“Thanks,” I said.
"I thought you were passed out in the bathroom,” she said.
I laughed nervously. "Not me,” I said.
Eventually I made my way to the bar. Here I found Brandon waiting for me. “How’s it going, rock star?” Brandon said.
“Pretty good actually,” I said. Did I really invite him?
“Awesome,” Brandon said with a wide, empty smile. “Listen, I know you’re probably wondering how you can pump up the returns on your big bucks.”
I started to shake my head, “Brandon, I don’t think I’m looking for anything like that,” I said.
“Now hear me out,” he said. My eyes were already starting to glaze over. I noticed an awful smell in the air and wondered if it was him or me.
Brandon kept talking but I pulled away and found my way to an elevator and pushed the up button. I entered the elevator and hit the button for the fourth floor. I looked in the mirrored wall of the elevator at my face. I looked haggard as if I had aged a year in a day. “So, this is how Alice in Wonderland feels,” I thought.
The elevator doors dinged open and I walked down the hall noting the door numbers. 429, 431, 433, here it is 435. “Now what,” I said.
I tried the handle on the door. It was unlocked. I twisted and pushed the door open into a dark room. There was an awful stench in the air. I stood still, staring into the darkness inside. I heard a shuffling sound. I stepped through the threshold and started feeling around in the dark for a light switch. There was a door to my right and an empty wall to my left. Whatever was moving around was still for a moment. I held my breath. I heard a gravelly grunt. I ripped open the door and slammed it behind me.
There was a dim light and I could tell I was in the bathroom. I heard a furtive scratching noise on the other side. I looked around for anything that might serve as a weapon, a wrench, a toilet plunger, anything. There was a hairdryer but that was about it. Then I noticed a man slumped over in the bathtub. I looked at his face. Where had I seen it before? It was my face. I stared, my lips trying to form words without success.
“I’ll explain, but we’ve got to move him now. I can’t lift him on my own” It was future Frank speaking. He appeared through the glowing time hall in the bathtub. It hadn’t been there a second ago. We carried the unconscious body down the corridor. I felt dizzy. I was helping myself carry myself into a time machine. I was dissolving. Then everything fell back into place and we were back in the domed room of the time machine.
“OK, put him down here,” future Frank said.
We placed my unconscious body near the door.
“You have to hide,” he said. “I’m going to wake him up.”
I frowned and hid on the floor behind the central pedestal. A few moments later I heard the two of them having a conversation. This is the talk we had after the party the first time, I realized. I rubbed my forehead. This had to be against the laws of physics.
When they were finished my future counterpart walked around the pedestal and stood in front of me. “He’s gone,” he said.
“You mean I’m gone,” I said. “That was me and I almost died.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m you, too.”
I shook my head and frowned again.
“I didn’t know those things would show up, I swear,” he said. “But a time machine kind of fell in my lap so I decided to do something for myself. To survive.”
I stood blinking at him. “You’re dying,” I said.
“Yeah, colon cancer. You should probably cut down on the alcohol and processed meats now, kid.”
I frowned and shook my head. “How long?”
“I don’t even know anymore. Hopefully I can get treatment now,” he said. “But when I went back to take care of things after I took care of the lottery I found those damn things.” He rubbed his eyes and continued, “I had to do something. I don’t want to spoil it for you but we don’t exactly ever come of our shell and make best-selling video games, or get health insurance plans, or set up retirement savings.” He looked at me with wide eyes. “I took advantage of an opportunity. You should try it some time.”
“It almost sounds like you’re blaming me for all this,” I said.
“I’m curious, really,” he said. “Do the years seem to stretch out ahead of you like a road to the moon? You don’t need a time machine to know that they won’t. Not forever anyway.”
“Wow,” I said. “Say something sarcastic,” I thought. “Duh,” I said.
He sighed. “I know you’re lonely,” he said. “You want to play video games for the rest of your life? You just might.”
“I’m not lonely,” I squeaked. I felt sweaty. “I’ve got friends.”
“Barely,” he said. “I know you walked the streets late at night, looking for something. But you never found it.”
“I’m not going to find anything if those things eat me,” I said.
He bowed his head and said, “They don’t eat you, they suck out all your blood.”
“OK great,” I said. “What are you doing about it?”
He perked up and said, “I have an idea.”
He approached the central orb, tilting his head back. His eyes were closed tightly. The room shuddered. “Maybe if we go far enough into the future we can lose them,” he said.
“That sounds pretty insane,” I said.
He shrugged his shoulders and threw his arms wide and walked down the corridor. I gritted my teeth and followed him. Cue the now-familiar feeling that the universe is cracking up. The tunnel opened into a night sky as brilliant as a fireworks display. Vast bands of stars in spiral arms spread out covering the whole sky. It was bright enough that we could make out our surroundings.
