by Turner, Ivan
I could offer none of these things. I was inadequate to the task. Even if I could have set up a transfusion, I had no way to tell whether or not my blood would help him or kill him. Furthermore, carrying him to Rupert’s room had sapped the very last of my energy. Without even a bed to lay on anymore, I sank to the floor and leaned up against the wall much the same way as my charge had been doing when I found him. I switched off the light.
“Help,” I whispered into the darkness. “Please.”
I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t think I died at that point. All right, it’s clear enough that I didn’t die at any point. But there was a sense of death in the way I lost consciousness. I was close to death, as close as anyone can come I suppose without actually crossing over. But I don’t think it happened at that point. I have little snatches of memory that indicated that I awoke, maybe even stood and moved around. Again, there’s no way to tell how long I was down there. I think I checked on the wounded man. I think we had a conversation. The trouble is that there are no visuals to associate with the memories. It was so utterly pitch black in the headquarters that I couldn’t have hoped to see anything without the flashlight and I don’t think I turned it on. Ultimately, though, the blackness was complete. I was dead, or as close as you can come without actually crossing over.
The memories then became more clear. I began to see things with my eyes. There were people hovering over me and bright lights. When I finally came to, I knew I was in a hospital. There was a bed beneath me and a softly painted room around me. Next to the bed was a table that I could barely see from my position. I didn’t feel as if I was restrained but I was too weak and tired to move regardless. I could smell food, hospital food. In front of me, mounted on a short boom, there was a television set. I suddenly became excited. I thought for a moment that it had all been a hallucination. Perhaps it really was just blackouts. For just that moment, I wished for it to be so. Then I wished against it. If it were all an illusion then Jennie had been an illusion as well. Of all of the things that had happened to me since I started leaping, good and bad, I wouldn’t give up even one of them if I had to give up Jennie as well.
My throat hurt badly. As I flexed the muscles in my face, I found that my lips hurt, too. I turned my head briefly but that was too much for me. In the end, I just lay back and waited, breathing in air that was recycled and cool.
After a time I fell asleep again. When I awoke, I was not alone. Sitting in a chair underneath the television was a man. He was busy doing something on what I guessed was a handheld computer but he saw my open eyes when he looked up. At first I think he was a bit shocked to see me. It was tough to tell. He was very thin and pale with blonde, almost white, hair. He was young, though. I would put him somewhere in his early twenties. The expression on his face was difficult to read. It was as if human reactions had changed over the decades. I would place his expression somewhere between awe and delight. Without a word, he up and left me.
I stared for a moment at the empty chair feeling almost nothing. The physical sensation, or lack thereof, of my body almost totally absorbed my thinking. I couldn’t get myself to consider what I had just seen. Only a moment passed, however. The man returned with two people in tow. The first, a man, wore slacks and a shirt and a tie and a white coat. He was a doctor clearly and he looked very much as if he’d come right out of 1975. He had a thick mop of black hair that was done in a sweeping wave across his head. He looked older, maybe close to forty, but like a man trying to look younger. The man who came in behind him wore scrubs. They differed somewhat from what I was used to seeing on TV and in hospitals from my era. They seemed a bit more form fitting and the color was indefinable. It was almost as if the material defied color. This second man, I presumed, was a nurse.
The doctor came and leaned over me. He lifted my arm and I saw that there was a patch over my vein in the crook of my elbow. I supposed it was an IV.
“Can you talk?” the doctor asked.
I shook my head. My throat burned with every swallow.
“Do you think you can drink something?”
I nodded as vigorously as I could.
The nurse produced what looked like a rubber bladder filled with some amber liquid. He handed it to me. It was cool to the touch and smooth without being slippery. I squeezed it in the palm of my hand almost reflexively and a few drops of the liquid seeped out onto my hand.
“Careful!” the doctor warned and helped me to lift it to my mouth. I sucked on it and the liquid flowed through the membrane and down my throat. It was not water. It went down very smoothly, coating my sore throat and giving me strength. It was gone too quickly.
“…more,” I managed to choke.
The doctor smiled and got a second bladder from the nurse. This one, however, had just plain water in it. It was good enough for me. Every sip brought me knew life and restored my clarity of thought. I began to remember, in vivid detail, the hours I had spent buried underground. The darkness. The smell. The wounded man.
“…man…”
“What?” said the blonde headed fellow. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘man’,” the doctor told him. “What man?”
“…wounded…”
“Oh!” cried the blonde headed fellow. “You must mean the man who was in the bed. The one with the gunshot wound?”
I nodded.
“Sorry to say that that poor fellow didn’t make it.” As he said it his tone never changed. I could still sense that bit of excitement underlying his words. “You are Mathew Cristian, aren’t you?”
I froze. Had I gone from the frying pan into the fire?
He shook his head. “Don’t worry. You’re safe here. There’s been no aggression against Forty Leapers in well over a hundred years. In fact, there have been hardly any Forty Leapers at all.”
