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Quantum Coyote
Chronicles of the Cake Stop
Vol I No. 4
Red Is Faster...
In one corner a conversation has erupted about the best pro-team shirt. The cry goes up "Because red is faster!" The woman shudders. That phrase now fills her with dread, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach twisting and turning about her intestines as the words call to mind the memory of the look in EvilChuffy's eyes the week before, when he had explained his scheme to her over a pint in the corner. She remembered that night so vividly, so clearly. Derall and Gunner had been training in the Weirding Way in the middle of the room, with Aeroflash and Flying Monkey hooting and making suggestions from the side, all the tables and chairs cleared out of the way. Thanatos had been watching them with a hungry look, Kathy and Tim canoodling quietly in the corner discussing a name for their new tandem. Kitzy had been earning some pocket money for some new tri-bars helping Claire behind the bar and even Withers had come down for a gentlemanly drink with Gordon, Nutty, Phil and the rest. Sheriff Strutt had been very convivial that evening and had bought her a drink, so she had been feeling somewhat guilty about leaving him to try to patch things up with roadtrain when Chuffy had beckoned her with one crooked finger and squirrelled her away in a darkened corner.

After the first few words she had known it was going to be a wild one, and had delved into her stash to make the going easier. "Red is faster," he had said that, his voice heavily laden with the sort of feverish conviction of faith that she usually expected from religious fundamentalists. "Red is faster and if I prove this, Winona will reply to my letters. I had a vision."

"Chuffy," the woman had said, patiently and hoping not to turn him against her. "Winona doesn't care if red is faster - which it isn't, by the way. Winona will not reply to your letters because Winona is a loon who needs some serious psychiatric help and a good spanking."

That had been a mistake. Mentioning Winona and spanking in the same sentence was bound to send him off on one. Mentally slapping herself for being so stupid, the woman tried to change the subject. "How's the new post office bike coming on?"

"I'll prove that red is faster, then I can spank Winona," he had said, the look in his eyes becoming ever more fervent.

"Chuffy, I have travelled across space and time. I have conversed with Gods, with mythic beasts. I am, for pity's sakes, the engineered product of a divine and sapphic union of Tank Girl and Ellen Ripley in Alien: Resurrection. Red is not faster."

"Yes it is. That's why the wavelength gets longer, you see. It has to be longer or there would be more of it in the same amount of time and relativity says you can't have that."

"I think you've got that backwards, Chuffy. That's not what relativity says at all."

But it had been too late by then. The seed of the experiment that is now worrying her so greatly had been planted in his mind. This damned Doppler shift experiment. The woman knows that is what he is doing, or has been trying to do, all the time he has been away but she has not been able to find him, to stop him, to bring him home to tea and cake and beer. She feels that somehow it is her fault and she must bring him home. How will the Cake Stop survive without him?

A hand rests on her shoulder. She turns. It is Yenrod, who has sneaked away from the Archaeologist, having broken his fetters. His lips move, jaw working, brow furrowed as he tries to form some semblance of speech. She waits, entranced.

"It will soorvee-ive," he says. "We got Sherreeeff. He play good."

"That's nice, Yenrod," she says, not entirely sure what he's talking about.

"Maybe he went down to the sea for a swim and got mistaken for a sea-lion that needed rescuing. Have you tried the wildlife sanctuary?" calls a grinning FatBloke from the end of the bar.

"Just because you once got mistaken for an elephant seal it doesn't mean it's likely to happen to anyone else, Fatty," the woman responds, poking disconsolately at her malt loaf. Somehow even the food of the gods does not seem to whet her appetite this afternoon, and she knows she is in serious calorie deficit after that trip back from Sirius C where she had been to talk to Nommo the Fish God. Not only that but it had felt like the seat post was slipping a bit and those tyres were probably on their last legs. Playing about in A-Time is really hard wearing on parts and sundries, and of course, her computer is now saying that her max speed is the square root of minus j, which is totally unhelpful.

She slams her fist into the bar, the sudden shock in the magical æther causing the spontaneous collapse of her avatar, leaving Gunner looking rather nonplussed. Where on this Earth, or any other, could Chuffy be?



*   *   *


There is a sequence of five speed cameras on the A217 towards Sutton, a perfect stretch of dual carriageway for the Doppler Shift experiment. The rift in dimensions that the crazed cyclist has left behind him ripples like heat haze, crackling with static every time a car hurtles past. He begins, pumping up towards a cadence of 80 or so as the perfect tarmac surface threads the horizon at Mogador services.

At around the speed camera barrier, heavy buffeting occurs, the cyclist knows this as he plunges down the hill after the first of the cameras. One down four to go.

No, this is not the strangest thing. Other than the odd sense that he is being watched, that an interdimensional being in silver Specializeds standing by a bar is attempting to peer through the dimensional barriers he has pierced, there is the odd feeling that the controls reverse as one approaches the barrier. And if only he had the courage to pedal backwards when the buffeting got too bad, he might just do it and come out the other side.

In the Cake Stop, Thanatos is trying to control his prescience with a particularly strong mug of spice beer. He sees the timelines thundering away from him, a cyclist spinning into a crevasse of purest red and then... nothing.

From this folly will spring the 'Jihad' he realises - there will be nothing to stop those who know that Campag is better than Shimano realising their place in the universe and sweeping all in the Empire before him. They must be stopped!