by Eric Vall
Maybe there was an electrical conduit, after all.
A sudden pain shot through my aching head, and I had to lean against the machine to keep myself from falling to my knees.
The second my hand touched the cold metal of the computer, though, a loud whirring sound filled the air.
Then the multicolored lights sprang to life as the whirring turned into a grating, dial-up internet like noise, and the jumbotron sprang to life.
There, on the massive screen, was the face of an older man. He had large, square-shaped glasses over his eyes and a horseshoe hairline on his dome. On his forehead rested a pair of strap-on goggles, which became somewhat redundant when you realized he already wore eye protection. The man’s face also sported a burly mustache that sat above his expressionless mouth.
In fact, the man’s whole face was completely stern and emotionless.
And it was surrounded by a turquoise, glowing aura.
Underneath the man’s face was a ticker that read “Blood sample identified. Wayfarer of Dimension One - Hunter Bragg” in bright red letters.
“Welcome, Hunter Bragg,” a voice arose from the figure on the screen. “Please allow me to introduce myself… My name is Dr. David Nash, and I have been expecting you for quite some time, Wayfarer.”
Chapter 2
“Uhhh… huh?” I slowly backed away from the seemingly sentient machine, and I refused to peel my eyes away from the glowing face the entire time.
The man on the large screen frowned when he saw I was trying to leave.
“There is no need to be afraid, Wayfarer,” Dr. Nash reassured me. “I’m just a state of the art, cognitive-based artificial intelligence. I couldn’t hurt you even if I wanted to.”
Oh, that was reassuring.
I continued to back away and didn’t even dignify the greeting with a response. I needed to figure out how to get out of here. Generally, people who had secret laboratories underneath their houses weren’t too happy when somebody wandered into them. It was only a matter of time before Karla came to inspect the loud crash, and then--
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a cocking shotgun.
“What the fuck did you do?” Karla growled from behind me.
“Calm down, daughter,” Dr. Nash implored. “It’s only natural for the asset to be a tad spooked. This is all a lot for him to take in… I’m assuming you didn’t inform him of my current state when you brought him here?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Karla still had her gun aimed square at my back, though she now wore a concerned look on her face.
“What are you talking about, Dad?” the brunette asked. “We have a termite problem, and this is just our exterminator.”
“Pest Control Technician,” I corrected.
“Quiet!” Karla snapped as her eyes whipped back to me. “Now, I’m gonna ask again, what did you do to the IFDR? Did the government send you? Or was it Dr. Malice or Edward Parsons or another one of my father’s rivals?”
“I-I just fell through the floor,” I explained with my hands in the air as I pointed to the hole in the ceiling. “I was looking at the termite damage, and then the next thing I know, boom! I’m down in this place.”
“Likely story,” Karla growled. “An exterminator--”
“Technician,” I interjected, and she shot me a look that could peel paint off the walls.
“Whatever the fuck you are,” she continued, “a simple pest control idiot wouldn’t know how to operate an IFDR. How did you turn it on? It hasn’t been functional in almost five years.”
“Uhhh, I didn’t do anything!” I hissed as I waved my hands and tried to look away from her shotgun. “I just leaned against it so I didn’t fall over, and it booted up. I promise, I’m only a technician, not a spy or an agent or whatever you think I am.”
“Please put the gun down, daughter,” Dr. Nash implored once again. “This is no way to treat our Wayfarer.”
“This dumbass?” Karla scoffed. “The Wayfarer? Not a fucking chance.”
“It’s in his DNA, Karla,” the AI explained in a fatherly tone. “I got a sample of his blood when he placed his wounded hand on my console. That is why I have reactivated after all these years. Our mission is alive and well, daughter.”
“Ohhh!” Karla gasped, and then she bit her lip as if she were trying not to cry, but then she finally lowered the gun.
“I thought I’d never see you again.” She hung her head. “I mean, I know you’re not… you. But you’re the closest thing to… Well… him… It’s just--just nice to hear your voice again.”
“It’s good to see you again, too, Karla,” the face on the screen replied longingly. “Even though I know deep down I’m just a machine, a shadow of your father unable to grasp the concepts of emotion, it did make me sad to shut down indefinitely.”
Uh… what the fuck was going on? Actually, on second thought, I really didn’t care.
The shotgun wasn’t pointed at me anymore, and I could see a bit of light shining in from the staircase at the far end of the room like a shining beacon of freedom in the darkness.
All I had to do was run and hope Karla couldn’t get her weapon back into position before I was up the stairs.
“You can’t possibly believe this man is the Wayfarer,” the brunette woman argued. “I thought they were supposed to be the most important people of their timeline? This guy is just an exterminator.”
Pest. Control. Technician.
I wanted to argue, but I wanted to escape even more, and reminding them I was right here probably wasn’t the best way to do that.
So, I took a careful step toward the stairs, and neither the crazy-sexy girl with the shotgun or weird computer dude noticed.
“Your father raised you better than that, Karla,” the computer reminded her. “A human being’s job isn’t what defines them. What defines them is--”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” Karla half-chuckled, half-grumbled. “It’s their character and the ultimate potential of what they do with their life that decides their impact on the world. Dad certainly programmed his boring life lectures into you, huh?”
