RJ gasps as he pulls away from me, cringing from the headache of the trip. We all experience one, but we haven’t gone that far back, so it’s not very intense. Since I do this a lot, I barely notice it and am able to immediately assess our surroundings.
In the west, a quarter moon rests just above the horizon, providing more than enough light to see the dry lake in the plain in front of us. At one edge of the lake is a large rectangular area filled with cars and campers and RVs, many with lights on. I have never seen so many vehicles parked in one place before. Surely there are more than a thousand. As for the hill where we stand, we are alone. I look around and spot some large rocks that should hide our presence during daylight and then use the chaser’s calculator to adjust the location number so that we will pop out behind the boulders next time.
“Where . . . what . . .” RJ stutters as he rises out of his crouch and looks around, wide eyed.
“Grab on,” I say. “We’re not done.”
“What are you talking about? We’re not done what? I don’t understand.”
“RJ,” Iffy says, “do you want us to leave you here?”
I know he’s desperately trying to find an explanation for what has just happened, but he’s obviously coming up empty. The thought of being abandoned, though, is enough for him to scramble back over and grab on to me again.
A push of the button, and we travel physical backward forty feet and forward in time several hours to 10:05 a.m. The bright sunlight forces me to squeeze my eyes shut. Once I feel them starting to adjust, I slowly open them again. The good thing is, with a trip this short, the accompanying headache is all but nonexistent for all of us.
RJ has once more moved a few feet away from me. He blinks rapidly as he stares up at the sky. “But . . . but . . . how . . . we were just . . .”
Iffy moves quickly to his side, but as she puts an arm around him, he jerks away and looks at her, terrified.
“It’s just me,” she says.
He swallows hard, and when her hand touches his shoulder again, he doesn’t shake it off.
“I told you not to freak out.”
“You drugged me, didn’t you?” he asks. “This is some kind of hallucination.”
“What? No. We didn’t drug you.”
“This can’t be real.”
She touches the rock we are now hiding behind. “Feel it. It’s real.”
He moves a hand toward the boulder as if he or it or both might explode if actual contact is made. When his fingertip brushes the surface, he freezes for a second and then shoves his palm against the rock.
He turns to me. “Where’s your apartment?”
“A couple hundred miles south,” I say, almost adding that I’m pretty sure it hasn’t even been built yet. Better to ease him in. “We’re in the desert, north of Los Angeles.”
His brow wrinkles as he tries to process this. After a few moments, he sneers and begins shaking his head. “No, no, no. We’re still in your apartment. That box, it’s some sort of VR rig, isn’t it?”
Now I’m the confused one. “VR?”
“Virtual reality. I have no idea how it could work without goggles, but holy crap, this is great!”
“It’s not VR,” Iffy says. “Feel the wind and the heat. Smell the dirt. We’re not in Denny’s apartment.”
RJ shakes his head, snorting a couple laughs. “So, what? That’s some kind of transportation device? Very funny, Iffy. But I’m not stupid.”
“Oh, it’s more than just a transportation device.”
He cocks his head, his mask of denial cracking a little. “What do you mean?”
Iffy glances at me. “How much time do we have?”
I check the chaser. “Just a few more minutes.”
“Come on,” she tells RJ. “There’s something you’re going to want to see.” She starts climbing up the rock.
“Oh, no. You tell me what the hell is going on, or I’ll—”
“Trust me, you’re not going to want to miss this.”
“This is insane,” he says as he starts up after her.
Once I put the chaser in my satchel, I head up, too.
I’m still a long way from understanding all the intricacies of Iffy’s world, but I’m sure our presence here is breaking some kind of United States law. We’re on a military base without permission, after all, on what is a very important day. When Iffy told me her idea, she assured me that while security might be tight, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as strict as it becomes after the New York terrorist attack in 2001. I hope she’s right. While we could easily escape by jumping if we’re spotted, I would rather the military not see us disappear in front of their eyes.
For this reason, I urge caution as we reach the top and peer over it.
The dry lake bed lies before us. Permanent lines are drawn into it, mapping out what look like several wide roads. Off to the side, in the area where all the vehicles are parked, a crush of people now line a barrier on the edge closest to the lake. They’re pressed together a dozen deep at the least, like a giant amorphous snake with one very straight edge.
“What is this?” RJ asks. “Where exactly are we?”
“Edwards Air Force Base,” Iffy tells him.
His mouth opens several times as if he wants to ask something else, but each time it closes again without a word.
After a few minutes, Iffy points at the distant sky. “See it?”
Both RJ and I look to where she’s indicated. At first I see nothing but blue, then slowly I begin to make out a white dot.
“Is that a plane?” RJ asks.
“Not exactly,” Iffy says.
The dot grows and begins to take shape: wings and a tail connected to a fat body.
I glance at RJ. His expression is a battle of wonder and confusion. I look back to the sky and see that two smaller aircraft have joined the first. At that moment we hear the distant sound of the thousands gathered on the lake cheering.
