The Pocket Watch

by Michael Shaw

  Chapter 24

  The voice was not my own. Or was it?

  I looked up and saw a young man. Face red with anger. A baseball bat in his hands.

  I saw myself. It was my future self, but not by much; he looked just like me.

  My eyes opened wide in disbelief. “What…”

  My other self wound up with the bat. “Ex-Machina,” he barely muttered.

  David turned toward the sound.

  Other Jon knocked him in the head. David reeled off the chair and fell onto the tile. His leg slammed against the table, sending it and the bin of water across the floor. Other Jon quickly grabbed the knife, which David had dropped, and ran to me.

  My mind raced. “How is this happening?”

  He cut my ropes with the knife and pulled me up.

  “How did you go back?” I asked him. I looked over at the pocket watch. “How could I go back?”

  Other Jon grabbed the watch from the counter and shoved it in my hand. “Hush.” He rushed to the door and kicked it open. On the other side, Jacob stumbled and fell down from the brunt of the kick.

  He started wrestling with Jacob, trying to reach into his pockets, and I struggled to understand how this was happening.

  David Kemp started to get back up.

  Other Jon pulled a set of keys out of Jacob’s pocket. “Let’s go,” he said sternly.

  David stood up, disoriented, blood running down from his face. He stumbled toward me.

  I reacted and just punched him in the face.

  He fell backwards and hit the floor.

  My knuckles throbbed. I couldn’t believe I’d just done that with my skinny arm. An arm now covered in red veins.

  Other Jon yanked himself away from Jacob’s grasp and gave him a hearty kick. “Come on.”

  I ran out to him. My dark view became even darker. Where were we? And what time was it?

  Other Jon pressed a button on the key fob, and a nearby car’s lights illuminated. A black Mustang. He shoved the keys into my hand. “Go.”

  “Wait,” I pleaded. “What’s-”

  He was already walking back into the bathroom. He went for the claw device.

  As soon as he entered, though, David sat himself up and whipped his own gun out. Finger on the trigger.

  I, stuck watching and not following my own directions, was prompted to move when I saw the barrel pointed our way.

  Other Jon grabbed both the claw and the laptop and immediately turned around. He plopped the laptop onto the ground and shut the door, crouching.

  I took a step back; my sneakers dragged across asphalt.

  He pushed me down by the shoulder.

  A bullet sped through the top of the door. My eardrums rang.

  Other Jon sighed. “Man, again?” He pulled me up.

  Again?

  He grabbed the computer and claw and ran towards the vehicle.

  “Wait, Ashe!” Came a yell from inside the gas station.

  We made it to the doors.

  The yell turned to a scream. “Jon!”

  I opened the passenger door. Other Jon was already inside.

  The scream turned to cries. Sobs. “Jon!” David wailed.

  I ducked down into the car and closed the door.

  Other Jon took the keys and drove. He dropped the claw into the cup-holder.

  Everything spun. I gripped the inside door handle. My heart raced.

  Several minutes went by. I almost passed out. But future Jon brought me back when he started mumbling.

  “Not again…”

  I rolled my head over and looked at him. At myself. I could only guess what the potential dangers in having a conversation with my future self would be. It was clear that I didn’t understand all of the complications, but what would happen when I was on his side of events? When I was in the driver’s seat? Would I say everything the same way? Would I be unable to change the past just like he was? I kept all these questions inside and asked the simple one. “What’s going on?”

  He grit his teeth. “I… I was supposed to fix it this time!” He hit the steering wheel.

  I looked around the interior. I couldn’t believe we had stolen Jacob’s car. “What’s-”

  “No more words.” He pressed down on the accelerator. It was dark. I had no idea where we were. “Just listen.”

  I swallowed and sat back. My stomach turned upside-down. This was the longest I had ever been in proximity with a double. And the first time I’d ever spoken with one.

