The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 2): Saving Time

by Samuel Ben White

  After dropping Sarah off to spend the night with Helen Thompson, who Sarah considered to be one of her grandmothers, Heather and Garison went to Farmington. It was close to nine when they showed up at the TV station. It was still a fairly new station to the area and the building looked it.

  The doors were locked, but Aaron came at their knock. He smiled and let them in. "Here all alone?" Garison asked.

  "No," Aaron chuckled. He had always seemed upbeat as long as Garison had known him. Even his lousy game of golf failed to depress him. "There're a few others around. They all have real jobs, though. I'm the only one with the free time to answer the door." As he lead the way, he said, "Come on back to the tape room with me."

  The lobby was a small affair that appeared to be strictly for looks and not for function. It was decorated in the common lobby motif, a style that politely implied, "Don't sit here." They were led into a hallway that was lined with two foot by three foot photos of the smiling newscasters. At night, with the hallway lights somewhat subdued, the pictures took on a spooky quality. Heather took Garison's hand as face after face of enormous, pearly white teeth stared at her. Of course, newscasters affected her that way during the daytime, too.

  Seeing the on air personalities, Garison asked, "Shouldn't you be getting ready for the ten o'clock news or something?"

  Aaron chided, "You don't watch this station, do you?"

  "Actually, we don't even pick it up unless the wind is just right," Garison answered.

  Aaron shrugged, "We hear that more than I'd like to admit. Sometimes from people as near as Aztec. But anyway, we dropped the ten o'clock news about a month ago. Everybody who wants news in this area at that time of night watches the Albuquerque stations. We figured we'd do better running 'Andy Griffith', and we have. It's been the highest rated program in that time period ever since we switched."

  Garison quipped to Heather, "Sounds like your friend Garrett must be the programming director." Heather gave him a playful elbow in the ribs, though a station that dropped the news in favor of Mayberry did sound like something Bat would do.

  Aaron continued, "Anyhow, all we do now after the six o'clock news is run little hourly newsbreaks."

  "And that's all you're the director of?" Garison asked incredulously. He blocked another elbow shot with one of his own.

  "Sort of. Mainly, I go through all the news footage we shoot or receive and edit it down for broadcast the next day. You know, sometimes when we cut to something live or 'near live' we end up showing a whole lot of boring stuff. Neighborhood kids standing around an accident victim trying to get on television and stuff like that. I edit it down and help write the copy so that—on the next day's news—it all looks exciting and crisp. Besides that, you ever think about how much news happens at night? Car wrecks, knifings, bar room brawls—"

  "You sound like you enjoy it," Heather teased him.

  Aaron blushed and excused, "Well, I really don't. But I also know what I have to do to keep my job. I have limits, though," he quickly added. "I don't do the stuff a lot of stations do and try to get the dead body on film or a close up of the grieving widow. Call it a fine line of ethics if you will, but I do have my code. A little blood on the pavement is about as far as I will go."

  Garison nodded along, having heard before of some of the things Aaron had been exposed to in the business. The man had such a strong code of ethics and morals that Garison figured something would break if he stayed in the media. Either his morals would get eroded away like they had for most other media people; or he'd have a nervous break down and get out of the business. Garison was betting on the second option though he hoped it wouldn't come to that.

  Aaron led them into a little room where a young black man was editing a tape. He glanced at Aaron and said, "Be done in a minute, Boss. We just got the tape of the Farmington Gallup game and I was pulling Hermesillo's touchdown pass out for use in the update. You ought to see this one, off the back foot and everything."

  "Good job," Aaron complimented genuinely. "Who won the game?"

  "We did! Can you believe it?"

  "I can, but I bet those Gallup newsmen who picked their boys by thirteen can't." As the young man stood up, Aaron told him, "Put together a good ninety of highlights for tomorrow morning's daybreak news show. And make sure you offer it to the Gallup affiliate. On second thought, over night it to them whether they want it or not."

