by Daniel Quinn
“You said it was just double memories.”
Future-Me gives a reluctant shrug. “If you count the old memories we’ve been tampering with—from when we were eight? Well, then you’re gonna need double digits. That’s why I’m sayin’ to steer clear. Your first idea of stoppin’ Holmes before he torches the place just muddles things up anyway. It’s gotta be after we get through the window. But… there’s not much time. Five seconds, tops.”
“Before… ?”
“Before Holmes kills Kate.” His tone—which I guess is my tone, although it’s hard to think of it that way—is annoyed, like I should have figured that out on my own. Shouldn’t have made him actually put it into words. “Give me your key.”
I pull the leather cord that holds my CHRONOS medallion over my head and slide it out of the pouch. He presses the back of his key to the back of mine in order to transfer a stable point.
An odd tingle runs up my arm.
“What was… ?”
Other-Me shakes his head and runs his finger across the key to check it. “Don’t know. We think it’s the whole duplicate thing. This is the same key, just twenty-five days older. They’re still working fine, though.”
I pull up the interface on my key and he’s right. The only change is the new stable point he transferred—a single black square speckled with green lights. Five, maybe six, of them.
The other me reaches out and grabs my arm.
“We’re losin’ it, okay? Everything’s gettin’ jumbled. That’s why I came back. To find a time when your—our—head is clearer. If you have to go in more than once, don’t… don’t interact with the earlier versions. It just confuses things more. And it would be nice if you avoid this, too.” He nods down at the gunshot wound.
“But I thought you were—”
“Yeah, so what? It’s not fatal and I’m the splinter. It still hurts like bloody hell. Skip the early steps, and move carefully so you don’t have to erase anything. Read the notes. Maybe if we can avoid creating splinters in the first place and focus on—”
And then he’s gone in mid-sentence, just like the duplicate me I created that one time with Simon. No fade out, no sound effects. He didn’t pull up the CHRONOS key and blink away to another place and time. He’s just there one minute and not there the next. Even the red splotch on the floor from his blood—my blood—is gone.
It’s probably not logical to be glad that he’s the one who disappeared instead of me. He knew more about what worked and what didn’t than I do, even with these notes in my hand. But I am glad, nonetheless.
When I unfold the papers, I see a list of eleven time jumps, each crossed out. Below the list are notes corresponding to each jump. The first in the list is marked Kate’s Room, with a timestamp of 10311893_19:13:00. The next is Third Floor Corridor, same day, at 20:22:30. Another says Holmes’s Office 20:20:00.
The remaining eight jumps are all within the span of a single minute, most clustered between 20:25:37 and 20:25:42. None after that point. All are marked Hidden Room. The words make my gut clench with the remembered smells of rotting flesh and smoke.
I activate the key and navigate visually to the stable point that Future-Me transferred, a black square with the green lights. The familiar shade of green tells me that those specks are from CHRONOS keys. If Kate was viewing this stable point, those lights would be blue. Simon claims they’re the deep orange of the setting sun, one of the rare moments where Simon has ever waxed poetic. Anyone without the CHRONOS gene couldn’t see the display at all.
When I expand the view, I detect a single light in front of me, off to the right. It moves slightly as I watch and I see a hand—Kate’s hand—in the light. She’s trying to pull up a stable point on her key. She seems vulnerable, exposed, and I have to remind myself that Holmes doesn’t have the CHRONOS gene, so he can’t see the light from the keys, can’t see Kate in the darkness.
But he could hear her. I find myself straining to pick up sounds—Kate’s breathing, Holmes’s movements, or noise from the city—even though I know it’s not possible to hear anything through the key.
A green light flickering off to the left in the display catches my eye. Another version of me popping in to scope out the situation, I guess. Closer to the stable point, I make out several cots against the wall. An array of bottles on the floor nearby reflects the green from the CHRONOS key. Just above the bottles, a skeletal hand hangs over the side of the cot, a hand that was fuel for many of my childhood nightmares.
