Rewrite Redemption

by Walker, J. H.

  My phone alarm buzzed and we both kind of startled.

  “Perfect timing,” she said. “That’s A.J.’s story in Cliff Notes. You ready to spill?”

  “You have an open mind?” I asked.

  “I do,” she said, nodding.

  “No problem then,” I said. “No problem at all.”

  Before I could blink, the Indian was between the cowboys and me. “Not your child,” he said calmly. He gestured with his knife, which was dripping blood from skinning the rabbit.

  Fear buckled my knees. Struggling to control my shaking, I took a few wobbly steps backwards and leaned against the tree for support. I clutched at my ripped hoodie, pulling it closed and wrapped my quivering arms across my chest. Then I crouched by the tree, my eyes riveted on the scene in front of me.

  “Easy now, Chief, take it easy,” Joe said indignantly. “This here belongs to us.”

  “We found her,” Edgar chimed in, licking his lips, as if I was a pork chop.

  “Not your child,” the Indian repeated, wiping his knife on the grass.

  Joe looked at the knife. Edgar whispered something to him. Joe nodded. “Hey, we’re happy to share,” Joe said, backing up, hands held up in front of him.

  Edgar backed up too.

  The Indian just stood his ground, staring them down.

  The cowboys retreated to complain by the campfire. “No hurry…plenty a time,” said Edgar. “How bout we get that rabbit cookin?” He pointed to the rabbit and held up the stick the Indian had been sharpening to skewer it.

  Completely ignoring me, the Indian walked over to him and grabbed the stick. Glaring at Edgar, he shoved it through the rabbit in one violent move. Edgar flinched. The Indian changed his gaze to Joe and did the same with the second rabbit. Joe, who’d just opened his mouth to say something, closed it abruptly.

  Both cowboys suddenly got very interested in the whiskey bottle. The Indian put the rabbits on to cook. Then he crouched by the fire, staring into the heat. The cowboys passed the bottle back and forth talking low and urgently to each other. Not once during the little scene had the Indian looked at me.

  Not once.

  I was confused. I sat back against the cottonwood. Obviously, the Indian wasn’t on the same team as the cowboys. But he seemed a little scary. Still, he was the only thing between me and the Gross Brothers and things too horrifying to mention. I wanted to thank him, but had no clue how to do it.

  When the rabbits were done, the Indian split them up, and the cowboys dug in greedily. The Indian walked over to me with a hunk skewered on a stick. He handed it to me gently and motioned for me to eat. I took the stick and nodded. He looked at me intently for a moment and then went back to sit by the fire.

  Now that the action was over, he broke his pattern of ignoring me. As he sat staring into the fire, he glanced at me periodically from under a curtain of heavy, black hair. I knew that trick. Maybe he wasn’t that scary. I was feeling pretty good about him at that point. The cowboys were a problem, but if the Indian was on my side, I had a chance. I was still scared, but not quite as much.

  Keeping an eye on the cowboys, I munched on the rabbit. It tasted a little weird, but hey, I had no clue when I might eat again. It was strange to eat something I’d seen, well, not exactly killed, but skinned, which was even grosser. I mean, I knew hamburgers came from cows, but I’d never seen one slaughtered.

  A live animal had just turned into dinner in the blink of an eye, with no grocery store buffer zone in between—creepy. The rabbit skin peeled right off, like a freakin banana. I shuddered and struggled to swallow the wad of it in my mouth. Suddenly, I wasn’t so hungry anymore. I spit out the meat and tossed the bone in the bushes.

  The cowboys were wolfing it down and leering at me. When he saw me looking at him, Joe gave me a freak-show grin.

  I cringed and pulled my hoodie tighter. Then I sat back against the tree with my hand on the pepper spray. I needed a plan. There was no way I could fight them, especially not two of them.

  So you need to slip away, whispered Ipod in my mind.

  Yeah, right. They had horses. They knew the terrain. I was on foot in Ipod’s big bulky jeans and Lex’s bedroom slippers. It wasn’t the best outfit for speed; even if I was a runner, which—cue laughter from the audience—everyone knows I’m not. And let’s not forget the weapons.

