by Agster, Joe
Full of anxiety, he hurriedly leaves his apartment and makes a straight line toward Cassie’s place, knocking on her door to no avail. She’s probably out with Alaina and Wyatt. He doesn’t want to bother her. After all, she provided him with space when he demanded it. Nonetheless, she relishes being his helper, his Nightingale. She would surely want to ameliorate his condition, and counsel him on what he should do. He decides to change his clothes into something more nighttime and dining appropriate, and head out looking for her.
He heads downstairs and makes the first stop at the coffee shop. He then checks the various restaurants in Zone F, all without finding her. He then remembers a conversation they all had about exploring the different zones. From that he concludes they are most likely in Zone D. It’s the one place she hasn’t visited yet.
Zone D is considered the cultural district, containing museums and art galleries, and fine dining restaurants. As Friend steps through the portal into the new zone he is awed at the fascinating art: various sculptures line the streets and canvassed paintings adorn the walls of the buildings. Classical music plays through the street speakers. Something in him tells him this is the kind of thing he had appreciated in his past life.
As he walks by an art exhibit, he stops and marvels at the various pieces, encased through a window. He stands and analyzes for a few minutes, trying to understand the different styles and periods, some as old as five hundred years. It would make sense that some the best art the world has ever seen would be rescued.
“Friend?” Cassie calls out from a distance, hastily moving toward him. “You feeling better? We were just heading to dinner. Want to join us?”
“It happened again,” he tells her.
“That’s it then. You’re sticking with me until we figure this out,” she dictates, to his satisfaction.
They enter an upscale seafood restaurant, decorated with classical Renaissance art. The ambiance brings back memories of his first romantic dinner with Cassie, just before the announcement. The four of them are seated promptly as the restaurant quickly fills up. After they order their meals, the conversation steers to their eventual jobs.
Wyatt speaks, “If we don’t start work until next week, how are so many already working?”
“I heard they arrived much earlier, some even weeks before. There’s supposedly an incentive to start work early,” Cassie responds.
The discussion focuses on the coming weeks, making Friend feel uneasy at the thought of the unknown. Their meals arrive, and Friend is instantly drawn to the aroma of the rice dish before him. The conversation is quiet for the first few bites, until Alaina feels compelled to continue the conversation.
“Friend, thank you very much for bringing us here,” she tells him, caressing his arm, as they all stare at him in gratitude, Cassie brandishing a smile.
For the next few minutes the mood turns light, the group joking and laughing at each other. Suddenly, Friend collapses to the ground, losing unconscious. Cassie gets up to check his breathing, screaming for help. He is unresponsive, his lifeless body ignoring her slaps to get him to awake. The other restaurant guests look on with a mix of concern and curiosity.
Within a couple minutes, a paramedic crew arrives to check on him, but he is still out cold. They try various scents and techniques to stimulate his revival without progress. Realizing his condition may be dire, they load him onto a stretcher, quickly load it onto a medic trolley and head for the hospital in Zone C.
19:12
Zone C Hospital, Emergency Ward
Friend comes to, slowly sitting up. He looks around the tiny plain white room, devoid of liveliness save a picture of purple tulips situated near the door. Cassie is sitting there, along with a doctor who is observing his vitals on a monitor. The doctor is younger, light skinned, almost balding. The room is fairly small, white walls with little decoration, typical for a hospital room.
“Where am I?” Friend asks, lying almost motionless.
“You’re in the Zone C hospital, Aiden. Try to relax. I’ll return shortly,” the doctor tells him, as he nods and exits the room.
“How long have I been out?” he asks Cassie.
“About two hours.”
“It keeps happening, Cassie. I saw the bright white light, and a woman who keeps telling me to undo it. But this time there was more. A strange city, similar in size to Las Vegas, but with much taller, finely shaped buildings, surrounded by endless grassy hills with some trees, and an ocean off to a distance. Children were playing, and I was happy. Perhaps it is my future.”
