by John Hulme
“Say good-bye to Rhianna for me.” Though Becker’s heart was heavy, he couldn’t deny that it had been an honor and a privilege to spend even one night with the Jackals. “And tell the kids I’m sorry I couldn’t see Eric’s shack.”
“They’ll be heartbroken, but I’ll be sure to pass on the message.”
Jackal handed Becker his old pair of Transport Goggles, for he would never need them again.
“Do you want me to send a message to anyone?” Becker slapped the Goggles over his eyes. “Fixer Blaque? Or Lisa Simms?”
“Tell them . . .” Jackal thought long and hard. “Tell them you never found me.”
As Becker reached for the knob and pulled the Door open, he wanted to say, “Thank you for saving my life, Tom,” and Jackal wanted to say, “I wish you luck, kid,” but neither of them could get their mouths to speak the words.
The rest was lost in the roar.
16. Well, there was the one time that Becker’s uncle Jimmy gave him a taste of Schlitz at the family picnic in Donaldson Park. But don’t tell his mom or dad.
17. Perished in Action.
18. The agency responsible for dispensing Little Unplanned Changes of Kismet to The World.
7
Meanwhile
Alton Forest, Caledon, Ontario
“Do you guys think there’s a plan for everything that happens?”
Jennifer Kaley stared up at the clouds from the newly finished addition to the headquarters of Les Resistance. “Or is it all just, like, random?”
“JK, must we figure out the meaning of life right now?” On the other side of the circular perch, Vikram Pemundi dozed in and out of consciousness, enjoying the elevated view of Alton Forest. “Can’t we just chillax?”
“I’m serious.”
“There’d better be a plan,” answered Rachel Mandel, taking a long swig of lemonade from a bottle. “If there isn’t, I’m gonna be seriously mad I never ate bacon.”
Though Jennifer and Vikram were the original founders of the “the resistance” (against whom or what they were resisting was never fully articulated), their number had quickly grown to five. Rachel—an Orthodox Jewish girl who always wore sleeves past her elbows and skirts past her knees—was the third member, followed quickly by the Moreau twins, Rob and Claudia. All of them were basking in the glow of a construction job well done.
“Totally random,” interjected Rob Moreau with disdain. “Anybody who believes there’s rhyme or reason to the universe is living in a fantasy world.”
“I agree with Moreau.” Claudia took a bite of a big juicy peach. “Nothing would make me happier than to believe that things happen for a reason, but who’s kidding who?”
The Moreaus had been dubbed “the Peppers” by some of the bullies because of their French-Canadian roots, but in fact they were just a little too ahead of their time to fit in. They both had Bluetooth before anybody knew what that meant, they both listened to Kruder & Dorfmeister, and they both wore argyle, in anticipation of its long-overdue comeback. Yet despite all that, they loved to do nothing more than watch bad TV and eat Cheez Doodles from the bag (like Rob was doing right now).
“All you have to do is watch the news any night to see that the world’s totally messed up.” Claudia chucked the half-chewed peach pit into the waiting woods.
“Life is what you make of it.” Vikram smiled, his eyes still half-closed. “If you choose to see randomness, you will see randomness. If you choose to see plan, you see plan.”
“Oh my G-d!” Rachel cried out, scaring everyone half to death. “There’s no ‘K’ or ‘OU’ on this bottle!” She held up the lemonade to let her friends know that the juice she was drinking wasn’t kosher, but they just laughed it off, because Rachel always was breaking the rules, worrying about it, then finding a brilliant rationalization for why it was okay. “Then again, I am stuck out in the woods and this is my only means of survival.”
“You know what I was thinking?” Jennifer abruptly pulled her head out of the clouds. “What if there was like this other world that was responsible for making our world but instead of being lame, it was cool, and there were all these people working to make sure everything goes right for us?”
“Please,” answered Moreau (Rob). “Have you been drinking the non-kosher juice too?”
“No,” said Jennifer. “But I did have this really weird dream once . . .”
