The Dark Restarter

by Sean McMahon

  Being separated from his physical body allowed the imbalances in his perception of what was real, and what was not, to go full circle. Eventually, as the trauma from his younger years faded into nothingness, he was finally able to view his life from a unique perspective. One that was far more objective and rational.

  All of this ultimately led to the bold masterstroke of switching off his own life support. Sending a third Malcolm, one from the future, back into the past. Free to explore their shared bubble of time entirely without limits.

  ‘What do you mean, without limits?’ asked Kara.

  ‘Without boundaries,’ said Malcolm, simply. ‘Unseen and unheard unless I specifically chose otherwise, but ultimately being unable to affect any of my surroundings. Unless connected to another Restarter, of course,’ he added, stealing a glance at Peter, who broke eye-contact immediately.

  Malcolm became a phantom, tethered only to the thirty-three hours of perpetuated time; to when his physical form had first arrived at Pentney Lakes. Though his transcendence still held caveats.

  ‘Despite my best efforts, I cannot travel further back in time than the 24th of August 2018. Nor can I travel forward further than Saturday the 25th, up to the very moment Hal and Kara here killed me in the real world for the first time.’

  ‘Hang on, what do you mean, killed you?!’ said Peter.

  ‘Wait,’ said Hal, the cogs turning and ignoring the totally skewed use of the word “killing”. ‘Why can you only go as far as Saturday?’

  Malcolm looked at him strangely, as if Hal had missed all of the most important details and was honing in on something utterly irrelevant.

  ‘Don’t look at me like I’m honing in on something totally irrelevant,’ said Hal, understanding his glare with perfect clarity. ‘If you wound up in a hospital on Sunday, getting trapped in a whole new restart chain, why are you stuck here and not there?’

  Malcolm shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clearing his throat as if wanting to change the subject.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Hal in utter disbelief. ‘You’ve been back here, what, a whole year? And you’ve never once tried to go further?’

  ‘That,’ said Malcolm defensively, ‘is when the restart triggers. Every time,’ he added, thinking both backwards and forwards to the day he had technically taken his own life by switching off his life support. He had no desire to ever revisit that point in his life. ‘My time there changed me. I am not the monster I once was.’

  It was all incredibly convincing, with one minor exception;

  ‘So, you’re saying,’ said Fearne, ‘that the time you spent in solitary confinement has left you, what’s the word?’

  ‘You’re saying you’re reformed?’ said Kara, equally unconvinced.

  ‘Yes. I suppose I am,’ said Malcolm. ‘I thought that would have been evidenced when I helped you save Peter’s life?’

  ‘That’s…a lot to ask of us Malcolm,’ said Hal. ‘To accept at face value, I mean.’

  ‘Well,’ said Malcolm matter-of-factly, ‘fortunately for all of us, you don’t have to accept it. The only part of this that holds any real importance is that I, and I alone, know what’s going to happen next. And you’re going to need my help.’

  ‘This should be good,’ said Hal. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because a battle is coming, Harold.’

  ‘Don’t call me Harold.’

  ‘A battle between the past version of myself,’ said Malcolm, ignoring him. ‘A fight you cannot possibly win. And I am offering you my help so that you may survive it.’

  ‘And why would you do that?’ said Peter.

  ‘I have a theory on how I arrived at that hospital,’ said Malcolm. ‘The only logical explanation for how I broke through into Sunday is that something happened after you defeated me for the first time, when you reached into me and stopped my heart.’

  Hal and Kara shifted uncomfortably. It would be harder for them to take the moral high ground with Peter and Fearne now that this particular cat was out of its respective bag. They could feel the glares shooting towards them, and mutually refused to meet them.

  ‘Maybe we didn’t actually…’ Hal mimed the act of drawing an imaginary knife across his own throat and made a high-pitched noise reminiscent of a duck trying to perform the sound effect of paper being torn, ‘do you in after all?’

  ‘I have revisited that moment countless times,’ revealed Malcolm. ‘That is to say, I witnessed my murder. And besides, my past-self running amok is proof enough that you took my life. Not very smart. Poor Kevin, left to rot in that storage cupboard.’

