“Let’s do it.” Carson straightens up briefly, looks straight ahead and disappears.
Wow, that’s still crazy. Here we go again.
I push the pin.
We’re on Ninth Street. Traffic is light, so no one is shocked by our sudden arrival. I look diagonally across the street and realize that we’re in view of the large windows of the lab. “We need to move. Fast.”
We slide off the trunk and head south down the sidewalk, past the car and away from the lab. The first available means to get out of sight is a walkway between two storefronts. We step around the corner into the walkway and stop near an air conditioning unit.
“So we just need to wait for the other us’s to leave and we should be good, yeah?” Carson asks.
“Yeah. I think so. I guess we can just wait here. I don’t think we’re going to bother anybody. They might see us when they drive past though.”
“Let’s just head around back when we see them coming out,” Carson says.
I look down the walkway to where it connects to the rear parking lot. “Should work.”
“So we get in, grab our stuff, and Blake’s and Francesca’s,” Carson says. “Are we going to take our practice navigation stuff, or do we need to look for more?”
“All of our stuff should be useful, since we were trying to plan for the real trip anyway,” I say. “I know Quickly never got to review any of it, but hopefully it can get us there. Maybe if Quickly is in there, we can get him to help us check it.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Unless he left, too,” Carson adds.
“Let’s hope he got out at some point. That fire looked awful,” I say.
“Hey, how are we going to get into the lab? Does he have a lab key on that set of car keys he gave you?”
I grab at my pocket for the keys but don’t feel them. I check my other pockets. “Shit. I must have left them in the car.” I step toward the car, then realize it won’t help me. Damn it. That’s hours from now. Movement catches my eye beyond the car. Carson’s red hair suddenly stands out, and I see that he and Francesca have just walked out of the side street next to the lab and onto the sidewalk.
“No worries, I got this,” the Carson next to me says, as he moves the dials on his chronometer and sprints to the front end of the Galaxie, twenty yards ahead of us.
“Wait, Carson, we’re coming!” I call to him, but I can’t tell if he hears me. He slides smoothly onto the hood of the car and instantly disappears.
A hundred yards farther on I see my friends and myself crossing the street.
No! No no no. This is not good.
The group passes out of view behind some vehicles. I hold my breath. Blake and the other me step onto the sidewalk past the parked cars and instinctively jerk my head back behind the corner, but then there’s Carson, back on top of the Galaxie.
He slides off the front of the hood and walks casually toward me, his back to the other versions of us. He smiles and jingles the keys in his hand as he cruises right past me and heads for the parking lot.
Of course. He’s good at everything, why wouldn’t he be great at this?
I sneak one more peek around the corner at the earlier versions of us, walking obliviously toward the car, and then turn and follow Carson.
“Nice job, man. That was smooth,” I say, as I join him in the parking lot.
“Thanks. It may have bumped back our return a little. I didn’t leave there again till ten-fifty. Took me a few minutes to double-check my settings for coming back. I’ve never tried to hit such a small window of time before.” He smiles.
“You did great. They never noticed you at all. A few more seconds and who knows what would have happened.”
The dumpster behind the building smells like stale coffee and something dead. We move away from it and exit into the alley, taking it back to the street to look for the car.
“It’s gone. We’re in the clear,” Carson says.
I glance up at the shining reflective windows of Quickly’s building and wonder who might be watching us as we dash across the street. We move around the side of the building till we find the door that leads to the lab. Some of the other side doors along the alley are labeled with business names or “No Soliciting” signs. Quickly’s entrance is a steel door, painted a rust red with no markings whatsoever. The two locks on the door have different mechanisms, so I scour the keychain for possible candidates. I find the key to the doorknob lock on my third try. The deadbolt takes me longer, but after going through each of the keys on the ring, the last one fits. The satisfying click of the bolt sliding back heralds our entry.