  The young man chuckled and smiled widely, "You bet, Boss."

  As the man started to dart down the hall, Aaron asked him, "By the way, how many touchdown passes does that give Hermesillo for the season?"

  The young man slowed down, turned, and thought a moment before replying, "I think that makes it fifteen!" He turned and was quickly out of sight around a corner though they could still hear his excited voice. "He's got a shot at the school record if next week's game is as good as tonight's."

  Aaron told the Fitchs, "That Hermesillo's a great quarterback! Little small to play major college ball, but he might make if he were to switch to wide receiver—or maybe cornerback. Not the best arm you've ever seen, but his head's always in the game. He's one of those players who can't run or throw especially well; all he knows how to do it win. He'll play college ball somewhere."

  The Fitchs nodded and took the proffered seats Minton pointed to. He asked, "Now, where's this tape you want me to enhance for you?"

  Heather reached into her purse and pulled out the tape. She hesitated for a moment—as they had never shown it to anyone except their disbelieving families—then handed it to Aaron. He looked at it and muttered, "Standard VHS, huh? Well, let me transfer it over to three quarter Beta and we'll go from there. Easier to work with that way."

  He put the tape into a machine and then asked, "Does this need to be rewound?"

  Garison replied, a little too quickly, "No. Well, it's already cued up to just before the spot we want to look at. That's really all we need to see."

  Aaron shrugged and started another machine recording. He flipped on a monitor and they watched as Garison got into the machine, disappeared, then reappeared. A moment after that, as the Garison with the pony tail and wearing odd clothes got out of the machine, they told Aaron to stop it. He looked puzzled as he asked with a laugh, "What was that? Some kind of a magic trick?"

  "An experiment," Garison replied uncomfortably.

  "An experiment in what?"

  Garison hesitated, in which time he looked at Heather, but she just shrugged. He finally said, "I really can't explain it right now. Suffice to say, I think something went wrong."

  "All right," Aaron shrugged, drawing the words out extra long to demonstrate his dismay. "I've known ever since you tried to explain that mini nuclear power plant to me that I had no idea what you were talking about when it came to your science stuff." He rewound the Beta tape then asked, "What was it you wanted to see on this?"

  "Go back to the first flash. I want you to run that flash by as slowly as possible. Can you do that?"

  Aaron patted the Betamax as if it were a baby and smiled, "This machine can do whatever you want with a video tape." He punched some buttons and the scene began to roll by. At the point of the flash, he hit the tape counter and rewound. Playing the tape forward, he watched the tape counter, then slowed the tape down to one eighth speed as it got to the flash. He did this all with an expert hand, having edited thousands of hours of news footage into crisp, fast moving, fifteen second blurbs.

  What they saw was a bright light that emanated from the time machine, filling the screen, then quickly dissipating. Garison shook his head and asked, "Can you go through that frame by frame?"

  "Well, technically, video doesn't have frames," Aaron began. Then he remembered he was talking to people who probably knew that and shut up. He rewound and went back through the flash of light as slowly as the machine would let him. It was almost like advancing the tape by hand. He had done that as well, too, and always found the exercise extremely boring and tedious.

  T
hey clicked through the beginnings of the flash and saw nothing but light. Suddenly, though, something appeared in the middle of the screen. "What's that?" Heather asked, basically rhetorically.

  "I don't know," Garison replied, in a voice filled with something akin to amazement.

  With another click, the spot had grown much larger, and by the third it filled the screen. Heather and Garison gasped while Aaron just looked in confusion at the image on his screen. "Trees? Why are we seeing trees?" At no answer, he turned to his fellow video viewers and asked, "Why are there trees in that flash? Was there something else on your tape before you recorded this? Something with trees, maybe, that bled through?"

  Garison shook his head and mumbled, still awed by the taped image, "No. It was a new tape."

  After a moment of silent and utter confusion, Heather whispered, "Go to the next flash."

  "Huh?" Aaron asked, momentarily shaken by the break from the silence.

