“We’re going to blow up the Forge,” he said.
“You want to steal a bomb?”
“Not in such dramatic terms. I want to keep the portal open long enough to let the explosion do what it does.”
“What about the explosion getting all of us? What about radiation?”
“Jim, there are sacrifices that must be made. If we survive, we will get to live free.”
For the first time since he had encountered the pharmacist in the Forge, it occurred to Jim that Dr. Mike was insane. Maybe the man’s sanity had always been on the brink, maybe spending so much time at his store had transformed his mind, or maybe it was the explosion or his endless incarceration. It didn’t matter. Dr. Mike’s calm, educated demeanor belied a brain that had lost its grip on reality.
“Mike,” Jim said. “Please. We need to go back and follow the others. We can figure this out.”
“Stop right there.”
Jim and the others turned. A guard was approaching them with a gun raised.
“I need you all to put your hands up and come with me,” the man said. “Otherwise, I’m authorized to kill all of you. You know I mean it. Let’s not do this that way.”
“Please,” a man said. “Please. We just want to be free. Just tell your superiors we ran away.”
“No can do,” the guard said.” Hands in the air. Now.”
“Fuck this,” the man said. He turned and ran away from the guard. The guard aimed his gun and fired, striking the man in the back of the head. He fell forward and skidded in the sand.
Jim gasped, and turned back just in time to see Dr. Mike come up behind the guard with a large rock. He brought the rock down on the guard’s skull with a disgusting crack. The guard crumpled to the ground, blood gushing from his collapsed head.
Dr. Mike picked up the guard’s weapon. “Now,” he said, “does anybody have any issues with my plan?”
After the guard killed the man in Jim’s party, there remained only two women, one other man, Jim, and Dr. Mike. The mad pharmacist led the four of them around the side of the military building. He waved the gun, a large assault rifle, back and forth, so that nobody was free of its aim for very long.
“What are you going to do?” Jim asked.
“Inside this building is the bomb. At some point in the night, some people come and take it on a truck out to the middle of the base. They leave it there and drive back to conduct their test. We’re going to wait until they leave and take it back to where we want it. So right now we are going to steal a vehicle.”
The calm, rational way that Dr. Mike talked made Jim think that he might actually believe the plan made sense, if not for the waving gun and the guard whom Dr. Mike had brained only minutes earlier.
“You’re going to get us all killed!” one of the women said.
“Maybe,” Dr. Mike said. “But we have to try. We need to right this wrong.”
Dr. Mike brought them to a large garage with its metal door open.
“How do you know all of this?” Jim asked. He looked around for someone who could help them or even some other available weapons, but he saw nothing.
“I studied and learned everything, Jim,” Dr. Mike said. “I learned it all because I had to in order to survive.”
They entered the garage. Dr. Mike went to a wall where several white suits hung on hooks. He began pulling them off the wall and threw them at his frightened captives. “We need these for later.” Dr. Mike pointed to a green truck with tan fabric covering the bed. “Get in there.”
“What?” the other man said.
“In the back of that truck. Get in there and don’t move.”
One by one, they followed Dr. Mike’s orders. Jim prepared to climb in but Dr. Mike tapped his shoulder with the barrel of the rifle, making him jump.
“No, Jim, you ride with me. Up front.”
He followed the pharmacist to the front of the truck. It was unlocked, and Jim climbed up the step and boosted himself into the passenger seat. His pulse pounded in his temples. Dr. Mike climbed in next to him in the driver’s seat. He began to dig beneath the steering wheel and pulled a clump of wiring loose from its housing.
“Just give me a second to get this thing going,” Dr. Mike said. “God, it’s been so long since I’ve been in any kind of vehicle. Never had anywhere to go in all those many years.”
Jim couldn’t believe the man was making small talk with him. He thought of Liz and felt tears well up in his eyes. “It’s terrible what they did to you and the others with you,” he said. “But we don’t need to do this. The risk is too great.”
“Wrong,” Dr. Mike said. The wires in his hands sparked and the truck roared to life. “There’s so much you don’t know here, Jim. The government does whatever it wants to whomever it wants. These people don’t care about people like us. But you know what? They only got access to the store and the Forge and all that they’ve been able to discover about the multiverse because of me. Because of the work I did.”
You nearly blew up your street, Jim thought, but he stayed silent.
Dr. Mike backed the truck out of the garage. He turned the vehicle around and headed out toward the openness in front of them. “We’re going to hide out in the dark while the military does what it does,” he said. “And then we’ll steal the device. It’s not very big, according to spy documents I’ve seen. Their technology when it comes to mass destruction is far superior to ours.”
Jim watched the darkness outside the window roll by and prayed for a miracle.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dylan and Emma held each other in the dark of the store for a long time. He wondered if there hadn’t been some permanent damage done to his psyche as a result of what he’d seen and experienced. He felt far too good.
“Are you okay?” Emma asked. She smiled at him, and her eyes were bright.
“Yeah. I’m really fine, all things considered. You?”
“Yeah. Me too. So what now?”
