“So you don’t make a habit of killing people who screw with time?”
“No…we don’t make a habit of it,” the man said, frowning. “But the people I work for, if they feel they’ve exhausted their options…well, they’ve been known to wipe people out of existence. Make it so you never existed.” He forced a smile that I wasn’t sure I could trust. “But we don’t need to talk about that. I know you’ll do the right thing, and take care of the problem.”
“Right. If I have to. I just want this all to end. I want my life back the way it was.”
“Do you?” He asked, seemingly with genuine curiosity. “We’ve kept tabs on you and what you changed. What of your girlfriend? Suzy Bailey? Are you willing to never see her again?”
“I’ll do what I have to do. Her life is better without me in it.”
“Hmm. You are a curious one, Daniel Wells. Okay. Then you know what you have to do. And when you’re done…listen to this part closely: No. More. Travelling. When you’re done, you’re done. You hear me?”
“I hear you.” I could see the threat in his eyes and hear the echo of his voice saying “they’ve been known to wipe people out of existence.” I wasn’t about to argue. All I wanted was to return home and never travel through time again.
“Good. Any other questions?”
I thought for a few seconds. “I have three. If you’re from the future, why do you speak like somebody from my time period? How do you travel the way you do? It doesn’t seem to follow the rules you talked about. And… can you tell me your name?”
He flashed a broad grin. “My name is Thomas. As to the other questions? I have the same abilities as you but I’m better trained and I travel with the assistance of science using fragments of the device that we had to pull from a few people who weren’t quite as agreeable as you.”
“And my remaining question?”
“I said I work for the group that runs things in the future. Never said I was from the future. It’s time to go.” He put his hand on my shoulder again, his grip lighter this time, and the world blurred again.
Chapter 24
1
Thomas left me by the side of Dorothy’s house. All he said was, “Here you go, right where we departed.” Then he walked away, calling over his shoulder, “Remember, you fix it and you go home. After that, no more traveling.”
I nodded in agreement and understanding. He turned around and kept walking. With a crackle of some energy I couldn’t begin to comprehend, he vanished into thin air.
I walked back into the house and Dorothy was waiting for me. “Who was that strange man?” she asked.
I didn’t know how to answer. “What did you see?”
“I saw you walk around with that other guy, then you were both gone, and a few seconds later you were back. I can’t begin to understand what I’m seeing, and it’s very darn well possible old age has caught up to me and I’m losing my mind, but I’ll just ask you: did that man help you figure out what it is you need to do?”
“Yes,” I said, “I think he did.”
She grinned. “Well that’s just wonderful. Will you be staying a while?”
“Just a few days, if it’s no imposition. But I have to ask something of you, Dorothy.”
“What is it, dear?” She didn’t look too worried about what I might ask.
“I need you to go about your normal business. Don’t deviate from your schedule. Act as if I’m not here, and don’t make me any more meals or show me any kindness like that. Everything has to be as if I was never here, and you can’t ever tell anybody about this. Do you understand?”
“Not really, but I’ll do what you ask. Don’t think many people would believe me if I told them.”
2
The three days passed slowly. I was bored, impatient, and still trying to wrap my brain around the whole deal. I would go through phases of grief over my lost loves, and then my overly reasonable part would remind me that they were clones, not of the prime universe. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t like the other Daniel. I knew that these alternate versions were still real people. At some point, presumably after I met Suzy, most likely after I changed Danny enough to set his life on a new course, the universe had shunted me out to a parallel world. From then on, the woman I had known and loved and watched die was a clone. She was really the only Suzy I knew. Though I was convinced she had died in 2013, she was alive in 1993 and I thought about her every day.
Dorothy kept to herself as I had asked. I was going on Thomas’s guidelines and hoping that by minimizing my interactions I could keep myself in the prime universe. Finally, May 31st arrived. I said a brisk but, I hoped, warm goodbye to Dorothy and left on a long walk.
It took me hours to reach the bar where I had returned to the past. Even so, I had allowed so much time that I was there a half hour before the earlier, slightly younger version of me appeared. I sat at the edge of the parking lot and waited, my eyes fixed on the spot where the wormhole would open.
Finally, I heard the crackling and then I saw myself materialize on the blacktop in front of me. I had met myself as a child. I’d seen more than enough of a crazy alternate version of myself. This arrival though…it still shocked me a bit. This person was me. The same, adult version of Daniel Wells that I basically still was, just one who had experienced a hell of a lot less.
He sat with a happy smile, eyes closed, face turned toward the sun. I remembered that feeling, coming after my panicky inability to travel back from the twisted world that had created “Druggy Daniel.” This time, the smile faded quickly when his eyes met mine.
“What the…how…” he stammered.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you who I am,” I said. “What you need to know is that I’m a future version of you. I’m not an alternate version like the guy you just met.”
“How do you know about him?” He asked. Then he smacked himself in the head. “Of course. You’re me. Why are you here? What’s going on?”
I didn’t know how much I should tell him. I decided he had to know a certain amount in order to be convinced to keep to himself.
