“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 D
akota. 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, Tupac . . .”
“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 when 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.”
“Damn. No reunion then, I suppose.”
He didn’t ask about Yoko. They never did. Somehow, ever since she died, the Johns always knew. He looked out the window a while, the rain streaking the glass.
“What now?” he asked. “Do I . . . do I have to go back?”
“God, no,” Nick said. “No, no, no. We’ve already dispatched a team to put in a substitute for you—don’t worry, no one died in your place. I’m not sure how it works, exactly, but it involves cloning and the substitute was never alive in the first place. Everything happened like it was supposed to, as far as anyone knows. But you can’t go back now, ever.”
John drummed his fingers on the table. A fly landed on his knuckle, and he shook it off. “I can’t just leave this place either, can I?”
“Not right away. You’ve got acclimation to go through, but it’ll be quicker for you than most. No major psychological work, no rehab. Mainly just history classes covering the last fifty years. Enough so you’ll feel comfortable in the present before you move on to the island.”
“The . . . island?”
Nick met John’s gaze, held it. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “You can’t just go into the world proper. Can you imagine how things would be if the world were filled with Gandhis and Martin Luther King Jrs and Joans of Arc? Not to mention Alexander the Great and Hitler . . .”
“People bring back Hitler?”
“People bring back everyone,” Nick said. “We try to screen out the crazies, but every now and then someone steps back through with Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan.”
John was beginning to look pale. “Jesus Christ.”
“Him too. So you can see we need a way to deal with the abductees without just handing each of you a bus ticket and a change of clothes and saying good luck. The company has a facility where abductees can live on an island in the Indian Ocean. The artists’ facilities are quite lovely, I’m told. There are currently
nearly two thousand people there.”
“How many of them are me?”
“I’m not sure,” Nick said. “Last I counted, there had been sixty-three John Lennons abducted over the past nine years.”
John grinned. “You know, that’s not really what Paul had in mind when he wrote ‘When I’m Sixty-Four.’ ”
There were, of course, certain things Nick didn’t mention. Like how the island hadn’t been part of the original plan when abductees started showing up. How the company board of directors had initially wanted to have the abductees euthanized—humanely, of course—to minimize expenses; they were supposed to be dead anyway, weren’t they? How a whistle-blower somewhere in the department had leaked word onto the net, forcing the ethical issue and changing the company’s plans overnight in order to avoid a media firestorm. How the total cost of buying and equipping the island meant a travel cost increase of only a few hundred dollars per back-trip. How they continued to euthanize the more dangerous abductees anyway, and just kept it off the books—better that than an island out there full of Mussolinis and Neros and Che Guevaras, everyone agreed.
He didn’t tell John about the advanced aging, either— how, for whatever reason, the abductees got five years older for every actual year. He’d find out about that eventually, of course, but experience had taught Nick that those kinds of revelations were best saved for later in the acclimation process.
Most of John’s questions were about people, as always. He asked about Stu Sutcliffe, who’d been his friend and had died in Hamburg before the Beatles got big. Yes, Stu had shown up, but just once. Most people now didn’t know who he was—and if you were going back for a Beatle, you picked John ninety-nine times out of a hundred, didn’t you?
No, no one had ever brought back Brian Epstein. That always upset John.
Were the Kennedys around? Of course. There was a whole political department, in fact. Lincolns and Roosevelts went there too. So did the occasional Garfield or McKinley. Gandhi and Crazy Horse. Reverend King and Malcolm X. Yitzhak Rabin and Princess Diana and Benazir Bhutto. The Kennedys were the hardest, though, because of how John always took it when he first saw Bobby, and found out his little brother hadn’t outlived him by much. It was even worse when he saw John-John. Those specific moments were why Nick had transferred out of that department as soon as he made senior pay grade.
Jean Rabe & Martin Harry Greenberg Page 11
