by Turner, Ivan
“I came because I love you.”
Her expression remained unchanged, as if she consciously made an effort to keep it so. I felt nothing from her and could think of nothing else to say so I turned and began to walk away. The separation was permanent. The fight was over.
I was on the verge of going around the corner when she called out my name. I turned. I thought I had turned back quickly but I guess she was quicker because I barely had time to react as she launched herself into my arms. I lost my balance and she lost hers and we both tumbled to the ground in a ragged and graceless heap. Fortunately, we fell onto the grass between the sidewalk and the street. I was slow to recover but she was quick and before I knew it she was on top of me and kissing my head and my cheeks and my lips. This is the part where I realize that I’m a human being just like everyone else because all of my defenses dropped. And with them went the fear and the self doubt and the weirdness. I wrapped my arms around her and began kissing her back because it was my instinct to do so. I had wanted her so badly. I truly did love her. And now I had her and it was just exactly everything I had hoped it would be. Everything I had ever watched or read about love was silly and inadequate to the task of describing the feeling. All inhibitions were gone. I wanted to hold her forever.
I never wanted to leap again.
I spent the summer with Jennie. We went once to go and visit my brothers and they were able to meet her and she them. Igor was good enough to fly us out there. Jennie knew him. He had been there before her manifest had come through and after so we had both had the pleasure. I learned that she detested him and we shared many laughs at his expense. She wanted me to take advantage of his “generosity” with no intention of paying him back. I couldn’t and didn’t. To begin with, paying him back meant going to the Colorado Rockies facility and submitting myself for tests. I was loath to do so.
The rest of our time was spent learning about each other and discovering our love for one another. I had a hard time remembering that she was my contemporary now instead of a lost teenager, but it must not have come through. That is particularly the kind of thing that would have annoyed her and she would not have let it go.
The rest of what we did that summer is private, not for these pages.
I love Jennie.
I wanted never to be without her but my affliction loomed over us and everything we did. The closer we became, the larger the shadow grew. I would have married her that summer without question and without regret but for the fact that I would one day soon be gone. As the hot days turned into cool nights and September crept over the horizon I knew that I was reaching the end of my tether.
I tried to hide it from her but she read me too well. One thing about Jennie, she didn’t play games. She sensed my anxiety and tried to get directly to the root of the problem. I avoided it as best I could but she eventually told me to cut the shit or go back to Wisconsin. So I told her. Of course, she felt the same way. It was easier for her to have hope that, perhaps, my time jumping had come to an end, but I knew better. I couldn’t stand the anticipation of not knowing when I would be ripped away from her. One day I just wouldn’t come home or we would be embracing and suddenly our arms would be empty, separated by the years.
Since she had forced the issue, I told her everything that I had been thinking. My primary concern was Jennie. The next time I returned to regular time, it would be many years later. It could be ten years or it could be a hundred. I had no way of knowing and she certainly couldn’t spend her life alone waiting. She didn’t want to talk about that aspect of it the way most people don’t want to talk about death. But, I told her, it really was a form of death. She would be in her forties and I would still be thirty five. That’s not much of an age difference, but she couldn’t sacrifice more than a decade for another few months. And then what? Another jump? She would be an old woman and I still a young man. Her life would be almost done while mine wiled on.
She could not wait for me.
She insisted she would.
I insisted that I would not attempt to contact her again.
She spent two days angry with me. Really angry. I can’t really blame her. I had come into her life again and declared my love. She had returned it with everything she had and now I was telling her that I would abandon her. But what else could I do? So I thought I would take a chance.
Igor had played me well. He had given all he had to give in an effort to win my trust but somehow I believe he knew it would come to this. My condition brought about separation. A death for everyone while everyone remains alive and everyone is hurt. The prospect of leaping away from this time was awful for me. The idea that others were going through the same thing made it all the worse. With the resources at his command, I imagined that Igor’s research facility was my best chance at finding a cure.
I called Jeremy and Wyatt to discuss the idea with them. I did not use Igor’s phone (in fact, I never used it for anything because I was suspicious that he was using it to track me). Jeremy thought that I was being foolish for giving up any time with Jennie on such a long chance. Wyatt, on the other hand, understood how hard each day had become and knew that my mind was made up. He didn’t exactly encourage me, but he didn’t discourage me either.
Still the focus of her anger, I approached Jennie with this idea.
She became more angry. How I could even think to trust him was beyond her understanding. Certainly I could relate to what she was saying, but I felt trapped by fate and circumstance. She felt hurt.
We reconciled.
What else could we do? The bond between us was not built but inherent. Natural. We could not fall out of love. It was impossible. No matter how far ahead I skipped, the people and the worlds I saw, Jennie would always be the one.
With leaden hearts we parted, I climbing once again into a car driven by Wil Lowenburg. She wept. I wept. We held each other for a long time. I tore a piece from each of our souls that day and created a wound that would never heal. As Wil pulled away from the curb, I sat twisted in the car and watched her as she watched me. She stood with her arms folded and her and her jaw set, determined to be finished with her crying. As we pulled around the corner and away from her, I straightened in my seat, dipped my face into my hands, and wept some more.
