The Beautiful Land

by Alan Averill

  “But Dennis didn’t know about them.”

  “Which means we’re in the wrong timeline.”

  “Are you sure?” asks Samira as she blows on her hands. “I mean, what if Dennis was just really stupid? I don’t want to sound mean, but—”

  “I’ve been looking for Axon ever since we got back, and I haven’t seen a thing. No signs, no newspaper articles, no building names, nothing. But Dennis also said he can remember bits of the solid timeline. He doesn’t know that’s what he’s doing, but it is. He remembers how things used to be, and that’s not how this was supposed to work.”

  Samira leans away from Tak and presses her face against the glass of the airport door. A nearby sign claims the doors open promptly at 5 a.m., which is a little over ten minutes away. “Come on guys, hurry up,” she mutters. “I’m freezing.”

  “You want my coat?” asks Tak, pulling off one sleeve. “Seriously, go ahead. I’m fine.”

  “No, I’ll be okay. Just keep talking because I need to understand this.”

  “Basically, they brought the wrong timeline here. This isn’t the one I found for them: it’s something else.”

  “So they screwed up?”

  Tak shakes his head, then joins Samira at the window. Their breath makes little round fog marks on the door as they search the darkened interior of the airport for any signs of life. “Yates wouldn’t screw up something this big. I think he did it on purpose. I don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure it’s not out of the goodness of his heart.”

  Samira turns away from the door and looks at him. “Who is this Yates guy? You’ve mentioned him a couple of times.”

  “Yates? He’s brilliant, but he’s also a complete nutbag. And if he’s in charge of this place, we’re in a whole lot of trouble.”

  Samira seems ready to ask more, but then a figure begins moving toward the doors. Seconds later, they slide open to reveal an older man in a bright blue vest. “Well, hello,” says the man. “Been waitin’ long?”

  “Just got here,” says Tak smoothly. “You open? We need tickets.”

  “Counter’s around back,” says the man. He reaches for the door and inserts a small Allen wrench into a slot at the top. “Christy should be there in a second. I’d help ya m’self, but I have to finish opening up.”

  They move past the man and into the airport, stopping for a second to marvel at its compactness. The terminal, if it could even be called such a thing, is a single large room with a flickering neon sign for Great Lakes Airlines hung crookedly over a counter along the far wall. Bright yellow carpeting covers the floors, while the walls are painted an unpleasant shade of brown. Another pair of doors along the side wall lead to the outer tarmac, where a single-engine plane covered in snow waits to be cleaned off.

  “Wow,” says Samira. “This place is tiny.”

  “That’s good,” says Tak. “That’s really good. Tiny is good right now.”

  There is no sign of Christy anywhere, so the two of them wander up to the counter and wait. Samira yawns and rests her head against Tak’s shoulder, pressing her hair against his nose. The smell of her creeps up into his nostrils yet again, causing his mind to temporarily go fuzzy. Christ, Sam, he thinks. You’re gonna have to stop doing that.

  Tak sets the briefcase down and begins drumming on the counter, a random pattern of noise against the stillness of the terminal. He can hear someone moving around in the back room, but whether it’s Christy or another employee, the person doesn’t seem to be in any great hurry.

  “So hey,” says Samira, her voice muffled by the crook of his shoulder. “What are we doing? I mean, what’s the plan?”

  Tak pauses. His plan, if you could even call it that, was to fly from Nebraska to Los Angeles to Perth. Once in Perth, they would steal a car, drive into the heart of the Outback, break into the Axon Corporation, and restore the world to normal. Like most of Tak’s plans, this one had kind of come together at the last minute. “Well,” he begins, “I’m not totally sure.”

  He expects Samira to be upset by this, but to his surprise, she actually looks up and smiles. “You don’t have a clue what we’re going to do…. Do you?”

  “Not really. I mean, I can get us to Australia, but after that, it gets a bit fuzzy.”

  “Details,” shrugs Samira.

  Tak stops drumming on the counter as a new, crazy idea suddenly pops into his head. Or maybe it’s actually been there all along. Maybe I knew about this from the moment I stole the briefcase and fled the country, but I just didn’t want to admit it.

