Isolation

by Kevin Hardman

  Still incredibly high, I said to myself, then stated aloud, “Okay, we may have to just try this again later.”

  I looked at Myshtal, expecting a response, but she didn’t say anything. In fact, from what I could see, she hadn’t moved since she last spoke. Now staring at her, I quickly realized that she didn’t even appear to be breathing. I waved a hand in front of her face, noting that she didn’t blink, nor did her eyes track any movement.

  I didn’t need any special powers to understand that something weird was happening. I didn’t know the cause, but it seemed best to get her out of Mouse’s lab as soon as possible. With that in mind, I was on the verge of teleporting the two of us when a person suddenly appeared in the corner that Myshtal had been staring at.

  I stared at the new arrival in complete and utter surprise, thoroughly amazed and astounded by who it was.

  The person who had appeared was me.

  Chapter 51

  He was older than I was – in his mid-twenties, I guessed. Dressed in the trademark black-and-gold uniform of the Alpha League, he walked casually towards me, eating an apple.

  Even though I knew the answer, I couldn’t stop the question from leaving my mouth: “Who are you?”

  “You gotta ask?” he responded rhetorically.

  “I mean, are you the version of myself that I met in the past on Caeles?”

  “Yeah,” the older me initially responded. “Well, no… I mean, not yet.”

  “I think I understand,” I said with a nod. “So what are you doing here?”

  “Just hanging out and eating an apple,” he replied.

  “I meant–”

  “I know what you meant,” he said. “I just couldn’t help being a wiseacre for a minute. I mean, how often do you literally get to joke with yourself?”

  He then chuckled for a moment, but stopped when he saw that I wasn’t laughing as well.

  “Geez,” he groused. “I honestly don’t remember being wound up this tight at your age.”

  I ignored his comment. “You were explaining what you were doing here?”

  “Yeah,” my older self droned casually. “I’m sorta, kinda moving backwards through time.”

  “What?!” I exclaimed. “How’d that happen?”

  “World in danger, supervillain with a new weapon, yada, yada, yada,” he intoned. “I saved the day but got blasted. The weapon turned out to be some kind of temporal displacement device, and next thing you know, I’m flying backwards through time.”

  I scratched my temple for a moment. “So if you’re going backwards through time, why is it that you’re here – in my present – instead of continuing on past this temporal juncture?”

  “Every few years, the journey seems to temporarily halt for some reason.”

  “Every few years?!” I repeated incredulously. “How long has this been going on?”

  “You know I can’t answer that,” the older Jim said. “But let me be clear, the years I’m referring to are those that are objective – the ones that I pass through going backwards – and they can go by in a flash.” He snapped his fingers for effect as he spoke.

  “And you also can’t tell me how many years this has been going on subjectively – that is, from your point of view.”

  “Absolutely not,” he stated. “Anyway, I’m not sure what occasionally causes the stop – whether it’s something inherent in the device that blasted me, or some force I encounter, but it seems to happen randomly.”

  “Well, when will this backwards journey end?”

  He gave me a disdainful look. “Really? You think I know the answer to that? Your guess is honestly as good as mine.”

  While I absorbed this information, the older Jim stared at the apple he was holding. He had continued eating while we spoke and was now down to the core.

  “Man,” he muttered, plainly talking to himself. “Still hungry.”

  He then stared at the apple, seeming to concentrate, and moments later, my eyes went wide in surprise as the apple became whole again.

  “How did you do that?” I practically demanded.

  “What – the apple?” he inquired. “Oh, that’s right – you don’t have your full slate of powers yet.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said, still in awe.

  “Eh,” the older me droned with a slight shrug, obviously not impressed. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. You have no idea how tedious it is to have to reconstitute and eat the same apple over and over and over again. What I wouldn’t give for a burger and fries right about now…”

  “Wait a minute,” I remarked. “All you ever eat is that apple?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” he said with a nod. “I somehow had a seed in my pocket when I started this trip, and I grew the apple from it. According to Mouse, it’s all I can eat because it’s essentially the only nourishment from my own timeline. I asked him about maybe having just a little slice of bacon or something, but he completely shut me down.”

  “Really?”

  Older Jim nodded. “Yeah, it was all butterfly effect and crap… If I eat a T-bone steak and throw the remainder away, then some dog at the junkyard chokes on the bone, which somehow leads to some nut jumping off the Eiffel Tower in France next month, and as a result some kid who’s supposed to grow up and save the world isn’t born eighty years from now in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

  “Okay, that’s a lot to digest,” I noted. “But speaking of Mouse, it sounds like he knows about you.”

  “Oh, yeah. I sought him out the minute I stopped moving backwards in time.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me to stay in the lab, stay invisible, and stay phased. Don’t go see anybody, don’t talk to anybody, don’t do anything.”

  “Sounds like Mouse,” I noted with a smile. I then gave my older self a hard stare. “You know what’s going on with him right now, don’t you?’

  “Of course,” Older Jim acknowledged. “All of this is in my past.”

  “And you can’t tell me anything at all?” I asked.

