by Turner, Ivan
I was on a boat on the river. In front of me was Manhattan Island in all of its lit splendor, as magnificent as it had ever been. The FDR drive, completely repaired, ran in three levels with traffic racing back and forth along it. The shape of the cars looked funny from this distance but I certainly couldn’t make them out for sure. They were travelling faster than I would have expected. All around me, people were fussing. There was the sound of machinery rising above everything else. The man who had spoken stared at me with an open mouthed grin while, behind him, two ladies in white blouses conferred over what appeared to be an electronic clipboard. They, too, wore the unfamiliar badges pinned to their breasts.
“I’ll be damned,” the first voice repeated. He opened his mouth to say more but was drowned out by a violent noise behind me. I turned quickly to see the appearance of Samud’s minivan as it was yanked from the water by a crane. It was covered in algae and rust. The water poured from it in sheets, revealing decomposed upholstery and mechanics. Only minutes ago, it had looked so new.
“What year is it?” I whispered.
“I’ll be damned,” the man repeated. “Twenty twenty three.”
Someone pushed a chair under me and I sat gratefully. Leaning back, I closed my eyes and breathed. Once again, I had leaped. This time, however, fate had played a hand and saved my life from the psychopathic troll who had attacked me. And despite the failure of his attempt, I was now twice removed from my family and twice removed from Jennie. She would no longer be a child. She would be a woman, perhaps with a child of her own. With the passing of nine years, I feared I had probably lost her forever.
“Mr. Cristian?”
It was the same man again and I realized that he had called my name several times. His grin was gone, replaced by a look of concern. I looked back at him, strangely calm. I was not even curious as to how he knew who I was.
“Do you need anything?” he asked.
“I need to rest,” I said, thinking of Carlos and their trek through the tunnel, thinking of Samud.
Chapter IV
Mine was a fine room in Cento Towers, a four year old establishment that had taken advantage of real estate prices during the reconstruction. My new friend was a man by the name of Wil Lowenburg. I managed to get that much as he escorted me off of the boat and to the hotel. It was a dark summer night and I was tired. Only as we reached the street did I realize that there was a light rain falling. Being so wet and on a boat in the middle of active waters, I’d had no inkling of the weather. It didn’t matter anyway. Wil talked a lot and he asked me questions which I couldn’t even interpret let alone answer. I was exhausted from my ordeal and when he showed me my room, I began to strip off my wet clothes without even a second thought. Blushing, he hastily departed. Bedclothes had been laid out upon the bed and I took them up, finding them a perfect fit. Forgetting about my time jump and my murderous companion, I lay down and fell asleep.
When I awoke, it was still dark outside and the clock read 2:58. I don’t know how long I slept because I have no idea what time it was when I arrived at that place. What did occur to me, though, was that the time now was not much later than the time I had leaped. Of course, you’d have to take out the nine years in between, though.
The room was nicely furnished and clean clothing had been provided in just my style. Apparently, I had been expected. Gathering my wits, I went quickly to my own clothes, still piled on the floor, and fished out my journal and my wallet. Though wet through, the journal was relatively undamaged. If I let it dry, it would be sadly out of shape but the writing would be intact. I resolved not to play with it until it had dried. The wallet was water logged but there was little in there that would matter anyway. The contents were relics of the past and I decided it was best to shed myself of them. I deposited them into the empty trash can and went to the television set.
TV was not much help. I was glad to see that most of the shows were in English and Spanish again, as opposed to the Arabic I had been seeing for the past several weeks. Far be it from me to condemn a people for their language, but the sound of it had grown ugly in my ears. Many of the shows were decades old reruns that I had seen in the past. I even managed to kill thirty minutes watching Gilligan’s Island between 4:00 and 4:30 am. The news was mostly local. Little was discussed that could fill me in on nine years of missing history but I was at least able to ascertain that Americans had once again gained control of America. There were numerous references to Constitutional Amendments I had never heard of. There was also this inundation of the news with a company called GEI.
Just before six o’clock, I decided to test out the shower. It was good and hot, the best shower I’d had in quite some time. Certainly, the United Arab Nation had treated me well, kept me clean and housed and fed. But there was nothing like the comforts of an establishment designed to please its customers. When I came out of the bathroom almost thirty minutes later, I noticed that a small light on the phone was lit. I picked it up, the shape of it strange compared to older phones. It was smaller and thinner. As soon as I held it to my ear, a message recorded in a ladies voice began to repeat.
Please dial 001 for an important message. Please dial 001 for an important message. Please dial 001 for an important message.
And so on.
I put the phone down and the light went off. Curious, but not too curious, I decided to dress first and check on the status of my journal. In almost four hours, it had dried somewhat, but still had a long way to go. I found some plastic shopping bags in the closet and took one for the journal. Then I sat down on the bed and dialed 001.
