Memory Hole

by Douglas Jern

  There was no chance of adding the man to the Survivor’s Network; he was already in police custody, for one thing. For another, the Network worked because its members had only a vague understanding of Homer’s power. Not knowing when or how he might use it on them was the key to keeping them under his control. He did not know how much the scapegoat knew, and he had no means of finding out.

  Homer cursed himself for freezing up like a deer in the headlights when the man had stared at him. Had he acted quickly, he could have eliminated him on the spot, substituting another scapegoat from the crowd. How shameful that for all his power, for all the danger he had faced without fear, this one unexpected occurrence should terrify him so. This called for immediate rectification.

  Homer walked back the way he had come, slowly so as not to attract unnecessary attention from any of the police officers remaining on the scene. The crowd was dispersing as people returned to their business, resuming individual thought once more.

  About a block away he came across a coffee shop and went inside to consider his next move. The coffee shop was crowded and noisy, the latest hits blaring from speakers mounted in the ceiling at a volume that drowned out any conversation. The outcome was that all the patrons had to shout to make themselves heard, adding to the cacophony, which was punctuated by the tinkle of metal spoons on porcelain cups. Homer shut it all out, retreated into his mind, and thought.

  His initial terror had subsided, letting him direct his thinking onto a more constructive course. Complications were to be expected at any time, and today was no exception. No great deeds were ever accomplished without hardship. And if today was to be the day of his rebirth, was it not only appropriate that he should suffer the trials of fate to achieve it, as the phoenix suffers the fire before it rises from the ashes, restored to its former glory?

  He shook his head at his earlier weakness and consigned it to the past, a past that may now be beyond the reach of his power, but which he would not allow to hinder his reign over the future. He took a sip of the espresso and let the hot liquid pour down his throat to energize him as he went over the facts at hand.

  The police had arrested the target—as he had already come to consider the scapegoat—eight minutes ago. He knew that the nearest police station, Stonewell Central, was about ten minutes away by car, possibly fifteen in this traffic. They would be taking the target there, and it was already too late to catch up with them before they arrived.

  Once the target was inside the station, reaching him would be impossible. Homer considered impersonating the target’s attorney or a relative, but quickly dismissed the idea. Accomplished though his disguises may be, he knew far too little about the target in this case—he may not even have any relatives, and his attorney’s just happening to show up so shortly after the arrest was too implausible. Besides, even if he were able to get inside the station, assassinate the target, and pin the blame on someone else, he would without a doubt be called as a witness to appear in court, which brought with it a slew of other problems and risks.

  Killing the target inside the station was out of the question. That said, he did not know when the target would next leave the station, and since he had no members of the Survivor’s Network on the inside, the only way of finding out would be to conduct a stakeout, which would take time. And time was something he could not afford to waste, not with a person privy to his secrets at large. There had to be a way…

  There is.

  He sat up straight, his body galvanized by a sudden lightning bolt of inspiration. Of course! If he did not know when the police would move the target, he would just have to arrange it himself. He took out his notebook from the backpack and flipped through the pages, looking for…

  “The Bunker,” he whispered, tapping at the scrawled address.

  He had learned of the Bunker’s existence and location from one of his Survivors, a high-ranking member of a rival family of the Morricones, who had spent some time within its walls. It was where they kept the nastier pieces of work before transferring them to prison or escorting them to court.

  He went through the situation, mentally ticking off the boxes. A murder had been committed: check. The victim was the son of a well-known crime boss: check. The police would most likely dispatch a detective to investigate the crime scene: check. Homer had the phone numbers for all the police stations in the city at his disposal: check.

  This could work.

  Now he had a plan again, hastily slapped together though it may be. If it worked, it would solve all his problems in one fell swoop. If it failed… well, no sense worrying about that right now. After a quick visit to the restroom to relieve himself and change disguises, he left the coffee shop behind, heading back to the scene of the crime.

  In the time Homer had been away, the police had been busy establishing a crime scene. Bright yellow tape had been drawn between four large traffic cones, forming a rectangular border around Vincent’s car and the pool of blood on the sidewalk. As Homer approached, an ambulance disappeared around a corner, presumably carrying Vincent’s body. The sirens were silent. No need to rush when the passenger is dead.

  There were several uniformed officers at the scene, but no detectives. Homer waited a short distance away. After a while, a gray Chevrolet Malibu pulled over behind the target’s car, and two men stepped out. The driver was a middle-aged man with a prominent beer gut. He wore a brown trench coat despite the heat, and his looks and demeanor practically screamed detective. Homer had found his man.

  He adjusted his trilby and opened his notebook to an empty page. Walking with purposeful strides, he made his way toward the detective, who had just finished chatting with one of the uniformed officers. Homer hailed him as he drew near.

  “Excuse me.”

  The detective turned around to face him.

  “Are you in charge of this case?” asked Homer. “May I ask your name?”

  He brandished his pen and notebook for the look of the thing. He had no idea if these were questions an actual journalist would ask, but he was not out for a scoop anyway, so it mattered little.

