Die Again to Save the World

by Ramy Vance

  Reuben tried not to think about dying again.

  After an hour of further analysis, Buzz snapped his fingers and said, “Follow me. We need more information.” He was back to his old self, working the problem from every angle his genius mind could conjure.

  Buzz turned toward the hallway, his slippers silently padded over the marble linoleum while his bathrobe swished around him like a cape.

  Reuben followed, still trying not to think about dying again. “Buzz, why do you think this is happening to me?”

  Buzz shrugged. “It might be genetic. Either that or you were bit by a radioactive clock.”

  Reuben was lost again. “Radioactive clock?”

  “You know, like Spiderman, but your power is to manipulate time, so it’s a clock.”

  “Oh,” Reuben said.

  Buzz rolled his eyes. “It’s a joke.”

  “Yeah, I get that. I was just wondering if I was chosen or something?”

  Buzz stopped, turning to Reuben. “What? Like an angel tapped you to save the world? If that were true, and just for the record, I do not think it is. Don’t you think the angel would have tapped someone, I don’t know, smarter?”

  “Maybe, but—”

  “Or stronger,” Buzz interjected. “More coordinated. Hell, able to cook.”

  Reuben sighed. “Oh, ha-ha, I get it. I’m not exactly superhero material.”

  Buzz continued, “Since you’d probably remember being bit by a radioactive clock, I calculate that this is genetic at ninety-two percent probability.”

  A thought hit Reuben. “So, what? There’s others like me?”

  Buzz shook his head. “Unlikely. I suspect you have a genetic anomaly, think mutants from X-Men or something. It’s most likely this genetic mishap gave you your abilities. But like I said, ninety-two percent probability on that one. There is an eight percent margin for error. That is not insignificant. Of course, there is the miniscule chance that this anomaly is the universe's version of cleaning up horrible events that should never have happened, like this microwave bomb in NYC. But let’s consider one thing at a time.”

  They arrived at a door, and Buzz keyed in a quick code on a security pad, which opened the door to a cavernous room with high, vaulted ceilings. At first glance, it looked to be a server room.

  “This,” Buzz gestured, “is where the real science happens.”

  Reuben saw floor-to-ceiling computers and monitors. Cables ran everywhere, and just about every wall space had a screen on it. Built-in cabinets every which way held desktop computers and technology that didn’t even exist yet in the field. It was only theorized in trade magazines.

  Geez, Reuben thought. Buzz’s lair made the CIA look like a basement hack operation. No wonder he had thought they were obsolete and irrelevant.

  Standing in the center of the room, and with the authority of Moses parting the Red Sea, Buzz spoke to the machines. “System book, level 7 dilemma protocols activate.”

  Several screens on the wall lit up with a calendar interface. Reuben considered himself on the brink of the technology curve, but this was beyond anything he knew was out there.

  “We have two issues we need to work out. One, how to stop the bomb. And two, what’s happening to you. I rank them in that order because stopping the bomb is the top priority. Once that’s done, we’ll have plenty of time to dissect you.” From Buzz’s tone, Reuben wasn’t entirely sure Buzz was joking.

  Buzz cleared his throat and spoke into the room. “The bomb explodes on February 14 at 9:47 a.m.”

  After a quick beep, the information appeared as a time note entry on the calendar. Buzz slowly lowered his arm toward Reuben, gesturing him toward the middle of the room.

  Reuben came to tentatively stand in the center circle, where speakers and dial lights hung from every direction.

  “Plot everything you remember,” Buzz instructed. “The timetable system is designed to work with conversational data so that it processes the information in its format while you process it in yours.”

  More data collection. Reuben groaned. He was so sick of data collection and experiments. “I don’t want any more tests. I want action. I want you to give me some sort of weird plutonium Doc Brown Libyan terrorist’s potion that will magically cure all of this.”

  Buzz’s face turned hard, his eyes cold. “Don’t ever mention Back to the Future to me again. That film makes a mockery of the scientific profession and turns the legitimate work of serious researchers into Hollywood culture punchlines.”

