In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  I have to admit he has me on that one. Whatever my life has become, ‘simple’ clearly doesn’t apply any longer. If it did, I wouldn’t be sitting in a pantry in 1777 talking to a parallel self from the future.

  “So what happened then? You were a bad dad?”

  My older self looks away. “I wish it were that simple. I wasn’t a bad anything. It just took me too long to figure things out.” He crosses his arms and looks back to me. “It’s not like we didn’t do things as a family. We planned trips, had adventures. I took Piper to meet Pierre Lallement and his Velocipede before I taught her how to ride a bike. She once had a guitar lesson from Jimmy Hendrix. We definitely made our share of memories. I was always good at the grand gestures. It was the little stuff that I sucked at.”

  “How do you mean?” I ask.

  “I think I just wanted to live life to the fullest. It’s so much potential, you know? A multiverse? All of time? How are you supposed to live a normal life and do basic stuff in the face of all that? Any night of the week, I could be meeting pop stars, presidents, kings even. Every damn day could be extraordinary.

  “It’s an addiction though. Nobody tells you that. Turns out I should have just paid attention. That’s what it is in the end. Paying attention to the little things. The people closest to you. For all the grand plans I had, I missed out on the things I never realized were special. Or I always ducked out right after. I felt like I owed it to myself. Piper would get the flu, and I’d feel like seeing her through it meant I needed a reward. Held her hair back while she threw up, and I thought that meant I deserved a week to myself in the Old West. Went to a PTA meeting and listened to her principal complain? I’d better go hang out with Bon Jovi for a weekend. I thought I was being heroic, sacrificing my precious time for little menial shit when I could have been out there living it up. Like I deserved a medal every time I emptied the damn dishwasher.”

  “I can relate to that more than I’d like,” I say.

  “Of course you can,” Ben replies. “You’re me.” He tosses away the jar lid he’s been fiddling with. “I know Mym had her share of side trips too. She took off sometimes to get space. But not as often as I did. She might have a night with the girls here or there—have her chance to unwind—but I’d come back with a beard and a contact list full of entirely new friends that I’d want to keep up with. There was always another trip or party planned. I was ready to commit to anyone else’s time but mine.”

  “Kind of ironic,” I say.

  “It just built resentment in the end. For both of us,” Ben says. “Mym waited around for me to be happy with just us. Our family. Our life. I never got it until it was too late.

  “Kids are smart. Especially Piper. You might think you’re fooling her, popping in and out of her life and pretending like you’ve been there the whole time. But she knows. She always knows.”

  “So what’s the solution then?” I ask. “Assuming we get back? I don’t think the world is going to let us quit time traveling. ”

  “Time travel doesn’t matter,” he replies. “Linear or time traveler, you just have to stay together. Stay for all of it. Because none of the other stuff really matters in the end. The universe is going to go right on existing without you. History . . . the future . . . all of it. It’s all out there, and it’s going to be perfectly fine whether you show up or not. Your kids, though . . . nobody but you can do that job.”

  “Kids? As in plural?”

  Ben smirks. “That part’s up to you. You get your own story now, I imagine.” He stands up, stares at the door, then reaches a hand out to help me to my feet. “If we do get out of here, do yourself a favor and try to get things figured out a little quicker. Don’t be me, okay? I think you can do better.”

  “What about you?”

  “Yeah. I can do better too.” He brushes off his hands and picks up the cast iron plate I stole. “Okay. So what’s this plan of yours? How is this going to work?”

  My plan is embarrassingly vague at the moment, but I do my best to explain. “I’m just thinking whoever gets shot should wear that . . . and not die.”

  “Is that what happened in the video?”

  I recall the scene of the man in the hood taking the bullet to the chest—the blood wicking into his shirt.

  “No. It’s not exactly how it happened.” I begin searching the shelves and cupboards in the pantry. I rummage through jars until I find one filled with preserved cherries. “We’d still need blood.”

  The other me stares at me skeptically. “Cherry blood?”

  “Look man, I’m just doing the best I can here. I’m trying to make this work.”

  He sighs and nods. “Okay. I guess I see where you are going with this. You’re trying to recreate what you saw on the video.”

  “I’m trying to cause what I saw in the video,” I reply. “Maybe I didn’t see someone die.” I find a leather water costrel on the shelf, stoppered with a cork. “I hope I just thought I did. Maybe what I really saw was something like this.” I hold up the jar of cherries alongside the leather water bag. “Fake death. Followed by wildly successful escape later.”

  “Is the rest of your escape plan this bad?” my other self asks.

  “I don’t know because we haven’t come up with it yet, so I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  We spend the next half hour exploring the pantry for any tools to aid in our plot. I salvage some twine from the neck of a grain bag and a leather thong that previously held together a bundle of candlesticks. We successfully fabricate our version of body armor. When I’m done trying it on, I’m almost feeling confident. But we still have one big problem. We don’t know which one of us will take the hit.

  “You said it was the guy on the right?” he asks. “Any distinguishing characteristics?”

  “Not really,” I reply. “Oh. Except the one who got shot had a rip in his pants.”

  My other self looks down at his knees, then at mine. When his eyes find mine, I understand the question.

