “Nice bowels in this building.”

“Thank you.”

He led me through
some dim corridors to a particularly nasty looking door that was covered with
warning signs. I didn’t bother to read what they said, but it was something
about not going inside.

We went inside.

“I’ve got
everything I want now,” he said quietly, as the door closed. “Including the revenge
I’ve always sought on the man who killed me. Come, let me show you my
DeathBox.”

“All right.”

As he began
leading me towards what sounded like my doom, I had a sudden inspiration. I
realized I was still wearing Overkill’s shiny black ring. The One Ring That
Rules Them All. I held it up so Overkill’s guards could see it. Then I pointed
at Overkill.