"The Three Tinkerers" - Part Five

 

Part Five

            A pair of black Converse squeaked like they were on a basketball court, maintaining a steady pace through the halls of the Type-X model TARDIS. Their owner, 25-year-old Kristin Curtsinger, was having the time of her life. She had just been wed to the greatest man in the universe – or multiverse, in his case. Some wouldn’t consider him a “man” in the traditional sense, being that he was an alien from another world – a Time Lord. The people from his home planet of Gallifrey called him “Aznavorian,” but Kristin always called him by the Earth name she helped give him: “Steven.”

            After a private wedding back in her home of Harlem, New York, they were on what Steven referred as “a very long honeymoon,” setting out to explore endless worlds across the infinite dimensional corridor (“Infinite DC” for short).

            But, right now, Kristin enjoyed rocking out to one of the tunes on her Whitney Houston mixtape, played on the Walkman she brought with her, hence all the squeaking from her Converse. She danced all the way to the console room, but she stopped once she got there and received a bit of a shock. Her new fiancée stood as still as a mannequin near the TARDIS console, not even looking at the thing.

            Removing her headphones, she griped, “Jeez, babe! You scared the heck outta me!” Steven didn’t respond, which only worried her more. “Babe? You O.K.?” She slowly and carefully approached him, walking in his line of sight. There was a cold intensity in his bright blue eyes, one of his dignifying features that she loved so much about him; only right now, she didn’t so much as like how they registered. “O.K., now you’re really scaring me, Steve! Snap out of it!”

            She delivered a swift, hard slap across his face.

            “OW!” he yelped, appearing to finally be out of his trance. He looked directly at Kristin, surprised and a bit peeved. “What was that for?!”

            “You were zonked out,” Kristin excused her actions.

            “Zonked out?” Steven repeated, still getting used to her Earth jargons.

            “Like you were hypnotized,” she clarified.

            “Oh,” he understood, rubbing the side of her face where she slapped him. “Maybe I was. I don’t even recall putting in new coordinates for our next destination.” He indicated the console itself.

            Kristin did feel that they were moving. She smiled and said, “Cool. Where are we headed next?”

            Steven shrugged. “No idea. But we’ll find out real soon.”

------------------------

            CRASH!

            One of Skeeta’s fists went through one of Discovery’s wall console panels as if it were made of cardboard and plastic. There was no damage to his hand – a testament of his remarkable strength, as well as his unyielding fury. “I can’t believe I was suckered by a machine!” he howled. “A machine that stole my TARDIS!!!”

            Rania and Mireya kept their distance as he went on this destructive tirade.

            It was frightening to witness from an outside perspective – a tall black man with a heavy muscular build and the temper of a raging gorilla. The latter was a trait that carried over through his successors, including the two women standing there with him; it was often when a loved one was threatened or their intelligence was insulted. Skeeta was a mountain of ego that erupted like a volcano when his was bruised.

            Once Rania gathered enough courage, she stepped in before he could rip up one of the bolted chairs and toss it at another panel. “Alright, let’s chill for a moment,” she calmed him.

            Skeeta was still too pent up. “I wanna destroy him!!”

            “And you’ll get your shot – we all will,” Rania promised. “Right as soon as we figure out where he went.”

            “Right,” Skeeta breathed, beginning to settle down. “I owe you ladies an apology.”

            “For what, baby?” Mireya inquired.

            “For not listening to either of you sooner,” Skeeta said. “If I had, who knows? I’d still have my TARDIS here with me…and our lil’ friend would still be here as well.”

            “You’re forgiven, Big Man,” Rania accepted. She then sharply turned towards Mireya and scolded, “You, on the other hand, still got some explainin’ to do. What did you mean when you said about Craig disappearing ‘again’?”

            Mireya felt embarrassed and ashamed. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

            “About what?” Rania pressed. “What happened to Craig in our future that it happened again in our present?”

            “It was really bad.” Mireya fought back tears. “All of time just…unraveled. Craig was gone, the Cyber Legion won the Cyber War and destroyed Craig’s home among countless other worlds…not even Neas could remember ever meeting him!”

            These details mortified Rania, her right hand instinctively clutching her abdomen in disgust. “Why…Why didn’t you tell me any of this?!”

            “I was still trying to figure out what went wrong!” Mireya wept.

            “What went wrong is that you didn’t tell me when you had the chance!” Rania scolded. “Here we were, withholding information from poor Skeeta, and now you come and—” She stopped after she glanced to where Skeeta stood, only to discover that he was no longer there.

            Instead, he was staring out one of the windows, spellbound.

            Joining him, Rania and Mireya looked out as well and were overcome with emotion by what they had seen: a fetus enclosed in a transparent orb of light floating in space. “Awwwwww!!!” Both Time Ladies gushed at the captivating sight.

            Their shared reaction bemused Skeeta. “Don’t tell me you both find this cute!”

            “Of course we do.” Mireya’s hearts practically melted.

