Jeremy walked with a spring in his step, whistling to himself and looking up at the sky. The day was perfect, and he wanted to remember it, since it would be a few years before he got back to it. Petra trailed a few steps behind, quiet and dour as usual.
The sun was shining. Birds were singing. A couple of cute girls were chatting and laughing on the other side of the road. Feeling generous, Jeremy let them pass unmolested. If only they knew, he thought, that a God was looking their way. When he got back to today, those same girls would probably wet their panties at the chance to worship him.
But first things first. He had everything he needed: lottery numbers, stock predictions, lists of technologies and services to create, and the tools necessary to enforce his will. He could go back a year or two before the whole mess started, meet up with himself, and become as rich and powerful as he’d always deserved to be.
He’d also get away with a murder or two, but that sort of thing was easy for a God.
-*-*-
Pyotr paced nervously in the backyard. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Everything was in place, and everything would probably be alright now, but he had realized too late that he had no idea what Jake and the two Petras had planned. Maybe they would stop Jeremy first, and this would all come to nothing. Or maybe Jeremy would stop them, and be enraged. What if he found out that Pyotr knew about them? What would he do then?
“Pete!” Jeremy’s voice shocked Pyotr out of his thoughts, and he turned to face him where he stood at the side of the house. “Great day to save the world, huh?”
Pyotr nodded, glancing over to Petra, who stood behind Jeremy. She had a grim look in her eyes that made him nervous. Pyotr swallowed and looked at Jeremy instead. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.
Jeremy chuckled, walking toward him. “Am I sure? What’s this, all of a sudden? Of course I’m sure. Let’s do it!”
“I suppose that means we’re out of time,” Jake said, approaching the same way Jeremy had come. He chuckled. “It’s been awhile since I’ve had to say that.”
Jeremy spun to face the impossible voice. “What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Some kind of joke? You’re dead!”
Petra – the longer-haired, fiercer-looking Petra – stepped out from behind her father. “It takes more than that to stop him,” she declared. “You always were pathetic. I can’t believe you beat me here.”
“Petra,” Jake warned. Petra gave a bratty look and crossed her arms, but didn’t taunt Jeremy any further, and Jake turned to Jeremy again. “Just take it easy and we’ll explain everything. But I’m going to need you to take that glove off.”
“Not happening, old man,” Jeremy said with a sneer. “I don’t care why or how you’re here. I’m going back to fix everything, and you can’t stop me. In fact, come to think of it, I can stop you.”
Jeremy twitched his hand, keying a sequence with his glove that Pyotr knew was meant to freeze everyone else. There was a jarring moment, but nothing seemed to change.
“No, you can’t,” Jake said, taking a step forward. “Your stolen power won’t get you out of this. Just give up.”
“No!” Jeremy shouted, stabbing his hand into the air in Jake’s direction. He made a gesture that Pyotr didn’t recognize, and everything stopped.
Then started.
Then stopped.
Then started.
Faster and faster, the world froze and resumed itself. Jeremy’s Petra stumbled back, leaning on Pyotr for support. Pyotr held her up, but his insides felt like they were going through a blender. Across the yard, the other Petra held onto Jake’s left arm; his right was stretched toward Jeremy, holding a familiar-looking black remote control, albeit one without the modifications Jeremy had made.
“St-o-o-o-o-p th-i-i-i-i-s.” Jake’s voice was drawn out to a long stutter by the time distortion. The world had become the inside of a giant bass speaker.
“Yo-o-o-o-u f-i-i-i-r-st!” Jeremy demanded. His hand twitched, and the ripples of time became more frequent.
Jake stood fast, but the strain of counteracting Jeremy’s rapid-fire timestops was starting to show. His forehead shone damp with sweat, and a single rivulet of blood trickled down from his nose. He wiped it with a strobe-like motion of his free hand, then screwed his face into a grimace of effort.
A loud pop sent sparks flying from Jeremy’s wrist, but he kept the pressure up. Jake staggered, letting his daughter hold him up. Time thrummed around them, starting and stopping faster and faster until even breathing felt to Pyotr like a futile effort. Jake staggered again, and everything went silent.
“Ha!” Jeremy exclaimed in the soundless space of frozen time, Pyotr took a gasping breath, looking around. Jake and Petra were on their knees, exhausted from the time-battle. Jeremy’s glove was smoking, and the more familiar Petra was beginning to regain her balance.