  Then Buzz winked and slapped his friend on the shoulder. “I’ll give you a hard copy of the data so you can study it and memorize as much as you can. This will fast-track us to recreating it if you lose this timeline. The code to access this room is Binnie, which no one else in the world knows. It will also serve as a memory key to fast-track us to this moment in other timelines.”

  “Binnie?” Reuben smirked. Binnie was the name of the robot in Buzz’s erotic novel from college.

  Buzz’s eyes got a faraway look, and he stared off into the distance.

  Reuben smiled and got his head in the game. “Right. On February 11 at 7:30, I woke up in my bed without the blackout curtains. I grabbed the pizza box dated February 10 and went into the living room with Dad.”

  Buzz sat at a computer monitor, and they both watched as the information appeared in calendar format on the screens. Encouraged, Reuben verbally vomited every event that had happened to him since the time warp started.

  It took a few hours for Reuben to tell his whole story, taking into account the three deaths. He collapsed into a chair next to Buzz when he was done.

  Buzz already had multiple graphs and charts with the information on over a dozen monitors. “OK. Much of that matches with the nanobot’s records. Of course, we’ll have to go on your memory for the first death since the nanobot wasn’t in you then.” Buzz generated an intimidating battery of graphs, pie charts, and stats pages that filled multiple monitors. “You’re stuck in a timeline of three days. According to these calculations, it would appear that each rebound lasts anywhere from twenty minutes to seventy-four hours and forty-four minutes. In theory, you could travel back mere seconds if you knew how to control your power, but three days looks to be the maximum you can go back at one time.”

  It was good trivia, and if it wasn’t so horrible to die, Reuben would have appreciated the numbers. But all he could think of now was how to get out of the constant repeats.

  Death. Final death, he thought. Is it really that bad?

  “This is good. This is good,” Buzz said excitedly as he typed on his computer. “I’ve set up an automated process so that when you die, the nanobot syncs to your smartwatch, which then automatically sends the feedback through your phone to my computers. All my notes on your warps and the timeline are also reverse-synced back to your nanobot so that my computers stay up to date when you warp.”

  Reuben studied the graphs. “This is great, but how can I use this information to stop cycling?”

  Buzz scratched his chin and clicked around on the screen, each click pulling up different elements of Reuben’s experience. It was beyond impressive how intelligent the program was. Each entry was highly accurate, organizing all of the details and conversations into a cohesive timeline. It even had other information he hadn’t given it, like a map of the addresses where the events occurred.

  “Your problem is,” Buzz clicked around as he spoke, “that the farthest you’re going back is just over three days. We've got lots of research to do. And we've got to figure out a plan. That’s not enough time to stop the bomb.”

  Reuben sighed. “Probably not, no.”

  Buzz’s eyes twinkled. “What you need is more time.”

  “But I have no control over it,” Reuben countered. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”

  “Right.” Buzz smiled. “But what if you did?”

  Reuben tilted his head in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “You only go back t
o this morning because you don’t control when you die. What if you did control when you died?”

  “Like…” Reuben’s face paled. “Suicide?”

  “Don’t think of it as suicide.” Buzz rubbed his chin. “Think of it as controlling the cycle.”

  “You think if I killed myself,” Reuben thought aloud, “it would give me more time?”

  “Theoretically, yes. Because if you’re going back up to seventy-two hours, you could potentially rebound at close to a week before the bomb explodes. That would certainly give you more time. If that works, you could experiment with other time ranges.”

  Reuben felt bile rise in his throat. "What if it's not just any death that causes the time warp? What if it's specifically linked to the bomb killing me?"

  Buzz shook his head. "As a scientist, that doesn't make sense to me. It is most probable that you simply cannot die at this time. Old age is probably the only thing that can truly kill you."

  Reuben had serious doubts. “But killing myself just feels wrong."

  Buzz crossed his arms.

