Chapter 10

"I need to get home," I said to Six.

I wasn't talking to Seven. She made my head ache.

After the pain and trouble I went through getting my head screwed on straight, I didn't need the bullshit. And she was full of it ... and she lied to me ... maybe.

Sins of omission count when you've been kidnapped ... even if it was by accident. If Tom hadn't decided to mark his territory that night I wouldn't have been washing the cat pee off the watch fragments. If I'd have dropped the watch when it suddenly got almost hot while cold water was running on it and its innards, I'd still be going to work every day and Tom would be minding the house.

Now nobody was watching the house ... except Doctor Janie and her twelve gauge pump.

If I knew how the watch worked I wouldn't have worried ... but nobody told me anything. Mushroom, they treat me worse than mushrooms, I thought.

So ... I didn't know that the reconstructed watch would put me back home milliseconds after I left and do it so fast that it would take an ultra high speed camera played back at slower than refrigerated molasses poured from a small mouthed jug to see I'd been gone.

If I had known it ... I still wouldn't go. The idea of separation from Wendy was getting harder to take everyday. She was recovering from yet a third surgery ... although surgery doesn't fit the process ... surgery was what I knew ... what they did was magic. Now she was healing; they didn't put her in a coma ... The Powers that Be told me when she was all fixed ... she'd wake up ... and not until.

Another thing; I knew time travel was not only possible but someone had done it.

It's like the atomic bomb; the first one was unbelievably expensive and enormously complicated, the bomb took one hundred thousand scientists and untold numbers of supporting civilians three years at a cost of two billion dollars ($17,247,191, o11.24 today) and installations from border to border and coast to coast to build it. Now a bomb with the blast area the size of TALL BOY would fit in an oversize suitcase and couple of garage mechanics and a machinist with a half way decent lathe could build it.

Somebody invented time travel and it could be done again.

"The Powers that Be are discussing it," said Six, "And that's all I can tell you."

"I'll lose my job," I said.

"Don't worry about it."

"That's easy for you to say," I grouched.

Six smiled.

Bastard!

I'll have you know I know who my father is.

FUCK! Another fucking mindreader!

"Yes," he said. "Be careful, stray thoughts are like stray bullets."

"Huh?"

"They keep going until they hit something ... it could be you or it could be dirt."

"That makes sense ... or not."

He laughed.

"Look, be patient ... stay calm. We're working on it. This isn't as simple as it looks. We have to figure out how trustworthy you are."

"I have TS/SCI-clearance for internet related activities issued by NSA."

"We know ... it scares us," he said. "Anyone with a working partnership with a government is a 'red flag' to us. Government intervention is how we got to the condition the world is in." He thought about that for a second or so, slapped his hands to his mouth and, "Oops!" slipped out.

"What condition?" I said.

"Hold on." He did that talk to your sleeve thing and put his hand to his ear like he was listening. Gods don't blush ... this one did. "Yes Ma'am."

"Come with me," he crooked a finger.

There was a door I hadn't seen that opened on a hall I didn't know and that led to a good sized room with the Powers seated at a table. I took the indicated chair on my side of the table. Six made his way to his seat on his side of the table.

A Tableau curtain parted and a high platform was revealed with a woman seated on a ... throne? A good sized wood rocker ... like granddad used to whittle and spit from. The woman reminded me of my grandmother ... always knitting but paying perfect attention.

"Hi," she said. "You must be David."

"Hello, yourself," I said, "You must the God of fire, war, vengeance, menstruation, and medicine, Sekhmet."

And the Seven gasped.