"Thanks." Garison took the form and filled it out. He had to make up a social security number, but he seriously hoped it would never be checked out. If someone did check it out they would discover it was the number belonging to a ten year old girl in Highland Park, Texas. Why a crook in Aztec, New Mexico, would forge her number no one would be able to guess. Just luck, they would probably muse.
Garison gave the filled out form to the man and he said, "Just have a seat, please. This may take a while to locate." Garison nodded and the man left. Garison knew nothing moved quickly in government, especially county government.
After about half an hour, as Garison began to think the man had gone home, the man returned. He was a prematurely balding fellow who looked like he ought to be a clerk for the county. Garison couldn't imagine him in any other job. The man smiled as he handed Garison the birth certificate. "Here you go, sir. You know, my son's eyes changed like that, too?"
"Huh?" Garison asked quickly, looking up.
"According to your birth certificate there, you were born with blue eyes. My son was that way, too. I think most babies are like that. His eyes started turning green rather soon, but—of course—they won't change birth certificates. Some day he's probably going to need that birth certificate to get married and they'll think he stole it or something." The man laughed and Garison forced himself to join in. He thanked the man and left.
By Monday morning, Garison found himself in Albuquerque. He had been able to do some work for a little garage on the outskirts of town on Saturday and had earned enough money to kind of get a hotel room for the weekend. The room was little bigger than a walk in closet, but it was clean and had a shower and a television. Garison had gone to church in Albuquerque and had been so welcomed he wished he could stick around. He still felt a little too close to Durango, though.
On Monday morning, still carrying his canvas bag in one hand and the lap top in the other, he made his way to the county courthouse. Walking inside, he went to the first desk he found, which proved to be an information desk in this building. There was a young girl there, slightly plumpish and looking just over twenty. She wore far too much make up, drawing Garison's attention to the idea that she would probably be much more attractive without it. She smiled a fake smile and asked how she could help. The stranger was a little scruffy looking, but rather handsome for all that.
Garison said, "Hi. My name is Oliver Lyons and I was wondering if you could tell me where to go to get my name legally changed?"
"Hmmm," she mumbled. Loudly smacking her gum, she looked down a roster and finally found the place she thought could help him. He nodded and followed the directions she had given him. He feet echoed on the tile floor and that made him even more self conscious about what he was doing.
Garison knew that, generally, a person hired a lawyer to help them change their name. He had been involved in the process twice during his practice—both times it was a case of someone who didn't like their name and had it changed. Garison was confident he knew the procedure, so he decided to ignore the first rule of good counsel and serve as his own attorney in the matter. It wasn't like he was representing himself on a murder rap.
The process took longer than he had originally thought it would, so he had to take a job frying burgers to pay some rent. His "home" was a garage apartment in a not too great part of town, but he didn't plan on being there very long. He at first tried to make friends, but the efforts were futile when it became clear he wasn't interested in buying drugs. The encounters steeled his will to leave the area as soon as possible.
Finally, though, a thirty seven year old man with black hair and green eyes had his name legally changed from Oliver Daniel Lyons to Burt Cottage. He took his newfound identity over to the Department of Motor Vehicles and then down to the social security office. Not only could he now get better work much easier, his fingerprints and dental records would now firmly be under the name Cottage. He wondered briefly if any relatives of the real Oliver Lyons were still around, but he doubted he would ever meet them. He had only changed his name in the unlikely event he did meet them, though.
Garison stayed on with the burger place for another few days, until he could get a solid job in the oil field. He "shipped out" near the end of June for an oil patch near the small town of Hobbs. It was a boom town—had been for a while, actually—and "rough necks" were in high demand. The bustling atmosphere made it a perfect place to become a hard working non entity.
Garison liked the work because it was physical. It was just hard work from sun up until sun down, with little time to think in between. If he wasn't working, he was sleeping. He even volunteered for the Saturday shift most weeks, taking only Sunday off to go into the nearest town for church. He especially liked going into the Christian Church in Hobbs, where a really tall man (with three really tall children) was the minister.
Through all the hard work, Garison could keep himself from thinking about Heather, Sarah, Justin, Henry, Helenor Sarah. Some physical labor, he knew, allowed a man to think while doing it. But rough necking was a job where a man had to be constantly thinking—or he would soon lose a finger, or even a hand. Most nights, even he went to bed just too tired to even dream. He liked it that way.
On the nights he did dream, though, he frequently woke himself up to stop them. For all he seemed to dream about were the two wives he had left in other time periods and the children he had lost. He soon became known around the oil patch as a haunted man, but one who worked hard and worked well. Like the code of the old west, no one asked him about his past—mainly because many of them had pasts they'd rather leave behind.
There was another reason well bosses began to seek out Garison. Despite his early resolve to just do the job given, he couldn't help but improve jobs where improvement could be found. A naturally logical thinker, he just couldn't do anything haphazardly. If not actually improving the equipment, he was thinking of ways to save steps and do pre existing jobs more efficiently.
