In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  Smiley and Wiggy both look up. Wiggy immediately aims the gun at the woods.

  Oh this was a bad idea.

  It’s too late now. I dig my heels into my horse’s sides to spur it forward. The animal responds immediately, leaping forward into a run. The second horse neighs loudly as I pull it along, eight hooves now pounding through the underbrush.

  The commotion is enough to make Wiggy take a few steps back. Piper’s dad must have recognized my yell. He got the message. He takes a two-handed baseball bat grip on the shovel and turns on Wiggy. The kidnapper doesn’t have time to react. The shovel blade collides with his skull with a resounding crack, and the previously conscious man goes thudding to the ground, raising a puff of dust, a few startled insects, and sending several of the fallen maple leaves fluttering about.

  That just leaves the big man.

  Smiley is tall. He’s muscular and strong and an intimidating specimen of a human being. There are zero circumstances I’d like to tangle with him one-on-one. But I’m not one-on-one. I’ve got a horse. As I come galloping out of the woods, headed straight for him, Smiley turns and falls to his face in the weeds. Smart decision. My horse leaps cleanly over him and skids to a stop at my command.

  I’m starting to love this animal.

  I pull on the reins of the second horse and encourage it forward till Piper’s dad can grab ahold of its bridle. The older me is looking up at me with wonder. “You know how to make an entrance.”

  “You said you wanted an escape plan. Welcome to the only plan we’ve got.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  I study the face of the other me. “So you’re you? Or are you the other one?”

  Piper’s dad looks to the body lying near the base of the maple tree. “I thought it would be me to get shot, but it was 50-50. I didn’t know.”

  Smiley is getting back to his feet. He looks angry.

  “Come on. Time to go!” I shout.

  Piper’s dad grasps the saddle of the horse I brought him and pulls himself up. He’s more efficient at it than I am. He must have had some practice sometime in the next decade of my life.

  Smiley roars and charges at us. My horse sees him coming and sends a sharp kick in his direction that instantly stops Smiley in his tracks. My horse then breaks into a run for the road.

  It’s official. I love this horse.

  Piper’s dad is on my tail in a flash, racing along next to me.

  Smiley shouts his displeasure into the cloud of dust we leave him in.

  I cast one last look at the body on the ground as we flee. I don’t understand what has happened here exactly, but I hope my other self knows what he’s doing. He promised I’d have answers. We just have to get out of here.

  Our horses thunder down the road, navigating the ruts and bends with practiced ease. As we pass a particular grove of trees, I get a strange feeling of déjà vu again and slow my horse to a walk and then a stop. Piper’s dad reins his horse in as well.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just have a weird feeling we should get off the road. Someone is coming.”

  The road ahead looks quiet for now, but my gut is telling me otherwise.

  My other self peers down the road. “That’s right. There were soldiers on the road last time.”

  “Last time?” I ask.

  He shakes his head and guides his horse into the woods. I turn my horse and we follow. My premonition comes true almost immediately.

  A column of soldiers comes around the bend up ahead. They are led by a bold-looking Patriot officer on a white horse. As the column passes, we keep out of sight. In a matter of minutes they’ve moved on.

  “You certainly called that one.” Piper’s dad says. “I would have run right into them again, and I even knew better.”

  “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” I say.

  “It’ll make more sense to you when we make it back.” He leads the way through the trees and onto the road again. We reach the barn with the time gate without further incident, and Piper’s dad enters the coordinates to get us back. I unsaddle and unbridle the horses, turning them loose to run free. I give my horse a grateful scratch between the ears, and it whinnies at me before breaking for the road home.

  As the colors swirl from the emitters, I put a hand to my older self’s shoulder. “Thanks for saving me, man. Here I thought I was coming to save you.”

  He turns to me with a somber look in his eyes. “You already did save me. Trust me, I should be the one thanking you.” He extends an arm and invites me to step through the gate ahead of him. I still don’t know what he’s talking about, but I don’t need further invitation. I want out of this place. I step through the gate.

  Yesteryear Adventure Park.

  I had hoped I could be done with the bleak and desolate version of this place from the future, but that’s where I find myself again. I don’t have time to look around because I’m instantly tackled by Piper.

  “Yes! He did it!” She’s grinning as she wraps her arms around me. “I knew you would make it. You had to!”

  “Whoa, hey there! Good to see you too.”

  She’s somehow dirtier than the last time I saw her but seems otherwise unhurt. I wrap an arm around her and step away from the gate. “How’d you get here? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she says. “I came here with you. We followed Vanessa and you saved me from the roller coaster.”

  Roller coaster? What’s she talking about?

  Piper’s dad emerges from the time gate, and she rushes over to him. He grins and opens his arms. “Hey, there’s my girl.”

  She flings herself into his arms and hugs him even harder than she hugged me.

  I’m still unsuccessfully trying to solve the riddle of what has happened when they finally separate. It’s a heartwarming sight seeing them back together in any case. Whatever happened, I like the results. Piper’s dad walks to the controls for the time gate and pulls the plug on it.

