by Agster, Joe
“Cassie, do you know who I am?” he wonders.
She replies almost instantaneously and assuredly, “Yes… you are Friend. I can’t believe it though, although I should.”
She takes a moment to reflect on her father’s prophecy. She recalls his dying words, words that detailed the man standing before her, who would come to her aid when the world was in flux. But he didn’t say how the world would be in flux, or was he specific about what kind of “aid” he would provide, only that the moment she laid eyes on him, she would suddenly experience a rush of familiarity in him. Perhaps he was vague for a reason, she concludes to herself.
He lets her finish getting dressed, putting on shoes, then the final touches on her hair, before applying that musky sweet oriental scent she enjoys wearing. She didn’t realize he would be so handsome, and she finds herself dressing for a date, sporting a sexy wine-red V-neck sweater. As she nods to confirm her readiness, he passionately grabs a hold of her hand as they whisk away into nonspace.
By teleporting her to the mansion, it provides her with manifested proof that her intuition, all the fibers of her being, are true and correct about what and who Friend is. It also gives her a chance to view the clearboard and to review what their purpose is. She looks around the mansion, admiring the rich interior design and spaciousness.
“We need to pick up some friends. You ready?” he asks gently, as her awestruck stare at both him and their surroundings has yet to cease.
They arrive in the back parking lot of an office park, in an out-of-view, tiny nature preserve. The complex is composed of plain white and mirrored glass buildings, aged but still functioning. Through the asphalt trek toward the front they arrive at a street, bordered by grass lined sidewalks. Dead ahead is a compound full of cars, protected by a black iron fence.
“A rental car place?” Cassie wonders. “I didn’t know people still rented cars.”
“He does, and we need to rescue him before he rents one.”
“And who is this ‘he’ exactly?”
As they cross the street and enter the rental car compound, he feels compelled to fill her in. “His name is Max. Most people refer to him as Dr. Pond. He’s a top scientist for NASA, but he’s on the run by your government’s FBI, on orders from the president. He flew here to Los Angeles by plane last night, from a city called Houston. He disguised his path by purchasing several plane tickets in his name that departed around the same time, even checking in to those flights. Now he’s here, renting a car under a false identity supplied to him by his CIA friend. That CIA friend we will meet later.”
As they enter the building, she remains contently silent in that holistic description of the man they are trying to intercept. The building inside is wide and crowded, full of business travelers and families all gathered into lines waiting to check in with one of the six machines. The silver and titanium stationary machines project a lifelike holographic face of a customer service agent, confirming identity and payment. Other roaming humanoids help customers to their cars outside in the lot. Max stands impatiently toward the back of the line, easily spotted by the light brown jacket he is always wearing on this first day.
Friend wastes no time, standing to the side and giving him an uneasy stare, essential to expedite the linking process he has with him. “Dr. Pond, you need to come with us.”
A flash comes over him as they can see the redness in his face, the look of sudden shock as something he never could have imagined a moment ago is now consuming his mind. Believing quietly that this whole encounter was preordained, Max exits the line and follows Friend and Cassie outside of the building. Once out of view, the three of them vanish.
Max already had an innate awareness of Friend and his capabilities, but nothing can overcome the feeling he just experienced as he was displaced from one location to another. He looks around the mansion just as Cassie did, then looks at her, still brimming with many questions. Friend looks at them both and decides to bring them up to speed before these two geniuses’ heads explode, or worse, engage in another catty argument over quantum physics.
Directing attention to the clearboard, he sheds some light on their deep hunger for answers. “Max, meet Cassie. Cassie, meet Max. So here’s where we are. Cassie and I need to travel to Hong Kong to find a man by the name of Len Wang. We believe he holds key knowledge in the plot to intentionally target Icedragon toward Earth.”
Both their faces light up in horror, Max because his more guarded, sinister secret is out, and Cassie, wondering how such a plot came into fruition in the first place. If only they could reacclimatize to their deep discussions such rebriefings wouldn’t be necessary. But again, this is the point of the big clearboard. He had already redrawn everything back, drawing on his ability to photographically retain the previous image of it from his memory, every letter, line, and shape down to the color and thickness of the lettering to recreate it.
“Now I need to retrieve the person who will help us track down Wang.” Friend concludes his brief talk, before he dematerializes right before their eyes.
The door from the stairwell gives way to a lavishly decorated hallway, carpeted in lots of shades of red, with some purple and white accents along the walls. The unusual arrangement of colors is something Friend has grown accustomed to, realizing that temperance and neutral give way to flashy and pizzazz in a place such as Las Vegas.
He quickly brings himself to the door, and similar to when he was at Cassie’s door, he unleashes a wave of aggressive knocks. Within seconds, a muffled voice shouts through moments later, “State your business!”
Friend replies, looking on at the door with a quirky smile, uttering the goofy but essential code phrase Fisher gave him. “Your mother is a hot potato.”
A second and a half passes in complete silence before the door swings open violently. Fisher stands there with an impatient posture, in a pair of worn jeans and a white torn t-shirt, holding a gun and waving him in with a sense of urgency. Friend enters cautiously just as he slams the door.