“Just… listen,” Jake said, panting. “You can’t…”
“I can!” Jeremy declared. “I can do anything, and not even you can stop me! I am your GOD!”
Petra – Jeremy’s Petra – stepped up behind him. Her legs were barely holding her up, but her hand reached out and struck like a viper. “I’m agnostic,” she declared, grabbing the wires that poked out from his wrist.
There was a sizzling sound as the heated metal and melted insulation burned into Petra’s hand. Holding fast, she let her knees buckle; her weight, crumpling to the grass, wasn’t even slowed. A bundle of wires followed her, pulling out of Jeremy’s sleeve, ending in ragged ends where they had yanked free of the heated solder.
“No!” Jeremy cried, clutching for the wires. Time started itself, heralded by the return of the mundane noise of Pyotr’s neighborhood. Jeremy pulled up his shirt and pulled a velcro-strapped belt off, clawing at it to open the pouch that held his stolen remote. “You fucking bitch!”
Jake pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on his daughter’s shoulder. Both his nostrils had bled down over his mouth and chin, lending a ghoulish air to his grin as he raised the remote in his hand.
A noise like a thunderclap blasted through the air. Pyotr’s ears rang for a couple seconds, and he watched as Jake’s grin drained away. A red flower bloomed on his shirt, low on one side, and he once more fell to his knees. One of the Petras screamed.
Jeremy dropped his gun and bolted for the garage.
-*-*-
“Cunt!” Jeremy spat as he slammed the door shut behind him, drawing the bolt across to lock it. “After I took care of her for years, she fucking… and how the fuck were those other two… fuck it!” He started turning on switches in the order he’d seen Pyotr work them before, causing the machinery all over the garage to hum to life. The fillings in his teeth started vibrating, but where he was going he could buy new teeth if he wanted.
There was a laptop connected to the main data cable. A simple prompt was on the screen, requesting a date and time for the destination. “Thanks, Pete,” he muttered as he keyed in a date four years in the past. “I knew I could count on you to make this simple.”
The laptop’s display changed. It now read “EXECUTE” with a timer counting down from 00:30, beeping every second. Jeremy strapped the remote back around his waist and shoved his damaged glove in his pocket, snatching a soldering iron from the workbench on his way to the shower stall in the middle of the room. He’d have plenty of time to fix the glove, and after that he’d have all the time in the world. Time to kill Jake again. Time to trap Petra and mess with her brain until she was a complete slave to him, not the broken creature she’d been for the past two years. Time to make everyone who ever was going to cross him suffer.
He stepped into the opaque glass box and slammed it shut, holding his breath and listening to the final beeps of the countdown. The hum of electricity was even louder, and the hairs on his arms were standing up, drawn toward the metal frame of the shower stall. Sparks ran along the silvery metal bars.
The final beep sounded, and everything went quiet. Jeremy’s heart pounded in his ears. The metal frame around him started glowing with a white light, brighter and brighter until he had to squeeze his eyes shut.
Pyotr’s voice, pre-recorded, drifted to him from the direction of the control computer. “Das vidaniya, my friend,” it said. “I am sorry.”
“What?!” Jeremy cried, reaching for the handle to open the stall and escape. It sizzled and he drew his hand back, leaving a strip of cooked skin behind. “No! It’s not fair! N-”
The light surged, then died.
-*-*-
“That is it,” Pyotr said, sitting heavily on the grass. “He is gone.”
“Pyotr!” Anna cried, running across the lawn toward him. “Are you okay? What happened??”
Pyotr laid back on the grass, staring at the sky. “I killed my best friend,” he said, chuckling. “That is what happened. I killed him as surely as if I had shot him.”
Jake came into view over him, help up by his two near-identical daughters. “Killed him how?” he asked.
“By sending him back in time,” Pyotr replied, closing his eyes. He felt Anna take his hand in hers and squeeze it. “Exactly as he wanted.”
“But nothing changed,” one of the Petras said. “If he went back, like he wanted, then why is everything still the same?”
Pyotr opened his eyes and sat up again. “In order to send an object back in time, I required more energy than I could get. I required all the energy in the universe. So I took it. The machine had a point zero zero zero… a very low chance of missing its target by a few seconds. It created a new universe where this happened. And that universe was consumed to power the machine.”
Anna’s hand tightened around his. “You sent him there?” she asked.
“Da,” Pyotr confirmed. “I sent him to the End of the Universe.”