by Sean McMahon
Kara inhaled deeply, turning her gaze to the night sky, visible through the kitchen window. What he was really asking her was if the two of them had what it would take to pull the rug out from underneath a force that had stalked them relentlessly. A power that had hindered them at almost every turn, and reclaimed them more times than she could count. They had even been shown a display of their failed attempts in a visible form, when they had witnessed their time-echoes, playing out the decisions they had made, and perhaps even decisions they were yet to make. Kara exhaled, then turned back to face her friend, ready to address his concerns.
‘It’s going to work Hal. Because we’re not the echoes, we’re The Restarters,’ said Kara, in a tone that was so resolute with certainty, that it almost made Hal wonder why he had experienced any form of doubt in the first place.
‘Well shit,’ said Hal, ‘I’ll drink to that. On three?’
Kara nodded, and they began the downward count from three. As they reached the designated numerical checkpoint, they both then reached out for their glasses, and downed their shots, gently placing the glasses back on the counter.
‘Wow,’ said Hal, ‘someone really needs to patent Temporally-distorted Tequila!’
‘Smooth, right?!’ said Kara.
And with that, they made their way to their chosen sofas in the communal living area, safe in the knowledge that someone would clear up the two splashes of Tequila that were currently lining the kitchen floor, feeling only mildly guilty knowing that it would probably be Rachel or Jasmine who would draw the short, metaphoric straw.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Best Laid Plans
165th Restart – Saturday Evening, 8:47pm
Hal and Kara had no trouble shaking off the innate desire to over-analyse the existential paradox of seeing themselves several minutes before their untimely death, and decided instead to refocus their attention onto the next phase of their plan.
“Okay,” thought Hal, taking stock. With Kara’s past-self clearing up the spillage from the bottle he had knocked off the table upstairs, and Stacey blocking past-Kara from using the stairs, combined with Hal’s past-self conversing with Robert in the rear garden, they had earned a thirty-nine-second head-start. This meant they were on the right track to ensuring their killer would have headed back down to the basement by the time their past-selves arrived at Kevin’s. But all that would count for nothing, if they were unable to nail the next part of the plan.
Kara mouthed the word “Go” at Hal, but he knew precisely when and where he needed to be, shooting off into the night.
Her eyes glazed over, as the conversation between her and Hal’s past-selves played out before her as it always did. Leading to the conclusion it always did. Leading to them agreeing, as they always bloody did, that it was too dark to just lock Jerry outside and that, as always, they would be worried for the poor little guy’s safety blah blah blah, she thought to herself.
She wasn’t sure if this restart was moving slower than the rest, or if she was just utterly fed up with the boringly-repetitive nature of the conversation.
And then, after a single minute in real time, but what had felt like one hundred restarts all rolled into one for Kara, their past-selves had eventually decided on the outcome that, unbeknownst to them, was irrevocably inevitable. Kara wearily gave a second, half-hearted salute, this time to herself, at their unparalleled decisiveness.
‘Go team,’ she said to the fog.
‘Go team!’ said past-Kara, a split-second later, causing the Restarter to raise an eyebrow.
“Well, that’s new…” she thought, then refocused her mind, concentrating on the music.
Her next task was dead simple; distract Jerry at specific intervals to give Hal the time he needed to ensure everything happened precisely when it needed to. All she had to do was concentrate. Focus on the music. And then she experienced a sensation of true terror.
“What’s my last name?!” she thought, her heart suddenly beating in her chest ten times faster than it ought to have been.
She hopped onto the edge of the pool table, accidentally potting the black ball with her arse, causing Will to win the game by default. Jon began barking something about how Will must have knocked the table. Had Kara been paying attention, she would have noticed that the fog was thickening in density. But she was lost in her own memories now, desperately trying to kick-start the specific cerebral-synapse that would grant her access to her full name.
Her past-self had departed with Hal and Jerry, just about the time she’d first noticed her missing memory, and were now well on their way. As her ability to form new thoughts was gradually taken from her, she fleetingly wondered if she was merely a time-echo after all. Doomed to repeat the thirty-three hours leading to her death on a continuous loop, no different from the countless shimmering outlines of herself that she had seen when she and her friend…
What was his name?
Had…done…something…
But her thoughts were refusing to form fully, her mind becoming too foggy for her to remember.
*
Hal raced up the winding roads, flitting between the shadows of the trees like a flash of lightning, seemingly tapping into the force of speed itself. Despite still being partially charged, his stamina felt boundless, perhaps due to how much was at stake. Though he much preferred running without a charge at all. One of the rad things about being stuck in a Punxsutawney purgatorial paradox was that you could run as long as you wanted, without getting a stitch, regardless of how out of shape you were. The other cool thing was that you could get away with using words like “rad” without being judged by others.
Hal flew through the woods like a bullet, winged a dozen or so turns and finally arrived at Kevin’s lodge. Racing up the driveway, he tried to ignore the eerie lack of audible feedback that should have been emanating from the displaced shingle beneath his feet, realising that he would clearly never get used to that.