I wonder if Quickly has a security system? I survey the outside of the building but don’t see anything that looks like a camera. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one though. We slip inside and proceed down the short hallway to the stairwell. There are a couple of other doors in the hallway that I’ve not paid much attention to before. Now they are a mystery I’ll never get a chance to solve. No time for exploring in a soon to be burning building.
The stairwell is dark and I see no switches. We walk a few steps and are soon engulfed in darkness. Ten steps up we hit a landing and I navigate the turn with my hands sliding along the walls. It’s another ten steps till the second landing.
“I think the door is here somewhere,” I say.
“Got it,” Carson says from beside me.
This door isn’t locked. The fluorescent hallway lights illuminate us as Carson opens the door. The hallway is empty. We take it left and then left again out to the study, and emerge under the second balcony. The study is silent and the orange light of the setting sun is streaming through the window.
“Dr. Quickly?” I call to the upper balconies. Silence answers.
“Maybe they’re in one of the back lab rooms,” Carson says.
“Yeah. Could be. Let’s grab our stuff and then see if we can find them.”
“We’re going to need something to carry this stuff in,” Carson says.
“Okay. See if you can consolidate everybody’s things. I’ll look in the back and see what I can find. I think I saw some backpacks in the jumpsuit lockers.”
Carson starts climbing to the upper balconies as I walk back down the hallway toward the kitchen. The hallways in the lab still confuse me. It takes me a few wrong turns before I remember that the lockers were on the next floor up. I locate the stairway and head up to the next floor. The second level of the lab is a combination of jump rooms, lab spaces and some classrooms. I pass the room where I first saw Quickly disappear. Three turns later I find the hallway with the lockers. Scanning the contents of the first locker, I slide the jumpsuits aside and check the floor. I find a pair of Francesca’s flip-flops. I open a few more lockers to see what I can find. I come up with some socks, a couple of blank logbooks, and finally what I’m looking for, four canvas backpacks. I snag the flip-flops and the logbooks and stuff them into a pack. I debate for a moment, then grab the socks and one of the jumpsuits too. It feels a bit like stealing. The place is going to burn down, Benjamin. If anything, you’re doing Quickly a favor by saving things.
I take the four packs by the straps and carry them like luggage around the corner. I make a couple more turns before I hit a dead end. Without any windows to the outside, I have a hard time knowing which direction I’m facing. I just need to find the stairs. I backtrack to the lockers and am going the other direction, when a door slams.
“Carson?” I call.
Carson is up in the balconies in the study. There aren’t any doors through to here, are there?
I walk back to the lockers and turn down a side hallway of blue jump room doors. It’s quiet. I open one of the doors and see nothing but an empty anchor stand in the center of the room. I walk inside past the anchor stand to the green door on the far side, and as I twist open the doorknob with my free fingers, I glimpse someone’s backside walking past the door. I swing the door open with my foot and poke my head out into the hallway, spying the figure of a man wal
king away from me.
“Dr. Quickly?”
The man turns and I see that it is Dr. Quickly, but he looks younger than I’ve ever seen him. There is only a sprinkle of gray on the hair that protrudes from under a baseball cap.
“Hello,” he says with a smile. “I wondered when I might meet some new faces around here. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” He takes a couple of steps toward me and extends a hand.
“Oh, hi. I’m Benjamin.” I drop two of the packs and shake his hand.
“What’s your last name, Benjamin?”
“Travers.”
“I’m Harry. Though you seem to know that.”
“Yes. Well . . . I’ve met you before, or later I guess. I’m not sure how phrasing that works.”
“Ah. Future me. Please say no more. Still not sure how much I should know about my own future, though I have run into myself a couple of times now and seem not to have hurt anything. It’s not an exact science yet, this time traveling, by any means.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Just passing through, currently,” he says, smiling. “I use these jump rooms to come and go. It’s a relatively secure location the way I’ve got things worked out. Has the future me explained the use of these rooms to you?”
“We made some short blinks in here.”
