I wrote this tale for a writing contest where the last line of the story had to be a line from a song. Hope you like it.
Bulgakov's
Bar
Chapter
1
There
was a song playing in the background, that was vaguely familiar, but
since the band playing it wasn't even humanoid, their rendition of
the tune was avant garde, to say the least.
This
had to be the worst bar I had ever been in. You wouldn't believe the
slime they let in here.
I'm
talking real slime, wallowing in tubs by low tables, sipping drinks
from extruded tubules projected from their shapeless mass.
I
don't know how I get talked into these missions. I swear every time I
get done with one I'll never do another, but the boss can be rather
persuasive. I think it has to do with the fact that I am a bar fly. I
have been frequenting drinking establishments since the people of the
worlds first figured out how to concoct liquid inebriates. That goes
back an astonishingly long time.
Because
of that, the boss always tosses me the jobs that requires a presence
in a watering hole. This place had to take the prize for shit holes,
and I don't say that because of the excrement covering the floors, it
certainly is a hang out for the most unsavory characters in the
multiverse.
The
joint, Bulgakov's Bar, no doubt named for the author, is where the
boss told me to rendezvous with a target who has been instrumental in
starting serious wars, on various planets, spreading bio-weapons use,
and being an all around pain in the arse for the boss, for many
years.
I
was here to get him to cease, or there would be hell to pay. I have
been tracking this guy for quite some time and had finally been told
by one of my locals that he comes here every so often. That,
unfortunately, could mean a long time spent in this dump, waiting for
a no-show. But I had no option but to wait and see. To help pass the
time I conjured a copy of "The Master & Margarita" to
read while I waited. I figured it was only fitting since I was in a
place called Bulgakov's.
I
have always liked this book about the adventures of a young human
female who is chosen to be the hostess for an annual party. The party
turns out to be quite unusual, with the hostess standing for hours,
while the guests kiss her heel, as they arrive, in tribute to the
host.
Finally
after several hours of sitting at the counter rubbing elbows with
patrons who don't have elbows, my local arrives.
Thanks
to the boss, or maybe not, depending on the situation, I can follow
whatever gibberish is spoken in the worlds. This particular dialect
my local speaks sounds like gargling gravel and snorting, not one
enjoyable to hear.
"Am
glad here you be. Target is to be coming in time not to long."
said my local.
"Good,
I tire of waiting for this creature."
"Target
is come within soon time, not more than a turn or two at least."
"A
turn or two? That's 700 days! Why so long?"
"Target
busy till wars gets started in the other place, must be sure it goes
before come."
"Best
can be said, no sure way to get better time."
"I
thank you for the help and hope to work with your new child in the
next cycle."
"Is
an honor to serve the boss, this people will not see you again but
will come as child soon after an explosion of life. Thank you for
this creature be to help."
With
that the local left to go mate. These locals have three sexes or
breeding units, can't say that this local had a sex really. They have
a male and a female element in as much as two of the three contribute
genetic material used to produce offspring, but my contact is the
recipient of both and essentially only contributed continuity of
consciousness to the reproductive process.
That
means my contact will be exploding directly and will return to me as
a new person, with the old mind in it. Of course, it will have to
contact me since I will at first fail to recognize it. The offspring
mature to a usable age in just a few hundred days, so I will be
operating alone during that time. Such is life.
Things
have significantly changed since I was first asked, by the boss, to
"do a few things" for him. He is hard to deny, and I have
been in his service for far longer than I first planned to be. I have
worked some demanding jobs and have always been able to get the
results I needed. A few were touch and go for a while, but in the
end, it worked out. Things got a lot tougher when the people of the
worlds learned to travel through space and dimensions. This created a
far greater opportunity for mischief. When they were contained to a
single world they could only bugger with each other, but once they
got the technologies to travel things got wild. Back in the days of
old, most travel was by using a lower life-form to do the walking,
swimming or flying. Travel between population centers took a long
time, and problems were mostly isolated incidents, not effecting
whole worlds or groups of worlds as it is today. Now these greedy
little fools can cause all manner of mayhem resulting in the death of
millions, billions sometimes.