  "Next flash," Heather repeated softly.

  "Oh yeah, right." He advanced the video to the next flash, then backed up to the beginning of the light surge. Again, he began a "frame by frame" survey.

  In the middle of the flash there again appeared a dot. With another two clicks, the dot had grown to fill the whole screen. Garison gasped when he saw what was in the dot. It wasn't trees this time—it was the inside of a shed. The inside of a shed illuminated by a strange flash. With another click of the tape, the image had shrunk. Two more, and nothing could be seen but flash.

  "What did we see in there?" Aaron finally asked. "That second one looked like the inside of an old barn, or something. Image was kind of fuzzy at that speed, though, so it was hard to see."

  "It was an old shed, all right," Garison told him.

  "Why?"

  Ignoring the question, Garison asked one of his own, "Could you make me a tape of what we saw in those flashes? Hold them still for a moment and tape it onto my tape?"

  "Uh, sure," Aaron replied. Then he said, "But let me put it on another tape for you. I wouldn't want to accidentally tape over whatever else is on that one you brought." He said it like he hoped they would tell him what else was on the tape, but they didn't say anything. He finally shrugged and did what he had offered to do.

  As he was putting the flashes on a tape for them, he asked, "What's going on? You knew there was something in those flashes, right? Otherwise, you wouldn't have brought the tape to me, right? What I want to know is how you knew something would be in those flashes. That was way too quick for the human mind. It was, like, subliminal at best."

  Heather shared a look with Garison and smiled, "I guess it was. I told you there was something on that tape we hadn't seen before."

  "You gonna tell me what it was?" Aaron asked again. "What's so big about seeing some trees and the inside of a shed? What kind of experiment was this?"

  Garison took the two tapes from Aaron and said, "I really don't think I can explain. Not until I know for sure myself. Top secret, you know?" Garison winced as soon as he said it, thinking it was just the sort of thing Bat Garrett would have said.

  Aaron laughed and said, "You come all the way down here at night to get me to run a tape for you and you're not going to tell me why?"

  "Like he said," Heather answered, "It was an experiment that went wrong. Until we know more than that, we better not say."

  "Listen," Garison said, putting a hand on Aaron's shoulder, "When I have this figured out I'll pay for eighteen holes at Tamarron and explain it to you." He added with a smile, "You won't believe me, but I'll tell you, anyway."

  "That means I'm probably not going to hear about this at least until spring, does it? When the snow melts off the course?"

  Garison pointed to his shoulder, "I wouldn't be much good at golf right now, anyway. Probably be spring before I could get my swing back in any case."

  Aaron laughed, "That means I might have a chance at beating you—'specially if we went now. But, deal, I guess."

  Out in the car, Heather asked almost frantically, "Was that the shed, Garison? THE shed? Your shed from—way back when?"

  "All eighteenth century sheds look a lot alike," he replied with a grimace, "But what other shed could it be?"

  They rode on in silence until well outside the city limits before Heather asked, "So those little scenes we just saw—they were windows in time, weren't they? For one one thousandth of a second—or less—we were looking into a window to the eighteenth century?"

  "I guess so," he replied. He was still trying to register it all in his head, and wasn't having much luck. It just didn't make any sense.

  "What about the trees, though? The ones in the first flash. Why were they in the picture? Was that the meadow you landed in?"

  Garison shook his head and reminded her, "The trees through the first window were pines. There weren't any pines in the meadow where I landed."

  Her eyes got wide and she nodded as she said, "But there are pines in La Plata Canyon."

  "Not in the lab!"

  "But there are in the canyon. If that were a window as well, then maybe it was to a time in La Plata Canyon before you built the lab. You had to cut some trees to place it where you did, remember?"

  He nodded and agreed, "That has to be it. We saw through a window in time back to La Plata Canyon before the lab was built, but probably on the site of the lab." After a moment of silence, he fairly whispered, with shaky voice, "This is all my fault."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "The windows," he explained. "The windows in time. They're my fault. My experiment opened a window in time. Windows, maybe. Not just the one I apparently traveled through, but another one."