  Reuben sighed. "Well, it’s not the worst idea I’ve heard.”

  The time warp had done a lot for his confidence. He had told off his bosses and somehow scared the shit out of his landlady.

  But, suicide?

  That was an entirely different beast. Could he really conquer that? In the movies, the guy would always sweat during his moment of contemplation before he pulled the trigger. Could he do it in real life?

  Buzz seemed to be tracking with his thoughts. “Think about it. If you get over your fear of death, then you would have conquered fear once and for all. You’d be unstoppable.” Buzz pulled out a gun from his drawer and handed it to Reuben. “Now, temple or in the mouth?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Reuben—Saturday, February 11, 2:32 p.m.

  Reuben leaned against the side of the jacuzzi in Buzz’s pool house.

  Buzz sighed and closed his eyes, quiet as the jets massaged him.

  “But that’s the thing,” Reuben told Buzz as Rosa brought them cold beers on a silver tray. “Dying is the worst possible pain you can imagine. After all, your body lives through any other pain. It can’t survive death. Death, in essence, is your body waving a white flag to the injury because all of its built-in defenses have been maxed out and compromised.”

  “Thank you, Rosa.” Buzz grabbed a drink and twisted off the top, and Reuben did the same.

  They sipped their drinks, and Reuben let the alcohol numb his nerves.

  “Well, you’ve only died one way, though. Death by explosion, yes. But the gun…” Buzz was still sour that he had refused to put a bullet in his head.

  Reuben ignored him. “So what other ways could I die, then?” Reuben contemplated, a little unnerved that this was indeed his real thought process.

  Buzz grabbed his phone off the side of the pool and started searching for ways to die. “Poison, terrorist attack, car accident, plane crash, drowning, being crushed by a large object… The human body is alarmingly frail, and there are infinite ways to destroy it.”

  Buzz read the last item. “Gunshot.”

  “We’ve been through that one already,” Reuben told him.

  “Too messy and dark.” Buzz sighed. “And it would be awful if Rosa couldn’t get the bloodstains out of my rug. Terrible for the resale value.”

  “Your new house is ready, right?”

  “How do you…oh,” Buzz replied. “It won’t be ready for another year.”

  “Right.” Reuben thought about his apartment with his dad. It was just the way things were going to have to be for a while.

  “Now, we could have a car wreck,” Buzz suggested.

  “The old car off a cliff, huh?” Reuben considered. "Seems a bit dramatic."

  They sat in silence for a couple minutes.

  Reuben looked up at the high ceiling. “What about jumping off a building? I saw a movie once where they said you don’t die on impact on the ground, you die from wind impact.”

  “Plenty of high buildings around here. Empire State, Chrysler.”

  Reuben saw one issue with that. “Getting past security, though…”

  Buzz nodded. “True, true.”

  “You could bribe security,” Reuben suggested.

  “I don’t want to get involved.” Buzz held up his hands, and salty pool water dripped down his scrawny arms. “If this doesn’t work and you are crazy after all, then I’d have to stay in this timeline. Murder, prison…” Buzz gestured toward his ultra-lanky frame in swim trunks. “This doesn’t do that.”

  Reuben chuckled. “Yeah. It would be difficult to avoid being implicated.”

  Buzz sighed. “All right. This is getting us nowhere. Let’s take a walk. We need new ideas.”

  They got out of the pool and started to dry off.

  Buzz rattled off several ways one could stop the heart. “What you want is one that interrupts the vital systems. Those are fairly easy to find.”

  After several minutes of this, Reuben stopped him. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Take a moment.” Buzz slapped him on the back. “We don’t have to decide right now. We’ll get dressed and walk in the gardens. We have plenty of time to figure out exactly how to kill you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Reuben—Saturday, February 11, 2:40 p.m.

