by Scott Meyer
This was all an improvement, but he was still falling.
As if on cue, Roy’s voice said, “You have your powers back. You can start flying any time you like.”
Jeff stopped himself, then hung suspended in the sky, catching his breath.
“Welcome back,” Roy said. Jeff thought he could hear the traces of a smile in Roy’s voice. “We’re all over at Phillip’s shop. Come by when you’re ready to join us.”
Jeff found a surprisingly large group of people waiting for him in the street in front of the shop. He’d expected Roy, and it made sense for Phillip, Tyler, and Gary to be there. He was happy to see Martin and Gwen as well, although he didn’t know how they were involved in all this. What really surprised him was that the Brits were there, but upon seeing them, he suddenly realized the female voice that had been assisting Roy was probably one of theirs.
Jeff came to a landing and was greeted a bit more enthusiastically than he was prepared for.
Phillip asked, “So, what did you think of New Zealand?”
“Is that where we were?” Jeff asked.
Phillip said, “Turns out.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said. “What I saw of it, I didn’t like so much.”
As they all filed through Phillip’s shop and upstairs to the rec room, Jeff said to Roy, “Thanks for saving me, but, why didn’t you just yank me out of there?”
“We couldn’t let Todd see that we’d rescued you,” Roy explained. “We had to switch you with a copy.”
“A copy?” Jeff asked. “Of me? We can copy people now?”
“Kinda. It was a computer-generated automaton. It’s a trick we picked up from Todd’s hard drive.”
“I don’t know why I was worried,” Jeff said, chuckling. “We’re time travelers. I should have known you all would find a way to save me.”
“Not necessarily,” Brit the Elder said. “If we hadn’t been told the precise time and place that you’d been killed, we wouldn’t have been able to intervene. We can’t change an event we don’t know about. If Todd had managed to kill you all without anybody knowing when and where, we would all be dead. It’s something you all should keep in mind.”
“But you don’t have to keep it in mind?” Brit the Younger asked.
“The fact that I’m still here proves that I did keep it in mind, and that you did too, I suppose. Well done, dear.”
Jeff looked around. The room looked much as he remembered it, except there were two large laptops on the coffee table with a microphone headset wired up and ready for use. He settled down in one of Phillip’s lounge chairs. He sighed contentedly, then looked up at everyone else. None of them were sitting. They all stood in front of him, smiling down, unnervingly happy to see him. Looking at them now he saw that Phillip, Tyler, Gary, and Martin were all wearing new robes and hats. The colors were slightly different. The designs were fancier. The silver sequins on Martin’s robe were smaller and interspersed with what looked like rhinestones. Phillip’s robe now incorporated some patches of black fur. Even Roy’s trench coat and modified fedora were different.
“How long have I been gone?” Jeff asked.
“About a month and a half,” Roy said.
Jeff said, “You took your time.”
“We wanted to do it right,” Roy answered. “There were animations to plot. It had to look absolutely convincing.”
Jeff thought for a second, then said, “Fair enough. What did I miss?”
Phillip said, “I broke my arm.”
Martin said, “Gwen has moved in with me.”
Gary said, “I have a robot foot!” He lifted his leg and displayed the gleaming chrome appendage starting just below his knee. The metal toes clacked together as he wiggled them for effect.
“Huh,” Jeff said. “A robot foot. That’s the third-coolest possible cyborg body part.”
“I know!” Gary said.
Gwen’s expression soured. Martin leaned close and whispered, “What?”
Gwen said, “Third-coolest robot body part. You boys.”
Martin said, “Yeah. Hand, eye, then foot. What’s wrong with that?”
Gwen frowned. “Nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”
Gary continued. “It’s a false construct, of course, not a real robot part, but still, it seems real, and it has three different looks: this one, a dragon’s claw, or a normal human foot, but I never use that one.”
“Why would you?” Jeff said.
“There’s no reason to when you can have a robot foot,” Gary agreed. “I keep fake skulls around just so I can stomp on them.”
Jeff said, “Cool. Anything else happen?”
Martin said, “Well, Jimmy’s dead.”
“No, he isn’t,” Phillip added quickly.
Jeff asked, “How’d he die?”
Phillip said, “He didn’t.”
Martin answered, “He took his own life.”
Phillip said, “Nobody really believes that.”
Gwen stepped in. “He realized that we would never be able to truly forgive him, but we also couldn’t let him run around free if we knew he was alive, so he made it look like he ended himself, but he may have just gone off to make a new life somewhere else.”
“And we’re just letting him go?” Jeff asked.
Phillip said, “We’ve looked at the file, and he appears to be dead. If he is still alive, we can’t find him. Anyway, he was right. What he did was unforgivable, and we never would have trusted him again, but we have no concrete reason to believe he has or had any evil intent.”
“I don’t know,” Jeff said. “I don’t like the idea that he’s still out there.”
Martin said, “Yeah, I agree, but most of us don’t really like the idea that he isn’t still out there either.”
“Look,” Phillip said, “it doesn’t matter. Jimmy didn’t want to kill us, or else we’d be dead. He made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to spend any more time with us, and I know that none of us want to spend any more time with him. I’m confident that we’ll never see Jimmy again.”
Brit the Elder said, “Yes,” which Phillip found quite encouraging, until she added, “You are totally confident of that, right now.”
Phillip thought about what she might have meant by that, and deflated noticeably.
“And now,” Brit the Elder said, “you’re less confident.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank my wife, Missy; my friends Steven Carlson, Allison DeCaro, Jen Yates, John Yates, Mark Yocom, Debbie Wolf, Mason Wolf, Rodney Sherwood, Leonard Phillips, Ric Schrader, David Pomerico; everybody at 47North; and the readers of my comic strip, Basic Instructions.
I’d also like to thank my aunt Donna, who gave me a Mexican worry doll, which I refused to carry because I was afraid I’d lose it, and my uncle Jim, who failed in his attempt to give me a work ethic, but he showed me what one looks like, and that was a start.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott Meyer has worked as a radio personality and written for the video game industry. For a long period he made his living as a stand-up comedian, touring extensively throughout the United States and Canada. Scott eventually left the drudgery of professional entertainment for the glitz and glamour of the theme-park industry. He and his wife currently live in Orlando, Florida, where he produces his acclaimed comic strip, Basic Instructions.
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