“…journal…”
He smiled and went back to his chair. There was a bag underneath and he pulled out my battered and dusty journal. “It’s fantastic,” he said as he handed it to me.
I don’t know what kind of darkness passed over my features upon hearing that but he definitely sensed my anger. His casual admission of having read my journal had left me feeling violated. Many of my most private thoughts had gone into that book and they were not for the eyes of some floppy headed child.
“I didn’t mean to… I didn’t realize…”
The doctor broke in then. “Perhaps we should let him get some more rest. We’ll bring you some food in a bit if you think you can get it down.”
I nodded again, hugging my book protectively to my chest.
“…pen…”
My greatest fear was that this advanced civilization had forsaken both paper and pen but the doctor pulled one from his white coat and handed it to me. “It would be better if you slept.”
I took the pen and thanked him, glaring at the platinum man as they all left the room.
The year was 2342 and it was April in New York. The food they brought me was jello. I almost laughed when I saw it. It was pink and tasted like the color of the nurse’s scrubs. But it went down easy and further rejuvenated me. Presently, I began to get my voice back. I was still restricted to a hoarse whisper, but I could at least complete a sentence. The blonde man returned, this time a bit more reserved. He started to apologize again for reading my journal, but I waved him off. There was nothing to be done about it now and whatever his interest in me, it was clear that he had saved my life.
His name was Jefferny Smith and he was the chairman and co-founder of an organization called FLASH (Forty Leaper Analytical Historical Society). I was amused but didn’t bother to mention the error in the acronym. He was actually quite a bit older than I had thought, but that was what the miracles of modern medicine will do for you. He was close to forty but he described himself as a spoiled rich kid with nothing to do but use his money to indulge his interests. That had prompted FLASH.
Jefferny related information in a quick and jerking speech, usin
g many words that I didn’t understand. The English slang had changed over the years and I had spent so much time in the company of other Forty Leapers that I had seen none of the evolution of the language. I forced him to slow down but still fell behind his oration. We spoke for several hours and I questioned him frequently. He seemed tireless and with endless patience. It was difficult to dislike him, his enthusiasm was so great.
He had read about Forty Leapers in an old book he had unearthed in someone’s estate. At the time, he’d been a teenager. The whole concept appealed to him in a way that nothing else had. Remarkably, there was little about us on the internet. All of the data had been squirreled away somewhere or destroyed. But Jefferny’s research had uncovered a vast amount of paperwork and digital reports that were still in existence. Included were the names and photos of dozens of leapers from different eras. In some cases, he had even learned their leap routes. From what I could understand of his speech, he had actually met a Forty Leaper some years before while in Nigeria. Apparently, an African bushman had been leaping through time since before the turn of the nineteenth century. Jefferny couldn’t recall his name and the man had leaped before any sort of real communication could be established, but still Jefferny insisted that he had learned a lot from the experience.
Thursday November 26th, 2189 had been a significant date in the history of Forty Leapers. The Forty Leap Police had raided almost all of the Forty Leaper installations across the globe. The maneuver had been set up to come in a synchronized fashion. All of the installations were overtaken and all of the Forty Leapers were either killed or leaped out of the battle. With no way of determining just how many had been lost, the installations were closed off in much the same way Rogers Clinton’s headquarters had been. Anyone leaping back in would die of hunger or thirst, buried alive. I shuddered to think of it.
The governments of that time, our enemy, had done an excellent job of concealing those locations so that they couldn’t be later uncovered. At the age of thirty, Jefferny had met up with several other people, all interested in the Forty Leap phenomenon. Some were scientists and others were historians. Most of them were as rich as he was. Together they pooled their money and created FLASH. The society was really nothing more than a front for men at play. They took long trips to visit sites that were either confirmed or suspected installation sites. Jefferny had actually made three trips that had proven to be actual sites. The artifacts found there had furthered their knowledge immensely. It was interesting to hear about Forty Leaper experiences in other countries. Rupert had told me about the experiences that had brought him from England to America but that had been so long ago that the foreign countries of this world may as well have been other worlds entirely. Even my own country was foreign to me.
Eventually, Jefferny got to the part of the story that concerned me. Of all of the sites they had explored the one that was the largest and the most well known was the headquarters from which I had been rescued. In Forty Leaper circles, two names resounded among the masses. Rogers Clinton and Mathew Cristian. When it became clear that both of us had leaped from that particular installation, finding it had been made a priority. But they had no way of discovering its exact location. The information on it was so spotty, in fact, that no one was even sure it was in Manhattan. The city had been remade and remade again since I’d seen it last and there was much beneath the surface that I had called familiar. I thought of my amazement at the sight of Manhattan, rescued from United Arab control, rebuilt and functioning. That beautiful city had been destroyed and rebuilt again and again since then. Time was a match for anything, for everything. Everything, that is, except a Forty Leaper.