“You’re back a few months too early to intervene and stop yourself from attacking Jeff Berger,” I said.
“Okay.” He thought it over. “I’ll just wait it out. Maybe get a job.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought…well, obviously. The thing is, I meddled. Interfered with our younger version, and dated a girl I should never have met. I screwed everything up.”
He looked shocked. “You…dated? What about Helena?”
I sighed. “I know. I was here for three months. I acted like I had carte blanche to do whatever I wanted. It was a mistake. There’s an order to the universe. Small changes are okay but big ones can destroy everything.”
“How do you know that?”
“Take a walk with me, buddy.”
We trekked back toward my parents’ house, retracing the steps that my companion had just walked in an alternate 2013. I thought seeing the house as it had been before his (my) meddling would keep him calm enough to enable easy travel. I told him about Thomas and everything I’d learned about the confusing mechanics of the time stream and the origin of our ability. When we got to the house he sat on the driveway. I think he was so overwhelmed that he didn’t want to chance standing up and falling over.
“Does it make any sense to you?” I asked. “Do you understand why you can’t get involved?”
“It’s a lot to process,” he said. “You told me you screwed everything up. What was wrong when you went back to the present?”
“I don’t think you should know,” I answered. What I didn’t say was that I couldn’t bare to tell it again. “It’s a shitty bunch of events. An upsetting, horrible story. And it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you need to go back to the present and try again. You need to aim better, Daniel. And if you have to wait a day or two, even a week or two, just wait. Stay in your goddamned hotel room and don’t interact with anybody you don’t absolute
ly have to. Then, you call off our over-aggressive mutual friend before he beats that poor kid to death. Do you get it? What you have to do?”
He nodded. “Go back to that crappy alternate world and try again. Stay hidden. Call myself off the attack. Got it.”
I approached him with my hands out and helped him to his feet. I stepped aside, allowing him to have room for his travel back to the twisted present, and that was when I saw the beat up old car parked in the street in front of the house. Had it been there my last trip through 1993? I couldn’t know, but somehow a sixth sense sounded alarms in my head.
I opened my mouth to yell a warning to my other version but my voice was drowned out by the roar of gunfire. Three shots fired, three explosions shattered the stillness of the day. I saw myself stumble and fall, blood seeming to pour from everywhere. I looked down, expecting to see…what? Blood coming out of my own torso, maybe, or perhaps my body fading away as the universe erased my existence. There was nothing. Maybe my interaction with my other self had made him a clone instead of the past version of the real me? Despite everything I had learned, there was way too much about time travel that remained—and remains—way over my head.
I stood stunned as the drug-addicted version of myself walked around the side of my parents’ house and approached the prone form of yet another Daniel Wells, that one bleeding out in the driveway. If he had wanted to shoot me, I’d be dead. At that moment I had no ability to run, or react, or do anything at all.
“Well damn, this is surprising,” Druggy Daniel said as he looked from his victim to me. He seemed legitimately stunned. “Didn’t expect to see two of me.”
“What did you expect?” I asked. My voice sounded cold and mildly disinterested. I had killed my twin and yet there he stood.
“I’ve been waiting, you know,” he said, not ignoring my question but choosing to answer it in his own fashion. “For two goddamn years. Waiting for you to arrive at this very spot. I come here every day. I knew it in my head that you’d come here eventually.” How could he have known something I had only decided earlier that evening? He pointed to the other Daniel. “I didn’t plan to kill him, man. Really. I was going to watch and see what he did. But I heard you two talking. I heard what you told him to do.”
“And that made you shoot him?”
He shrugged. “How the fuck should I know what could happen if he goes back to my time? Or fixes everything? From what I heard you say you might be able to patch the whole damned thing back up and go on about your life. I can’t risk being eliminated from this world. I won’t! You caused everything that’s fucking awful in my life and now I want you to fix it for me. Give me a new life!”
I shook my head. “I don’t have the power to do that. I’m sorry for what I did but you might have just killed the only way I knew to put an end to all of this.” As I spoke, almost as if to put the exclamation point on the whole deal, the bleeding man on the driveway became transparent, first his skin fading away and then his organs. In seconds he was gone. The universe had reabsorbed him. “Do you see?” I yelled. “It’s bigger than you and me and who deserves whose life. We are destabilizing the entire universe, don’t you get it?”
His face tightened in anger. “I don’t give a fuck about the universe, you fucking bitch!” He yelled. “I want what I fucking deserve!”
He was approaching me aggressively with his pistol in an outstretched arm. I had no way to get behind him and attack like I had in Suzy’s bedroom. My heart was betraying me, racing along in an adrenaline-filled way that would prevent my ability to travel. Even with your fancy talent, I thought, you can’t save yourself. Then a thought occurred to me.
Druggy Daniel was only a foot or so away from me. I remained facing him, not backing down. “If you can’t fix anything,” he said, “I can still stop you from eliminating me. I’ll live a new life here in the past. Me…the only Daniel Wells left!”