  He reached over me and opened the glove box. Reaching inside, he pulled out a cellphone. Jacob’s.

  I watched Other Jon text something and drive at the same time. He drifted into the center of the road. “You know, I could-”

  “Shut up.”

  I did.

  He closed the phone and put it in his pocket. “You already have the power source.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “That bag in Dad’s old stuff. The one you brought with you. We never checked it.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “Seriously?”

  “I don’t know how we forgot it.” He wrung his hands on the wheel. “I screwed up. Or you did. We both screwed up, because the batteries are in the bag, and we forgot to check. Now just listen.”

  “Wait. How did you finally find out?”

  He looked at me. “Because my future self told me.”

  I grabbed my stomach. It hurt. My head hurt. Everything was swimming.

  “I was wrapped in those ropes. My future self came back to save me.”

  He was saved, and so now I was saved. “Then how’d you do it the first time?” I asked.

  He said nothing. His hands squeezed the wheel, and he shook, like he was ready to explode. My future self was angry.

  “Where did the timeline change?” I persisted. “How were you able to cause the loop?”

  “There was no change!” He erupted. “Don’t you get it? I went back to do it differently. But it didn’t work.”

  Things were starting to make sense. But they were also starting to scare me.

  He shoved the claw into my hand. “Hold onto this.”

  I put it in my pocket. Images of the bottom of that plastic bin started to flash in front of my eyes. The water filling my lungs. I gagged. Just stay with it, Jon. My eyes rolled down to the time on the dash. 5:00 am.

  I picked up the laptop. “What about this?”

  “There’s a password lock,” he said.

  I opened it. He was right.

  “Wait till you’re with Hunter.”

  Hunter? What happened to him?

  “That was the file.”

  I looked at other Jon.

  “The video he showed you. That was the file Eclipse is looking for. But there’s still a copy of it inside Luna.”

  I remembered. The video of Alex’s father being murdered. I returned my eyes to the screen. “Howard said it was Dad-”

  “He was lying.”

  I held my breath.

  Other Jon bit his lip, and I saw his eyes water. “He had to be lying.” He shot his eyes to me. “He had to be.”

  I swallowed, staring at my future self.

  He looked back at the road, and a long silence followed.

  Just when I was losing myself again, about to fall asleep, he spoke up again.

  “I need you to make David Kemp regret ever coming back to this time.”

  I looked at my future self. How far in the future he had come from, I still was not sure.

  “I need you to keep David from taking him.”

  “Him?”

  He closed his mouth and sped up.

  I watched my future self gaze ahead, rigidly holding back rage. For a moment, I did not recognize myself. And right then, I made a vow.

  I can’t become the man David says I’ll become.

  Silence led to weariness. Finally, my body got what it wanted. We glided through the interstate, and I collapsed in my seat.

  But the blackout was anyt
hing but black.

  Chapter 25

  “Daniel Pruitt,” Howard said.

  I saw through David’s eyes, a memory from what looked to be not too long ago.

  “Who is he?” Jacob asked.

  The three sat in that office in Luna. Howard at a desk, the other two in small seats.

  “He’s an asset.” Howard scanned over papers sprawled out in front of him. “Recommended by Patrick Corley.”

  “Luna’s CEO has access to hired guns?” Jacob asked waveringly.

  “Corley’s not from this time, Jacob. Just like we aren’t.” Howard gathered a few of the papers up. “That’s why he’s helping us in the first place.”

  “What are you thinking of doing?” David asked, arms folded.

  Howard stroked his chin. “Pruitt’s good. He’ll keep our hands clean. We weren’t even supposed to end up in 2042. I don’t want our actions leaving a heavy temporal fingerprint.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob replied. “How does a time machine set for 2026 end up in ’42?”

  Howard inhaled through his nose, unblinking. “I told you, it’s been known to malfunction.”

  Jacob folded his hands in front of him.