In the other direction, near the small door leading into the linen closet, a green light blinks out and then reappears a few feet to the right of the door. Then that one flickers out, and reappears a bit closer toward the stable point. More versions of me scouting the room. It’s a bit like watching fireflies and I’m mesmerized for a moment, waiting for the next light to appear.
It doesn’t.
The narrow window of time that Future-Me mentioned must have passed. When I pan back toward Kate, I no longer see the light from her key, except for a very faint glow around the man in front of me. And then he moves, and I see Kate again. Slumped to the side, eyes closed, a bullet hole near the center of her forehead.
Something else, too. Something seems to be eating away the green fabric of her dress. Her hair. Her skin.
I wince and look away. Then I roll the time back thirty seconds and watch again. And I take notes this time.
Boston, Massachusetts
07171905_06:45:00
The familiar aroma of tobacco hits my nose when I blink into the storeroom. Jess won’t open the doors to customers for another hour, but I know his routine well enough to be sure that he’ll be puttering around behind the counter. Unless it’s a day when his arthritis is really acting up, Jess always pours a cup of coffee after breakfast and takes it downstairs, telling his wife he has work to do. In reality, he’s just seeking a bit of solitude, because Amelia tends to snipe in the mornings. She needs a few hours to mellow.
This morning, Jess isn’t even pretending to be busy. Just sitting on the barstool he keeps behind the cash register, enjoying his pipe as he stares out at the early morning bustle. A lone automobile is winding its way around the horse-carts in the road outside the store. The sight is still enough of a novelty that two kids run along behind the car for a better look.
If I wanted, I could jump into the store directly. I set a stable point off to the right of the register earlier this week, while trying to explain the whole time-traveling insanity to Jess. But Jess is nearly eighty-three. I prefer to give him a bit of a warning, rather than just popping in and scaring the holy hell out of him, even though he’s had a crash course in the effects of Cyrist-engineered time shifts over the past few days. The last shift cost him a granddaughter, a girl he can remember only because he was in the range of my CHRONOS key when the shift happened. To the rest of the world, Jess’s granddaughter never existed at all.
I tap on the door to give him a warning before interrupting his solitude.
“Jess?”
He raises one gray eyebrow and turns slightly toward the storeroom. “Was beginning to think another time shift came along and swallowed you up like it did Irene.”
“Just been a little… preoccupied. Thought I’d stop in and let you know I’m goin’ out of town for a bit.”
“I see. Taking the train?” The wry look on his face makes it pretty clear that he’s teasing me.
“No train to the 1893 World’s Fair. I’m stuck usin’ the key.”
“What’s in 1893?”
I want to tell him that Kate’s in danger, but Jess has been through enough in the past week. Losing his granddaughter was a blow, and he only saw Irene once or twice a year. Kate has been in here every few days for the past eighteen months or so. Helped him behind the counter on many occasions. They flirt shamelessly with each other, and threaten to leave me and Amelia behind so that they can run off to Niagara Falls together. Jess has asked about Kate each time I’ve stopped by the past few
days. Well, past few days for him. It’s been weeks for me, but I spent most of that in other time periods, trying to piece together what Simon and his Cyrist cohorts have done with Kate.
The one thing I know for certain is that the Kate I’m trying to save isn’t the one Jess knows. She’s not the Kate who stood at the altar with me, as Jess and Amelia watched me slide that gold band onto her finger a few short months back. This Kate is younger, and she barely knows who I am. Telling Jess that Kate’s in 1893 would mean explaining the differences between the Kate I need to save and the Kate that Jess has come to know and love. I’m just not sure he’s ready for that.
“A really bad man is in 1893. Do you think I could borrow your gun?”
“Depends on who you’re planning to shoot, boy.”
“I’m thinkin’ more of using it as a threat. Or maybe as a distraction.”
