by Ramy Vance
Jake looked at her in disbelief. “No way. No way Alister Pout is the Canadian?”
“He is,” Zach confirmed. “I checked.”
Martha nodded. “We need to find more proof. Right now, all we have is him visiting a shady place.”
Jake shook his head. "For all we know, this guy in the hoodie is his weed dealer. You're going to need a lot more to even open a file on a guy like Pout."
Martha rubbed her temples, groaned, and pounded the desk. “When is there room in police work for instinct?”
Jake stiffened. “There's instinct, and there's insanity. We have to stick to the facts and do the job right. If that doesn’t work for you, then you’re in the wrong line of work.”
“Sorry.” Martha felt herself blush and then sat up straighter in her chair.
Jake lowered his voice and forced a smile. “What do you want to do?”
That was an easy question. “I want to track Alister.”
Jake cleared his throat. “You aware of what you’re taking on, right?”
“We’re just watching the guy,” Martha reasoned. “We’re not issuing a warrant or anything.”
Jake thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “OK. What have you got on that?”
Martha turned to Zach. “Zach, what do you have?”
Zach handed Jake a printout. “These are all his engagements over the next three days.”
Jake read the printout, then passed it to Martha. “How do you want to narrow this down?”
She scanned the page. “He’s not going to make any underhanded meetings publicly available. So, we block off these times and find out where he goes the rest of the time.”
Jake studied the ceiling, deep in thought. “The easiest way to do that would be to monitor the surveillance footage from outside his office during this time. We can follow him through most of the city streets, and it will give us an idea of how to give Investigations a better lead.”
“I’m not pushing this up the ladder,” Martha reminded him.
“With what little you’ve got,” Jake shook his head, “you damn well should.”
Jake left with the printout, and Martha buried her face in her hands. She was definitely taking those vacation days. But she wasn’t getting a hot stone massage.
She was going to catch herself a bad guy.
Chapter Ten
Reuben—Saturday, February 11, 9:00 p.m.
Reuben rubbed his temple around the sensors on his forehead while Buzz clicked around on a laptop. “Are we done yet?” Reuben asked.
Over the last hour and a half, Buzz had hardly spoken to Reuben as he ran a myriad of experiments using equipment that no home should have: MRI scans, blood screening, ultrasounds, and a weird machine that looked like a toy version of the Swiss Hadron Collider.
Even CIA check-ups were less thorough.
“I mean, what’s the big deal? I thought you said it was most likely a vivid dream or something.”
Buzz responded with a distant, “Um, hmm…” That was the same response he had given Reuben the last twenty times he’d asked.
“Should I be worried?”
“Aha…” Buzz pulled out another needle, presumably to draw more blood.
Reuben shook his head. “If you aha me one more time, I swear to God, I’ll scream. I think I’ve been a good sport the last four times you prodded me. No more needles, Not until I get some answers.”
Buzz shook his head. “If what you experienced actually happened, then you didn’t die by a nuclear explosion. You died by microwave incineration.”
Reuben’s head was still fuzzy. “Like a hot pocket?”
Buzz sighed and sat, looking very disappointed in Reuben. “It’s something you wouldn’t know anything about. It’s not knowledge disseminated among the proletariat. Basically, to break it down…let’s see…”
Buzz stared at the ceiling and pursed his lips. He crossed his ankles and shook his foot as he thought deeply. “To break it down, a microwave will accelerate water molecules so fast that they evaporate.” Buzz’s tone indicated his irritation that he had to leave out so much detail to be understood by the common folk. “That’s exactly what you described. The water in your body, and your cells, boiling away.”
“Well, that’s not so complicated.”
“Yeah…not at all. Still very specific. And unusual.”
Reuben pushed away his agitation with Buzz’s characteristic know-it-all attitude. He needed Buzz, and his arrogance went with him. The best way Reuben had found to deal with Buzz’s ego was to feed it. That wasn’t difficult in this case because he was genuinely lost on this one.
