Forty Leap

by Turner, Ivan

  Maybe he was right, but still I hesitated. Once I took that first pill, the decision was made. What would Phinneas Scot do?

  “I’m just not ready, Rupert,” I told him, even more guilt creeping into my belly. How long had he been here? How many leapers had come and gone through the doors of the Foundation, always seeing Rupert Oderick, never staying on. He was as alone here as he had been leaping from era to era. And now I was abandoning him as well.

  Yet he didn’t seem angry. “No worries,” he said with a grin. “I felt the same way at first. You’ll take the pills.”

  I smiled back at him, but was much less convinced.

  Rupert let the matter drop and told me to help myself to food. Presently, we began to chat, haltingly at first, but soon more comfortably. In no time, I felt very at ease in his company, the matter of the cure laid to rest for the moment. He took the time to explain how Forty Leaping was all but a thing of the past. The Foundation, which had helped countless Forty Leapers, including himself, was considered the greatest achievement in Forty Leap history. Once the cure had been invented, though, its days became numbered. The funding grew more and more sparse as it appeared that Forty Leapers were becoming extinct. The last few years, Rupert had been struggling himself to keep the Foundation going. Hardly any leapers came through anymore. Rupert never knew if the next one was going to be last one forever.

  “Why bother, then?” I finally asked him.

  “It’s complex,” he said. “I popped in here about, God it’s almost fifty years! At the time, the place was busy. I stayed on to help and thought maybe I’d write a book about the whole thing. As time slipped by, I worked more and wrote less. The people that worked here, some of them other leapers some not, eventually drifted off. But I stayed. I felt at home here and there were always new people literally popping in.

  “But that changed. After all, there’s a finite amount of us out there. I guess they’ll be sprinkling in long after I’m dead, but this place will be long gone. Truth to tell, I’ve stuck with it mostly because I was waiting for you.”

  This was a nice blow that made me want to reach out and take all six pills at once. As if just his presence wasn’t enough to inspire guilt, the added notion that all of his hopes had been pinned on my arrival practically crushed my resolve. But Rupert was decades older than I was. Decades. No matter how long people lived in this century, those decades would still show up. One day it would be just me and no Rupert. Then I would be sitting there and waiting for…what?

  Phinneas Scot?

  No sense being shackled to the world by a stopwatch.

  After lunch, we went back to the main building and to the large room that Rupert had taken as his office. I saw the new date next to my name. November 17th, 2588. Apparently, Rupert had updated it either that morning or the night before. It was far later than most of the other dates on the map but not Rogers Clinton’s. I had missed him by less than two months. And he was dead.

  Rupert’s eyes welled up with tears. “He came through in the morning. There are sensors down in the museum that trip an alarm any time someone goes down there; no one ever goes down there anymore. So I knew it was a leaper. I knew it wasn’t you, Mathew. It couldn’t be you because you leaped from the great room. It was a veteran of the war. It had to be. No one’s leaped from the old headquarters since 2188. There really wasn’t anyone else it could have been besides Rogers.

  “He was still shooting when he came through. Even without the alarms, I would have heard the gunshots. I went down there, calling out, telling him he was safe. It had to be Rogers, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it until I saw him. Mathew, you should have been there. He held two guns, both of them empty and he didn’t have the strength to reload them. There was blood on his face and blood on his chest. He was sweating and filthy. There was a smell on him that instantly brought me back to that battle and that place. When he saw me, he dropped the guns. He knew me, I suppose, but never called me by name.

  “He died right there, just fell into my arms, took a few breaths and died. His wounds were so bad, Mathew, so bad.”

  We were silent for a while after that.

  “I buried him in the courtyard,” he said. Then, as if it had been building up inside of him for all of these years, he began to tell me about other people we had known. Most of them had been passing acquaintances for me, but Rupert had served with them. Every once in a while he would say, “you remember him?” and I would nod as if I had been as intimate with these people as Rupert. He spoke of Natalie with venom. It came out, what she had done, after our argument. It could never have been easy for her after that, leaping into the heart of the Forty Leap Foundation and regarded as the greatest individual enemy Forty Leapers had ever known. She had been tried and jailed in 2494, fifty years before Rupert’s own arrival. She had spent two years in prison before dying of cancer. I looked at the bottle of pills, still in my hand. They could cure Forty Leaping, but cancer was still as deadly as ever.

  Hours passed. For Rupert, I think our conversation was cathartic. Sharing all of this information with someone who would care helped ease him out of a great funk. He kept saying how great it was to have me with him. Now he could finally be happy. At some point, I covertly stashed the pills in my pocket. I kept wanting to take them, but something stopped me. Finally, the afternoon stretched into evening and we went for dinner. He promised to show me the city the next day.

  Manhattan had truly rebounded from its forced condemnation after the Forty Leap war. Many of the great buildings had been reconstructed. Times Square was brighter than ever. Broadway was magical. We saw several shows. Someone had used holograms to recreate shows with original casts. The novelty was interesting, but I much preferred the live actors. The language barrier here was worse than it had been in 2189. My English was growing ever more obsolete with each leap. Rupert was, of course, fluent in the current dialect, but never used it with me. I wanted him to do so, but he refused. He told me it was a break not having to spit out that trash day after day. With me, he could speak proper English.