  Pepper spray versus guns and a whip? You do the math.

  If I could incapacitate them with the pepper spray, I could steal a horse and…and…what? Gallop off into the sunset? They’d just come after me and they’d be pissed. What were the chances of pepper spraying both of them without getting shot? And could I even climb up on a horse, much less make it go?

  I turned my attention back to the Indian. He was sitting on the log, calmly gnawing on a rabbit leg, licking the grease off his long fingers. His hands were huge. He was huge. He ignored both the Gross Brothers and me. He was buffed, but he seemed like one of those Indians who might be more a peace-pipe smoker than a scalper. Would he keep defending me? Would he help me get away? I didn’t know.

  But I knew one thing.

  I might be strange. I might be a misfit. I might have some of the worst luck in the history of luck having. But I sure as heck wasn’t going to lose my V-card to one of those disgusting slime balls. I needed this Indian to be on my side.

  I closed my eyes and went inside my head. Lex stood there, chin up, fists clenched, looking determined and fearless like she always did. You can do this, A.J.! Shrink Four, “Instead of freaking out, access the situation and make a plan.”

  Ipod told me to consider all my options. Brains are more important than brawn. You just use them differently. If you can’t fight them, you have to outthink them. Look at your problem space. Focus. See it clearly…all the pieces…like a chessboard. What are the possible moves on each side? People who survive disasters stay calm and make their moves intelligently. Look ahead and your chances of winning increase exponentially.

  I took a breath and scanned the “board.” The light was fading fast. It would be dark soon, and with no cities, dark was really, really dark. The flashlight was in my pack in the bushes by the rocks where I’d hidden earlier. There was a chill on the side of me not facing the fire. I figured it would get a lot colder as the night progressed, and I didn’t have much fat keeping me warm. My hat was on the ground a few feet away. My hands were already cold and the gloves were in the pack. I needed that pack if I was going to head off on some survival get-away by myself.

  I needed it to get through the night.

  I took a mental inventory of what I did have: the knife, pepper spray, and the other half of the granola bar. My water bottle and the matches were in the pack. Ipod would tell me that getting the pack was my first move. And at that point, I really needed to pee. In the movies, people never had to pee. They could sit tied up for days and not pee. But this wasn’t the movies.

  You can do this, Ipod told me.

  I can do this, I repeated like a mantra. I stood up and instantly two pairs of eyes riveted my way.

  Joe’s hand moved to his gun. What was he going to do, freakin shoot me for standing?

  “Excuse me,” I said, my voice catching.

  The Indian looked up.

  “Excuse me!” I tried again, a little louder.

  Joe’s eyes traveled up and down my body.

  I swallowed. “I need to use the…” jeez, they didn’t have bathrooms in the olden days. What did they call it? “I need to…um…relieve myself…in private,” I said as firmly as I could. I waited, blushing furiously.

  The Gross Brothers looked at each other and snickered. Joe stood up. “I’ll count to fifty,” he said, leering and pulling on his filthy beard. “If yer not back by the time I’m done, I’m comin’ after you. And maybe I’ll just relieve myself too.”

  Edgar hooted and gave Joe a conspiratorial nudge with his elbow. I guess they hadn’t invented the high-five yet. Joe glanced sideways at the Indian to see if he caught
on. The Indian just continued cleaning his knife, ignoring everyone.

  I nodded.

  Joe started counting, and I scrambled across the little clearing and back behind the rocks, where I’d hidden earlier. I could hear him, “seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…” At least I could tell by his voice that he was still by the campfire.

  I quickly “relieved myself” and dug through the bushes for the pack.

  “Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one…”

  I slipped one arm out of my hoodie and through the strap, flattened the pack against my chest, and closed the hoodie over it. It was a little bulky, but the hoodie was huge, and the pack didn’t hold much.

  “Thirty eight, thirty nine, forty…” He started to speed up his count, the rat.

