I scratch my head. “It was in the apartment of one of my ex-girlfriends.”
“What were you doing there?” Doctor Quickly asks. Mym is watching me intently, obviously wondering the same thing, if with a slightly different level of curiosity.
“There’s another me in town. He’s staying there for the time being. We were working a few things out.”
“And this former girlfriend of yours knows the origin of this symbol?” Abraham asks.
“No. I only saw it in the vision. The notebook here was blank. If it’s showing up in my dreams that means it’s coming from the other other me.” I gesture vaguely toward the ceiling. “Departed Ben, or whatever we want to call him.”
“What did the dream feel like?” Abraham asks. “Was there a particular emotion affiliated with this symbol? Any other clues to its origin?”
“I don’t know about any emotions. I was so busy trying not to black out that I didn’t get much of a feel for that. There was something else though. A word or name that was written with the symbol. Zurvan? It was underlined like it was important.”
“Zurvan?” Abraham asks. “The Zoroastrian deity?”
“Is that a person we know?” I ask.
“A person history knows, to be sure,” Abraham replies. “Zoroaster was an ancient holy man. Before most of history as we know it. He even preceded my namesake, Abraham, though many of his teachings were said to have influenced the Judeo-Christian traditions that followed. The concepts of a single God, Heaven and Hell, even the idea of a Devil have their roots in Zoroastrianism. Zurvan is the name of a god whose origins also grew from Zoroastrianism. Though I believe that Zurvanism conflicted a bit with orthodox Zoroastrian teachings.”
“You think the attack has something to do with religion?” I ask.
Doctor Quickly responds. “That seems unlikely, but I suppose it’s possible. From what I know of religious history, despite being a dominant force in antiquity, Zoroastrians are one of the smallest religions in the world these days. Mostly in India, I believe.”
“Did you piss any off recently?” I ask.
Doctor Quickly allows himself a smile. “I wish I could say with certainty that I haven’t, but as you are discovering lately, it’s hard to say what influence your life might be having in the world, especially if you are not the only version of you living it.
“If there is a connection between the attack on me and the Zoroastrians, I would be more inclined to believe we are dealing with time travelers,” Doctor Quickly continues. “Could be some fringe sect. I have a hard time suspecting modern day Zoroastrians are out to get me. From what I know of their religion, it’s rather peaceful.”
“We are dealing largely in conjecture, Harry,” Abraham says. “How do you want to proceed?”
Doctor Quickly looks at me. “With all the help we can get. We’ll need to cover a lot of ground, temporally speaking, to find some solid evidence and see who is behind this. I would suggest we steer clear of the other labs for a while. I need to check up on the other versions of myself that I know of, to make sure none of them have been attacked. Then we can start to narrow down our leads about what they are really after.”
“I want to get into the Valencia lab before the police do,” Mym says, fiddling with the ring on her finger. “I think we need to start there.”
“It could be dangerous,” Doctor Quickly says. “I don’t want you going in there alone. Benjamin, would you be willing to assist in the investigation?”
“Of course. Whatever you guys need.” I look to Mym. “As long as I’m on Mym’s team.”
Doctor Quickly smiles. “I doubt she’d have it any other way. I want you two to be careful though. We still don’t know who we’re dealing with. We’ve arranged with Bob to have a contact point set up at his ranch in Montana. You’re familiar with the place, I believe. A meeting there should be secluded enough to keep us off the radar of our mystery attackers, but let’s be sure to keep a wary eye out anyway. In the meantime, perhaps you can research the symbol connection as well. During these dreams of yours, does it seem like you have any way to communicate with your departed self? Is the information one way or could you get him a message?”
“I’ve never really tried deliberately communicating with him. Hasn’t really felt like an option. I can try it next time, I guess.”
“I’m just curious what your other self knows that we don’t. He sounds like someone we may want on our side. If possible, getting in touch with him should be a priority.”
Mym slides off the edge of the bed where she’s been leaning. “When we find these guys who attacked you, what do you want us to do with them?”