  We even got out of the city on a few occasions. After all of the years and all of the technological advancements, I was surprised at how little man had spoiled the Earth. In fact, the countryside was brighter than ever. The sky was more blue. All in all, people seemed to be doing a good job at keeping Mother Earth healthy. Maybe all of the filth and trouble of my era had done its share of teaching.

  Rupert and I did our job of bonding. The friendship that had started in 2189 and been cut short grew. I let him look at passages from my journal. He was very curious about Arab occupied New York. He was very curious about Jennie. He also shared with me what he called his life’s work. It was a compilation of Forty Leaper histories, from the most obscure individual right on up to Rogers Clinton. He asked me for a copy of my journal, but I declined. Too many parts were very private and I was reluctant to show them to anyone, even someone as close to me as Rupert.

  In spite of all of the good times we were having, there were the pills. They hung over our heads like an albatross. I could not take them. Every time I thought I might, I developed this terrible panic. If I started them and did not finish, they would later be useless. I had to be sure. I was never sure. Rupert knew, of course. Every once in a while, he would ask. “Did you take your morning meds, Mathew?” Every time, I would look away. He was so good about it for so long. “No worries, mate. No worries.” But even Rupert had his breaking point.

  One evening, nine weeks after my arrival, he sat me down in the library and his smile was gone, replaced by a grimace, by frustration.

  “Do you know what happens, Mathew?” he asked. He had been drinking. Rupert liked a glass of wine with dinner and sometimes a brandy before bed. He was an old world kind of person. But this time he had gone over the limit and I doubted as if it were wine or brandy that muddied his mind. I could tell that his frustrations with me had come to a boiling point.

  “Rupert,” I tried.

 
“Don’t cut me off!”

  I froze, waiting.

  “When they gave me the cure, I gulped it down without thinking. And I regretted it right away. You see, Mathew, the Leapers come in and they get reintegrated into society and ole Rupert is left behind, waiting.”

  “Rupert,” I said again.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Mathew. All these years, I’ve been waiting for my friend to pop back into my life and stay here and now you want to go.”

  Suddenly, he started to weep. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen and it tore right through my heart. More than anything, I wanted him to stop.

  But he continued. “It’s lonely, Mathew. So lonely. These people live a different life and speak a different language. I’m a relic from a time they don’t even write about anymore.”

  I reached for him.

  “Don’t touch me!” He lashed out at me, much stronger than any ninety year old man I had ever known. His swing caught my hand and stung my knuckle where it hit. I recoiled and he stood, glaring down at me. I was suddenly tense, afraid. I stood as well and as I did so, he wheeled on me. Though I tried to dodge, he grazed my cheek, right at the bone and I staggered back. I was stunned and he pressed the advantage, coming in with both fists flying. He hit me twice before I could scramble away, tripping over my own feet and going to the floor. Even if I was a fighter, I don’t think I would have had the presence of mind to hit him back. All I could feel was that cold guilt. I had let him down. I deserved this.

  “All these years!” he shouted as he kept coming and I kept trying to get away. “Wasted!”

  “Please,” I whimpered. “Rupert, please.”

  “Shut up, traitor!”

  “Rupert. Rupert!”

  He stood over me, fire in his eyes, his fist clenched, ready for another blow. “What happens next, Mathew? What happens?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, massaging my aching body.

  “The next time you jump, you’ll be in a different world. One day, there won’t be any more Earth to jump into. It will be this dead rock because the sun will have burned out. What then?”

  His words stung more than his blows. They were similar words to the ones I had used against Rogers. It was the same argument. Had I crossed over? Was I now fighting for the right to be a Forty Leaper?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  He lowered his fist, waved me away. “Go then. You’ll see.”

  He turned from me and hesitated for just a split second. Then he left the room. I lay there for a long time, my heart pounding, waiting for him to come back. But he didn’t and eventually I got up and went to bed.

  The next morning, when I awakened, I felt disoriented, as if it was only a dream. I got out of bed and washed, my body tingling. There was a bruise on my cheek where that first punch had landed, but no other marks. I was stiff and sore, but I would be fine. I didn’t know whether Rupert would want to see me again, but I felt that I had to face him.

  Leaving my room, I made my way to the dining area. I could smell breakfast. When I entered, Rupert was already eating, and reading from a small screen. He looked up at me and I could tell that his anger had faded with his drunkenness.

  “You’re still here,” he said. “I thought, what with the fight...”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Soon, though. I can feel it.”

  He nodded and I thought I saw his eyes glaze over. “I’m glad.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to apologize to you, Mathew. I’m sorry for what I did. It’s just been so hard.”

  I sat down next to him. “Is it true, Rupert, that you were waiting for me all these years?”

