The Curiosity Killers

  The Curiosity Killers

  K.W. Taylor

  The Curiosity Killers © 2016

  by K.W. Taylor

  Published by Dog Star Books

  Bowie, MD

  First Edition

  Cover Image: Bradley Sharp

  Book Design: Jennifer Barnes

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-935738-81-7

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937559

  www.DogStarBooks.org

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my critique partners Jen Bigelow, Carrie Gessner, Crystal Kapataidakis, Anna LaVoie, Todd Moody, and Chris Wilk for asking the hard questions and pushing me to make this a better book. Special thanks to my perpetual workshop critique partner Alex Savage, whose own work I always love to read. The other students in the rest of my incoming cohort at Seton Hill University—Stephanie Brown, Charles Buechele, Amy Culey, Jenni Dillard, Traci Douglass, Sheri Flemming Becky Halsey, Lynn Hortel, Chase Moore, Annika Sundberg, Cathy Oswald, Shanna Sampson, and Eric Seidl—have also been instrumental in helping with this work and others, assisting with research questions, motivation, and general guidance and inspiration. My professors Michael Arnzen, Anne Harris, Scott Johnson, Nicole Peeler, and Albert Wendland provided the necessary tools to continue to improve my craft, as did workshops led by the above plus the fabulous Shelley Bates, Will Horner, and Randall Silvis. I also want to thank the members of my former writing group, “The League of Upsettingness,” (otherwise known as Michael Burnside, Charles Long, Cynthia Marshall, and Steven Saus) for their help with early drafts of this and so many other pieces.

  My deepest appreciation goes to Heidi Ruby Miller and Tim Waggoner. These two accomplished authors have been cheerleaders, idea cultivators, and true mentors to me in the fullest sense of the word. Not only are their talents apparent in their own work, but they are genuinely nurturing, kind, and patient human beings.

  Thanks to the fine, friendly, and deeply weird (in all the best ways) authors and editors at Raw Dog Screaming Press and Dog Star Books, particularly Jennifer Barnes, a true delight to work with, and John Edward Lawson. I owe a lot to author J.L. Gribble for believing early on that this project was right for Dog Star and providing support, friendship, and enthusiasm.

  Final thanks go to my husband Tom Kollman for listening to me prattle on about historical research, letting me drag him to an ugly metal statue of a cryptid in West Virginia, allowing a bunch of crazy fiction writers to inexplicably call him “Gatsby,” for doing a critical continuity check of my work for any appearance of dangling paradoxes, and for always loving and believing in me.

  Part I: The Enthusiast

  It is possible to fly, but not without knowledge and skill.

  —Wilbur Wright

  Tuesday, June 7, 1910, Dayton, Ohio, USA

  “My, what a musty basement.”

  The words were muffled, but Katharine Wright still heard them and dropped her pen, leaving a great dark smear across the paper. Lorin’s letter would have to wait—there was an intruder downstairs.

  As tentative footsteps mounted the stairs between the basement and the kitchen, Katharine scurried to the front parlor, where she’d secreted her small muff pistol, a double-barrel Remington .41 that Orville purchased for her with some reluctance. It was a tiny thing but packed quite the power when fired at close range. Katharine prayed she wouldn’t have to discharge it.

  She took Crime and Punishment down from the bookcase and withdrew the cigar box hidden behind it, within which the tiny gun rested, unloaded. There was a creak in the next room, and Katharine shoved the bullets in faster, with only a dim regard for proper loading. The metal became slick with her sweat.

  She held the gun out, bracing her right hand with her left, and waited. A moment later a young woman inched from the now-open basement door to the breakfast table, which Katharine could see through the arch separating the kitchen and parlor.

  The girl was younger than Katharine, and she had a headful of glossy blond curls. She wore a dress more suited for a cotillion than daily wear, all velvet and bustle and lace, and she was immaculate, despite traipsing through the brothers’ messy laboratory.

  Before Katharine had a chance to decide what to do, the stranger decided for her by spinning her way and letting out a shriek of surprise. Katharine, panicked, squeezed the trigger, and the other woman dropped to the floor. The shot went high, and an explosion of plaster rained down on the girl’s head. Through a haze of smoke, Katharine could make out a deep gouge in the wall above the arch.