  “Just letting you see me is probably too much. Mouse is going to go bananas when he finds out.”

  “You’re right about that,” I agreed. “Mouse wouldn’t like it at all.”

  Needless to say, that brought to mind the question: why was Older Jim letting me see him then? Why was he even talking to me?

  Of course – he’s trying to help, I realized. That said, he didn’t seem particularly eager to volunteer information. However, he didn’t appear to have a problem answering questions.

  Bearing that in mind, I asked, “So, how long have you been hiding here?”

  “I’d argue that’s classified,” he replied.

  “Yeah, but it had to be before Mouse went on the run, because he hasn’t been back here since as far as I can tell. That means you’ve been here every time I’ve come by during the last few days.”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny,” Older Jim said.

  “So you were here when I came in with Alpha Prime, Luna, and Buzz. You were here when Electra and I found Mouse’s bug-out bag. You were even here when we got the file off the computer.”

  As I finished the last sentence, I saw something like acknowledgment flash in Older Jim’s eyes.

  Something to do with the computer file, I realized. And then I had an epiphany.

  “The computer,” I said. “The one I couldn’t find a power switch for. You turned it on.”

  “Not per se,” Older Jim blurted out. “I no more turned that computer on than I turned on the lights in here.”

  I frowned. Older Jim seemed to be equivocating. Reflecting on his comments about the lights, I looked up.

  There was nothing special about the illumination that I was aware of. The lights simply came on whenever someone showed up in the lab – or rather, a body they could detect, since Older Jim, when phased and invisible, didn’t seem to count. Maybe the computer operated the same way.

  “The computer is like the lights,”
I surmised. “It comes on when someone enters the lab.”

  “Oh, you mean like now?” Older Jim quipped sarcastically.

  It was true. The computer hadn’t come on when Myshtal and I had shown up in the lab – at least, not that I was aware of. Now that my thoughts turned to her, I glanced at the princess and noted that she was still frozen.

  Tilting my chin at her, I asked my older self, “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing, I promise,” he replied. “I merely put the two of us in a time sheath.”

  I gave him a befuddled look. “What’s a time sheath?”

  “Think of it as a bubble around us in which time proceeds normally while being frozen everywhere else,” he replied. “It’s a little trick I picked up from the Incarnates, but don’t ask me anything in that regard because I am definitely not answering any questions about them.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled. “Back to the computer coming on. Like the lights, it powers up when people are present, but apparently it’s only certain people. Thus far, it’s only come on when Electra and I were in here together.”

  I chewed on that last fact for a moment. Why would Mouse require Electra and I to be together for the computer to turn on? If it was just me, I could understand: after all, I was his mentee. I hung out with him in his lab practically every day. But Electra? Sure, Mouse knew and trusted her, but they didn’t spend nearly as much time together as he and I did. Plus, it was common knowledge that Electra and I had broken up. Mandating that we be together for the computer to power up during a crisis didn’t seem reasonable. And if that was the requirement, why hadn’t it turned on when Electra and I returned to look for the bug-out bag? And with that thought came clarity.

  “It’s me,” I declared to my older self. “The computer recognizes me in some way and turns on, not me and Electra.”

  As I spoke, I reached out telepathically, trying to peek in Older Jim’s mind. It was really a reach, as my – and presumably his – mental shields had always been first-rate. As expected, that turned out to be the case in this instance: mentally, I hit a brick wall and was rebuffed.

  “Ha!” my older self barked. “You had to know I was expecting that. Come on, I’ve been here before – right where you are, in fact.”

  “Then you already know exactly what you can and can’t tell me,” I shot back. “So stop making me play these guessing games.”

  Older Jim just stared at me for a moment, as if deciding something.

  “Fine,” he finally stated flatly. “I’ll give you one, and then we’re done.”

  “Great,” I replied. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  My older self let out a sigh and shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing.

  “You’re right about the computer,” he finally admitted. “It’s supposed to turn on for you and only you. The systems in Mouse’s lab are supposed to scan the biometrics of anyone present and if you’re alone, the computer turns on. If someone is with you, the computer stays off.”

  “So why did it turn on when Electra was with me?” I asked, then narrowed my eyes as the truth became evident. “You did something. What was it?”

  “I suppressed all of Electra’s vitals and biometric data, so that the scanners in the lab couldn’t detect them.”

  I had trouble hiding my surprise. “You can do that?”

  “That and a whole lot more,” he declared. “Anyway, as far as the lab’s scanners were concerned, there was no Electra. You were the only person in the room.”

  “And that’s why the computer turned on,” I concluded.

  “Exactly,” Older Jim said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to being unknown and unseen.”

  “Understood,” I stated with a nod. “And thanks.”

  “If you want to thank me,” he shot back, “see if you can get Mouse to let me have something else to eat when this is all over. Maybe some lasagna, or steak, or even takeout. On second thought, scratch the takeout; it doesn’t really agree with me.”

  “Will do,” I promised.

  Older Jim gave me a curt nod and disappeared. The second he vanished, Myshtal began moving.

  “No, I’m ready,” she insisted. “We can try it again now.”