The important message was from Wil Lowenburg. He wanted me to meet him in the lobby and have breakfast with him. With nothing else to do, I went down straight away, carrying my bag with me. At that hour, the lobby was deserted. There was no sign of Mr. Lowenburg so I approached the desk. At the mention of my name, the clerk picked up the phone and rang him up. Mr. Lowenburg appeared in the lobby a few short minutes later. He was wearing a pale green suit of an unusual cut. But it fit his frame well and didn’t look odd even by my outdated standards of style. I was relieved that he had forsaken the badge and uniform of the night before. With a smile and a shake of hands we stepped out of the hotel in search of a place that would seat us so early in the morning.
Wil Lowenburg was an interesting character. His personality was cheerful at all times and he seemed eager to be friendly and make friends. In retrospect, I suppose that was why he was chosen for the job. I grew to like him almost instantly. There was a boyish charm about him that made it almost impossible not to. We began talking almost immediately as we walked. He was naturally curious about me, so much so that I was temporarily able to forget my ongoing predicament and my instinctive curiosity about the world in which I had arrived.
His first question to me was, “Are you really from the past?”
I was, of course, but I didn’t answer him right away. The truth is that I had never really considered it from that perspective. When thrust out of the normal sequence as I have been, there is so little opportunity for reflection. My journey was beyond my capacity to control so I spent all my effort in just surviving. But the lack of control did not belie the fact that I was a time traveler. Even though this particular time period was within the bounds of my natural existence, I was still from the past, being catapulted into the future at an unknowable rate. Being from the past made me wonder if I could return to it somehow.
“I’ll be damned,” he cried ecstatically when I finally did give him my answer.
He wanted to know all about it and all about my life. I was very general in my description, afraid to give away details which might land me into trouble. My experience was making a cautious man out of me. He did ask me when it had all started and I remembered back to that first spilled cup of coffee. That had been in April of 2007.
“I’ll be damned!” he cried again. And by this time we were entering an empty diner on the corner of 82nd street.
Our
conversation over breakfast was light and pleasant and he kept checking his watch. I supposed there was an appointment we had to keep and I was right. Here now, I will write what I learned from him at that meeting. I find myself once again in the position of having to annotate years of history in just a few paragraphs but so much of it is relevant to me and my situation that it would be neglectful to leave it absent.
The day of our escape from New York and the United Arab Nation marked the beginning of the end of their occupation. And there was a direct correlation between the two events. The name of Jesse Cataldo had become one known in every household. She had led four people on foot across the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania in a desperate attempt to be liberated from the terrible clutches of the evil Arab Empire. Or so it was told. I have since been able to look up some of the periodicals of the time and, yes, the tortures endured by the prisoners were described in frighteningly inaccurate detail. So it was to be a lie. As was the fate of Carlos Castillo, who did not arrive with his party. Apparently, it was under his brave leadership that the escape had been planned, but he had not lived to see its execution.
In the months that followed, the United States government began making queries and accusations. There were demands for the release of thousands of prisoners. Here there was a drastic contradiction between what I had learned from Samud and what was recorded as history. Samud had told me that the work details were maintained by people awaiting acceptance of their manifests. His contention was that the United States was responsible for the delays. The United States government claimed not to have knowledge of just exactly how many of its citizens were being held. Officials produced records of manifests and the dates of issue and dates of acceptance were very close together despite the interminable wait we’d had to endure at the time. I can’t say who had fabricated the bigger lie, but it didn’t matter at this point. The government trotted out its martyrs and managed to regain the sympathies of the United Nations and the world at large.
Over the intervening years, the government began to make efforts to regain lost territories. These efforts came in the form of reparations for displaced citizens. The U.N. was as weak a power then as it had been before the war so little could be done from a legal standpoint. But the president at the time was a shrewd lady and she began to draw military support from South America and some East Asian countries. The way Wil described it, there was a looming threat but no overt action. That was when GEI stepped in. A fledgling company at the time (2018), it began pouring money into borderline property and reconstruction. Its shareholders became very rich and negotiations between the corporate offices and the United Arab government went into motion. Before long, the officers of GEI had negotiated an accord between the American and Arab governments whereby the United Arab Nation would abandon the property it had gained in the invasion. This property would once again become U.S. territory, a substantial amount of which would fall under the ownership of GEI. This fast growing company would then pay cash settlements to the Arab government over the course of twelve years and numerous government officials would be granted shares of the company. Over the course of the last five years, the payments had been made and those shares had found their way back into U.S. citizen hands.
Wil spoke of this with immense pride, as if he himself had been a party to it all and it was then that I finally recognized the symbol on the badge he had worn the night before.
“You work for GEI?”
“Yes, sir,” he declared.
“And you knew exactly where I was going to be? And when?”
“Well, we knew the where but I don’t think anyone was sure of the when. Hell, most of us didn’t think you’d ever show up.”
“How long were you there?”
“You mean yesterday?”
“I mean when did they start guarding the spot?”
“Two years, give or take.”
Two years. That was a long time to pay people to wait around for me to show up. “Why?”
