The Time Traveler

by Tej Pratap Singh

“Are you serious!” yelled KC barely able to keep his eyes open with the amount of splinters flying all around the house.

  “Of course, I am serious,” yelled back Kamal. “I don’t want to die hungry.”

  The firing stopped and Lurton walked into the house lighting his Cuban cigar. He causally sat on the sofa, or whatever was left of it.

  “Come out. Come out from wherever you are, I just want to play,” chuckled Lurton. “You are a smart boy aren’t you one, KC? You know you can’t get out of this one alive unless you do as I say. Now come out.“

  “Alright, I am coming out,” yelled KC as he stepped out from behind the microwave.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Kamal and the lovely Jasmine, I would love to see you two as well,” said Lurton smiling.

  “We are coming out,” said Kamal as they got up and became visible. All three of them were now standing in front of Lurton.

  “Ain’t it your luck day now?” laughed Lurton.

  “All days are good for me, all numbers are lucky for me. I don’t care what the stones have to say, I don’t see the stars to change my day,” said KC fearlessly.

  “Really?” said Lurton. “Let’s see you getting out of this one then.”

  Lurton took out his pistol and shot KC just above his knee. KC fell on a side table and then on to the floor.

  “You fucking son of a bitch,” said Lurton as he walked towards KC and pointed his pistol at him. “You thought you could fool me, I had your bloody house bugged. No one messes with Lurton and gets away with it.”

  “Goodbye,” said Lurton as he pulled the trigger. His 1940 vintage classical revolver probably sprung into action after a long time; the hammer moved behind and the bullet came in line with the chamber. The hammer struck on the head of the bullet as the bullet case ignited and pushed the bullet out of the chamber of the revolver at a speed of 300meters/second with some flash and a lot of smoke. The bullet headed straight for KC’s head, which was just a couple of meters away.

  “Area active. Transporting. Standby,” came the voice out of nowhere. KC recognized that voice, it almost sounded like the time-com.

  A streak of bright light flashed across the room, in a split of a second KC recognized the light from the time-com before the bullet touched his head. The only passing thought he had in this moment was that he didn’t have the time-com anymore. The bullet cut open the skin on his forehead and then it just vanished!

  He fell to the ground with blood trickling from his forehead, Jasmine screamed as loud as she possibly could. He looked up; he was not dead, he definitely was not dead. He was bleeding from the cut on his forehead, but the bullet had not gone through his skull.

  Jasmine stared at him in disbelief, as did Kamal.

  “What the Fuck!” shouted Lurton as he shot two more rounds at KC and then another. The bullets left Lurton’s revolver with a great deal of noise and flash but they never made it to KC.

  Shocked, Lurton opened up his revolver to make sure the bullets had been fired and he could clearly see that they indeed had been.

  “What the fuck is going on,” yelled Lurton as he pointed his revolver at one of his men and fired, expectedly the bullet hit the man and he fell to the ground motionless.

  Lurton turned towards KC and fired the last bullet. Once again the bullet left the revolver with a bang but it just vanished midway.

  Lurton couldn’t believe it; neither could KC. Something out of the ordinary seemed to be happening.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” shouted Lurton as he bent forward and caught hold of KC’s hair and pulled his head back.

  “I am not doing anything,” said KC.

  There was a flash of blinding light and a pulsating noise and the whole house shook. Three figures emerged from one corner of the room; their outline became clearer as the bright light dimmed down.

  Lurton’s men raised their automatics at the three men, more out of surprise than out of fear.

  The three men walked towards Lurton.

  They had a strange uniform on. It looked like they were wearing some kind of metal, but they moved much too comfortably for heavy metal sort of gear. They held something in their hands but KC couldn’t make out what it was. They had a translucent glass around their head, it almost looked like water in a perfect circle. KC couldn’t see their faces behind the water like screen.

  “Fire, goddammit,” shouted Lurton as his men opened a volley of fire.

  One of the three men simply raised his hand up causing a kind of a concentrated and visible shock wave that moved towards Lurton’s men all over the room almost as if it was directed at them. In an instant, the men vanished; they turned into gas, which quickly dissipated through the doors and the windows that were broken. And, a lot of wind blew in.

  Lurton shocked but not disheartened, quickly took out his automatic and pointed it towards the three men.

  “Who the fuck are you freaks?” he yelled taking a few steps back. “Who let you on my turf? Nobody fucking messes with me.”

  Lurton fired his automatic at them. But nothing seemed to reach them either. Lurton checked his pockets but he had run out of ammunition.

  “Goddammit,” yelled Lurton as he threw his automatic at the three men. The three men didn’t flinch. The automatic disintegrated on touching the first man it came in contact with. It appeared as if they had shredded the automatic like paper in a shredder machine.

  “You freaks,” yelled Lurton as he charged at the men, bending forward trying to dislodge them off the ground with his shoulder in a football like tackle. Screaming, making his last and final charge.

  As he touched them his shoulder disintegrated instantly followed by his arm, his head and his upper body. By the time he fell down nothing was felt of him waist up.

  “Holy shit!” said Kamal as the men now headed towards him. They gave him a close look, then they looked at Jasmine and finally moved towards KC.