  Hal and Kara shared a sideways glance and smiled.

  ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk. Not very heroic, laughing at the dead,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Kara. ‘Lucky for us, he didn’t die.’

  This clearly caught Malcolm off guard, and it felt good to possess knowledge he didn’t have.

  ‘Yeah, we totally saved him,’ chirped Hal. ‘I don’t want to say you’re the worst serial killer ever, but…’

  ‘You literally are,’ chimed Kara.

  ‘How did you…remarkable,’ added Malcolm, with barely-concealed wonder. ‘How?’

  ‘Time heist,’ said Kara, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Keep talking.’

  Malcolm glared, then smiled, realising yet again that she was smarter than he gave her credit for. Her reluctance to provide him with such crucial information meant that he would really need to up the ante to win her trust.

  ‘That’s as far as I’ve ever reached,’ said Malcolm. ‘The fog claims me shortly after. However, before I am whisked away, there’s a faint flicker above the chest of my dead body. It’s the reason I brought us all together. It was–’

  ‘Yeah, about that. How did you bring us back here?’ asked Hal, interrupting him without remorse as he drew a sharp line across the page of his notebook.

  ‘Hal’s got a point, Peter’s funeral is one thing,’ said Kara, stealing a glance at Hal’s notepad trying to decipher his scratchy handwriting, but giving up. ‘It makes sense that something as big as that could change our future into a world where Peter was dead. But it doesn’t explain what caused a coffee shop to explode. You basically Restarted the entire world around us. What else did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything’ said Malcolm. ‘I don’t know what was changed to warrant your return, or of the coffee shop of which you speak. I merely brought Peter and Fearne into phase with you once I spotted you.’

  Hal and Kara sensed there was way more he wasn’t telling them, but with no way to prove it, they had little choice than to accept that at face value.

  For the time being, at least. Whatever that even meant anymore.

  ‘As I was saying,’ continued Malcolm. ‘Before my restart chain ends, there’s a flicker of blue electricity. And, seeing as how my particular brand of Restarter energy consists more of…the claret variety, that can mean only one thing; I am revived at a point beyond our thirty-three-hour time loop. At least, long enough for me to reach a hospital.’

  ‘Paramedics maybe?’ suggested Kara.

  ‘Unlikely,’ posed Malcolm. ‘Who would have called them? My working theory is that someone came back, somehow managing to restart my heart.’

  ‘And you think,’ said Peter, ‘that it was us?’

  ‘No, Peter,’ said Malcolm, ‘I think it was the two of you.’

  He stared at Hal and Kara.

  ‘Hate to break it you to Malc’,’ said Hal, ‘But Kara and I vanish after our thirty-three-hours are up. No matter what gets changed, no matter what phase we’re in, after just gone 9pm…’

  Hal enacted the action of a smoke bomb being dropped, adding a wonderfully delivered matching sound effect to indicate the ceasing of their existence.

  Kara saw Hal’s point. ‘There’s no way either of us can resuscitate you after we…take you down. Everything after that point is set in stone.’

  ‘Clearly we find a way to break that rule,’ said
Malcolm, never one to allow such a thing as a pesky temporal constant to stand in his way. ‘You understand now what I need of you. I need you to restart my heart when that time comes. After you have stopped it, of course.’

  Hal and Kara looked at each other, wondering if they should break the news to him about why his plan was so awful. It wasn’t just the laws of time they would have to break either. It was something much more grounded in the real world. Eventually, Hal nodded, giving Kara the go ahead with a “why not” kind of shrug.

  ‘There’s a huge flaw in your plan you haven’t accounted for…’ said Kara.

  Malcolm looked confused. Incredulous even. As if that were impossible. He had dedicated an entire year of his life to this plan, and was certain he had accounted for everything.

  ‘What are you talking about,’ he said snappily.

  ‘I’m sorry Malcolm, but even if you are as coherent as you claim to be, eventually that version of you in the coma may wake up, with no memory of any of this. It’ll just be business as usual for you.’