“Undo it? Your future?” She looks at him with confusion, before continuing, “I think you’ll be alright. I hear the doctor talking about what conditions you are experiencing.”
“Conditions? This is nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and they didn’t start happening until after the asteroid hit,” he explains. “I wonder if ‘undo it’ means undo this, undo being here I mean.”
The doctor comes back into the room. “Well we can’t find any abnormalities. Your vitals are normal. While you were unconscious we scanned you. There are no abnormal heart defects, no cranial damage, nothing noticeable. A psychologist will be arriving shortly to discuss any psychotic episodes you may be experiencing. For now, we’ll keep you here overnight for observation.”
The doctor leaves again. Cassie comes over to give him a hug, and sit close with him. She sits with him for a while, not saying much, stroking his hair. Eventually Friend senses her sadness and wants her to go out and enjoy her time with her friends, before they need to start working.
“Cassie, go. I’ll be fine here,” he pleads with her. After some initial hesitation she decides to leave him be.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” she tells him, kissing his forehead, then heading out the door.
January 2
He wakes to a loud thump from the door. An older woman stands there, grayed and a bit heavyset.
“I’m Dr. Perzinski. I’d like to ask you a few questions about your episodes. It says here you saw a white light, then voices from a woman. Is that correct?” she asks coldly, looking through the chart on her tablet device.
“Yes. Each time the images are more vivid,” he explains.
“You may be experiencing a hallucinatory palinopsia, possibly triggered by the underground environment. We’ve already seen it with a few others. We’ll keep you here for observation until the diagnosis is clear.” She leaves abruptly, as if she has many other patients to tend to.
Just as Friend was wondering when he would see Cassie again, the bright light starts to return. Friend shakes profusely, dizzily trying to hold on to consciousness, fiercely locking his sight onto the door. He grips the heart monitors while clinching his teeth using all his will and might. His heart is racing violently, and in that moment he succumbs to unconsciousness, no one there to witness the episode. He then lays still in the bed, unresponsive once more.
January 6
It’s blissful and perfect, like an utopian paradise, these fields that surround the city. The children, a young boy and girl, embrace him with a hug. A woman with sandy brown hair, the sun reflecting through it, and fully clothed in a white robe approaches from straight ahead, as his arms firmly clutching the two young ones.
She speaks to him and says it again, “Undo it. That is why you can’t be here yet. Promise me you’ll undo it.”
Suddenly, the elegant sky turns black, darker than night, the ground shaking in severe tremors, the city up ahead collapsing as the Earth shakes it apart. Then the Earth beneath his feet gives way, gravity sucking him into the dark empty abyss. He continues to fall seemingly forever, accelerating, then in a sudden abrupt event, he smacks into a hard ground.
At that moment he is transported back to his dreadful hospital room, in all of its dullness and confinement. He sits up, trying to relive it. It’s so clear to him it feels as if he is still dreaming now. He discovers several tubes attached to his arm. As he continues to re-acclimate, he feels lik
e he’s been away forever, years possibly, finally returning to this hell after being at peace in that pure serenity.
He tries to remember. He saw the woman this time, repeating undo it over and over. Then the fields with the children just as before. Eventually he appeared in a large room with a round table. They couldn’t see him, but they were talking about him. Did he fail, they wondered, where is he? Then the woman again, undo it, and then a new phrase, find the man. In all of this, there is now one clear fact that Friend now feels, with every fiber of his being: he doesn’t belong here.
The doctor comes in to tell him that he had been comatose for four days. They are recommending medication for his condition, most likely with side effects that will dull his senses, making him less passionate.
About an hour later, Cassie returns, this time with her mother. Friend looks at her for the first time, older, maybe slightly darker and shorter, but otherwise looks just like Cassie. She even has similar facial expressions, especially when they are thinking. No matter what, this amicable reunion between mother and estranged daughter can only provide him the only comfort he has left in this world.