“Good question,” Doctor Quickly replies. “We need to discourage them from any more attacks, for sure. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now we need to find them before they find some other unsuspecting version of me and get whatever they’re hunting for.”
I notice the bag hanging from my closet doorknob that has the portable gravitizer in it. “Hey, sort of a side topic, but since you are here, I have an idea I’d like to run by you. Sort of a science project that I thought of earlier.”
“Something that will help us out?” Doctor Quickly asks.
“I’ll show you and let you tell me.”
My idea has required a jump into the near future to arrive at a time after my earlier self got home from the marina. Doctor Quickly and I aim for about seven. The sun is still shining through the western windows. I lay out the portable gravitizer pieces on the floor of the garage as Doctor Quickly studies the motorcycle. He strokes his chin and paces the length of the bike. “So you want to gravitize the whole thing?”
“You said we’ll need to cover a lot of ground. I thought it might come in handy.”
“Indeed it would.” Quickly holds his arms wide to try to measure. “I’ve never tried gravitizing a whole vehicle using a portable before. Probably need to take the wheels off to make it fit inside the perimeter of this unit. Of course we could always do them separately.” I can see he is intrigued by the idea. “I suppose the utilitarian issue would be having a way to gravitize the fuel when you fill up. Otherwise you would leave it behind. Perhaps some sort of gravitite injection system . . .
“And you will need a way to anchor the bike to a temporal ground during a jump. The tires won’t make very good conductors,” Doctor Quickly adds. “I assume you’ll want to be able to make jumps while moving. Not that I recommend it, but it would certainly be useful.”
We are able to arrange the portable gravitizer into a shape that will fit the frame of the bike. We have to do a bit of wrenching to prop the bike up without its wheels, but without them it just fits inside the clear insulated sheeting. The power dims a little as we apply the solution of gravitites via a stream of electricity. The test works. After running Mym’s degravitizer test light across all the areas of the bike, the light glows a steady red, indicating that all of the items are gravitized.
Bob and Abraham are eager to join in the project and even Tucket tries to help. He seems in awe of Doctor Quickly and is uncharacteristically calm in his presence.
I notice Tucket has acquired a new leather bracelet on his wrist with some metal studs on it.
“Cowboy Bob gave it to me!” Tucket exclaims. “He says he got it straight from Bono at a U2 concert. Says it will make me look more rock and roll.” He clenches his fist and holds up the bracelet, then proceeds to play some air guitar. “Me and him are going to jam sometime.”
Bob is the one who actually comes up with the solution for the jump device in one of his casual comments. “There are plenty of benefits to time machines that can travel. You should just use my trick. Throw out a trailing line to the ground, then use the ground as a local anchor. Easy.” I recall my previous trip to Bob’s ranch and our flight aboard his hot air balloon. He would suspend a cable from the balloon and make time jumps via anchors on the ground. He could even trail degravitized anchors and jump to other places if he w
anted.
“If you have some wiring, I’d bet Abraham could find a way to plug your chronometer into the bike’s electrical system. You’ll be able to do longer jumps that way. Can probably keep your chronometer charged up, too.”
Abraham chimes in. “Actually, I’ve got another addition that will make this process even easier. Have I showed you my timer delayed chronometers yet, Ben?”
“No. Is it cooler than my current system?”
“Not sure about cooler, but it will let you keep both of your hands on the handlebars while you jump.”
Abraham disappears to his workshop and comes back with some additional parts for my chronometer. The extra toggle and timer lets me select an increment of time, like ten seconds, press the pin, but not have the action happen until the timer ticks down.
“Just make sure you’ve got your hand on your anchor by the time it hits zero,” Abe says. “Bit of a safety hazard if you don’t.”
I adjust the dial to the off position. “Got it. We’ve had enough unplanned trips to the Neverwhere as it is.”