The front door was open, as it always was, helpfully pushed open by Jerry before he had departed. Apart from that one time during their one-hundred-and-twenty-third restart. Hal cast his mind back to that day. They’d managed to position themselves just close enough to their past-selves to free Kevin from his restraints, but it was too little too late. They still ended up falling victim to–
“Shit. Focus!” thought Hal, slapping himself around the face. The here and now was all that mattered. “Or should that be here and then…”
He slapped himself again, and ran through the front door. Their killer had just finished clearing the remnants of the plate that had fallen from the kitchen counter and was transferring the pieces from a dustpan into the kitchen bin. They never did manage to find out what had caused that plate to fall and it still bothered Hal.
Kara reasoned that sometimes a falling plate was just a falling plate. It was more than likely that Hal was starting to see patterns where there weren’t any.
The killer let out an irksome sigh and stared out of the window into the mild illumination afforded by the kitchen light. Hal’s defiant face reflected back at him, as Hal stood behind the killer’s left shoulder. Not that his adversary could see him of course.
Now it was all up to his fellow Restarter.
‘Run, Kara…run,’ he whispered.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The Jaws of Time
165th Restart – Saturday Evening, R.I Timestamp Error: Recalculating
The music brought her back, though she had no idea how long she’d been gone.
‘Crap! Run, Kara…run!’ she said to herself, claiming ownership of the here and now once more.
Hal was depending on her to distract Jerry to give him the time he needed to bring The Big Bad back down into the basement. She flew to the front entrance, which was mercifully still open, and across the driveway of Fir Lodge. With a sigh of relief, she could see her past-self only just stepping off the yellow, shingled road and taking the left turn that led to her imminent death.
<
br /> She clenched her fists, pulling herself together. Everything they’d been through together had led to tonight. They’d thought of everything, and nothing had been left to chance.
‘Not an echo,’ she said, spitting the words as if they were poison.
She ran ahead of her past-self, and stopped at the first checkpoint, calling for Jerry, moderating her tone into a soothing purr.
‘Hey Jerry! Oh, good boy!’ she said, as he trotted over to her. She stroked him gently, her tangibility greatly increased thanks to her super-charged molecular composition.
Jerry didn’t seem to mind the coolness that ran through him under her touch, rolling onto his back and kicking his little legs at her hand in a playful manner. Not for the first time, she wondered if all dogs were interacting with other Restarters when they rolled around on their backs like this, seemingly playing on their own. She and Hal had remained in contact for every spare second they had, when they weren’t busy manipulating the day’s events.
She refocused her mind, suddenly aware that she was drifting again, replaying things she knew, over and over in her brain. Hal was of the opinion that it was an indication of how they could tell they were getting close to winning, that time was fighting back, that it knew what they were up to. Kara was more cynical. She knew deep down it was just a matter of restarts before they were erased forever, and that there would be no more do-overs. The reason for which–
“Dammit,” she thought, slapping her face.
Kara continued to delay Jerry, and by extension, past-Hal and past-Kara, at four more designated points. This gave the Restarters the precious seconds they needed for the final stage of their plan.
The Big One.
Not for the first time, she wondered if they would be able to live with themselves once the dust settled. Of course, that was assuming any of what came next would actually work at all.
With the last stalling tactic complete, she ran to Kevin’s lodge for what she hoped would be the last time. She wasn’t religious by any extent of the imagination, but her agnostic sensibilities were leaves in the wind to her now, and she prayed for the strength she was going to need for the upcoming battle.
*
Hal watched in silence, as the serial killer grabbed the scissors he was searching for from the kitchen drawer. Hal continued to stare, as the man turned, then made his way back down to the basement. It was at this point, in Hal’s original timeline, that his soon-to-be killer had heard them approaching, utilising the darkness as a cloak to remain invisible.
Hal winced, then breathed out through his nose, jaw-clenched, as he realised Kara had successfully delayed their past-selves just enough. They’d spent countless restarts getting this part right, but this was the first time they were able to test the perfect sweet-spot out in the wild. They would only get one attempt at orchestrating the perfect storm.
Staring at Kevin’s four-minutes-fast wall-mounted clock, Hal noted that the actual time was 9:01pm. Only they weren’t dead. Hal had secretly hoped that just surviving beyond their original time of death would have been enough to end it all. However, the fact he was still present, and engaging in these thoughts at all, proved that he was wrong. There was only one way to finish this.
The downside of reliving the same period of time, over and over, was that as soon as the timeline altered, the Restarters were effectively powerless. They had no way of knowing for sure what would happen next, having no point of reference. So, it was in this precise moment, as the beast faced the basement door and hesitated, like a shark catching the scent of blood across a vast expanse of water, that Hal was just as blind to the future as any normal person.
The man cocked his head to one side, then the other, as if lifting his opposite ear to try harder. Hal continued to hold his out-of-phase breath and realised, for the first time, that he didn’t feel a burning sensation in his lungs. This late in the game, he shot a dark smile towards their killer at the utterly pointless discovery; Hal didn’t need to breath at all.