This
current target has been particularly nasty spreading chaos on several
worlds simultaneously. I have to stop this.
Chapter
2
I
just caught a glimpse of my quarry, but the target saw me and lit on
out. I did finally managed to get a genetic sample from the target,
left on a beverage container. Now I will no longer have to sit and
wait for the target to show. I will be able to track him wherever he
goes. I have some extraordinarily sophisticated wetware that allows
me to home in on any target, anywhere, once I have a genetic marker,
as reference. My job just got that much easier. This is good since
this particular target can change its appearance and size to fit in
with the local flora and fauna.
It
looks as though he has gone to ground back on an ancient world where
at least the locals are vertebrae humanoids.
I've
always liked this world it reminds me of home or what home used to be
like an incredible amount of time ago. It's one of those worlds that
have a strange creation loop going that is extremely rare. It is as
though the world keeps rerunning the same history. The locals rise to
a certain level of technology, and then a gigantic rock hits the
planet, and they are nearly wiped out. The few survivors start over,
and after a while, they get back to where they were, just in time for
another hit. The cycle keeps repeating, and the most remarkable thing
is that everything returns to, as it was, right down to the location
of cities, the names of places and people, and even the same
literature. I got my copy of Bulgakov's, "The Master &
Margarita" here, and I could go down to a store in a few years,
and I am sure I could find a copy so close that only a few words
would be different. I was gonna ask the boss about this, but I keep
forgetting. But right now they are just starting to, once again, have
the technology to create impressive buildings of stone and to craft
with iron.
The
problem, presented with such a world is, if my target is causing
problems now, he has probably been here before, and done his mayhem
in a previous epoch. These worlds are exceedingly difficult to change
in a way that breaks the loop. This could significantly complicate my
difficulty in dealing with him.
I
have checked the records, and I got problems with this one. He has
been here before, and millions have died as a result of his
interference. He is already gathering followers and creating much
turmoil in the local government. I only hope I can stop him before
this gets too far. The boss wants it stopped this time to break the
cycle of endless rise and fall of civilization. He thinks the target
is somehow an integral part of this cyclic loop, and it's of the
utmost importance, to break that cycle.
He's
been extremely busy making speeches and gathering followers to his
cause. But he has made a fatal mistake. He just couldn't stay away
from his favorite bar, and has returned for a break, before the final
push when he does his act, and convinces the locals to follow him. If
he succeeds, the repercussions will result in the deaths of millions
of locals, for a frightfully long time. The locals will become
fanatics killing and torturing each other, practicing genocide and
destroying cultural diversity. They will wipe out entire
civilizations and wage war for their beliefs for millenniums to come.
He must be stopped here and now while I have the opportunity.
I
do not kill my targets, I simply need to get close enough to touch
them, and I can wipe their memory. Never again will the target be
able to cause so much misery on various worlds.
I
have disguised my appearance and the target will not be able to
detect me. I am close to him, and if I am successful, I will end his
career of spreading misery, torment and hatred through the worlds. I
have come to the realization, during my lengthy pursuit of my quarry,
that he is the most dangerous type. He firmly believes that what he
does is right and is for the betterment of those he subverts. He
fails to realize the shortcomings of his followers and how in just a
short time his teachings are twisted and perverted into a
justification for the persecution of vast numbers of locals that fail
to embrace his views. I intend to once and for all put a stop to the
senseless deaths and destruction on many worlds.
I
elbow through the crowd and take a seat at the bar next to him. I am
disguised as a member of the same race as he is. A perfect excuse to
introduce myself and shake his hand. Once I do, the mission will be
done, and he will be just another bar fly, with no direction in life
other than to sit here and drink.
"I
couldn't help notice you sitting here, looks like you and I are the
only humans in the joint." I say.
"Look
like it, sit down and have a drink and chat a bit." he says.
"Love
to, I'm Mike," I say and offer my hand.
"I'm
Jesus," he says as he takes my hand.
I
just caught that same song again in the background I heard the last
time I was here. It is a tune that I heard an awful long time ago.
The
band sings in the background,"...and they don't make Jews like
Jesus anymore."