  “Let’s keep the revolution in the past for a while. We’ve had enough of that.” When he’s done, he turns back to me. He picks up a bundle from next to the time gate and hands it to me. I recognize it as my shirt and leather jacket. “Here. Found these next to the gate on my first trip. Thought you might want them back.”

  “Thanks. I wondered who ran off with those. Glad it was someone trustworthy.” I take the shirt and jacket and immediately change into them.

  Piper’s dad gestures to the deactivated gate controls. “We think these gates operate on some kind of shared network. Piper said you guys have already found most of them. I think it’s best if we shut them all down. No telling who might come looking for us.”

  “We’ll be trapped,” I say. “Without the gates, we’re stuck here.”

  “But I don’t think we need to leave,” he says. “Piper says the warp clock is here.”

  I turn to look at Piper. She is still holding her dad’s hand.

  She addresses me. “We tracked Vanessa. We saw her with a package. You said you thought it was the warp clock, so it’s here now.”

  I run my fingers though my hair. “Okay. Slow this down for me, okay? You guys keep talking about things I said and did that I don’t remember at all. What happened back there?” I gesture to the powered-down time gate. “I went in to save you and things got completely confusing.”

  “Let’s walk and talk,” my other self says. “You two can lead us to the other time gates you’ve found, and Piper and I can try to explain.”

  We step outside the faςade of The Green Dragon Tavern and move past the dried up recreation of Boston harbor.

  “You were a hero,” Piper says. She’s looking up at me with something akin to wonder. “You saved my dad, just like you said you would.”

  “When?” I ask.

  “You remember me waking you up in the middle of the night and stuffing you in that barrel?” Piper’s dad asks.

  “Yeah. Pretty hard to forget.”

  “That was yo
ur idea. You did it to me first. You came back for me and replaced me in that pantry. Then you took a bullet so I could get away.”

  “You were the man with the ripped pants from the video,” Piper adds. “You tore them when you saved me from the roller coaster.”

  I look down at the legs of my trousers. Neither pant leg is torn. “That sounds awfully noble of me, but I never experienced that. Does that mean you guys changed the past to get me out? What about the paradox that would create? If you duplicated the escape, it would mean there are two separate timestreams now.”

  “We’re getting to that,” my other self says. “From what I can gather, you decided to come back and save me because you believed Piper needed her dad more than she needed you. You sacrificed yourself and died back there in 1777. I escaped and came back here. But Piper had more pieces of the puzzle.”

  Piper holds up my digi-lens sunglasses. “It was in the video. It was there from the beginning.”

  I take the sunglasses from her. I put them on and toggle the power switch. The red battery light is flashing angrily at me and threatening to shut the lenses down, but I’m able to start the video where Piper has paused it. It’s the scene with the Gladiator.

  “Mym Travers. This message is for you alone. You will hand over the warp clock at the location we tell you, at the time we tell you, or people you love will die.” He gestures to the man with the camera. “Feed in the video. Show her the price she’ll pay if she refuses.”

  The man with the camera fumbles with something, then aims the camera at the floor while he attempts to play the video. The Gladiator grumbles, then the man with the camera straightens it again. “There were two files with the same name for some reason,” he complains. “Not sure why they sent it twice. Okay, here we go.”

  The video switches to the scene of Piper’s dad and me tied to chairs while being threatened.

  “Did you hear it?” Piper asks.

  I lift the lenses from my face to see her better.

  “There were two videos,” she says. “Two video files with the same name.”

  I’m slow to pick up on what she’s saying. “Two different videos of the shooting?”

  Piper’s dad chimes in. “Like what would happen if the goons in 1777 sent multiple files.”

  “Or they sent one video file but from two different timestreams . . . ” I say.

  “The video you were sent showed the timestream where you came back and were shot,” he explains. “But there was always a second scenario. A video you were never shown. If we were to watch that video, I’m betting it would show the events of the second timestream we just experienced together. I knew that I could go back, pull the same stunt you did, and the end result would be both of us still alive. It had always happened twice because there were always two different versions of the 1777 timestream.”

  “You duplicated the timestreams, duplicating us there, but each of us died to save the other?”

  “That was the plan anyway,” Piper’s dad says. “I went back in trying to duplicate your sacrifice, but it was 50-50 odds. In my case it was my other self that got shot. I failed on that front. But the thing that gives me some comfort is knowing that he would have chosen the same thing. Any one of us would have gone through with it for the other. You proved it.”

  “So I went back in time, hid you, and died in your place, but you escaped, created an alternate timestream and saved me the same way? Two of us died back there, and we’re the two that survived?”

  “Exactly.” He puts his hands in his pockets.

  “How did you make the extra timestream?”

  “When I went back in, I picked a time before you arrived and unplugged the gate during the period you should have shown up. You couldn’t arrive there when you would have. It was a paradox. Enough to change things and set me down a different path. It was Piper’s idea.”

  I turn to Piper and rub my head. “It’s enough to give me a brain cramp . . . you figured this out all on your own?”

  “I told you I know how time stuff works,” she says.

  “Sounds like I owe you my life.”