“In my experience—which I’ll admit is limited in these matters—it’s never a good idea to bring a gun into a situation unless you’re willing to use it.”
“I’m more than willing. It’s just… complicated.”
Jess reads my face for a moment, and then reaches under the counter to pull out the pistol. But he keeps one hand on it.
“So… who is it you’re planning not to shoot?”
Jess and I talked a lot about my time at the World’s Fair during the months that I worked for him here at the shop. Back in 1893, Jess had wanted to make the trip from Boston to Chicago. He kept telling Amelia it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the wonders of the world, all collected in one place. But she wasn’t nearly as keen on it as Jess and there was no one to watch the store for them, so they never made the trip. I think Jess was glad that he at least got to visit it vicariously through me.
My father was one of the many job-seekers who flocked to Chicago in the months before the Exposition opened in May of 1893, as they struggled to turn 600 acres of swampland into one of the most celebrated World’s Fairs in history. At age eight, I tagged along behind him most days, helping out with small chores and running errands, but mostly just being a kid. Watching. Learning. By the time the Expo opened its gates, I knew the place like the back of my hand. I put that knowledge to good use, giving guided tours to visitors, and earning a bit of extra cash.
H.H. Holmes was another enterprising capitalist who sought to make his fortune catering to the tourists. His World’s Fair Hotel catered mostly to women, and many of the women who entered his fine establishment never left. The police and newspapers were overworked with the influx of people into the city, and people went missing all the time. Chicago papers would name the hotel the “Murder Castle” during Holmes’s trial, but by then it was much too late.
I’ve shared many stories about the Expo with Jess, but I’ve never mentioned Holmes or his hotel. I also don’t talk about the fire that ripped through one of the buildings, killing my father. Some memories are best left alone.
“How much do you know about H.H. Holmes?” I ask.
“The doctor who killed all those women?”
“Yeah.”
Jess shrugs. “I know what I read in the papers during his trial, mostly, although I did wonder how much of that was made up. Selling skeletons to medical schools seems a bit far-fetched.”
“He did, but it was only a couple. I remember seeing him a few times at the Midway, when I was workin’ there as a boy—mostly helpin’ my mum at the dairy exhibit and runnin’ errands. Seemed like a nice enough guy, until he smiled. Something always hit me wrong about his smile. He’d hand out these flyers for his World’s Fair Hotel to groups of ladies who were visiting. Had a couple of kids with him sometimes.”
“Those the kids he killed?”
“Yeah. Guess they became inconvenient. Anyway…” I stop for a moment and try to find a way to summarize, something that doesn’t go into so many details that Jess’s head will explode. “He’s connected to the Cyrists. The ones responsible for your Irene… not bein’ around anymore. And more people could die—two women who didn’t die the first time around—if I don’t go back and keep them out of Holmes’s path.”
His eyes stray down to the outline of my CHRONOS medallion beneath my shirt. “Why don’t you just jump in with that key-thing of yours, kill the son of a bitch in his sleep, and be done with it?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? Holmes murdered, what, fifty women at least? Maybe more. Even if something happened and you got caught, there’d be plenty of evidence to support you if the cops—”
“Maybe. But then there wouldn’t be the trial that you and a million or so others read about in the papers, would there? It would change too much history, and that’s what we’re tryin’ to stop the Cyrists from doin’. This has to be a surgical strike.”
I unfold the paper my other self gave me and take a pencil from the cup by the cash register. It would be easier to just show Jess the layout of the place through the CHRONOS key, but since that’s not possible, I sketch the long narrow room on the back of one sheet.
“The place isn’t even as wide as your storeroom, Jess, but the length is probably ten times that… maybe half as long as this block. It’s dark, so Holmes can’t see me. I can see him pretty well in the light of the CHRONOS key. The only door is one you have to crawl through—it opens into a linen closet. Holmes used the room to hide things from creditors—furniture he bought and claimed wasn’t delivered, and other stuff. He also used it to hide some bodies. Two of them are on cots along this wall here.” I mark two smaller rectangles with an X. “And at the far end here, there’s a window with a fire escape. Holmes gets off a couple of shots toward the window as one of the women and I—”
“Wait. You’re already there?”