Now.
I took off in a full sprint toward the staircase. My heart hammered in my chest as I ran, and the muscles in my legs screamed as they powered my body forward.
“Stop!” I heard her scream.
I didn’t bother looking back. I was almost to the stairs.
Suddenly, there was a loud gunshot from behind me, and a spray of concrete chunks exploded into the air as the floor in front of me was turned into a crater.
I halted in place, spun around, and fumbled at my belt for my screwdriver.
It wasn’t gonna do jack shit against a shotgun, but if this was the end, at least I’d go down fighting. I let out a frustrated scream as I charged at Karla and prepared to stab her with my flat-head.
She shot the ground at my feet once more, but it didn’t stop me.
I was on her in a few more strides as I hauled back my makeshift weapon.
The next thing I knew, I felt the butt of the shotgun hit me in the stomach. As I doubled over in pain, Karla used the barrel to knock the screwdriver out of my hand. Then, in one elegant motion, she twirled the gun around, brought it up to the crook of her arm, and took aim once more.
When I came up for air, I was staring down the barrel of the twelve-gauge.
“You’d really better hope the IFDR is right,” Karla hissed. “Because if you’re not the Wayfarer, I may just have to blow your head off for that little stunt.”
“Karla, please be reasonable,” the man on the screen pleaded. “This is no way to treat the Wayfarer of your dimension.”
“Call me a skeptic,” the brunette woman growled without taking her eyes off me, “but why would a Wayfarer just show up on our doorstep like this?”
“It’s only been five years, daughter,” Dr. Nash mused and clicked his tongue. “Must I really explain to you the two-headed arrow theory again?”
&nb
sp; “I remember,” Karla scoffed with a smile. “The idea that time works as a two-way street, and that all events in the present influence both the past and the future simultaneously. ‘Fate,’ as the less-intelligent like to call it.”
“Precisely!” Dr. Nash’s face lit up. “If I had to wager a guess, I’d say a version of us from another dimension, past or future, has been working hard to ensure this Wayfarer ended up in this laboratory, precisely at this point in time.”
“Okay, look,” I gasped as I tried to stand upright. “If you’re going to hold me at gunpoint, you at least gotta tell me what all this science mumbo-jumbo means, for crap’s sake.”
Karla and the face on the screen exchanged cautious looks, and then Dr. Nash nodded slowly. His daughter hesitated for a second, but then she slowly lowered the gun from my face.
“Promise not to try and run again?” she inquired.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I lied. “I value my life too much.”
“Oh, so maybe we shouldn’t explain everything to him, then?” Dr. Nash pondered aloud.
My heart sank into my stomach at his words. It must have shown, because both Karla and the face on the screen instantly burst out into laughter.
“He’s just messing with you,” Karla explained. “I’m glad to see this thing still has my father’s sense of humor.”
“And what exactly is this… thing?” I questioned. “Some sort of computer program? How does it know my name?”
Karla strutted over to a nearby desk, pulled out its chair, flipped it around, and then motioned for me to sit.
“You’re gonna want to be sitting down for this,” she warned, “it’s a long, complicated story.”
“I’ve got time,” I joked as I walked over and plopped down in the cushioned seat. “Especially when I’m being held against my will by a woman with a shotgun and her computerized dad.”
“Let us explain everything, and then you will be free to go,” Dr. Nash offered. “However, I believe you won’t want to leave once we let you in on just how special you are.”
What was this, an intervention?
“Alright,” I said as I leaned forward in the chair and rested my chin against my open palms. “Try me. Who are you people, and why are you so obsessed with me?”
“As I said before,” the computer explained, “I am Dr. David Nash. Or, at least, a glimmer of what he once was.”
“So, what?” I interrogated. “You uploaded yourself into a computer? Or are you dead, and this is your daughter’s convoluted way to try and bring you back?”
“As with most things, the answer is ‘somewhere in the middle,’” the glowing face on the screen noted. “Dr. David Nash was a brilliant scientist whose discoveries in quantum mechanics and string theory had the potential to completely change the world. He had it all… a beautiful wife and daughter, the admiration of the scientific community, and so many awards and prizes. He probably would have won a Nobel Peace Prize had he been able to finish his work.”
“So, he did die.” I nodded. “You keep referring to him like he’s dead.”
“We don’t know that for a fact,” Karla sighed and lowered her head. “All we know is my father has been gone for almost eight years now. He might be dead, or he might still be out there somewhere.”
“Out where?” I asked. “Was he kidnapped by one of those people you accused me of working for?”
“Doubtful,” the A.I. on the screen explained. “The IFDR logs show it has been used once, and only once, but the data was corrupted as to when and where Dr. Nash ended up. Every calculation I have made leads back to the theory that Dr. Nash used the device on himself and has been missing ever since. We do not know how he accomplished this, however, since he was not, to our knowledge, a Wayfarer.”
“He spent all of my teenage years building that damn thing,” Karla interjected. “And then, lo and behold, the second it’s finished… the second he might just actually have time for his family again… he up and uses the thing on himself and leaves.”
