Time Tsunami

by Danele J Rotharmel

  “I used Sam’s razor, okay?” He laughed. “Stop fooling around, and tell me what you think.”

  Giving him a smile, she said, “I think you look scrumptious. I don’t know why you hid that gorgeous chin. I’d tell you just how handsome you look, but then you’d get a big head.” As his blush deepened, she crooked her finger. “Come here, Doc.”

  Crossing the room, he stood by her side and looked down into her eyes.

  “Closer,” she murmured.

  He leaned closer.

  “Closer.”

  William’s breath began catching in his throat as he bent down some more.

  Sitting up swiftly against her pillows, Gil pulled his head down even more. Nuzzling her cheek against his, she gently pressed her lips to his chin and whispered, “That’s so much better. I’m glad you shaved.”

  William gave an unsteady chuckle. “If I’d known this would be the result, I would’ve shaved yesterday.”

  * * *

  “Hurry up,” Marc said, bracing himself against the counter and trying to shout over the noise of Ryan’s electric screwdriver. “I’m gonna drop this beast on your toes if you don’t—it’s slipping.”

  As Ryan nodded, Marc shook the sweat out of his eyes and tightened his grip. When the cupboard was firmly attached to the wall, he dropped into a chair and rubbed his sore biceps. “I’m glad that’s the last of them.”

  “It’s the last for now,” Ryan said with a grin, pushing a bag of chips toward him. “But after summer break, I’d like to make more cupboards and cover the east wall too.”

  Marc gave a groaning chuckle. “I might’ve known. I’ll give you a hand when it’s time to install them, but we need to recruit more help. I bet Kyle would volunteer if we sweetened the pot with dinner at Dos Maracas.”

  “Good idea.” Ryan went to the fridge and grabbed some sodas. “How much time do we have until we need to report back to NSU?”

  “About fifteen minutes. Remind me to avoid taking long lunches with friends with ulterior motives. I’ve been sweating so much that I need to change before we go.”

  “You and me both. I don’t want to show up in the main office looking like this.”

  “With the director overseeing your work, I don’t blame you,” Marc grumbled.

  “I don’t know why the director makes you so nervous. He isn’t a bad sort.”

  “I know, but he has a way of staring at me that makes me feel two-inches tall.” Marc shrugged and took a chip. “The funny thing is, I think he’d make a great friend if you could get to know him.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna be the one to find out. Even though I’m working in the office, the director’s been in the lab most of the time. I hardly see him.”

  Marc grunted. “So how many more letters do you need to send out?”

  “None, I finished them yesterday. I have some filing to do, but I’ll be done with that today.” Ryan handed Marc a soda and sat down at the table. “How about you? How are things going with Crystal?”

  Marc took a drink. “She still won’t talk to me. It’s like I’m invisible.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The birds were singing in the orchard as William carried Gil into the sunshine. Gil secretly knew she could walk on her own—and she suspected William knew it as well—but she was enjoying the closeness they were sharing too much to mention it. When they came to the glider, William sat down and perched Gil on his lap. She nestled her head against his chest. As he tightened his arms around her, contentment wrapped itself around her heart. She gave a soft sigh as happy thoughts flittered through her mind.

  Suddenly, Gil felt something wet hitting her forehead. Pulling back, she looked up at William. Shock rippled through her when she saw tears in his eyes. William had always seemed so reserved and emotionally controlled. She couldn’t believe he was crying.

  Grabbing his hand, she asked in concern, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “Things that can’t be changed.” William traced the fading scar on her forehead with his finger. “You paid too high a price to save Danny, and it’s my fault.”

  “I don’t see how,” she gently chided. “I distinctly remember ignoring you when you wanted to pull me out of the field.”

  “I never should’ve allowed you to go in the first place.”

  Putting her hands on either side of William’s face, she said softly, “I wanted to go.”

  Tears welled in his eyes. “I’ve never been as frightened as I was during D-day. I thought I was losing you.”

