by Turner, Ivan
A contingent of soldiers stood in the middle of the road about 100 yards on the hypotenuse. There, an apparatus had been set up. It looked somewhat like what I had seen after leaping out of and into the Rocky Mountain facility, but it was more streamlined. The tube was a bit more narrow, with tubes jutting from the bottom and the top. There were computers, tiny little things, sitting on stands a few feet away from it. Around the whole setup was a white fence that appeared to be made of plastic. The scariest part was the large sign that faced the department store. On it was a picture of me and, in bright bold letters, my name. The whole thing stood in the exact spot from which I’d leaped.
“They’ve been waiting for you, also,” Posner said to me.
So fifty odd years had done nothing to ease the tensions against me and people with my affliction. We were still regarded with this irrational fear. We were still hunted. I had no idea how we were going to get past the contingent. The picture was recent, or at least as recent as my last leap. It was a shot from the Rocky Mountain facility, probably blown up from some video footage. I had this stricken look on my face, a look I remember flashing regularly during the firefights there. There was a speck of blood on my cheek as well. I suppose it added to the drama.
“Now,” Posner said, dragging me into the street.
A group of people was passing by and we melded into them, moving in pace with them, blending in.
“Keep your head down.”
I didn’t see that it mattered much. My clothing was fifty years out of style. Everyone was wearing slacks or long skirts. The time of denim seemed to have finally come to an end. It was a chilly fall day so people were also in long coats whereas I had none. The cape was hardly enough. I felt the cold against my bare arms and a chill settled into my gut. But the populace was far more concerned with their own lives and my odd condition went unnoticed. Posner led me down the street, away from my would-be prison. Once we rounded the corner, he seemed to relax and pulled out what looked like an iPod.
“Hello?” The face of a middle aged man appeared on the miniature screen and it looked vaguely familiar.
“You’ll never guess who I’ve got with me, Philip,” Posner said to the screen.
Philip, obviously Philip Kung, pulled a face. “Not now, Akron. Okay, what was her name…?”
Akron’s smile grew. “I’m on duty, Philip. It’s Mathew Cristian.”
Dr. Kung’s expression grew dark for a moment, as if he thought Posner was pulling his leg. Then Posner pointed the screen at me and I could the excitement as it radiated off of him.
“Drat!” he cried, which was the last thing I expected to hear. “I’ve just left the building. All right, I’ll meet you back up on twelve. How much was I off?”
Posner smiled. “Four feet.”
“Four feet! That’s incredible. I bet I can narrow that down even further. And those buffoons with the government still think a Leaper stays in place during a leap. Good job, Akron. I’ll see you soon.”
Posner regarded him and shut down the phone.
I don’t know what other people would have done in my situation, but I just went along with the whole thing. Lewis Kung had helped me when my situation was desperate so I was inclined to trust his son and the man working for his son. I was convinced as well that the man on the other end of the phone was Philip Kung. The resemblance to his father, who I had met only a week ago by my time, was unmistakable. Of course, even years ago, there had been technology enough to fake it. To my untrained eye, though, the whole thing seemed far too elaborate a ploy. Posner led me down the street and into a building and I followed. I was grateful to be out of the chill. The sun was going down and the temperature had dropped in just the time it had taken us to walk a few blocks. Looking back at the street, I realized that it was empty of cars. What I saw actually surprised me. There were tracks running through the gutter but everyone appeared to be either on bicycles or on foot.
“What happened to the cars?” I asked.
He led me to the elevators. “Private cars were outlawed about twenty years ago. The cost of energy was too high. People began to resort to bikes. The result was that people stayed within their own communities, which put a strain on free enterprise. So the trolley system was developed.” That explained the tracks. “The trolleys run around the city day and night and they’re free. Well, you pay taxes for them. You can flag one down at any time. It’s a bit more complicated than I’m making it seem, but it works pretty well.”
We stepped into an elevator and Posner rang twelve. Although I should have had many questions, I couldn’t seem to put any of them into words. I just stood there, looking around, taking note of the very normal looking elevator as it took us speedily up to the twelfth floor. Outside the elevator was a short carpeted hallway that led in both directions. There was a door at either end. Posner motioned left so I preceded him to that door. Leaning in ahead of me, he opened it up and I stepped inside.
There was a small reception area, but we spent no time there. He led me directly into the back and through a number of other closed doors. It didn’t take me long to realize that we were in a laboratory and that raised some concerns for me. I had had quite enough of laboratories and experiments. I had vowed never to be anyone’s test subject again and I planned to honor that vow. Posner finally found the room he wanted, a room with just the one door, and led me inside. It was sterile white, with counters lining three of the walls and shelves above the counters. Two patient tables were set up side by side in the center of the room. Each had instruments mounted on booms a workable distance from them. On the right hand table sat a young girl.
“What are you still doing here?” Posner asked, surprised to see her.
“That’s what I want to know,” she answered testily. “Rudy was supposed to come back with some test results and let me go an hour ago.”
“I’m sorry, Natalie,” Posner said. “I’ve just got to wait for Philip and then I’ll check it out. In the meantime, I’d like to introduce you to Mathew Cristian.”