“You better have critical business to discuss,” Fisher barks angrily, his dark frame and muscular physique backing up his words with an intimidating presence. Fisher continues getting dressed, putting up a brown collared sweater and lacing up his black dress shoes.
“I do… I do,” Friend explains, gesturing his arms to calm him down.
“My name is Friend. I am a traveler through space and time. We’ve met before through our mutual friend Dr. Max Pond. Your CIA expertise is helping us uncover who is responsible for Icedragon.”
Fisher raises the gun to Friends head. “Come on man, I need a better cover story than that.”
Cover stories are a spy’s specialty, and Fisher has heard them all. He had been trained to make one up on the fly, and has perfected his technique over decades of espionage. You never know when you’ll be suddenly detained in a foreign country, or obligated to attend a high society dinner and ball for a diplomat.
But with that training he has a keen sense for bullshit, and perhaps it’s over-refined, but he’s smelling it all over Friend. Friend senses his distrust and urges him to grab his arm. He gives Friend a confused look after the unconventional request. As he reluctantly touches his sprawled arm, they are instantly displaced through space, arriving at the mansion.
“See, look. We are in a totally new place. I just transported you here. You gave me that phrase, you told me to use it as proof that we’ve met, and that you used to use it with another agent who died.”
Fisher spots his friend Max and immediately returns to being calm, embracing his friend with a big hug as if they haven’t seen each other in a while. It is apparent to Friend that their visit later in this day is the first in a long time.
“Okay. Now that the whole gang is here, let’s get started,” he declares, looking at his watch as it reads 9:10. Whew, he sighs in relief. He is glad that whole effort took less than an hour.
Friend shows him the clearboard and fills the entire group in on ev
erything they’ve uncovered and discussed, including the plan and the goal of finding Len Wang in Hong Kong. Fisher studies it for several minutes, rekindling his memory of the facts, even if he cannot recall their previous meeting. Fisher knows of the asteroid, but staring at this abundance of facts absorbs him into the plot, and he feels compelled to help, especially knowing that his friend Max is involved. Cassie and Max had already had a few minutes to study it while Friend was away, also soaking in all the knowledge being presented.
Cassie is beside herself, and her eagerness to speak forces her to ask. “So let me get this straight. You want to travel to Hong Kong because you have never been there and thus cannot teleport to that location. And I suggested a suborbital flight, well another version of me anyway, because it’s faster and we can get there in three hours. And I’m paying for all of this on my bank card?”
She continues to muse at her other self’s plan as she looks on at the clearboard. She is apprehensive at the idea, but inherently trusting of him as she analyzes the seriousness in his eyes. She always is fascinated with the idea of another Cassie each time she learns of his timelooping, one in a parallel universe, providing Friend with insight and ideas she barely knew she had.
“Yes. But I need a passport first before I can travel by plane. Our friend Fisher here claims he can provide me one,” Friend explains, looking in his direction.
Fisher is still in awe, desperately trying to return to reality, as Friend’s eyes compel him to respond. “Okay, okay I got it space-bro. So I’m supposed to arrange you a passport, not a problem. I have just the guy.”
Friend assumes his natural leadership position that he so intuitively feels is his nature. He directs Cassie to look for flights, Max to uncover what else he can find out about who is responsible, while Fisher contacts his forger named Bernardo, spending several minutes on his device before concluding the call.
“Bernardo is ready to meet.” Fisher tells Friend. Bernardo is an expert forger who resides in western Las Vegas. Fisher and Friend had taken a drive there during the last iteration, so Friend is able to jump to that location immediately.
13:05
Las Vegas Airport
It took a little more than an hour for Bernardo to complete the Canadian passport. In the meantime, Cassie had booked the flight, China Star Airlines, flight number 503B, with a departure of 16:40.
The process of checking themselves in and arriving at the gate for boarding is surprisingly uneventful, the forged passport producing no problems, so they spend the rest of their time at the gate waiting. The terminal seems to continue without end in all directions. The mood is very fluid, the use of the silver colors everywhere, save the red for the Las Vegas signs, provides the travelers with a sense of mental calm.
Friend realizes this is his first chance alone with her in quite a long time. He has longed for her intellectual insight coupled with her warm vulnerability, something he’s always admired and missed during all those iterations training. In that time his outlook has dramatically changed, no longer is he the curious boy wonder that struggled to find himself. He is now the well versed and well-traveled man, a natural leader, courageous and caring for a world he doesn’t understand, even if he still has yet to figure out who he truly is.
Cassie looks deep into his eyes, seeing troves of weeks and months filled with adventure, learning about this world, its social customs and its beauty, with her by his side through most of it. She swells with sorrow and jealousy that her current conscious self was never a part of it. She longs for even a morsel of a memory, perhaps a passing kiss, or a moment where he opened himself deeply and she hung on to every word.
