One Day All This Will Be Yours (Novella) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author:Adrian Tchaikovsky [Tchaikovsky, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781786183309
Publisher: Solaris; Rebellion Publishing
Published: 2021-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THIS WILL TEACH me to go gallivanting off on holiday when there’s work to do. I should have tracked down a damn nuke and sent it ahead to the utopians gift-wrapped, with a label saying Don’t open till Founder’s Day. Except that would likely still leave enough bits of their time machine fleet to cause me problems later, or indeed before. I need to make them never-have-been instead, and that’s going to be difficult when my bride-to-be has tracked me down to my lonely old farm and is lurking about on the grounds.

I am going to have to commit pre-uxoricide. It won’t be the worst thing I’ve done. In fact, when you think about it, most of the people I murder haven’t really done anything to me at all, save been incautious in venturing the wrong way across the fourth dimension. When I get hold of the future Mrs Me and feed her to Miffly or run over her with a combine harvester, it will be personal. There will actually be a real and immediate motive. Any court in the land would, if not absolve me of the crime, then at least convict me without needing to take some sort of course in advanced chrono-physics. She’s a trespasser and she’s come to ruin my life by somehow making me happy enough that I settle down with her and found a gloriously twee society of facile wankers like Weldon and Smantha. And if that’s not a good enough reason to seek someone’s death, then I don’t know what is.

I start off trying to do things the old-fashioned way and have Miffly track her down. I get myself up in proper huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ clothes—tweed plus-fours and jacket and flat cap—and I get myself a proper huntin’ and shootin’ shotgun, one with a decent laser sight and homing AI drone bullets, because if you’re going to do a thing, do it properly. I swear, these bullets are so smart that if my intention was to hunt grouse then, the moment after I fired them, the shells would go borrow my time machine, track down the closest common ancestor of all grouse and explode it. Which wouldn’t actually exterminate grouse because of the woefully disjointed state of time, but they’re only bullets, cut them some slack.

And anyway, it’s all for nothing because I don’t so much as catch sight of her. And Miffly’s no damn help. Miffly’s been got at, frankly. She might be several tons of ravaging therapod dinosaur, but the old girl is also just a big softy; feed her and rub her tummy and she’s yours forever. And my security cameras catch several instances of the future Mrs Me turning up while I’m asleep, dodging all my tripwires and alarms, and making a fuss of Miffly. So much for the savage vigilance of my faithful reptilian hound, unfortunately. So much for the old fashioned way—and if hunting someone down with a dinosaur isn’t old fashioned I don’t know what is.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.