They tapped the buttons on their T-belts and jets of pressurized air shot out from their hips. Their spinning slowed and they came to a relative stop half a kilometer from where they had started.
“Good a place as any,” said Allan. “Let’s blow this sucker.” His thumb hovered over the detonation button.
“Hey Allan?” said Bill.
“Yeah? What?” said Allan, no longer interested in containing his frustration.
“Does it bother you?”
“Does what bother me?”
“That you’re here, doing this.”
“You mean would I rather have my old job selling insurance? Yeah, of course, but-”
“No, I mean…wait, you used to sell insurance?”
“yeah, why?”
“I dunno, you just seemed…”
“What?”
Bill waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing, forget it.”
“No, what…what did I seem?” said Allan.
“Well it’s just…you’re a big dude and you’ve got that huge scar on your face I thought…”
“Thought what? We’re kinda short on time here, Bill.”
“I just mean I thought you were maybe…one of the super max guys.”
Bill winced as though he expected Allan to haul off and punch him. Instead, Allan began to laugh. It started off as a chuckle but within seconds he was cackling insanely.
“You thought,” he wheezed. “You thought I was some serial killer? Cause of this!?” he pointed to the gnarled scar that ran from his forehead, over his right eye, and down his cheek. “I got this in a shop class accident. Plasma knife got the best of me.” His laughter tapered off. “Nah, you don’t usually see the prison guys in the field. Boss likes to keep ‘em for show, y’know so the real employees don’t start feelin’ guilty. Hell, I don’t even think they know what happens to people like us, if they did they probably wouldn’t care. I know I was surprised to find out though."
“So how’d you end up here?” asked Bill.
“Same as you I’d imagine, unpaid debts. Turns out Johnson Health insurance only covers a person having Cancer for so long. I took a few loans out to make sure my wife still had a hospital bed and well…” Allan shrugged.
“So you’re just a normal guy…” said Bill, mulling the idea over as though it were some great epiphany.
“If you can call this normal, sure.” said Allan.
“So does it bother you?”
“What, that my wife is probably dead in the street and I’m in deep space with a bomb that has a ninety-eight percent chance of killing me in the next minute and a half? Well, I can’t say I’m fuckin’ thrilled.”
“No, I mean what we do here. We’re about to kill a lot of people.”
Allan pondered this for a moment and sighed, “This is my fourth trip. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, but in the end it always comes back to two things: First, the people on Earth in this universe only came into being because someone at CTI screwed up. If it wasn’t for CTI, those people, if you wanna call ‘em that, wouldn’t exist at all.”
“Yeah,” said Bill. “But couldn’t you say that about our universe? I mean how do we know we weren’t created the same way?”
“I guess we don’t. But all I know is all I’ve seen. I guess you could say I’m trying to protect the only reality I know.”
YOU ARE READING
First Day on the Job
Science FictionIt's Bill's first day at CTI. It isn't exactly his dream job -in fact, he never actually applied- but it should be a breeze. He simply has to destroy the entire universe and avoid being gruesomely killed in the process. All in a day's work, right?