It soon became known, therefore, that a team with Garison on it was a successful, well organized, efficient team. More than once he was approached with the job of foreman, but he always turned it down. He preferred to be as blue collar as possible and work as hard as a dog in the process. Still, he was given more and more responsibility. He didn't mind, as long as it kept him busy.
As winter hit the oil patch, though, work slowed down a bit. A top hand like Garison was always somewhat in demand, but even he found himself with a day off now and then. He came to almost hate days off, for they afforded him too much time to think. A month into winter and he was already anxiously awaiting spring, when the work would pick up to a fevered pitch again.
At first, he had forced himself to tolerate those days of thinking. On the one hand, it was horribly painful to remember Sarah or Heather and know they were so far removed from him, with no hope of retrieval. On the other hand, though, he dearly loved the memories he carried of them both. The trick was to relish the memories and not wallow in them.
But as those winter days set in, and weather sometimes postponed labor in the oil field and kept him inside, Garison began to make a horrifying discovery.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Garison's Journal
December 14, 1987
According to the calendar, I should be turning twelve today. According to my body, I am now thirty eight years old. Well, not exactly. I'm either half a year over thirty eight, or half a year under. I'm not sure which, and I really don't care enough to come up with a solid answer. With all I have been through, I believe I feel even older than that.
And now I am losing my mind.
Literally.
I have heard of people losing their minds before, but I always thought it was figurative. Not that they were actually losing little bits and pieces of their mind.
I didn't realize it was happening, or that anything was happening, until just about two months ago. At the time, I thought maybe I had gotten hit on the head somewhere out here
in the oil patch. It's not uncommon, and I thought maybe the hit on the head had removed my memory of the blow. I haven't been hit, though.
Maybe the actual first indication that something was either wrong or was going to be wrong was when I couldn't remember giving the video tape to myself. I should have been able to remember that from the moment it happened, but I never did. So maybe the problem was starting then, but it took a while for it to show up elsewhere. That was just the first major piece to turn up missing.
As I have said, I'm losing my mind. More specifically, I am losing my memory.
For the past two—almost three—years, I have been living with two complete sets of memories. One set I called mine—the me that grew up in the Soviet Americas, went back in history, married Sarah, and changed the world. But I also had all the memories of my other self—Heather's Garison, if you will.
I remembered growing up in the United States, in Colorado, in a town called Durango. I remembered playing baseball, going to the University of Colorado, and even watching "The Andy Griffith Show". Every one of those memories, and thousands more, were just as real and vibrant as "my own". They were my own. I was him.
But something has changed. I realized it one day as I was mooning about my loneliness. I was trying to recall my first wedding to Heather, but I could not. The harder I tried—it didn't make any difference.
I knew facts. I knew the name of her maid of honor and of my best man. I could tell you who the preacher was and who played the piano—but I couldn't REMEMBER the day. I was remembering the facts like someone who had read them in a book. I knew them like I knew about signing of the Declaration of independence: all the details, but my memory told me I hadn't actually been there.
Over the last couple months, I have realized that almost all the memories of "Heather's Garison" have slipped away—or are slipping away, which is an even more unnerving discovery. I know I once had a brother and two sisters—I can even remember their names—but I don't remember them as children. Again, I know facts, but I don't have MEMORIES. All I remember clearly about them is the times I met them in the last couple years.
It's as if all those memories of "Heather's Garison" from before 2005 are slowly disappearing. Each day, I feel like I can remember less, but I can't prove that. I don't know that specific memories are gone because, obviously, I cannot remember having them. I even run across things I recalled in my journal that read like fiction to me now.
Everything since coming back through time is still intact in my memory. I remember my second wedding to Heather just fine. I remember the birth of our daughter. I remember taking a vacation with Bat and Jody Garrett (longest weekend of my life). But all of my second memory from before March 16, 2005, is gone.
While I have detected no signs of losing my other memories—the ones I truly consider mine—I have to wonder: will they begin to disappear soon, too? Is this some latent effect of my last trip through time?
Or, is this the beginning of my slide into non existence?
The oil crew Garison was working for took two weeks off for Christmas. As most of them went home, he headed into the nearest big town—which was Lubbock at that particular time. He couldn't remember if he had ever been there before, but it seemed like a big enough town to provide what he needed. He was struck first, though, by the smell. It seemed as if the entire town were one big feedlot.
He found a phone book and looked for hypnotists. Finding none, he looked under the listings for psychiatrists and found a couple that advertised using hypnotherapy. He called the first one, a Doctor Kelso, and asked to set up an appointment as soon as possible, though he wouldn't say over the phone why he wanted one.
The doctor must not have had many patients, for the nurse gave Garison an appointment the next afternoon, under the name Burt Cottage. Garison thanked her and found a room in Lubbock for the night. He hadn't been spending his money on much of anything since coming to the oil patch and was beginning to have a good little nest egg.
