by Sean McMahon
‘How thoughtful,’ drawled Kara.
‘In order to stop him,’ continued Malcolm, ignoring her jab, ‘from causing any more damage to time, we have to take him off the board entirely.’
‘But how do we fight something we can’t see?’ asked Peter. ‘Let alone interact with?
‘There is only one way,’ replied Malcolm. ‘We must bring ourselves into phase with him on a quantum level.’
‘Neat idea,’ said Hal, rubbing the stubble of his forever-unchanging five-o’clock shadow, an idea clearly forming. ‘But it’s not like tuning a TV, we’re occupying different dimensions, Malc’.’
‘Please stop calling me that.’
Hal smiled, and Malcolm grimaced, knowing that Hal would forever call him that from here on out.
‘The fault in that concept is…the fault in our time zones. We’re in different phases,’ continued Hal. ‘Which is exactly why we couldn’t see Peter and Fearne whilst they were here before us, ruining our lives.’ His words caused both Peter and Fearne to wince. ‘I don’t know if that’s even possible.’
‘You are not listening, I have told you already that it is possible….’ said Malcolm, revisiting his bold claim of traversing between timelines. ‘When I showed Peter and Fearne the way to trade their lives for yours.’
Peter and Fearne flinched, each feeling like Malcolm could have chosen a better way to word that.
‘Timelines maybe,’ said Hal, his eyes forming a squint of scepticism. ‘But between phases?’
‘I’m still not sure I’m buying that,’ said Kara, wondering what the next bout of lies would bring to the conversation.
‘It’s how I brought the four of you together,’ said Malcolm, his glare burning with truth. For all his swagger, his past-self had never managed to kill all four of them in one timeline. ‘I had to step between two separate timelines to bring you all here.’
‘So, you know how he did it?’ asked Kara. How past-you restarted the past somehow, and brought us back here?’
Malcolm stared at them, seemingly weighing up his options, deciding if telling them how Hal and Kara had ended up back here would serve his own needs. In the end, he huffed, and spoke.
‘It is…complicated,’ said Malcolm, apparently eager to embrace that cop-out as his new favourite term.
Hal had no doubt it was clearly an understatement.
‘You’re overthinking it, Sinestro,’ said Hal irritably. ‘It’s a simple question with an answer you must remember. It’s your own damn past’
‘It does not matter what my past-self changed,’ countered Malcolm, ‘given that it will come undone when, and only when, we defeat him.’
It occurred to Hal that Malcolm was probably being intentionally evasive on detailing the exact point in the past his younger self had meddled with. But he assumed it must have been a pivotal moment during the restart that changed everything; when Hal and Kara had vanquished their foe.
After all, keeping that information off the table and out of their reach would prevent them from attempting to change the outcome of the new timeline Malcolm was trailblazing. Assuming they could even fix the mess that the killer had already made.
‘Fine,’ said Hal. ‘Keep your secrets. It’s not like we can change it now anyway.’
‘That still doesn’t explain these two,’ said Kara, throwing a thumb over her shoulder towards Fearne and Peter. ‘When exactly did you drag them from?’
‘So,’ said Malcolm, eager to change the subject. ‘Now that we’ve covered that my past-self has been existing in your 165th restart, altering and perverting it to his own ends, that is where we need to go.’
‘Again, how?’ said Kara. ‘We’re locked in…damn, what are we even on now?
‘We’ve been here for two restarts now,’ said Hal helpfully.
‘Right. So how do we travel from our 167th restart to our 165th?’
‘You’ve answered your own question,’ confirmed Malcolm. ‘We must cross between restarts to reach him.’
‘That’s not how The Force works?!’ said Hal, doing his best Han Solo impression, and causing Peter’s eyes to light up with mild nostalgia. Peter and Hal always saw those films together. He wondered if they ever would again.
‘What Force?’ said Malcolm, causing Hal to roll his eyes.
