The Dark Restarter

by Sean McMahon

  Before any of them had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief and react to his unexpected return, he finished his explanation.

  ‘Time always moves forwards,’ said Malcolm. ‘Each restart has a beginning and an end. And if my past-self is occupying a point in time that is ahead of us in this thirty-three-hour cycle…’

  ‘All flights are cancelled,’ said Hal, the realisation of what Malcolm was telling them finally made clear thanks to an inconvenient truth; their portal privileges had been revoked for the simple reason that they couldn’t trigger a restart whilst another time-traveller was occupying the future of the same timeline as them.

  ‘He wouldn’t even need to be that far ahead,’ reasoned Hal. ‘I mean, even if he was a single minute ahead of us…’

  ‘We’d never make up those sixty seconds and catch up to him,’ said Kara.

  ‘Correct,’ said Malcolm. ‘That would be enough to lock you out of restarting the time-loop. He’s occupying a future you have yet to reach.’

  ‘I hate time-travel,’ said Kara glumly.

  None of that mattered to Fearne, of course, who erupted with arcing blue energy at the sight of the man who had killed Peter, her long brown hair swirling in the air, defying gravity.

  ‘Fearne, wait!’ shouted Kara.

  But she couldn't hear them, or didn’t want to.

  Instead, she flew towards Peter's killer, grabbing him by the throat, the connection between them generating red and blue sparks that were almost as wild as Fearne’s eyes.

  What really caught them all off guard, however, was how she managed to summon the strength to throw Malcolm off his feet, sending him skidding several metres across the ground, the stones beneath him shaking impossibly.

  ‘I'll kill you,’ screamed Fearne, with such intensity that her voice seemed to generate a clap of thunder. ‘I will fucking end you!’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Seeing Red

  168th Restart – Friday, August 24th, 2018, 12:46pm

  Kara and Hal each grabbed one of Fearne’s shoulders, their entire state of being suddenly flooded by an overwhelming concoction of emotions; soul-crushing sorrow, coupled with a debilitating sense of despair, that was overridden by the unmitigated hatred they felt towards the future incarnation of their lover’s murderer.

  It was so all-consuming, so laser-focused, that it took them both a moment to realise they were simply channelling Fearne’s emotions in their rawest form.

  Ripples of crackling energy surged between the three Restarters, slivers of menacing red fizzling amidst the blue, swirling in and out of phase around Fearne’s clenched fists, as if daring her to draw upon an entirely different type of energy. One without limits. One that could give her everything she wanted.

  The revenge she craved…

  ‘Th-this isn’t you,’ stammered Kara, in a desperate attempt to pull her friend back from the brink of vengeance.

  ‘Get your damn hands off me,’ shouted Fearne, a simple shrug being all that was needed to send both of her friends flying backwards, repelled by the conflicting energy being generated between the three of them, terrifyingly amplified by Fearne’s intense emotional state.

  Hal and Kara landed hard, rolling several metres along the ground, each feeling unexpectedly drained of strength and focus.

  ‘You feel it, don’t you,’ said Malcolm, on his feet once more, but not retreating.

  For all the knowledge he possessed, this was now his present, and he had no way of knowing for sure what was about to happen. No memories to draw upon, no cheat sheets. All he had to work with was the here and now.

  It was surprisingly invigorating, like being alive again for the first time in forever. ‘The power at your fingertips, begging to be drawn upon.’

  ‘What are you talking about,’ shouted Fearne, ignoring the hue of red that flickered across her vision, unbeknownst to her illuminating the tears that were streaming down her face.

  Like droplets of blood, thought Malcolm fondly. ‘The red,’ he said, his voice chock full of gravelly wonder.

  Hal, meanwhile, had managed to drag his weakened body closer to the Restart Point, pressing his palm against the invisible barrier, a sense of relief flowing through him as his fingers drifted over the boundary line. He watched as his hand began to disintegrate into blue shards, but not for long, quickly pulling his hand back and feeling thankful that his hand had been returned to him fully intact.

  “Finally,” he thought, realising this could mean only one thing; the Malcolm of the past had clearly caught up with them, in turn reopening the rift in time. The Restart Point was once again open for business.

  ‘Go!’ yelled Kara, seeing what her fellow Restarter had discovered and barking her approval.

  Hal didn’t waste a second, pulling himself up and all but falling through the portal, the world behind him breaking away into nothingness. As he entered a state of freefall, the sense of weightlessness overwhelmed him, sending them all back to a place where they could fix this mess, or at the very least a place where Fearne and Malcolm could be separated until Fearne cooled off.

  And maybe, most importantly of all, a place where Peter was alive.

  *

  Now that Future Malcolm had ceased pulling the strings on precisely when and where he wanted Hal and Kara to be, both of them experienced a more traditional re-entry into the past.

  This was technically their first proper restart since Malcolm had brought them into phase with his murderous past-self, and the two Restarters were relieved to discover that the timeline they had crowbarred their way into had seemingly accepted them as part of the furniture, placing them once again on the driveway outside Fir Lodge.

