The Dark Restarter

by Sean McMahon

  Her friend dusted himself off and looked directly at her, or rather, through her. Glancing down at what Kara presumed was a watch, she saw him bring his wrist closer to his face, as he twisted the rotating bezel and whispered gently into his own arm.

  ‘Okay Iris, I’m going for minimal contamination, wake me up when it’s time to go go,’ said Hal, seemingly unaware of Kara’s presence. A voice emanated from the watch, as the circular dial lit up in a vibrant blue.

  ‘You should leave immediately,’ said a female voice that seemed as articulate as she was keen to enunciate. ‘As I advised. Before you ignored me and came here anyway.’

  ‘Don’t you sass me, Iris,’ said Hal. ‘This is a temporal constant, just like the bar in London. Probably.’

  Kara, still invisible to him, noted how he muttered that final word with a lack of conviction.

  ‘You mean the bar fight,’ said Iris, her tone dripping with sarcasm. ‘Which could have been avoided, had you just listened to–’’

  ‘Mute,’ said Hal abruptly, causing the dial to flash angrily, before settling back down to a gun-metal grey.

  Hal reached into the pocket of a black leather jacket she’d never seen him wear before, retrieving a ridiculous pair of nerdy specs that more than a little reminded her of the ones she had worn to finish off her Velma costume. He popped them on, then pressed gently against the left-hand side of the frame, the transparent lenses instantly becoming opaque with a wild blue hue.

  Hal continued to press the frame of his glasses, breathing deeply through his nose as the lenses flickered in tandem with his touch. ‘Nope…nope…still nope.’ He huffed in frustration, each utterance of the same word becoming snippier.

  ‘Hal?’ said Kara, standing up and walking towards him, surveying his attire; dark blue jeans that looked like they needed an iron, a pair of worn brown boots, and a black t-shirt emblazoned with bright neon blue numbers and letters that read “88MPH”. She noted that they were printed in a font that had an eighties sort of vibe to it. All of which solidifying the chilling realisation that this was not the same version of her friend from the here and now.

  Finally, his eyes were apparently met with what he was looking for.

  ‘‘There she is! Kara!’ said Hal, making her jump, as he ran towards her and attempted to give her a big hug. Regrettably, he passed straight through her, and span around on the spot looking more than a little embarrassed. ‘Right, bollocks, schoolboy phase-fail.’

  ‘What’s…happening right now?’ asked Kara, forgivably confused.

  ‘Wait, hang on,’ said not-Hal. ‘Can’t hear you, it’s a whole thing,’ he added, this time reaching into the pocket of his jeans to retrieve a small, black coloured object, which he jammed into his ear, pressing the frame of his glasses for a second time.

  ‘Hey!’ said Hal. ‘Sorry, forgot to pair them up. What was that you just said?’

  ‘Hey…I said what’s going on?’ replied Kara, growing a little impatient with all his faffing. She took comfort in the fact that some things clearly never changed. Whatever was happening, this seemed like his first time at it.

  ‘Oh, sorry, we’re not in-phase with each other right now. You can hear me, but I can’t see or hear you without these things,’ he said extending a finger of his left hand and running it in circles in the direction of his glasses and ear piece, like a cowboy spinning an invisible pistol.

  Kara stared at him, the backdrop of the lake now behind him.

  ‘Are you really here?’ asked Kara. It seemed like as good a question as any.

  ‘Are any of us?’ said Hal, shooting her a warm smile that failed to hide the tiredness lurking in his eyes.

  She couldn’t decide if he was making a joke to lighten the mood, or if he was hiding behind one to conceal an ugly truth. Knowing him the way she did, she’d put money on the latter.

  ‘You're looking...well,’ she lied, his usual five-o’clock shadow having grown out dangerously close to being regarded as a full beard, his hair far longer than she'd ever seen it. Still short, but very unkempt. ‘You want to fill me in, here?’

  ‘Right. Yeah. Of course,’ said Hal, clearly trying to find the right words.

  She walked past him and sat back down on the log, knowing full well he was gearing up for a classic Hal-branded ramble. ‘I’m…well, from the future. A future I should say.’