‘Restarts, Malcolm. That’s not how Restarts work,’ said Hal, draining all the fun out of the reference so that the murderer could grasp his point. ‘They play out consecutively. That means in order. You can’t just bounce between different ones on a whim. Unless you’ve got a Stargate in your pocket you haven’t told us about?’
‘That’s not how a Stargate works, is it?’ muttered Peter.
‘Holy shit, Pete…really?’ said Hal incredulously. ‘Now’s the time I get called out on the semantics of interplanetary wormholes?’
‘The White Lodge,’ said Fearne, her voice barely a whisper.
Malcolm grinned, baring his teeth as if they were an armoury of daggers.
‘What the hell is The White Lodge?’ asked Kara.
‘It’s easier if I just show you,’ said Malcolm.
Hal shot out a sharp puff of air from the corner of his mouth, finally understanding how annoying it was when someone did that, feeling bad for all the times he had done the very same thing to Kara.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Where We’re Going…
167th Restart – Friday, August 24th, 2:12pm
'So, let me get this straight,’ said Hal as they made their way to the boundary line of the Pentney Lakes. ‘Not only can you fast-forward through a restart, you’ve found a way to manoeuvre between them too?!’ It sounded incredibly unlikely to Hal that this was an actual thing.
‘Yes,’ said Malcolm, not bothering with egotistical exuberance.
‘And the key to that, is accessing this White Lodge?’ said Hal for what was at least the tenth time.
‘Correct,’ confirmed Malcolm, his patience thinning.
‘This sounds so made up that it’s just crazy enough to be real,’ said Hal, crossing his arms and staring up at the afternoon sun, not trusting their inadvertent ally one iota.
‘I assure you, it’s quite real,’ said Malcolm.
‘And you’ve both seen this place?’ said Kara, directing the question to both Peter and Fearne.
‘Only briefly,’ mumbled Peter. ‘We travelled through it with him to get here I think, but it’s hard to remember when that was exactly,’ he added, noting how it oddly felt like forever ago. ‘The first I heard of it was…I…it’s hard to explain.’
‘Is that because it involves telling the truth?’ said Hal with an impressive level of snarkiness.
Fearne shot Hal an indignant glare, but her expression softened when Peter smiled at her, indicating it was okay.
‘I heard it in Malcolm’s thoughts,’ said Peter, deciding to just go all in and be done with it. After all, was it really that crazy a prospect? Not so long ago, time travel seemed equally impossible. Yet here they were, doing exactly that. ‘Whilst we were connected, right after we trapped past-me in Rob’s room and–’
‘Betrayed us?’
‘We didn’t betra–’ began Fearne.
‘Hal and I have experienced that sort of connection before,’ said Kara, cutting all of them off. ‘Reading thoughts. It checks out.’
It was true. They had done just that right before defeating Malcolm on what they had wrongly assumed to be their final restart. As the Restarter energy thrummed between them, their minds had unified, albeit temporarily.
‘So, Skeletor,’ said Hal, addressing what was clearly a mainstay addition to their rapidly-expanding team. ‘Assuming this isn’t just one of your tricks, how did you even find it?’
‘Does it really matter?’ asked Malcolm, conscious of how much time it was taking to bring them up to speed.
‘I feel like it’s a pretty important part to leave out, yeah,’ said Hal, but decided to let it slide for the time being. He sighed, resigning
himself to becoming a version of himself that was willing to accept the impossible, if only for the sake of argument.
Hal missed the days when he and his brother Alex would spend hours geeking out over situations such as this. When they were only hypothetical.
“The days when it wasn’t real,” he thought.
‘Right then,’ pressed Kara, taking the wheel of the crazy-boat for a second. ‘Assuming this is a thing, how do we access this White Lodge of yours?’
‘We go through the barrier together,’ said Malcolm, extending an upturned palm towards the Restart Point.
‘That can’t work. If we walk through that, it’ll just trigger a restart and we’ll be right back where we started.’
‘For you, Kara, yes,’ agreed Malcolm. ‘But not if we go together.’