  ‘Kara’s right,’ said Hal. ‘When we made it out, we didn’t remember any of this. You said it yourself, neither did you.’

  ‘That is a risk I’m willing to take,’ barked Malcolm, taking precisely half a nanosecond to mull that over, his calm façade dropping to reveal more than a glimmer of his true nature.

  ‘And one we simply can’t take,’ added Kara.

  ‘But you’ve already taken that risk. I’m living evidence that you restarted my heart!’ Malcolm countered.

  ‘I’m no doctor,’ said Kara, ‘but even if we could hold off a restart long enough to revive you, there’s no telling what damage that could cause to your physical body. The implications would be…well, I have no idea. But my prognosis would be not bloody great is what I’m saying.’

  ‘Wait, I need to get my head around this,’ said Hal. ‘So, you’ve done all this,’ he added, raising his hands as if to encompass the room. ‘You changed our 165th restart, offering up Pete here as a sacrifice, then escaped the restarts entirely. Then found yourself in some kind of …restarting hospital. You then killed yourself at said hospital, nipped back and helped Peter and Fearne trade their lives for mine and Kara’s?’

  ‘That is correct,’ said Malcolm. ‘After reviewing multiple timelines I discovered that without my help, they would never have changed time to bring you to the beginning of your journey in the first place.’

  ‘You can travel between timelines?!’ said Kara, her mind blown.

  ‘It’s…complicated,’ said Malcolm, not eager to get into that just yet.

  ‘Oh, you can put a pin in that bullshit,’ said Hal, not wishing to get thrown off trajectory for what he felt was an important summary. ‘So, you recruited the four of us…now you want to help us defeat a version of you from the past, in an upcoming punch-up, with no idea of how Kara and I’s past was changed for us to be even having this conversation right now…all in the hope it will finally set you free permanently?’

  ‘Set all of us free, Harold. Once and for all. My offer is simple; allow me to help you survive the oncoming onslaught my past-self is threatening to rain down upon you. All I ask for in exchange is the small gesture of restarting my heart when the time comes so that I can become the man in front of you now.

  Malcolm stood up and offered an open hand in the direction of the baffled Restarters. An offer that was soon to be solidified in time as a temporal constant, with the utterance of ten words that threatened to take their lives down a path they never could have predicted in a million restarts;

  ‘So, what say you, Restarters? Do we have a deal?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Fault in our Time Zones

  167th Restart – Friday, August 24th, 1:17pm.

  It took Hal and Kara an exorbitant amount of time before they could form a full sentence, due to being doubled over in utter hysterics as they laughed deliriously in the face of both Malcolm and his utterly-insane offer.

  ‘Hahahahaaaaa! He-he wants a–’ tried Hal, still not nailing it, until eventually he grew quiet for a moment, letting the preposterousness of the situation sink in.

  ‘T-truce!’ spluttered Kara, her sides splitting once again and sending her into an endless cycle of giggles which, in turn, set Hal off again.

  ‘Th-that’s your play?’ said Hal, totally in stitches.

  ‘There’s no need to be so rude,’ said Malcolm, in the manner of a man being brutally scrutinised in a job interview that, up until now, he thought had been going rather well.

  Having spent a long time on his speech, he felt it was more than passable. Good, even. Clearly his efforts had been wasted on the cretins before him.

  ‘No!’ said Hal finally, wiping the tears from his eyes and cheeks. ‘No chance. No way. Never going to happen, Malc’!’

  ‘Hal, maybe we should listen to him,’ said Peter, the gravity of saying no to a man such as this crashing down on him like an anvil of life-changing destruction. ‘If even half of what he says is true–’

  ‘Oh, there’s a surprise,’ said Hal, his good mood being quickly nullified by yet another elephant in the room let loose by Peter, who seemed determined to turn Hal and Kara’s life into an elephant-only menagerie. ‘We’re team Jacob, and Peter’s Team Edward.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean,’ said Fearne, her temper flaring at the loaded pop-culture reference.

  ‘I think,’ said Hal, ‘you know exactly what that’s supposed to mean,’ his words cutting through her like one of the collector items that were surely mounted on the walls of wherever Malcolm actually called home.