The mechanical detour to the garage doesn’t seem to have bothered anyone. If anything, having the project to work on seems to be a good distraction from the attack. Doctor Quickly, Abraham, and Bob all pitch in at various times in troubleshooting and testing the modifications to the bike. We work on it for a couple of hours, but we end up doing a lot of the wiring and parts construction in Abe’s tool shop. Jumping back and forth between locations lets us use up less “real time” in my garage, and between the four of us, the modifications come together pretty fast. It’s only after a late dinner upstairs when Tucket asks me if I am planning a road trip that I remember he still doesn’t know anything about my new plans.
“I’m just going to be doing some traveling.” I lean against my bookshelf and try to sound casual. “Helping the Quicklys out.”
“Can I come?” Tucket’s eyes light up. “I’ve been wanting to see more of this timestream. Are you going to paint your fuel tank like an American flag and cruise around like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider?”
I shake my head. “Actually I’ve only got room for two and I think Mym already has dibs on the back.” I’m hoping desperately that Tucket is picking up on my hint. “But it’s been great having you visit. Maybe you can spend a little time on your own traveling around, or . . .”
Tucket looks up wide-eyed. “Wait! I have it!” His hands flash to his Temprovibe and suddenly he’s vanished.
“Oh shit,” I mutter.
Mym joins me from the kitchen. “What happened?”
“I lost Tucket again.”
Mym touches my arm, then shakes her head and walks away.
My apartment has become decidedly crowded. Even with Tucket absent there is a shortage on privacy. Post motorcycle project, Doctor Quickly and Abraham have taken over my kitchen table and are poring over a bunch of timestream charts. Mym has commandeered the couch and has hot-wired my TV to display the contents of her MFD. She’s navigating the internet at speeds that make my brain hurt, downloading data on Zoroastrianism, Zurvan, and any symbols that look like they could resemble a flaming circle with wings. Cowboy Bob has circumnavigated the apartment at least ten times now, but with his casual ease and polite banter, it took me half a dozen laps before I realized his repeated glances out the windows throughout the day were anything more than curiosity at the view. It finally dawns on me that he has been taking guard duty, keeping an eye out for trouble. I also now notice the bulge at the back of his shirt concealing a handgun. That more than anything else lets me know that, however casual he may seem, he’s taking the situation seriously.
It’s Bob who alerts us to new arrivals, though of the friendly variety. Carson and Francesca show up independently from one another. My cell phone had spent most of the day in the cabin of the Longletter boat so I missed both of their calls. Carson was apparently just enquiring as to whether I was playing softball this week and decided to swing by. Francesca was convinced after a half dozen calls that something was clearly wrong and I was in danger or dead. Her concern turns to elation when she finds the apartment full of the Quicklys and Cowboy Bob.
She and Bob have an enthusiastic reunion near the front door. I introduce Carson to Bob and Abraham and, in what I take as a ringing endorsement of trust, Doctor Quickly fills them in on the attack on the labs and our plan to look for the attackers.
The information has differing effects on Carson and Francesca. Carson is immediately ready to join in the hunt and is full of questions. Francesca adopts a plan of defensive paranoia and it’s not long before she is doing laps around the house with Bob, fretting about shapes in the darkness and casting withering glances at neighbors out walking their dogs.
I finally hunker down on the couch with Mym. She seems to sense my mood. “How are you holding up?”
“All right, I guess.” I repress a yawn. “Although when I said I wanted to show you a day in the life of Ben Travers, this wasn’t exactly what I meant.”
Mym puts a hand on my leg sympathetically. “I’m sorry. We sort of took over your life.”
“It’s okay.” I gesture toward the TV-turned-computer. “Find anything good?”
Mym drags some notes onto the screen, seemingly from nowhere. “Not much on the symbol, but tons on Zoroaster. The guy really had a following. Funny thing though, for being so famous, historians have had a hard time nailing down when he actually lived. Some are saying twelve hundred BCE, others say six hundred. A few old texts place him at six thousand BCE. It’s all over the place.”
“It’s strange that I’ve never heard of him.”