  “I needed you,” she says.

  Dropping to a knee, I smile at her. “I’m glad you feel that way, even though you’ve got your real dad back now.”

  Piper shakes her head. “No. You don’t understand. I meant the other me.”

  I squint in confusion. “Wait, what? What other you? There’s another one of you now too?”

  Piper’s dad takes her hand again. “Piper told me about how she came back to Harry’s funeral to find you. It makes sense that she would choose that weekend. It’s the weekend Mym and I found out.”

  “Found out . . .” I look from his face to Piper’s. “Found out what?”

  My other self grins at me. Piper is smiling too.

  “Oh whoa. Seriously? Mym is . . .”

  “Pregnant?” he asks. “Yeah. We found out the morning after the funeral when she started not feeling well. I thought it was just something to do with the service, but . . .”

  I look at the little girl in front of me.

  She really is my daughter—a version of my daughter anyway.

  “You knew the whole time,” I said. “Here I was thinking I wouldn’t be having kids for years and acting like you were someone else’s future. You knew.”

  Piper searches my face. “Are you mad?”

  “Mad?” I open my arms to her. “Oh gosh, how could I possibly be mad about this?”

  Piper steps forward and wraps her arms around my neck. I squeeze her tightly.

  When she steps back, she’s smiling. “Maybe when I’m born, I can come visit? It’ll be kind of like having a little sister.”

  “Let him at least tell your mom first,” my other self says.

  Mym.

  She’s going to be a mom. She’s going to be so thrilled.

  I get to my feet again. “Well, in order to tell her, I need to find her first.” I look around the desolate theme park. “Or give her a way to find us.”

  Piper’s dad rests an arm across his daughter’s shoulders and turns to me. “You have a plan?”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “Let’s find this damned warp clock. It’s time to go home.”

  *Author’s note. For the temporally curious, a detailed unraveling of the time travel twist in chapters 23 and 24 is available at the back of this book.

  25

  “Hurrying through life is like dumping out your ice cream to get to the cone. If that was the point, they’d offer it as a flavor called ‘empty regret.’” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2582

  It’s time to end this.

  One would think that with a slew of time gates at our disposal, we’d have plenty of exits from this broken-down park. The trouble with time gates is that they come in pairs. They only provide limited locations to jump to. When the entire network has been set up by a con man, the exits are nowhere you really want to go. Plus, the Gladiator’s gates are a bunch of nearly used-up single points in time. Being black-market stolen goods, he doesn’t have them hooked up to any of the Central Streams where activity could be tracked. Even if we were to find a decent decade to escape to, it wouldn’t get us any closer to home. There’s only one way out of this mess.

  But before we can find the warp clock, we need to make sure none of the other convicts can come back to stop us first.

  As I pull the plug on the time gate in the Gold Rush ride, we check the map again.

  “Is that all of them?” Piper’s dad asks.

  “There’s one more time gate symbol on this map,” I reply. “Over in Industrial America. We haven’t been to that part of the park yet. And there’s the one in the general store in Frontier Town that comes out of the ceiling. No idea how we can reach that one.”

  “High ceiling?”

  “Yeah. You fall through the floor of the store in 1958 and come out of the ceiling here. It’s terrible. You’d hate it.”

  The other Ben nods. “Okay. Let’s leave
that for last. Let’s knock out the one in the Industrial Revolution section.”

  We wander out to the main thoroughfare of the park. A sort of central plaza hosts shops from a dozen different eras. Most have broken windows and some have even suffered fires, but it seems like a central hub to the park.

  “According to the map, Industrial America is to our right, near the entrance gates.” I point to a sign that indicates an exit. It’s a cluster of arrows pointing different directions. Some have broken off and are lying in the dirt. I study the remaining signs with curiosity. “You know what’s weird about this place?”

  “You narrowed it down to one thing?” My other self is surveying the plaza skeptically.

  “Bird shit,” I say, pointing to the sign. “Why isn’t there any bird shit anywhere?”

  “There’s no birds,” Piper says.

  I squint at the sky. “Whatever happened to the world here, I don’t think much made it through.”

  I scan the clouds for any sign of life but find none. The only things moving are a few ragged curtains fluttering in broken windows.

  We march on toward Industrial America.

  I can tell what the original appeal may have been. The smokestacks and machines on display in this zone of the park are almost cartoonish in shape. The paint that hasn’t been eroded features bright colors like purples and greens. This industrial revolution bears little resemblance to the sooty reality of history.

  Old cars line the avenues. I spot several Ford Model As along with the ever-popular Model T. But there are plenty of other vehicles on display as well. A sign names a 1900 Olds to our right, and overhead there are aircraft fixed to poles, cheerily dive bombing the streets with pilots frozen in mid-wave. The skeletal contraptions hardly resemble modern planes at all. It was a simpler time with an enthusiastic population on the brink of a promised bright future.

  “This place is surreal.” Piper’s dad has been making similar comments throughout the park as we’ve given him the tour of time gates we’ve visited. I consult my map once again and point ahead to a building adorned with many oversized cogs and gears.