The store clerk waited patiently while I dried up and warmed myself. No other customers came into the store. When I pulled off the blanket and examined my extremities searching for signs of frostbite, he left the counter and walked over to me. “So, you tell me why you went swimming tonight?”
“It’s kind of a long story. I had a fight with my girlfriend and went for a walk at the campground down the street. Slipped on some ice by the dock and fell right in.”
He considered my story and laughed. “That’s not smart, buddy!”
“Tell me about it.”
“So, where you live, my man?”
“Down in Waldorf.”
He looked stunned. “That’s far! Your girlfriend took your car?”
Reasonable enough. “Yeah, she did. She was pretty mad.”
“Well, I tell you what. I call cab for you. My treat.” He smiled at me.
“Seriously? That’s…wow. I really appreciate it.”
“Yeah, buddy, sure. You pay it forward, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said. Then I noticed his laptop on the counter. “Hey…would it be too much to ask to use your computer for a minute?”
He thought for a second. “No big deal, buddy. Glad to have company, you know?”
I got up and walked to the counter. I turned the laptop around to face me and loaded up the white pages. I searched for my name and immediately the tightness in my chest returned. The address was wrong. The only Daniel Wells was my age, and he lived somewhere in Mifflin. Helena was not listed as my wife. It appeared I lived alone.Well, I thought, at least I wasn’t living with my parents. I checked my dad’s name and found that they were right where they should be.
My guardian angel store clerk—his name tag identified him as Ranjit—called the cab while I continued my online exploits. I fell right back into using modern technology despite my hiatus. I wanted to look into Suzy’s whereabouts but I couldn’t bring myself to cross that bridge just yet. Instead, I turned to Google and searched the news archives for Justin Bieber. Of course, even the local papers mentioned the pop star. Once I searched far back enough though, the name held a different significance. The Ambler Gazette had a small article from August 23rd, 1993. The headline read, “Mystery Man Goes Missing.”
The search is on for a man using the name “Justin Bieber” following his apparent disappearance from the Shady Pines Day Camp in Doylestown where he was employed as the camp’s computer specialist. Mr. Bieber’s car was found abandoned in the parking lot and campers discovered his wallet in the camp’s lake. According to the camps’ owners, Arthur Rosenberg and Tom Carter, Mr. Bieber is being investigated for alleged forgery of credentials used to obtain his position at the camp.
“It appears to me that this man, whoever he is, fled to avoid what he knew was coming,” said Rosenberg.
Others disagree. Bieber’s girlfriend, Suzy Bailey, is convinced he met with foul play. “He’s a good man,” Bailey said. “I’m incredibly worried about him.”
This reporter was unable to find any evidence of a Justin Bieber at Waldorf High School where Bieber claimed to be a computer teacher. There is no record of Bieber, thought to be in his late twenties, in any directories and he does not appear to live at the address he gave Shady Pines. Police are investigating both the claims against Bieber and his disappearance.
I advanced the timeframe of the search and found a later blurb, this one in the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was from October 10th, 1993.
Search For Unknown Waldorf Man Ends
A man known only by the alias “Justin Bieber” disappeared in August under intense scrutiny and questions about his identity. Authorities say there has been no sign of the man, nor have they been able to determine his true identity as his claimed ties to the Waldorf community proved to be false.
“This man is a complete mystery from beginning to end and we have no choice but to close the case and assume that he simply went back wherever it is he came from,” said Doylestown Chief of Police Adam DeGeorge.
That was it. I couldn’t find any further reference to my vanishing. It hurt me to think that Suzy had stood up for me—covered for me, even, considering the name Daniel Wells had never popped up in the investigation—and had been forced to answer questions. I should never have put her in that position. I started to type in her name, knowing I might have some difficulty finding her if she was married.
“Hey, buddy,” called Ranjit, “Cabbie’s here.”
I decided it was a sign from above that I shouldn’t investigate Suzy, at least not yet. I sighed and closed the laptop. “Thanks so much for all your help,” I told him.
“No worries. You stay out of lakes!” he said with a laugh.
I stepped back out into the cold, realizing that Ranjit had never questioned my out-of-season attire. When I had left on my original quest the weather had just been turning chilly. When I had come back to the unfortunate version of the present caused by the murder of Jeff Berger, the weather hadn’t changed. Now, winter had fully arrived. I realized I was lucky the lake hadn’t been frozen solid. I could have materialized in the middle of an ice sheet and cut myself in half. I wondered how much later in the year I had returned. Certainly enough time had passed for Helena to think I was dead, if this was the normal timeline. It clearly was not.
To my relief the taxi driver did not ask any questions besides an address. I gave him the one my Internet search had revealed. Fifteen minutes later, give or take, we pulled up in front of a house twice the size of the home Helena and I had shared.
Chapter 19
1
You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just go back in time again once I realized things were still screwy in the time stream. I considered it, of course. When I was wandering through the nearly freezing cold while dripping with water from the lake, I had thought that a return to summer or even spring might be preferable to freezing to death.