“Blinks?” he says.
“Oh, yeah, time jumps? Blinks is just the name your . . . um . . .one of your associates made up.” Does he know he has a daughter yet?
“Ah. I see.”
“But we only stayed in the rooms. We didn’t really come and go.”
“Oh, well the color-coded doors are my system of knowing which door to leave from and know how not to run into myself. I usually set up the anchors and leave out the blue door. When I arrive after using an anchor, I leave out the green door so I don’t run into the other version of me. There are tunnel exits that lead to different areas around town.”
“That makes sense,” I say. “I saw the ladders on the way in. Does that mean the other version of you is close by somewhere? Maybe in the tunnel? Because I was actually hoping to talk to him.”
“Oh. I don’t know. This was one of the anchors I set up a while back. Would have been a younger version of me that set that up. I’m afraid I have no idea where this older me has wandered off to.”
“You might want to be careful. Something bad is going to happen here soon,” I say.
“Oh, you probably shouldn’t tell me,” he says, and puts his hands in his pockets. I can tell he is thinking about the possibilities. He gazes past me a moment before his eyes come back to mine. “How bad are we talking?”
“The building is going to catch on fire in a few hours,” I say.
He looks at the four backpacks in my hands. His eyes grow suddenly serious. “It’s not you burning it down, is it?”
“No! I would never want to hurt this place. I just know that it’s going to happen soon. I’m trying to get our stuff out before it happens. My friends and I are trying to get back to 2009. You were helping us, but I’m not sure where you are now.”
Quickly takes off his hat and runs a hand through his hair. “This is getting complicated again, as always. I’m headed toward the past, so I should be safe for now, though I suppose I ought to adjust my jump plan for heading forward again, if this place is going to be on fire, like you say. What time does this happen?”
“Before seven. Not exactly sure,” I say.
He consults his wrist and I notice he has a regular watch strapped next to his chronometer. He draws a leather bound notebook out of his back pocket and makes a couple of notes in it. Quickly looks at my wrist next. “What are you working with there?” I hold out my arm so he can have a look. “Oh, that looks like a later model than mine. Manembo must be working on some modifications. I will have to check in with him soon. Want to trade?” He smiles.
“Um, I kind of need this one,” I say.
“Ha, I’m just kidding. I will get my own at some point it seems. No use rushing things.”
“Yeah. Yours is much more advanced than this later on, I think. These are just our training models,” I say.
“It certainly looks like it will do. I wouldn’t have minded having that as my first device. You should have seen all the clutter I had to lug around in the beginning. I must have looked like a hobo. I even had a shopping cart involved for a bit.”
“That must have been tough,” I say.
“Ah well, there’s a lot of trial and error in science, no matter how far in time you go. Luckily I’m still here to tell about it. It sounds like we ought to be moving along if we would like to stay that way.” He extends his hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Benjamin Travers. Till we meet again.”
“Good to meet you too, sir.”
Quickly gives a nod and walks back down the hall. He’s about to walk into the next jump room when I call out to him. “Oh hey, Doctor Quickly?”
“Yes?”
“Can you point me to the stairs by chance?”
“Indeed.” He points to the hall behind me and crooks his finger to the left. “East down that hall, second door on the right.”
“Thank you.”
Then he is gone.
I walk to the corner he was pointing to, pull out my pen, and reaching up under the trim, draw an arrow with the word “East.”
That should help if I get lost again . . . at least till the place burns down.
I find the second door on the right, and sure enough, the stairwell is beyond it. As I’m about to head through the door, I look to my left and spot a door across the hall hanging open. Through the open crack I see an oak desk with photos on it. Even from this distance, I recognize one of them as Mym.
