The Glass Dragon
by David Derrico
Free Excerpt
It was the same dream that night as the night before. I awoke with a start, nearly
knocking myself off the bed as I banged my head painfully against the night table.
“Jason,” my wife mumbled, her auburn hair shrouding her face, “are
you alright?”
I stifled a curse as I rubbed my forehead, painfully tender and sure to bruise
nicely. The alarm clock on the dresser read only 6:15, but there would be no
use now in sleeping for another half-hour.
As if my aching head would permit it.
“Yes, honey,” I replied belatedly before Celia turned over to see
my purplish forehead. “Go back to sleep.”
Celia mumbled something incoherent and proceeded to do just that. How the woman
was able to pass out at will like some narcoleptic puppy was beyond me, but it
was a trait I often admired.
I rose from the bed, my sore head spinning wildly, and stumbled to the bathroom
where I found a medicine bottle in the cabinet. I took two of the yellow pills,
not even really wondering what they were, and swallowed them with a glass of
water from the faucet.
Once downstairs, my head began to clear and I was glad that I had a bit of extra
time before work. I munched absently on a bagel, reading the papers and just
as absently glossing over most of the stories, sensationalist nonsense that they
were. As I flipped to the Government section, however, a headline caught my eye.
Funding for Time Cop Project Approved.
It was about time, I thought, shaking the last vestiges of grogginess from my
mind and settling in to read the article. The TCP was an idea that was long overdue,
and it appeared that its supporters in Congress had finally been able to make
it a reality. The proliferation of personal time distortion devices had, over
the past decade or so, become almost out of hand, and, for better or worse, we
were now at the point where any sixteen year-old could download instructions
off the internet and create his own device with common household items like a
paper clip, a rubber band, and a nine-volt battery. You always needed a
nine-volt battery, I mused, and I was glad that it had not exactly progressed to that point.
Yet.
In a way, I felt partly responsible. I was, after all, the one most directly
responsible for inventing the damned things.
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