They're Back

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Neither of us said a thing. I wasn’t sure what I believed any more.

  Then Denise slipped the manilla file folder across the counter toward Patty.

  Patty looked at it and gasped.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing either.

  Someone had taken a color Polaroid of the Slots of Saturn half crushed by two huge metal crushing arms of a big machine.

  “We take a picture of everything we crush as it’s being crushed,” Denise said. “That way we’re never accused of double-dipping like some crushing yards.”

  We said nothing. I was too stunned to say anything.

  “That what you were looking for?” Denise asked. “Almost ten years to the day as you said.”

  “That’s perfect, thanks,” Patty said, pushing the file back to Denise. “Can you make us a copy of that?”

  “Oh, sure,” Denise said and took the thin file to a copy machine.

  A couple minutes later we walked back out into the heat, Patty holding the copies of the file. The smell of desert and old cars hit me again as we walked down the slight hill on the old gravel road and through the big gate to get out of sight of anyone in the wrecking yard.

  How could the slots have been destroyed?

  I had just seen them at Binion’s just a short few hours before.

  “Are we dealing with real ghost slots this time?” Patty asked, her voice low and soft, as we walked through the heat.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said, feeling completely helpless as I jumped us back to my office overlooking Las Vegas.

  I had no idea how to fight machines.

  I really had no idea how to fight ghost machines.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Silent Dinner

  After Patty passed around the record from the wrecking yard and the picture, the dinner started off pretty silent. Stan, Ben, Screamer, and Sherri were there with us.

  Screamer and Sherri were staying close and sometimes touching across from me in the booth. Ben sat in the back of the booth, saying little, and Stan sat in a chair at the end of the booth.

  Madge came and went with food and drinks, but said little. That was normal for her unless she had some observation and like the rest of us, she didn’t seem to have many ideas on this mess.

  So finally I asked Sherri what exactly she felt when the machine jumped and knocked her out.

  “Like I had grabbed a supercharged electrical fence,” she said, shaking her head. “Hurt like hell.”

  Screamer touched her arm and she smiled slightly. Somehow his power and touch must have eased the memory of the pain some.

  “Could you tell what kind of energy it was?” Patty asked.

  “Human energy,” Sherri said without hesitation. “The same kind of energy I can track long after a person goes by. Only multiplied by factors and focused.”

  “And any sense of the machine now?” Ben asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. It just vanished.”

  “Do you think if it was here, you would be able to sense it?”

  “I’m sure of it,” she said. “And I think I’ll know the instant it comes back anywhere in town.”

  “Well,” I said, nodding to myself. “That’s going to help.”

  And I really believed it might. I wasn’t sure how, but knowing when it arrived, even if in a place the police didn’t have protected, would help a lot.

  Screamer smiled at Sherri. “That’s what I said.”

  “I hope so,” Sherri said.

  At that point Madge brought everyone dinner. This was not the nice, quiet dinner Patty and I had hoped to have, but there were people’s lives at stake. We could always go out to a better dinner on another day.

  I had ordered deep-fried shrimp. Patty again had some kind of a salad, only with chicken on it.

  We all ate pretty much in silence, and I was almost through my shrimp and baked potato when Lady Luck arrived and pulled up a chair next to Stan, who scooted over to give her room.

  “Feeling better?” she asked Sherri.

  Sherri nodded. “I am, thanks. Any leads?”

  Lady Luck shook her head and a moment later Madge appeared and slid a salad similar to Patty’s in front of one of the most powerful gods in the world.

  We all went back to eating in silence.

  I just kept running down everything I could think of, and I kept coming up blank. Then I remembered the Bookkeeper who had been trying to predict the machines.

  “Stan, have you checked with the Bookkeeper?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Just makes him angry when I push him.”

  “Don’t you think he needs to know the machines were destroyed ten years ago?”

  Stan nodded and took out his cell phone, standing to move off to talk with the Bookkeeper.

  Lady Luck looked at me with that stare of hers again, the one that could melt a normal person and pretty much did to me. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her daughters to grow up with that look.

  “Destroyed?” Lady Luck asked.

  I nodded and Patty took the copies of the file from beside her and handed them to Lady Luck.

  “Son of a bitch,” Lady Luck said after a moment of looking inside, then handing the file back to Patty.

  I didn’t know she swore like that.

  Then Lady Luck took another forkful of her salad, stuffed it in her mouth, and vanished.

  As we all sat there, sort of in shock at Lady Luck swearing, Stan came back over to the table and sat down. “The Bookkeeper was swearing at me when he hung up.”

  “Mom just did the same thing,” Sherri said, shaking her head. “That’s not a good thing when Mom swears.”

  When Mom was Lady Luck, there was no chance in the world I was going to disagree with that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Another Encounter

  Ten minutes later not a one of us could figure why both Lady Luck and the Bookkeeper were so upset about the machines having been destroyed ten years before.