“It’s all a dream, JK,” promised Vik. “Our challenge is to wake up.”
Jennifer was about to tell Vik and the others more about what happened in that dream, when— “Ow!”
“What’s wrong?” asked Rachel, seeing Jennifer slap her hand to the back of her neck.
“I don’t know—my neck’s been bothering me all day.”
“Is it muscular or skeletal?” asked Vik, whose father was a doctor.
“First it was just chills, but now it’s starting to hurt,” Jennifer explained. “And this is gonna sound crazy. But I have this terrible feeling that something is about to go . . . I don’t know . . . wrong?”
The members of Les Resistance cracked up at first, but seeing she was deadly serious, immediately scrambled into action. Vik checked the support beams of the fortress, the Moreaus the foundation, and Rachel scanned the woods for any sight of the slavering grizzly she always worried was watching and waiting for just the right moment to eat them for lunch. But when everything was hunky dory, they breathed a sigh of relief.
“That was so not cool.” Rachel exhaled, waiting for her heart to slow down. “You totally freaked me out.”
“I’m sorry, I just . . .” Jennifer was struggling to explain the pit in her stomach that was telling her something really bad was about to go down. But then that same pit told her to go over to the telescope they’d installed and point it 35 degrees south by 42 degrees west and take a look at the—
Crack!
“Oh no,” she whispered, eye pressed to the lens.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Through the telescope, Jennifer saw the base of a huge tree begin to wobble and shake.
“What are you doing, JK?” asked Rob. “You’re acting really loopy.”
“We gotta get outta here . . .” Jennifer backed away, her own heart starting to pound. “Now!”
But before she could gather the troops, the cracking echoed through the forest again, so loud that this time her friends could tell where it was coming from too.
“That tree.” Rachel pointed in the direction of the shadow that was looming larger and larger over their heads. “It’s heading right for us!”
Indeed, the massive oak that stood sentry over Alton since time immemorial had inexplicably collapsed, and was now making its final, lurching journey down to the forest floor. Worse yet, it would undoubtedly smash the clubhouse of Les Resistance to smithereens. Not to mention Les Resistance themselves.
“Hit the fire pole!”
Moreau (Claudia) was the first one down the emergency escape hatch, which—thankfully—her brother had insisted upon for just such a crisis, closely followed by Vik, Jennifer, Rachel, and Moreau (Rob). As the sound of falling timber built to a roar, they collectively ducked beneath the tilted pine and into a small underground storage space they had dug to hide a stack of magazines and canned goods.
“Hold on,” cried Vik, and that’s exactly what they all did, hugging each other tightly and hoping for the best. But instead of the devastating crash they expected, or the explosion of branches and leaves, all they heard at the moment of impact was a “whoooosh”—as if a giant bag of sand had suddenly been emptied out above.
Then silence.
“Everybody okay?” asked Jennifer, and the others nodded back, frightened but ecstatic to still be in one piece. “C’mon— let’s go check it out.”
As they tentatively lifted the bamboo trap door, the five friends expected to see a pile of trees laid across the woods like giant pick-up sticks and their beloved clubhouse in shambles. But when they staggered into the light,
all they found was a plume of ashes, billowing through the air like thick, gray smoke . . .
The massive oak had literally turned to dust.
“Guys?” asked Jennifer Kaley, hand still holding her stomach, though the pit inside was gone. “What the heck just happened?”
Time Management, Department of Time, The Seems
“What the heck just happened?” Tony the Plumber pulled his head from the mass of thermal coils and fuses that were responsible for climate control. “My 7th Sense is ringing off the hook!”
As the Fixer grabbed his Blinker and toggled over to “Missions in Progress,” Permin Neverlåethe, Administrator of Time, anxiously looked on. This terrible day was quickly getting worse, and he couldn’t help feeling that it was entirely his fault.
“We got Essence of Time strikes in five Sectors . . .” Tony’s face darkened as the data scrolled across his screen. “Last one looks like Canada.”