  I scurried back to the tree, grabbing my hat on the way. Joe looked disappointed that I’d made it. I sat back down against the trunk, heart pumping. It was a small victory, but I felt pretty good about it. Maybe I was just soaking up energy from the tree, but I felt a little more powerful for having taken the risk… kinda as if I’d won round one.

  Okay, I was still screwed, but at least I didn’t have to pee anymore.

  Joe and Edgar were getting loaded at that point. They bumbled through a round of drinking songs and thumped each other on the backs talking about their run of good luck. They offered the whiskey bottle to the Indian, but he shook his head. He sat down and leaned against the tree facing me, knife in his hand. He watched me intently for about a half hour, and then his head began nodding against his chest. Soon he was snoring softly.

  So far, nothing really bad had happened. Maybe this was the worst of it. Maybe the Indian would protect me. I looked over at him, sleeping against the log. Except for the snoring, he seemed so peaceful. The sight of him relaxed me. It was reassuring to have him between the Gross Brothers and me.

  I glanced over at the campfire. The campsite was empty. I felt a quick jolt of adrenaline whip up my spine. Joe and Edgar were gone. I didn’t see them anywhere. What—

  A filthy hand slammed across my mouth, slapping my head hard against the tree. For a second, I think I lost consciousness. Because when I opened my eyes, there was Joe, approaching in stealth mode. He was grinning wickedly and fiddling with the buttons on his pants.

  Son of a bitch!

  We were still sprawled on the sofa. Lex was sitting sideways, cross-legged, and I was on the other end facing her. She was waiting for answers. Once again, I was searching for a good opening line. I didn’t find one. “Earlier, you asked me if we were aliens,” I said finally. “We aren’t, but we do have alien technology.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack. It’s extremely advanced. For one thing, we have enhanced computer capabilities…things that would blow your mind. The most important is a grid system for tracking travelers and changes in the timeline. Each Editor has kind of a signature, like a fingerprint that can be tracked and monitored. Or blocked…” I stopped that line of thought. I didn’t want to get into my disgrace yet. “But the really vital part is something we call a Hitchhiker Mechanism.”

  “Which is…?” She rolled her finger.

  “You know how tech just keeps getting smaller and smaller all the time—exponentially?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, imagine how small things might be, say, a thousand years from now. The aliens are light years more advanced than we are. They created a device so incredibly small it can hitchhike on a strand of DNA and get passed down genetically.”

  “No shit!” She seemed like she believed me.

  “So are your parents Editors?”

  I shook my head. “No, they know nothing about it. The HM is programmed to just express sporadically. They didn’t want power condensed in families.”

  She got up and opened a window. “That’s a pretty big secret to keep from your parents. It must be hard.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said as the breeze from the window blew cool air across my face.

  “So how does it work?” she asked, sitting back down.

  “Have you ever heard of ‘junk’ DNA?”

  “I took biology. It’s the left-over pieces that don’t do anything, right?”

  “Right. Well, the Hitchhiker Mechanism codes our junk DNA for the alterations that give us our abilities.”

  “How does that connect with time travel?”

  “Ever heard of string theory?”

  “Yeah, it’s one of Ipod’s favorite things. But I ignore most of what he says when he gets on one of his rants. So I’ve heard of it, but I can’t really say I know much.”

  “It deals with subatomic particles.”

  “Not a geek here, Dude, simplify.”

  “Okay, well, you know about atoms, right—the basic units of matter? Every atom has a nucleus with electrons zooming around it, like little planets around the sun. There are different kinds of atoms and they’re incredibly small. For instance take a helium atom, you know, the stuff you fill balloons with.” I picked up a pencil lying on the table. “You could line seventy million helium atoms in a row across this eraser, that’s how small they are.”

  I stood and grabbed a round pillow off the sofa. “Pretend this pillow is an atom, blown up. The nucleus in the center would still be smaller than this grain of salt.” I licked my finger and picked up a grain of rock salt that had fallen off my Hot Pocket. “I’m talking really, really small. Still with me?”