  “There’s something none of us know,” Stan said, “that they clearly do and don’t really want to tell us yet.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, but as a lowly superhero, I was sort of used to either being in the dark, or just flat uninformed. I didn’t like it, but I had gotten used to the feeling. It was why I liked having Ben around. He helped me with the history.

  I turned to him with that thought. “Any record of anything like this happening before?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing even close in thousands of years of my memory.”

  Suddenly, Sherri tipped forward and grabbed her head.

  Screamer instantly held her, clearly working to help her in some fashion, his eyes closed.

  After a moment I asked softly, “Need help?”

  “Patty,” he said.

  Patty reached across the booth without hesitation and touched Sherri’s arm and then closed her eyes.

  At that moment I knew all three of them were linked up for some reason. And I had a hunch I knew what the reason was.

  The machines were back in town from wherever they went.

  And Screamer and Patty were helping Sherri set up some mental shields against the intense energy.

  Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, but must have only been fifteen seconds, Patty sat back and released her touch on Sherri.

  “Machines are back at Binion’s again,” Patty said.

  Sherri sat up straight and opened her eyes. They looked a little haunted, but not bad.

  “Thanks,” she said to Screamer and Patty. “I can deal with them now if I don’t get too close.”

  Screamer’s phone rang and he answered it. Then after a moment he said, “Make sure no one goes near them.”

  “Police still have the area surrounded,” Screamer said. “So we won’t lose another person this time.”

  “Think from this distance you might be able to follow the machines this time when they jump?” I asked Sherri.

>   She nodded. “With Patty and Screamer’s help I can try.”

  Patty slipped out of the booth and slid in on the other side with Sherri and Screamer. I watched from across the expanse of empty plates and used drinking glasses as the three of them got ready.

  I felt helpless. But I knew that sometimes a leader of a group was best left observing. I didn’t like it, but I knew that to be the case now.

  All three of their minds were going to be linked.

  “It’s powering up to jump,” Sherri said.

  Screamer held her shoulders and Patty reached over and held onto Sherri’s arm.

  All three of them closed their eyes, clearly no longer mentally in the booth.

  After four or five seconds, all three of them jerked as if shocked. Then they slumped.

  I wanted to shout to see if Patty was all right, but somehow I held my panic under control slightly.

  Finally Patty opened her eyes, looking at me and smiling at what must have been a panicked look on my face.

  “Could you trace them?” Stan asked.

  Patty shook her head and took a deep breath.

  “We should have been able to follow them,” Sherri said, opening her eyes as well and looking at Stan. “Anywhere on the planet. But it was as if the surge shut them off as they vanished.”

  Screamer nodded agreement and handed Sherri a glass of water.

  “We never saw them shut off ten years ago,” I said. “So is there any place on this planet you couldn’t trace them to?”

  “Nowhere,” Sherri said, and beside her Screamer again nodded in agreement. He had been inside her head, he knew what she felt and saw as well.

  Suddenly Lady Luck was back at the end of the table.

  She pulled up a chair, still clearly upset. “You are both right and wrong, daughter. There is no place on this planet you could not have traced them to with your power and the help of your husband and Patty.”

  “So where are they?” I asked.

  “They are on this planet,” Lady Luck said, looking at me. “Just not in this timeline.”

  Lady Luck took a forkful of the salad still sitting in front of her. And before putting it in her mouth she added, “and not in this time period either.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Time Headache

  I hated any thought of time travel. It always gave me a headache.

  And now just mentioning it again felt like it might give me one again.

  Patty stood and stretched and then came around and slid back into the booth beside me. She touched me and I could feel she was tired, drained from her experience with Sherri and Screamer.

  I focused some energy in her direction through our contact and she smiled, letting the energy in so that she could regain some strength. I liked that about our relationship. Together we were a lot, lot stronger than alone.

  Before I could even formulate a question for Lady Luck, Stan’s phone rang.

  “Bookkeeper,” Stan said, and answered the phone without leaving the table.

  “Yeah,” Stan said. “We know that.”

  Then he listened for a moment and I watched his face. It wasn’t easy to get a read on the God of Poker, but sometimes when Stan wasn’t aware, he let down his guard. And this was one of those times.

  His eyebrows seemed to creep up his forehead toward his receding hairline as he clearly got news he didn’t want to hear.

  Then he asked, “How long?”

  “Thanks,” Stan said after a moment. “Anything else, call me.”

  He clicked off his cell phone and looked at the silent group around the table.

  “We have fourteen hours,” Stan said, “to solve this.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Lady Luck said. “That’s what Kronos told me as well.”

  Kronos, the God of Time, was the only one allowed to travel in time. He controlled it and if he thought this was a problem, it really was a problem.

  “What happens in twenty-three hours?” Sherri asked.

  “This timeline we are in is permanently separated from our original timeline,” Stan said.