Chapter V
As before, Wil was my constant chaperone on this journey. This time he did not even attempt conversation. We flew in silence, his nose in a book, my gaze out the window. We were met at the airport in Denver by a van. Two other people were accompanying us on our trip. One was a man and one was a woman. The man had taken the front seat of the van and turned around with a wide grin as we entered. He wasn’t a particularly large man but he was brimming with confidence and I could tell that he kept himself well in shape. He introduced himself as Neville MacTavish from Scotland. The woman was much more reserved, probably because she didn’t speak any English. She was a Chinese woman and I could tell by her haggard appearance that she had come a long way and traveled for several hours. She was introduced to us as Joanne Li and I wondered about her having an English name without the command of the language.
Neville talked for much of the trip, telling us about his adventures as a pilot and a time jumper. Of course, he’d had to ground himself since learning of his problem. I listened to some of what he said. I wasn’t terribly interested but it took my mind off of my depression at having to leave Jennie. He had crashed a plane and that was when he knew he was in trouble. Justifying away the little incidents before had been easy, but when he’d walked away from a plane crash it was because he simply hadn’t been there. When the plane had crashed everything had changed.
“Just bloody glad it was only me on that plane!” he joked.
For someone whose entire existence was, essentially, in question, I thought he was in exceptionally good spirits.
The van took us way out of civilization. We drove into the mountains, stopping occasionally to use the bathroom at a rest stop and once to eat. After several
hours, we pulled into a tourist center that arranged helicopter rides for people over and through the mountains. We were booked on a flight that was due to leave twenty minutes later. Of course, Igor had arranged all of this. Wil wandered off and spoke with the people in charge of the station while Neville, Joanne, and I wandered about staring at pictures of the Rockies and reading about the nature and history of the mountain range.
I remember nothing that I read.
Shortly, we were loading ourselves and our luggage onto a helicopter. Neville, being cute, took the pilot by the shoulder and asked if he could “have a go”. The pilot gave him a sour look, clearly not appreciating the humor of it. I’m not sure whether he knew the danger and didn’t care for the joke or just didn’t get the joke.
I have to say that the view of the Rockies from the helicopter was almost worth the trip. It was breathtaking. The flight from the tourist center to the facility was just over thirty minutes and I spent every second staring out the window at the terrain below. I have never been so captivated by anything in my life before. It’s just proof once again that nature can outshine man whenever it wants to. But as magnificent as it was, when we landed in the small enclave into which the facility was nestled, I felt suddenly small and trapped.
The facility itself was built using an architecture that I had never seen before. While I wasn’t surprised by that, I was surprised that I actually made that observation. Either my awareness of such things was becoming more acute or the changes in the world, from my perspective, were becoming more and more drastic; so drastic that they could hardly escape my notice. It was a sprawling structure, only two levels but with spires and antennae whose purposes remained a mystery to me. Our pilot flew a slow circle over the entire estate so that we might have a good look and I was impressed. There were eleven entrances, all placed at points were the mountainous terrain was thinnest and supply roads led away. I wasn’t sure how far a ground vehicle could get on those roads, but probably horses or donkeys could be used. I didn’t, though, see any animal pens. I saw a running track and basketball courts. I saw a sauna. There was even a hiking trail that ran around the entire facility, although it stayed fairly close to the building. Finally, we touched down on a helipad and were ushered off of the helicopter.
We were met by an average looking man who introduced himself as Marty Fingergold, the director of the installation. He insisted we call him Marty, but none of us ever spoke or thought of him as anything but the director. Neville MacTavish was instantly suspicious of him, a fact which he conveyed to me with a wink and a look. But I though the director seemed nice enough. He was jovial and genuinely happy to have us with him. The winds on the helipad were almost unbearable so he brought us inside quickly, the big heavy doors closing behind us.
Much of the inside was devoted to living and leisure space for all of the occupants, both those on staff and those under care. We three were given a careful tour and PDAs with a map programmed into them. I was able to get a decent sense of the layout. There was a logic to it and I found it difficult to lose my way. The research areas were built into one wing. We were brought inside where we were able to view some of what was going on there. In addition to the standard blood and medical tests, there were people on treadmills and people in strange tanks. Some had electrodes pasted to their heads and chests. Some simply sat and waited.
Our rooms were spacious, each with its own personal computer. Internet access was available, although monitored, and we were informed that all emails would be scanned before being sent off due to the secrecy of the installation. Any phone calls would go through a special satellite link and would be monitored for content. The phone given to me by Igor was left in my possession but there was no signal. We were allowed to make calls at any time of the day or night. The kitchens were open from 6:00 am through 9:00 pm. At other times, we could help ourselves from a community store. There were recreation rooms with card and billiard tables, video games, computer terminals. There was a gym and a swimming pool. There was a library. The entire place was designed to make us feel comfortable. But that didn’t make it feel like home. In fact, I wondered if you could take twenty two people (for there were twenty two of us at the installation) who were displaced in time and make them feel at home.
