“Responsible for at least one hundred deaths, the Chronos Chamber sanctions your termination,” Lethem said.

            “But I haven’t done any such thing!” the man protested.

            They always say that, Lethem thought. Lethem shot him five times, four in the chest, a final shot to the head. “Now you never will.” 

 

#

 

            The bar, located in the late 1990s, was mostly empty – which suited Lethem just fine.  No one pestered him, asking him if his pad was some fancy new laptop. Just wait twenty years, Lethem thought.

            Lethem scrolled, looking for new contracts. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, …. all claimed and sanctioned long ago, but new weeds kept sprouting to replace them. Barkowski, Obdewalla, Tsai Feng, …. It didn’t seem to matter how hard the Chronos Chamber worked to expunge history of its mass murderers. Usually, anyway. Strange that nothing new was coming through.

            Damned if he knew how the Chamber determined responsibility. Not as if Hitler went out and personally shot one hundred “Untermenschen.” Jacob Beser was crew on both the Enola Gay and Bockscar — was he responsible for all the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Lethem much preferred the clear ones, like Luis Garavito, serial killer in the 1990s, one hundred ninety-three proven victims. Well, not anymore, Lethem had sanctioned Garavito well before the bastard’s first kill.

            He re-checked his chronal uplink connection. His news feed refreshed. Oh, come on! The Stellars lost the 2309 series in game seven? The connection was definitely working so why was his contract board empty? It wasn’t possible that the Chamber had made its final judgment and the 1900s were clear.

            Someone bumped his elbow, “Hey, old-timer, buy you a drink?” 

            “Cassie!  What are you doing slumming in the nineteens? Thought you were working the twenty-twos?”

            Cassie pointed to the top shelf. The bartender obligingly poured out two whiskeys. 

            Lethem raised an eyebrow, “And why do I deserve the good stuff?”

            “To answer both your questions, just hoping to catch you, say thank you for all you did for me, training me up, making sure I was good enough, and not just a statistic before my fifth contract.”

            Lethem shrugged.  “You would have done just fine on your own — what are you at, fifty-two or so now?”

            “Seventy-four.  One more, then I’ll call it quits on my diamond sanction. You considering retirement anytime soon?”

            “Only at eighty-nine. Ninety-one? At most, ninety-three. Still got a couple left in me.”

            “For a guy who can calculate eleven-dimensional spacetime trajectories in his head, it still amazes me that you can’t count.”

            “They’ll let me know when I get too close.”

            Cassie gave him a hard stare.  “Weren’t you the one who instilled in me the importance of personal choices and responsibility for one’s actions?  ‘The monsters made their choices,’ you always said.”

            “Peace, Cassie, peace. I’ll re-check my logs. Make sure I quit in plenty of time. What would a hundredth sanction be, if anyone ever got there, anyway?” 

            Cassie took a slow sip of her drink before answering.  “Bone. One hundred is bone.”

            Fitting, Lethem thought, especially given the Chamber’s avowed mandate of removing all centennial killers, without exception, from the timeline. 

            Cassie seemed about to say something else, but her earpiece beeped. She listened, face rigid as tombstone marble, then quickly downed the rest of her drink in one swallow. 

            “Gotta run — work — see you again soon.”

            Lethem raised his glass, “Thanks for the drink. You take care of yourself.”

            She nodded, then quickly turned away.  He watched her head for the ladies’ room for some privacy to jump back Uptime. No need to let the locals cotton on to time traveling mass-murderer hunters in their midst, Lethem mused. She never looked back.

            Lethem took another sip, the smooth burn sliding down his gullet. Damn, that was good whiskey. What was he going to do after his next couple bounties? Retire back Uptime — somewhere far away from his own childhood in the 2260s?  Maybe travel the twenty-fours? Keep working, more likely — teaching the newest up-and-comers like Cassie. He realized he’d meant to ask if any contracts were showing up on her pad.  Must be. She’d said she had work.

            He glanced around the bar. Empty, except for the bartender, polishing glasses and neatly placing them in rows down at the other end of the bartop. About to take another dram he paused, thinking. See me again soon, she’d said.

            Lethem suddenly felt searing pain like four sternum punches, then one to the head, but with no apparent cause. Falling, fading into nothingness, Lethem heard the temporal echo of a much younger self’s last memory reverberating through his mind, a woman’s hard voice — “Responsible for at least one hundred…”

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