  ‘You. Right now? You’re from the future?!’ It seemed obvious as soon as he said it. ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘Oh, you know. The usual; life, death, tequila…and time travel.’ That seemed to make him chuckle for some reason. ‘To be honest, it…feels like a story for another time. Or from another time, as it were.’

  ‘Urgh,’ grimaced Kara playfully. ‘I can only imagine how long you've been waiting to bust that one out.’

  ‘I just came up with it now,’ said Hal earnestly.

  ‘Liar,’ she said, shooting him a knowing smile.

  ‘Ha. It's really good to see you Kara.’

  ‘How is the future? Tell me we beat this thing!’

  Her voice was full of hope, which she reasoned wasn’t unwarranted. After all, if he was here speaking to her, it surely meant they had made it back.

  ‘The future's okay,’ said Hal breezily. ‘I meeeean, the zombie outbreak set us back a bit. But at least Avengers 4 had a terrific ending!’

  ‘Wait, seriously?!’

  ‘Yeah, I know right, I was surprised they stuck the landing on that too. So much hype,’ said Hal, his eyes glazing over at the fond memories.

  ‘I hate you,’ said Kara, realising he was joking.

  ‘Anywhoooo, I can't tell you any more than that, but something’s going to happen. When it does, I need you to focus on one thing, okay?’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ asked Kara.

  ‘I can’t say,’ Hal replied cagily.

  ‘Okay, when is it going to happen?’

  ‘I…can’t say,’ he said again, his brow furrowing with frustration.

  ‘Are you kidding me right now?’ said Kara, noting a fleeting reflection of herself in the lenses of Hal’s glasses. An outline that seemed incomplete, as if she was made up of fluctuating lines of a vibrantly blue neon.

  ‘All I can tell you is that you need to go big. Bigger than we've ever gone. We're talking Full Blue. I won't be able to lock on unless it's big.’

  ‘Full blue?! Cryptic much?’ said Kara, her voice peppered with a drollness that caused Hal to laugh.

  ‘Sorry, but I’m sorta breaking every rule in the book just by being here. Oh, there's one more thing.’

  ‘Shoot,’ said Kara, quickly coming to terms with there being no point in asking this time-travelling Columbo any more questions.

  Hal hesitated, as if he were weighing up whether he had already said too much. But eventually, the Hal she knew won the internal battle.

  ‘I’ll never stop looking. Ever. Understand?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Kara truthfully.

  ‘Say it,’ he pressed.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘What I just said.’

  ‘You'll never stop looking. I get it. Jeez.’

  ‘Also, and I know it sucks, but don't tell past-me anything about what we've just talked about, okay? That’s incredibly important,’ his eyes suddenly full of worry.

  ‘What have we just talked about?’ said Kara, genuinely unsure.

  ‘Exactly.’

  The watch around Hal’s wrist began to beep, the screen glowing a worrying red, which he responded to by pressing the screen and killing the alarm. Presumably, she reasoned, it was signalling him that it was time to leave.

  ‘Okay Kar’, close your eyes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because time travel and reasons, Kara. Just trust me.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, closing her eyes and crossing her arms, as well as blowing a stray strand of hair that was dangling from her fringe in pathetic rebellion.

  She felt a presence leaning in close to her a
s her friend from another time whispered three nonsensical words into her ear.

  ‘Follow the flamingo,’ he said.

  A parting gift to remind her he was definitely the real deal and not an echo. His dumb sense of humour still very much intact.

  ‘Oh, come on Hal, you–’ but upon opening her eyes, she realised he was gone.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ said Hal, who had approached her silently from the left and was standing directly behind her.

  ‘Gah!’ she screamed, noting that this was her Hal. ‘What the shit, Hal?!’ she said punching him hard in the shoulder, blue sparks exploding from the contact and making him stagger backwards. ‘You scared the crap out of me, sneaking up on me like that.’

  ‘I wasn’t sneaking,’ he said, rubbing his arm. ‘It’s not my fault I can’t generate sound when I walk.’

  ‘Dick.’

  ‘What’s got you so spooked anyway?

  ‘No one,’ said Kara, instantly correcting her course. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Uh huh, Are you sure you’re okay? You look like you've had a run in with a boggart or something.’