  “The interview tactic was a dreadful failure.” Howard rubbed his forehead. “This is more direct. Our asset will get us the watch. Then we can go back to our intended destination.”

  “And kill Jonathan Ashe as a child,” David said emphatically.

  “The whole family,” Howard corrected. “Like we planned. No loose ends. George, Carrie, and the young Jonathan.”

  “What if something goes wrong?” Jacob asked.

  “Nothing will, once we can go back.” Howard wiped his eyes and sighed. “This setback is only minor.”

  “So,” Jacob said quietly, “after we kill them?”

  “We’ll destroy George Ashe’s prototype,” Howard declared. “The pocket watch will be eradicated. Time travel won’t be invented. Jonathan Ashe will never harm anyone.” A smile made its way onto his face. “Our loved ones will be safe.”

  “And after that?” Jacob leaned forward.

  Howard raised an eyebrow.

  “When we finish the job, what happens to us then? Will we just… vanish or something?”

  Howard leaned back in his chair and rested his hands over his stomach. “If everything goes as planned, our lives as we know them will not exist. The conditions that dictate the men we become will have been drastically altered.” He paused. “I suppose we will vanish. In fact, we will have never had this conversation.”

  Jacob and David shared a glance.

  David turned to Howard. “We’re really going to change the past.”

  “Look where we are, David,” Howard replied. “We already are.”

  ∞

  The visions from David’s memory faded, and I found myself in some sort of dream. I was drowning. David’s hands were around me. It was like the gas station, but in this nightmare, I was fully submerged. It was an ocean, but it had the same green walls as that tub from the bathroom. I couldn’t breathe. David wrung the life out of me, but I never died.

  Someone else was there, too. He stood over me, just above the surface of the water. And he smiled. Simultaneous hatred and satisfaction.

  It was myself, but much, much older. In his hands, he held the pocket watch.

  I kicked and squirmed away from David Kemp, and his hands slipped off. I swam up toward my future self, reaching out, not toward him, but to the watch. My hands breached the water. and my face followed. The pocket watch was so close.

  All of a sudden, Jonathan Ashe, my future self, lifted the watch up. Just out of my grasp. He looked me in the eye and grinned, baring his teeth.

  Gravity began to bring me back down. Before I fell, the old man in front of me held the watch against his chest, wrapped in his wrinkling hand.

  “Mine.”

  I fell back into the water. This time, my body sank.

  ∞

  Water crashed on top of me. But this was not a dream. This was real. I jerked up in fright, feeling as though I were being drowned once more. My fists swung and punched around.

  “Whoa! Hey!” The voice above me called out.

  For a moment, I couldn’t see. Everything was blurry. My fist made contact with someone’s face. Just then, I remembered that before I blacked out, I was with my future self.

  Did I just punch myself in the face?

  Two hands came down on my shoulders. “Easy there!”

  With the water clear from my eyes, I looked up and saw him. Hunter. I exhaled a sigh of relief.

  He took his hands off and rubbed his cheek. “Man, relax, Jon!”

  I put my hands down and took a look around, breathing quickly. A cup was in Hunter’s hands. My face had only been splashed just a bit, but it had felt like much more. Underneath me was a comforter. I sat on a bed. Hunter stood in front of me in some little hotel room. But we weren’t in the same hotel as last time; I didn’t recognize this place. The room was much smaller, and the bed squeaked with every move I made. A faint odor filled the room. Sunlight shone in from the window next to me. A motel room. Ground floor.

  I read the sign that stood next to the parking lot. Savings Inn. The yellow Jeep sat just outside our door, next to a walking path that ran alongside the building. “Tell me we’re not still-”

  “In Sacramento,” Hunter finished. “Yes, we are.”

  I hopped off of the bed. My bones immediately ached. “We can’t stay here,” I said, pitifully making my way to the door. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Wait a second.” Hunter put his hand on my shoulder.

  I shrugged it off and kept going.

  “Jon, wait.”