  Putting her head down on his chest, she listened to his thudding heartbeat and whispered, “It’s okay. I’m right here.”

  He held her close. “Sitting in the lab waiting for midnight to arrive was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I wanted so badly to come and save you.”

  “You did save me,” she murmured. “You came when I needed you most.”

  “I’m sorry this happened,” he whispered. “I’ll spend my life making it up to you.”

  Gil’s dimples peeked out. “Now that sounds like something I can work with.”

  “I’m being serious,” he said, looking intently into her eyes.

  “So am I,” she grinned. “If you insist on feeling responsible, I can milk your guilt for all it’s worth.” She tipped her head. “Now, what should I ask for? Pearls? Dinners? Shall I demand to be serenaded?”

  “Gil—”

  “I can think of a thousand things, but none of them are necessary. D-day wasn’t your fault. You’re being rather silly, you know.”

  Moving her gently from his lap, William stood and turned his back to her. “You don’t understand—there’s no way you could.”

  Hearing the distress in his voice, Gil stopped grinning and rose to her feet. Putting her hand on his shoulder, she said quietly, “Please turn around.”

  As William slowly turned and faced her, Gil blinked rapidly. She’d seen him angry. She’d seen him worried. She’d never seen him looking like this.

  “What’s bothering you?” she asked gently.

  He opened his mouth, but couldn’t seem to speak. “Look at me,” he finally said. “Tell me what you see.”

  “I could do that all day,” she lightly replied, trying to make him smile. “You’re rather easy on the eyes, especially since the tumbleweed growing off your chin’s gone. Do you want me to catalogue the features I like best?”

  “I want you to look past the obvious.”

  “Fishing for compliments, are you?”

  “Please stop joking. Tell me what you see.”

  Hearing the urgent note in his voice, she nodded and gently cupped the side of his face. As his breath caught at her touch, she smiled. “When I look at you, the first thing I see is your eyes—I’ve never seen such kind eyes before. They’re gorgeous, but more importantly, they’re full of love. If eyes are windows to the soul then yours tell me everything I need to know.”

  “What else do you see?” he whispered.

  She trailed her finger slowly up his cheek and over his forehead. As he shivered at her touch, she murmured, “Your brow’s wide and thoughtful. It shows dignity and honor.”

  William’s breath was coming in controlled gasps as she moved her finger down to slowly trace his mouth. “Your lips are tender and warm,” she said softly. “They’re swift to speak encouraging words and to participate in shared laughter.”

  “Look at me,” he said in a choked voice. “Please, look at me.”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” she said in confusion.

  “Look harder! Tell me what you see!”

  “You vain man,” she chortled, “just how many compliments do you need? Do you actually want me to keep going?”

  William nodded with troubled eyes.

  “In that case, you have an awfully cute schnoz.” She gave his nose a playful tweak. “It’s perfectly wonderful, in fact.” She tweaked it again. “It isn’t broken for one thing—it’s nice and straight like I like ’em.”

  “Please
stop joking. This is important.”

  Her smile faded. Putting a finger beneath his chin, she inspected his clean-shaven jaw from every angle. “Your chin has a bit of a tan line, but that’ll fade. You have a strong, firm jaw. It’s a jaw that belongs to a real man in the truest sense of the word. A man a woman can love and respect. A man a woman can feel honored to be loved by...” As her voice came to a smothered halt, she smiled and cleared her throat. “All in all, I think it’s a perfectly lovely jaw, especially the cute little freckle right here.”

  As Gil kissed the heart-shaped freckle, her body froze. Stepping back two paces, she looked at William with shocked eyes.

  “You know, it’s funny,” she said in a tight voice, “we’ve known each other for years, but I don’t know your first name. William’s your middle name, and you’ve always had your students call you Doc or Dr. Ableman. Please tell me your first name.”

  “Gil, I—”

  “Tell me!”

  “I think you know it,” he said softly, his eyes never leaving her face.

  “Danny? It can’t be!”