“It must be runoff from the Split Second . . . ,” whispered Permin, dropping his face into his hands. “Was it a heavily populated area?”
“Negative. Looks like it hit some forest or wildlife refuge or something.”
“Thank the Plan.”
“Don’t thank the Plan,” the Fixer retorted with his trademark swagger. “Thank the Agents of L.U.C.K.”
Though Fixer #26 had not been called in for over six weeks, he’d still had the presence of mind to request that Agents of L.U.C.K. shower the Fabric of Reality with their precious salve. Thanks to these efforts, the remaining four strikes had fortuitously avoided population centers and instead hit the middle of the Indian and Pacific oceans, the Caspian Sea, and the Ellsworth Mountain region of Antarctica.
“Okay, Mr. Thermostat.” Tony the Plumber returned his attention to the frigid conditions in Time Management. “I need you to start cookin’, or we’re gonna have a little problem.”
If the thermal coils heard him, they had nothing to say in response.
“Lemme put it another way. Neither of us wants me to go get my lug wrench and start diggin’ around in your tummy, so why don’t we compromise on a cool forty-eight?”
Apparently those terms were acceptable, for the coils took on an orange glow, and the temperature in the room began to rise.
“That’s incredible,” Permin marveled.
“All in a day’s work.” Tony tossed his work gloves into his Toolkit and made his way over to the Frozen Moment pool, where happily the thin layer of ice that had formed on the surface was already crinkling. As long as that pool stayed melted, the Jersey boy still had a fightin’ chance. “I gotta tell ya though, Permie, somethin’ don’t smell right here.”
The Administrator sniffed the air, before realizing that the Plumber was speaking metaphorically. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Time was on a twenty-five-hour lockdown and still these guys managed to plant a Bomb smack dab between the gears?” Tony looked the Administrator straight in the eye. “I think we got an inside job.”
“How dare you accuse my people on a day as tragic as this?” Permin shot back, insulted. “Keeping the World on schedule is their reason to be!”
“All I’m sayin’ is, maybe one of them is surfin’ the wrong wave, if you catch my drift?”
Permin stormed out of Time Management—but not before muttering under his breath, “I’ll go check the time cards . . . see who was on duty when the Bomb was planted.”
“You do that.” Tony pulled his pants up to their normal position, then called out to someone in the adjoining room. “Yo, Brief, I need to talk with you for a sec.”
Every Fixer has a favorite Briefer, someone trustworthy to be the right-hand man (or woman) beyond all others, and Fixer #26 was no exception. Tony’s preference was a med student from the Baldwin Hills section of south-central Los Angeles, who grew up on the same side of the tracks that he did and shared a similar love for greasy food, professional sports, and high-end automobiles.
“What up, T the P?” Briefer Harold “C-Note” Carmichael poked his head into Time Management. “I’m almost done oiling the gears.”
“Drop that, C, and bust out your Transport Goggles.”
“Why? Where in The World am I goin’?”
“You ain’t goin’ to The World.” Tony knew that if the Essence of Time had leaked into The World once, it would likely happen again, and the only way to stop it was to cut it off at the pass. “You’re goin’ In-Between.”
I-95 North, Pawtucket, Rhode Island
“You guys are being so good back there . . . ,” announced Professor F. B. Drane, switching his Garrison Keillor CD over to disc two. “This could mean double scoops for everyone when we get to Sundae School.”
Benjamin wanted to shout “yay,” but he was still scooched against the window in the backseat, peeking intermittently at his “brother” to the right. For the last four hours, they had sat together in dead silence, Benjamin resisting the urge to dive into the front and tell his parents that there was an inflatable replica of Becker in the back. But the clear and present danger of the promised wedgie made him hold his tongue.
“Ice cream is all well and good, Dad,” the Me-2 said with the same hint of sarcasm that the real Becker Drane would have used. “But if I have to listen to one more Lake Wobegon story, I’m gonna tear my own ears off.”
Benjamin cracked up despite himself, then slapped his hand over his mouth, because he knew how much his father loved those old homespun tales.