  Thankfully, Malcolm was nowhere to be seen, and they assumed that he too must have been jettisoned off to his own point of Restarting-origin.

  Hal holstered his gun, which was once again inexplicably in his hand despite Kara having discarded it on Kevin’s basement floor in another reality entirely, and felt a pang of concern at that; did that mean that Malcolm was currently standing next to his past-self right now? That would be…potentially problematic.

  Kara was about to head into the garden behind her, where she assumed Fearne would be waiting, when the area of space where Robert’s car was soon destined to occupy began to shimmer erratically. It was in that moment that both she and Hal were gifted with a unique perspective; witnessing from a distance exactly how it looked when a Restarter materialised into a fresh restart.

  The shimmering particles made way for a crackling of what could only be described as amplified static electricity, as blue grains of energy appeared from nowhere, dancing lazily like drunk and disorderly fireflies.

  The sloshed manifestations of temporally-charged lights gradually began to swirl with greater enthusiasm; some sailing past each other like busy commuters not wishing to engage in conversation, merely tipping their hats with a “how do you do” demeanour, whilst others collided more forcefully.

  Exploding upon contact, these rogue particles multiplied with gusto to create even more blue light, until the sound of rushing air filled the vacuum being created before them, the aforementioned static electricity funnelling through invisible channels to form the faint outline of a central nervous system.

  For a moment, Hal and Kara feared the tornado-like sound was heralding that they were being rejected by this timeline, and that maybe they were about to be sucked back into the timestream, sent hurtling to wherever it was aberrations such as them called home.

  But it soon became obvious that the angry, self-contained storm merely signalled the arrival of a Restarter, as Fearne was pulled into chronological alignment with the two of them.

  Peter was very much conspicuous by his absence, as Fearne effortlessly nailed a time-traveller landing and spun around on the balls of her high-heeled feet.

  Catching sight of Hal and Kara, she walked towards them, giving them a look of desperation, which they acknowledged with mutual expressions of fear-t
inged confusion. None of them seemed to be able to ask the question that mattered, not that the three words were needed to give the question itself the life it needed to exist;

  Where was Peter?

  Kara and Hal exchanged a shared look of anxiousness. They were working on the assumption that triggering a restart would bring Peter back to them. But the truth of the matter was that they honestly had no idea what happened to a person if they were killed whilst out-of-phase with time.

  To add insult to mortal-injury, Robert had pulled up outside the lodge, and Fearne and Peter’s past-selves exited the car.

  Fearne jogged ahead of her doppelganger and reached a quivering arm out to the Peter of the past, tears filling her eyes as her arm passed straight through him.

  In that moment, she knew. Her Peter was truly gone.

  *

  The three Restarters took up residence on the patch of grass that ran parallel to the front driveway. Whilst they were ridiculously exposed, it offered a relatively solid vantage point; not only could they see all the way along the rear access of the lodge into the garden itself, but a quick glance to their right allowed them to see a reasonable distance into the road that led to Kevin’s.

  Their makeshift war room kept them visible enough for Future-Malcolm to see them, whilst also offering as much of an early warning system to past-Malcolm’s inevitable arrival, giving them plenty of time to run if needed.

  Kara heard her own playful scream billowing over the roof of Fir Lodge, realising that Jerry must have just made his appearance. She knew their timeline well enough to know that meant it was approximately 3:30-ish on the Friday, meaning they’d been waiting for their Malcolm for over three hours now.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t make it back?’ suggested Kara.

  ‘Maybe he knows what’s waiting for him if he does,’ said Fearne savagely.

  ‘Maybe he’s fighting with his past-self?’ mused Hal.

  ‘No way,’ said Kara. ‘You know how obsessed he is about not interacting with his past-self.’ Kara pulled her best grumpy face, and lowered her voice, mimicking Malcolm. ‘“I don’t remember it happening that way, therefore it can’t, I’m the master of time, I know all.” Blah, blah, blah.’

  Hal laughed, and even Fearne smiled, though caught herself and ceased doing so just as quickly.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Hal. ‘I know he sees himself as the literal manifestation of a Zoltar machine,’ he added, referring to the iconic fortune-telling contraption. ‘But what if he didn’t have a choice?’

  ‘How’d you mean?’ asked Kara.

  Hal elaborated, reasoning that if they had sprung up where they always had on a fresh restart, it stood to reason that Malcolm had too. Only now there were two of them, occupying the exact same point in space and time.

  ‘Well we didn’t splice into old restarting versions of ourselves,’ noted Kara.

  ‘Because those versions of us in our 165th slam dunk of awesomeness are in a different phase to us,’ said Hal. ‘Dark Douchebag is in-phase with Slightly-Less-Dark-Douchebag.’

  Hal was just rounding off his theory that they all needed to prepare themselves for the possibility Future Malcolm might just have been reduced to a pile of gross-looking goo, when Jerry wandered over to a flower pot situated by the rear corner of the lodge, which he proceeded to sniff with interest.