She eyed me suspiciously for a moment, then her face brightened. Of course brightening for Natalie wasn’t terribly bright. She was a seventeen year old girl with an obvious and giant chip on her shoulder.
“So you’re the hero of the Forty Leapers?”
“The what?” I asked.
“The Forty Leapers?” she taunted. “You know. Us.”
I looked at Posner and he smiled. “Forty Leap is the accepted term for your condition.”
“Oh,” I replied, without having any understanding.
“You started the riot that started the revolution,” Natalie explained. “What was that like, taking down that prison in the Rockies?”
I shook my head. It had been awful and I told her so. I was inclined to tell her the true story of that awful night, but I was interrupted by Posner, who was preparing a syringe and attempting to roll up my sleeve. I withdrew my arm.
He looked up at me, surprised. “It’s just a couple of tests.”
I shook my head. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but no.”
He stood there, needle in hand, undecided about what to do. A quick glance toward the young girl betrayed his confidence. Placing the needle on one of the counter tops, he informed me that he would have to see what Dr. Kung would want to do about this. Then he left the room.
We sat for a time, Natalie and I, not speaking to each other. She was staring at me. I was trying to ignore it. Finally, she said, “You’re not a hero.”
I looked over and saw that her initial brightness had faded entirely. She now regarded me with something akin to disdain. But I agreed with her assessment and I told her so.
“Were you even there, in the Rockies?”
I nodded.
“Did you shoot anyone?”
Maybe the question should have been funny to me but it wasn’t. I shuddered and shook my head.
She made a sound in her throat, this one definitely revealing disdain.
I found myself eager to explain to her who and what I was. I don’t know why I felt that I needed to justify myself to her. And yet I said nothing. I stared at her staring at me.
“So it’s all a lie.”
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s not my lie.”
There was another pause in the conversation during which my host arrived. I recognized the man from Posner’s phone call. He was a bit older than I had at first assumed but still middle aged. He had a commanding air about him and Posner slunk in behind him very much in his shadow.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cristian. Akron tells me you’re reluctant to submit to testing. That’s understandable, but unacceptable. You’re unique in that you are fresh from a leap and it was a long leap. The information I can get from a blood test and a brain scan could be invaluable toward identifying the cause of Forty Leaping in the first place.
“The window of opportunity is closing fast so I won’t beat around the bush. I’ve come prepared to make you an offer, something in exchange for your cooperation.”
I motioned to speak, but he put up his hand. “No time for arguments. Jennie Campbell, a woman with whom you’ve had some acquaintance, is one hundred and two years old and still alive, but very ill. She is in a hospital in New York City. In exchange for your cooperation right now, I can give you an identity, a little bit of money, and a ticket for a six o’clock flight tomorrow morning. Yes or no, Mr. Cristian.”
I sat frozen in place. To be honest, not much had registered after he mentioned Jennie’s name. At the moment, I found myself stumbling through my memory of his words, picking out details. One hundred and two years old. Very ill.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
He held a mini computer up to me. “Everything you need to know is on here. You can trust me the same way you trusted my father over fifty years ago when he saved your life.”
That last was a not too subtle way of reminding me of the debt I owed Lewis Kung. I noticed Posner standing well in the background, bouncing proudly on the balls of his feet. They had me. They knew they had me and even the chance to see Jennie, even an ancient and dying Jennie, was an offer I could not refuse.
The tests were mercifully short. Everything he needed to do, he needed to do quickly. I lay down on the table, noticed Natalie watching me carefully. Dr. Kung pulled over one of the mounted instruments, a large sort of helmet, and placed it above my head and over my face. Though it was not all enclosing, I could see nothing but the light coming from underneath the lip of the helmet. When it was activated, it emitted a low buzzing. The buzzing was irritating and got into my head like a swarm of mosquitoes. Beyond it I could hear Kung and Posner moving about, but all of the external sounds blended into one another, leaving me almost completely deprived of my most important senses. As this was going one, they took blood from my arm. I felt something smooth and cold run first across my chest and then across my belly. Though there was nothing painful, the experience was still excruciating. It ended in less than two hours and yet it seemed an interminable ordeal.
When I finally sat up, I noticed that Natalie was gone. Dr. Kung was scribbling on an electronic clipboard and Posner was running some tubes through a machine.
“Some of us have your best interests at heart,” Dr. Kung said to me. “Some of us understand the consequences of your condition.”
I said nothing, quickly deciding that I didn’t care for him and praying that he could deliver on his promises.
He didn’t look up at me. “Akron will show you to a room where you can get some sleep. We’ll have you up early in the morning so that you can make your flight.”
Chapter VII
My new name was Allen Burke. I was from New York, which was fine because I actually was from New York. Posner advised that I keep my mouth shut except when directly questioned. It wouldn’t do for me to make friends in public. The official stance on Forty Leapers was that they were enemies of the state. Though the facts were clear to parties in charge, those facts were distorted when released to the public. Leaping through time, according to propaganda, was controllable and used as a tool for espionage. There was a litany of items, both secure and non-secure, that had been stolen by Forty Leapers. A leader in a small burgeoning country had been assassinated. Any Leapers who were identified were immediately incarcerated or executed.