So then why didn’t I travel? I was incredibly curious, and that sense that I could always go back whenever I wanted made it seem like a quick look around the alternate present wouldn’t be such a big deal. There was more to it though. As much as I’d hurt Suzy, as scared as I was about what had become of her life, I wasn’t ready yet to let her go. To go back and change things again might mean that she and I never met. I didn’t know enough about all this time travel stuff to be sure that my time with her wouldn’t disappear from my memory. Even if it didn’t, I couldn’t bare the thought that she wouldn’t remember it.
When I look at it now I realize how selfish and foolish that was. I had tried over and over to be an adult and I had repeatedly made emotional, immature decisions, consequences be damned.
“I’m in love with you, whoever you are,” she had said to me. The memory tortured me as I thanked the cab driver and walked up a long driveway toward the large house. There was one more reason I was staying in a present that wasn’t my own. In the previous alternate reality I had tried to fix the broken version of myself, considering the possibility that he might continue to exist even if I went back where I belonged. Since I was in this new time stream…okay, since I had potentially created this time stream, I felt an obligation to check in on this version of myself and make sure he was doing alright. The fancy house seemed to be a good sign.
Unfortunately it was the middle of the night and I didn’t want to ring the doorbell. If it had been warmer I would have stayed outside but it was freezing and I was tired. I walked around to the garage entrance. A small keypad mounted to the wall controlled access. I didn’t hesitate, typing in my birthdate and hitting the button marked “enter.”
The garage door rumbled up and I considered that a sound that loud could easily wake somebody up, but it still seemed the better choice. A small silver Porsche and an enormous black Range Rover were parked in the garage. I opened the door dividing the garage from the rest of the house. The alarm was not set and the house remained silent. No pets.
I walked through a vast mudroom and down a
long hallway. In a door to one side I saw a bedroom. I guessed it was a guest room or something. It had no photographs or any other sign of belonging to one particular person. I sat on the edge of the bed. I slipped off my shoes and swung my legs up, hoping that if this timestream’s version of me discovered me here he wouldn’t attack, at least not right away.
I rested my head on the soft pillows and closed my eyes. Visions of Suzy and Helena swirled in front of me. My lost loves from two different eras. I’d left my life with Helena behind and now I’d abandoned Suzy as well. In this new world I didn’t belong with either of them. I was completely alone. The warmth and comfort surrounding me took the edge off my pain. Sleep found me quickly.
2
“Where the fuck have you been?” yelled a nasal, female voice.
I snapped awake. Standing over me was a skinny young woman in yoga pants and a sports bra. She was pretty but her features were harsh and angular. She scowled at me.
“I asked you a question, Dan. Where have you been? You dropped off the face of the fucking earth without your car, your phone, anything?”
I truly had no idea what was going on, and I went with that honest approach. “I don’t know what happened to me. Everything’s fuzzy.”
“What’s my name?” she asked. Shit.
“I… I don’t…”
“You don’t even remember who I am?” she screamed. “After the night we had?”
“You’re gonna have to refresh my memory.”
“You and me. A week ago. That bar down in Manayunk. We came back here, you left in the morning for work, or so you said, but you didn’t take your car. Just wandered the fuck off.”
“So you’ve been living in my house for a week?” I asked.
“Don’t try to get all high and mighty on me!” she said. “I was waiting for you to come back.”
I thought about kicking her out, but it wasn’t really my home. “Just….give me some room, okay? I’ve gotta make sense of all of this.”
“Fine. I’m going to the gym anyway. I’m taking the Porsche.”
She seemed to think I’d react to that, and her eyes registered disappointment when I didn’t. She turned and left in a huff.
I was confused. My doppelgänger in this world had vanished a week earlier without a trace and he wasn’t back yet, despite what Ms. Yogapants House Squatter now believed to be true. I left the bedroom and walked down the hall. The next room down was a home office. Shelves of dark wood filled the walls and a cream colored rug took up much of the floor. There was a big ass desk, impressive in its sheer massiveness, and I sat down in the leather chair behind it.
The one wall not covered in shelving was full of photos. I recognized myself and my parents in several. Some other family, too. A couple photos seemed to be with friends, but I didn’t know those people. There were girls in a few of the pictures. No girl appeared in more than one photo, as best I could tell. I guess none had ever been significant enough to make the cut. Little Danny Wells, whom I had last seen beaming with excitement over his new girlfriend in 1993 had apparently become quite the player.
In the middle of the photographs hung a large diploma. It was written in Latin but I recognized the insignia of the University of Pennsylvania and my own name. School, it seemed, had been a very different experience for this Daniel. He’d stayed local though, both in college and beyond, and that resonated with me. Some things about a person can’t be changed.
Where the hell was he? It seemed the most logical answer was that he’d discovered he could travel in time and was off on an adventure further splintering the time stream, or maybe using good sense that I did not have and just observing from a distance. It seemed reasonable, considering my own abilities had spontaneously manifested in 2013. But this week? That seemed too uncomfortably coincidental.