  He thinks about this new idea for a moment before realizing that he has to act—if he spends much more time pondering the implications, he might realize how little sense it makes. Without another thought, he grabs Samira’s head in his hands and leans in close, resting their foreheads together. “God, you smell fantastic,” he says quietly.

  “Tak?” she asks with a tremor in her voice. “Tak, what are—”

  “Listen,” he says, “there’s another option: Fuck Australia. Fuck reality, fuck the solid timeline, fuck all of it. Let’s just run. Find some place to hole up, get work, buy a house, maybe get a dog or something.”

  Samira smiles at this, but her expression fades as she stares into Tak’s eyes. “Wait. You’re serious?”

  “I’m serious as a heart attack. This whole time, all I’ve been thinking about is trying to make everything the way it was before, but now I realize that’s stupid.” Tak pulls his head away from hers and turns to look at the sad little plane on the airport runway. He’s shocked by the words that he feels rising in his mind, but has no way to stop their arrival. “I mean, what happens if we do it? I’m back working for a company that I hate, and two weeks from now you get sent back to the desert so people can try to kill you. Here we can start over, you know? We can do whatever we want.”

  Samira smiles shyly, then reaches down and takes his hand. “Where would we go?”

  “I don’t know. This place seems nice.”

  “I don’t want to live in Nebraska, Tak. It’s too cold.”

  “Well, California then. I dunno. Look, I’m making this up as I go along.”

  Samira lets his hand drop and turns her attention to the floor. Crap, thinks Tak, you shouldn’t have said anything. You freaked her out. Now she’s gonna wonder if this whole adventure was just one big date or something.

  “Look, Tak,” she says. “I don’t…The nice thing about the past couple of days is that I haven’t had to think about certain things. Between the time travel and the freaky creatures chasing us, there hasn’t really been the opportunity for quiet introspection.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t have—”

  “I have problems, Tak,” she continues. “Real problems. You’ve seen a little bit of it, but that’s…That’s just what’s on top. There are some terrible things inside my head, and at some point they’re going to come out, and it won’t be pretty. So if we give this up and just try to live a normal life, I don’t think you’re going to like what you find.”

  “Maybe,” replies Tak. “But you know what? I’ll take the chance. Look, if we decide to drop this and run, and you end up in a nuthouse somewhere, we’ll deal with it when it happens. I mean, banzai, right?”

  “Yeah,” whispers Samira. “Banzai.”

  The door behind the counter suddenly opens to reveal a young woman. She smiles at the two of them, walks over to the counter, and turns on an ancient PC monitor. A gold name tag, clipped sideways on her blue vest, reads CHRISTY. “Hello there!” she says in an accent that could melt butter. “How are we today?”

  “Fine,” says Tak. He’s only barely aware of her presence—all of his attention is focused on his friend standing next to him.

  “And where are y’all traveling to?” asks Christy.

  “Australia,” says Tak, not looking up from Samira. “Or maybe nowhere. We’re trying to decide.”

  “Oh, wow,” says Christy with a smile. “That’s quite the choice you’ve go
t there.”

  “We have to keep going,” says Samira. “It’s like you said: this is how we make things right. I’d love to cut out, Tak, I’d love to hole up somewhere and start a new life, but…I don’t think it’s possible.”

  A phone on the edge of the counter suddenly springs to life. Christy picks it up with a cheery greeting, then quickly falls silent. As she listens, the smile on her face fades and dies.

  “It’s gonna be dangerous,” says Tak as beads of sweat suddenly pop out on his forehead. “Really dangerous. This is a brand-new timeline, and I don’t really have much of a plan.”

  “You never have a plan. It’s one of your quirky charms.”

  “Um, excuse me,” interrupts Christy. “Are you Takahiro O’Leary?”

  “…Yeah? What is it?”

  “You have a phone call.”

  Tak freezes as his mind begins to race. Wait a minute. She knows my name. How the hell does she know my name?…And who the fuck is calling me?

