by Keith Hughes
After rummaging in the desk, he came away with two pencils and an interoffice envelope. Having always been adept with chopsticks, he held the pencils in the same manner and used the rubber erasers to carefully lift the device and drop it in the envelope. Ness closed the safe and swung the painting back into place.
Stopping at the door, he looked around the room, making sure he had everything he’d come with, including his empty gun, and verifying everything looked as he’d found it, except for the bits of Paul splattered on the wall. He smirked at Glenn’s sleeping form. This version would have a surprise when he awoke to the mess brought about by Paul’s demise.
Not my mess, so I don’t have to clean it.
He gave the unconscious killer a jaunty wave and could not keep a grin of victory off his lips.
“Be seeing you.” He fervently hoped the opposite would hold true. As Ness left the lab, the satisfaction of his accomplishment buoyed him. His promise to the doctor had been kept. Ness should have been relieved, or even ecstatic, that he’d not only kept his promise to the doctor but also survived the ordeal, but his exhaustion started to assert itself. Regardless, he could not shake a niggling sense deep in his mind he had forgotten something important, and this worry tarnished his sense of achievement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Protecting the Future
Wednesday, September 03, 2008 11:09 p.m.
Nighttime had the ability to make the ordinary appear magical, and the yellow light emitting from streetlights crafted like a Victorian fantasy only added to the otherworldly atmosphere. In the silence of the car, Ness had a sense of having crossed into another dimension.
In a large metropolitan area like Detroit, the main roads were never deserted. The sparse amount of traffic so late at night occasionally gave Ness the illusion of having the road to himself, which only added to his sense of dislocation.
His eyelids drooped, and he fought a special beyond-tired lethargy, a consequence of nearly twenty-four hours without sleep. If he didn’t get some shut-eye soon, his body would force the issue.
At least returning the doctor’s car and finding a bed are my only tasks left tonight, he mused through a yawn.
He piloted the car around the corner, and the envelope clad PDA slid across the leather of the passenger seat.
That is the device Glenn will use to come to this time, appear in the lab, and kill Paul. That realization triggered a small avalanche of logic, tumbling and sliding until it revealed an inescapable conclusion.
“Oh, hell.” He had risked his life to retrieve the second device and safeguard it from Glenn, but his brain wanted him to give it back so events would play out as they already had.
How did it get in the doctor’s secret cubby in the first place? Ness frowned. Perhaps Dr. Bertrand would have retrieved it himself and placed it in the cubby later in this time line.
Did I create a mess by going to the lab to retrieve this device myself? Had it truly been necessary to retrieve the second PDA at the lab? If so, how did Glenn get the device?
Ness knew his exhausted brain did not have the capacity for such complicated reasoning. As he drove on the quiet residential street, Ness decided he didn’t want to risk changing something that might resurrect Glenn and put him back on the hunt through time. From what Ness could tell, the second PDA had imploded with him. As long as this result remained unchanged, it could not cause any future harm.
The doctor’s shadowy house appeared welcoming now that he knew no one from Intellisys would be lurking inside. He parked the car in the garage and used his shirttail to wipe his fingerprints from the steering wheel and other controls he had touched. Then he gathered his belongings and entered the house. Using the glow of the stove clock as his only illumination, he wiped the car keys with a towel then replaced them where he had found them. He had barely enough light to move along the hallway to the office. He again utilized the desk lamp so he could at least see a little. He wiped the doctor’s keycard and returned it to the desk drawer.
He used the back of a knuckle to swing open the picture of him and the doctor then carefully slid the device out of the envelope and into the secret space. It sat right in the middle, an easy discovery whenever Glenn came back to do his search.
“I hope I’m not going to rue this later. It could be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Ness grumbled. He swung the picture shut again, concealing the second PDA.
He collapsed into the welcoming leather of the desk chair, and every part of his body groaned as his muscles relaxed. The nap he had taken on the bus to Kalamazoo seemed like a lifetime ago, and as Ness enjoyed the easing of his physical tension, his eyelids fluttered closed.
Don’t fall asleep. I don’t want to be here when past-Glenn comes to do his search.
Opening his eyes took an unexpected amount of effort, but he forced himself to do it. The PDA confirmed he still had several hours of borrowed time left, but he had spent enough time in the past. After flicking the desk lamp off, he clicked the return button. As he started toward his home time, Ness questioned where he had been when he instigated this jump to the past. So much had happened that he could not recall. He neglected to account for one important detail, as he had not been sitting when he started his trek. But his body remained in a sitting posture from Dr. Bertrand’s chair. Ness toppled backward as, temporally speaking, he had the chair pulled out from under him. Falling on a dense mat of leaves and brush, he recognized the woods behind the house.
He lay still on the ground. Being still eased his fatigue with an amazing sensation of well-being. The chair had been much more comfortable, but the leaves would do for a bit. The late-afternoon sun sparkled against leaves rustling in the slight breeze. A trio of birds engaged in a musical conversation, a counterpoint to the tranquil setting.
