Ziff under fire

Part 5 - Snow Angel

As if we didn't have enough snow already, the weather office had issued a 3W (a winter weather warning) for Sunday. It was not quite a Snowmageddon but it had snowed all weekend and by Monday morning city snow plows, working around the clock, had piled the windrows high enough to hide the cars parked in the driveways along rue Sumac street. I listened to the radio hoping Silverwood School would be closed for a snow day. I was out of luck. School buses had been cancelled but all schools remained open.

Grandma had already gone to work when I got out of bed. I looked in the fridge in the hope that she had bought some food recently. I found one egg, half a cup of soy milk and a tray of ice cubes. The cupboards were full of crockery but there were no cans or dry food. I thought about scrounging breakfast upstairs from Emma but I didn't want to wake her up. I boiled the egg and drank the soy milk. For lunch, I ate one of Licia's sandwiches.

After school, Miguel's mother picked him up for hockey practice and Licia was visiting her grandmother, so I waded home through the snow alone. It was already getting dark when I saw a giant dump truck near the end of rue Sumac street. It was moving slowly alongside the square bulk of an old-fashioned snow blower that was trundling down the street, cutting into the snowbank and shooting a stream of snow into the truck. With its curved funnel sticking out of the top, the big blower looked like a cubic effigy of an elephant.

Curious, I walked closer and ducked behind the snow blower when I spotted a small man, wearing a heavy parka and a bowler hat climb into the passenger side of a white SUV backed into the church parking lot. The only person I had ever seen wearing a bowler was Murga's assistant, Kozak.

The SUV was covered with snow, except for the area swept by the windshield wipers, so I couldn't see who was inside but two bits to a dollar the driver was Murga.

Murga had followed my father and me back to this time phase in an attempt to steal the secret encoded into my DNA by my scientist grandfather. Grandpa had genetically altered my chromosomes so I had the ability to use distortions in the curvature of space-time. Negative space-time curvature meant I could fly but only when I was near a time shear. I didn't think this was a big deal but Murga seemed to want it . . . badly.

I was born in 2160 CE (which makes me about minus 140 years old!) And when Murga had tried to extort the secret of grandfather's discovery, my birth mother had sent Dad and me back to this time phase for safety. This plan had worked until last Fall when Kozak and Murga had found out when and where I was. He had tried several times to abduct me and was currently holding my parents hostage in Germany . . . in 1945.

Kozak was still working for Murga although he was somewhat disgruntled because Murga would not let him return to his own time place. So he had agreed to work, as a double agent, with Time Agent Onderdonk (also known as Triple Oh or Ondy) in an attempt to arrest Murga for illegal time travel. Triple Oh normally worked as a security guard to protect Shakespeare from illegal time travellers but he had been temporarily assigned to arrest Murga.

The huge truck, piled high with snow, roared away in low gear and I got to the snow blower's cab just as the driver got out. Sure enough it was Jeremy.

'Hey, Ziff. How do you like my wheels? Cool, eh? My boss says if I don't wreck his beloved antique he will let me loose with the new Volvo blower.'