  "Another one?"

  He thought a moment, then explained, "My trip must have torn a hole in time. Or it opened a door that somehow hasn't been closed. That's why all the weird stuff has been happening around our house and in the yard: there's a hole in time that probably centers on the lab! And what else could have made a window at that exact spot other than my trip?"

  Quick as a flash, Heather decided and said, "We'll move, Garison. We'll fence off our land and move."

  "I can't Heather. I might be turning my back on the Black Plague of the twentieth century. I mean, look at it this way: it took the window in time two years to show up. Since then, it's happening more and more often. Twice just today."

  "You're saying it's getting worse?"

  He wanted to reach out and touch her, but couldn't with his immobilized right arm. As if sensing his thoughts, she scooted over next to him, being careful of the arm. She put her hand on his thigh in a comforting manner and he said, "I don't know. But I have to find out. If it is getting worse, and I'm somehow the cause of it, then I have to stop it."

  She put her head gently on his shoulder and whispered, "Garison, I'm scared."

  "Me, too, Heather. Me, too."

  Chapter Thirteen

  "We agree," he said as he doodled on a piece of paper—which is how he had come up with the idea for The Box years before, "That we do not know much, correct?"

  "Right," Heather responded with a curious glint in her eyes. "But what good—if any—does knowing that do us?"

  "Purely psychological," he replied, the doodle taking the form of the cartoon baseball player, Burt Cottage. The comic strip "Cottage & Co" had been his favorite ever since he had come back through time and, though not much of an artist, his doodles often took the forms of Burt, Bronwynn, Picadillo and the rest of the comic cast.

  "The most dangerous type of person is the one who thinks he knows what is going on so he operates without investigation. Rather like our preacher's wife. You know how—when she cannot remember the correct name for something or someone—she makes one up. In literature it's called a malaprop, I believe."

  "What you're saying is: 'The only thing more dangerous than a loaded gun is an unloaded gun'," she quoted.

  "Exactly." Tearing off the top sheet of the pad so that a fresh one would be present, Garison sugg
ested, "Let's look first at what we do know." He wrote down a "1", then stalled as he stared at it.

  "I thought we just established that we knew nothing."

  "Mostly nothing," he corrected. "We do know that there are holes in time—or appear to be."

  "All close to this house," Heather added. She looked around, with a slight shudder, then back at the paper. He hadn't, yet, written anything down beside the "1".

  "We think," he pointed out in response to her assumption. "Again, that is making a generalization based on what little evidence we have. We have been assuming that this rift in the time curtain—if that is, indeed, an adequate way of expressing it—is merely localized. Perhaps it's not."

  "What would that mean?" After a pause, she added, "To us, I mean. To anyone, really?"

  He forced a smile, "It might mean it isn't my fault. Was my fault? Whatever."

  "Your fault?" she asked, not knowing what he meant.

  Drumming the pencil on the table (until she took it away from him), he told her, "I have a terrible suspicion that this rift in time is my fault. Small clues would point to that conclusion. Like I said last night on the way home: my trip through time must have somehow tore a hole in time."

  She looked at him with confusion, then said, "You've lost me. Start from the beginning and tell me what you're thinking. Wait, not exactly what you're thinking, I'd never understand it."

  "Beginning?" he asked, smiling wryly. "I don't think my thoughts have a beginning any more than my family tree does—that would be like trying to run around a circle until you came to the end. My thoughts are so jumbled I have no idea where they start. Let me try, though:

  "What if time is linear?" he asked rhetorically. "Now, I realize that's the common assumption of just about everyone, but again, we beg your unloaded gun question. Do we take too much for granted by just assuming time is linear? That's a whole 'nother argument, so, rather than explore alternate views of time, let's assume, for now, that time IS linear. H.G. Wells's works were based on linear time and we have—for the most part—assumed that he and most other time travel novelists were correct."