            “It’s a widdle Star Child,” Rania cooed.

            “Widdle?” Skeeta scoffed. “It’s more massive than this whole ship!”

            “Doesn’t make him any less cute,” Mireya defended. “Aww, look! And he’s waving at us!”

            Skeeta noticed the Star Child moving one of his hands inside the orb. “I don’t think he’s waving,” the Second Tinkerer noted. “It looks more like he’s—”

            Suddenly, the three Tinkerers were struck with the same agonizing headache.

            Along with it came visions: HAL, the Terminator, Dave, a very young Craig, and Neas’s Type-Z TARDIS.

            It all culminated with a bunch of random numbers.

            As soon as they recovered, they took a moment to recuperate before Skeeta blurted out, “Still think that thing’s cute?! It tried to kill us!”

            “Yes, I still think he’s cute,” Rania told him. “And he wasn’t trying to kill us. Weren’t you paying attention to those numbers at the end?”

            “No,” Skeeta admitted. “I was trying not to throw up!”

            “I did,” Mireya raised her hand like a student in class. “They looked like coordinates.”

            “To where?” Skeeta asked.

            “Let’s hop in the only TARDIS we still got and find out,” Rania urged.

            Together, they boarded Rania’s TARDIS, and Rania got to work right away, inputting the coordinates into the console. As she did so, Skeeta gazed around the console room more attentively than he did earlier. Taking it all in, he realized, “You’ve redecorated.”

            Rania beamed mid-input, briefly turning back and asking her distant predecessor, “I did. Ya like it?”

            “No,” Skeeta flatly answered.

            Her smile faded instantly. “I figured you wouldn’t.”

            “Well, it all brings back memories for me,” Mireya smirked. “I haven’t stepped foot in this TARDIS since who knows when.”

            “I’ve been meaning to ask where yours is,” Skeeta posed to her.

            “Oh, I didn’t come here in mine – it’s still stashed away somewhere,” Mireya elucidated. “I came here using this.” She tossed him a metal grey gun-like controller. It had a black dial that was used to select a destination, as shown on a red-green LED display; it currently displayed the designation of the world they were in.

            Rania again looked over her shoulder to glimpse at the device, revolted when she recognized it. “Oh, no. Is that the portal gun?”

            Mireya nodded. “It’s the portal gun.”

            “It looks tacky,” Skeeta surveyed it. “Surely we didn’t invent it…did we?”

            “Heck no!” Rania and Mireya exclaimed in perfect sync.

            “Rick Sanchez invented it,” Rania gagged.

            “Ah,” Skeeta acknowledged this future tidbit. “I take it he’s not a friend.”

            “He’s an idiot!” Rania and Mireya were again in perfect sync.

-------------------------

            The Star Child’s coordinates brought the three Tinkerers to a quaint little world that only the Sixth and Seventh Tinkerers recognized upon disembarking from the ship. “This is Craig’s world,” Mireya happily identified it. “But it looks so much older.”

            “The coordinates say that this is Herkleton, but it’s two years prior to the time Craig started traveling with us and Neas,” Rania specified.

            “Why would the Star Child bring us to this place?” Skeeta pondered.

            “Obviously, this is where the ripple effect started,” Mireya said. “The point in Craig’s personal timeline where he was terminated by that Terminator, now in the control of our psychopathic A.I. friend, HAL.”

            “Then let’s find him and kill him,” the hellbent Skeeta had already began marching forward in one random direction.

            That was until Rania barred his path and insisted, “Maybe it’d be wise if Mireya and I were to look for him. We know this world better than you, plus…no offense, dude…but the spatial quality doesn’t quite do much favor to your gruff exterior in this world.” She tried not to laugh as she pointed this out to him.

            “What do you mean?” Skeeta glanced at his hands before they touched his face.

            “Baby, you look like the result of G.I. Joe having a son with Vin Diesel and Yul Brynner,” the direct Mireya indicated.

            Skeeta tried not to be offended. “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he coped.

            Rania did her best to collect herself from laughing so hard. “We’re just saying that you’ll draw a lot of attention, Big Man, especially with where Mireya and I are headed to search for Craig.”

            “Fine,” Skeeta conceded before handing out earpieces to his successors. “Keep comms open at all times. I’ll be monitoring from your ship’s computer for HAL’s whereabouts. If he’s here and hunting our lil’ friend, we’ll know and act accordingly. We’re gonna take that thing down.”

            Mireya and Rania reluctantly took the earpieces from the seething Skeeta, watching him return to Rania’s TARDIS with thunderous stomps.

            “Homey needs to chill,” Mireya uttered.

            “Girl, don’t I know it,” Rania concurred. “Hard to believe we were ever that vengeful. Ego can be a frightening thing.”