  “Detective Zachary Zimmerman,” said the detective, producing his ID. Homer checked it closely, confirming that the man was telling the truth.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t make any comments at this time. If you would excuse me, I have to get to work. Good day.”

  Homer took a small step forward, firing off a series of questions to play his part as the inquisitive tabloid hack. He already had what he needed.

  “Has there been a murder? Do you have a suspect? I heard someone was taken into custody here not long ago. Is he the perpetrator? Would you say you caught him red-handed?”

  “I told you, buddy,” said Zimmerman, his face as hard and implacable as a brick wall. “No comments. Now beat it. Some of us have work to do.”

  He turned around and stomped away without another word.

  That suited Homer fine. He made a few halfhearted attempts to talk to the other officers, but they all deferred to Detective Zimmerman. Satisfied that he had given a convincing performance, Homer left the scene.

  He took a little while to prepare his next move, checking the notebook for the location of the Bunker, and the phone number to Stonewell Central Police Station. Closing his eyes to concentrate, he recalled Zimmerman’s voice and manner of speech. Authenticity was of the essence. An unfortunate limitation of the Memory Hole was that long and intricate conversations were impossible to manipulate with the same efficacy as physical actions, since the person subject to the manipulation would remember the other party as the person Homer had supplanted but would at the same time remember their own responses as they had made them to Homer himself.

  In this case, the recipient of the phone call would remember having talked to Zimmerman, which was all well and good. But if the recipient at any time became suspicious of him and verbally questioned his identity, the memories of this questioning would remain in their memory even after the switch, introducing an el
ement of discord that could ruin the whole plan. Perilous as it was, the phone call was crucial to his scheme, and he had only one chance at it. He would keep it short and simple, to avoid giving the recipient time to protest.

  With the sound of Zimmerman’s voice clear in his mind, he drew a deep breath, and dialed the number. The call went through after two signals.

  “Stonewell Central Police Station, this is John Doe,” said a man’s voice.

  “John, listen,” said Homer, doing the best impersonation of the grouchy detective he could manage. “It’s Detective Zimmerman. Got a bit of an emergency here.”

  “You feeling okay, sir? Your voice sounds kind of funny.”

  “Must’ve caught a cold or something. Anyway, you know the suspect they just brought in? The sidewalk slugger?”

  “Jeffrey Greenwood? What about him?”

  Homer smiled to himself and committed the name to memory.

  “Yeah, Greenwood. I found something at the crime scene. Turns out he’s connected to the mob. Could be there’s a war brewing between the families. I think that’s what the assault today was all about.”

  “The guy’s a gangster?” Homer recognized the grim tone of Doe’s voice. This was the voice of someone who hated the mob with a passion. He could work with that.

  “It sure looks like it,” said Homer. “And I need him moved to the Bunker ASAP, John. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let some vengeful hit squad barge into my station. Can you get him out of there?”

  “You can count on me, sir. Detective Mullin is interrogating him right now, but I’ll get him. Don’t you worry.”

  Homer could have jumped for joy. This was almost too easy.

  “You’re the man, John. I owe you a beer. Hell, I owe you five.”

  “No problem, sir! Be my pleasure to send that gangster scumbag to the slammer!”

  Homer hung up and clutched the phone to his chest. His heart was beating like a battle drum, and his legs itched to get moving, to proceed with the plan. He could not remember how many years it had been since a job had made him this excited.

  He looked at his watch. The time was now 11:31. The phone call had lasted less than two minutes, which gave him roughly thirteen minutes to make contact with Zimmerman. Doe had seemed willing enough to help out regardless, but one could never be too careful.

  There was no need to worry about any voice recordings that may have been made of the call; he had established through experimentation with his abilities that any electronic audio or video recording affected by the switch was irreparably corrupted, with nothing but white noise left in its place. And unlike people, phones and computers were mass-produced, one device identical to the other. There would be no unexpected aberrations there. All he had to do was destroy the phone he had used for the call, and it would be impossible to trace it back to him. Should he for some reason be unable to reach Zimmerman and make the switch in time, he would pick another scapegoat at random to at least erase his own voice from John Doe’s memory.

  Back at the crime scene, Homer saw Zimmerman heading for his car along with the other detective. Homer almost broke into a run to catch up with them. He got within range just as Zimmerman was opening the door and caught his eye over the car’s roof. Zimmerman frowned at him, but the sight of his face was like a beautiful sunrise to Homer, who without a moment’s hesitation opened the Memory Hole.

  Switch

  Zimmerman’s frown remained unchanged, but Homer had felt the world twist as the Memory Hole did its work. He grinned at Zimmerman, and grinned even wider when Zimmerman banged his head as he got in the car.

  The car drove off, and Homer drew a sigh of relief. It had been a close call, but it seemed his deception had worked. Now all that remained was to go to Lester Street where the Bunker was located and ambush the police transport when it approached. Eliminating the driver and any other officers present would be a walk in the park. Killing the target would, to extend the metaphor, be a stroll in the backyard.