“This can’t be,” RJ whispers.
Down the aircraft travels, its shape becoming more and more distinctive.
“This can’t be.”
I worry that RJ is going to jump off the rock and run, but he stays where he is, transfixed by the event unfolding in front of us.
Iffy pulls her phone out of her pocket and points it toward the aircraft. Using the camera, she magnifies the image until the vehicle rests prominently in the middle. The iconic image is impossible to mistake for anything other than what it is—a space shuttle. We are witnessing the return of the very first one to orbit the earth.
RJ stares at the camera for a moment and then quickly returns his gaze to the sky so he can watch with his own eyes.
The shuttle is so low when the landing gear deploys that I’ve begun to wonder if the aircraft is going to crash. I am not familiar with the details of this event, but I do know at some point there is at least one disaster involving the shuttle program. I only hope that I’m not about to see it. But the gear does drop down, and the aircraft touches the dry lake bed with a puff of dust.
As the orbiter slows, RJ finally looks back at Iffy’s camera.
“That’s . . . that’s the Columbia.”
I look at the screen, but the only thing I can make out on the shuttle is a red, white, and blue rectangle next to the barely readable words United States. “How do you know?” I ask.
He points to a line of black on the front half of the fuselage. Letters or numbers, maybe, but impossible to read.
“The Columbia is the only one that had its name on the cargo bay doors,” he explains. “All the others were closer to the cockpit. They even moved Columbia’s there later, too.”
As if just realizing what he’s said, he jerks back from the phone and climbs quickly off the rock. When we join him, he backs away a few feet, creating a buffer between us.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “What just happened?”
Iffy smiles sympathetically. “RJ, you saw it with your own eyes.”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
Iffy lifts the flap of my satchel and says, “May I?”
After I nod, she pulls out the device that has brought us here.
“It’s called a chaser,” she says. “It allows Denny to travel through time.”
RJ spits out a solitary laugh. “You’re crazy.”
“You just witnessed the landing of the very first space shuttle mission, in person.” She looks around. “We’re standing in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from where we were twenty minutes ago. Not to mention when we left San Diego it was evening, and now it’s midmorning.”
“No, it’s some kind of . . . some kind of trick,” he says, though he sounds far from convinced that he is right.
“All right. What else can we do to prove it to you?”
He frowns skeptically. “Right. You’ll take me anywhere.”
“We can.”
“Okay. Let’s go see, um, the signing of the Declaration of Independence.” He crosses his arms as if he’s thrown down a challenge he knows we can’t deliver on.
In a way, he’s correct. There are so many things wrong with this request—from the clothes we are wearing to the type of money we don’t have, not to mention that RJ’s African American ancestry could create its own set of dangerous problems—but it’s the proximity of the signing to the point in history where I already changed the time line on multiple occasions that concerns me the most. “We’re not prepared for a jump that far,” I say. “Plus it would use up too much of what is left in the battery. Which is what we’re trying to get your help with, after all.”
Looking at me for approval, Iffy says, “How about something a little more recent? Say within fifty years of 2015?”
“That we can do,” I say with a nod.
RJ is silent for several seconds before saying, “1977?”
It is near the far end of the time frame, but doable. “Okay,” I say. “Do you have an exact date and location?”
A mischievous smile grows on his face. “I do.”
The total time of our journey into the past was several hours longer than I had anticipated, but I don’t adjust for this when we jump home, and instead return us to my apartment only ten minutes after we left.
Being in the opening-night audience for a movie called Star Wars has turned RJ into an enthusiastic supporter of the—as he calls it—“Juice the Time Machine” project. While he and Iffy take detailed measurements of the chaser and the power slot, I check on my sister, and am surprised to find her sitting up, a book in her hand.
“When did you wake?” I ask.
“A few minutes ago.”
I sit on the bed beside her and touch her forehead, happy to find it cool. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.”
“Tired?”
“I’ve been sleeping all day.”
“I’ll bet you’re hungry.”
Her eyes light up. “Yes. Very. How about a hamburger?”
I made the mistake of letting Iffy pick up a hamburger for Ellie one night, and now my sister can’t get enough of them.
“I’m thinking soup tonight.”
She grimaces. “I don’t want soup.”
Knowing even if I win this argument, I’ll lose, I say, “I’ll see what we have.”
I tilt my head and read the title off the spine of her book. Oliver Twist. Charles Dickens. He was a writer in our time line, too, though his canon of work is different than it is in Iffy’s world. Ellie likes reading this version of him better, she’s told me. Even though his stories are more than 150 years old, she says there are things about them that remind her of home and the friends she will never see again. These are the same friends who stopped visiting her as she grew more and more sick, but Ellie doesn’t know this. That occurred to the version of her I watched die when I was still a boy. I grabbed this Ellie before her friends turned their backs on her.
“Where did you go?” she asks as I stand up again.
“Go?”