There was a slight breeze in the air and it was a warm evening. Nothing was moving except the leaves of the trees. They were green but the leaves looked different from any I’d ever seen. The summer breeze carried strange scents on the air. They seemed to come in waves. Oranges, cumin, roses, others I couldn’t recognize. I shook my head to escape them but they were strong.
“Where are we?” I said.
“In a park, I think,” he said with a nervous smile. “The real question is when. I think we’re about five million years in the future.”
I gazed at him wide eyed. “Something could eat us,” I said. “We have to go back. Can you even get us back?”
“I think so," he said.
“You think so,” I said. “What about that wand thing, what does it say about the monsters?”
He produced the short stem with its stone from his pocket. “Seems clear,” he said.
He walked on. I hesitated and considered threatening him to make him take me back. I just followed him. We were walking through a valley between four huge hills. He began walking up one of them. Looking back down at the starlit grove we had left behind, it did look deliberate, like a park, like a patch of land had been spared from whatever process had built the vast range around us.
I paused and looked around. The hill I was on was repeated across the landscape. It looked like a cornfield of great mounds of rubbery dirt. I called out to Future Frank but he was way ahead. He was at the top the hill looking down. When I reached his side I was out of breath.
“Take up golf, keeps your feet moving and your mind sharp so long as you’re not lazing around in a golf cart the whole time,” he said.
As I stood by his side, I looked down into the fantastic world I had seen in my dream. It was a star-lit city of insects crawling along swirling roads that stretched down into dark galleries hidden from view.
“This is Xanthros’s world,” he said. “Whatever lives down there, they don’t know humans ever existed.”
The scene grew blurry. Our whole world was gone, inherited by these bugs. I felt swept away on the mad tracks of this alien civilization, through the vast hive that spread out into tumbling darkness below. How far did their catacombs extend? Was the earth now a great anthill for these insects? All our ci
ties must have crumbled into dust.
I saw Frank coming clear before me. “Old Frank. What do I call him?” I thought. Then I realized he was holding me up. I looked down at the slope below us. My legs were shaky.
“OK, come back,” he said. “Seems like that was too much of a shock for you, sorry.”
I shook my head. “How long was I out?”
“Just a minute.”
“Can we get out of here before those bugs come swarming up here to eat us?”
“They’re vegetarian,” he said. “There’s something else I want to show you.”
He began walking back down the hill and I followed. “What can he possibly have to show me in this place?” I wondered.
We returned to the park where we had first arrived. Past the copse of trees there was a small clearing. There was some bulky black thing there on the ground. I realized it was one of those bugs. It wasn’t moving.
“Is that thing dead?” I said.
“That is Xanthros,” he said.
I noticed next to the body was a cube with a cone coming out the top. It looked almost like an old Victrola but made of some black plastic or similar material. I was speechless.
“Xanthros came to me, he was dying,” he said. “Interesting guy, for a giant cockroach. I wish I had known him longer.”
I found my voice. “I’m going to become friends with a dead giant cockroach. Is that what you’re telling me?” I said.
He chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t know that I would call him a friend. He told me a little about himself. He was a fugitive from his time. The study of history is forbidden. This time machine is designed for space travel but he hacked it.”
“So we’re whizzing around time and space in a hack job given to you by a time criminal,” I said. “Great.” I paused for a moment trying to take it all in, then I said, “Why you?”
He sighed. “When I got my diagnosis, I thought about how I was when I was your age,” he said, looking at me. “How you are now. It was only a few days ago. I thought that I really could have done anything but I wouldn’t stray outside my comfort zone. I go home, I sat down in my easy chair. I was about to turn on the TV and watch the Pro Gaming Network, hoping to take my mind off things. I heard a weird noise, like the seal breaking on a bottle of soda pop. I turned and saw a hole in my wall. You know what I mean,” he said.
I nodded, watching him speak.
“So there I was on the threshold of this place and I had no idea what I was seeing. That corridor lit by those florescent lights set behind the wall. I knew the only way to understand it was to see what was on the other side.”
“And you met this bug,” I said.
“I was looking around the big room trying to make sense of it. There were strange machines that looked like they had been hacked together from spare parts by Buckaroo Banzai.”
He paused and looked up at the star-flooded sky. “That’s when I noticed it,” he said. “It was a bug. A big bug, looked kind of like a cockroach with big domed eyes. I thought I was about to pass out. And then it spoke. Its voice came out of one of the machines nearby. I’ll never forget it. ‘Hello again,’ it said. I think I was still ready to run but it looked like he was injured. There was some gray ooze around his midsection and it looked like green foam was coming out of his shell where it had been cracked. He said he was dying. He said we had met before and that I had to help him. I don’t know why he thought that.” He stopped talking and just looked down at his shoes.
“Did you help him?” I asked finally.
“I did what he asked but I couldn’t save him. He wanted me to bring his body here and leave that machine with him. He said it was his life’s work, a record of his study of the past. He hoped his species would find it. And then he died. As soon as he passed I felt the control crystal link up with my mind and it’s been with me since.”
