by Bob Avey
“Regarding this place you don’t want to go back to, have you been there more than once?”
He nodded.
“How many times, Luke? How long has this been going on?”
He shrugged. “Two, I think. Not long.”
“Good, Luke, you’re doing fine. Now this is important, so try to answer correctly, okay?”
“Okay.”
John paused, trying to be precise without going too far above Luke’s head. “Have you been to this place more than once because you had more than one, multiple appointments or reasons to go, or was it the same thing, ‘like wait a minute, I’ve done this before’?”
“Yeah, like that.”
John nodded, close to certain now that Luke had traveled and remembered at least some of it. Such a revelation would worry Andrew to the breaking point. Whatever actions John took, he would have to proceed with caution. Another question occurred to him.
“Very good, Luke. One more thing, was anyone with you when you discovered you were having this unusual do over?”
He nodded. “My dad. We had a car wreck.”
John took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Discovering two travelers in one day was a bit much, even for someone with his experience. “So, was it the automobile accident, is that what happened more than once?”
He shook his head. “Only once.”
Caution, John. Proceed with caution.
“And what preceded the accident?”
He shook his head.
“What I meant to say was, what happened just before the car wreck? That’s it, isn’t it, Luke? It’s right before the car wreck that has you troubled?”
“I no go back.”
“No, you don’t have to go back.”
A tear slipped from Luke’s eye and rolled down his cheek. “You said you ask once, no more.”
With that, John’s heart broke. “All right, Luke. I think I’ve got enough. No more questions. I’ll be leaving soon. After I’m gone, your mom will sleep for about five minutes. When she wakes up, she won’t remember any of this, okay?”
He nodded.
“Could you do me a big favor, Luke?”
“I guess.”
“If you promise not to tell your mom I was here, I promise I won’t come back. No more questions. And more than that, I promise you won’t ever have to go back to that place you don’t like, okay?”
“Okay, promise.”
John patted Luke on his substantial shoulder and turned to leave.
“Mr. Rainbow. My dad love me.”
John tried to walk away, to remain no more involved than he already was, which was already way too much, but he could not. He was an investigator, trained to listen, to pick up on the nuances of what people were saying and what they were not. Luke was not saying, ‘thanks for stopping by, have a nice day.’ Luke was asking for help.
He turned back. “Yes, Luke, your dad loves you very much.”
“You bring him back?”
At that point, something inside of John gave way, releasing all the emotion he’d kept at bay. Why did it always seem that it was the innocents of the world who suffered?
“I’ll try to bring your dad home, Luke. I can’t promise any more than that.”
With that, John turned and walked out.
John closed the door to Martin Taylor’s house behind him but heard it opening again. He did not turn back. It would be Luke, his confused face and questioning eyes calling out, begging for help. If John had to guess, he’d say Luke’s entire world revolved around Martin and Susan. It was difficult to leave him this way—his dad gone in a way he didn’t understand, and his mother, loving, but completely unable to understand what was happening. He’d always laid the heavy burdens of life onto those who loved him, encouraged by loving parents to do so. Now, Luke’s comfortable world had been turned upside down.
After reaching his car, John brought the rented automobile to life and pulled onto the street, all too aware of Luke Taylor’s stare through the doorway of his home, watching his only hope for answers fade from sight.
Back at his hotel room, John reluctantly punched Andrew’s number into his phone.. When he picked up, John said, “We have a lot to talk about my old friend.”
“Things have taken a turn for the worse, haven’t they?”
Though he didn’t completely understand why, John hoped Andrew was still in the dark about the troubling affair. He had a way of knowing things before he needed to.
“What makes you say that?”
“I’ve had a bad feeling about it from the start. Humor me and tell me you have everything under control.”
“I’ll do my best. My interview of Susan Taylor and her son, Luke Taylor, turned out pretty similar to that of Chris and Jennifer Barnes. Nothing to worry about, neither of them know anything.”
It was true. Susan was clueless and Luke, well Luke was in his own little world, which would effectively render him as being in the same category. He wouldn’t cause problems because he wouldn’t know how to.
“How about the other family member,” Andrew asked, “Martin Taylor?”
John considered his answer carefully. He’d been at this long enough to have developed a sense about travel and those extremely rare individuals who had somehow learned to indulge in it. He decided to just lay it out there. “I strongly suspect Martin Taylor is a traveler.”
The line remained silent for a long time, and John wondered if he’d lost the connection. “Andrew?”
“You never cease to amaze me, John. In the field for one day, and already you’ve located the source of the problem?”
“In a manner of speaking. However, while I think Martin Taylor is caught up in it, I don’t believe he intentionally instigated it.”
“Maybe you should let me in on the facts and let me make up my own mind about it. What did the interview turn up?”