  “Thank God I didn’t get the molding,” Katharine muttered. “Orville would’ve killed me.” She put the gun down and rushed to the girl, who was still prone on the floor and gasping.

  “I’m sorry,” the girl cried. “Miss Wright, I’m a friend of your brother’s. Please don’t shoot.”

  “Well, then, don’t go breaking into people’s homes and I’ll refrain,” Katharine said. She took the girl’s arm and eased her up to a sitting position. “Are you hurt?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Alison,” she replied. “Alison Keller. I met your brother Wilbur in—” She stopped and cast her eyes across the parlor. “Wow, that’s some beautiful furniture.” She scrambled to her feet and examined the loveseat. “Oh, my gosh, this is all original. It’s all original.”

  “Heavens, Miss Keller, that piece isn’t particularly special. A leftover from my father before we—”

  “And your books. Oh, God, old books with all their pages. They smell new.”

  “Miss Keller, calm yourself,” Katharine ordered as the girl flitted around the room, hands everywhere. “I’ll thank you to watch your language while in my home.”

  The girl ceased her tour around the parlor, a look of childlike wonder on her face. “This is what Doctor Vere doesn’t get, Miss Wright. Because he’s a scientist, not a historian. He doesn’t see the technology’s true use—to get to be a part of this.” She gestured at random items in the room. “You, this house, all of it…I feel like I’m in a movie.”

  “A…what?” Katharine narrowed her eyes and tightened the grip on her pistol. “Miss, I think—”

  “Just call him. Call Wilbur. I know I sound like a crazy person, but he does know me, I swear.”

  Katharine shook her head. “If you mean I should telephone him, I can’t. We don’t have a line in the house.”

  Oh, dear. Perhaps it’s better she think I can rouse the authorities at a moment’s notice.

  “Miss Wright, I promise you, I’m not insane, and I don’t want to harm you.” The young woman stepped closer, holding her hands up in supplication. “It’s just…the circumstances under which I met your brother are a bit…what would you say? Fantastic.”

  No, it couldn’t be.

  Katharine recalled Wilbur’s strange hints that morning, scraps of conversation between Wilbur and Orville about H.G. Wells and putting engineering to different use. This woman talked of history and seemed to simply appear…

  “How did you get in?” Katharine asked at last. “Show me what he’s got up to down there in the basement.”

  The girl spent the next half hour explaining rudimentary physics to Katharine, who felt quite faint at it all until the girl also produced the simplest of objects from her pocket.

  “You see? Not only the name of the country, but—”

  “The year.” Katharine turned the penny over and over in her palm. Upon the shiny red surface was stamped the unmistakable truth. “How long ago was this minted? What year is it for you, where Wilbur walked into your school?”

  “That’s from this year,” the girl replied. “Twenty seventy.�
�

  Upstairs, the front door opened and shut. “Kitty?”

  A little smile flickered across the girl’s face, a smile that caused Katharine to raise an eyebrow.

  Well, it would be nice to see him happy, even if it’s with a time traveler. One can’t choose whom to love, after all.

  Tuesday, March 8, 2060, Council Bluffs Riverfront Park, Iowa, disputed territory

  The scout climbed down the ladder into the trench and looked around. “Vere!” the scout barked.

  Vere poked a headful of chestnut curls out of the rear auxiliary unit. “J? That you?”

  The scout pulled off her helmet and rubbed a hand through her short dreadlocks. “Yup. Where’s Cap?”

  “Supply run.” Vere peered at her. “You don’t look so good, Jasika. What—whoa.”

  As he spoke, Jasika blinked and stumbled against the ladder. Vere rushed to her side and caught her before she fell.

  “Damn, I thought I heard shells…” Jasika pulled open her jacket. A circle of red bloomed on her abdomen. “Shit!”

  “Hang on, it’s probably not bad if you’re walking around.” Vere eased her to the ground. “I’ll get the kit.”

  Jasika grit her teeth. “Shit, they don’t tell you how much it burns, man.” She clutched at Vere’s sleeve and looked up at him with pleading eyes. “It burns.”