  William—Danny—gave her a wobbly smile. “Can’t it? You told me I’d grow up big and handsome. What do you think?”

  Gil stepped forward and put a hesitant hand to his cheek. “Danny?”

  “It’s Dan actually. I haven’t gone by Danny since high school.”

  “But your last name’s Ableman—not Winston. I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, Gil,” he said tenderly. “You overlook the simplest things. Sam married my mother.”

  “But Sam’s last name is Jacobson—not Ableman.”

  He shook his head. “Sam’s mother was Mr. Jacobson’s daughter. She married a man named Ableman, and I took the Ableman name after Sam and Mom married.”

  “I’m such a dunce,” Gil moaned, touching his freckle. “Your identity was right in front of me.”

  Dan grabbed her hand and held it next to his chest. “Can you understand my guilt now? It is my fault. Every bit of it. I’m the reason you had to come to Charlesberg.”

  “But how’s that even possible? I saw Death Row Daniel. You were in the same room with him.”

  “Oh, Gil,” he replied with a shaky grin. “You really should’ve read those manuals.”

  “I know,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes. “Stop rubbing it in and explain.”

  “If you’d done your homework, I wouldn’t have to.”

  “Quit being an obnoxious cheeseball”—she laughed—“and start explaining.”

  “Okay, here’s the short version. Normally, timewaves travel individually like ocean waves skimming toward the beach. I want you to get a clear picture of an ocean wave in your mind—it has a circular motion that isn’t perceptible until it gets closer to shore. We harness that circular motion with GAP. Now picture a piece of driftwood caught in the wave. When a time surfer is sent back to change the past, the surfer is essentially changing the position of a piece of driftwood. The location of the driftwood has no bearing on the motion of the wave—correct?”

  “I guess so,” she replied.

  “Most time surfs follow that innocuous pattern. A surfer makes a small change, but nothing so major that it interrupts the circular flow and forward motion of the wave. However, when something goes terribly wrong during a time surf, a Cataclysmic Failure is initiated that’s destructive to the timewave being manipulated. This causes the timewave to split apart and create two separate timelines. The two halves of the timewave will travel simultaneously toward the temporal shore in a massive Time Tsunami. As the tsunami travels, the two halves of the wave intersect at various junctions.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she grumbled. “I never did understand this split-wave mumbo jumbo when you brought it up in class.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me to explain it better? I would have—gladly.”

  “I know. I just didn’t think it was relevant. I wasn’t planning on anything going wrong during my time surfs.”

  As Dan raised an eyebrow, Gil put her hands on her hips. “Look, don’t give me static. I’m asking you to explain it now, okay? Quit going all professorish on me.”

  “Professorish?” Dan chuckled. “Is that a word?”

  Gil smacked his shoulder. “If it isn’t, it should be. Stop being a smarty pants.”

  “Okay,” he smiled. “Let’s look at it differently. A split timewave resembles two pieces of string tangled together. As they cross, intersecting junctions occur. A tangled timeline needs to be straightened out. The confusion gets worse the longer it’s left.”

  “How do you straighten it?”

  “It takes a third timeline acting as a mirror image of one of the previous two timelines to dissipate the split.”

  “Are you talking about the Canceling Rule of Threes?”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “So you were paying attention in class?”

  “Partially,” she replied, refusing to rise to his bait. “I know the term, but I don’t understand the concept.”

  “It’s simple. The third timeline, being identical or extremely similar to one of the timelines in the split wave, will merge with its duplicate counterpart. Once they merge, they gather strength and wash over the differing timeline and cancel it out.” Dan’s eyes searched hers. “This is actually the third time Gil Montgomery has traveled through a temporal portal to little Danny Winston, even though from your point of view, it’s the first.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He nodded. “The first time Gil Montgomery went through GAP, her surf failed and produced Death Row Daniel. The second time Gil went through GAP, her surf succeeded and produced me. As little Danny, I can remember Gil’s second surf clearly, even though you cannot. You—the Gil Montgomery you are now—was a toddler when I was ten-year-old Danny.”