  ‘I understood that reference,’ said Kara, forcing a chuckle.

  ‘Finally!’ said Hal. ‘Maybe you are human after all!’

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied, her mind clearly somewhere other than the present.

  ‘Because, I’ll be honest. I was legit starting to wonder. Come on, we need to get going,’ he added, not utterly convinced Kara was being entirely open with him, but respecting her space all the same. ‘Hannibal Lecter just popped up with Pete and Fearne.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ replied Kara, looking back over her shoulder hoping to catch a glimpse of the future iteration of her friend, the ominous nature of their conversation feeling more like a dream with each passing moment.

  And with each step she took, the memory slipped further and further away from her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Flutterby Conundrum

  Restart Unknown – Friday, August 24th, 2018, 4:11pm

  'You guys took your sweet time,’ said Kara, eyeing Peter and Fearne with notable suspicion.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Hal with equal mistrust. ‘What happened? Did the three of you stop off for a quick killing spree before coming back?’

  ‘How many times can we apologise?’ said Peter, as diplomatically as he could muster, though the constant attacks and jokes were wearing real thin real fast, and his tolerance for Hal’s anger had all but been expended.

  ‘The amount of time you were gone, surely you had time to burn down the odd orphanage or two?’ said Hal, refusing to relent.

  Fearne dispensed a dagger-like glare at the Restarter, and seemed to inhale enough breath to fuel a tornado of retaliation, before Malcolm stepped in to explain their absence.

  ‘As you saw yourselves, during our foray along the precipice of infinity, it is not an exact science. I had trouble locating the two of you Harold, nothing more,’ Malcolm’s words offering little in the way of warming the frost between them, eliciting a feeling deep within Kara that made her wonder if dividing them all had been his intention from the very beginning.

  ‘So, which repeat,’ began Peter, before feeling the room and adjusting his lexicon. ‘Sorry, restart, are we in right now?’ He’d sensed pretty early on that “Repeats” was not going to catch on, and when Malcolm adopted the term Restarters, that was pretty much the last nail in the vernacular coffin.

  ‘We couldn’t tell you,’ said Hal sourly. ‘We haven’t ventured back to Fir Lodge to check. We were waiting on you.’

  ‘Well, let’s get going then,’ said Fearne coldly, marching away from them down the road, with Hal following in hot pursuit.

  ‘Is this a bad time to tell them that’s the wrong way?’ Kara whispered to Peter.

  ‘Most definitely.’

  *

  After a diplomatically orchestrated course correction, and some considerable sleuthing later, the once and future Velma, Ghostbuster, Pro-Golf Player and Marilyn Monroe had all managed to ascertain this particular restart appeared to be somewhere not even remotely close to the 165th time-loop of Hal and Kara’s first adventure that they had hoped for, which Malcolm convinced them was actually a good thing.

  Before they made another attempt to phase with his past – and considerably more murderous – self, he proposed that they should probably use the opportunity to prepare for what would surely be a dangerous first contact.

  They knew that in order to reach their target, they would eventually be forced into returning to The White Lodge, where Malcolm would then have to search for the red-coloured anchor that represented his former self. It was Malcolm’s hope that they would then be able to latch on to a nearby echo of the past, hopefully generating some distance between the Restarters and Malcolm’s darker persona.

  After all, Future Malcolm had no intention of allowing his past-self to know he was working with the four of them, given that it could have, as he put it, “disastrous repercussions in terms of cause and effect.”

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Peter. ‘Why don’t we just send Future Malcolm here to go and take care of this Dark version of himself?’

  Having calmed down a little, Hal and Fearne had reverted to a far more amicable level of passive-aggression towards each other. This was, in part, a direct result of returning to Fir Lodge, and getting to relive (albeit vicariously) the highlights of Rachel’s thirtieth birthday party.

  ‘Did you see that?’ said Fearne excitedly, watching as her past-self and past-Stacey completely destroyed Jon and Gavin at a round of beer pong. ‘We really smashed them at that!’ she continued, watching as her alive-self removed the blonde wig of her costume and swished her brunette hair with a sturdy rambunctiousness.

  ‘I cannot attack this…Dark Restarter as you call him, head on,’ said Malcolm, immediately quashing the idea.