  The woman behind the counter is holding the phone the way one might a poisonous snake. A cold fear slowly creeps in and latches to Tak’s spine as he reaches out to take the bright orange receiver. “Hello?” he says slowly.

  “Mr. O’Leary,” says a voice on the other end. “How very nice to hear you again.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Do me a favor, Mr. O’Leary. Look above you.”

  “It’s a light,” says Tak dryly as his eyes raise to the ceiling. “Wow, that is really awesome. I’m so glad you called to tell me about that.”

  “To the left of the light, if you please.”

  Tak shifts his gaze from the overhead light to a small black bubble mounted on the ceiling. He feels Samira tighten next to him and reaches out to find her hand. The cold fear on his spine is a raging beast now, and despite his best effort, his voice quakes a little when he responds.

  “That’s a camera, isn’t it?” says Tak.

  “Very good. Now let me ask you something, Mr. O’Leary. Are you aware that whenever you use the device at your feet, it leaves behind a large burst of both radiation and tachyon particles? Such things are rarely found in the middle of Nebraskan farmland, and so when we discovered them, it was a fairly simple matter to determine the origin.”

  “…Yates?”

  “Slower on the uptake than I would have liked from one of Axon’s finest, but I suppose we can let it go. All that thievery has probably tired you out.”

  Tak’s eyes grow wide. He takes a step back, then another, his tongue suddenly leaden in his mouth. On his third step, his feet trip on the briefcase and send him stumbling to the ground. The phone flies from his hand and goes crashing against the counter, where it begins to pendulum back and forth on its shiny orange cord.

  “Tak?” says Samira. “Tak, what is it? What’s going on?”

  “Run,” he whispers. “Oh God, Sam, we have to run. We have to run right now.”

  “What’s going on? I don’t—”

  “RUN!” screams Tak, leaping to his feet. He grabs Samira’s arm with one hand and the briefcase with the other as he spins in a crazy circle. Through the front doors of the airport, he sees a half dozen black cars crash onto the sidewalk and screech to a halt. Within moments, very large men begin to pour out of them and head for the terminal.

  Tak pulls a stunned Samira toward the door that opens onto the tarmac. His only thought is to make it outside, where at least they have some options. He runs full speed at the door and hits the crash bar, but to his horror it doesn’t even budge. Momentum carries him face-first into the glass, then sends him stumbling backward, stars flashing before his eyes. Before he can recover, Samira grabs the briefcase from his hand and swings it at the door. Though she puts all of her strength into it, the glass is thick and solid, and the case simply bounces harmlessly off to the side.

  Tak hears men approaching behind him but doesn’t dare turn around. He lowers his shoulder and runs at the door again, screaming at the top of his lungs. He has a vision of heroics, of fear and panic granting him the superhuman strength required to crash through the barrier and send them spilling out into the world, but it doesn’t happen. He simply slams face-first into the door yet again, sending a shiver through the glass as his weakened legs give out and spill him to the ground.

  The world fades in and out of darkness for a moment, and though he can hear the faint sounds of a struggle behind him, it’s as if his ears are crammed with marshmallows. High-pitched screaming is coming from at least two sources, interspersed with the loud chatter of agitated males. He tries to stand up, but someone puts a heavy boot down on the back of his neck and pins him to the ground. He hears another loud scream followed by a gunshot, then silence.

  For a brief moment, he’s sure they shot Samira. But when the boot is lifted and a pair of strong hands flip him onto his back, he sees her crouched against the counter with a pair of dark-suited men on either side. A small stream of blood flows from behind the counter and toward the front door of the terminal, and he realizes that the men have actually shot Christy, the nice girl who did nothing more than show up for work on the wrong day.

  “Assholes!” chokes Tak, knowing that this is probably the worst thing he could say to a group of angry men with guns, but not caring. “You goddamn uncle-fucking assholes!”

  Two pairs of hands lift him off his feet and carry him behind the counter. He can see Christy’s body now, eyes open in stunned surprise, but then another large man kicks her to the side, and Tak is thrust into a battered office chair.

  “Sam!” he yells, as one of the men produces a roll of duct tape and begins securing him to the chair. “Sam, you okay?!”

