by Anthology
BUT I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE
Chris Pierson
It’s warm for December in New York: weather like two months before. People have been talking about it all day. Smiling at each other, strange for a city that can be so mean, particularly as winter is beginning to bare its teeth. Even at night, people are out without their coats, laughing as they walk, not caring about any of the trouble in their city and the world.
It feels safe.
They come out of the studio together, no longer young but still just as in love as when they first met. It’s been a productive evening, polishing up a new song, one of hers. A good day. The new album, the comeback, is selling well, barely a month old, and there’s still more new work to be done. After the time he’s taken off, he feels more creative, more invigorated than he has since he and the lads called it quits. Ten years gone. A hard decade in a lot of ways, but things are better now than they’ve been in a long time.
He puts his arm around her as they walk back to the limo, the driver holding open the door, all of them smiling, the sky starry-clear and the breeze warm.
“Where do you want to eat?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “It’s late. Let’s go home.”
She nods, and they get into the limo. The driver pulls out, turns the corner, and heads up Sixth Avenue to the Upper West Side. Central Park slides by on the right, couples walking together, savoring this unexpected jewel of late summer in the dying days of fall. She hugs his arm and leans close, her head on his shoulder. He kisses her hair, loving the way she smells, the weight of her against him.
He leans forward as they stop at a red at 71st Street. “You can let us out at the curb up ahead,” he says. “We’ll walk from there.”
The driver glances back. “Are you sure, sir? It’s no trouble for me to pull into the courtyard.”
“Don’t bother. It’s a beautiful night.”
Shrugging, the driver pulls over outside the Dakota, near the iron-gated archway of the grand old building. Home. She kisses him, and they get out, head toward the building. He says hello to José, the doorman, who has opened the limo door.
“Lovely evening, sir,” José replies.
She goes through the archway first, and someone calls out to her from the shadows, says hello. She walks by, not breaking pace, not answering, and for a moment he has a strange feeling, a premonition maybe, but it’s gone just as fast. He follows her into the darkness, toward the lobby. Sean’s upstairs, in bed by now—the boy’s five, and it’s almost eleven at night—and he just wants to see his beautiful boy, wants to watch him sleep. That and make love with his wife, of course.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone in the shadows, the same one who called out to her. The face is familiar, and he knows where from. He signed the new album for this man earlier that evening, when they left for the Record Plant. There’d been several autograph-seekers and at least one photographer, but this one stood out in his memory. He got that cold feeling again, but made himself keep going toward the front door, Jay the security guy waiting inside to buzz them in.
The man in the shadows calls his name.
Cold all over now, he begins to turn.
Something hits him hard from behind. He hears two quick pops—some part of his brain tells him it is gunfire, but it doesn’t sound nearly as loud as he’d imagined—and glass breaking. She whips around, screaming. José is yelling too, and then he’s on the ground, and the breath’s knocked out of him and he can’t draw another, and there’s a lot of pain.
“I’m shot,” he gasps.
“No,” says a voice in his ear. “You’re not. Not this time.”
He realizes then that the thing that hit him was a man, another lurker who must have sprung out of the darkness and tackled him like an American footballer, right before the gunshots started. The pain and breathlessness aren’t from bullets in his chest, but because this big man is lying on top of him, covering him with his body. Protecting him. “Who are you?” he grunts.
“A fan,” says the voice in his ear. “For forty years, ever since I was a boy. It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Lennon.”
John has just enough time to think: that doesn’t make sense. I’m only forty. Then blue lightning flashes and his mouth floods with acid and his stomach drops ten miles into the earth and all of it—the Dakota, the madman with the gun, José, Jay, Yoko—it all disappears.
And then, and then, and then . . .
He’s indoors now, lying facedown on white tiles. The man’s still on top of him, crushing him flat: he must weigh sixteen stone, at least. After a moment, though, the weight eases off, and John pushes himself up off the floor to look around. Gunfire still echoes in his ears, as does Yoko’s screaming, but there’s no one else in the room. Just him and the man who tackled him, and what looks like equipment from a science fiction film, perhaps the dreary one Kubrick made or that new one about the alien ripping everyone apart. Only this stuff looks like it’s real, not props on a movie set.
Also, there’s a shimmer in the air, like you see over New York asphalt in the dead of August, but the air is cool and smells like a thunderstorm. He rubs his eyes, but it doesn’t go away.
“Bloody hell,” he says, and turns to face his . . . what? Assailant? Savior?
He’s a big man, tall and broad-shouldered, a bit of white in his black beard, a bit of skin showing through the hair on his head. Black shirt, blue jeans. There’s a trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth, but he’s smiling as wide as a man can smile without hurting himself.
“I did it!” he says. “I got you out of there! Up yours, Chapman, you asshole!”
John stares at the man, confused. He’s about to ask a question when the lone door out of the room they’re in opens and in step three men. Two are dressed head-to-toe in black, with bulky vests and helmets and unpleasant-looking rifles at the ready. The third wears a suit that looks like he’s slept in it for a week, and in his hand there’s a shiny silver badge.