  As they got nearer, KC was able to make out what was written on their uniform, A.P.U.

  “Crap!” said KC. “They are here to get me, Kamal get the hell out of here, get Jasmine out as well.”

  KC crawled back, he tried but he couldn’t get up, his leg hurt too much. He crawled back further so that he could get hold of one of the automatics of Lurton’s men. He immediately pointed the auto at the men.

  “You are not going to get me without a fight,” he said aiming at them.

  “Why are you countering us, commander?” said one of the men.

  “What…? What are you talking about?” said KC still pointing his automatic at them.

  “Sir, don’t you remember?” said the man.

  “Remember what?” asked KC.

  The men quickly had a word with each other and one of them raised his arm up. Kamal expecting the worst quietly picked up an auto lying on the ground and slowly cocked it trying to make as little noise as possible. One of the men, in the meantime, typed something on his arm, there seemed to be a holographic projection on his arm with some symbols on which the man typed something. His hand casing opened up and he took out a small cylindrical capsule. He took a couple of steps further; Kamal pointed his auto at that man.

  “Not a step further,” said Kamal pointing at the man realizing pretty well that his auto was no match for their equipment, “I’ll shoot.”

  The man nevertheless took another step and extended his hand towards KC.

  “Take this capsule and puncture your head with it. It will only take a minute, sir, you will remember everything.”

  “Don’t do it, KC” said Kamal empathetically. “These guys are trying to trick you, they are from the A.P.U.”

  “Sir,” said the man moving forward pressing his head screen. The liquid kind of screen slowly disappeared, revealing his face.

  KC looked at him carefully, the face seemed to be a projection.

 
“What are you?” asked KC.

  “We are the battle units run by our command at our headquarters.”

  “What? Where is your command?” asked KC.

  “They are back in the 29th century,” came the reply from the projection.

  “You got to be kidding me,” said Jasmine in utter surprise.

  “Hang on, Jasmine,” said KC. “It gets much more complicated.”

  “Sir, time jumping is very dangerous,” continued the thing, “our command therefore decided to send us instead to retrieve you back from this time. We are the battle units used for execution of field tasks.”

  “Whose face is this then?” asked KC.

  “I am Northern Sector 21, Group Commander Amin, I am operating this battle unit from our command HQ in the 29th century.”

  The other two battle units moved forward dissolving their liquid screens, their faces becoming visible.

  “Sir, I am the Northern sector 25, Group Commander Rul,” said the second battle unit.

  “Sir, I am the Northern Sector…”

  “Sector 27 Group Commander Akil,” interrupted KC vaguely remembering things in bits and pieces.

  “Yes, that’s right, sir,” said Akil. “And you are Commander Kenneth Cent, Commander of the Northern Sector Command of the A.P.U., the most active command in battle with the I.F.”

  KC tightened his grip on the capsule and punctured it on his head. It lighted up sending his whole body into a shock as he moved violently. Akil and Rul immediately got on their knees holding their commander still till the drug took its affect.

  “It will only take a minute,” said Amin trying to reassure Kamal and Jasmine.

  And a minute later, KC stopped shaking. He lay still on the ground and then with a sudden jerk he got up.

  “Aah,” he said holding his neck, “my neck hurts.”

  “Sir, are you ok?” asked Amin.

  “I guess,” said KC looking at Amin trying to recognize him. He removed the capsule from his head and punched in the right sequence to deactivate it, getting it right in the first attempt itself.

  “Amin, what’s going on? How did I even get here?” said KC indicating at Kamal to lower his automatic.

  “Sir, the year is 2956. The I.F. detonated an electron impulse bomb over the northern sector of the A.P.U. Being the…”

  “Dammit, it was the I.F. who detonated the bomb,” said KC. “I remember now, we were just outside the blast radius that day, it was… ah, the moon was in the third phase, and the winds were blowing due west. Dammit the time-com told me it was the A.P.U. who detonated the bomb, and I believed it. It means that the I.F. was formed from MegaTech.”

  “You are right, sir,” confirmed Akil. “As the Supreme Commander of the Northern Sector you launched an attack on the I.F., the attack was going very well until the 8th day, when the I.F. raided our command HQ and took over our communications. Our Central Command, commanded by you, was then tricked into heading in the wrong direction towards a trap set by them by separating you from the troops of sector 21 and sector 27.”

  “I was with you, sir,” said Rul, “when you were captured, but not before giving a tough fight in which our Central Command killed the I.F. Southern Sector commander, Elapses Quntol.”

  “Yes, I remember now,” said KC getting up, he was so caught up with what was being discussed that he temporarily forgot about his wounded leg.

  “They captured me, then they drugged me and recorded the video, I sensed something was wrong so I used my right hand in the video instead of the left one. Yes, I remember that now. They had created a time modulator, an excellent instrument for travelling so fast that one could jump time into the future and into the past.”

  “That’s what they had done,” confirmed Rul, “sent you back in time to deliver plans to their forefathers. Shortly after they had sent you back in time, our Sector 25 forces raided their facility where they had held you. But you had already gone by then. It took us and Commander Jenny, your wife, the Ocean and Space Sector Commander some time to fully understand the time modulator concept. She used the time modulator to plan your rescue.”

