Say Goodbye To B9

PRESENT DAY.

JANUARY 01, 2071.

Hot simmering oven. That is exactly what it feels like to walk on the streets of Newbury, a town in Costashire, on a summer afternoon. There are no birds in the sky. The land is parched. Golden brown dust has swept over the town, that once used to be lush and green.

***

DANNY FISHER is not muscular, but toned and athletic. He stands still, without moving a single muscle, at the farthest end of a deserted train-station. He is preserving every bit of energy for the big sprint, that is yet to come.

His sharp ears pick a faint rumbling, supposedly coming from the northern end. He turns his head for the first time, slightly, like a German-Shepherd trying to locate the source of an approaching sound. His ears are quite bigger than normal.

The long-awaited Northern-rail to London - T335, shows up at a distance, and is fast-approaching. Danny clocks the timer on his wrist-watch. He sighs upon realizing that his prediction is about to come true - that the train would not stop at the station.

At full throttle the rumbling is growing steadfastly. Danny gets into position - a sprinter's standing start .

The approaching train is a vintage steam-locomotive, one of the very few left in Britain. It can reach a speed of up to 90 miles per hour.

If the man inside the train has planned it correctly, the train is already a ticking bomb by now, ready to go off in a few minutes. Their goal is to ram into the London-Paddington station at full speed. The train is carrying a thermal-liquid-exploder in a small cylindrical container. The man inside the train might have already planted it under the driver's seat, the driver long dead. This thermal-liquid-exploder, if subjected to sudden inertial stoppage - from 90-miles-per-hour to zero, in less than 30 seconds, will trigger a small nuclear-style blast, with a radius of around half-mile. A hundred thousand Londoners may die.

The approaching train is travelling at 40 miles-per-hour to avoid suspicion. However once it is past the Newbury station, it will pick up speed after which there is no turning back. T335 will reach Paddington in around 6 more minutes. In 6 minutes, the Queen will be near the Paddington station, unaware of her fate.

Danny's mission will be to find a way to get into the train at Newbury station, when T335 will be at its lowest speed. He must then reach the driver's carriage, find the thermal-liquid-exploder, place it in a small collidron-style device that he's carrying in his backpack, turn on the collidron, diffuse the potency of the liquid, stop the catastrophe, and thus save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Londoners. He must also find a way to slow down the train so that it doesn't ram into the station, killing hundreds.

And then, he has a third mission, which is personal. That is the whole reason why he has come back from the future. That is the reason why he invented the machine that can send a man from the future into the past. He never had a chance to say goodbye to his father. This will be the perfect opportunity, and inevitably the only opportunity.

With the three missions ahead, Danny waits for action. The plan is to match his speed with the train's. He has a distance of around 50 metres from one end of the station to the other. He must time it so carefully and precisely to catch up with the train's momentum and thus not get himself ripped when he leaps to grab the side of the train, with his simple bare hands. He takes a deep breath. The sweat's dripping. He must accomplish the task in 8 seconds. A narrow window for a scientist-cum-sprinter. He fixes his eyes on the timer. It clicks.

Danny begins his pounding sprint. He charges like a bolt of frizzy lightning. The train almost approaches the station. Danny's muscles and ligaments are all working in tandem. He is really fast and it is promising. The train finally arrives with no sign of slowing down. Danny has seven more seconds before the leap. He is pacing faster now. 6 more. 5 more. 4 more. 3 more. Danny must maintain the speed. He must not trip. He must not tire. He has a bigger mission ahead. He has been planning for this whole mission ever since his dad died. He was 9-years-old then. He is thirty-two now. Today is the day to prove to the world that it is all worth it.

2 more. 1 more. And he leaps off the platform.

***

2 DAYS AGO.

DECEMBER 30, 2070.

BRIAN FISHER opens his eyes. He is lying on a bed, surrounded by the latest electronic machines, whirring and beeping continuously. One amongst those machines is a cardiometer measuring the pulse of his heart-beat. He has numerous cables and tubes plugged into his body, buried deep under his thick skin, from head to toe. He is not fully conscious yet.

He suddenly realizes two things. One, that it is a mistake to have volunteered for a hundred grant. Then he consoles himself that the money will save his dying wife and protect his son's future. That must be worth all the pain and suffering that he is going through, and that he will go through. Two, that the people whom he has volunteered to, might be having a sinister motive, hidden behind the closed doors in the name of science. There is no backing off now though.

He can see a vague figure of a man walking into a room, ushering in a bunch more behind him. They stand in a circle around his bed. They raise a toast - mentioning something about 'the first of its kind'. That is all Brian can hear. The rest is muffled and echoey. A man then pushes a button on one of the machines. He approaches Brian and whispers into his ear, 'We're very grateful to your sacrifice. Rest assured, your family is safe now. It'll be quick'. The next moment, Brian hears a buzzing sound, followed by the sound of the whole world collapsing inside his brain. A sharp pain. Then everything goes black.

***

PRESENT DAY.

JANUARY 01, 2071.

The next time Brian opens his eyes, he is inside a moving train. 'Wake up B9'. The blokes from the other day have implanted a nano-mobile-earpiece inside his brain. Brian can listen to all the instructions now, without distraction, not even from his own self.