  ‘Oh man,’ said Hal excitedly. ‘That’s precisely where we were standing on our first ever restart, remember?’

  Kara smiled nostalgically, then raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘How is he still sensing us standing there?’

  ‘I guess, for Jerry, it’s still the first time,’ reasoned Hal.

  ‘I remember him walking over and playing right where we’re sitting now…’ said Kara, her eyes lighting up at the prospect that she was about to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. ‘Watch this,’ she said, knowing Hal would surely get a kick out of this, and whistled warmly to get Jerry’s attention.

  Sure enough, Jerry’s ears twitched again, and he bolted towards them, sitting like the good boy he was, before rolling onto the grass between the three of them.

  ‘No waaaay,’ said Hal, his mind suitably blown.

  ‘Yup,’ said Kara, as if she’d just delivered casual small talk as opposed to taking a pliable moment in time and solidifying it as a temporal constant.

  She ran her out-of-phase fingers across Jerry’s upturned belly, his tongue hanging out to one side, enjoying the attention as always

  ‘We were here all along,’ said Hal, utterly mystified by the ramifications of that.

  ‘That’s a good sign, right?’ said Kara optimistically. ‘It means we’re right when we’re meant to be.’

  Hal shrugged. It certainly seemed like a good sign. On their first ever restart, Jerry had been drawn to their Restarter-selves when Hal had let out an unintentional whistle of amazement. Shortly after, Jerry had lost interest, trotting off to where they were currently sitting in what constituted as their perception of the here and now.

  To Jerry, it was like walking from one Hal and Kara to another. On the flip side, they were indirectly interacting with their first ever restart all the way from their 169th.

  It was a sobering thought; they weren’t just changing the future, they were simultaneously building what was always destined to be.

  ‘Hate to tear you two geeks away from whatever this is,’ said Fearne sourly, ‘but there’s a Malcolm making his way over to us.’

  They turned their gaze to the road that ran alongside the lodge, causing Jerry to stir and continue on his path, sensing the attention he had been enjoying had come to an end.

  Malcolm strode towards them, undoing and discarding his black apron onto the ground, his hands held high as if signalling he meant them no harm.

  ‘Could be a trick,’ reasoned Fearne. ‘Malcolm 2.0 pretending to be 3.0?’

  ‘Except the Dark Restarter doesn’t know a future version of himself exists,’ countered Kara. ‘I think this is our Malcolm.

  Whichever version of Malcolm this was stopped short, and waited on the edge of the driveway before breaking the silence. His tone told them everything they needed to know in order to carbon-date him.

  ‘We have a lot to discuss.’

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The Restarter who Knew Too Much

  168th Restart – Friday, August 24th, 2018, 3:59pm

  Malcolm had delivered a thrilling recap of where he had been for the past three hours, quashing Hal’s theory that he had reappeared next to his past-self, as he described the odd limbo he had found himself in; a space between restarts, not unlike The White Lodge, where he presumed he had been kept on retainer, whilst time itself wrestled with the decision on what to do with him, and where to send him.

  Eventually he found himself whole once more, or as whole as any of them could truly be in their current state, in a seemingly random location near the boundary line.

  Hal, however, wasn’t buying it.

  ‘Cool story, bro. But it doesn’t take three hours to walk back here,’ he said, staring with that look of a man trying to ascertain who in the room was responsible for letting rip a drive-by bout of flatulence.

  ‘I have only just reformed, and this was not my first stop,’ said Malcolm irritably. ‘I assumed you would be at Kevin’s. I also had to ensure I didn’t run into my past-self along the way.’

  ‘I personally don’t care where you were,’ said Fearne, her patience all but extinguished. ‘I only care where Peter is now!’

  ‘Fearne’s right, what the hell is going on,’ said Kara. ‘Where’s Peter?’

  ‘I…do not know,’ said Malcolm truthfully.

  ‘You knew this would happen,’ said Fearne, her eyes glistening once again. ‘And you did nothing to help us change it,’ a blue energy sizzling around her body, desperate to be released.

  ‘If only it were that simple,’ said Malcolm, his face not giving anything away, but more importantly not showing a single flicker of remorse.

 
‘Actually,’ argued Hal, ‘it literally is that simple. You knew your past-self would do this, because it’s your own freakin’ past!’

  ‘Our arrival here has evidently led to a deviation in my timeline,’ said Malcolm. ‘He is free to make new choices based on our actions.’ He saw the doubt in their eyes, and breathed in through his nose, deciding to try a different approach. ‘Though my memories do eventually adapt,’ he conceded. ‘Honestly, I don’t think even he expected to take things that far. At least you see what's at stake now. How far gone I was at this point in my time here.’

  ‘Past-you is a monster,’ said Kara, slinking back down onto the grass.

  ‘You're the monster,’ said Fearne, standing up and staring down on him.

  ‘I was,’ conceded Malcolm, before correcting himself. ‘I am...but that's not what I want to be anymore.’