According to Posner, Dr. Kung had spent his entire life working on behalf of the Leapers. It was his contention that the only way to eliminate the problem was to eliminate the condition. If no one leaped through time then no one would be persecuted for it. The early network of which his father had been a part had fallen to pieces shortly after the destruction of the Rocky Mountain Facility. The search for both Neville and myself had exhausted men and resources. My leap wasn’t officially recorded until several weeks after the incident. With no evidence, the federal government had been forced to drop the case against my brothers. I was glad to hear that and hoped it satisfied Martie at least. Neville had been smuggled out of the hospital and he, too, had leaped. But his leap went unrecorded. For months, the police kept up the search for a man who was nowhere on Earth. When all was said and done, Posner gave me a wealth of information and delivered a message from Dr. Kung inviting me back after I had seen Jennie. I thanked him for all he had done and told him to pass on that thanks to Dr. Kung. I should be dead or worse without them and the gift that Philip Kung was giving me was priceless.
I said goodbye to Akron Posner.
Once on the plane, my thoughts turned away from all things but Jennie. I realize that I thought of her as she had been in 2023, when we had been in love. I could not picture her as an old woman, certainly not a woman of one hundred years. Dr. Kung had said she was ill but I didn’t know what that meant for a hundred and two year old woman. It frightened me to think of her as gravely ill, perhaps on her deathbed. Had I leaped almost eighty years through time just to watch her die? What would happen if I missed her?
The flight landed before nine o’clock New York time. Without any luggage, I was able to disembark and make my way quickly out of the airport. Unlike Wisconsin, New York had not made complete use of the trolley system. Individually owned cars were illegal nationwide, but taxis were in abundance. I grabbed one and told the driver which hospital I needed to visit. He looked at me queerly, the hospital laying deep inside Manhattan, which was not easy access for a cab. He told me it would cost a lot. I told him I didn’t care.
The roads leading out of the airport were clear and well kept. The vehicles on them resembled the vehicles of fifty years before. They were sleek and looked like they were made of paper. I saw no private vehicles. Everything was labeled. There were police cars and taxi cabs and delivery trucks. Apparently there were no trolleys on the highways either, though. I was going to ask the driver about it, but thought better of the idea. It was smarter at this point to live in ignorance. If I gave myself away as a, what did she call it, Forty Leaper I would never get to see Jennie.
Once we reached the city, I saw the driver’s point. Deeper into the city, most of the roads had been converted for trolleys or bicycles. Only official vehicles were allowed on the regular streets. My driver once again told me that it would be faster and cheaper to get out at the edge of the city and take the trolleys. I told him that I was tired and didn’t feel like it. I would wait out the ride and pay him for his time. This seemed to satisfy him without giving him even the slightest hint that I just didn’t know what to do or where to go. I watched out the window as he took a circuitous route through the city I had once known well. Buildings that were new ninety years before were old now. Many of them still existed, but they had been changed, redone. The South Street Seaport jutted out of the east side of the island like a pinnacle of modern technology. And yet, it was billed as a throwback to the old shipping days of the twenties and thirties. Of course that was the twenties and thirties of the twenty-first century so it was hardly old fashioned to me.
At length, we made it to the ho
spital and I handed him the identification card given to me by Philip Kung. I could only hope that it was legitimate and that there was enough money on it. Otherwise I would be at a loss. The driver inserted it into a machine and instantly a number popped up for the fare. He passed back a keypad and I authorized the payment with the PIN given to me. A green LED lit up and the card was ejected. He handed it back to me and thanked me. I took it and got out of the car. I didn’t envy him the trip out of the city.
The hospital lobby was a sprawling affair with paintings and sculpture. There were several security personnel posted at different positions. A large reception area was situated off to my left and a waiting area to my right. It looked more like the lobby of a hotel than the lobby of a hospital. The check-in desk had nine clerks instead of the one or two hospitals had employed in my time. We were in the heart of midtown, the building a new building, at least new from my perspective. Large individual letters were posted above the reception desk identifying it as the MACrosoft Corporate Health Center.
A timid young man looked up at me from behind his station at reception. It was almost like looking at a version of my own self in my youth. He looked completely out of place in this people heavy position. He looked as if his life were boring and unfulfilling. Without having spoken a word to him, I felt a kinship. His name was Gerelled, which I thought to be an odd name, or at least an odd spelling of a common name. I wondered if people called him Gerry.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said to me.
I responded in kind and asked him where I could find Jennie. A queer expression crossed his features, but he made a show of looking it up and provided me with a room number and a visitor’s pass. When I say he made a show of it, I got the impression that he already knew it and was pretending not to know it for my benefit. That, in and of itself was odd, but what he said to me was even more strange.
“Stay as long as you like, sir.”
I thanked him, making an effort to be extra nice and extra courteous. Jennie was on the seventh floor in what was known as the Hospice Ward. Some terms never go away and never change their meaning. Jennie was dying.