  He shook his head. “When I first started, it was great. There weren’t a lot of Forty Leapers, but there were enough. I was always busy and always working hard at reintegrating people into this society. I found them lives and they disappeared. From most of them, I never got so much as a Christmas card.” I saw the anger flash in his eyes and I recoiled slightly. But then he saddened again. “And all the time I was reintegrating others, I never bothered to reintegrate myself. I just got older and older and older and now I’m alone. When I realized that I was locked in here, I found something else to hope for.” He looked up at me. “When you showed up, Mathew, I was delighted. I thought I would finally have a friend to share the rest of my life with.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Rupert. I just…couldn’t.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just jealous, is all. I’m ninety four years old. I may live another twenty or thirty years, but you’ll go on for another eighty or more yourself. Before long, you’d just be me.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It is,” he said, looking at me seriously. “Never stop leaping, Mathew. It’s like a sea captain being landlocked. You’re not built to survive in one time anymore. Believe me, you’d be better off dead.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe you should just let go of it, Rupert. If you’ve got twenty or thirty years, that’s a long time to be miserable.”

  We talked some more, exchanged goodbyes and then he went out. He said he didn’t want to be there when it happened. He would rather say goodbye and have it be final. While he was out, I wandered through the building, looking at the things that I had built and the things that had been built after me. It was all so much different, so much the same. Before I left, though, I came to a decision. I scanned my entire journal onto a memory chip and left it for him with my affections. Shortly afterward, I leaped.

  Chapter XI

  I popped into an alley, which meant that the Foundation had been taken down and two buildings had been put up in its place. Sure enough, they surrounded me on both sides, shooting upward into the Manhattan sky. The alley was well lit and well traveled and passersby stopped in surprise at my appearance. I made no moves, just stared at them staring at me. Eventually, their surprise gone, the moved on, content with their own inner explanations of what had just happened. A young man said something to me, but I didn’t understand him. There were English words in his sentence, but the context was wrong. I couldn’t even tell whether it was a question or a statement. In what I deemed a universal gesture, I shrugged my shoulders. He, too, moved on.

  I stood for a brief time, watching the very human looking people in really not so strange clothing moving about and then decided to move about as well. Why not? I was pretty freshly showered and dressed in clean clothing. I didn’t particularly stand out. It occurred to me that, for the very first time, I had reemerged from a leap in complete anonymity. Not only didn’t these people seem to know who or what I was, they just didn’t seem to care. And yet there was nothing otherworldly about them that concerned me, either. They walked like people with a purpose and talked to each other or to the air. They looked in shop windows, greeted passersby, and ate at outdoor cafes. It could have been New York in my lifetime or the lifetime after that. But it was several lifetimes and I had no money and didn’t even speak the language.

  As I walked the streets, I saw a number of things that I didn’t recognize. There were signs that made sense and signs that didn’t. The technology was too far removed for me to even puzzle it out. But, as luck would have it, I stumbled upon, of all things, a book store. In my time, people had been chanting that print was dead. And yet, here was the proof that it would never die. Print would outlive us all.

  I walked in to find an immaculate store with shelves and shelves of books. A young lady floated about standing on what looked like an oversized serving platter. I couldn’t see any jets or vents and yet the thing hung in mid air, supporting her weight and, if my guess is correct, adjusting itself to her movements so that she would have no trouble retaining her balance. Amazing.

  “Solutions!” she said to me with a smile.

  “I’m sorry?” I asked instinctively, and her expression changed instantly. I wondered if I had offended her. She turned away quickly, preferring to ignore me.r />
  Before I could think of something else to do, there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw a pretty young girl, about nineteen or twenty years old, with bright eyes and a straight face. “English?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you speak it?”

  She made a funny gesture with her hand. “Some. I make study of it.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend her.”

  “Offend?”

  “Insult?” I offered. “Anger?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Not angry,” she said, motioning to the lady on the serving platter. “Confused.”

  “Oh.” I was confused as well.

  “She never heard English.”

  “Oh,” I repeated with a bit more clarity. I wondered what parts of the world still spoke it if one woman never heard and another was studying it.

  “I am Saritala,” she said, extending a hand.

  “Mathew.”

  She giggled. “A very old name. Very English.”

  I smiled back. “Do you work here?”

  “No.”

  “Can you help me ask the lady for a book?”

  “What kind of book?”

  “I study Forty Leaping.”

  Saritala shrugged her shoulders and moved off toward the lady. I heard them whispering, clearly heard Saritala say the phrase Forty Leaping, when the lady on the serving platter moved off toward one of the shelves.

  “There is one book,” Saritala said on her return. “She will retrieve it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You like stories?”

  “Hmm?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Stories. Make believe. Like Forty Leap.”

  I was brought up short for a minute, not sure if I was interpreting her English correctly. I was about to investigate further when the lady returned with a book entitled The Forty Leaps by Rupert Oderick. I was immediately taken aback and opened the book to find that it had been translated into the current language. Though there were English words scattered throughout the text, it remained almost indecipherable.