“Yeah, but it’s eight-year-old me that’s going through the window. And there are… some other versions of me who’ve already tried to fix this and failed scattered around the room.”
“I’m gonna ignore that bit on the grounds that I want to stay sane.” He motions for me to go on.
“There’s another shot when we’re on the fire escape. Probably two. That was about the time that one of the windows on the second floor cracked due to the fire, so—”
“The fire?”
“Yeah. Holmes set the place on fire to cover the evidence. Or maybe for insurance. Or both. Anyway, like I said, I can’t kill him. Apparently I can’t take his gun away either, because I’ve already tried that and…” I look at his expression and say, “I’m guessing you don’t want details about a duplicate me jumping in to give me this information. Let’s just say it didn’t end well and I’m not planning to repeat the experiment.”
He shudders, as though to shake off the twists and tangles of time travel, and then he pushes the gun toward me. “Take it. My vote is for shooting the black-hearted son of a bitch outright, no matter what it changes. To hell with history. I’m perfectly okay with you spinning the wheel again. Maybe we’ll get the timeline that has my granddaughter in it and Amelia will stop thinking I’ve lost my damn mind.”
Wooded Island
Chicago World’s Fair
11271893_22:21:00
I slide down against the outside of the cabin wall. It’s cold and drizzling out here, but I need to feel the night air on my face. I’ve spent most of the past two days alone in the cabin, with occasional fieldtrips to a corpse-filled room. The only company I’ve had is H.H. bloody Holmes and the other versions of myself in that room, none of whom I can talk to without splintering myself or at least triggering a double memory. Kate’s there, too. But all I’ve been doing is watching her die, so for once, I don’t count her company as a good thing.
The Wooded Island is silent now. In fact, the entire fairground is silent. Empty, like a ghost town. Or a ghost metropolis, I guess. On any given day between May and the end of October, an average of 120,000 tourists roamed every inch of this island. The massive buildings I can still see in the distance, on the other side of the bridge that connects the Wooded Island t
o the mainland, were never meant to be anything other than temporary. Aside from two buildings and some of the statues, the White City will be reduced to ashes in a fire much like the one that killed my dad, less than a quarter-mile from this cabin.
I take another swig from the flask in my pocket. The bourbon probably isn’t helping me sort things out, but it is definitely helping to keep panic at bay.
Here’s the crux of the problem: four seconds isn’t much time. That’s doubly true when you have to make incremental steps and avoid bumping into the other versions of yourself. Most of them were just there scouting things out, but a few have already tried things and failed. I’ve been careful to ensure that no more than two of me are in the room together for longer than a second, but that’s become tougher to pull off as the day goes on.
For one thing, I’m getting tired. My skills with the CHRONOS key have never been as good as Kate’s or Simon’s, probably because I inherited the gene from one grandparent and they got it from all four. It wears me out, and even though these are short time jumps to a nearby location, I doubt I have more than a few jumps left before I’ll need to rest.
My brain is also muddled from trying to balance two different versions of the past few days. Adding another set of memories to the mix would render me damn near worthless, so rule number one has been to avoid interacting with my other selves and, most of all, to avoid doing anything that I might have to go back in time and talk myself out of.
And now I’m going to have to break that rule.
My latest plan was to make a noise to distract Holmes. I nudged one of the iron cots slightly, just enough that it clinked against the bottles Holmes had stashed by the wall. If I could make Holmes stop for a moment and look my way, I thought it might buy Kate an extra few seconds to pull up a stable point on her key and jump out.
Only it was Kate who looked my way when the faint ping of glass against glass echoed in the silent dark. Kate who paused as she moved toward the exit. Kate who gasped, and thus guided Holmes’s gun to where she was standing.
