In none of those futures, however, not one, did the world Carl knew as home exist.
"What have you done?" He looked around at them frantically. "...WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE FUTURE??"
Brandon slapped Kevin on the shoulder. "Brent Spiner, are you freaking kidding me?? Why the hell did you bring him here?"
"We need him," Kevin replied.
Becca snorted. "Like we need herpes, or a sucking chest wound, maybe."
"He brought us here against our will!" Yellow energy buffeted them from Mia's now circuitry-free hands. "He tried to kill us!"
Simon roared. "He can't be trusted anyway. We listened to him before and look where it got us." He leaned in close to Carl's face, huffing air into his eyes. "Look where it got me."
Carl crossed his legs in front of him and remained seated on the floor. He folded his hands in his lap, saying nothing.
"Look at him." Brandon ran a hand through his curly hair. "He's probably figuring out how to kill us all right now."
"I don't want to kill anyone," Carl answered. "I only want to live. I want this world to live."
"You said this before," Kevin said. "You said we caused the end of the world."
Carl nodded. "I saw you all together, standing on a rooftop. The sky opened up, and all the worlds collided together. Everything came to an end."
"The sky did open up," Brandon said. "We were on the rooftop, together. The sky opened up, but...the world didn't end."
Carl nodded. "I know. I saw it."
Becca kneeled in front of him. Tyler placed a hand on her shoulder. They appeared to have a telepathic exchange to which Carl was not privy. "So if you didn't stop it from happening by killing all of us, why didn't the world end?"
Carl searched the floor with his eyes. "I'm not sure."
Becca raised an eyebrow. "And you never saw a woman? A red woman?"
"Not before, no." Carl looked her directly in the eye. "But I have now. I think, before, she didn't know about us. But Kevin changed things, when he took me away from this world. I think he got her attention."
Invisible hands wrapped around Carl, dragging him to his feet and face to face with Simon. "Tell us: who is she?"
"The question isn't 'who is she'." Carl swallowed. "The question is: WHAT IS SHE?"
______________________
Carl tried to huddle tighter into the shallow shelter he had dug for himself at the base of the mountain. The bitter cold still punished his body. At night, the temperature dropped sharply, cold winds biting his face and hands. He tried his best to cover them with the lab coat, but that only left other areas exposed.
The wind picked up, and a sound reached him, like the sound of cracks opening in ice, only a million times louder.
Carl looked up, and there in the sky a hole opened, a portal like the one through which he had driven the school bus. Sparks leapt down from it, striking him.
Carl analyzed the portal, gauging its distance from the ground and from the slope of the mountain. He quickly clambered up and began to climb, attempting to reach the level of the portal. If he could reach it, perhaps he could leap into it.
He might be able to get home.
______________________
"Just go around, real quick," Davis said, moving around the Chevrolet that had stopped on the line in front of them. "Give each wheel a good shine." He sprayed the wheel and wiped it down. "Make sure they look good, but you gotta move fast." He went from one wheel to the next, shining each one in turn. "When you done, just hit the button here, that clears it to move on."
He pressed a large green button on the console standing a few feet from the line. There was a loud buzz, and the car moved on down the line to the vacuum station. Another car replaced it.
"You try it."
Carl took the spray and rag and moved around the car from wheel to wheel, spraying and rubbing down each one as Davis had shown him. When finished, he hit the green button and the line moved forward.
"Good, good." Davis smiled. "There's a kinda flow to it? You get each one lookin' good, but you don't take too much time, so things keep moving."
"Seems pretty simple," Carl observed.
"Yeah, yeah," Davis nodded with a laugh. "This a startin' out job, you know. You do good here, we see if we can't move you up to one of the assembly spots. Your daddy said you're a hard worker but you got your head in the clouds." He laughed.
Carl felt his face heat up. He looked down.
"Hey, don't sweat it, kid, don't sweat it." Davis clapped him on the back. "Your daddy done worked here a lot of years, people respect him. But he's kind of a hard ass, ain't he?"
Carl felt the corner of his mouth turn up a bit. "He can be."
"You gon' do just fine. It's simple, like you said. Here." Another car was moving up the line into Carl's post. "Sometime it's slow like that. Sometime real fast. You get to it, I'll check on you in a couple of hours for break time."
"Thanks, Mr. Davis." He shook the affable old fellow's hand. Davis' dark brown skin was cracked, dry and rough to the touch. Carl was a bit embarrassed by his own soft hands.
"Davis, just Davis," he said. "Good to meet you, Carl."
Carl went about his work. It was tedious, repetitive, but he expected no different from a factory job like this one. It wasn't so bad, though, the time passed quickly, like Davis had said there were periods where the cars came one after another, and time passed quickly.
Occasionally, he had time to sit and wait while cars caught up with the line, and he found himself glancing toward the stations before and after him. The station before was placing floor mats inside the vehicles. The station after was vacuuming out the interior.
A young woman was working the vacuum station. She was very pretty, with long brown hair.
Carl hadn't realized he was staring until she waved at him. He looked down, embarrassed, then was even more embarrassed by his own guilty reaction, so he looked back up and waved, but she had already looked away.