Reuben cracked his neck. “I mean, how do you know it was a genuine experience? What if I actually saw that on a science show, or heard it in some intel briefing at work and just filed it away, and then it seeped into my subconscious and expressed itself in my dreams?”
Buzz made a face. “It’s possible, but not probable. There is a difference in the way the brain recalls experiences versus the way it recalls things we’ve learned. The things you’ve recalled relate to your experience. Talking to Sven Larson about Julian Schaeffer was an experience. But your thoughts are different. Besides, your blood has withstood three simulated temporal shifts. That shouldn’t be possible.”
Reuben frowned in confusion. “Simulated?”
Buzz pinched the bridge of his nose. “Here, let me show you.” Turning the needle on himself, he drew a few milliliters of his own blood. “If I put my blood—normal blood—into this capsule and run it through this machine, watch what happens.”
He squirted his blood into a plastic test tube and placed it in the mini-Hadron collider.
Reuben narrowed his eyes. “What is that?”
“It's something I threw together to simulate the effects of a wormhole.”
“So, it’s not a toy Hadron collider?”
Buzz tilted his head in confusion. “No? Why would I need one of those?”
Reuben shrugged. “I don’t know. Why would you need to simulate a wormhole in your own home?”
Buzz chuckled. “Good point. But given what may or may not be happening to you, you’ll be glad I have this.” He turned the machine on. Like the last time, it hummed for about six seconds before he turned it off. Buzz pulled out the vial. “What do you see?”
Reuben held up the vial. It looked empty. Impossibly clean, actually. “Nothing.”
Buzz pointed at him. “Exactly. Every time I run organic material through that thing, the result is always the same. It disappears.”
“Where does it go?”
Buzz shrugged. “Another dimension, a parallel universe, back in time, forward…a hell dimension? I don’t really know.” Buzz took the vial back then pulled out another needle. He jabbed it into Reuben’s arm. “Yet. But when I do, Nobel Prize, here we come. You can be my plus one.”
Buzz extracted another five milliliters of blood from Reuben and squirted it into the vial. Then he ran it through the machine.
He pulled out the vial and handed it to Reuben. “Now, what do you see?”
Reuben saw his blood in the damn thing. “What the fuck? My blood didn’t disappear.” He was both comforted and troubled by this. On the one hand, his blood hadn’t disappeared into some unknown hell dimension. On the other, his blood being there meant he was a freak. “What does this mean?”
“I don’t really know,” Buzz said. “I need to run more tests.”
Reuben rubbed the sore spots on his temples from Buzz's sensors. He thought back to everything that happened. It was all so strange, but then he remembered one odd event that had been lost in the shuffle of weirdness that was his life. He snapped his fingers, recalling the event. “What about the homeless guy and what he said? Can he time warp, too?”
Buzz shrugged. “Maybe. But there is a theory proposed by Dr. Patrick Ness that schizophrenia is really just the mind experiencing things that defy natural laws. While that’s a bit on the extreme side, it is possible that t
he homeless guy’s schizophrenia isn’t schizophrenia at all, but rather him remembering the future. He doesn’t actually warp back in time like you do, but he does retain some fuzzy memory of what had happened to him. You could see how that might mess with someone’s mind.”
Reuben dropped his hands. “Whoa.”
Buzz nodded. “Yeah. If this is the case, then people like that homeless man don’t have powers like you. When you die, you go back, and everything essentially resets. Also, you are able to come to terms with what the reset date and time is. But someone like him just remembers bits and pieces of the forgotten timeline like some terrible dream.” Buzz considered this. “You must feel like a real shithead for resetting things and confusing the hell out of people like him.”
Reuben still had issues with the idea. “But he was like this before my first time warp. Does that mean there are others like me?”
Again Buzz shrugged. “Maybe. But so far, my best theory is that this is a genetic anomaly. If I’m right, then you can’t be the only one. But you might be one in a billion. Hell, ten-billion, even. A hundred billion. That would mean you are the only one in several generations.”
“Like Buffy, ‘there is one every generation.’”