  “Yeah, I don’t know how it happens. Could be in the fall after. I just know the guy who gets dragged away has a rip.”

  “Doesn’t really help us much.”

  “I agree.”

  We debate the logistics of how to determine our fate for a while longer. Eventually we end up drawing straws, or in our case bits of string, for who has to wear the homemade armor. I end up with the short piece. It’ll fall to me to make sure I’m the guy who ends up with the gun pointed at him.

  “I guess it’s only fair, since I came up with the idea.” I keep my voice calm, but I imagine my nerves still show. He is me after all. He can probably tell.

  There isn’t time to discuss the subject much more because someone lets out a whoop as he slams the front door.

  “We did it! She gave it up!” I recognize the voice belonging to Wiggy.

  The other men stir somewhere on the other side of the door. “What, already?”

  “Yeah. Apparently we’re the ones who make it happen. The hostage video does the trick.”

  “We haven’t even sent one yet,” Smiley replies. “They sure?”

  “Sure as shootin’. We just have to send the video tomorrow, then we’re in the clear. After that, it’s game on for the rest of our plans.”

  I turn to the other me. “You know what they’re up to in colonial times? What’s their game here?”

  He keeps his voice low, even though I doubt our captors could possibly hear over the sound of their jubilation. “I heard them talking about it. They came for the Constitution. It gets ratified next year. They plan to make some changes.”

  “Rewrite the U.S. Constitution? Which parts?”

  “A bunch of it. The slavery part for sure. Heard them talking about that. I think they have some other changes in mind too.”

  “Well, I can’t really fault them for trying to fix that. Saving the United States a hundred years of slavery sounds like a great idea. But they have to know it will make major changes to any f
uture timestreams. What’s the end goal there?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” my other self replies.

  Eliminating Hitler, writing slavery out of U.S. history—I have to admit that these guys seem to have noble intentions. But the execution leaves a lot to be desired, especially if it means murdering me as part of the plan. Hard to empathize with that.

  We listen to the men outside the door for a little longer, but it becomes more difficult to hear once their enthusiasm dies down. We’re soon left with only indecipherable murmurs.

  I pace the narrow confines of the pantry, then open myself another jar of fruit. I snag a bag of walnuts as well. If I’m going to get shot tomorrow, it’s not going to be on an empty stomach. I find a place to settle down in the corner. My other self repositions himself on the bags of grain. He picks up something that has fallen to the floor, and I recognize it as one of the bags used to cover our heads during the abduction.

  “You get to see much coming in?” I ask.

  He shakes his head, then holds up the fabric sack. “Mostly blindfolded. Just enough to know it was a dirt road.”

  I describe the ride in from the barn where the time gate was. Whatever happens, it’s a good idea for both of us to know the way out. My other self seems to have no trouble picking up on what I’m saying, even when I’m fumbling with how to phrase things. One benefit of being the same person is that he gets how my mind works and what the important details are to pick up on. He in turn fills me in on where the horses are kept and other information I missed coming in.

  Once we experience the shooting, assuming we’re both still alive, our options will be a lot more open. We can run, fight our way out, do just about anything it takes to escape. No paradoxes will ensue. At least none we know of. We’ll be freed from my knowledge of the future. It’s just a matter of surviving till then . . .

  I fiddle with my homemade body armor some more, filling the leather costrel with a mixture of water and cherry juice. I get the whole set-up affixed to my chest underneath my shirt. It’s terribly uncomfortable, but I have no idea what hour of the morning these guys are going to come for us. I’ll need to be ready. The frilly-looking shirt does a fair job of disguising the contraption on my chest but it still looks a little bulky. Am I crazy to think this could ever work? I wrack my brain for a solution I’m missing, but it’s hard to argue with a future I’ve already seen happen. For now, it’s the best option I have.

  Before long, my mind settles back to Piper waiting for me to return with her dad. What will happen to her if I don’t make it back? The candle in the corner gutters and then goes out, leaving only a single glowing ember at the tip of the wick. I lose sight of the other me and can only hear his breathing. He might be falling asleep.

  Despite the stress of the situation, my body is crashing too. Physical exhaustion is catching up to me. Before I succumb to the pull of sleep, I ask one last question of the darkness.

  “You think when we get out of here, maybe we should give up time travel?”

  My other self answers from the dark. “I’d like to have a future where I see my daughter grow up. Time travel or no time travel, I’ll take any version where that happens.”

  I let the words linger in the dark and ponder them. All things considered, I would too.

  21

  “Time travel offers flamboyant excitement and the intoxicating high of bold adventure, but a linear life often hides its joys in moments easily overlooked by those rushing from peak to peak.” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2018.

  Something is very wrong.

  When I open my eyes in the morning, I’m aware of two disturbing facts. One is that the big man I’ve nicknamed Smiley is standing in the doorway pointing a gun at me. The other detail takes a moment to register but bothers me far more.

  My other self is sitting up on the grain sacks he’s turned into a bed, and he already has a bag over his head. That in itself would be bad enough, but there is a far more disturbing sight at knee level.

  His trousers are ripped.