“I don’t know. We can’t go back to the Forge and we aren’t safe here. Not for long. Somehow we need to get to another of the purple resets, but I don’t know how much longer it will be before one comes.”
Emma sat up. She grabbed her clothes and started dressing. “I want to burn these clothes as soon as possible,” she said.
Dylan followed her lead. “Why don’t we go get something to eat and we can figure things out.”
They finished putting on their clothes and exited the store. Everything seemed the same, as if none of the lunacy of the Forge had happened. The bubble version of 1989 was immune.
“There’s no sign of Clyde,” Emma said.
“That doesn’t mean anything necessarily.”
She took his hand. “You really don’t want to give up hope about him.”
“I don’t know. I think holding on to some kind of loophole for hope is the only way I can not completely crack.”
“Makes sense to me,” Emma replied. “So do it. Keep holding on to it. I’m with you.”
They walked down to the café. “We never did try our plan,” Dylan said.
“What plan is that?”
“To convince Dr. Mike to do something different. To not conduct his experiment tonight and open up the Forge.”
“I don’t think it will make any difference. We didn’t understand before how this place works.”
Dylan looked at her. “Do you think we understand it now?”
“No…I suppose not really. But still…we talked to him before in this time period. He’s not the kind of guy who can be convinced.”
He scratched his head. “There was a time I would have agreed with you. But we’ve got a ton to tell him now, don’t we?”
“You think he’ll buy any of it?”
“It’s worth a shot.”
They stole food from the restaurant, and raced back to the store. Dylan took a bite of his sandwich. It was far superior to the food he had been served down in the Forge and his stomach growled as he chew
ed.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked.
“We know how to get him out of the store,” she said. “That part isn’t too hard. And we can get him to talk to us. So I think we’ll just try what you said. We’ll tell him about what really lurks beneath the ‘special qualities’ of his store. And ask him to hold off on his experiment. At least for the night.”
“Okay. I think we can try that.”
They finished their food in silence. Dylan wondered what Emma was thinking. Other than that brief moment when they’d returned to the store, she’d kept her emotions in check and had shown no real sign of having suffered in anyway at Murphy’s hands or from anything else that happened in the Forge. Still, there was something in her eyes as she stared off. She loved him the way he loved her. Of that he was positive. But something had changed in her. Something had changed in both of them. What that meant for the future, he had no clue.
The dark expanse of the desert military base continued to draw Jim’s eyes to the window of the truck. He realized that without the adrenaline surge of having a gun pointed at him, he was really quite tired. The trauma of the recent events had exhausted him.
Dr. Mike talked constantly, reminding Jim about the wrongful treatment he’d experienced at the hands of a corrupt and secretive intelligence agency acting at the behest of the United States government.
“They didn’t let me out!” Dr. Mike ranted. “No sunlight. No fresh air. Just the air that had leaked into the Forge from other dimensions. Do you know what happens from breathing in oxygen from another world? I certainly don’t!”
Jim listened, pondering the fact that they were breathing in another world’s air at that very moment. He continued to run through escape strategies, but none seemed viable. The remaining survivors in the back of the truck were too scared to be much help. He thought about attacking Dr. Mike while the man’s hands were on the steering wheel and not on the rifle, which he had stashed behind him. He figured he might even be able to take possession of the gun. Still, that would risk the lives of all of them if the truck ran out of control.
“Why do you think they captured you?” he asked. It was maybe pointless conversation, but keeping Dr. Mike talking and distracted might be the best chance he could get, if only he could put together an actionable plan.
“They saw an opportunity, Jim. I was helpless. Disoriented. Stuck in a world between worlds. What better time to put an end to a threat…lock me away forever.”
“How did they even know you were a threat? I mean, how did they know you had anything to do with the incident at the store?”
Dr. Mike scowled. “They watched me. Tried to pry into what I was doing. A couple of them threatened me to stop my experiments.”
“They knew? The government knew what you were doing?”
“They knew about the special properties of my store before I did. And they wanted to steal all of that for themselves, just the way they’ve done! But I tried to stop them. Anybody who tried to stop me got what they had coming to them, and now I’ll finally take care of the rest of them.”
Jim stared at him. “Mike…what the hell did you do?”
Dylan and Emma walked back up Butler Avenue. He wondered what it would take to convince Dr. Mike to change his mind. They arrived at the store and walked back inside their version.
“Okay,” Emma said. “Same thing as before.” She shut the door and reopened it, resetting the world outside.
It felt like a lifetime since the last time they had strategized to bring Dr. Mike out of his shop. It was both eerily repetitive and imbued with new, uncomfortable feelings of apprehension.
Emma stepped outside and banged on the window. She gave Dylan his signal, and he walked out to meet her on the sidewalk.
Dr. Mike burst from his store. “What’s going on here?” he asked. “How did you do that?”
“He looks so young,” Emma whispered.
“Sir,” Dylan said, “We need to talk to you. What you are doing in that store is dangerous for you and for many other people.”
Dr. Mike tensed. “What I’m doing? Who are you? What are you talking about?”
“Please, Dr. Mike,” Emma said. “Can we talk to you? We know you’ve got some kind of experiment planned for tonight, and we’ve seen what happens because of it. Trust us. You don’t want to do whatever it is you’re planning to do.”