Six months ago, Jefferny had received an anonymous communication confirming that the site for which they had so long searched was definitely located in midtown Manhattan. Since they were used to receiving these kinds of communications, they ignored it. But the communication kept coming, over and over. Only when they replied that they had received the information did it stop. FLASH was unaccustomed to accepting information anonymously. They ignored it. A week later a new message arrived asking why they hadn’t begun to investigate the site. Jefferny was adamant that “midtown Manhattan” did not constitute a site. It was a region and they couldn’t go tearing up a region.
In the end, more information had come through and the members of FLASH could not help themselves from investigating. The source was still anonymous but I suspected that a Forty Leaper had either made it out of the headquarters during the assault or had leaped out a few days prior to the assault and had only just leaped back in. After learning of the battle and the fate of the installation, any leaper would have come forward with the information. Although, why remain anonymous? Then again, why not? If I had leaped from a place of safety to a place of safety, yet still unknown to me, I would have been reluctant to advertise my condition as well. As far as I knew, the whole thing was a complicated ploy to round us up and be done with us once and for all.
It was only when Jefferny informed me that I never need leap again that I started to hope. One of the major pharmaceutical companies had created an adrenal inhibitor and distributed it in pill form. The pill was to be taken daily and the effects were near one hundred percent. The possible side effects were drowsiness, lethargy, and muscle cramps. Occurrences of side effects were low. Use as directed.
I was so directed.
Ironically, I was excited to be unburdened with my disease. True, I was not cured. If I stopped taking the pills for three days then my system would return to normal and I would be at risk again. I began taking them as soon as I got out of the hospital. Jefferny put me up in his home while an apartment was made ready for me. I asked him about work so that I could support myself and he smiled, telling me that it had all been arranged.
Jefferny’s bright idea was to turn the headquarters into a museum. From mausoleum to museum. Of course, the primary attraction would be me. I could give speeches and answer questions. My journal, the parts of it that I didn’t consider too terribly private, could be reproduced and displayed. I didn’t so much object to the idea as I was unenthusiastic about it. I told this to Jefferny one morning over breakfast. There were still Forty Leapers out there, popping into and out of realities completely unaware of the situation surrounding them. Most of them had been persecuted and were afraid. They were coming through with weapons which made them dangerous. Who knew who would pop into the middle of speech and start shooting? That idea, by the way, seemed to excite Jefferny. The lure of the possible leap was more than he could bear.
I toyed with the last of my eggs. “But it doesn’t help us,” I said.
This seemed to sober him. Despite his age, he was such a boy. Certainly people lived much longer these days. The average lifespan was in the upper nineties with fewer debilitations. But the rate of maturity seemed to have been retarded as well. Jefferny could not always see his way clear to consequences without having it spelled out for him.
“How can we help?” he asked. More often now, he was using less of the slang that was popular in New York these days. He understood that it made no sense to me and hindered our communication. English as a whole had changed. It had been melded with Spanish to a certain extent, but was still the dominant language. Spanish still existed but was rarely spoken in the United States, which was still the United States. Jefferny never used the word water. He always said agua. In fact, he was totally unfamiliar with water as an expression. The look on his face when I had used it had been priceless. It had given me a good laugh which, for me, had always been rare events.
I pondered the question. Like many ideas before, I hadn‘t really thought it through. The idea that we needed to help leapers had occurred to me at that moment with no framework of how to put it into place. As I reached for my pills, an idea came to me.
“How about finding a cure?” I said. “These inhibitors are effective, but I’m stuck on a drug for the rest of my life. Besides which, I don’t feel one hundred percent lik
e myself. I can get excited, but there’s no adrenaline to accompany it, or very little. The physical sensation of excitement is missing. My enthusiasm for anything is disconnected.”
He thought about this. “I guess we could fund some research. What else?”
I threw my arms in the air. “I don’t know. Forty Leapers need a place to go when they come back into the time stream. We come in lost and scared. We have no dinero and no idea how much time has passed. The longer the leap, the more el mundo has changed. We don’t know where we’re going find food or agua. We don’t know where we’re going to sleep. We don’t know who’s going to help us and who’s going to try and kill us.
“Maybe that’s what we should do. Forty Leapers need a safe place to go. They need a place where all of those things will be available to them while they are introduced to el mundo nuevo. This place needs to be so public that everyone in el mundo knows about it. If anyone leaps in, there’ll be a hundred people who know just exactly who to call.”
“A foundation?” Jefferny asked. “You want FLASH to sponsor a foundation for Forty Leapers?”
I hesitated for a second and then nodded vigorously. That was exactly what I wanted. It could contain the histories of any of the Forty Leapers that passed through its doors. It could provide that safe haven that we always craved. There could be laboratories devoted to seeking out a cure. How would it be for a Forty Leaper to step through those doors and be handed the ticket out of their turmoil? It was perfect.
Jefferny thought so, too. His contemplation turned into exuberance and he began to scribble furiously on his PDA. All the while he was talking to me. But in his excitement, he had lapsed back into the quick slang of English and I wasn’t getting it all. All that I managed to understand was that I was to be put in charge of organizing the whole thing and that it would be called the Mathew Cristian Foundation.