“Who knew,” he thought wryly.
It had taken them five restarts alone just to get this moment right. They had underestimated the man’s abilities before. Adding to his shark-like traits, he seemed to be able to read the environment, attuning his senses to his surroundings like nothing they had ever seen. Only this time there was nothing but silence for the predator to work with, causing Hal’s smile to widen.
‘Nice work Kara, right on time,’ he whispered, elated that their persistence had paid off, but still not brave enough to talk loudly in such close proximity to the animal before him.
‘Now open the door you piece of shi–’ but his sentence was cut short, as Kara slipped through the open front door. Hal had a momentary disconnect, and for a split-second thought it was the wrong Kara entering the cabin.
‘Jeeze Kar’ I thought that was–’
‘The other me. You say that every time,’ she said in a bored tone. ‘Have a little faith.’
‘Says the atheist,’ said Hal dryly. ‘And to be fair, sixty percent of the time, it’s the wrong you every time.’
‘Agnostic actually. Settle down Burgundy. Head’s up, he’s going for the basement door!’
‘Oh!’ said Hal excitedly, ‘say it!’
‘I’m not saying it, it’s stupid,’ said Kara, with stubborn resolution.
Hal gave her a brief attempt at puppy-dog eyes, and she caved like a bad soufflé, adopting a lifeless tone of indifference.
‘Oh for fu…fine. Open the pod-bay doors please, Hal.’
Smiling like an idiot, he waved his hand with his fingers and thumb in an “L” shape, like a knight of an old republic, using an unseen force. Hal’s action coincided perfectly with their killer, as he finally seemed to accept that there was no prey in the vicinity and opened the door to the basement.
Hal and Kara swooped in behind him, passing through his arm as they did so, though the man didn’t shiver. Not for the first time, Hal wondered if this man was even human at all, as they descended into the dimly-lit cavern of death below.
Kara saw no point in stating out loud what she was thinking; that only time would tell if they were destined to succeed. After all, time already knew.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Blue Lanterns
165th Restart – Saturday Evening, 9:03pm
There was an unnerving stillness to their surroundings, as the basement door closed behind them. For a few seconds, it was as if they were peeking behind the curtain, whole once again, and fully in-phase with time.
It had taken them one-hundred and sixty-five restarts to get this far, the odds had seemed eternally stacked against them. They felt like they were breaking countless rules just by being here; at a point in time that they hoped was as pliable as they needed it to be, and not carved in stone like they secretly suspected.
To the best of their knowledge, no one had ever attempted something like this before; manipulating the flow of time, to change the destiny of not only themselves, but for Kevin too. Potentially, they could be saving countless others in the process. The ripples their actions would surely cause, from the present and into the future, were mind-boggling to Hal. The Restarters were the personification of the flutterby wings that were about to cause a tornado, one that was monumental in scale.
Their intervention, in terms of cause and effect, would not be isolated to just one location either, they could be changing the world in ways far beyond their ability to predict or comprehend. As their retained charge diminished, the thick static fog that had hounded them since the early days returned, slowly but surely, permeating through the walls, obscuring their vision, and clouding their minds once again. It had taken them many restarts to learn exactly how long they could operate before the blue energy depleted fully from their out-of-phase bodies, and they were relieved that they had timed it perfectly. They needed to be powerless for what came next.
‘It’s gone,’ said Hal.
‘For a second there, I thought the charge wa
s never going to leave us,’ said Kara.
‘And we’re still here…’ said Hal.
‘Which means,’ said Kara, ‘we have no choice. We have to take the next step.’
Their faces turned a little green at the prospect, as they looked down the stairs into the darkness below.
‘Kara, I…’ Hal was struggling to the find the words.
After all the time they had shared together, hurtling through time from restart to restart, he felt a sharp pang over all of the things that had been left unsaid. How he couldn’t have made it this far without her working the problem with him, how the oppressive feel of their self-contained time-bubble would have surely driven him insane without her constant support. But, perhaps most importantly of all, how everything they had achieved together had finally brought him a mere hop, skip, and a time-jump away from seeing Jess again, something that literally would have been impossible had he been stuck here alone.
He must have conveyed all of these feelings through the look he gave her, because she was looking back at him in exactly the same way. She didn’t have to say anything at all, no words were necessary.
It was then that they heard the voices of the only two people in this timeline they could still hear clearly through the dense fog. Their past-selves were close, the delay tactics they had implemented officially expunged. Their killer had clearly heard them too, deep in the dim light, being cast by a bulb that surely could have done with being a higher wattage, they could see his tell-tale, shark-like, jerking head-movement, as he listened intently.
Grabbing a menacingly large knife, the killer made his way back towards the staircase they were still standing on.
Hal pulled up the collar on his boiler suit, and tried to click his neck by turning his head in a circular motion, the dramatic effect he was going for not lost on Kara.
“Ever the showman,” she thought to herself with a smile.