“Friend, this is my mother, Dr. Felicia Whittle.” The older woman extends her hand to Friend, with him barely able to move. He feels a slight atrophy from laying and not moving for several days.
A burning curiosity consumes him, and there is no one more perfect to ask than Cassie’s mom, who works for NASA as a data scientist. “Dr. Whittle, can the asteroid be stopped? I mean… could it have been stopped?”
“Please call me Felicia, my dear. And to answer your question: Yes, probably. But with what little time we had to prepare, coupled with the fact that the GSC hampered our efforts, it made the likelihood that much bleaker.”
“Could it have been stopped within the final six days?” he furthers his question.
“No, that’s impossible,” Felicia explains. “It would take a hundred or more nuclear devices, planted in perfect positions deep within its core, with their explosions timed just right. The blast would need to divert the pieces away from the Earth, otherwise it's pointless. Despite what you see in all the old asteroid movies, you don’t just point nuclear warheads at a multi-kilometer asteroid.”
“Friend, my mom knows about your condition. I mean your real condition, your traveling through time. I told her everything,” Cassie explains in a serious tone.
“The asteroid has to be stopped. There has to be a way somehow. It’s why I’m here, repeating these six days. I know it now,” Friend strongly explains, continuing. “Your father saw this. He didn’t see your future living underground, or in a dystopian wasteland. He saw it at the peak of civilization, you there leading the world.”
The room is silent. Mother and daughter enter into deep thought, both their heads crinkling in unison. Felicia, frustrated with a lack of an answer, admits to him, “I’m sorry, Friend. There is just no way. If you were to travel back in time before the asteroid’s orbit was altered, only then could you have a chance.”
If only he could travel farther back in time, but he can’t. Felicia comes closer, grabbing his lethargic hand to shake it in a final gesture of good will. She leans close to say some parting words. “Nice to meet you, Friend.”
Then she leans in a little closer, with a softer voice. “Some advice for you my dear: Not everything is what it seems. Look deeper, and be careful.”
She waves one final goodbye before exiting the room. In the private confinement of his room, Cassie goes right to his ear to whisper, “She’s got to be careful what she says. They are watching everyone. She told me about your friend Dr. Pond. His behavior was erratic the past few weeks, and the rumor around NASA is he uncovered something momentous, and it drove him mad.”
His secret, Friend wonders. Cassie adds more, “My mom thinks there is more than the government is letting on, much more in fact. She said Max’s ex-wife works for the CIA as an analyst, and that they have many friends in the CIA. But don’t listen to her… nothing is impossible. If what you told me about Max is true, maybe he believes there is a way to stop it.”
“Cassie, I need to go back. You need to find a way to kill me, end my life here, so I can return,” he tells her, holding her hand. She tears up strongly. Her logical side and emotional side are in constant war, one side fighting to keep him here because she loves him, and the other realizing he is right.
“Stay here for a while. Let’s brainstorm,” she suggests, giving way to her devotion to him, unable to control her tears.
“There is a man. Another timelooper. He will have the answers. I need to find him.”
“Please let me—”
“No. There is no point, Cassie. Listen to me. I love you, and this love has transcended space and time, this much is true. I will find you again, I promise.” He pauses, pleading with her once more, “You have to help me get back.”
She peers into his eyes, wiping away her tears. She kisses him once more and then leaves the room, saying nothing, unable to stand the agony any longer.
January 7
He lies there alone in his cold hospital bed, wondering when his next hallucination episode will strike, or if Cassie will ever return. He understands that if she helps him she may get into trouble, possibly locked up as a punishment. He weighs this against just trying to take his life on his own, without her involvement. How could he though? Suffocate himself? Stab himself? They would detect his vitals going down and possibly rush in to stop him. He would then be a considered a suicide risk, making way more difficult to try again.