Ness woke to the persistent buzzing of a mosquito trying to find its way into his ear canal. When he opened his eyes, night had fallen, and the birds had gone silent. The sky shone with a discernable glow radiating upward from the horizon to obscure the stars. Checking the PDA, Ness discovered he had slept until shortly after four in the morning. He tried to sit but grunted with sudden pain at the movement. Every muscle, joint, and ligament in his body had stiffened as he slept on the ground, and they all protested being put back to work.
He stood and stretched out his back before slowly crossing the lawn. Sliding open the kitchen door, Ness saw Thing One’s shoes protruding out of the doctor’s office.
I guess someone should deal with this. Ness sighed. He did not claim responsibility for the mess, but Ness refused to leave the body to putrefy and further contaminate the doctor’s home.
The kitchen phone, mounted to the wall near the garage door, had a speakerphone button. Still trying to avoid prints, Ness pressed it with his knuckle, resulting in the loud buzz of a dial tone. He dialed three digits.
“9-1-1 dispatch. What is the nature of your emergency?”
Ness deepened his voice. No sense making it easy to identify him on a recording, even though the effect sounded odd to his own ears. “There’s been a murder. One man, shot in the head.”
“Where did this murder take place, sir?”
Ness told the dispatcher Dr. Bertrand’s address and turned away from the phone toward the sliding door.
“And who shot the victim? Sir?”
Ignoring the requests for further information, Ness stepped back out on the deck and closed the door. The proper authorities could handle the situation without further help from him. He doubted he would even be questioned about it, but getting involved would only make him a suspect.
He passed through brush and murky yards to finally make it to Glenn’s car, which was still parked at the school. Although Ness was reluctant to use the killer’s vehicle any more than he had to, his options were limited. The keys were in the glove box, where he had left them, and he drove back home. At one point, he pulled over for the flashing lights of three patrol cars racing toward Dr. Bertra
nd’s house. Once they were past, Ness continued on his way.
Even with the death his adventure had spawned, he enjoyed a sense of grim contentment. He had not personally killed anyone, and neither Glenn’s nor Paul’s deaths would be a detriment to the gene pool. Besides the loss of Dr. Bertrand, the only lamentable act had been the murder of Thing One.
I guess when you hang out with predators, eventually everyone is considered food.
Driving alone, battered and exhausted, Ness hoped this ordeal was over and he could finally go home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Wild Goose Chase
Thursday, September 11, 2008 5:14 a.m.
The morning air smelled of sweetness and coffee, and Ness’s stomach rumbled at the prompting. He recognized the source: a bakery on the street ahead, one of his favorite places for a relaxed breakfast. He typically stopped there on Saturday mornings for a couple of crullers. But the siren call of his bed won out, and he decided not to delay the final block and a half of his walk. He had left Glenn’s car in a Big Boy parking lot a couple of miles north then taken a bus to get him as close to home as possible. He’d walked the last half mile or so.
As he could see his building ahead, Ness remembered his crazy leap from balcony to balcony. So much had happened since then that Ness could swear it had happened weeks ago, though it had only been less than two days here in his home time. That reminded him of his apartment and the ruined state of pretty much everything he owned. He had not checked out his bedroom on the first three-hour jaunt into the future, but he didn’t imagine it had fared any better than the rest of the place. The unfairness of having his entire life ripped opened and trampled underfoot made him angry. He wanted his life back the way it had always been.
As he finished walking the last block, an idea occurred to Ness, and a grin grew the more he considered it.
I can fix this. I can keep Glenn from trashing my place.
The plan erupted fully formed in his mind. He admired it like a bright and shining jewel. It would mean another delay in catching some sleep, but Ness knew it would be worth it.
At his building, instead of entering the lobby, he went into the parking structure. The ramp led him past his assigned parking space and to the small unused area where Thing One had tried to corral him. He took out the time machine and set a destination of two days before on September ninth at five thirty in the afternoon. He might have to wait, but the chance for success made it worth the delay.
When he arrived, he stayed on his feet, afraid his body might even find sitting on concrete comfortable enough for a nap. He took to pacing around the small space. Fortunately, none of his neighbors came home to see him loitering in such an odd fashion. Finally, after almost half an hour, Ness saw his blue Saturn Ion ascending the ramp. He waited until the car pulled into his spot before walking to meet it. His double left the car with his camera bag over his shoulder. But he stopped at the sound of Ness’s footsteps. His copy stood frozen for a couple seconds with his mouth agape.
Jeez, did I look so stupid to my future self in the apartment?
Ness amused himself with the remembrance of the muttered comment his copy had made on their first meeting. No doubt his reaction had been similar.
“Hi, we need to talk.”
His slightly younger self took time to swallow before answering. “Okay.”
“We need to move fast, so here’s the deal.” Ness hoped his other self could accept what he was about to tell him. “In your mail today is a box from Dr. Bertrand. It contains this.”
He showed him the PDA, which his copy examined with a considering look.
“He modified it to enable the holder to travel through time. This is how I’m here now. I am from two days in your future.”
His copy’s eyebrows rose in surprise, but otherwise, he made no comment.