  “Tak!” she yells. She is invisible on the other side of the counter, but he sees the man next to her pull his leg back and give a short kick. Sam cries out at this, a noise that threatens to tear Tak’s heart apart.

  “Hey, fuckbag!” he screams. “You like kicking girls? How about you come over here and kick me?”

  The man turns around to reveal a pair of sunglasses covering a face like a granite carving. Tak is flowing on pure adrenaline now, a dizzy giddiness descending on him like a blanket. “Yeah, that’s right!” he continues. “Leave her alone and kick me instead! Come on, you can beat the shit out of me, then we’ll go have a drink and I can give you a toothless blowjob. It’ll be fun! We’ll take pictures for your wife and everything.”

  Another man hits Tak in the back of the head with something hard. He feels blood rush into his mouth as he bites down on his tongue. The tape seems to be wrapping itself now, a strange silver streak that runs from the top of his shoulders down to his knees. His arms have been allowed to remain free from the elbows down, and as the man with the sunglasses who kicked Samira continues to stare, Tak takes the opportunity to flip him the bird.

  “You’re starting to piss me off,” says Sunglasses.

  “I have that effect on people,” replies Tak.

  The large man hauls Samira to her feet, her head barely rising over the top of the counter. He can see that she’s shaking but otherwise showing remarkable calm. “Hey, Sam,” he says. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine, Tak,” she says. “Just stop saying things.”

  “Listen to the little lady,” rumbles Sunglasses. “Stop yelling.”

  “That’s what I told your mom!” cries Tak, unable to help himself.

  Samira actually rolls her eyes, a reaction that causes Tak’s heart to leap inside his chest. He thinks about telling her this, but then a new thug steps forward and sets the briefcase down on the counter. Popping the latches, he grabs Tak’s free hands, slams them onto the glass panel, and holds them in place so someone else can tape them down.

  “Oh, hey, wait a second,” begins Tak. “I don’t…Yeah, this is a really bad idea, guys. Can’t you just throw me in the back of a van or something?”

  Sunglasses reaches forward, keeping one massive paw clamped firmly around Samira’s arm, and places the dangling phone back o
n the receiver. “We’re here, Mr. Yates,” he says, leaning into the phone.

  “Good, good,” says Yates, his voice tinny and distant through the cheap phone speaker.

  “Hey, Chuck,” says Tak, as the men finish taping his hands down and step away. “You might wanna tell your boys here not to play around with gear they don’t understand.”

  “They are men in your mold, Mr. O’Leary: they know enough to cause trouble but not so much that I can’t use them.”

  Tak looks back at Samira and raises his eyebrows hopefully, trying to remain confident despite the presence of a dozen large men and a swiftly cooling body behind him. “So hey, listen,” he begins. “I’m sorry I stole the briefcase, but you can totally have it back. I’m done with it. Really.”

  “Mr. O’Leary, I don’t know how much you know about this new timeline of ours, but here, I am a very important, and very busy, man. Now, I need you to be quiet and attentive and listen to what I have to say. If you do not, I will have my men do something entirely unpleasant to your curly-haired friend there.”

  Tak’s mouth snaps closed. For a few seconds, the only sound is the whistling of wind through the open front door, then the voice of Yates returns. “I take it you are listening now?”

  “Yeah. I’m listening.”

  Instead of speaking again, Yates begins to cough—a thick, watery sound like a man hacking into a bowl of Jell-O. This goes on for nearly a minute, then finally stops.

  “Wow, Yates, you sound like shit,” says Tak. “Maybe ease up on the smoking, huh?”

  When Yates speaks again, his voice is harsh and low. “I would be much more concerned about your own health, Mr. O’Leary. Rather than mine.”

  “You switched the timelines, didn’t you?” accuses Tak. “I mean, I know chicks dig power and everything, but this seems like a real roundabout way to take over the company.”

  Yates chuckles. “The material trappings of wealth hold no interest for me, Mr. O’Leary. Yes, it is as you say: I am in charge of the Axon Corporation here, and of course that comes with many advantages. But my ultimate goal is something far more important than a buxom trophy wife.”