"Her name Ellen," said Davis' voice close to his ear.
Carl jumped. "Oh, I was just..."
Davis laughed long and hard, clapping Carl on the back. "You-you-you was just! HA!" He gripped Carl's shoulder. "You just go on up to her and say hello, on break time."
"Oh no, I wouldn't want to bother her," Carl said.
"Life too short, Carl," Davis said. "Life too damn short. You don't know what's gon' happen to you, or to her. So you go say hi, you hear? You make hay while the sun shines, you know that old saying? You make hay while the sun shines."
______________________
The suns beat down miserably upon him as he dug into the dry, baked earth. He had found a calculator in one of the lab coat pockets, an item useless to his enhanced brain in terms of calculation (he could far exceed its computational power and speed) but useful for its hard plastic casing as a digging tool.
Carl's arms were tired and sore, and kept cramping up unexpectedly. Twice now he had had to stop digging and work out cramps in his upper arm. Pain throbbed up and down his arms, shooting into his hands, forcing him to stop and rest.
He did not have long now before he would be unable to dig. He kept hoping for a cloud, something to pass over the twin suns and shield him for a short time. And at first, when the sky began to grow dark, he thought that he had been granted a respite. He looked up, expecting to see clouds, but instead saw a dark, hazy line had grown across the sky.
Dust storm, he realized with a start.
A few clouds, maybe a nice rain, those he would have welcomed; a dust storm, however, might prove fatal.
His hands had gone on digging and digging out of habit while he looked at the horizon. Now he heard a slosh beneath him. Carl looked down. Dark brown water had filled the hole under him, sloshing behind the plastic calculator casing as it passed. The pale grubs, exposed to the sun, fought to escape it and dig their way into the cool, wet mud.
Carl tossed the calculator down. He had already looked forward, to make sure the wa
ter did not make him sick. He scooped it up in handfuls, slurping it off his fingers, so thirsty he barely noticed the thick coppery taste of mud in every sip. Next he caught grubs between his fingers, slurping them up and squishing them between his teeth, each one popping in a horrid gush of foul ooze. After that taste filled his mouth and he feared he might vomit them back up again, he began simply swallowing them down without bothering to chew them. Their slick, wet texture made them go down easily.
The dust cloud was moving closer.
Carl took one more sip of muddy water and grabbed up the calculator, scrambling for the base of the mountain. He had to find a place between the rocks where he might dig a shelter, protecting him from the storm.
He looked forward in time, seeing the various paths ahead, looking for one that led to one more day, one more fight for survival. If he could just stay alive, he thought, he might find a path that led to victory, a path that led home.
______________________
"This is all a little too familiar, isn't it?" Carl looked around at them. "You holding me hostage, questioning me."
Simon growled. "And we all know you're a liar." The invisible hands tightened around Carl's chest. "So save yourself some grief and tell the truth. WHAT is she?"
"I don't know exactly," Carl said. "Aghh.." The hands tightened still more. "I...don't!"
"Simon, stop it!" Brandon said.
The invisible hands loosened, a bit. Carl breathed deep. Something was very wrong. He looked around at them, his eyes settling on Kevin. Like the others, his power didn't seem to work on Kevin. Try as he might, he couldn't see Kevin's past. He could, however, clearly see the future. He knew the red woman would be arriving very soon, and in most of the possible futures he could see, she killed them all very quickly. And Kevin...
Carl turned back to Becca. "You don't trust me. That's understandable, I did lie to you before."
"You tried to kill us all," said Becca.
"I did kill you, Rebecca. Or, at least, soldiers under my command did."
"Don't call me Rebecca," she said reflexively. "You were on the bridge that night?"
"Yes." Carl projected the scene into her mind.
They approached in absolute silence. Carl had warned the men of the absolute need for the element of surprise. With Rebecca Miller's ability, if she were alerted to their approach, she could potentially destroy them all and they would be unable to stop her. Luckily, her power was still new to her. Preoccupied as she was by the man she was tormenting, she might not sense them until it was too late.
Carl watched her control the man, forcing him to remove his clothes and hurt himself on the bridge railing.
The men moved closer, slowly, silently creeping through the darkness, weapons raised.
A motorcycle approached from the other side of the bridge. Kevin Lloyd stepped off, removing his helmet. He and Rebecca exchanged words.
Carl hadn't seen Kevin since the school bus crash. He had no idea what Kevin's powers might be, hadn't had a chance to examine him as he had most of the others. This might be an opportunity to eliminate two targets at once.
Carl raised his hand.
"My name is Kevin? You remember? You're Becca, right? You were on the bus with me that night."
"SHUT UP about that!"
Carl lowered his hand, and one soldier activated the spotlight. Kevin and Rebecca, caught by surprise, turned toward it, covering their eyes.
One soldier fired, and Rebecca Miller's head splattered. Her body hit the ground, blood everywhere.
"STOP!" Becca cried, flinching.
Carl ceased playing back the scene for her, looking her in the eye. "Kevin proved more difficult to kill. He escaped, but he left his motorcycle behind. We ran the plate and got a match." He watched Kevin for a reaction.
"That's how you found me," Kevin said.
"Yes."