  “After almost a year we received signal from the 21 century,” added Akil. “Commander Jenny had told us that you would activate the time-com in the year 2018 that would give out a distinct character pulse. That’s what we had to wait for to home in on you and that was our clue to get you out, without it you were lost in time. We did receive a signal a couple of months ago but it was very faint and for a very short period so it was very difficult for us to use it to trace you, we tried but we lost you again and had begun to lose any hope of seeing you again. Then, in a bizarre twist of events we received a heavy surge of pulses. It was huge but it only lasted for a micro-second. It was enough though for us to track you down. It took us some more time but we got to you, sir.”

  “Yes, that heavy surge was created when I destroyed the time-com,” explained KC holding his knee and sitting back on the ground.

  Rul took out a rod from his combat pouch and bent it into an arch and placed the arch over KC’s leg. Soon the arch illuminated and shook violently changing its state from solid to a liquid like structure and spreading over KC’s leg. In a split of a second it vanished and KC’s leg had completely healed.

  “Whoa! What was that?” exclaimed Jasmine. “How did it heal your leg?”

  “Great! All that discussion about fierce battles in the future and time travel and this is what caught your attention, Jasmine?” joked Kamal.

  “That is a matter re-integrator,” said Akin. “It can be used to re-structure or reshape any matter. An advanced re-integrator is also used in the time modulator to rearrange matter from another time.”

  “Well then, KC, my boy, everything is sorted out, you finally know who you are, nearly all the bad guys are dead so you should be on your way back home. But, how exactly are you going to travel back home? Where is the time modulator?” asked Kamal.

  Akil took out three rods and passed it on to Rul and Amin. They bent their rods and placed it around their necks. Akin then took out another rod and gave it to KC, “Sir, this one is for you, put it around your neck and when you’re ready, you can travel back to 2956.”

  “That’s it,” said Kamal disappointed. “This rod is the time modulator.”

  “What did you expect?” said KC. “Some gizmo or something?”

  “Hell yes,” said Kamal.

  “You guys should be on your way. I will follow soon,” said KC, placing his right hand over his heart.

  “Yes, commander,” said his sector commanders as they too placed their right hands over their chests and held on to the time modulator with their hands. A liquid type of substance immediately covered their whole body and their whole structure imploded inside within a second. And they disappeared.

  “Wow!” said Jasmine. “That was the most awesome thing I have ever seen in my life.”

  “KC, you are next I guess.” said Kamal reluctantly.

  “Yes, I guess,” said KC not seeming that happy though.

  “You don’t look very excited?” said Jasmine.

  “Hell no,” said KC. “Pardon me for not being able to express my exuberance. I have waited for this moment for such a long time; I could give up anything for this and yet …”

  “Yet, what?” asked Kamal.

  “If I have learned anything since I have got here, it is that things are not always as they seem to be, even if you really want them to be that way. Sometimes one has to look beyond the obvious,” explained KC sitting down once again.

  “What exactly is it?” inquired Kamal. “No wonder you let your sector commanders go first.”

  Jasmine and Kamal also sat down, they all definitely needed a break after what had just transpired. Jasmine looked around her house wondering where to begin, whether it was even worth the effort to start cle
aning.

  “Tell me something, KC,” said Jasmine, “can you, like, make my house go back in time, and kind of repair stuff?”

  KC and Kamal looked at each other and KC said, “No”

  “Oh, okay,” said Jasmine. “Thought it was worth a try.”

  “Jasmine, I am sorry, I didn’t tell you anything about me, about Jenny, about any of this before,” said KC. “You must have realized now how crazy and pointless I would have sounded if I had told you any of this before you had actually seen it for yourself.”

  “It’s okay,” said Jasmine. “After all you have been through, I mean, I know people who break when they are away from their homes for too long, but, you were not only away from your family, you were in a whole different time altogether, and having to deal with half of the world chasing you. Also, you did not remember anything. You don’t have to apologize.”

  “Thanks, Jazz,” said KC smiling.

  “So, what were the inconsistencies you were talking about?” asked Kamal realizing he was sitting on his chicken sandwich. He opened its plastic wrap and dug his teeth into it.

  “Yes, there are a couple of things I need to figure out before I head back so that all this pain and effort I have put into saving my alliance, or country as you would call it, doesn’t go waste,” said KC. “Firstly, when I had the confrontation with Jenny, she had told me that I had asked her to come back in time and make sure that I don’t falter in my task.”

  “So?” asked Jasmine.

  “Well, now that my memory is completely back and I don’t remember telling Jenny to look out for me, I am very sure about it. In fact, I did not even know her before travelling to this time period. That can only mean one thing…” said KC.

  “That the event is yet to take place,” added Kamal.

  “Yes, exactly,” said KC. “It means that I have yet to meet Jenny and tell her to look out for me. So, could this mean that I’ll have to go back in time again?”

  “But why would you have to go back in time again?” asked Kamal.

  “That’s exactly what I am thinking,” said KC. “That exactly is my point, there is something much deeper going on here. For example, what about that one dollar note and the man who gave it to me.”