  ‘I can’t see why…wait? What did you just say?’ said Hal, Spider-Sense flaring.

  ‘I said I can’t confront him head on,’ said Malcolm, growing impatient at having to repeat himself.

  ‘Not that,’ a look of suspicion rolling across Hal’s features. ‘I don’t recall any of us calling past-you a Dark Restarter,’ his brow furrowing and immediately doubting himself.

  Had they said it? Perhaps in passing? So much had happened, it was virtually impossible to keep track. But the niggle clawed at his thoughts all the same.

  ‘You must have,’ said Malcolm simply.

  ‘Preeetty sure we haven’t,’ agreed Fearne. ‘What about when you were at The White Lodge?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Kara.

  ‘I must have just made the leap,’ said Malcolm weakly.

  ‘I guess,’ said Peter, who admittedly had been putting extra emphasis on the word “dark” an awful lot.

  ‘Then I merely assumed that is what you went with. Am I mistaken?’

  The four of them shifted awkwardly.

  ‘Well then, clearly you’re not all as creative as you think you are Harold,’ the killer noted.

  ‘In my defence, Pete came up with it,’ said the Restarter, throwing Peter under the bus.

  ‘Well, Peter,’ said Malcolm coldly. ‘I don’t care much for the term.’

  ‘Fill in a complaint form,’ said Kara. ‘I’ll make sure it gets filed into the correct receptacle. It’s the one that sits under the desk.’

  ‘You know, where the trash lives,’ said Hal, giving Kara a high five.

  As the smattering of blue sparks evaporated, Malcolm let out a sigh, secretly berating himself for making such a stupid error. In the end, he decided to go easy on himself. He had a lot on his plate.

  ‘Juvenile labelling aside, I do not remember it happening,’ said Malcolm matter-of-factly, subtly steering the conversation back to Peter’s suggestion of sending his future-self to take care of his younger, darker, restarting incarnation. ‘Therefore, we must have determined a reason not to take that approach.’

  ‘Well that’s convenient,�
�� said Peter, still smarting over the assassination of what he felt was a totally solid Bad Guy name, watching longingly as Hal retrieved a bottle of water from his backpack.

  ‘Kylo Ren’s right,’ said Hal, referring to Malcolm as he popped the screw-top lid off of his drink.

  Noticing Peter’s apparent desire for some water, Hal smiled at his friend and grabbed the second restarted bottle, lobbing it to him as if it were a hydration-themed peace offering.

  None of them felt thirst here, but there was something oddly comforting about holding an object that was in-phase with them. They were beginning to realise that there was a lot to be said for the nostalgic act of simulated refreshment.

  Flicking the lid of his metal lighter, Hal lit up a cigarette, took a drag, then stubbed it out and discarded it, determined that he was done with the things. Ordering his thoughts, he dropped his theoretical musings on them all.

  ‘Flutterby Effect,’ Hal blurted, causing a smile to run across Kara’s face.

  Actually, his emerging idea had more to do with an Infinity Loop Paradox, but he knew the former terminology would make Kara happy, which was far more important to him than technicalities.

  ‘What’s a…Flutterby Effect?’ said Fearne.

  Kara told them, once again breaking down why “Flutterby” was a much better name for the colourful insect that “butterfly” ever was.

  ‘Malcolm can’t just zip backwards and take himself out,’ said Hal, finally getting to the meat of the matter. ‘Assuming he could even win–’

  ‘Obviously I could,’ said Malcolm proudly, as if it were a given.

  ‘Uh huh, sure you could big guy,’ continued Hal, smiling at Malcolm’s touchiness and adjusting his word use. ‘When ol’ Stabby-McStabberson wins then, and successfully subdues himself, his past-self won’t go on to do all the things he’s already done.’

  ‘Sound like a win to me,’ said Peter.

  ‘Oh, it would be,’ agreed Hal. ‘In the short term. But sooner or later, time will catch up with them both. If Dark-Restarter-Malcolm doesn’t do the things he needs to do to finally become this Malcolm,’ reasoned Hal, pointing towards the fifth member of their party, ‘Future Malcolm will have no reason to be here. All that would come undone.’