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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Humor
eBook Description: On the brink of the millennium, Smedley Faversham decides to party like it's 1999 forever ... but first he has to ring in the old, and wring out the gnu. Story #6 in the Smedley Faversham Chronicles.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2008

1 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [35 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [38 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [21 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [186 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [22 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [80 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB] , hiebook (KML) [78 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [47 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [19 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [24 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [51 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [36 KB]
Words: 6429
Reading time: 18-25 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"This job takes all my time," said Officer Julie Anne Callender of the Paradox Patrol, as she unbelted her blaster pistol, kicked off her duty boots, sighed heavily, and sank wearily into a chair in the squad room of Paradox Central. Actually, there was no chair beneath her as Julie Anne sank wearily backwards, but she was spared the indignity of pratfalling her goddess-like posterior across the deckplates. This was because Paradox Central's squad room (a rather squalid squad room) is equipped with a utility fog of airborne nanotech microbots. The utility fog had been keenly monitoring Julie Anne's biorhythms, and calculating a 99.9% probability that she was about to sigh heavily and sink wearily (or sigh wearily and sink heavily) into empty air in a place where a chair was supposed to be, so now the utility fog dutifully wafted itself across the squad room and morphed its nano-mass into the appropriate size, shape, color and density to replicate a comfy overstuffed air-chair ... just in time to catch Julie Anne's delectable derriere in midair, supporting her weight with ergonomic efficiency. A subgroup of utility foglets were speedily morphing into an automatic ottoman which was scientifically designed to support Julie Anne's feet while gently wicking away the perspiration accumulated on her tootsies during her arduous tour of duty. Normally, the nanotech furniture in Paradox Central's squad room is programmed to thriftily recycle the sweat and other excess bio-fluids of Paradox Patrol officers (the squalid squad room does not squander its squalor) ... but the auto-ottoman contained an algorithmic subroutine which diverted all the perspiration from Julie Anne Callender's voluptuous feet for delivery to an auction site on eBay.

"This job takes all my time," she repeated to nobody in particular, and the statement was literally true. During the past eight-hour shift, chrono-constable Julie Anne Callender had prevented the assassination of Calvin Coolidge in 1927, saved Benjamin Franklin from fatal electrocution during his kite-flying experiment in 1752, nabbed a gang of far-future fraudsters who had conspired to wreak economic chaos in the year 2874 by flooding the antiquities market with counterfeit Rush Limbaugh lunchboxes, and--oh, yes--in the midst of her coffee break, Officer Callender had foiled an invasion of Earth by bloodsucking aliens in the year 457 B.C. during the Peloponessian Wars. (If your history textdisk neglects to mention that Earth was invaded by bloodsucking aliens during the Peloponessian Wars, that's because Officer Julie Anne Callender of the Paradox Patrol got there just in time to unhappen it. All in a day's work.)

The gentle reader might wonder how Julie Anne could accomplish so many deeds in a single eight-hour duty shift, and the answer is ... she could not. The aforementioned tasks required nearly three days' worth of Julie Anne's undivided attention. But the Paradox Patrol was currently undergoing its annual staff evaluations, and so Julie Anne had decided to tweak her efficiency rating by warping her personal timeline so that some off-duty hours from her future (weekends and vacation days) were spliced between the departure and arrival points of her on-duty constabulary trajectories in space-time ... so that she experienced three days' worth of her lifetime while the duty sheets showed she'd only worked an eight-hour shift. In those eight hours, she had quite literally aged three days.

"This job takes all my time!" Julie Anne moaned again, and the nanotech air-chair nodded sympathetically beneath her. "There's just one thing I'm grateful for," Julie Anne tiraded spleenfully. "It's been a while since I've had to go after that cheap crook Smedley Faversham, the intergalactic time-smuggler and proverbial nogoodnik. Him and his lousy puns! Faversham's been awfully quiet lately, and good riddance." Julie Anne sighed contentedly and sank deeper into the armchair. "With that chrono-goniff Smedley Faversham out of my continuum, I can finally get some peace and ... uh-oh."

Officer Callender's reverie had been interrupted by the sudden arrival of a small wormhole directly in front of her. The wormhole's circular event horizon was spangled with a rim of glowing ion plasma which now contorted its shape so that the circular aperture of the wormhole twisted its midsection into a figure-eight. "Somebody wants me to report to Level Eight," said Julie Anne, reaching for her boots.

The wormhole rotated ninety degrees clockwise, shifting its figure-eight pattern into a sidelong double loop ... the symbol of Infinity. "Oh, time-warps and tesseracts!" said Julie Anne angrily, buckling on her gizmo belt. "Not Infinity again! Any place except there!"