Grand's declaration that the Viachron was a time machine, and that the world might just be more fantastic than they'd ever known made Nick forget the angry SpaceNow rep's face as she batted small chunks of cinder out of her turtleneck.
"Are you serious, Grand?" Nick slowly approached the machine. It thrummed quietly and a blue light pulsed deep within its gears. "Time travel really is a thing?"
"No way?" Tim tisked. "You're buying this, Nick? You can't be that dumb."
"I—I" Usually Nick could shut Tim down, but the events of the last hour left him reaching for words. He had nearly blown up his friends and the pyrodrones were still dousing a small brush fire. Something made Nick lock down his excitement. He looked at Daniel, his genius friend for some kind of an explanation. "What do you think?"
Daniel lowered his brow and limped toward the Viachron.
"Is it possible?" Nick glanced at Daniel, hearing the strained excitement in his own voice.
Daniel leaned into the machine, his eye reflecting the electrical arcs. After a moment he concluded, "Anyone with a machine shop and an imagination could build a box with knobs and spinning wheels. Doesn't mean we can travel through time."
"We do not have time for these juvenile brats with their limited imagination," Lir seethed. "Mr. Lyons. I must insist! The Sheriff's trackers have been chasing us across the globe for weeks now. Very likely in the city even as we speak." He spun his wheelchair to face Nick. His eyes trembled with pain as he breathed through his teeth. "This will convince you."
Lir reached into the pocket of his tweed coat, pulled out a tiny vial of red liquid and with a dramatic toss of his head, guzzled it down. He then twisted a copper dial on the arm of his wheelchair, and it began to hiss. It ejected steam while emitting a clicking metal sound. The wheels collapsed and refolded into thin bars, which turned out to be mechanical legs. The arms became a steel brace around his waist and the leather seat wisped out of existence. He was lifted up onto brass clockwork legs that shimmered under the bright lamps. But that wasn't the most fantastic part of what Nick was witnessing. Lir's legs swelled and grew until his pants tore and they merged into one mass. His skin fell away like waxy sheets revealing iridescent scales. The bottom half of his body had turned into a fish's tail.
Lir raised the emptied vial, "I consume a daily draft of the rosey-be-spectacle elixir to disguise my true identity." He patted his mechanical leg. "And my wheelchair change into automaton legs. Helps me move about in my true form on the dry."
The automaton legs wheezed as he adjusted from one mechanical leg to another.
"Merman!" Xanthus squealed.
"Well, that's different," Helen bugged her eyes, searching for something more to say.
"Seriously. A living merman?" Nick's voice shook. He was really having a hard time keeping cool. "This is real, Grand? You're not making it all up?"
"I told you!" Xanthus screamed. He began skipping around the room while jabbing the air, declaring to his half-brother. "I told you it was all real, Daniel. I told you. I told you, I told you. There is a fantasy world out there, Daniel! You didn't believe me. No one believed. Redemption!"
"This proves nothing," Daniel said cooly while twisting the top of his cane. "As Arthur C. Clarke once said. 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic—'"
"Don't you finish that sentence!" Xanthus curled his fist in a mock fighting stance. "You're my brother, and you're disabled, but I will still commit physical harm all over your body if you finish that sentence. Arthur C. Clarke is a dummy face. Magic is not science. Science is not magic. They are literally two different things.
"I have my bestiary with me," Realization coming over Xanthus. This is great!" He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thick, ratted book titled Perlock's Mythological Bestiary 30th edition. "I can update definitions. Send them to the publisher! They'll make me a contributor! Oh, Lir. Boy do I have questions for you."
"I—uh—I …" Nick reached for words that wouldn't come.
How was he supposed to wrap his mind around this new bit of reality? Here was a merman buckled into robotic legs that seemed to be engineered from a mad clock-worker. He knew Grand was into some weird stuff. But had he really been running around South America with some fish man trying to find a key to activate a time machine?
It wasn't that Nick couldn't believe. It's that he wanted to believe it so badly that it couldn't be true.
"If he's really a merman?" Nick shook his head, looking at Grand's time machine. He caught the eye of his brother, who seemed to be skeptical of it all. But he didn't care. A confidence began to fill his voice. "Tim. If he's really a merman. Then all bets are off for everything we think we know. Grand's time machine could be the real thing."
Xanthus had his bestiary up in the air, cross-checking the illustrated mermaid with the real life merman standing before him. "Can I touch them? The scales?" Xanthus held a studious gaze at Lir's fin.
"My …scales?" Lir frowned at him with a mix of disbelief and horror.
"If you ever shed a scale, I call first dibs. I'm your guy."
"I'm sorry," Tim said. "Did I miss an invitation to the crazy convention? Is this, like, some elaborate joke you two are playing on us?"
"This is no joke," Grand scowled. "Tim, this is real."
"Real?!" Tim said. "For the last twenty minutes here are the words that have come out of yours and Lir's mouth: 'Mermaids,' 'Moon,' 'magic,' 'time-travel!' Seriously, time travel!? I'm waiting for the part where you actually talk about something REAL!"
"You think a man with the body of a sea creature is a normal thing?" Xanthus pointed at Lir's flapping fish tail.
Daniel shrugged. "He could be genetically modified. Most genetic laboratories could reproduce the same results."
"Right," Tim said. "So someone did some biohacking. Spliced Lir's DNA with a carp fish."
"What did you say!" Lir's voice changed into something sinister, echoing across the room. "Carp fish? I am no bottom-dwelling deformity from the Murkwaters, boy. I am a Merrow! My name is Lir Anu Palus, Duke of the Eyncleane province. Guardian of the Coastal Fortresses, Admiral of His Majesty's Navy And Servant to the Steward of Huron!"
In one swift move, Lir reached behind his back and unsheathed two swords in the shape of a long, sweeping knife. A blue flame erupted and covered the blade. He held them up before Tim, who yelped and scrambled onto the couch. If he could have deflated into the smallest corner of the cushions, he would have.