I had no idea what to do about finding the other Daniel. Even though my influence this time had made him successful, I still felt a responsibility to make sure he was okay. In the meantime, there was another person I wanted to check on. In a creepy Ghost of Christmas Future way, I wanted to see what became of Helena without Daniel Wells in her life.
My Google search didn’t take as long as I had anticipated. Helena was still single, and popped up in several places under her maiden name. I couldn’t see much of her Facebook profile, but she looked happy. Very happy. I didn’t think I had any right to feel the slightest bit upset about anything Helena could do in this world or any other and yet that one picture hurt more than I could have imagined. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her filled with that genuine joy.
It took me another three minutes to locate her address. While I searched I browsed the contents of the big desk. An iPhone was in one of the drawers, plugged into a charger that snaked through the back of the desk. The phone had 27 missed calls. Not all that much considering it had been left unanswered for a week. I grabbed it and put in my pocket, just in case. Next to it was a Visa card in my name. I took that too.
I found out that Helena lived in an apartment on the outskirts of Philadelphia. I left the office and found my way upstairs to the master bedroom. It was enormous. It was also very white, which seemed to me like an open invitation to stains. I entered the cavernous closet and picked out jeans and a sweater. I didn’t even recognize the brands.
I went back to the mudroom and grabbed a heavy jacket and the keys to the SUV. As I slipped behind the wheel it occurred to me how strangely comfortable I felt in a life that wasn’t mine. A guy could get used to the trappings of success. Of course, there was a job that paid money to produce that lavish lifestyle. A job I almost certainly couldn’t hold down without an ivy league education and years of experience. As I left the neighborhood I wiggled out of the jacket. It wasn’t necessary with the car’s heat cranked up.
That made me think— had my other self left on his quest without his jacket? That made sense if he had traveled to the past from inside his house, but that seemed odd to me. It also made me wonder what past he would have traveled into, and how all these timelines connected. It really hurt my head. For everything I’d learned to that point, so much about time travel was still way beyond my understanding.
I drove the Range Rover to the turnpike and stepped hard on the gas as I merged onto the highway headed west. I needed to eat but I needed to be in Helena’s general area. I had to know about her life. It was a 25 minute drive to her apartment complex. Once I was there I walked to a McDonalds and grabbed some kind of egg and sausage concoction.
I thought Helena was probably at work, so I walked for hours around the area, strolling up and down the streets. Everything seemed normal. This world’s Daniel’s great success had not changed things any more than that other Daniel’s failures. Really puts your life in perspective.
The day went by slowly. Finally, I spied Helena walking from the parking lot toward the apartment buildings. She looked great. She looked familiar. It was everything in me not to just run up and kiss her. It had been so long. I decided the more prudent approach was to go up to her subtly.
“Hi,” I said as I walked in her direction.
“Hello,” she responded with a friendly wave. She was probably used to meeting guys that way all the time in a place like where she was living. “Do I know you?”
That comment threw me. I knew that she would view me as a stranger, but to have it out in the open…to hear my wife respond to me that way… I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. My name’s Daniel.”
She put out her familiar hand and shook mine. “I’m Helena.”
Did she recognize me on some level? I don’t know. Again, that’s one of those things that I’m not skilled enough to answer. What I do know is we clicked quickly, no doubt aided by my understanding of her mannerisms and thought processes. I had to gloss over questions about my job, because the only evidence I’d seen in my brief tour of the mansion had said I did something with computers. That made sense
. I guess I could have talked about my life in the real timeline, but it seemed so foreign when I was meeting my wife for the first time. Otherwise, our conversation was free-flowing and enjoyable. By the time she said she “really had to go” for the fourth time, over an hour had passed. We exchanged numbers—I had to browse the iPhone’s settings and claimed I had just received a new number—and parted ways.
I returned to the Range Rover and sat quietly in the dark. I was completely in love with Helena again as if I had just met her for the first time which, in a way, I had. I saw her as I had once seen her. Vibrant, spirited and fun. It made me sad to think that something about being with me the past few years had made her so negative. Yet for all my renewed feelings for my wife, thoughts of Suzy refused to stay away. To top it all off, I didn’t know where that timeline’s Daniel had gone, and I was no longer completely certain that I knew how to reset the world to its proper order, or if I even wanted to.
If the other Daniel didn’t come back, if my little buddy Danny was maybe stuck in another reality just like me, then I could potentially assume his identity and some semblance of his life. I was certainly him down to the DNA. But was that right? What if my world still existed out there and my version of Helena was crying herself to sleep every night wondering in what ditch my dead body would eventually be found? Too many complications. As interesting as the prospect of dating this world’s Helena might be, I had to go home. But first…
I drove to the gas station I had visited my first time traveling to 1993. It was now an Exxon Mobil, and probably had been for many years. I can’t remember when that merger took place. I parked alongside the building and went in to the shop. It hadn’t changed much. A guy about my age worked at the counter. He didn’t appear to be one of the mechanics. He was tall and wiry and looked far more at home with a smartphone than a lugnut or whatever the hell those things are.
The Traveler: A Time Travel Thriller Page 15