It was John’s turn to delay his answer. This was where things would get sticky. “I haven’t interviewed Martin Taylor, not yet.”
“Why not, what’s stopping you?”
“No one seems to know where Martin Taylor is,” John said, “including me. I suspect he’s traveling.”
“I see. Tell me again why you don’t think he’s our man.”
“All right,” John said, “but you won’t like it. All I ask is that you keep an open mind and consider the facts.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the fact that Angela Stewart and Candy Barnes, who were both mentally challenged individuals, both effectively died at childbirth because of the meddling of our mysterious traveling doctor.”
“John, how many times have we been through this? Don’t you think I’ve lost a lot of sleep over all of that too? But you’ve become obsessed over it. I wonder if your judgement’s been compromised.”
John resisted a temptation to throw his phone against the wall. “Well, Andrew, if you really feel that way, then why don’t you send down my replacement? I already told you I was ready to retire. What do you say? Shall I pack my bags and return home?”
“All right, all right, settle down. Lucky me, my only hope of reaching a resolution with this matter has gone off the deep end.”
“That might be funny if it wasn’t so close to the truth. Anyway, there’s more. Luke Taylor is also mentally challenged. There’s a disturbing pattern emerging. Anybody with eyes can see that. Sometimes, I think you’re the one who’s obsessed, Andrew, obsessed by your disillusioned notion that you’re always right.”
“I’m just trying to do my job, so let’s put our difference
s aside and move forward with what we have. I’ll get the viewers involved and see if we can’t get a lock on Martin Taylor. I have a feeling he’s the key to all of this.”
“In that he might provide some answers, I agree, though I suspect finding him might prove difficult, more so than what we’ve previously encountered.”
“Why do you say that? I know you’re tired, John, and didn’t want to get involved in the first place, so I can understand your reluctance to do what it takes to find Taylor, but I ask you to pull yourself together and give me one more good effort.”
“All right,” John said. Andrew was wrong about his not wanting to find Martin Taylor. He very much wanted to find Luke’s father. Hopefully, in the end it would be for the same reasons. “Like I said, my experience is telling me there’s something radically different about Mr. Taylor, the way he travels I mean. Finding him won’t be easy.”
“I assume you have some ideas,” Andrew said. “I can almost hear the gears turning in your head. So, let’s have it. What do you suggest?”
John relaxed his grip on the phone, a small sense of accomplishment in gaining a slightly agreeable attitude from Andrew putting him at ease momentarily.
“I think we both agree the next step is to locate Martin Taylor. The question is once we do, if indeed we get that far, how do we proceed from there? We could go anywhere from simple observation, hoping to gain useful information; to casual contact, hoping to plant a positive suggestion; to full blown contact, attempting to change Taylor’s previous course of action. The implications of any counter action on our part are practically immeasurable.”
“Why do these things always have to be so complicated?”
“It’s the nature of the beast, my old friend, having to live with the consequences of our meddlesome actions.”
“I know, but at this point, involvement seems unavoidable.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I’ll make sure the equipment is ready. Let me know when you get back in town.”
“You can count on it.”
“Thanks,” Andrew said. “Just one more thing before you go. I know I don’t say it enough, but I appreciate you and what you do. The entire agency does. You’re the heart of our operation, John, and that’s the truth.”
“Thanks, my old friend. I’ll try not to let you down.”
And then there was Luke. He would try not to let him down as well.
It wasn’t easy being somewhat unique.
CHAPTER NINE
JOHN
May 5, 2020, 7:00 p.m.
After finishing his affairs in Tulsa, John left his hotel room, and a few hours later he settled into a recliner in his home in Arlington, Virginia. Now he sipped on a small glass of Scotch he’d poured for himself.
He was to go directly to the office following the interviews. However, a slight deviation would be tolerated, if indeed discovered. He’d always taken a few hours to prepare—a time to be alone, gather his thoughts, and concentrate on the mission ahead. This time, he would only have the luxury of a few minutes. By necessity, most of the preparation was spent on becoming acutely aware of his personal rhythms, his internal reference clock.
Internal rhythms varied from person to person. A matter of genetics, John guessed. Determining travel candidates hinged on the rare trait. It helped travelers return to the same reference point they had left. Physicists had made remarkable advances in understanding travel. Nonetheless, the whole sordid affair remained largely misunderstood. The technicians knew enough to pay close attention to the traveler’s biorhythms, and before a jump, a team would constantly monitor them to keep the time reference computers updated.
Along the way, John had learned something quite interesting about himself. He could correct his rhythms and bring them in line just by thinking about it, wishing, as it were, for them to be so. He even played games with the techs now and then, just to keep them on their toes. At least, that’s what he told himself. He was doing them a sort of secret favor. Traveling was serious business. The techs needed to be at the top of their game.