The basis for the discovery of this fact was evidenced by the presence of Peter and Fearne, the first two entities he had successfully brought back with him.
Hal was about to ask why the Restart Point didn’t work the same way for Malcolm as it did for them, but was beaten to the punch by Malcolm himself, who explained exactly how death after death had changed him.
That by switching off his own life support whilst occupying a restart, his ability to use the Restart Point in quite the same way had seemingly been revoked.
Hal shuddered, as he remembered the time he had broken his own jaw by hitting his alive-self. Would he have shared the same inability to trigger a restart, if he had hit just a little harder? If Hal had effectively killed himself in the past whilst trapped in an out-of-phase state?
He didn’t want to think about the consequences of that.
‘Okay, Mighty Max,’ said Hal. ‘Enough telling, more showing. Pop on your red cap and let’s do this thing.’
‘We’ll need to take two trips,’ said Malcolm, throwing a last-minute curveball. ‘It’s too risky to all go through at once.’
‘Of cooourse it is. And why’s that exactly?’ asked Kara, not liking the sound of that one bit.
‘It may draw…unnecessary attention,’ said Malcolm, with a level of ominousness befitting the last soul-survivor of an abandoned space-station tasked with exporting a large quantity of face-huggers.
‘From what?!’ said Fearne, her memories, as foggy as they were, refusing to kick up any indication that there was anything but endless whiteness where they were going.
Malcolm grew silent, his face impenetrably unreadable.
‘From what Malcolm?’ said Kara, repeating Fearne’s question.
Malcolm swallowed, for once in his life somewhat lost for words. ‘Where we’re going–’
‘–we don’t need roads!’ blurted Hal, interjecting with excitement. ‘Please say roads!’
‘You are a very odd man, Harold.’
‘Says the man wearing an apron.’
‘I was trying to say, there are things beyond our ability to comprehend,’ said Malcolm, choosing to ignore the Restarter entirely.
‘Vague much?’ said Kara.
‘Just stay close to me. And do exactly as I say, understand?’
‘Not really,’ said Peter.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Malcolm, addressing them all.
‘Not even a little,’ said Fearne.
‘Then let’s go. I’ll take Peter and Kara first, then come back for you and Fearne,’ the former killer proposed, shooting a look at Hal with uncharacteristic chirp.
‘Absolutely no chance in hell,’ said Kara without hesitation. ‘Hal and I go together or not at all.’
Malcolm stared at her, his good mood extinguished, and his glare narrow, as if fighting an innate urge to murder her on the spot right then and there for her insolence, before gruffly conceding with a barely formed word of agreement and extending his hand.
‘Try not to stab me,’ said Hal, as he took the allegedly-reformed murderer’s hand, instantly feeling drained, and quickly pulling away from the harrowing handshake. ‘What the hell, Malc’?!’
It was entirely unlike the energy spike he usually received when he connected with Kara. Rather than charging him up, it had the complete opposite effect; hoovering up Hal’s internalised power like an unleashed Dementor sucking happiness from a room.
‘What is it?’ said Kara.
‘See for yourself, Henry the Hoover over here is hogging the blue!’
Kara reached out for Malcolm’s still-outstretched hand and connected with it, blue and red sparks spiralling wildly between them. She had to admit, it wasn’t the same as when she connected with Hal, but it wasn’t as bad as she was expecting. It was tolerable, at least.
‘Stop being a baby,’ said Kara with a wink, causing Hal to stomp closer and interlock his arm on Malcolm’s opposite side in defiance.
He noted that with Kara in the mix, the sensation of being drained didn’t seem quite so bad, and wondered if perhaps he had imagined it.
With that, Hal and Kara, with Malcolm in the middle, each linked their arms, creating the surreal image that made them look like the best of friends.
Fearne noted that it looked a lot like they were both supporting a drunken friend on a pub-crawl gone wrong. The only thing that shattered this illusion was the arcing red and blue energy that hummed between them, forcibly trying to repel them apart.