“He probably didn’t intend to leave, my dear,” the computer-man said. “We’ve discussed this before.”
“Not to sound like a total idiot,” I cut in and raised my hand, “but what exactly does this machine do? Other than host your missing father’s conscience?”
“I am not the conscience of Dimension One’s Dr. Nash,” the computer explained. “I am the conscience of the Dr. Nash from Dimension Six-Eighty-Seven.”
My brain was starting to hurt.
“So, your dad is missing, but the guy in this computer is your dad… from another dimension?” I pointed to the glowing face.
“That’s correct,” Karla explained. “When my father disappeared, I spent months trying to figure out how to operate this machine to get him back. After countless hours of heartache, headaches, and frustration, another version of my father appeared in the lab and offered to help me try and figure it out.”
“You see, in my dimension, it was Karla who used the IFDR too soon and went missing,” Dr. Nash explained. “So, I used my device to send me to a dimension where my doppelgänger was missing. I figured the combined brainpower of my daughter and I would be able to crack the code and bring both of our missing halves back. However, the joke was on me. You see, because of slight variations in the space-time continuum, the version of the IFDR that Dimension One’s Dr. Nash built was much different than my own.”
“We eventually got it to work,” Karla grumbled, “but we made a terrible discovery. The machine doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to on regular humans. When you send somebody through, it’s a one-way trip.”
“So, we believe Dimension One’s Dr. Nash and Dimension Six-Eighty-Seven’s Karla are out there somewhere in another dimension,” the computer’s hypnotic voice continued. “Lost, with no way to get home.”
“Hold on, hold on… ” I shook my head in disbelief at what I was hearing. “You’re telling me this thing lets people travel across dimensions?”
“Again, you are halfway there,” Dr. Nash clarified. “The Interdimensional Future Doomsday Radar is a device that, in theory, grants travel to future timelines across a plethora of alternate dimensions.”
“Wait, no.” I stood up and shook my head even more vigorously. “Maaaaybe I can believe your father disappeared and that his personality was uploaded into a computer program, but now you’re trying to sit here and tell me Dr. Nash invented not only time travel, but interdimensional time travel?”
“That is correct.” The face on the screen nodded. “Shall I continue?”
I didn’t even know what to say. So, I threw out my hands, shrugged, and then sat back down.
“I guess I might as well hear you out,” I admitted. “The story can’t get much crazier from here.”
“You’re going to regret saying that,” Karla mused.
“So, this is where the Wayfarers come in,” Dr. Nash began once more. “Each timeline has what we call a ‘Wayfarer,’ or a person who has the ability to travel back and forth across space and time. Unfortunately, the Dr. Nash of Dimension One wasn’t one of them.”
“We spent years trying to find the Wayfarer of this dimension,” Karla added. “I scoured the world looking for anyone who might fit the bill.”
“And how do you know when people fit the bill?” I chuckled. “Did you just go up to them and ask ‘Hey, are you an interdimensional time traveler?’”
“Wayfarers are surrounded by anomalies in the timeline,” Karla retorted without missing a beat. “They’re people who constantly experience things like deja vu, precognition, prosopagnosia, and other similar phenomena of the mind.”
“Well, that only narrows it down to a few million people,” I joked, but Karla didn’t seem to be in the mood for jokes.
“I did my best, given the circumstances,” the brunette woman scoffed. “I was in my twenties, barely even above the legal drinking age, and I was next to alone. Mom was dead, and Dad was gone… It wasn’t exactly a simple task
.”
“No, it wasn’t.” The face on the screen frowned. “That’s why I wanted to make sure she was never alone again. The Karla of Dimension One may not have been my daughter, but I couldn’t bear to see her lose her father again.”
“So, you uploaded yourself into the computer,” I finished the statement for him.
“That’s right,” he confirmed.
“We put him into sleep mode about five years ago,” Karla explained. “This thing only has so much juice left in it, and I didn’t want to waste it while I jaunted about looking for the Wayfarer.”
“I instructed Karla not to wake me until Dimension One’s Wayfarer was found,” Dr. Nash noted, “and now, here you are in the flesh!”
“I-I think you might have the wrong guy,” I admitted. “I mean, I have some bouts of deja vu just like any normal human being, but I’m just a regular dude who spends his weekends playing video games and binge-watching Japanese anime. I’m no interdimensional traveler. Besides, what are the chances the one guy you’re looking for just drops onto your doorstep like this?”
“That’s what I thought at first, too,” Karla admitted, “but my father here seems to think that ‘fate’ made it so.”
“I’m not some super badass time-jumper,” I repeated. “There’s no way.”
“I have a sample of your blood, Hunter Bragg.” Dr. Nash’s glowing head nodded. “It has the genetic makeup of a Wayfarer.”
Now, the room started to spin around me, so I leaned back in my chair and looked up at the ceiling to keep from passing out. There was no way. This had to be all a dream. Nothing but a dream…
And if it wasn’t, these people were certifiably crazy.
Was I really supposed to believe I was talking to a living computer, whose consciousness was uploaded from a man from another dimension, and that I was some sort of special mutant who could jump across space and time?
This was insane, and I had a feeling it was about to get even crazier.