Wil looked at his watch again and smiled. “It’s almost eight. Do you want to go to corporate headquarters now?”
The question was so out of place that I didn’t know how to respond. Why would I want to go to corporate headquarters? But Wil was already paying the bill and gesturing that I should move along. So I did. What else could I do?
Corporate headquarters wasn’t far from the diner. We walked it. On the way, Wil told me about Alexis Asosvskiy. She was the CEO of GEI. Any operation run by the company passed over her desk in the form of a digital document. Nothing got started without her seal of approval and nothing continued if she grew tired of it. Wil tried his best to cast her in a favorable light, but I could read between the lines. He did not like her. No one liked her. I wasn’t surprised.
I was led into a tall glass building and ushered into an elevator. Somewhere along the way, we were joined by security officers. I was either very dangerous or very important and I have never in my life felt very dangerous. The elevator took us to the 52nd floor without stopping. The doors whooshed open and I stepped out into the lobby of what could have been any office from any era. I’d barely had time to gather my wits when a large door on the left opened up and admitted Alexis Asosvskiy.
Ms. Asosvskiy was a tall woman with a slender frame. She wore a ladies business suit with a skirt and sharply buttoned white blouse. Her hair was cut unevenly but even I could tell that it was a style of some sort. I didn’t care for it, but I chose not to say anything. As if that was a choice. She came forward with a gleaming smile and took hold of my limp hand, vigorously shaking it. Then she thanked Wil, calling him Mr. Lowenburg, and we were in her office alone with the door closed behind us.
Standing stupidly in the lavish office, I looked behind me once and then around me once. I took in the office without taking it in at all. It was a business office, not meant to be a second home. There was no sofa and there was no bar or refrigerator. But there was a desk, the likes of which I have never seen before. Digital picture frames sat on the desk and hung on the walls, their images changing from scenes of nature to scenes of family to scenes I could not describe. Ms. Asosvskiy offered me a seat so I took a comfortable leather chair as my own and tried to relax.
“I have thought several times about shutting down the Mathew Cristian project,” she said to me. “I’m glad it’s over.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I could think of nothing else.
She waved me away. “Certainly not your fault, Mr. Cristian. How could you have known that this company was pouring tens of millions of dollars into your existence every year.”
“Why didn’t you just shut it down, then?”
I noticed that she did not sit, not even on the corner of the desk. It was a power play and she was a powerful woman. I was intimidated in spite of myself.
“I don’t have that authority. This project was of a special interest to our founder and primary shareholder. He is a very stubborn man.”
“What’s his interest in me?”
“He knows you. I daresay he knows all about you?”
I sat silently then, waiting for her to dispense with the drama. She was goading me, I could see it. There would really be no harm in me asking who this person was, but I had developed something of a stubborn streak and managed to hold my tongue.
“He would like to meet with you.” When it was apparent that I would continue to maintain my silence, she continued. “He’s concerned that you might not want to meet with him.”
“Who is he?” I finally blurted, feeling as if I had lost a staring contest.
It was Igor Grundel and I was surprised by it. I’m not sure who I expected if I even expected anyone. A lot of names, though, wouldn’t have surprised me and as I reflect upon it now, I think some of the more likely options would have been Samud or one of the Tiris or even Jonah Jones. But Igor… The initial shock passed quickly leaving me enraged.
Ms. Asosvskiy looked uncharacteristically sheepish. “He said you might not be
glad to hear his name.”
“He tried to kill me!” I shouted.
“He didn’t really discuss the details of what happened between you nine years ago…”
“It was yesterday!”
She quieted and I sensed all background activity outside the office door to have stopped as well. There was a long and uncomfortable pause as everyone tried to regain his and her composure. I was trembling with rage. I felt violated. I still didn’t understand why Igor had done it, but the fact that he had poured time and money into saving my life nine years later cheapened it somehow. What was the point? Had he saved me so that he could have his opportunity to murder me once again?
“What does he want?” I asked.
“He wants to see you.”
“No.”
“He thought you might feel that way.”
I didn’t say anything. What could I say? My anger was dissipating but not dissipated. I wished never to see him again.
Ms. Asosvskiy said, “It’s Thursday, Mr. Cristian, and your room is paid for through Sunday. Mr. Grundel has instructed that you may enjoy its comforts through that time and then you’re free to go off on your own.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. When there was nothing more, I stood up and went for the door of the office. She didn’t try to stop me.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon watching television and trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I had already decided that I wouldn’t be staying at the Cento Towers through the end of the week. I would have much preferred to leave the hotel immediately but I needed a plan first.
When evening came, I was still without one. Of course I thought of my family and of Jennie. I thought of my strange affliction. I thought of Igor Grundel. Nothing gave me a direction. I was more lost now than ever I had been. The world into which I had been born no longer existed. Declared dead years ago, I had no identity. The money I had carefully planted into a growing bank account had long since been gobbled up by bureaucracy. I was homeless, penniless, and alone.