Extra Life

  I couldn’t read Virgin Russ’s thoughts, but I could guess the filmstrip playing on repeat in his head. Same as mine, captured from a different angle. Dad catching the bullet, collapsing backward into the banister as police swarmed through the front door. Bobby dropping the gun like it was all a misunderstanding, just a prop weapon, a misfired blank, no harm intended.

  Last we saw Dad, he was strapped to a stretcher gliding through the hospital entrance, and then we were ushered into this room, buffeted with an hour of questions from two police detectives while awaiting contact with Mom, who could not be reached by phone. Police were supposed to be on their way to alert and collect her. All I wanted was Mom with us, even if it meant she had to see her son cloned and hear the crazy story. I tried my best not to be pissed that she couldn’t even be reached in an emergency.

  Dad was in surgery now. Our last update from the nurse was more than a half hour earlier: the bullet missed our father’s heart, but nicked an artery and punctured a lung. Surgeons hard at work, no guarantees, the usual. It all seemed so tentative. A new shape could still be molded in the clay.

  Virgin said, “So you’re going to do it, then?”

  “What?”

  “You got the phone, your eject button. That’s how it works, right? You just teleport away and leave this mess for the rest of us?”

  “The mess you jump into is worse, believe me,” I said.

  “It’s my choice as much as yours,” Virgin said. “I could leave instead.”

  “Listen, I’ve been through it. I know what happens. Dad told you about the warning video, but you haven’t seen the crazy holes that rip open between reality and virtual reality, or what seems virtual to us. It’s like we’re putting the universe through a shredder every time we do this.”

  “If Dad dies…”

  “He’s not going to die.”

  “How do you know? Did you see the future?”

  “No,” I admitted. But our dad could recover, and then the extra leap wouldn’t be worth the risk. Even if the worst happened, even if Bobby Parker won his eye-for-an-eye out of some twisted idea that I tried to make him kill his father, the program couldn’t save Dad in this world. If one of us pressed the button, the other would be left behind to grieve. The worlds I ruined still limped on without me, real as ever.

  I couldn’t stop thinking of all those other realities where tragedies struck people I loved over and over again... some of those worlds I visited, breathed the air, and the awfulness that happened there still weighed on me. It was all too much for one person.

  “There can’t be two of us,” Virgin said. “One has to leave.”

  “Wherever you go, there will be at least one more of you.”

  “But not here. Here, if you leave, I get my own identity back.”

  I couldn’t take his accusing glare anymore. It was confronting the mirror when your self-esteem is in the toilet. When I stood, he asked me where I was going, and I told the truth: to get a drink from the fountain. And I took the phone with me.

  This wing of the hospital was mainly empty. Just the uniformed police officer assigned to guard us until such time as the detectives were satisfied with our account of the incidents.

  We told them what we could, minus the sci-fi stuff, and we even admitted to stealing the car in desperation, out of fear of Bobby Parker’s gun spree. They told us that Marv Parker was in stable condition just a few doors down from my father, who was critical. Bobby was in custody—that was all we knew about him.

  I nodded at my guard and dribbled water all over my shirtfront at the fountain. Down the hall, the elevator doors slid open, and I stood upright in anticipation. Two people stepped out, neither of them my mother, although I knew them both. It was Connie and his mother Sara, an on-shift nurse at this hospital, in her blue scrubs. Sara held her arm around her son like he’d keel over if she let him go. She regarded me with pity instead of the usual suspicious pucker of her lips.

  Twenty feet off, the cop guard got antsy, but he let my two visitors approach. Must’ve decided a nurse and a chubby kid in glasses posed no threat.

  “Russ, I heard what happened,” Sara said.

  I nodded, wiped the water off my chin. Connie’s mom looked a little pale and spaced out herself. She was probably freaked by how narrowly her son escaped the horror that seemed to follow at my heels. But she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “I just checked in downstairs. They’re still working on your dad, doing everything they can. It’s going to be all right.”