  “I think I understand, go on.”

  “Your third surf—the one you just completed—was a success, so it underlines the successful second surf that produced me and cancels out the failed first one that produced Death Row Daniel. Your second surf and third surf have merged together and formed one single timeline. Does that make sense?”

  “I think so,” she said slowly. “But how could you and Death Row Daniel be in the same room together?”

  “The prison was where our timelines intersected. The junction was a dead giveaway that the timeline was tangled. A third surf had to be completed to erase one of the Daniel Winstons. It was fifty-fifty for a while which timeline was going to win out. If your current surf had failed, I would’ve been erased from existence rather than him.”

  “That was quite a gamble.”

  Dan shook his head. “It wasn’t a gamble—it was a necessity. I have the memories of ten-year-old Danny. I knew about Gil Montgomery’s time surf. That’s why I had to find you and convince you to train for TEMCO. Your surf would lead to a final outcome, one way or the other. It would cause one of the grown-up Daniel Winstons to be erased.”

  “That’s why you feel so guilty.”

  “Yes.” His voice was ragged. “The decision to send you to Charlesberg knowing what you’d face was hell—pure hell.” He put a shaking hand to his forehead. “For years, I drove myself crazy trying to find GAP scenarios in which you didn’t have to go back and save little Danny—but there weren’t any. It was Danny’s love for you, and your love for him, that made the surf a success. It was love, more than anything else, that won D-day. It had to be you who went back. No one else would’ve had the same impact.”

  As she stood silently, he looked intently into her eyes. “I tried to find another way—I promise—but all I found were dead ends. I calibrated a game cartridge, so I could surf in at a moment’s notice, but GAP predicted disaster if I used it before midnight. I thought about ignoring the tangled timeline, but the tangling was getting worse on a daily basis. GAP was melting down, and all of the violence TEMCO’s prevented was in danger of reoccurring. If it’d just been my life on the line, I never would’ve sent you, but other lives were goi
ng to be destroyed. I can’t ask you to forgive it, but please understand it. Sending you back, knowing what you’d face, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “But you tried to pull me from the field. What would’ve happened if I’d come home?”

  “The minute you passed through the time portal, I—Dr. Ableman—would never have existed and TEMCO would’ve been destroyed.”

  “Then why’d you give me the option?”

  He shuddered. “I realized I’d made a horrible mistake in sending you.” His eyes searched her face. “When I was a boy, the adults shielded me from most of the details of Rick’s crimes. When I was training you, I thought my childhood memories of your injuries were exaggerated, but I was wrong. When Director Matthews uncovered data showing how vicious Rick was, I couldn’t believe I’d put you in such danger. I thought I’d rather disappear and have TEMCO collapse, than have you go through all that pain—pain that I realized would be every bit as horrible as I remembered. What kind of a man sends a woman to face such agony? It was unforgivable of me to involve you in D-day.”

  As Dan trembled and turned away, Gil pulled on his shoulder. When his guilty eyes met hers, she said quietly, “It’s not unforgivable.”

  When he began to protest, she laid a restraining finger on his lips. “No matter what you think you orchestrated, I chose this profession. I wanted to help Death Row Daniel, and I’d have chosen to help him even if you hadn’t been my adviser. I made my choice to stay and face D-day knowing all the facts. Knowing Rick was brutal. Knowing that facing him could mean my death. I chose it. And now, looking back and remembering everything Rick did to me, and every bit of pain I experienced, I can tell you without hesitation that I’d choose to do it again.”

  As hope began to fill Dan’s eyes, she said firmly, “You don’t need to feel guilty anymore. I understand and forgive you. More than that, I’m grateful to have been involved. This surf has been the most fulfilling experience of my life.”

  Dan gave a gasp and bowed his head. Gil watched as a strong tremor ran through his body. When he raised his head, the worry lines that had been etched into his face were gone.