  “Huh?” I muttered, unsure of what she was talking about.

  “You just said something about searching for my ring again later. I was just saying that I’m ready to try again now.”

  “No, I think we’re good at the moment,” I assured her. “Let me get you back to Monique.”

  Chapter 52

  I immediately teleported Myshtal back to Monique’s house. Still under the influence of the brownies, Myshtal apparently couldn’t shake the notion that she had somehow disappointed me. Thus, I made it a point to explain to her that she’d done an excellent job, and I appreciated her efforts. I didn’t leave until I was confident that she understood I was being sincere.

  Afterwards, I teleported back to HQ, popping up in the teen lounge. No one was around. I was about to go looking for my friends when klaxons abruptly began blaring.

  Mouse is back, I surmised, not needing any external source of confirmation.

  I teleported, popping up at Command Central – the control room for HQ. Nominally the nerve center of all League activity and information, it was filled with various types of equipment, including computers and monitors, and allowed access to cameras throughout the building.

  There were a handful of guards on duty when I appeared. My sudden appearance startled a couple of them, but they quickly recovered.

  “Where?” I demanded of no one in particular.

  Even though I hadn’t bothered to properly phrase my question, everyone present understood what I was talking about. Even better, they all knew who I was.

  “Underground parking garage,” one of the guards replied. “Level Three.”

  I teleported, this time appearing – in line with the guard’s information – on the third level of HQ’s subterranean parking structure. I immediately found myself in an expansive parking bay, with vehicles of various makes and models all around.

  There was a fair amount of commotion nearby in the form of shouts and other noise, and I dashed in the direction of the sound. A moment later, I was standing at the edge of an open area, where I saw Mouse facing off against several League members. Unlike previous run-ins, however, my mentor seemed to be receiving the worst of it this time.

  Mouse was grappling hand-to-hand with Luna when I showed up. Just as I arrived, she broke his grip and then spun inside his guard, at the same time bringing up an elbow that she used to whack him in the head.

  The blow sent Mouse staggering backwards. While he was still off-balance, Luna leaped towards him and spun in the air, landing a back kick on his chest that send him flying.

  While he was airborne, a streak of black and gold – obviously Buzz – slammed into my mentor, sending him caroming off to the side. However, he didn’t travel far before his motility was arrested, brought to an abrupt halt by the hand of my father catching him around the throat in midair.

  Mouse clawed futilely at the hand gripping him for a moment, and then Alpha Prime flicked his wrist, as if swatting at an annoying insect. Mouse went sailing backwards; a second later, he slammed into the windshield of a nearby sedan with such force that he not only shattered the glass that he struck but also blew out the remaining windows.

  Walking almost in synchronized fashion, my father, Luna, and Buzz began to close on Mouse from three different directions. On his part, my mentor appeared to be barely holding on to consciousness, and I saw a small trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.

  All of the action had happened pretty fast – in the space of just a few seconds, to be honest. Had one party or the other been comprised of bad guys, I like to think I would have immediately joined the fray. As it was, with me now convinced that Mouse hadn’t gone rogue, I had hesitated those first few moments. But the current lull in the conflict, such as it was, gave me
just enough time to come to a decision.

  “Hey!” I shouted, causing everyone to look in my direction. “Mouse is fine now, I think. He’s–”

  “It’s okay, son,” Alpha Prime interjected, cutting me off. “We’ve got this under control.”

  With that, he, Luna, and Buzz resumed closing in on Mouse. My mentor, however, apparently hadn’t been idle. At some point during the exchange between me and Alpha Prime, he had pulled one of the little silver balls from somewhere on his person. He tossed it weakly at Alpha Prime’s face.

  My father swatted at the metallic sphere disdainfully, apparently intending to bat it aside. Instead of being knocked away, however, the ball seemed to explode on contact, filling the air around Alpha Prime with a thick cloud of glittering dust.

  Everyone froze, and all eyes turned to my father. The dust was too thick to see his face, but you could still make out his frame. He had stopped moving and was standing still. Then, without warning, he started making an odd sound.

  “Ah…ah…” Alpha Prime began. “Ah-choo!!!”

  It was a sneeze unlike any I’d ever seen before. First and foremost, it was loud as a foghorn, and seemingly magnified by our underground location. Next, it gushed out with hurricane force, sending an entire fleet of cars tumbling away.

  Realizing at the last second what was afflicting my father, I had phased myself and everyone else (except Mouse, who had apparently vanished). I was about to make us substantial again when I suddenly recognized that Alpha Prime wasn’t done yet.

  “Ah… Ah-choo!” he sneezed.

  Facing a different direction this time, he nevertheless caused the same amount of havoc by once again sending vehicles flying. Moreover, looking at his face, it became clear that there was more to come.

  Deciding to tackle the problem from a different angle, I made Buzz and Luna solid again, then teleported Alpha Prime and myself.

  Chapter 53

  I took us to a spot where my father could sneeze to his heart’s content: the middle of the ocean. There, about a thousand feet up in the air, he was unlikely to cause any harm.