  The crisp February wind in Buzz’s garden stirred the trees, and there was an effervescent floral scent that Reuben could never hope to accurately place. He wished he knew flowers and plants. Knowledge like that may have proven helpful in his nonexistent love life. Birds flew overhead, and bright spots of red dotted the holly bushes and hedges while a fountain bubbled nearby. The tranquility of the garden put Reuben more at ease, and the surreal nature of what he was facing started to fade just a bit.

  “Well?” Buzz fell into step with him as they strolled through the hedge mazes. “Have you come to any conclusions?”

  “I don’t know,” Reuben admitted weakly.

  Buzz nodded. “Let’s head back to the lab. I’ll show you what I’m working on inside Binnie.”

  The two men went back into the house and down the hall to the Binnie room. Buzz entered the code and took Reuben into the computer room.

  As they walked, Buzz piped up again, “I was thinking about your questions earlier. How did you get this ability? Are you the only one? And what about others?” Buzzed paused.

  “And?” Reuben coaxed.

  “I have no idea,” Buzz admitted. “But, well, have I given you my theory on pseudo-schizophrenia in a previous time warp?”

  Reuben nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t know about that.”

  Buzz chuckled. “Hear me out. Not everyone suffering from schizophrenia, just a select few who are genetically predisposed to time warps. The .00001 percent of the population with a recessive time warp gene, if you will. But what if, on a more universal, common level, we all have a touch of access. No memories. Zero knowledge that anything happened, but we can sense a disturbance?”

  “In the Force?” Reuben quipped.

  “You are such a nerd.” Buzz chuckled. “Yes, sort of like a disturbance in the force. That could potentially explain things like déjà vu, intuition, some dreams. They’re really just the mind processing information that otherwise isn’t accessible to the conscious mind.”

  Reuben gave him a blank look.

  Buzz waved his hands. “OK, think of it this way. Someone has déjà vu, right? It’s an odd feeling of familiarity. But because you’ve yet to experience it, the event just comes off as out of place. Odd. But what if that’s a piece of their mind remembering the future? A future that was reset by a time warp? I’m not saying all déjà vu is that, but it is possible that can happen. The more important the memory, the stronger the feeling.”

  Reuben considered this but then shook his head. “Wouldn’t that mean time warps are happening all the time? Déjà vu isn’t exactly a rare occurrence, and if my abilities are as rare as
you’ve hypothesized, then time warps would be super rare.”

  Buzz nodded in agreement. “Maybe. It is possible there are more time warps happening that we don’t know about. It is also possible that feelings like déjà vu have other sources outside of time warps, like us seeing events in parallel universes or—”

  “Stop,” Reuben stamped his foot on the ground, abruptly stopping. “This is already crazy enough without you introducing parallel universes into this.”

  Buzz laughed. “Yeah, you’re right.” Shaking his head, he gestured for them to keep moving. “Say, remember when we were in college, there was this one night we got really high and started talking about cool ways to die?” Buzz mused. “Do you remember what we said it would be?”

  “We were horny kids, Buzz.”

  “True, but you did say it would be a great way to go.”

  “Sex is probably a good way to end it, but there are many problems with that scenario. One, I’m pretty sure I’d need some underlying condition for it to work. A bad heart, an aneurism, maybe. And two, there’s no one around here to have sex with. Unless of course, you’re volunteering.”

  Buzz and Reuben chuckled as the scientist led him into a concrete hallway off to the side of the room. They went down a long narrow stairwell into what could only be described as an underground bunker.

  Reuben got a chill down his spine. “Buzz, you’re creeping me out, man. What is this place?”

  Buzz just smiled, and another shiver of fear went down Reuben’s spine. The bunker reminded him of the interrogation room at work. It was a large area with not much in it, only a metal folding chair and a lab panel with all kinds of weird switches, controls, and dials that looked like something like an audio sound board. Against one wall, a closet-sized opening was covered by a pink curtain with butterflies.

  “What’s back there?”

  Buzz smiled. “Sit.”

  Reuben sat in the metal chair, and Buzz played with a bank of switches on the lab panel. The pink closet door opened, and out stepped the most beautiful woman Reuben had ever seen.