"He's telling the truth," Becca said with a grimace. "Motherfucker."
Carl looked around at each of them, taking time to look each in the eye. "You all have questions. I suggest we take turns. You can each ask me a question and I'll answer truthfully. I won't lie about what I've done."
"Why would you tell us the truth?" Becca asked.
"Because if you don't trust me, if you aren't willing to listen to me by the time the red woman arrives...we are all going to die."
Kevin looked at him doubtfully. Carl risked a glance forward. Again, he saw the red woman slaughtering them all. And Kevin...Kevin wasn't trying to stop her.
______________________
Once level with the portal, he knew it was hopeless. He could see through it, see glimpses of the myriad worlds he knew lay beyond it, but he could not get to it. The longer he looked, the more he could see another opening, far beyond this one, where the kids from the school bus stood on the rooftop, the scene he had envisioned when first his power had activated after the crash.
Is this it? thought Carl. Is the world about to end?
But the worlds continued to turn. None of them collided, nothing ended. Carl did not know why, but he knew it afforded him a chance. He climbed still higher. When he reached a high enough perch above the portal that he calculated at least a possibility of jumping into it (though a slim probability at best), Carl jumped.
______________________
As he prepared to ask, Carl's throat unexpectedly went dry as a desert. He reached for his wine glass, gulping the Cabernet Sauvignon a bit too eagerly.
"Are you okay?" Ellen asked with a laugh from across the table.
Carl set down the wine glass, nearly knocking it over in the process. He looked around the restaurant to steady himself. Waiters were hustling to and fro, carrying plates heaped with pasta and sauces, carafes and bottles: everything you'd expect to see in a restaurant like this.
Ellen was dressed in her nicest dress, a stunning deep green gown, her neck adorned with her mother's pearl necklace, which she only took out for "occasions".
Carl was wearing a suit, which he found dreadfully uncomfortable, but his brother had always worn suits when taking a lady to a nice restaurant, and had told Carl it was the way to go. Carl had never forgotten that, although he had forgotten all his brother's old girlfriends long ago, or whether any of them had seemed overly impressed. In his mind, his brother had always been the most dapper and charming man any lady could have ever wanted. Carl struggled to open the car door without looking like a clutz.
Ellen was gazing at him with a mixture of humor and warmth.
Oh, God. This is it.
Carl pushed his chair back, and stood.
"Carl?" Ellen looked around nervously.
Carl removed the ring box from his jacket pocket, and slipped down to one knee in front of her. She clapped both hands over her mouth and nose, eliciting a little squeal.
Carl opened the ring box, displaying the engagement ring he had saved for months to buy.
"Ellen Denise Donovan, will you marry me?"
She tried to blink the tears from her eyes as she extended her hand. "Yes, I will."
Carl slid the ring onto her finger, beaming with pride. Applause erupted from the other diners around them. Carl stood, leaning over and kissing her on the lips, knowing that they would be together the rest of their lives, for good or ill, better or worse.
They'd always be together.
______________________
Something sharp was flying in the dust.
Carl felt them, razor sharp particles of rock or metal scratching him in the wind, occasionally cutting deep into the exposed skin of his forehead, cheeks, or hand. He scrabbled with the calculator, digging the soft earth between two boulders. If he could cut a kind of warren in the ground, something he could burrow into, the boulders might shield him from the worst of it.
He felt a trickle of blood trace its way into his eye. He tried to wipe it away with the sleeve of his lab coat, but it was already caked with dust and he only managed to blind himself even worse. He had pulled up his shirt over his n
ose and mouth to try and breathe, but it wasn't doing much good. There was every chance he might suffocate in the shallow grave he was making for himself.
Still, he continued to dig. His glances into the future told him he could survive this storm, if he did the right things. First, dig his shelter.
______________________
The first question came from Mia, her eyes crackling with energy. "Why were you keeping me drugged, experimenting on me? If you just wanted to kill me, why do all that?"
"I'd like to know that too," Simon asked.
Carl projected his experiences into Becca's mind. "In your case, Mia, I should think the answer would be obvious: we couldn't kill you. The energy inside you reacts to threats, even when you're not conscious. It protected you from us. We kept you drugged while we tried to figure out a way to deal with you. It wasn't easy to do, we had to keep you drugged enough to stay asleep, too little or too much and the energy inside you would start burning the drug away, which is eventually what happened. I thought, based on what I could see, that Rebecca had taken care of the problem for us, but because of an...anomaly I couldn't see or detect, you were still alive."
Becca nodded to Mia. "He's telling the truth. And don't call me Rebecca," she added with a harsh glance back to Carl.
"And me?" asked Simon.
Carl breathed out a slow stream of air. "Your case is a little more complex. I analyzed your powers and knew you could see glimpses of the future. I thought if I could extract and examine the part of your brain that allowed you to do that, I might be able to determine how my own abilities might be detected. I could then more easily prevent that from happening."
"So you did it to save your own ass," Brandon said. "Charming."
Carl raised an eyebrow. "Who here hasn't hurt someone to save themselves, Brandon? You all attacked this base without a second thought. Do you think the soldiers you harmed don't have lives? Families?"
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