“And he left you in charge of the time machine so you could rig the lottery?” I said.
He looked down. “No. I think he thought I was a fellow time-traveler.”
“So you figured this guy thinks I’m a time traveler, so why not mess up the whole space-time continuum,” I said.
He glared at me. “I got in over my head here, but I had to do something. I got handed opportunity and decided to do something with it. If life keeps going the way you’re living it today, you’ll die with a chili dog in your mouth playing Scions of Gammalot.”
I turned and started walking away and then stopped. There was no place to go. I pivoted back toward him and said, “Can we just get out of here?”
We headed back to trees and the entrance to the time portal appeared. Once we had traversed the corridor and returned to the time room we stood in silence. I watched as he ran his hands over his face, as if trying to rub it away. “What was it like changing history?” I said.
He snorted. “There was no magic to it. I went back, changed things around and came home to find a bigger bank account. Seems like I lived a different life, I just can’t remember it. I guess I can live the good life for the time I have left.”
“If I live a healthy lifestyle will that spare you all this?” I said.
“I have no idea.” He moved toward the central orb. He stood in front of it as before and a tremor passed through the room. “All right, we’re back in your time. Let’s see what’s going on.”
###
The tunnel led out into a wasteland. There was trash everywhere, broken glass, newspapers pushed around in the wind. Most of the buildings had been burned and there was a lingering sulfurous smell mingled with the smell of smoke.
“This should be the place,” Future Frank said. He didn’t sound convinced.
“What is going on here?” I said.
He shook his head. We continued to move through the area but it was a disaster zone. I noticed that mixed in with the trash was the familiar gray ooze. “What could have happened?” I said. I was afraid I already knew.
We were wandering through the streets. It should have been a busy day with a few hot dog vendors, open shops, homeless people, and random passers-by. “Are you sure this is my time period?” I said.
A familiar face popped out from one of the burned structures. “Emily?” I said. “What’s going on?”
She looked like a commando, complete with some kind of gun in her hand connected to a tank tied to her back. “Come with me if you want to live,” she said.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Future Frank said.
“I’ve always wanted to say that,” Emily said. “But for real, you can’t be up here on the streets for long.”
We followed her into a building and down a stairwell into a large basement. It must have been a bomb shelter of some kind. “Thought you were dead Frank,” Emily said. “Who’s your friend?”
“This my uncle,” I said. I looked him wide-eyed and said, “Uncle Frank.”
We continued to follow her through the basement. It was some kind of maze of nineteenth century opium dens interconnected beneath the city.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“We have a base where we maintain supplies and weapons. You’re lucky I was out on patrol and found you when I did. The fog can come without warning,” she said.
“The fog, huh,” I said, glaring at Frank.
“Yeah,” Emily said. “Haven’t you seen it? There are some kind of vicious animals in it. They can get into anywhere and all they leave behind are creepy goo and bloodless corpses. They’ve messed up everything. I think they’re aliens or something.” She sounded almost happy with the situation. “You must have seen it.”
“We’ve seen it,” Future Frank said, grimly.
There were a series of burning torches lighting the way through the underground labyrinth. We entered a large chamber. “This used to be a speakeasy,” Emily said. “Now it’s our base of operations.”
It was a large hall. There were bunks, refuse piles, crates of supplies, tables where dark-eyed refugees sat. Future Frank ca
me close and whispered over my shoulder, “We should get out of here.”
“And go where?” I shot back. “This is where I’m supposed to be, right? We need to figure out what is going on here.”
Emily led us to one of the tables and said, “Look what the cat dragged in.” Suddenly I realized I was surrounded by familiar faces from my office.
“You’re lucky to be alive coming in from out there,” Melinda said.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Who’s that,” Melinda said, gesturing toward old Frank.
“It’s his uncle Frank,” Emily said.
“Will we really be safe in this place?” I said.
Melinda shook her head. “It’s just a matter of time until they come here. Seems like they can go anywhere,” she said.
“Yeah, but we have a lot of guns,” Emily said. “I made flamethrowers.”
“Flamethrowers,” I said.
Emily said, “Yeah, we made flame throwers with portable spray tanks. I learned how in a squat one time.”
“How long have you guys been down here?” I said
“A few weeks, pretty much since this all started,” Melinda said. “I don’t think there are many people left in the city. Where have you two been hiding?”
I looked back at Frank and he said nothing, just looked at his feet shuffling through the dimly lit room. “I kind of went out on the road. I wanted to find Uncle Frank because he’s family.”
“It’s good that you found him, others haven’t been so lucky,” Melinda said. “What about your mom? I thought she was still in the picture.”
“My god,” I thought, I have no idea if she’s safe. Flustered, I managed to say, “I couldn’t find her.”
“I hope she’s OK, wherever she is,” Melinda said.
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