Buzz shook his head. “No, you’re one in several generations. Look, I don’t have many answers yet. Like I said, I need to run more tests.”
After another hour of experiments, tests, and numerous additional needles, Reuben’s stomach growled. “Got any food?”
Buzz didn’t look up from his microscope. He just yelled, “Rosa,” so loud that Reuben jumped.
An older Hispanic woman appeared in a black-and-white maid uniform. “Yes, Mr. Buzz?”
“Really, Buzz?” Reuben tilted his head in judgment. “A maid?”
Buzz grinned from ear to ear. “When you’re as rich as I am, it’s a nice perk.”
“Reuben would like something to eat,” Buzz told Rosa.
“Yes, Mr. Buzz. Pizza, pasta, sushi, hotdogs?” She rattled off the menu at an almost inhuman rapid pace.
“Pizza,” Reuben finally interjected, happy just to get anything.
Rosa nodded. “Margarita, pepperoni, pepperoni and mushroom, pepperoni and pineapple…”
“Pepperoni,” Reuben interjected. “Just pepperoni is fine.”
Another nod. “Soda?”
“No, thank you,” Reuben said before she could start rattling off another list.
“That will be all,” Buzz said, still not looking up. “Thank you, Rosa.”
Rosa disappeared, and Reuben laid back on the couch and rubbed his face. “I can’t believe you have a fucking maid. I don’t even have my own place, and you have a goddamn maid. What is there even for her to do all day?”
Buzz didn’t look up. “You know, I don’t really know.”
Reuben chortled, and Buzz clicked around on the computer. “How are things with Marshall?”
“Geez.” Reuben snorted. “He’s pissing the neighbors off again.”
“Still running around in his underwear?” Buzz asked with amusement.
Reuben sighed. “No, he stopped that once we adjusted his meds. Now he’s just stomping around yelling obscenities, and the management is fed up with him. They threatened to throw us out.”
“Damn.” Buzz went on clicking on his computer, not asking anything else. He was back in the zone.
Bored, Reuben got up to walk around the room. Up until now, he’d been so fixated on what was happening to him that he had been relatively quiet. But now, hours later, he was bored, bored, bored.
Buzz’s lab was filled with seemingly random bits and bobs that more closely resembled garbage than actual scientific equipment. Reuben picked up what looked like a magnifying glass with a broken handle.
“Don’t touch that,” Buzz told him. “It’s worth more than your car.”
“I have a shitty car.” Reuben examined the thing with interest. “What is it, anyway?”
Buzz sighed, unable to hide his aggravation at being disturbed. “What does it look like?”
“A magnifying glass,” Reuben answered.
Looking up, Buzz narrowed his eyes in frustration. “A magnifying glass? That’s a magnifying glass in the same way a bicycle is a jet engine.”
Reuben put it down. “OK, but you just asked me what it looked like, and I—”
Buzz cut him off, “You know what, I’m coding a new test. But it’s going to take some time. Why don’t you have your pizza by the pool?”
Reuben raised his eyebrows. “Pool?”
“Yeah, had it installed a few weeks ago,” Buzz muttered over the rapid clicking of his fingers on the keyboard. “Get Rosa to show you to the guest swimwear room.”
“Guest swimwear room?” Reuben should have been surprised.
“Yeah.” Buzz snapped his finger as if just remembering something. “And before you go, did you have your Apple Watch on when you, you know, blew up?”
Reuben nodded.
“Excellent. Give it to me.” Buzz extended his hand.
Sighing, Reuben handed over his watch. “You’re not going to destroy it, are you? I really like that thing.”
Buzz didn’t answer, transfixed by the laptop screen.
Watchless, Reuben wandered off through the mansion. He found Rosa easily enough. She sat in the kitchen with her feet up, watching a telenovela. A man lay in a hospital bed, surrounded by weeping women. He breathed deeply on a respirator. Then the hospital monitor beeped and the women burst into fresh tears.