  ‘No,’ said Peter, ‘it’s more than that. If this version of Malcolm helped us escape our repeats…’

  The room fell silent, as Hal debated the ramifications of that.

  ‘Is that really true?’ said Kara, praying it wasn’t.

  ‘It is,’ said Malcolm, setting fire to said prayer before it had a chance to take flight.

  If that truly were the case, and they didn’t accept his offer, this very version of Malcolm from their shared future would be unable go back and help Peter and Fearne to free themselves from their restarts. Meaning Peter and Fearne would never have escaped their purgatory.

  ‘But if you don’t break your restart chain,’ said Kara, addressing Peter and refusing to adopt their time-traveller terminology, despite the seriousness of the situation dawning on her, ‘Hal and I will never inherit the restarts in the first place!’

  They had not only seen a glimmer of this potential future, they’d lived in a similar version of it for the past six weeks. Or was that six weeks from now? Kara decided not to dwell on semantics.

  The four of them stared at each other in silence, none of them wanting to be the one to admit they had been well and truly backed into a time-travel-tinged corner.

  ‘You clever bastard,’ said Hal, staring at the man claiming to be from their future. The fact they were still here in this very moment proved they were destined to say yes.

  They had no choice.

  Their entire existence hinged upon their collaboration. ‘He’s just Act 3 Prisoner of Azkaban’d us!’

  Hal once again took to his pad, amending his list to incorporate how not helping this version of Malcolm would have a knock-on effect to the previous timelines he had mapped out, passing it to Kara.

  Timeline Prime – Arrive at Fir Lodge.

  Timeline Alpha – Peter and Fearne ruin our lives.

  Future Malcolm shows Pete and Fearne exactly what to change to ruin our lives.

  Timeline Beta – Hal and Kara Restart.

  Kick Time’s ass! #Timepolice

  Timeline Charlie – Dark Restarter Malcolm changes

  future. Kills Pete. Karma. Hal and Kara survive.

  (Because awesomeness.)

  Timeline Delta – Whatever this thing currently is.

  The four of us stop Dark Restarter Malcolm from killing Peter, bringing Dark Restarter back into his restart
chain. He must reach the hospital or Timeline Alpha is toast.

  ‘Oh…’ Kara’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, that is clever. If we don’t get the version of Malcolm we just stopped from killing Pete to the hospital at the end of all this, and it erases Peter and Fearne’s chain of restarts…’

  ‘We’ll be torching Timeline Beta. All 165 of our first run of restarts!’ confirmed Hal, relieved she understood. ‘Which means no Malcolm 2.0 timeline. And, just for good measure, the timeline we’re currently in would get wiped as well. We wouldn’t even be having this debate right now.’

  ‘None of us would,’ said Fearne, grasping Peter’s point now that it had been explained in greater detail by Hal.

  In truth, Peter really hadn’t considered the long reaching effects of his initial observation. His mind blown by how one man could be causing so much chaos.

  ‘Am I saying “timelines” too much?’ Hal whispered to Kara, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the matter.

  ‘A little,’ she confirmed, causing Hal to nod apologetically, taking her constructive criticism on board.

  None of them seemed sure on if Future Malcolm’s plan was pure genius, or pure blind luck.

  But one fact was clear; they needed to make sure Malcolm made it to that hospital on Sunday the 26th of August. A point in time none of them could physically reach.

  Malcolm stood there, arms crossed, stone faced, the hint of an irritating smile lurking beneath his left cheek, despite not knowing precisely what that meant.

  ‘Okay,’ said Hal, forced into changing his tune. ‘First off, “Repeats” is never going to be a thing Pete, so stop trying. Secondly, even if we wanted to stop Malcolm 2.0, that version of you is literally running around in a completely different phase to us. We stopped him, remember? Now he’s out-of-phase and in a brand-new restart groove.’

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Malcolm. ‘That was intentional. I thought it prudent to allow you all the necessary time to acclimatise, rather than dropping you all in at the deep end and forcing you to face my past-self head-on.’