It isn’t an NYPD badge, but John’s sure he’s police. The men with the rifles aim the guns at the big man, who freezes, suddenly frightened.
“David Stephen Walker,” says the man with the badge. Not a question. “You are under arrest for attempted timeline sabotage and pre-mortem abduction, in contravention of Article Six of the Temporal Interference Act. You are also in breach of your Timeshares contract, and your operating license has been revoked.”
The big man, Walker, beams like he’s been told he just won the lotto. “I don’t care,” he says. “Do what you want with me, it doesn’t matter. Do you know what I’ve done? I’ve just saved John Lennon!”
The policeman rolls his eyes. “Big deal,” he says. “You’re the third this month.”
Walker blinks, turning pale.
“What?”
“You heard me,” says the cop. “You guys think you’re so original. Come on. You really thought you were the first?”
There is a silence. Walker seems to deflate. He can’t think of anything to say.
“Excuse me?” John raises his hand.
The cop’s eyes flick toward him. “Yeah?”
“Could someone tell me what in God’s name is happening?”
Nick studied the report on the train that morning, on the way to work. Trees slid by outside his window, then a bridge, then the backs of old factories and industrial strip-malls and U-Store-Its. That had all given way to wetlands, thick with loosestrife in bloom, by the time he closed the file on his Reader and shook his head.
Another goddamn Lennon last night. People had no imagination.
He sat quietly for a while, sipping his morning coffee, cream, two sweeteners. He scratched his beard. He glanced at the news on the Reader, but didn’t really pay much attention. His mind was already working out the routine for this one. What he’d say to explain. He stared out the windows—suburbs now, whizzing by too fast to pick out individual houses. His stop was coming up.
He sighed, then reached
into the inside pocket of his rumpled suit jacket, pulled out his plastic badge, and attached it magnetically to his lapel.
NICOLÁS ORASCO-MENDEZ, it read, next to a four-year-old photo of him, beardless with a fake smile. SR. ORIENTATION CONSULTANT, DEPT. OF ANACHRONISM, MUSIC DIV. The Timeshares company holographic logo shimmered underneath it all.
A tone sounded, announcing an approaching stop, the one before his. The train slowed, halted, got started again. Nick slept his Reader, made sure he had his umbrella, then glanced across the aisle. A small, gray-haired woman sat there: sixty, maybe sixty-five, and reading—a book, actual bound paper, not a Reader.
We Can Work It Out, the title read, and under it: Six Attempted Beatles Reunions, 1972-1980.
Nick swore under his breath. That was why so many Lennons lately. Every couple years some joker wrote another book, and even though the surviving two and all their original fans were all older than God, the nostalgia always got people missing John again. George, too, but that wasn’t really Nick’s problem. But John . . . the books, the eternally reissued recordings, the video games, they all gave people ideas. People who thought they were smarter than Timeshares’ legal department. And Nick caught the fallout.
The woman glanced up, saw him watching. A dark line creased between her brows.
“Good book?” Nick asked.
She shrugged and went back to reading.
The tone sounded again. The train started to slow. Nick got up, grabbed his coffee, and started bracing himself to meet yet another very confused Beatle.
“Time travel,” said John, looking across the table. He adjusted his glasses, ran a hand through his hair. Then he laughed, shaking his head. “This is a joke, yeah? You’re having me on. I mean, that sort of thing only happens in terrible movies.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “In your time, yes—as far as people know, anyway. Not in mine. Here, have a look at this.”
He slid a glossy pamphlet across the old gray table which had veneer chipped at the corners, coffee rings here and there. Acoustic tiles and LED bulbs above. A window looking out on pine trees, gray skies, drizzle. A bulletin board, bare except for multicolored push-pins that someone bored had arranged into the shape of a question mark. A calendar showing a year Nick’s current subject found hard to believe. Hell, Nick had trouble believing it was already 2034 himself.
Nick drank water from a paper cup while John Lennon read the Timeshares brochure. “See the pyramids—while they’re being built!” said Lennon. “Travel to Gettysburg—and watch Lincoln’s address! Behold the Sistine Chapel—with Michelangelo still on the scaffold!” He frowned, and folded the pamphlet up again. “Holiday makers?”
“Premium tourism,” Nick said. “My company offers an exclusive service for an affordable price. Go back in time to anyplace you want, any year you want. You’d be surprised how many folks go back to see you and the other three play. The Cavern, Shea Stadium, Budokan.”
“Your prices don’t look very affordable to me,” said John.
Nick shrugged. “Not by 1980 standards. But, well, inflation, you know.”
“And this bloke, this Walker. The one who knocked me down. He was one of yours?”
“He was. And he broke his contract, and several federal statutes, by bringing you back.” Nick took a deep breath, let it out again. “By saving your life.”
Lennon frowned, looked out the window. For a while, the only sound was hiss of rain against the pane.
“So I died, then,” John said. “That night, outside the Dakota. That weird fellow shot me . . . and he killed me.”