My fellow patients were an interesting lot. If I had thought Neville MacTavish’s stories were interesting, I was amazed at some of the things I learned by sitting and listening. And sitting and listening is most of what I did. Though I was not as dispirited as I had been in Arab occupied New York, the feel of the place was similar. Despite the comforts and freedoms offered, I was still lonely for Jennie and my family, still acutely aware of time slipping away from me at an ever increasing rate, still unhappy. What confounded me the most was the good spirits of the people around me. Of the twenty two of us, four had leaped through time so often that they had long since cleared their own lifetimes.
One of them was a man named Moziya Markwee. Dr. Moziya Markwee. African in descent, Markwee had spent most of his life across the ocean, battling with his time jumping and the far reaching effect it had on his life. I don’t know how Igor had found him, but in a snatch of conversation, I overheard that they had come for him in his homeland. He had never been to the United States and, as payment for his volunteering for the program, Igor had provided him with a grand trip across the country.
Two others were Awen Mohammed and Samantha Radish. I didn’t learn much about them in my first days. Mohammed was quiet, like me. I noticed him keeping to himself in the dining room much of the time. He had a laptop and was always furiously pounding keys. I suppose he was writing a book about his adventures. Once I saw him talking with Neville MacTavish, but Neville’s clear attempt at friendship was decidedly rebuffed. The Scot walked away with a sour look on his face, but gave me a nod and a half smile when he saw me looking. I found myself grinning back.
Samantha came to speak to me once. Time jumping, she felt, had been her saving grace. A gift from God. She was a devout Christian who had found her unfortunate way into a bad marriage. After twenty years, she said that her kids were worse than her husband. When she’d finally got to the point where she just couldn’t take it anymore, the solution had been presented to her. After some hard early leaps, she understood the truth and used it to escape her terrible family. Working with GEI in an effort to understand the science of this God-given gift was just her way of paying back her good fortune.
The others all had different stories. Some were depressed, as I was, by the loss associated with leaping through time, but many had come to accept it. In fact I found that most of us were, at this point, captivated by the adventure. I often heard people talking about what it would be like in the far future and how it was so tremendously exciting to have the opportunity to be a part of it.
By far, though, the most interesting person in the place was a man by the name of Rogers Clinton. Rogers reminded me a bit of Jonah Jones in that he would talk to anyone, but he didn’t have the gentle nature of Jonah Jones. On the contrary, when he spoke it was with a fiery determination. He never touched the games and never made any phone calls. Why would he? He was the farthest removed from anything he had ever known. According to Rogers, he had been born in1804, the son of a slave and destined to be a slave himself. He’d begun his career as a time leaper at the age of 38 and almost lost his life to it several times. One story of his brought me back to one of my early leaps, when I had gone off to get tea for my sister-in-law and come back several minutes later with no indication of lost time. But for Rogers, this similar instance had earned him a beating at the hands of his master whereas I had simply gotten a sour look from Martie. Though I had no desire to engage in conversation with Rogers Clinton, I would always find a way to sit near him so that I could hear him speak. His lunacy was as captivating as his stories and I endeavored to absorb some of that from him as immunization against it for myself. How would I feel 220 years after my birth?
But I learned that I could not h
ide from Rogers Clinton. He was an alert and powerful individual and in trying to hide from him I had placed myself directly into his sights.
“Your name is Mathew Cristian,” he introduced me to me. “And my name is Rogers Clinton.”
I nodded.
“Now we are friends.”
And so we were.
While I felt that he mostly spoke at me rather than to me, I developed a genuine liking for him and I think he experienced a similar feeling. He spoke to me of his life as a slave and how he had once leaped from a field in plain sight of all of the other workers. He had then been branded a witch. His next leap had been from a burning stake. His stories were fantastic and I don’t know how many of them were true, but I found myself enjoying his company and spent a lot of time with him.
In return, I told him about my travels, which seemed quite tame in comparison. He was most interested in Jennie and shocked to learn that she was a black woman. Though many of the masters of his day had had relations with the slave girls, he had never known two people of different skin colors to love each other. Even his travels in the modern world, while bringing knowledge of such events, had never shown him two so different people in love. His wonder encouraged me to speak more about it. I even let him speak to Jennie on the phone once so that he could confirm that she was, in fact, who I said she was. I was amazed at how he could find my relationship with Jennie far more interesting than all of his harrowing adventures.
And in the meantime, there was the testing. I was poked and prodded, hung upside down, and spun around every which way. Some of the tests were obvious while others made no sense to me. The doctors and researchers were kind and gentle and I was able to beg off testing a couple of times in the first two weeks. Igor himself came for a visit to the installation on October 4th. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me and I found that my disdain for him had lessened. Rogers, on the other hand, had grown to hate him on my behalf and refused to even acknowledge his presence. He only stayed two days. Other endeavors required his attention, but he wanted to make sure that Wil was taking care of me properly and that I was satisfied with the accommodations.
