Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

Neddy Nelson: I want to ask you, instead of a "Granddad Paradox," I mean, what if there's a "Grandma Paradox"? I'm not saying anybody's done this, but what if somebody's gone back and screwed with their own past? Not major changes, but just stacked the deck so their present is—better? I mean, what if you found yourself a long time ago—by accident—and you met your own great-great-grandmother before it was wrong to date her? And what if she was a babe? And let's say you two hooked up? And how about she has a baby who'd be both your daughter and your great-grandmother? In the wrong, sick-minded guy, could you see where this plan might be headed? A hybrid you with superpowers? Couldn't you keep living, maybe hooking up with your next ancestor babes—your grandmother and your mom—stoking your own genetics so the future you—even the present you—was more strong, smart, crazy…some extra something?

Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): No shit. I remember the big media push for everybody to get ported so we could all boost peaks. First off, stores stopped selling and renting videos and books. You couldn't get audiotapes or disks. Overnight, the entertainment industry switched to producing nothing except ports and out-corded transcripts. The real push was targeted at young adults, ranging from fourteen to forty-five. Among that demographic, not being ported was equivalent to not being able to read. Or not getting inoculated against some common disease. Or not wearing glasses if you needed them. Like you were a total cretin.

It's no coincidence that age group is the people most likely to Party Crash, to drive or ride along as part of a team. But I have to shut up. Hush. We're not supposed to talk about that.

Neddy Nelson: Jumping backward in time, wouldn't you be living alongside history, knowing what the news would be since you've already lived this part? Couldn't you be getting older, hooking up, trying to inseminate another, better generation of yourself? Buying lottery tickets and betting on horse races that always pay off?

If you lived long enough, couldn't you watch yourself be born? Couldn't you raise yourself? Be your own old man?

Echo Lawrence: Get this. Most passenger cars are crash-tested no faster than thirty-five miles per hour. The automotive industry reasons a driver will take evasive action and hit the brakes before the moment of impact. The pulse. Not my mother.

The officer at the scene reported that our car never slowed as it crossed the centerline. No skid marks proved my mom had tried to brake. While I snoozed in the backseat, she'd steered us head-on into another car. For all I know, my dad was right. But it's funny, I try to find, to meet and talk to, the engineers who worked with my parents. They'd only be in their thirties or forties by now, but they're all dead. Dead or missing. Killed in car wrecks, or just vanished.

Neddy Nelson: All I'm saying is: What if time is not the fragile butterfly wing that science experts keep saying?

What if time is more like a chain-link fence you can't hardly fuck up?

I mean, even if you fucked it up, even ten hundred times—how would you ever know? Any present moment, any "right now," we get what we get. You know?

Lynn Coffey (Journalist): Take the time to review the press releases, and the government's official statements seem to conflict with actual events. The rubberneck study wasn't suspended due to passage of the I-SEE-U Act. The study died because its chief engineers were failing to report for work. If you tally the expense reports and cross-reference them with payroll records and police statements, you'll find a pattern of wrecked government vehicles, and a significant number of the engineers driving those vehicles appeared to have fled the scene of each accident. They didn't die, but they've never been seen again.

Neddy Nelson: And by the time you were old, like creaky, fucked-up old, and you'd spermed your last version of yourself—wouldn't you get with that latest-model, young you and have a little heart-to-heart? Let's say this finely tuned new hybrid you is eighteen or nineteen years old?

Tina Something (Party Crasher): Forget it. Nobody's going to tell you what's the real goal of Party Crashing. Go ahead, keep telling yourself we're all just goofing around. A bunch of lamebrains who get our jollies by ramming each other with cars.

Besides, most of these idiots are operating based on rumors. Stories. Nobody's sure how it really works. Nobody's going to tell you what's really going on.

But a few of us are going to become gods.

Neddy Nelson: All I'm saying is: What if it's not Rant's fault he's the result of somebody's longtime, sick-assed plan?

Didn't Rant use to say, "The future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday"?

You got all that?

35–A Flashback