He is sitting next to the window. The lamp-posts outside are moving past in full-speed. 'Don't worry. It'll be a bit jarring at first. You'll be alright in less than a minute'. He calms down.

He tries to remember but he doesn't realize that he is dead inside, with no memory from the past. It is partly liberating. But then, it is more terrifying when a man can't save his own memory inside the God-given hard-disk - one's brain.

'Get Ready B9'. Brian gets ready.

'Don't panic B9'. Brian stops panicking.

He is a perfect robot inside a man's body. He can follow orders and can remember nothing. So fragile, and yet so powerful. A good piece of a throw-away assassin. An assassin, which he'll be.

'The ticket-master's here'. Brian nods. He slips his hand inside the pockets. He doesn't have a ticket. 'You don't have a ticket B9', followed by a giggle. 'Your task is to break the ticket master's neck. Can you do that B9?'

Brian nods. He then notices two adults in the same carriage. 'There are others in the carriage. What shall I do?', speaks Brian into his in-built microphone.

'Make no mistake B9. We have a bigger task for you. We don't want anyone to inadvertently sabotage our plan. You must do what you have to do'. The ticket master steps next to Brian. 'Ticket please'.

The two adults on the other end of the carriage stand up quickly upon hearing a strange yelp.

***

FEW MINUTES LATER.

The train has a total of four carriages. The glass window on the last carriage has already been shattered. Danny stands up on his feet and brushes the glass pieces off his shirt and the backpack. He is restless. He looks into his watch.

The Paddington station is 6 more minutes away. He dashes into the next carriage - the third one from the front. Everything looks normal there. A young mother scolding her daughter for some misdemeanour. An old man is all squirmish, speaking on his phone. Two young man are having a serious discussion about the Big-Bang theory - one of Danny's favourite topics. Another young lad is munching on a boiled egg, without a worry in the world - something that Danny always wanted in his life but never quite got it there. A woman sitting next to the young lad wrinkles her nose in disgust. Nobody looks fazed by Danny's sudden appearance. They are also unaware of the danger lying ahead - that they only have 6 more, well 5 more minutes left in their lives.

Danny rushes past them and dashes into the next carriage, the second one from the front. At first look it appears normal, but then there are three lifeless corpses nicely contorted and tucked under the seats - a ticket master and two adults. Danny decides to move as fast as he can to the front carriage but then he hears a gasp.

The ticket master is not dead yet. He is still breathing. His wind-pipe is quite twisted but he is still breathing. Maybe not for long unless someone releases the pressure from his windpipe. Danny pulls the ticket master out, as carefully as he can, and stretches out his neck slowly. The ticket master is unconscious and so he can't feel the pain, assumes Danny. He presses hard against his neck and makes a quick pull. The ticket master starts to breathe normally. He must be alright, for now. Danny doesn't have a lot of time left. If his guess is correct, the suicider has already killed the driver in the front carriage, safely planted the thermal-liquid-exploder under the seat, raised the speed of the train to 90-miles-per-hour, broken the brakes and waiting patiently for the impact. 'You'll be alright', Danny reassures the unconsciously lying ticket-master and makes his move. 3 more minutes to go.

***

Danny opens the door to the first carriage. As expected, the driver is dead. He runs in quickly and searches under the seat, for the thermal-liquid-exploder. He spots it. A big relief. A good 2 minutes to diffuse it but when a shadow moves around the corner he pulls back. He knows exactly who it is but what he doesn't know is that a pistol is about to explode. And it does.

Two quick shots in succession. He didn't expect the B9 to be carrying a loaded pistol. Or more so, he didn't expect him to pull the trigger that quick. Nor did he foresee blood spurting out from his own chest. In his head, he had pictured everything rather differently. He had pictured himself being the triumphant but not the loser. He had pictured of a scuffle, and that being physical, more of a hand combat, but never imagined the B9 with a loaded pistol. He had pictured himself disarming the B9 with a couple of karate kicks. Nobody warned him of the loaded pistol.

Danny's third personal mission, as he had pictured in his head, was to finally meet his dad - the B9, in the first carriage. And that, he has done it now.

Though his dad's memory is totally fried up, Danny can't take his eyes off his birth-father - the B9.

Danny's time-machine is a one-off. It means that he cannot use it for the second time. It means he cannot travel back into the future, from where he has taken so much trouble to come backwards, to meet his dad, and say a proper goodbye, which he didn't during his childhood.

Of all the possible happy-good days from his childhood, Danny chose to travel on this date - the day when his dad, a B9, went on to cause a mass rampage in Paddington, a scale that London had never expected. Now that he has seen his dad, he must quickly move on to the other two missions - to diffuse the exploder and stop the train.

Danny is bleeding though.

He lays eyes on his dad for one last time. 'Sorry dad. I'll miss you. Goodbye'.

He pulls the hidden pistol out from under his long sleeve. He fires the razor sharp bullets aiming for his dad's forehead. His dad succumbs. Danny's eyes are filling up. One more minute to go.

***

LATER.

* Danny diffuses the thermal-liquid-exploder using his collidron equipment but he fails to stop the train.

* The steam-engine powered T335 ploughs into the Paddington station, killing less than a hundred people.

* The ticket-master miraculously escapes.

* As for Danny, the man from the future who travelled backwards to say goodbye to his dad, he dies. A contentful death though.