  “Okaaay. And this matters, why?”

  “So you have the pillow or the atom with this tiny grain of salt for the nucleus. The nucleus has electrons spinning around it. But most of this pillow is filled with…nothing. Most matter is really empty space. When we travel, we move through the empty spaces.”

  “Strange,” she said, “it just doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Yeah, I know. It gets even stranger. The building blocks of everything are increasingly small. Even smaller than the atom is a quark. Even smaller than a quark is a string. These strings are the building blocks of everything, including us. We used to think that these building blocks were points…like dots. But now we know that they’re really unimaginably small, vibrating strings.”

  I walked over and plucked a string on Ipod’s violin. “Like this string, these strings have specific vibrations, tones so to speak. Well, Editors can control the vibration of their strings.”

  “And that’s important because…”

  “It lets us do very cool things,” I said, sitting back down. “That’s where it connects to the time travel. There’s one more component. You know how trees have rings.”

  “That I know. A ring for each year, right?”

  “Right, as a tree moves through a year of four seasons, it marks time with a ring. Like everything else, trees at their basic level are just a mass of vibrating strings. Each cell on that ring was formed at a specific point in time. That point in time corresponds to a particular vibration. Editors can match their “strings” to the exact vibration of the tree at that specific point in time. They harmonize with it and use gravity to pull themselves through the empty spaces to that point in time.”

  “Whoa…”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Cool, huh? We’re traveling through an alternate dimension when we’re in the vortex.”

  “Ipod will be in geek-heaven. He’s been trying to figure it out forever. He’s always speculating about what scientists are going to be able to do in the future. Too bad he’s not here to hear this.” The mention of Ipod’s name must have gotten her thinking again because she teared-up a little.

  I felt bad for her. “You okay?” I asked.

  She sighed and then was silent for a second. “I’m dealing. A.J.’s not my only disaster.”

  “Want to talk about it?” I asked.

  “Maybe later,” she said. “What I want to know is how you got the alien technology. And are they friendly or are they going to enslave us?”

  “No worries,” I said. “They’re peaceful. There have been
visitations, but only on a small scale. We call their planet Kepler-22b. They call it Oreon. And they’ve been observing us for centuries.”

  “That’s a little scary,” she said, getting the wrinkle between her eyebrows.

  “We’ve just been conditioned by Hollywood that aliens are evil warmongers that want to take over our planet. The Oreonians mean us no harm. Think about it from our perspective. We wonder what’s out there in the cosmos. We’ve been searching for signs of extraterrestrial life for decades. Finding it would be the news of the century. The whole world would be fixated on it. Well, the planet Oreon is fixated on us.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “They wondered what was out there, too. Only, they’re way more advanced than we are, and they’ve actually gone looking. We spend the bulk of our resources on weapons and wars. They spend theirs on science and learning. They’ve been searching for life on other planets for centuries, and they’ve found it. The reason they find us so fascinating is that we’re the only planet they’ve found that has both technology and humanoid life.”

  “Humanoid life?”

  “Walks upright, has limbs, opposable thumbs. They’re obsessed with us. In the beginning, they just had our airwaves. But once we developed the internet, they had everything. Their linguists deciphered our major languages. They study us at their universities. They have what could only be called fan clubs. Their kids play with Earth dolls. Seriously…we’re like their reality TV.”

  “Shut the front door!”

  “I know, right?” I couldn’t help grinning. It was incredibly liberating to just say it out loud. I started getting into it. After all the times I wanted so frickin bad to tell Daniel. Telling Lex was kind of making up for that. She was a good audience.

  “For a long time they just watched us,” I said. “But then they began to get concerned that we weren’t going to make it through the technological age. We too readily use war to settle our differences, and we continue to build more and more powerful weapons of destruction. We give no serious attention to climate change. We just aren’t evolving fast enough to keep up with our technology. They didn’t think we were going to make it. They instigated the Editor Program to give us a fighting chance to survive the next century.”