“Laugh it up, half pint. If I had a nickel for every Rafi or Wiggles song I had to listen to to keep you two pacified, we’d be flying to the Cape on a private jet.”
As if to rub it in, Professor Drane pumped up “A Day in the Life of Clarence Bunsen” in the rear speakers—just loud enough to torture his kids and still avoid waking his sleeping wife in the front.
“Yo, B?” the Me-2 whispered, seizing this golden opportunity to speak to Benjamin undercover. “I gotta talk to you.”
Still a little freaked out, Benjamin inched a little closer.
“Listen, I know we got off to a rocky start.” The Me-2 glanced up front, where the professor was again immersed in his tape. “But you shouldn’t be scared of me. We’ve hung out lots of times.”
“We have?”
“Remember when we went fishing with Grandpa and caught the rainbow trout? Or that time we won the three-legged race at Ag Field Day?”
“That was you?”
The Me-2 nodded, fondly remembering the victory and the shiny blue ribbon.
“We totally housed those guys.”
Benjamin was starting to get the picture, but instead of feeling better about things, he was actually feeling worse. A lot worse.
“What about the time you and the Croziers told me I was a loser and wouldn’t let me come sledding with you down at the park?”
“That was all Becker!” The Me-2 wasn’t about to cop to something it didn’t do—but passing the buck didn’t seem to be cheering Benjamin up. “What’s wrong, pal?”
“It’s just . . . I don’t even know who my real brother is anymore!”
The duplicate took another peek up front, then kicked Benjamin on the foot.
“Becker’s your real brother, and I know for a fact he loves you very, very much.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because we talk about it all the time. When he was away at Training, he always called to see how you were doing. And whenever he comes back from a Mission, you’re the first person he wants to see.” The Me-2 gave him another brotherly little shove. “Just because me and you hang sometimes doesn’t mean that any of that has changed.”
Benjamin might have nodded—but he wanted to make the Me-2 feel a little guiltier, so he kept his eyes on the floor mat.
“Is, um . . . my brother okay?”
The Me-2 turned toward the passing landscape, not wanting to betray the look in its mechanical eyes. The truth was that the Memory Bank account it shared with Becker had gone silent over two
hours ago, right after he’d jumped into the Frozen Moment pool. At first, the Me-2 had written it off as a typical delay at the deposits window . . . but now it wasn’t so sure.
“He’s fine, B.” The Me-2 turned back to the boy, thankful that it had been quite well programmed to cover for its Fixer. “The Mission’s going great.”
Meanwhile, The Seems
Far, far away from Interstate 95 or even the devastated village of Time Square, Briefer Shan Mei-Lin stumbled through the darkness and cursed the Case Worker who had steered her to this Plan-forsaken place.
“Helpful Hints, my butt!” Shan took a moment to reignite her Flash in the Pan, which was the only thing that allowed her to see her own hands, let alone where she was going. Unfortunately, she was running out of Flashes. “How ’bout throwing me a Bone or a Big Idea once in a while? And I could really use a Shove in the Right Direction about now!”
The only response to Shan’s pleas for assistance from the Big Building was a deep, deafening silence. It was as if her words had been choked before they’d ever left her lips, and soon it was the Briefer herself who began to feel smothered by the blackness around her.
“Hun dan!” she swore. “Hun dan!”
When Shan found the footsteps leading off from the waterfall of Frozen Moments, she was convinced that Fixer Drane had somehow preceded her to this location, and she sprinted through the mud to ensure that she would be at his side when the Split Second was captured. But then she realized that the prints were made by someone wearing boots—not Fixer #37’s Speed Demons™—and her pace slowed to a cautious jog. When they abruptly ended midstride, she was forced to stop altogether.
“Briefer Shan to Fixer Drane, come in, sir!” she called into her Receiver, but just as with her previous attempts, static was the only response. Even more disconcerting was the fact that there didn’t seem to be any natural source of light in this place besides the churning waterfall, which had faded to a distant glow behind her.