Curious, I cross the hall and swing open the door the rest of the way. It appears to be Dr. Quickly’s private office. Behind the desk are an oak credenza and a Van Gogh painting. I inch closer to it and see the texture of the paint. Oh God, is that an original? I scan the office for any clues to Quickly’s whereabouts. I stop at the desk and pick up the photo of Mym. She’s standing in a wide-open expanse of land with a hot air balloon basket in the background. For a moment, I consider stuffing the photo in my bag. No. Don’t be a creeper, Ben. You just met this girl. I set the frame back down.
I slide open a couple desk drawers but just find stationery and pens.
I open the doors on the credenza and take a step back in shock. On the shelf inside, in neatly ordered rows, are stacks and stacks of hundred-dollar bills. The edge of the shelf has sticky labels fixed to it, telling the year the stacks of bills belong to. The years range from 1965 all the way to 2050. There must be millions of dollars sitting there. I stand in front of the credenza, debating for a moment, then start stuffing stacks of bills into the backpacks. Now this really feels like stealing.
After I have a couple dozen stacks deposited in the backpacks, I stop, because I realize I still need to fit so many anchors in there, too. It’s hard to leave all that cash sitting there, knowing the place is about to burn down. We have more important things than money to worry about, Ben. I leave the rest and walk back out of the office.
I push through the stairwell door and head downstairs, emerging on the floor below, in the hall across from the kitchen. I know my way from here and don’t have any trouble making it back to the study.
“Took you long enough,” Carson says as I walk out from under the balconies. He has shuttled our anchors from the upper balconies and placed them on the table in the middle of the study.
“I ran into Dr. Quickly,” I say.
“Oh cool, is he going to help us with this stuff?”
“There was a complication there.” I fill Carson in on my encounter with the younger Quickly as we stuff items into the backpacks.
“That’s nuts,” Carson says. “So different versions of Quickly are coming and going through this place all the time?”
“I guess so. He said he was headed for the past,
so this must have been a sort of pit stop.”
Carson wrestles a portion of chain link fence into an already stuffed backpack. “I don’t think I could handle a life that complex,” he grunts, finally getting the pack to close. He grabs the next pack and notes the stacks of bills in it. He holds one up. “What’s this?”
“A little traveling money,” I say.
“Sweet.” Carson thumbs the stack and then stuffs it back into the bag.
I check the clock on the wall. Almost six. I scan the walls of cubbies above us. “What else do you think we should grab?”
A crash from somewhere in the back of the lab startles me into silence. It’s followed by a couple of shouts. “What was that?” Carson says.
“I don’t know.”
We start to move toward the hallway when a pair of loud bangs stops us. “That sounded like gunshots,” Carson says. “We should get out of here.”
“What if someone is shooting at Quickly?” I say. Or Mym.
“We didn’t bring a gun to this party, so I don’t know what good we can do.” Carson picks up two of the packs as I slip over to the entrance of the hallway and peek around the corner. The hallway is empty but I can still hear noises. “Ben. Come on!” Carson whispers.
I grab the other two packs off the table. I sling one over my shoulder and carry the other. “That’s our way out anyway, if we’re going to get this stuff outside.”
I walk back to the corner and peek around it again. It’s still clear. We move quietly toward the adjoining hallway that runs in front of the kitchen and make a right. The exit stairwell door is just ahead of us on the right when at the far end of the hall, a figure walks backward into view from the left. He’s aiming a gun down the hallway he’s just come from. We freeze. The man still has the gun aimed down the other hallway when he turns and sees us. Confusion contorts the face of the last person in the world I want to encounter. Stenger.
He swings the gun toward us and scowls. In his other hand, he’s holding something colorful. I recognize it as a Rubik’s Cube.
“I’ve had enough of your tricks.”
I raise my hands. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Ha! A little late for that. Give me the watches.” Stenger takes a couple of steps toward us. We’re trapped. There’s a door to the left of Carson but it leads to a classroom. The door to the stairs is between Stenger and us on the right. I could sprint back out to the study and try to get out the stairs to the tunnel, but in the small hallway with no room to maneuver, he’ll probably just shoot me in the back.
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 25