  “You’re all right, J.” Vere took her fingers from his sleeve, not liking how cold her skin felt through the thin material. “Just gimme a sec and get the kit. I know right where it is.” He jogged back to the AU, his eyes scanning the makeshift shelves backed in dirt. Canteens, canteens, why did they have so many damn canteens? Where was the goddamned medical kit? Beer…Jesus, why did Cap let them have beer out here, for God’s sake? What was the—ah, there. White plastic, the size of a shoebox. Vere plucked it off the bottom shelf and rummaged through it.

  Jasika screamed.

  Vere quit rummaging and instead took the whole kit out to her. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”

  “Ah, dammit! It didn’t hurt this bad when I had my kid, Vere. Jesus.”

  Vere knelt down beside her. “You got a kid, J? Tell me about him.” He pulled a syringe from the kit and, while trying to find a vein in her arm with one hand, gripped the cap in his teeth and spit it out. “I bet he’s real proud of you, holding back the Raiders.”

  “Mmm…gah!” Jasika’s whole body arched upward as Vere plunged the needle into her vein. After a second, she relaxed. “God, what was that? That hurt almost worse than the bullet.”

  “Epinephrine and cold-prep,” Vere replied. “And I gotta give you a shot of Endiguer at the wound.” He pointed at her abdomen. “Can I?”

  Jasika nodded and unbuttoned her shirt to the waist. The bullet hole wasn’t large, but blood flowed freely. Vere found a larger syringe, this one wider and full of thick, white plasma. “Tell me about your kid, J.”

  “He’s gone, man,” Jasika said. Her eyes lost focus. “The Raiders got him in ’55 when they took Kentucky.” She smiled, but the smile bothered Vere—it was dreamy, vague, resigned. “That’s where we were from, all of us. Brent and his dad and my mom. Newport, pretty town on the river.”

  “You were close to Ohio, then.” Vere pulled the cap off this syringe and searched for a spot clear of blood to inject her. “Coulda got safe.”

  “Yeah, but they had it all blocked. The bridges…it was no use.”

  Vere took Jasika’s hand. “Don’t tell me how it ended,” he whispered. “Tell me how it started. Tell me about holding him when he was born.”

  Vere plunged the needle into her bullet wound, and Jasika screamed again. The grip of her hand almost broke Vere’s own, but he held on.

  “He was beautiful,” she cried. “Eddy, Eddy, listen to me. Listen! The Raiders are here now, not in some memory, but now.”

  “Well, yeah, if they shot you, J. Kinda figured that.”

  “No, you gotta get Cap on the phone and get us out of—”

  She stopped.

  She stopped and her eyes got glassy and cold. Her hand slipped from Vere’s.

  “Shit, no, Jasika. No!” He slapped her face. Nothing. Head to her chest. Nothing.

  Vere tilted Jasika’s head back, shoved the remains of her shirt away, and started compressions. Shit, what did they teach us? What? There’s a song…something disco with a steady beat…shit, shit, shit. The song eluded him, but he imagined himself playing an electric bass, a mirrorball spinning over his head. “Jasika!” He continued pumping in time to the bassline in his head.

  In the sky over the trench, a grenade whizzed by, landing several yards to the east of where Vere ministered to Jasika. All too near, an explosion rattled the entire trench. The ladder knocked over to one side.

  Vere pinched Jasika’s nose shut, tilted her head back further, sealed his mouth on hers, and breathed.

  This isn’t how I pictured it…

  He saw Jasika smiling in dress blues, clinking her champagne glass against his. The bassline timing out his CPR compressions was now part of the first dance at their wedding.

  Push, push breathe…

  Saw his arm holding hers on a dance floor, spinning her out and then pulling her back in close. Saw a toddler with her golden brown skin and his gray eyes jumping up at him, begging to be picked up.

  Another grenade, and then Vere saw blackness, his body slumping over hers. When he came to later, it was with a corpse beneath him.

  Monday, May 26, 2070, Flussville, South Carolina, Rénartian Alliance of America (RAA)

  “Do you have the fertilizer?” Claudio asked.

  “I don’t remotely understand how that’s going to help,” his assistant replied.