But that wasn’t all. By concentrating on a set of predetermined, temporal coordinates, John could adjust his rhythms to appear normal while they were in fact mimicking the adjusted coordinates. Of course, he would always readjust the rhythms seconds before travel was initiated. He often wondered what might happen if he failed to readjust in time. After all, he wanted as much as anyone for him to return to the place where he belonged.
Of course, there was much more than time reference to consider when determining candidates. Nothing more important, but crucial just the same. The big ones were orientation and reorientation. The ability to adapt to another time and place where one didn’t belong, and then leave it all behind upon return, was essential for long-term survival. This was where John excelled. It was the reason Andrew referred to him as somewhat unique.
John finished his Scotch and went into his office where he kept a file containing the details of the fateful jump he had completed May 04, 2017—the date of the first rift created by their mystery traveler. He carefully removed the file from the drawer and laid it upon the desktop where he opened it to the page displaying the coordinates of the 2017 jump and, more importantly, those relating to the 2014 destination. He dared not keep a digital file of such sensitive information. He committed the coordinates to memory before placing the file back into the desk.
Two hours later, a security team escorted John through the doors of a building located on 3701 North Fairfax Drive in Arlington, Virginia. One didn’t simply walk unattended into such a place. He was taken to a small room where he was searched and questioned, more like interrogated. He didn’t know any of the officers. They changed so often.
With the briefing completed, two of the security officers accompanied him to the East Wing and took him down a hallway into a sparsely decorated office with no windows.
He turned to the officers and smiled. “That will be all for now, thank you.”
John waited while the officers left the room and then leaned through the doorway, watching until the security team turned the corner of the hallway, disappearing from sight. No one else was in the room, or the hallway, or the whole East Wing as far as John knew. He strolled behind the only furniture in the room, an empty desk with a lamp on it, and opened the door to what appeared to be a coat closet. He stepped inside, closed the door, and placed his hand upon a glass panel. The closet, or elevator, descended.
Ten stories beneath the surface, the elevator doors hummed open, and John stepped out into a vast area nearly devoid of light. Of course, the closing of the elevator doors took care of the nearly. John had never cared for the peculiarities of this part of the business.
Moments later, a familiar form emerged from the darkness, and even before he drew near enough to be recognized, his slightly hunched stance and rapid pace of his gait gave him away. It was Andrew.
He hurried over and grabbed John’s hand. “It’s good to see you, John. It’s been a while.”
It was true. They often talked on the phone but seldom met in person. “Andrew, how are you?”
He didn’t answer but was already leading John away from the open area and into a ready room. Once inside, Andrew flicked a switch, and a soft, dim light filled the room.
John took a seat near the front of a long, shiny, conference table. The light was insufficient by design but still a vast improvement over the area outside the elevator. From what he could tell, he and Andrew were alone in the ready room.
“So,” Andrew said, “where do we go from here?”
John leaned back in his chair. Why did they always have to go through this? Andrew knew perfectly well what was to happen. “As we discussed, I
travel back to May 04 and intercept Martin Taylor, hopefully before he has the automobile accident. I will then attempt to gain information on the time rift through a formal interview.”
“And what if he doesn’t cooperate?”
“I can be very persuasive.”
“I’m not questioning your ability, John. You have, however, continued to insinuate that this might well be a repeat offense, perpetrated by the same person. What if Martin Taylor and your mystery traveler are one and the same? If that were true, I don’t suspect he would be agreeable to an interview.”
“They are not the same. Martin Taylor is caught up in this, but he didn’t cause it.”
“How can you be so sure?”
John leaned forward and placed his hands on the conference table. “It’s difficult to explain,” he said. “It’s just something I know to be true.”
“That’s not much to go on.”
“We’ve completed jumps with less assurance,” John said, “even gone on missions with no assurance at all.”
“You’ve got me there. Maybe I’m getting cautious in my old age. Just try to come back in one piece, okay?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been in one piece. Maybe that’s the secret to my success.”
John pushed away from the conference table and exited the ready room. Minutes later, he and Andrew entered the jump chamber. John let his eyes adjust to the darkness before striding toward the equipment. He counted at least five technicians sitting at various workstations around the immediate perimeter. The charge in the room made the hair on his arms stand on end. He’d never cared for that sensation. He took a deep breath and stepped beyond the electromagnetic curtain. At least, most described it as a curtain. It had always reminded John of a waterless and yet colorful rain shower.
John closed his eyes and offered a silent prayer. No matter how many times he’d done this, it always terrified him. What if he didn’t travel to the right place? If he did, what if he failed to complete the assignment? Even worse, what if his efforts made things worse by further deteriorating the timeline?