  I lifted my arm for the door knob. A sharp pain raced from my hand all the way up to my chest. It felt as though a bolt of lightning was ricocheting back and forth, traveling from my arm to my heart and back. I collapsed, catching myself on the thin carpet with just my left hand. The veins in my right arm overtook me with pain.

  Hunter rushed over to help me up. “How about you sit back down, and we talk through this?”

  Our eyes locked.

  I exhaled and closed my eyes. “Okay.”

  ∞

  The first part of my dream frightened me, because it was a dream of David’s past. I’d only seen those visions when touching the watch. This time, it just happened in my sleep. Were David’s memories mixing with mine?

  Today was Tuesday, May 18, 2042. Hunter let me get a shower in the room, and he had gotten some food and clothes for me. I was incredibly thankful, but still uneasy.

  We sat across from each other at the room’s little wooden table. I told Hunter everything that had happened. The kidnapping. The torture. My future self.

  “He came back in time to save me,” I said, sitting on the bed. “But he was only able to do that because his future self had done the same thing.”

  “Self-causing,” Hunter mumbled, sitting in one of the two chairs in the room. “That’s…”

  “It’s a contradiction.”

  “It’s a paradox.”

  It frustrated me. “Then how did it start?”

  “That’s the thing about a circle, Jon,” Hunter smirked, “you don’t know where it starts unless you’re there when the pencil meets the paper.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair, now washed and clean. “He gave me the claw to open the watch, and he told me what I need to power it.”

  He nodded at the dresser. On top of it was the claw, a phone, and the laptop. “I know. He just drove away after dropping you here with me.”

  I looked up at Hunter. “But what about you? How’d you get out of there?”

  “Well, after I had been so graciously knocked in the face… which seems to be a trend now,” he raised an eyebrow at me, “it took maybe twenty minutes for me to wake up. I think it was about that much by the clock that was on the nightstand.” He scratched his chin. “Everything was in the room, still, though. Everyt
hing but you and the bodies.”

  The bodies. Cooper and Sam. I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. “Does…” Behind my eyelids, I saw Sam’s last look at me as she died. “Does that mean you don’t have the Midas gloves anymore?”

  “On the contrary.” He reached into his satchel and pulled out a pair. “I always come prepared.”

  “Okay.” I scratched my chin. “What about the mission?”

  “Donald said to go through with it. That is, if you can still use the watch.”

  “Do you have my bags?”

  “Yes.” He stretched to reach under the bed and grabbed my book bag. “We’re lucky they were in a rush to get rid of the bodies. Looks like they didn’t take a single thing.”

  “Lucky isn’t really the word I was thinking of.”

  “You said your future self told you how to power it up?”

  “Yeah.” I took the back pack and opened it. “And hopefully, the answer’s in here.”

  Chapter 26

  I pulled out the smaller bag that I had kept with my stuff. Just like my future self told me, I had never bothered to look inside; the last time it caught my attention, I was already on the run. But there it was, a bag of batteries compatible with the watch. All this time, my dad had left me with a time machine and the way to power it.

  I laid out what was inside. Small, smooth red discs, with holes in the middle. They were cut into perfect circular shapes, just the right size to fit within the circumference of the watch. Not like any normal watch battery. They looked more like large, thick washers.

  “What do you think they’re made of?” Hunter asked.

  “I don’t know.” I picked one up and examined it closely. It was sleek, and its color was a dark burgundy. It felt like steel, and it had seams around the edge. Inside the outer casing, something made the weight lopsided.

  “Well,” Hunter took one and walked over to a small refrigerator that sat by the wall. He placed it against the door, and it immediately stuck. “I know one thing that’s in them.”

  I looked up at the battery. It was magnetized to the door. “Yeah, but what else?”

  He shrugged.

  “I would try to get one of these open,” I said, “if only I had more of them.” I looked down at the collection. Five in all, including the one Hunter was messing with.