            Together, the two Time Ladies ventured into the Creek, the one area within Craig’s world that felt like home-away-from-home to them. They were taken in by how much lusher and more vibrant the atmosphere was in this past era. “I just love this dimension so much,” Rania inhaled the fresh air, her robust bosom expanding beneath her tight black turtleneck. “Why would the Cyber Legion ever want to destroy it.”

            “It’s in their programming,” Mireya scoffed. “Nothing organic must survive.”

            “Mireya, look!” Rania alerted in a hush. At first, she thought her predecessor had spotted the HAL-controlled Terminator; but she followed her gaze to a more comforting sight: a much younger Craig playing with three little tadpoles at a stream.

            The two Tinkerers watched him like two proud mothers.

            “Ohhh! Look at him!” Mireya verged on tears. “He’s so little and precious!”

            “Just mindin’ his own business, not botherin’ anybody,” Rania added. “This must be his first time in the Creek. He seems so fascinated by everything here. Bless his lil’ heart.” Her innovative mind then thought up a clever play on the usual nickname she and Neas gave him: “Craig Before the Creek.”

            “I wish I had my camera for this moment!” Mireya giddily squealed.

            Her gushing appeared to have attracted the attention of the 8-year-old Craig, who jolted in alarm when he saw the two women looking on him. “W-Who are you?! My mom told me never to talk to strangers!”

            Neither Rania nor Mireya thought how they looked, creeping up on him in such a secluded spot. “We’re sorry, sweetheart,” Rania told him. “We didn’t mean to frighten you. We live around the neighborhood and were just on our daily jog.” It was the only reasonable lie she could come up with, despite the fact that neither she nor Mireya were exactly wearing the appropriate jogging attire in the summer climate.

            Luckily, Little Craig didn’t seem to notice. “Oh,” he accepted the fib as truth. “By the way, you two haven’t seen a Small Uncle toy, have you? It flew over here while I was playing with my little sister. It kinda looks like an onion with a face? I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to be.”

            Rania and Mireya didn’t answer. They were still gushing (silently) over him.

            Little Craig took their silence in stride. “Forget it. You grownups don’t know nothin’ ‘bout anything.”

            Noting his aggravated tone, Rania figured this was more than about Jessica’s toy. “You O.K., hon? You sound a little upset.”

            “I’m sorry,” Little Craig huffed. “It’s just…It’s my first day here as the new kid, and I already hate it here. All my real friends are back home – one of them was gonna have me over for my first real sleepover – and there’s this annoying sound inside the floor vent in my new room that’s keepin’ me up all night! I think it might be a monster!”

            Rania’s hearts felt for him. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I’m sure it’s nothing to be scared of.”

            “You sound like my mom – a lot like my mom,” Little Craig observed.

            “She’s a very wise woman.” Rania quickly caught herself and rephrased that sentiment. “I mean, she sounds like a very wise woman.”

            “Nice save,” Mireya whispered to her.

            “Of course she is,” Little Craig concurred. “She’s my mommy, and I love her.”

            “Awwww!” Rania and Mireya enthused.

            “Well, it was nice talkin’ to you ladies,” Little Craig said. “I gotta go see if I can find that Small Uncle toy.” He then dashed off, but not without Rania and Mireya tailing him, a bit more discreetly this time. It was imperative to ensure his safety with HAL lurking somewhere in the realm.

            Along the way, they witnessed Craig’s adorable first interactions with the kids of the Creek, all the way to the Trading Tree. However, things took a bit of a turn when a group of “pirate kids” ambushed the scene, bullying and plundering the Creek kids of all their possessions, including Bobby’s candy.

            They were led by their ruthless “captain,” a young teen Latin girl in pirate garb that included a white shirt with a blue skull on it, as well as a dark blue sword that she wielded as a weapon. While it seemed like all a game to the adult eyes of Rania and Mireya, the bullying aspect of it all had gone a bit too far; particularly when Craig became the victim of the girl captain’s ruthlessness, stealing the Small Uncle toy he found at the Trading Tree.

            “That’s it!” Mireya put her foot down. “I’m gonna do something about this!”

            Rania restrained her before she could’ve stepped out from the foliage where they kept hidden. “Hold up. For one thing, they’re just kids and you’re a grown woman! And two, a bunch of little pirates aren’t our mission priority. If Craig handled these kids in his original timeline, he can handle them now. But we need to handle the deadly machine that’s after him.”

            Mireya knew she had a point and grudgingly abandoned helping Little Craig.

            “Rania…Mireya…come in…” Skeeta’s voice came through the static in their earpieces. The frequency was a bit weak. “Scans don’t…cate that HAL or…have shown up in the…alm yet. We…ust have arriv…lier than…em.”

            “Skeeta, you’re breaking up,” Rania responded, tuning the frequency. “Say that again?”

            “I said that the scans don’t indicate HAL or the Terminator he’s possessed have shown up in the realm yet,” Skeeta reiterated, much clearer that time. “We must have arrived earlier than them. C’mon back to the TARDIS, so we can monitor their arrival from your ship.”