“Dios mio,” Rosa gasped at the screen as she clutched her heart. “Not Pedro!”
“Poor Pedro.” Reuben shook his head. “Is that his wife?”
Rosa whipped around, startled. “Mr. Reuben. I have your pizza on the way.”
“No worries.” Reuben watched as the doctors flitted around Pedro’s dead body.
“Pedro,” Rosa shook her head, “he was a good man, but he accidentally impregnated his sister.”
“How did he do that?”
“He didn’t know she was his sister. He thought she was his business partner’s daughter. So, then when they took a paternity test, he found out his partner was his father. So he admitted to sleeping with his sister, and his father chased him through the house with a gun and shot him. They thought he would survive, but no.”
Reuben’s eyes widened. “Damn.”
Now the pregnant sister and father exchanged heated words in Spanish, and then it cut to commercial.
“Well.” Rosa wiped her eyes. “What can I do for you, Mr. Reuben?”
There was something off about Rosa. She was your stereotypical maid. Too stereotypical. Like she had been copied from some 1960s sitcom or something.
In college, Buzz had once said that when he made millions, he was going to get a Latino maid just like the maid in As Good As It Gets or Consuela from Family Guy. Of course they had been high and just had a Family Guy marathon. Still, here was Rosa, fulfilling that wish. Reuben couldn’t help but wonder if she was real. Maybe she was an actress Buzz paid to be like this or a robot that he made.
Reuben laughed at the thought, but when Rosa didn’t move, just stared at him expectantly. As she waited for his request, he wondered if he might be right.
Unsure how to verify or disprove his suspicions, he stammered, “The, um, guest swimwear room?”
“Yes, yes.” She showed him to a closet. Rows of swimsuits separated by gender filled the racks. “Mr. Buzz keeps these here for parties. When someone uses them, we throw them away.”
“Parties, huh?” Reuben repeated as he browsed past rows of tiny bikinis. “Buzz has parties?”
“No.” Rosa shook her head like a disapproving mother. “But Mr. Buzz likes to think he does.”
Reuben nodded. “I see.”
Rosa left, and Reuben picked a swimsuit and made his way to the pool. The pool was inside a two-story, domed room. One side of the dome was all windows looking out onto a large outdoor pool, which in early February would be to
o cold.
The bottom floor of the cream, marble-paneled dome held the indoor pool, a large, dark-blue saltwater circle. Colored track lights glinted off the water and dark wicker lounge chairs surrounded the pool, while a boulder fountain filled the room with the tranquil sound of rushing water.
The top story had metal railings overlooking the pool, and Reuben noticed a couple of telescopes up there. Buzz had his own observatory up here.
Reuben jumped into the pool and let the warm water relax his body. This whole experience had been confusing and upsetting. Maybe he really was having a mental breakdown.
What if I'm not? he wondered. What if I really died? What if I could die again and again and always come back? I would have the power to save the world.
What if I could save the world and get the girl?
Reuben couldn’t help but feel like he was living in some sort of Marvel comic book reality.
“Maybe, but then again, what if I’m a real superhero?” Reuben said out loud as he propelled himself into laps through the pool.
He thought about Buzz and how the guy had probably had the shit bullied out of him as a kid. Now look at him, in his big mansion with a maid. Most of those kids were probably busting their asses in some entry-level job, kissing up to ten different bosses. Buzz practically had the president of the United States on speed dial.
If Reuben had all the time in the world, then what was to stop him from being Buzz in his next life? Or someone like him.
Maybe, just maybe, this was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Chapter Eleven
Martha—Tuesday, February 14, 7:56 a.m.
Martha crept through the alley, trailing Alister. He was alone, and he had been since he’d left his condo that morning. His black trench coat blew in the February wind, and his dress shoes clicked against the concrete. There was an odd familiarity about the whole thing that she just couldn’t shake.
She followed Pout into the parking garage, where he boarded the elevator bound for the fourth floor. She flew past the security guard, her gut telling her he was no threat. She entered the stairwell and ran up to the fourth floor.