He spends the whole day feeling antsy, wondering when she’ll return. Each time the door opens, it reveals a nurse, or an orderly, or someone venturing in the wrong room. Loneliness creeps in methodically as time passes, making it difficult to cope. During this time he finally reads the letter from Max to his sons, committing each word to his visual memory. The letter doesn’t reveal much, and contains some language that he doesn’t understand, possibly words used within their family. But a promise is a promise, and if he ever needs to he can recreate the letter, capturing every idiosyncratically brushed letter from Max’s pen, and give it to them.
At the height of his intolerable solitude, Cassie barges into the room, staring at him with a mixed look of disgust and anguish. Her face is pale like fresh mountain snow. He returns a stare back with such a look of longing.
“I’ve got something for you,” she says in a depressing tone, revealing a small vial of a liquid from her mostly concealed palm. He looks at her without speaking, admiring her strength and her ability to rise above this adversity, but having reservations. She stands there in that sexy black jacket she loves to wear, matching those wonderful dark eyes that are worn with sadness.
“I realized if I do this you will get into trouble,” he tells her, hoping she will help him come up with a better plan.
“Do you know what I went through to get you this? What my mother went through? That doesn’t matter. I’ll deal with that. You have a mission to stop the asteroid. I don’t know how, and I cannot fathom how it is even possible, but I believe it now, down to the depths of my soul, I believe you.” She confides in him, passionately persuading him to follow through, placing the vial in his hand, revealing a syringe to go with it.
His eyes begin to water as well, unable to temper his emotions any further, something he rarely does. Something he realizes he’s never done since they met.
“Cassie, I’ve met you many times. Each time you are slightly different, different mannerisms, different body language. Even though I’ll see you again, I’m going to miss you Cassandra, this Cassandra at this moment in time. You are truly unique.”
She comes close and embraces him with a final hug, with her crawling into his bed, kissing him all over, lips, neck, everywhere, knowing this is it for them.
She chokes up, explaining, “I’m going to go now. But I will tell you it has been a pleasure. I hope one day you will share all your adventures with me. That version of me w
ill be so lucky.” She gets up off the bed, slowly walking to the door.
“I love you too, by the way.” She blows him a kiss from her outstretched palm, symbolizing her final goodbye in this timeline, before retreating to the door. Her hand pushes down on it, the hardest door knob she’s had to turn, until she disappears from view through the rectangle window for the last time.
He contemplates his dire situation, thinking through this current iteration that has stretched to almost two weeks. He savors the memories they had, from the road trip to their passionate encounters, enjoying them one by one. He takes solace that she is once again in union with her mother, that they were able to team up to help him. Her mom is one remarkable woman that brought another remarkable woman into this world.
He takes a final deep breath, looking once more around the plain room, before pulling out the syringe. He extracts the liquid from the vial, and injects it into his left arm, puncturing the large vein within with all his might. He feels things going blurry quickly, losing his ability to think, losing all ability to move, before he flatlines.
Part 2
The Awakening
15
Iteration 9
The grainy texture of the sand never felt so good. As each particle flakes from his clothing, it reminds him that the bunker idea was a mistake, a dead end, but not one he regrets in the slightest. After all, the experience of finally saving Cassie was memorable. He was also happy to reunite mother and daughter, as they were able to assist him so that he could return here. But he had reached the terminus of that long journey, and he now stands at the forefront of a brand new quest, one that seems almost impossible. It’s a riddle that billions of people in this world cannot solve: stopping the asteroid.
And so Friend begins his next journey, taking to the dirt trail and no longer in any sort of hurry as he contemplates his next steps. He prods along, admiring the sanctity of the dirt trail, the smoothed path layered with light golden sedimentary grains and bordered by white cobblestones. The path is intended as a gateway into the natural wonder of the desert, but little seem to utilize it. For him, it has always been nothing more than a walkway, a chore to be traversed so he can begin the next iteration, but for the first time he appreciates its creation and purpose.