They maintained their connection, Hal and Kara utterly sceptical that anything would happen at all besides an inevitable restart, certain that Malcolm was luring them into an elaborate hoax. “Or worse,” thought Kara, “a trap.”
‘Right then, let’s go see the Time Wizard,’ said Kara, hiding behind a passable forgery of bravado, as they stepped over the boundary line and into the portal that served as a Restart Point, a look of approval appearing on Hal’s face, as each of them shattered into billions of tiny blue and red shards of energy.
ENIN-YTNEWT RETPAHC
The White Lodge
R.I Timestamp Error: Recalculating…
System Error. Timestamp Failure.
The red and blue energy thrummed between the three of them, forcibly trying to repel them from piercing through the fabric of space, time, and all the other bits and bobs that kept reality ticking over, so that those who were still alive could drink their morning coffees, instead of forcibly being made to undrink them.
After all, there was a reason people left for work, instead of leaving for bed, so that they could feel unrested during their stay in an ocean of traffic that travelled backwards all the way to their hungry in-trays, which insatiably demanded their owner’s daily grind be undone. Not least of which being that it would have made for terrible small-talk, having to tell someone about the day you were yet to have, yet somehow had already lived through.
“Or something,” thought Hal, lost in the chasms of his daydreaming mind.
Of all the places they shouldn’t be, it seemed the universe was particularly intent on preventing them safe passage to what lay beyond, until eventually it relented under their combined power.
To Kara, it felt as if she was passing through a mesh like veil, or forcibly pushing her body through an enormous rubber balloon.
Hal, on the other hand, was wrestling with his own descriptive terminology, his imagination igniting within him a terrifying fear, convincing him that he was pushing his face through a century-old amalgamation of approximately one-billion-and-forty-eight cobwebs.
As the colour was pushed to the outskirts of their vision, their eyes were greeted with a familiar sight; an entire world laying ahead of them, seemingly contained within the heart of a marble, as if they were looking through the wrong end of a dodgy telescope. A world of immaculate and pristine whiteness, that gave their approaching destination an eerily clinical looking makeover.
Malcolm looked at the sorry souls either side of him, then yanked them rather unceremoniously into the great white yonder.
And with that, they were through.
Hal was frantically rubbing his face, trying to wipe away what he was certain was a particularly nasty cobweb, spitti
ng repeatedly, as if the intangible barrier had somehow adhered to his lips.
‘Is it off me? Is there anything on me?’ said Hal, his voice more than a notch beyond overtly high-pitched.
‘There’s nothing on you,’ growled Malcolm, failing to even remotely cloak his complete lack of empathy, his words a constant reminder to them that they were only here because he needed them, not because he wanted them to be.
‘You’re fine, Hal,’ said Kara reassuringly, helpfully attempting to ease his mind by dusting off his shoulders in a show of solidarity. Barely-visible sparks bounced off his shoulders, presumably thanks to Malcolm having stolen his charge like a hungry hippo let loose in a marble storage facility.
With the drama of interdimensional travel behind them, they at last had the opportunity to drink it all in; a world between worlds, existing outside of time itself. Just as Malcolm had promised.
Only his description did it little justice.
White particles circulated around them, like self-conscious snowflakes that fluttered as close as they could possibly get to the three of them, but dancing away before making contact with whatever phase their bodies were currently in.
Kara extended her palm, hoping that the ethereal grains of the hourglass they were occupying would grow brave enough to land on her, but the quantum-entangled motes of dust spiralled away from her outstretched paw as if sensing her ploy, and swirled off in a seemingly random direction, eager to retain their freedom.
‘You have to hand it to Vigo The Carpathian over here,’ said Hal, casting a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Malcolm. ‘He really knows how to undersell an alternate reality.’
‘It’s not an alternate reality,’ said Malcolm abruptly, ‘it’s a space between time.’
‘Like a truck stop?’ said Hal innocently, intentionally playing dumb to wind up their guide.
‘No, nothing like a….’ Malcolm closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, as Hal and Kara shared a mischievous smile.