  Lady Luck and Ben were both shaking their heads, clearly understanding what that meant.

  And knowing what he meant.

  I had no clue. Not one.

  And I could tell the other superheroes at the table had no idea what the gods were saying or thinking, since there were blank looks on the faces I could see. I could feel my look was as puzzled as the rest.

  “What happens then?” Screamer asked.

  “This entire timeline drops into a time loop,” Lady Luck said.

  “A what?” Screamer asked a moment before I could get out the question.

  “Think Groundhog’s Day, the movie,” Stan said, “only we won’t have a memory of anything repeating.”

  “This timeline would just repeat the last few days,” Lady Luck said flatly, “plus the next fourteen hours over and over and over. We would never know it and never escape.”

  My stomach clamped up so tight I wasn’t sure if I could even swallow. And my lungs seemed to expel every ounce of breath they were holding.

  That was the worst kind of jail I could ever imagine.

  “How do we know,” I asked, afraid of the question, “that we didn’t fail and are already in a time loop?”

  “We don’t,” Lady Luck said. “So let’s not fail, because I don’t want to eat this salad for the rest of eternity.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Ticking Clock

  After we all sat there for a few long moments in silence, thinking about our possible eternities having dinner together, the same dinner, and not knowing we were doing it, I finally managed to get a thought in my brain and let it come out my mouth.

  “What caused this in the first place?”

  “You did,” Stan said.

  “We all did,” Lady Luck corrected. “None of us knew. We were just glad Poker Boy and Patty and Screamer saved the gambling industry, remember?”

  “I’m not following,” I said.

  “We saved people the machine had taken from this timeline and just left them in the past,” Patty said.

  Now I knew that didn’t sound good.

  Stan nodded. “So to get those same people again, the machine has to jump to another timeline and take the same people again and again and again. Jumping from timeline to timeline. A time loop creating new alternate realities off the same event.”

  “So we already saved everyone who is in the machine the first time?” I asked.

  “You did,” Lady Luck said, nodding. “Now we have to save all the rest of us and everyone in this timeline.”

  “So the main timeline actually got split back ten years ago?” Screamer asked.

  Lady Luck nodded.

  “So to stop this,” I asked. “Will Kronos allow us to go back in time and fix the mistake?”

  “He will,” Lady Luck said. “I already asked him and he agreed if I went along. We can bring the victims back to the future and that will reset all the timelines.”

  I could feel my stomach starting to unclamp. “So what’s the problem?”

  She looked at me. “Do you know which people you saved were from that past time and which were from this time?”

  “Oh,” Patty said, slumping slightly beside me.

  “We don’t have a lot of time to figure that out,” I said. “We can do that, can’t we?”

  Lady Luck nodded. “We can, but if we miss one, we’re into the time loop and will always miss one.”

  She was so full of good news I couldn’t stand it.

  She stood. “I’ve got some things to set up, and I need to talk with Kronos again.”

  She vanished.

  I took a deep breath and pushed the headache back. We needed to get moving and move fast. I turned to Stan. “Can you get the Bookkeeper on this?”

  “He said he would start the computer searches for them when I talked with him. He should have a list for us shortly.”

  I nodded.
“We don’t want to trust it, though.” I looked at Stan again. “Can you talk with the gods in charge of the police and get a full list of names we rescued?”

  “I’ll get it,” Stan nodded and vanished.

  “So what do we do?” Screamer asked.

  I sat there staring at the four left around the table that was still covered with our dinner dishes. Then it suddenly dawned on me that we had yet another way of getting information.

  We could travel back without actually traveling in time.

  “Screamer, when you pushed those people out of the chair, you touched them.”

  “I did,” he said, frowning at me. “Do you really think after ten years that I can remember flashes of who they all were just from touching them for an instant?”

  “I do,” I said, smiling at my friend. “With help. Whatever we get can work as another check-point to make sure the lists we get are 100% accurate.”

  “I don’t know how I could do that,” Screamer said, shaking his head.

  “It won’t just be you,” I said. “Remember, all three of us were hooked up and thus all three of us caught a glimpse of the mind of each person you touched.”

  “Good point,” Patty said, “But I don’t think I remember much either.”

  “I remember us being a little busy,” Screamer said.

  “But we have a secret weapon.”

  I looked directly into the wonderful brown eyes of the love of my life. It took her a moment, but then she laughed, clearly understanding what I was getting at.

  She smiled at me and then turned to Screamer. “Remember how I slowed the time down so we can get the people out of the chairs?”

  Screamer nodded.

  “I can slow the time down even more in memory. A lot more.”

  I looked at Ben, who just smiled at me and nodded his agreement.

  “Ben can remember what we all only caught a glimpse of in each person,” I said, “if he’s linked to us when we go back into the memory.”

  Screamer nodded slowly. “You know, Poker Boy, that’s a hairbrained scheme like most of your schemes, and it just might work.”