  Claudio pinched the bridge of his nose. Miss Rochelle was useful because she followed well, but she was nosy enough to be replete with questions along the way.

  “I told you—it’s for the explosives,” Claudio explained. “Dear, I don’t ask you how you cook or how you do those mountains of research you indulge in, do I? I simply take it on faith that you are the expert in those arenas and I let you do your best.” He grit his teeth against his waning patience. “Let me do my best, won’t you please?”

  She nodded. “I just don’t get why you can’t tell me what—”

  “Miss Rochelle.” The time for gentleness was past. “You work for me. End of discussion, unless you wish to cease your employment.”

  She scurried out. Claudio made a series of phone calls. As evening fell, the materials were either in his possession or on their way.

  The university science laboratories should all be empty now.

  Time for the men of Monsieur Rénart to take control. Not just of the Rénartian states but to advance into the New British Empire as well.

  The entire continent would be reunified under his command, but it would be the RAA who triumphed. They would take Canada, too.

  A fire starts from a single spark. After years of wary peace, tonight a new spark would ignite.

  There was a knock at Claudio’s office door. “For heaven’s sake, Miss Rochelle, I—” But the words died in his throat as he opened it to reveal not the unreliable Tina Rochelle but instead an awkward young man in thick spectacles, his titian hair spilling every which way in a greasy mess around too-big ears.

  “Mister Florence, good t’ see ya, sir.” The man spoke with a thick Cockney accent and, when he smiled, revealed a mouth filled with crooked yellow teeth.

  Claudio stepped over to allow the young man to enter. “Ambrose, do you finally have some news?”

  “No, sir,” Ambrose said, “but we been gettin’ some good video feed of the comin’s and goin’s, and I can safely say the doctor wot works outta this lab we’re hittin’ tonight is always out by seven, as of late.”

  “And no one else works past seven?” Claudio asked. “Not his assistants or anyone?”

  “There was this bloke last week hangin’ ’round,” Ambrose said, “but ’e seems to ’ave moved on.”


  “Bloke? Was it the primary scientist, Doctor Vere?”

  “No, no, we know Doctor Vere on sight right quick, we do,” Ambrose replied. “No, this was another fellow. Taller, balding, dressed a bit funny. Saw ’im a few times with Vere’s assistant, too.”

  “But when was the last time you saw him?” Claudio pressed.

  “Not since Friday past,” Ambrose confirmed. “’Less he’s still in there or somefink, I’d say we’re bloomin’ good to ’ave a go tonight. An’ even if we kill ’im, he’s just one of them, yeah?”

  “I will have you know,” Claudio said, “I don’t murder unless absolutely necessary.” He straightened the lapels on his coat. “These hands have never been dipped in blood directly, and I aim to keep it that way.”

  “But a little sabotage gets the ol’ heart pumpin’, eh?”

  “Something like that,” Claudio said. “Let’s be off, lad. If we take the concocopter, we’ll be there in no time.”

  Tuesday, May 27, 2070, Avon University, Avon, Vermont, New British Empire (NBE)

  Edward Vere was stoop-shouldered. It wasn’t an actual disorder of the spine but more a disorder of attitude; Vere tended toward hunching his shoulders up around his ears even as a child. As an adult, he worked well into the night on his experiments, convinced that with the right particle acceleration, he could achieve actual, honest-to-God time travel.

  The latest version of Vere’s accelerator, which he called the Herbert Mach III in homage to H.G. Wells, was smaller and lighter than the Mach I and II, but it contained enough dangerous particles to qualify as a local health hazard, should the university get wind of what he was really doing.

  The night involved heavy consumption of coffee, energy drinks, and more than a few illicitly obtained pharmaceutical-grade amphetamines that led Vere to his three a.m. epiphany. The equation he’d been using was a little bit off, and just a mere tweak was all it took to get the machine working with an entirely different timbre of sound, light, and color. Whenever he’d tried to make things work before, Vere would get high-pitched whines, flashes of white, and then the sound of gears grinding to a frustrating halt. Now there was a low, purring drone that wasn’t subsiding, and the indicator bulbs all glowed a steady gold.