  It would all be over soon. Even now he could smell the fertile ashes from which he would be reborn, having passed through the fire.

  MIDDAY, NOW

  At noon, Homer, having changed into the gray hoodie and removed the beard and hat, was standing on the sidewalk on Lester Street waiting for the transport. It should pass by here soon, assuming John Doe had complied with his order.

  He had decided to wait until two in the afternoon. If no transport showed up, he would have to think of another plan. For now, he remained where he was, watching the street like a hawk. A combat knife was tucked in the waistband of his pants, concealed beneath the hoodie.

  The time was 12:15 when the black police van came around the corner onto Lester Street. Homer fixed his eyes on the van, judging its speed, and began walking in the van’s travel direction. He kept a distance of about twenty meters to the van, paying attention not only to the van, but to the surrounding pedestrians as well. He needed one of them to execute the next step of the plan, and once he was sure that he had at least three candidates at hand, he made his move.

  He slowed his pace, allowing the van to get closer. There was a gap in the traffic in front of the van, and it was just starting to accelerate. The time was right. Homer looked at his watch and started counting. He waited until the van was just a few meters behind him, then lunged sideways into the street. He heard the screeching of tires on asphalt before he felt the van slam into his back, jostling his kidneys and shattering his shoulder blades. A few of his vertebrae dislodged from his spine, paralyzing his lower body. He hit the ground shoulder first, and scraped his forehead against the rough asphalt, leaving a red smudge. His pelvic bone cracked like a walnut, and a burning in his abdomen told him that something in there had ruptured badly.

  Homer rolled over on his back, ignoring the protests from his mangled body, and looked up into the face of one of the candidates he had picked out, a young man dressed in an oversized jersey and a baseball cap. Right on time. Nine seconds should do the trick.

  Switch

  The man in the jersey lay crumpled in front of the van, his cap sent flying by the impact, his body wrecked by Homer’s injuries.

  Homer got up and drew the knife, ready for the next step. The driver of the van had opened the door and was hurrying over to the injured man. A second police officer was still in the van, talking into the radio and staring wide-eyed at the blood on the van’s hood.

  Homer stepped around the injured man and approached the driver, a uniformed officer of gargantuan proportions that reminded him of the minotaur he had defeated in his youth. The officer paid Homer no heed as he hunkered down next to the young man on the ground, checking his pulse and asking him in a frantic voice if he was okay.

  Memorizing the new cutoff point and starting to count once again, Homer grabbed the officer’s head, forcing it back to expose the throat, and slashed. He shoved the officer to the ground and left him to bleed out while he went over to the other side of the van.

  Through the windshield, he could see the other officer, talking into the radio with even greater urgency, no doubt requesting reinforcements. He would have to act quickly.

  He tore the door open and stabbed the officer in the chest, pushing the knife as deep as it would go, and twisted. The officer was defenseless where he sat and soon stopped resisting. His body flopped down from the seat and ended up halfway out of the van, his head and shoulders resting on the ground. After slitting his throat to make sure that he was dead, Homer went through his pockets and found a keyring.

  He wiped the blood off the knife on the officer’s jacket, holstered it, and hurried around to the back of the van. He found the right key and got the rear doors open. The target was sitting on a narrow bench that ran the length of the van on the right side, his hands cuffed in front of him. The target stared at him with a dazed expression, until recognition flashed in his eyes.

  “You!” he exclaimed. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?”

  Homer
slipped one hand behind his back and loosened the knife from its holster.

  “I’ve come to get you, Jeffrey” he said.

  He grabbed the target by the wrist and pulled him off the bench and out of the van. In the same movement, he brought the knife around. The target’s eyes snapped to it, as if drawn by a magnet, and widened with fear. He tried to bring his arms up to defend himself, but Homer was faster.

  The blade sheared past the target’s arm and buried itself in his stomach. He let out a deafening scream that trebled in intensity when Homer twisted the knife around, relishing the resistance against the blade. He could have ended it quickly, but he wanted to savor this moment, when the last obstacle on the path to his rebirth was finally removed. It had been a daring plan, where a thousand things could have gone wrong, and indeed, many things had.

  Yet here he was, triumphant.

  It was clear to him now that he was destined to succeed, had been ever since that day three decades ago. On that day he had awakened, and today he had reawakened, ready to conquer new heights and grow more powerful than ever before. His age was beginning.

  “Stop! Leave him alone!”

  A woman was running towards him with rage in her eyes. It seemed he was to meet two Good Samaritans in one day. There were no other people in his immediate range, but the woman would be close enough in a few seconds. He nodded to himself. She would do. Though she would clearly not be a match for two big burly cops, she had both a knife and the element of surprise on her side. It would work.

  He planted his left hand on the target’s chest and tore the knife out of his stomach with a satisfying meaty sound, leaving a gaping wound through which the target’s intestines tumbled out like a potful of spaghetti Bolognese. The target let out the loudest scream yet and fell backwards. His back struck the van and he slid down to the ground.