Randy Sterling Bracken, one of the last experienced operatives of The Service—the bleeding-heart, liberal-bullshit, save-the-fucking-savages-from-the-white-past for the diverse future organization of all ϲunt time—was edgy, was teetering on the verge of a rampage, had not been able to readjust after going into the Past, had no more small-case time to willingly give to this fucked-up Time, which unfortunately had spawned a whore-vagina that had spat him defiantly at the world. He was fed up, but figured he had a card to play—himself.

His brother was dead in the future.

Sensei was down with the gout.

Bruco, the gay Chink Angh, and that sissy mooke Eddie had taken up with Three-Rivers.

Doc was too goddamned important to send off in Time again.

That faɡɡot Robinson was figuring out incomprehensible shit on a chalkboard.

With Tina having gone terminally bitch, Hoost had to watch Shuei and Epsom.

All they had was a handful of ancients—and the fucking retards at that.

Three-Rivers had Aristotle.

Davis had taken Burton away from Randy in his least favorite fight—fucking Spiderman in nuclear powered underwear!

The bleeding-heart, do-gooder, ϲunt organization needed some good old DNA.

They were fucked. This was it, a dozen assorted retards—and admittedly one smoking hot Indian babe—to people the future with. They needed an ancient genius and this mind-reading genius faɡɡot monster nerd across the table at the Wendy’s in Laurel Maryland, up over the hill from some slope-headed gook-food market, new it all—Don’t you you perfect piece-of-shit-stained stardust?

The big, beautiful, suited Future Freak regarded him with what seemed infinite patience.

“You do realize,” said Hoost, as he regarded him with those hyper-aware green eyes and peered with disdain from atop that perfectly starched Jew-suit, “that we cannot form an away team to base in Sicily for a retrieval or Archimedes, not that your limited command of modern Greek expletives, had from wooing the waitress at the diner, would serve you to identify—let alone communicate with—the ancient mind in question.”

Randy's battery acid sense of humor was roused. “Oh, did you see that, blowing down the street—that’s a mutual fund! Well, go get it, boy, you look the part.”

Hoost forced a smile, “Your sense of humor does not reside among your tiny canon of redeemable qualities.”

“Look, faɡɡot, pooch Daddy Shuei needs a fucking dead genius out of the past, and he needs him alive—Ben Franklin, baby, I’ll bring his fat, bald ass home, and you know it! Besides, I’m climbing the fucking walls, faɡɡot. Putting up with freaks like you was bad enough before. Now I want the pure past—I’ll be your chrono-hopper, fucking Time’s own broke-ass elevator! All I need is fucking fifty-caliber Barret to flatten Davis!”

Hoost was like living ice. “Leave Davis to me. Franklin will do. It is late summer. Seventeen-eighty-eighty is your target year. An investigation into Our Concern is underway, here, now. Remove to Philadelphia before jumping. Know, that if you kill anyone of enough import to put The Paradox into play, this will become a branching device and will be lost to us as a looping unit, leaving us but two more, with one of those utterly indispensable.”

Hoost then slid a banjo case onto the table. “In honor of your heritage, the unit is imbedded in the instrument.”

“You trust me with this shit?” Randy inquired as he leaned over the table.

“Not at all,” spoke Hoost, in his maddeningly serene tone, which bespoke a mind that never needed beer, booze, pot or hashish, let alone tobacco. “I launch you at a doomed world which I despise, expecting never to see you again. If you do return, remove yourself twenty miles to the Northeast of your access signature and I shall find you before Davis. If you ever approach the facility again I will liquefy your mind. If you manage to bring Franklin back without wrecking the timeline then I will employ you again. If you return without the unit, leave Franklin for me at the assigned location and do thereby not trouble me with your liquidation.”

With those words the monstrously beautiful man rose and walked out past two terrified ghetto breeders and Randy could not help himself, “Fuck you, pig! I’ll be back, and in solid state—and don’t hold it a against old Ike—he’s a good dude!”

When Randy stood and slung the banjo case over his shoulder it must have weighed a hundred pounds.

He ducked into the men’s room, laid the case out on the sink, and clicked it open. There was no banjo inside, but his entire custom arsenal, and one of the precious fucking time travel hoops. He was so glad that he wore his duster, as hot as it was, because he could strap down and ride like a conquering Whiteman out of this fucking mooke town.

Five minutes later and an empty banjo case on the sink, Randy Sterling “Skelator” Bracken stood back, gazed at the ugly skelator motherfucker in the mirror and failed to detect any of the four revolvers, four blades and four automatic weapons, spare clips and spare cylinders and ammo adorning his customized body harness beneath the oversized trench coat. He was blessed with wide shoulders, narrow hips and the BMI of a gulag guest. He could ride undetected. All he would need to haul this world-fucking arsenal back into time was some bodies—two to be precise.

He winked in the mirror and snarked, “My first double kidnapping. What a way to start the day.”

Randy turned, leaving the case where it lay, the precious hoop around his neck like Hell’s own necklace and walked on out of the life of a wannabe city that no longer deserved to receive a body dropped by his hand.

A moment later, as he fired up his custom chopper, his saddlebags stuffed with the booze he stole from the cop’s house this morning, including a fifth of Maker’s Mark he would soon make luscious love to, he felt like the last ME-262 pilot to take off into the war-spattered skies over Berlin.

As he roared out of the lot and up the street to the east with a crackle of thunder, he screamed, “Fuck you, Mud Century! I’m off to rape your great grandmamma—that half-breed bitch!”