  I nodded again. For all I knew, my father could be dead already, and the staff were just postponing the news until my mother showed up. If they delayed their worst-case scenario until after seven, I’d be stuck in this world without a father for the rest of my life.

  Connie said, “Russ, I’m so sorry.”

  “This isn’t your fault,” I said.

  Sara lifted my free hand and examined the clean dressing. She must’ve thought I got hurt when Bobby attacked us in my living room.

  “Mrs. Bower, could Conrad and I have a minute?” I asked.

  She flinched a little, flared her nostrils. Here she was, finally treating me like a human instead of a nuisance, and I was asking her to scram. “That’s fine. Conrad, you know where I’ll be, all right?” She hesitated, glanced at the cop, and then made her way back toward the elevator.

  “Here,” I said, and offered Connie my cell phone.

  He looked at the phone but didn’t take it.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you,” I said. “I was being paranoid.”

  He pressed himself against wall, shying away from me like I was a drug dealer insisting he try a sample.

  “I’ve done this twice now,” I said. “And every time I’ve just made bigger and bigger mistakes. You gotta do it this time. Go back to four o’clock, call the cops and tell them that Bobby Parker is fixing to show up at my house. You’re not going to screw it up like I would.”

  I didn’t tell him such a change would mean nothing in this world. If Connie took the bait, he’d find himself twinned in another dimension, and I’d be left here to grieve the disaster I caused. It was a desperate offer, it made no sense, but I had to be sure I could trust him.

  “I can’t,” Connie said. “I’m not like you, I can’t just—”

  “Exactly—you’re better,” I said. “I knew you’d be too smart to try it.” We kept our voices too low for the guard’s liking. He was coming toward us to break up the conspiracy.

  My voice shuddered. “If my father dies… you know how it is to lose…”

  Years ago, it was my dad who forced me to apologize to Connie after that helicopter-in-the-locker prank. It was Dad who convinced me Connie would be a good ally to have in my corner.

  Connie swallowed hard. He spoke clear and calm, looking straight into my eyes. “No, Russ. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

  And I believed him. Connie couldn’t lie to your face like that. If I saw any kind of hesitation, I might’ve kept going with the test. I might’ve even suggested another leap could change something drastic—maybe even reverse the death of his father. But I didn’t have to play that mind game.

  Connie couldn’t be the one who Future Russ warned me not to trust. I mean, if my best friend commanded time-space tech like this, why would he decide to use it just to screw with me? He wasn’t a vindictive asshole.

  “Everything all right here?” the guard cop asked. He studied us, grinding his jaw.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Mm-hmm,” the cop said. “Where’s y’alls brother?”

  “Where you left him, in the waiting room.”

  The cop said, “Then why don’t you go wait along with him?”

  My cell chimed in my hand. 6:59. The video message from Future Russ had arrived. Yet another chance to set things right, except the real chance had already passed me by a million miles ago. When Connie and I stepped back into the waiting room, Virgin Russ raised his face expectantly from the mask he’d
made of his hands.

  I met his eyes—and tossed the cell into the covered trash bin. It landed softly inside, the plastic hatch swinging back into place. No more leaps.

  Except Virgin Russ didn’t seem to appreciate my grand gesture. He stood up, far more concerned about whatever was happening in the waiting room doorway behind me. I heard the squawk of several police radios at once, then my mother’s voice, close by: “Russ?”

  I’d never seen her eyes so glossy before. Even in her steely executive suit, she never looked more vulnerable. She blinked and staggered against the wall and Connie reached out to steady her. I couldn’t tell if newly terrible news about my father was what made her swoon, or if it was the unnerving sight of her doubled son. She must’ve thought she lost her mind.

  “Mom…” I said.

  “Your father…” she answered.

  Inside the trash bin, the cell phone chimed. It sounded miles away.

  And Virgin Russ made his move. He shoved the bin over with a rubbery thump. The cap fell off and clattered across the tile floor with empty paper cups and balled-up diapers in its trail. He dropped to his knees and scooped hungrily through used napkins and candy bar wrappers.