Dr. Mike’s face grew tight, then the muscles in his jaw relaxed and he managed a small smile. “I’m sure you kids have better things to do than worry about what’s going on in my store. Tell you what. Why don’t you come inside and I can get you each a Coke.”
“We can’t,” Dylan said. “We can’t go into your store because of the things that happened to it after you do your experiment tonight. We’re from the future.”
“We can go in through the window, if you’d be willing to actually sit and hear us out,” Emma said.
Dr. Mike’s eyes were wide. Dylan couldn’t tell if those eyes were frightened or excited. “You’ll tell me what happened to you? If I can get you in through the window?”
“Yes,” Dylan said. “Please.”
“Okay. Hold on.” Dr. Mike went to the loose window and removed it. He helped the two of them up into the store, eliciting another wave of deja vu. He slapped Dylan on the back. It was a jovial, friendly gesture, but it was so hard that it hurt. “Now come. Let’s talk this over. You can grab sodas over there, if you’d like.”
“They came to me, Jim,” Dr. Mike said. He slowed the truck, signaling that they were close to their destination. “The government came. Sent ‘agents’ with badges and a bunch of bullshit authority telling me what to do in my own place of business! Me. A scientist!”
Dr. Mike punched the console of the truck. Jim saw small trickles of blood run down the man’s knuckles.
“I made them pay. It’s not about me, Jim, I hope you understand that. None of this is. It wasn’t about me being outraged that they wanted to interfere with my experiments, and it’s not truly about revenge now. These maniacs wanted to fuck with science! They had no right. Government can not stand in the way of progress and man’s right to know more about the world he inhabits!”
“Mike,” Jim said, “What happened to the government people who tried to stop your experiments?”
Dr. Mike parked the truck. He turned to Jim and smiled. “I made them disappear.”
In Dr. Mike’s back office, Dylan and Emma sat on the couch drinking their sodas. A brief firework of caution had flashed in Dylan’s mind before taking the drink, but he had picked it himself and opened it himself with the satisfying crack and fizz that signaled a drink that hadn’t been violated since it was packaged. He sipped the Coke and watched Dr. Mike. Seeing the pharmacist before his decades of imprisonment was a strange experience, but he was used to the strange and bizarre at this point.
“So you’re from the future,” Dr. Mike mused. “And you say it’s because of something I did to the store?”
“That’s right,” Emma said. “Something you’re planning to do tonight. Nobody we’ve encountered seems to know what it is, and we’ve met you before both in this time and in our present, and you’ve never let on about anything.”
“You tried to convince me to stop before?” he asked.
“Well, no, not exactly…”
Dr. Mike began to pace back and forth across the small room. “You know what really gets me,” he said, “is how small-minded people can be.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Dylan said.
“There’s more to this world than meets the eye,” Dr. Mike said. “The truth is more wonderful and more terrifying than people could possibly imagine. I suppose you know that as well as anyone. And people have a right to know. Mankind has a right to explore all the possibilities and take those paths as far as they can possibly go. I don’t understand why you’d want to try to stop me.”
“It’s not about wanting to stop you,” Emma said. “Think about what we told
you! You’re not the first person to do what you’re going to do. There’s some ancient civilization or something that existed in the space between worlds before you led the government to it. So all you accomplish is to allow bad people to do bad things. And they did many of those bad things to you!”
Dr. Mike stopped pacing and winced as if he’d been stung. “All I accomplish…”
“What I meant was—”
“All I accomplish? Don’t you dare tell me about what I can accomplish! How do you know that you aren’t from the one timeline where my experiments caused what you describe? What if in a million other potential timelines they succeed? I could use that power to cure cancer! To bring about new capabilities in the human mind and body. There is so much we don’t know! So much we can discover! You sit there and judge because you don’t have any idea what someone like me can accomplish. Nobody ever did.”
“What is it you plan to do tonight?” Dylan asked.
“I’ve found ways to channel the energy in this place,” Dr. Mike said. Dylan couldn’t tell if his question was being answered or if the man was continuing to rant. “I’ve channeled it into plant life. Animals. But tonight, I’m going to prove what this power can do for humanity.”
“You’re doing experiments on people?” Dylan asked.
“I’m going to experiment on myself!” Dr. Mike exclaimed. “Nobody will be harmed, and humanity will be better because of this experiment. You’ll see!”
“Dr. Mike,” Dylan pleaded, “please think this through. We really can’t let you do this. If there’s even the slightest chance that everything that happened can be avoided…we have no choice.”
Dr. Mike frowned. “I’m sorry, there really is no stopping what has to be done.”
Dylan felt nauseated. He looked over at Emma and saw her eyes rolling back in her head.
“What did you do to us?” Dylan cried out. His voice sounded muffled and slurred. Dark spots bloomed in his vision. He looked at the soda, then remembered the pharmacist slapping him on the back, and the sharp pain that had come along with it. He felt the bottle drop from his hand, and saw Emma slump down on the couch with her eyes closed. Then there was darkness.
Vacancy Page 25