James Axler – Rat King

show me where I am to live.”

“Very well. We know you are Dr. Theophilus Tanner, but we have no names. We are

one with the mechanism, and something you will have to realize is that you, too,

will become one. You will cease to have the trappings of individual ego and meld

into the amorphous brain of the rat king. We are one, and you will be one with

us. When that happens, then the mechanism will once again be in full working

order.”

Doc resisted the urge to ask why the Moebius MkI would need to be in working

order when there was nothing for it to do anymore, no world into which it could

possibly fit. Instead he merely nodded, and allowed the other members of the rat

king to lead him from the chamber.

As one they filed toward the door into the anteroom, moving in a close mass that

seemed to shimmer in Doc’s mental vision, so that they—at moments—appeared to

meld into one creature, rather than a collection of individuals. Doc followed,

wondering what was waiting for him through the door…

“REALLY, DR. TANNER, this just won’t do.”

“Why not? I have nothing to lose, do I? After all, this Alice-in-Wonderland hell

of absurdity is not a world that I know. It is not a world that I care to know.

My only desire is to return to the bosom of my family… to my own time, to my own

world. Is that really so much for a man to ask? If you were in my position,

would you not ask the same?”

The whitecoat scientist blew out his cheeks and scratched at his balding pate.

He’d been warned that the only success for Chronos was a problem in the flesh,

but he hadn’t expected an argument of this sort.

“Doctor, you aren’t a stupid man, are you?”

“That, my dear man, is possibly my great curse.” Doc sighed, settling back on

the bench in his cell and hearing the chains on his manacles rattle. It

astounded him that, more than a hundred years after his birth, the military was

still so unimaginative as to resort to chains when trying to confine one man. He

mentioned as much to the whitecoat, who gave a short, barking laugh.

“I like that. You realize, of course, that we only use these on you because

you’ve been such a problem. We’ve never had to resort to such measures before.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Doc replied.

His captor looked at him with a puzzled frown that was partway between

exasperation and admiration before turning on his heel and leaving the room.

“YOU SEE, we can trawl these memories from you,” came the voice of the rat king.

Unlike before, it was a sinuous voice that seemed to be all of the men talking

as one. It wormed its way into Doc’s brain, eating at the corners of his mind

and reminding him that he wasn’t actually in the 1990s, but over a hundred years

ahead, not really in this cell, but strapped to a couch with electrodes

connecting him to a mainframe computer.

“To what end?” Doc asked of them, speaking aloud, even though he knew didn’t

have to in order to communicate with them.

“To show you how powerful the mechanism is. To show you what we can do. To show

you what you can do, if you join us. Not that you have any choice in the matter.

You will be absorbed eventually. We all had our qualms and doubts to begin with,

but in the final analysis we became as one. And it is glorious, Dr. Tanner, it

is glorious. But allow an indulgence…”

DOC FOUND HIMSELF back in Baron Teague’s hellhole ville, strapped to a table and

subject to the attentions of the hideous Cort Strasser.

Pain racked Doc’s body, even though he knew this to be ridiculous. He was inside

a computer, and the computer was inside him. He wasn’t in any real danger,

although it did cross his mind momentarily that the computer could be

stimulating his cortex in such a manner as to simulate pain.

He was unable to detach himself from the searing agony of torture enough to work