“There are some videos on the PDA where Dr. Bertrand explains what’s going on, but you can watch those later. There are men from the doctor’s lab who want to get it, and they destroyed our apartment, trying to find it.”
“Destroyed?” His other self found the notion disturbing, just as Ness did.
“I can prevent it if we work together. Can you go get the box?”
The copy jogged to the entrance to the lobby. A minute later, he returned holding the box.
“Open it. Take the PDA out of the inner box, and I’ll take them.”
It took only a minute to open both containers. The doppelganger held his version of the PDA, looking at it with awe. Ness grabbed the car keys from his other hand and unlocked the Ion. He placed both boxes on the shelf below the back window, positioning them so they would be extremely visible to anyone looking from behind.
“So, what are we doing?”
Ness popped open the trunk and faced his double.
“Go ahead and put your camera bag in here. There are several deadly men in a van waiting to run upstairs and nab the PDA. I’m going to drive this car right past them, where they should see the boxes. If all goes well, they will follow me, and our home will remain intact.”
“And what do I do?”
Ness gave his copy a rueful smile. “Wait a couple minutes after I leave then get out of here. Find someplace safe to watch the doctor’s videos and do what he asks. These men won’t be fooled for long, and they will be on your heels before you know it. They have a lot of access to security cameras and the like. It won’t be easy, but as you can see, you’ll live through it.”
“Okay, this is insane, but you’re obviously me. Tell me, though, what’s with the T-shirt?”
Ness looked down at his shirt. “Camouflage.” Then he opened the driver’s door, turned, and gave his befuddled self a small wave. “Be seeing you.”
Sitting at the wheel, he turned on the engine. Pausing for a moment of self-reflection, Ness held on to his firm resolution to implement his insane plan to save his apartment by changing his past. He ignored the writhing ball of qualms in his gut as he put the car in gear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Follow the Leader
Thursday, September 9, 2008 5:42 p.m.
It’s good to be back in my own vehicle. Backing out of the parking space, he reveled in his connection to the small blue car. It had always fit Ness like a glove. No one would categorize it as impressive or even sporty, but he enjoyed driving it.
He descended the parking structure to street level and glanced behind. His two-day-younger double stared after him. Fly, you fool!
As if he could hear Ness’s instruction, his other self bolted toward the lobby exit. Turning his attention back to driving, he maneuvered the car onto Main Street. Glenn’s van was parked across the road. The driver’s face was easily recognizable perched atop the thick trunk of the body-builder’s neck.
Ness drove alongside them then came to a quick stop. He didn’t have to worry about attracting their attention. The angry horns from the drivers behind took care of that. Glenn’s goon gawked out the window. Ness smirked and held up the PDA. The driver’s eyes widened, and his lips moved, which had Glenn glowering over his shoulder. The killer sneered to see the object of his search so close at hand.
Okay, the hook is baited.
Trying not to envision himself as an impaled worm, Ness stomped on the accelerator, and the little car shot forward. He didn’t have a racing engine, but this vehicle’s pep was one of the things Ness liked about it. In the rearview mirror, he watched the van take advantage of a narrow opening to perform a quick U-turn, accompanied by even more horn honking. There were several cars between them, but the driver used the two available lanes to swerve around traffic and close the gap.
In less than a mile, Ness had left downtown Royal Oak and entered the I-696 freeway heading east. Once among the high-speed traffic, he engaged in the typical Detroit-area practice of considering the seventy-mile-an-hour speed limit more of a suggestion. He sped away, but the van descended the ramp behind him.
His pursuer’s vehicle might hav
e looked rundown, but its engine had obviously been upgraded from factory default, because it roared into expressway traffic and weaved around slower vehicles. Ness mashed his accelerator harder, wondering how much speed his little car could produce. He had never driven above eighty before, but he was pushing ninety.
Despite his speed, the front end of Glenn’s dented white van filled Ness’s rear window. His speed crept to ninety-five with added pressure to the accelerator. It could go no further; Ness had reached the limit of his vehicle’s capabilities. The van matched his pace with ease, and if anything, it consumed the distance between them even more quickly. Ness pulled his attention forward as he nearly plowed into another car and had to juke right, missing it with scant room to spare. He had been in the left-most lane, but Ness and his pursuers were faster than anything else on the road.
Holy crap, that’s a cop!
They rocketed past a blue Michigan State Police patrol car. As expected, the light on its roof flashed an angry red as it commenced pursuit. The van bumped into Ness’s rear bumper, making the car shake. It was a light tap, not enough to spin him out.
At these speeds, losing control would likely mean my death.
He could not cajole any more speed out of his engine; the small four-cylinder had never been intended for high-speed chases. The stress of the chase birthed sweat on his brow, and he watched the engine temperature with trepidation as it crept higher.
Another juddering impact from the rear rattled Ness, and the van swerved. He risked a quick glance behind to see the police cruiser hard on the rear of the van. It must have rammed against the van’s back end, driving it into the Ion’s bumper. As Ness watched in the rearview, the van dumped speed rapidly, and the driver fought for control. The police car veered beside the vehicle, using its bulk to shepherd the van toward the center of the highway, near the cement wall separating the two flows of traffic.
