In the not too distant future, Cameron Dodd, a waster and a junkie, wakes one morning with no recollection of the night before, only to find himself being arrested for a murder of which he likewise has no recollection.
Shown surveillance footage of the murder being committed by his own hand, a deal is place on the table before Dodd, one he has no choice but to accept. In exchange for his freedom, Dodd will be sent to catch Philip Caesar, an dangerous serial killer, one who has escaped from confinement. Of course, nothing is ever that easy for Dodd.
Caesar has escaped not across country, but back through time, using a new drug known on the street as SloMo, a drug which Dodd himself has experienced. Armed with a weapon and a desperate desire to escape the bogus murder charge, Dodd agrees, and is administered his first dose of the LSD-based narcotic. The world turns over on itself, and Doddfinds himself opening his eyes in the past.
I remember the first time I thought of Killing Time. I was reading Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (again) and
marvelling at how wonderfully PKD had put it together: every 20 or 30 pages the hero of the piece found himself chasing a new bad guy, so while the
overall story arc built, the chapters were kept fresh by the shifts in location and nemesis. I
instantly thought it'd be interesting to have the hero chance the same guy, but do it over and over.
From there time travel was the obvious way to do (for me, anyway) and started to put this story together. Once I decided the drug of choice had to be LCD I did a lot of research into its effects on the brain so that I could create the idea of LSD-P and have it sound even semi-possible.
I am very proud of how this came out; it's got its own voice and the research I did ensures that the drug's effects are at least grounded in reality. I think I even managed to avoid more than a few time-paradoxes!