“You’ve probably heard of his followers. They were big into astronomy and science. People thought they were magicians—called them Magi.”
“Magi? Like ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are,’ Magi?”
“Yeah, probably the same ones. It was a whole class of astronomers slash priests. Zoroaster was from Mesopotamia in any case. Modern day Iraq and Iran. It was the cradle of civilization back then.”
“I’ve heard about some of that. Didn’t the wheel first get invented there?”
“That’s definitely one of the places. It’s also where they first started writing.”
“Anything else specifically about Zurvan?”
“One interesting thing. Zoroastrians worship a god known as Ahura Mazda, an all powerful creation spirit, very similar to the Judeo-Christian God. But a fringe sect also believed in a god named Zurvan. He’s believed to be the god of infinite space and time.
“Zurvanites credit Zurvan’s influence on tons of myths and legends. There were quite a few about the prophet Zoroaster too, like where he got killed by the stars in a rain of fire for trying to restrain them. Some of the stories get a little crazy.”
“Wow. God of time. That doesn’t exactly seem like a coincidence.” I watch her browse through a few more sites. “No luck on the symbol?”
“Not yet. A few Egyptian hieroglyphics popped up as possible matches and a couple of etchings in the catacombs of Rome, but nothing recent. Nothing to show why it would be spray-painted on Dad’s wall. I want to go do a sweep of the lab now that I know what we’re looking for. I feel like maybe I’m missing something.”
“So how do we tie it together? I’m guessing we need more to—”
“Hey, Ben,” Bob interrupts. “You expecting a delivery?”
“Not that I know of.” I get up and follow Bob to the front window. He points down to the street. A flatbed truck has pulled up in front of the apartment and is offloading something covered in a tarp onto the sidewalk. Bob walks downstairs with me to meet the driver who intercepts us in the driveway.
“One of you Benjamin Travers?” The man has a belly that precedes him by a foot and the rest of his proportions are equally oversized. When I show interest, he shoves the clipboard and a pen into my hands. “Promised a guy I could have this here and offloaded by nine-thirty. Made a real big deal about it. You tell him traffic was shit, but I made it.
” The driver consults his watch. “Couple minutes to spare.”
“Who did you—”
The man walks over to the unwanted delivery and yanks the tarp away. Sitting on the pallet is a rocket-shaped contraption with a single wheel protruding from the side. A dusty windshield partially blocks the view of a leather seat in the opening of the pod. The vehicle is set at a slight angle to one side and both Bob’s and my heads tilt sideways to take it in.
“Would you look at that,” Bob says.
“Good enough?” The truck driver asks, jerking his clipboard back from me. “Didn’t put no dings on it or nothin’. Looked like that when I loaded it up.”
I lift Bob’s arm from his side so I can consult his wristwatch. The second hand is ticking upward toward 9:30. “What was he thinking?” I let go of Bob’s arm and observe the empty seat of the sidecar. There is a pregnant pause as the truck driver stares at us, waiting for his okay to leave, but I don’t take my eyes off the sidecar. Sure enough, the space is spontaneously filled by a squatting man in vintage motorcycle goggles. He laughs out loud as he spots us in the driveway. The truck driver stumbles backward in shock.
“I knew it would work!” Tucket exclaims. He slaps the sides of the cockpit with both hands. “I had it shipped all the way from the seventies! What do you think, Ben?”
I can’t help but laugh as I take it all in. The truck driver turns on his heel and makes for his truck as fast as he can waddle. He doesn’t look back as he slams the door and fires up the engine. The truck lurches into gear and lumbers down the street at high RPM, still trailing straps behind it.
I smile back at the grinning young man in the sidecar. “I guess you did it, Tuck. Welcome to the team.”
Chapter 6
"Time travel and parenting are both difficult enough on their own. Combining them . . . ? Let’s just say that when your five-year-old daughter discovers that every day really could be her birthday party, your cupcake and piñata budget is going to need to be revised.”- Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1992
In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 112