  I was frozen in place, watching him. Any second he would have the phone in hand, and all I could imagine was a flat line on the heart rate monitor in my father’s operating room, the relentless single note keening forever.

  A device in Virgin’s grip. Thumb seeking the touchscreen.

  You have to stop the leaps, said Danger Russ, deep in my brain.

  And then another burst of clarity reminded me that if Virgin Russ took a leap away from his own reality, then there would be no original in this universe. No original, no copy—and the logic of it could wipe me out completely. I was a thumb-tap away from death.

  Damn it. I jumped Virgin Russ, and he folded backward to the floor, stretching his arms to keep the phone from my reach. But I clutched for it, clawing. “No, no, no!” he screamed, pushing me away with one knee. Two pairs of the same hands wrapped around each other until the phone was swallowed whole inside our twenty desperate fingers.

  One of us found the icon, didn’t matter which. And then, again, the white light.

  I COULDN’T breathe. A dead weight pressed on my lungs, flattened my naked back against an ice cold floor. I gasped like a deep-space astronaut coming out of cryogenic sleep. There is an instant of nothingness mid-leap. I had to rise from it, find my bearings, even though I was in the same place I left—the hospital waiting room.

  The trash bin stood upright and capped, as if a custodian had come in and tidied up while I blinked. Lights out, vending machine and TV dark and still.

  The mass on top of me came alive. It was human and groaning and sweaty and now fumbling to get away. It was Virgin Russ in his birthday suit, crab walking backward into a bench. “No, no, no,” he was still saying.

  “Oh, crap,” I said.

  We shared a simultaneous physical shudder. I might’ve thought it would feel familiar, being tangled with my own nudity, but body horror is never natural.

  Virgin Russ cupped himself, whimpering. Well, Virgin Russ no more—and the first time’s a real bummer—because now he was an alien to this reality as much as I was. The two of us had sneaked through, while somewhere else in this world another Russ inherited the title of Virgin. Twin Russ would have to be this one’s nickname from now onward.

  There was nothing in the room for Twin Russ and me to cover ourselves with. Even the bench cushions were the stiff kind, bolted to their frames. We were alone at least, but shouts and sneakers in the hall meant we could get visitors any second.

  Somebody out there was calling for flashlights. The hospital power supply was freshly dead, and I could guess why. Me and my twin were mucking up the system again.

  “What just happened?” Twin Russ asked.

  “We leaped.”

  “But—it was—it wasn’t anything. Just… everything tingles.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it goes,” I said. The stitches on my hand were gone, lost in transit. What was left was a nearly bloodless wound split open like the lips of a rubber coin pouch.

  “Why are we naked?” Virgin demanded.

  “Why’d you press the icon?”

  “You pressed the icon.”

  “I was trying to stop you.”

  “So you could take the leap yourself,” he insisted.

  “That was your world. You actually existed there. Now—”

  Twin Russ slapped his bare chest to show he was made of solid stuff. He said, “I exist here, too. I had to get out of the mess you made of my life.” He didn’t have to say what he meant. The mess was our father’s fate, whether or not he’d died.

  “You had no qualms about leaving me behind?” I asked him.

  “Who are you?” he snapped. “A copy. Like an old videotape.”

  I shook my head at him and said, “You’re rough footage now, bro, same as me.”

  Just then, the fluorescent lights flickered back on and the deep continuous rumble of the hospital resumed itself. Hospitals had dependable generators on site for the life support machines, defibrillators, CAT scans, and these had just kicked in. Somewhere, somebody clapped.

  The embedded electrical clock on the wall got ticking again. But the time was not what it should’ve been. It said 5:30, and, judging from the baseball game outside, it was evening. An hour and a half too late. The four o’clock half-point had been skipped all together.

  A surge of nausea gut-punched me so hard I gagged. The whole world seemed to jostle on its axis. Twin Russ groaned like it struck him too, and his face whitened almost to ivory. Aftereffects of the leap, I guessed, though this didn’t happen the last two times. “What the hell?” Twin Russ asked.