As they pass the time he does what he can to fill her in, starting from their first moment at the Vyxx, to making it to the bunker. He describes in heartfelt detail how brave she was to provide him the liquid toxin he needed to kill himself and return, so he could start his new quest. He talks about his need to train and develop his powers, careful to leave out any mention of the Other, as his mere idea strikes fear even in him.
The announcement is made to board the flight. They idly funnel along with the other passengers through the narrow walkway onto the advanced, space-capable plane. As they reach their seats on the airship, Friend recalls his bout with the fear of heights, and thankful that he conquered it. Still, he cannot help to wonder what is in store for him, as flying into space redefines the word “heights.”
The seats are spacious, composed of plush gray leather, with two seats on each side of the aisle per row. Cassie explains these concepts to Friend, how the exorbitant ticket prices make the entire flight first class, so much so that she has little left in her bank account. As they are seated on the right hand side, Cassie next to the window, they study the configuration of the wing, as during the flight test the outer half can reposition itself vertically.
As they are cleared for takeoff, the aircraft begins to accelerate rapidly down the runway, much more than a conventional flight. After about five minutes, the captain informs everyone to buckle in tight, as they begin what is called a vertical ascent. The aircraft is pointed straight up for several minutes as it continues to accelerate. The adrenaline rush is intense, and at moments Cassie grabs his hand tighter and tighter, feeling his unease. Friend however returns to his training and takes control of his mind, dispelling any remaining nervousness.
Ten minutes into the flight they eventually level off, but as they look around, the Earth and the blue sky are below, and they finding themselves floating in space, devoid of all their gravity. The captain informs everyone to stay buckled during the weightlessness. Drinks are served in sealed cups, to prevent the liquid from floating out. He finally lets go of her hand as she takes some sips of her soda, as they both are mesmerized at the view of the curvature of the Earth. They stare down through the window for several minutes, focused enough to watch the planet rotate in the opposite direction from underneath them.
As her intrigue for the flight wanes, she realizes she is bothered by the silence between them. Burning curiosity takes her over, and as she dwells on it she is finally compelled to ask. “So how much do you know about me?”
He replies immediately, “I know you are kind, very intelligent, fearless, and have a penchant for helping lost souls like me.” He smiles as she listens attentively, but as he speaks he becomes enamored with her deeper, more mysterious side. “But I sense a deep reservoir of dark feelings within you. Your mother, that boyfriend you had when you dropped out of school, you bring these topics up and we discuss them, but at some point you abruptly withdraw, changing the subject. I care for you, so I never probe.”
She stays silent, slightly comforted that her other selves hadn’t revealed too much of her past. He is right after all, she is a web of dark secrets, many of which she has buried so deep, she refuses to remember. But they are there, and so perhaps there are regrets, but she holds herself in high esteem that these experiences have shaped her, made her fearless, made her carefree. She reminds herself that she cannot undo some of the terrible things she has done, so she might as well embrace it. And in time, she will open up to him, just not today.
After about forty-five minutes in suborbital space, the captain informs them that they will be starting their descent, a procedure that will take another hour. As the descent starts, the craft initially feels like it is in a state of free fall, as passengers nervously look around, gripping their arm rests. The ship’s nose is then pointed downward through the reentry phase. “Oohs” and “ahhs” echo through the cabin, as the captain soothes them by explaining it will be over soon. After five minutes, the plane again levels off, and from then on out it’s a slow, gliding, peaceful descent.
Through the clouds they are treated to a bird’s eye view of the entire region of islands and peninsulas spread out through the South China Sea, seen perfectly from their right side window. The city of Hong Kong eventually comes into view. Cassie points out some of the places she’s visited when she was a kid, th
e Big Buddha statue, the temples, the various restaurants, even the farmlands near mainland China. She talks about her relatives who live there, most who she barely knows. She is eager to get a fresh look at the city with mature eyes.
They disembark from the plane, and are greeted by a security team and guided through customs. They inquire about their intent in the city, their monetary funds, and their expected return flight. Once clear of that bureaucracy they are on their way. They leave the passenger area and head toward the train depot.
“We made it!” Cassie yelps in relief, grabbing his arm as they look around at the other bystanders as they wait for the train.
Friend hugs her in confirmation, but he isn’t so sure. Soon after they left the customs office he spotted two gentlemen, dressed in black suits and wearing large, silver rimmed sunglasses following at a distance. Both are sporting some variations of blue dragon tattoos on their hands. His photographic memory assures him they weren’t on the flight. The enigma momentarily perplexes him. Are they customs officials, keeping tabs on them, or something far worse? He doesn’t feel any presence of the Other; this fact putting him somewhat at ease.
During the wait for the train he continues to observe the two men, standing twenty or so meters away to their left, as if they intend to board the rear car of the train. The underground depot is bustling with travelers, providing the men adequate cover but not enough for Friend, as they continue to glance over, more toward Cassie.
As the metallic and turquoise train arrives, destined for the Kowloon district on the main peninsula as indicated by the digital boards on its side walls, his intuition blisteringly reminds him that he is in a far more dangerous place than he could have imagined.
23
Iteration 45, Day 1 – December 26, 12:13 HKT
Kowloon District