That next afternoon, he drove the old Ford Galaxy he had bought over to the doctor's office. It was a small place on the south side of town, on the road to Abilene. On seeing the sign, Garison thought he had once known someone from Abilene, but he couldn't remember who it was. It bugged him when he knew he should have a specific memory but couldn't call it up.
Doctor Irwin Kelso was a short, rather plump man with glasses and thinning hair. He had a beard trimmed like Sigmund Freud's, leading Garison to remark to himself that, if the man so much as used the word "oral", he was leaving. For all that, Irwin Kelso didn't look to be much over thirty years old. He greeted Garison warmly and invited him into his office.
It was warmly decorated and very professional looking. There were degrees on the wall proclaiming Kelso's academia, and pictures that probably depicted his family. There was also a goodly portion of naugahyde about the room, which made Garison have to stifle a laugh. He remembered the time when, as a freshman in college, some of his classmates had taken him out "to hunt naugas".
Offering Garison a seat (in a real chair, not on a couch), he smiled comfortingly and asked, "Now, how can I help you, Mister Cottage? Mind if I call you Burt?"
"Go ahead," Garison nodded. He looked around the room for a moment as he tried to think of how to put what he wanted to say. The room was definitely from the late seventies. The furniture was certainly authentic Naugahyde, causing Garison to wonder laughingly just how many innocent naugas had been slaughtered to upholster this man's office. All in all, the room had a feel of having been decorated by someone who watched "The Bob Newhart Show" frequently.
Doctor Kelso nodded and said, "Take your time. We are in no hurry."
"Doctor, I want you to hypnotise me and see if you can find some memories I think I have lost."
"I can't hypnotise you just on your say so. I need to know something about you and your problem."
Garison nodded, then finally said, "Doctor, the story I'm going to tell you is so fantastic you're going to think I'm making it up. But I swear to you I am not.
"It all started just over two years ago—or, almost eight, depending on how you look at it . . . "
" . . . about two months ago I started realizing all those memories from 'Heather's Garison' were gone. I have a journal I have kept that says those memories used to be there, but they are not now. In my writings, I allude to memories I have no clue about." Garison looked at Doctor Kelso intently and said, "I want to know what happened to those memories, Doc."
Irwin Kelso took a deep breath, then held up a finger asking Garison to wait for a moment. The story he had just heard was far too much to assimilate quickly. Kelso pushed a button on his intercom and asked, "Fran, do I have any other appointments this afternoon?"
"Mister Uhlenlake at four, sir."
"Could you call him and see if he can reschedule for tomorrow?" Kelso looked up at Garison and added, "Or maybe the next day?"
"Yes sir."
Kelso turned back to Garison and said, "Burt—or Garison—I'm sure you understand me when I say that is the most fantastic story I have ever heard."
"I told you it would be," Garison quipped, trying to sound more relaxed than he was. "My question is: do you believe me?"
"Would you believe me if I had walked in and told the same story."
"Heck no," Garison laughed genuinely. He leaned forward and said, "I called you for a reason, Doc. I want you to hypnotise me and see if those memories are in there somewhere."
Kelso nodded, but said, "Not right away." At Garison's depressed return look, Kelso told him, "I want you to come with me over to the hospital for a brief examination and CAT scan. I want to first establish that there is no physiological explanation for what you are telling me. I mean, either for your loss of memory or, um—"
"Or for why I believe something so patently ludicrous? I understand. I'm pretty sure there isn't a physical reason."
Kelso nodded again, but told him, "I need to be sure. I'll be honest with you, Mister Fit
ch—or Cottage. My first reaction is to think you were hit on the head and, somehow, you lost these memories you have talked about—even the memories of the blow. My feeling, though, is that they are the real memories and these memories you claim to still have are something you found in a work of fiction—or just made up."
"You think I'm making this up?" Garison demanded. He had to admit, though, that he probably would have felt the same if their positions had been reversed.
"No. Not now, anyway. My other gut level feeling is that you believe what you're saying." The doctor paused, took off his glasses, and rubbed his nose like doctors are apparently required to do. He put them back on and said, "If we can eliminate any physiological reasons for your problem, then we'll start to explore the psychological aspect of it."
"What if I'm telling the truth? What if you come to believe that? What then?"
"My job is the same, either way. Even if it proves that your story of time travel is somehow true—or even if it's false—my job as a psychiatrist is to find out what happened to those other memories. If you ever had them, they should still be up there in your brain somewhere. Like you, I want to find them." He turned to his intercom and told Fran, "See if you can get Mister Cottage a CAT scan appointment for this afternoon. Call up Harvey and pull in a favor if you have to."
"Yes sir," she returned.
Garison told him, "I am not a rich man, Doctor. I have insurance, and it might cover the CAT scan since that's a medical procedure, but I doubt that it will cover your services. I have a little money of my own, but—"
"Don't worry about it," Kelso told him. "We can work that end out." Jokingly, he said, "If your story proves to be true, maybe you can tell me some stocks to invest in. Or tell me who's going to win the Super Bowl."
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 2): Saving Time Page 23