I could see he was hesitating to pull the trigger. Maybe a small piece of the little boy I had been was still in there? I didn’t know, but I knew I had to act fast or I wouldn’t get the chance. I took a deep breath and felt a calm come over me. Was it the universe acting through me? Maybe. Whatever it was, I was completely in control.
“You’re not Daniel Wells,” I said. “You’re a fucking drug abusing loser who chose to blame all his problems on others and never amounted to a goddamned thing. You’re worthless.”
His eyes flashed with rage and he let out a curse that turned into a scream, “Faaaaaaa,” as he bolted forward and swung the pistol at my head. I stepped to the side, pulling his swinging arm down with both my hands. I studied that arm, that gun, all the details I could see, and somehow I travelled.
Chapter 25
1
The events that followed took place in a blur that I can barely piece back together in any semblance of order. I arrived in what I think was the distorted present that had spawned Druggy Daniel. The death of the version of me who was supposed to meet Suzy and mentor Danny had wiped out the connection to that alternate world. In my hands I held Daniel’s arm, which still gripped the pistol in a frail fist. Blood spurted from the end of the arm at the spot where it should have attached to his torso.
The arm faded, becoming like smoke in my hands. It dropped and vanished before it could hit the ground. The blood spatters on the driveway were gone too. I knew with great certainty that the dark version of Daniel was dead… again. I fell to the ground and vomited. When I regained control, I wiped my mouth with the back of a cold hand and travelled again. My skills had improved greatly. Was it practice or something that rubbed off from my travels with Thomas? I have no idea.
I was still sitting on the driveway but now I felt the gentle cool of a fresh, early autumn day. I stood up and swayed. I was hungry but I had no money. It didn’t matter. It was time to end the madness and go home. I walked in the direction of Tookany Middle School. I hoped that there wouldn’t be much of a fuss with my other self. I’d had more than enough of interacting with other versions of Daniel Wells, be they child versions, alternate reality clones or the Daniels of my recent past.
I thought about a movie I’d seen where all the time traveler had to do was commit to a course of action, and the results of that action would instantly echo through the time stream. If that were really the case, I would have fixed things already just by being in 1993 again. Fiction makes this stuff seem so easy. In the real world there are so many complications and crap that just doesn’t make any sense. It seemed that I would have to trigger the universe’s ability to heal itself. That’s a lot of pressure for one guy. Even Thomas had seemed a little overwhelmed when he talked about the scope of universal time travel dynamics, and that guy was, I think quite literally, a graduate of some kind of Time Travel University. I was like a guy who stumbled into a class halfway through the semester.
In another lifetime I had visited Tookany and been filled with a mix of emotions as I saw the important symbol of my past come back to life. This time around I felt nothing. My brain had run dry and was operating with pure Vulcan logic.
I had never even stopped to check the date but I knew it was the right day. If only I had possessed such skill the first time I could have avoided so much pain and suffering. I got in position roughly halfway between the place I had turned the corner and seen my young self and the place where Jeff Berger met his demise.
I stood and waited. I knew school was out for the day, and saw the same lingering students I had noticed the last time. It would only be a matter of time before I had to act. I heard the boys first, walking from a distance down the path toward the Annex building. I kept my eyes fixed on the corner from where I knew I had emerged. Then, there I was. The version of me who had set all of this into motion because he couldn’t passively observe his own past.
I can’t say that I hated him, but I felt a warm pulse of anger at the sight of his wide, naive eyes. I realized with a chill that it was that same anger that had truly caused all the problems. He
saw me and his jaw slacked open.
“What the hell?” he said in a voice that was almost a whisper.
“Dan,” I said, beginning to walk toward him, “you need to go home.”
“How is this possible?” he asked. God, did I really look and sound so ignorant? He noticed the boys, laughing as they walked. Harassing poor little Danny. “Is that…holy shit.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s little us. Listen to me, Dan. The reason I’m here is because you’re going to intervene to try to help him.”
He was watching the scene unfold in front of him and I could see him getting angry. He started walking toward the boys and I followed. “But…damn it. Damn it! Listen to them. They’re treating him like shit. They always treated me like shit.”
“I know. And you’ll have words with them and you are going to beat Jeff Berger to death. Do you understand me? You lose control and kill him with your bare hands.”
That stopped him in his tracks. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. Time travel is no good, man. You need to stop this shit right now. The universe depends on it.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “The universe?” He smiled but his grin faded quickly when he saw just how serious I was.
“Yes. The universe. You need to go home.”
“But… I can’t just leave him here to get bullied.”
“Yes, you can. Because he turns out to be us. That bullying made us stronger and those guys don’t go on to be anything special. It sucks but it’s how it has to be. This power we have…it’s not permission to do whatever the hell we want. There are big, scary fucking consequences. Go home, Daniel. Please.”
He stood there, torn between the cruelty up ahead and his dreams of revisiting the glorious past on one side and preserving the safety and sanctity of the universe on the other. He locked eyes with me and slowly nodded his acquiescence. He closed his eyes and with a crackle of invisible energy disappeared from view. The boys up ahead didn’t even notice.
The Traveler: A Time Travel Thriller Page 19