  Five-thirty p.m. Future Russ must’ve used the four o’clock leap into Marv Parker’s office without any do-overs. He must’ve forced us onward to the next drop-off point. No exit here. Or else two Russes taking the same leap burned twice the fuel—I had no clue which was the right explanation.

  Five-thirty p.m. My father might already be shot, again. If not, it would happen soon—any minute, any second—and we were too far away to stop it.

  First, we had to find some covering. Impossible to think straight when you’re naked. Then a phone. Then, don’t get arrested.

  I popped my head out of the waiting room. Nobody in the hall, closed elevator to the right, and an empty nurse’s station down on the left. While I watched, a nurse rushed from one room to another, but she was way far off and didn’t see me.

  Another bout of nausea whacked me good. My head spun. Twin Russ pulled off the trash bin cap and puked inside. Something was badly off. Our fit inside this universe was wonky, unsettled, a toy train that kept wobbling because one wheel wasn’t quite on the track.

  My plan now was to ransack a nearby room for bed sheets we could use as makeshift togas. With two cots in each room, I had two chances to find an empty bed, or two possible patients to catch me in the act and scream for help. What’s behind door number… 205?

  “Wait here,” I told Twin Russ.

  My bare feet slapped rudely on the hall floor, but I slipped into the opposite room without trouble. The closest cot was empty, but in the dim light I could make out the shape of a patient in the next bed over. I froze—and heard the steady drone of snoring. I grabbed a handful of neatly tucked blankets and sheets.

  Vigorous tugging got the blanket loose, but then came footsteps in the hall, approaching. When I turned to have a look, just that slight movement left me merry-go-round dizzy. I steadied myself on the cot’s aluminum side rail, then the blanket I was grasping pulled back against me.

  “Mine,” squawked a voice from two feet away.

  Five seconds ago, there was nobody in this bed. I would’ve bet my life on that fact, which meant even my perceptions were falling apart. Because now the cot was definitely occupied by a toothless old man with the grip of a professional arm wrestler. I cried o
ut and lost my hold on the blanket.

  The neighboring patient flipped on her light, and my tug-of-war opponent screamed through his pink gums at the sight of me standing naked by his side. He pulled his hard-won blanket over his head.

  “Pervert!” The other patient screamed. You could say grannies look alike, but this one was the spitting image of the one who doused me with a hose, way back when this whole leap business started.

  “Sorry!” I said, and backed out of the room just as empty-handed and naked as when I got there. Twin Russ shrugged questioningly at me from the waiting room doorway, but I zipped right past him.

  Two nurses and a security guard jogged toward us, shouting the usual pointless requests that we stop and perhaps answer a few questions. Elevator straight ahead, door invitingly open. It was a fluke I couldn’t pass up.

  I dove inside the elevator car and body-checked the back wall. Twin Russ, right behind me, swiveled and smacked the “close doors” button as our pursuers gained on us.

  “Woah, woah, woah,” the security guard said to the doors as they slid shut. His outstretched hand couldn’t stop them in time, and Twin pressed the fourth floor button to get us moving.

  “We’re going up?” I asked through my heaving breathing.

  “You want to show up in the lobby like this?” Twin asked.

  “I think we’re stuck between spaces,” I said.

  “No we’re not. We’re moving.”

  “No—not the elevator—I mean—”

  Twin didn’t have to ask why I stopped talking. He could see the ghost as well as me. It took shape in the center of the elevator car, forcing us against the back wall. It was the see-through outline of a woman, facing away from us. I reached out for her shoulder, but she was no more solid than a hologram.

  “Holy crap,” Twin said.

  “This is what I mean,” I said. “Stuck between spaces.”

  The ghost woman’s image thickened enough that we could see clothing, a pair of scrubs. The vague outline of a rectangle in both her hands—which materialized into an electronic tablet. She was a random nurse, just going about her day at work.