“Someone was knocking on the door. I went to check, and you and Iffy and her friend were gone.”
“Did you open it?” I ask, instantly concerned. When she is here alone she is, under no circumstances, supposed to talk to anyone.
She shakes her head. “Just peeked out the window.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. By the time I looked, no one was there.”
With the exception of Iffy, who has a key, and this evening, RJ, the only visitors we usually get are either our landlord, Mr. Castor, or people trying to sell us something. I assume it must have been one or the other, though my sense of unease does not completely disappear.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she says.
“We took a quick trip.”
“Back?”
“A few years.”
Ellie still struggles with the idea that I jump through time. The only trips she has taken with me were the jumps we made when I brought her here, and she was basically unconscious through all of them. But she realizes that the world here is completely different than the one we were born into, and she can’t ignore that the brother who had once been two years younger than she is now five years older. It’s actually surprising that she hasn’t had a mental breakdown. Thankfully, she’s only fourteen and still has a bit of wonder about the world.
“Let me go see what I can whip up for dinner.”
“No soup,” she says.
“No soup,” I agree.
When I return to the other room, RJ is looking over several pages of notes.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
He looks up, surprised. “Great. You wouldn’t consider letting me open it up, would you? I’ll be very careful.”
“No way.”
While I’ve opened one of the smaller interior cavities to disconnect my chaser’s companion function, I’ve never opened the main area. And with the very real possibility that this is the last chaser in existence, I wouldn’t want anyone else to do it either, unless there was absolutely no other choice.
“Figured as much,” he said. “It’s okay. I have a couple ideas that might do the trick. We’ll have to do a little testing, though.”
I frown. This is treading into the same waters as opening the box.
Before I can respond, though, he says, “Don’t worry. Nothing invasive. I just need to check power levels and make sure we’re sending the right type of electricity in so that we don’t fry any circuits. I assume it uses DC, but who knows? Don’t suppose you’d be open to bringing it by the lab at school? They’ve got everything I need there.”
“I’d rather we do what needs to be done here.” I can’t chance others getting curious about what RJ is working on.
“You’re not making this easy, are you?” He thinks for a moment. “Give me a couple days to see what I can come up with.”
“Sure,” Iffy says. “Call me when you’re ready, and we’ll set up a time to meet again.”
For months, the weight of the chaser’s diminishing power problem has been sitting squarely on my shoulders, but now, at least for the moment, it’s almost gone. So it’s with relief that I offer him my hand. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” he says, smiling broadly. “‘May you live in interesting times.’ Sure fits, doesn’t it?”
I cock my head. “What?”
“It’s something a friend told me once. Said it’s some kind of Korean or Chinese curse. I can’t remember what. It doesn’t sound like a curse to me.” He nods at the chaser. “And with that, man, you get to live in multiple interesting times.”
His words are truer than he even realizes.
He starts to turn for the door, but then stops. “Oh, I’ll, um, probably need to get some parts. They might not be cheap. And, well . . .” He points a thumb at himself. “Student.”
“Of course. How much do you think you need?”
He considers the question for a moment and then says, “A few hundred?”
“Wait here.”
I go into my room and open the safe I keep in my closet. It’s where I put the chaser when I’m not using it. It’s also where I keep some of the cash I’ve collected on hand. Usually there’s between $5,000 and $10,000, but I’ve recently had another bill from Ellie’s doctors, and at the moment there’s only $1,800.
I pull out ten one-hundred-dollar bills and return to the other room. “If you need more than this, let me know,” I say, handing the money to RJ.
His eyes widen when he sees how much it is. “This should be more than enough. I’ll bring you receipts and change.”
“Don’t worry about it. Whatever you don’t spend, you can keep.”
“I can’t do that,” he says uneasily.
“We’re not asking you to do this for free. Keep the money.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Thanks, man.” He walks over to the door, but hesitates before opening it. “So, um, if we can power that thing up, any chance we might be able to go back and watch an Apollo launch?”
“If you fix the charging problem, I’ll take you anywhere you want.”
CHAPTER THREE
I would rather not use the chaser again until RJ’s given us a working charger, but the lack of adequate cash in the safe means it’s time to go on another collection run.
Over the past few months, we’ve created a long list of potential “donors” by searching through newspaper databases and online archived news footage. Each entry has been chosen carefully, but none are without their dangers.
The list is broken up into groups based on how much cash I should expect to find. The higher on the list, the larger the potential haul. To this point, I’ve stuck to the lower half, with the occasional venture near the middle, but today I’m selecting a name from the top five. In the event that something goes wrong with RJ’s attempts to alleviate the chaser’s power problem, it makes sense to stockpile enough money to cover Ellie’s upcoming medical bills and the rent through the end of the year.
Exhausted from a day that has been stretched even longer than normal due to our trips with RJ, and knowing that my task ahead will require my total focus, I decide it’s best if we wait until morning and get some sleep first.
Destroyer (Rewinder #2) Page 2