  “Wait, you’re getting this wrong,” I blurt out.

  Smiley doesn’t blink. He merely waves the gun at me. “Get up. We’re going outside.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” I stammer. Though in reality it’s me who has made the mistake. I should have been smarter than to assume I could rig this reality to work in my favor. Wiggy steps into the doorway, only he’s not wearing his wig today. His short spiky hair jabs out at all angles, untamed at this hour of the morning. He grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet. “Come on, Travers.”

  The cast iron plate attached to my chest slides a little as I get up, and I use one hand to maneuver it back in place. “Listen. This is very important. When we get outside, I need to be on the right.”

  Wiggy isn’t paying any attention. He’s simply binding my hands in front of me. My mind is racing to catch up with the situation. My other self is just standing there. His hands are already bound and he’s not struggling at all. Has he given up? How on earth did he tear his pants since last night?

  The bag goes over my head before I’ve had time to think anything else.

  “The right! You understand?” I beg my question of the interior of the canvas bag. Wiggy ties something around my neck to secure it.

  Shit. How do I fix this?

  I’m shoved forward and guided across the room toward the front door. The steps slow us down, but after a brief delay, we’re outside. I bump against someone and hear my own voice from next to me.

  “Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay.”

  I’m glad he feels confident.

  Dirt crunches beneath my shoes, and I’m pushed to the left, guided around the corner of the house. I don’t know why they are using the side of the house as a backstop for this. It seems like a stupid idea to shoot toward a house, but I’ve got far more pressing things to worry about.

  “I need to be on the right, okay?” I repeat my plea to anyone listening. “Please!”

  “Will you shut up?” Smiley says from somewhere ahead of me.

  “It’s important. Please make sure I’m on the right.”

  “You’re on the right already. You happy now?” Wiggy is tying my hands to one of the hitching posts. I try to verify that he’s telling the truth, but I can’t hear where they put my other self. I’ve lost track of him.

  “Ben? You okay?” I ask to my general surroundings.

  I don’t get a response. Why won’t he answer me?

  “Will you please shut him up?” The third voice is facing me. Epaulettes. His voice is vaguely muffled. I recall that he’s wearing a rubber mask. “We need to get this done. You have the camera started yet?”

  “Keep your damn mouth shut, you got it?” Wiggy hisses the words at my ear then walks away to join Epaulettes.

  This is where things get real. If they’ve successfully positioned me where I asked, I’m about to get shot. The cast iron plate is still pressed against my chest. The leather water bottle too. I positioned it where I thought it should be last night before I fell asleep, but I’ve been jostled quite a bit since then. Plus, I think I’ve changed things now by switching places with my other self. Will the bullet still hit the same spot it did in the video? From what I remember of history, colonial muskets were hardly what you’d call accurate. What if I get shot in the head?

  “They didn’t say which one. I guess we get to pick.” It’s Epaulettes speaking again.

  Shit. It’s about to happen.

  My mind is racing, and my heart is going a thousand miles an hour. Please God, let them hit me in the same spot as on the video. This plate has to stop it. Has to. I really don’t want to die.

  The blast from the gun is deafening. I duck and flinch involuntarily. Shit.

  I do a mental inventory of my body. Did it work? I didn’t feel anything. My ears are ringing a little but that’s all. Am I in shock or something?

  The thump comes from my left. A body hitting the dirt.

&nbs
p; No.

  No no no.

  They lied.

  “Okay, you got that recorded, right?” Epaulettes says. “Send that back.”

  I’m frozen, shocked into silence until someone finally pulls my bound hands away from the hitching post.

  “You bunch of bastards!” I blurt out. “You said I was on the right!”

  “You were on the right,” Wiggy replies. He pulls the bag from my head.

  “No I wasn’t!” I exclaim. “He was!” My other self is lying prone in the dirt.

  “Oh, you meant right like from what the camera sees?” he replies. “Yeah, that’s true then. But I guess that makes it your lucky day.”

  I turn to look at the man being dragged away by Smiley. He’s bleeding. Real blood. There’s no way that’s cherry juice.

  I’m going to be sick. The bile comes up and I try to choke it back down.

  Wiggy takes a step back. “Don’t you dare throw up on me.”

  My mind is reeling. I’ve failed. Completely and utterly failed. How could I have messed this up so badly?

  “Get that body buried,” Epaulettes says. He pulls the rubber George Washington mask from his face. “Man it’s hot in this thing.”

  “What do we do with this one?” Wiggy asks.

  Epaulettes turns to face us. “The hell if I care. Apparently the video already worked. It’s not like we need him anymore. Get rid of him. Actually, no. Put him to work. He can dig his own grave.” He grins at me. “You dig a good enough hole, we won’t have to bury you with your clone.”

  Wiggy has a pistol. He gestures for me to follow the trail of blood left by Smiley and his grim burden. I’ve lost control of my own senses. The smell of dirt and the color of blood is all that’s registering in my brain. The sight of the body now lying near a brilliantly red maple tree at the edge of the woods brings on a strange sort of cold clarity. Smiley had the forethought to leave a shovel by the tree.

  It was always going to be this way.

  Nothing I did mattered in the slightest.