Nick held his gaze, nodded slowly. This was always the hard part, for most of them anyway. The realization that the only reason they still drew breath was that someone had decided to commit a felony.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said.
A shadow passed over John’s face. He blinked and looked up at the ceiling. It was always this way, with the Lennons. Their reactions never differed. “Oh, Yoko,” he said, and his breath hitched. “Oh, Sean.”
Nick felt his eyes sting, and he forced himself to stay under control. He’d never broken, not once—at least, not in front of the subjects. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he woke up crying. It was worse, he knew, in other divisions.
“Look,” he said, “I know this is difficult. You can have a moment, if you want.”
“No,” John said, and chuckled. “No, it’s all right. Bit of a shock, you understand.”
“If it’s any consolation, a large part of the world pretty much lost their minds when they found out. They even interrupted a football game to break the news.”
“Good lord.”
“And they built a garden in your memory, in Central Park. Called Strawberry Fields.”
John laughed. “Well, that’s original.” He shook his head. “You know, when the lads and I were still together, I joked that some lunatic was going to pop me off one day.”
Nick nodded. They all brought that up, every time.
The rest of the preliminary interview went smoothly, as it always did. As repetitive as meeting John could sometimes get, he was one of the more affable subjects. He wasn’t resentful like Kurt Cobain, or depressed like Ian Curtis, or out of his goddamn mind like Keith Moon. Lennon took it all with admirable good humor, considering what he’d been through during—for him at least—the last twelve hours. He even made jokes about it, which was more than most of them ever did. Finally, Nick got through the last of the initial paperwork and set aside his pen. He gazed across the table at that familiar face—the long nose, the round glasses—and raised his eyebrows.
“So,” he said. “Do you have any questions of your own?”
“Only half a million,” Lennon said. “How long do you have?”
Nick glanced at his Reader to check the time. “Maybe only long enough for the first ten thousand or so. I have another appointment at eleven.”
“Oh? Another one of me?”
“No,” said Nick. “Mozart.”
That stopped John for a moment. He didn’t have a quip for that one. “Really.”
“Yep. He’s one of the more popular ones, in fact. Him, you, Hendrix . . .”
“Who?”
“He was after your time. You’ll meet him, though—there are a couple of him around here right now. The two of you tend to get along quite well, in fact. And you should see Mozart when someone lets him near a synthesizer.”
John pursed his lips. “Will I get to meet him too?”
“You’ll meet all of them, in time. But with Mozart, there’s the language barrier. How’s your German?”
“Not as good as yours, I suspect.”
“You mentioned Hendrix. Are the others here? Joplin and Morrison? Brian Jones?”
“Joplin and Jones, yes. Morrison was too far gone when he died.”
“What do you mean?” John asked.
“Well,” Nick said, “it’s like this. There are safeguards against bringing people back when you’re traveling, for starters. Our designers knew temporal abduction would be a problem, so they engineered the equipment to prevent it from happening so the past didn’t get irrevocably changed every other time someone took a trip. But there’s a glitch they can’t get rid of, one circumstance they’ve never been able to come up with a block for.”
He paused, watched Lennon figure it out.
“Death,” John said. “The moment we’re supposed to die.”
Nick nodded. “The temporal repercussions are fairly small for premortem abduction—too small for our equipment to detect. If you nab someone right when their actions no longer have an effect on the world, you can slip them through. And unfortunately, once word got out on the net, everybody knew.”
“Got out on the what?”
“Never mind. You’ll find out about that during the acclimation program.” Nick waved off John’s questions. “Anyway, the trick to all of this, if you’re going to kidnap someone from the past, is that they have to be in good shape whe
n they die. No terminal diseases, no old age, and nobody whose condition is so bad they don’t survive the trip. The best cases are the sudden ones—accidents, preventable heart attacks, and, well, murders. I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Lennon asked. “You weren’t the one who should have shot me. So Morrison was in too bad a shape.”
“Exactly. Drug-related deaths are touch and go. Some people where the death is because of outright overdose, like Joplin and Hendrix, can survive the abduction. Others, like Morrison and Billie Holliday, where their bodies gave out because of the drugs, no.”
“Ah,” John replied. He thought a moment. “What about Elvis, then? Can he survive the trip?”
Always they asked this question. Anyone who died in Lennon’s time wanted to know.
Nick shrugged. “Well, there’s never really been an opportunity.”
John blinked, confused. Then his eyes widened.
“Oh,” he said. “Good lord. When did people find out?”
“About twenty years ago. He just walked up to a tour group at his grave and said hello. He started recording and performing again the year after that. Kept it up until 2021. They even built him his own theater in Vegas. He’s ninety-nine now, retired and living in Memphis. Still says hi to the tours from time to time.”
There was a long silence.
“Wow,” John said. “What about the lads? Are any of them still alive?”
“Paul and Ringo, yes—though they’re both over ninety themselves now, obviously. George died a bit over thirty years ago. Cancer. So he isn’t here, I’m afraid.”
