Extra Life

  There’s young Conrad Bower, mugging for the camera, doing a spastic interpretive dance to show his excitement. Must’ve been his mother recording. For no apparent reason other than pent-up glee, Connie strikes a mock bodybuilder pose—nothing you’d ever catch him doing in this life.

  And then somebody calls to him, and he turns, and a man in civilian clothes drops to one knee and widens his arms. Connie and his father hug like they just won the game show grand prize. His father, alive and well. Another miracle that never happened.

  One last shot showed Paige again, older now. The video might well have been recorded a few days before. The camera tracks her as she runs across a stretch of Wright Beach, leaps in the air and catches a Frisbee. She turns on her heels and whips the disk back, laughing maniacally, and the camera follows to where Paige’s older brother catches it smack between his hands.

  “Turn it off,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  My voice said it, but I didn’t, actually. Because another Russ Vale was in the theater audience. As my eyes adjusted I recognized my father, Conrad, Savannah, Paige, and two more variations of me. I counted six figures until the screen went black and they fell into darkness.

  A few seconds later that bright blank wall of blue overtook the screen and the house lights slowly brought me a clearer view of my friends, family, and facsimiles. One Russ was wearing the cargo shorts I still had on when this all began. I could assume he was our innocent Virgin, the one to be protected at all costs. Process of elimination meant the other was One O’clock Russ. Which one of them had the cell phone I needed—I had no idea.

  “Oh, crap, another one,” Paige said, flicking a hand gesture at me, her proof of an infestation.

  “How can y’all stand this gas smell?” I asked them.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said Virgin, with a cough.

  “What are you doing here?” Paige asked me.

  “I should ask you the same question.”

  “We were invited,” One O’clock proclaimed.

  “By who?”

  Savannah directed my attention to the highest seats, just below the projection booth. Someone was there, crouched so low in his seat I hadn’t noticed him at first. Bobby Parker, grinning, hands laced together behind his head.

  At the sight of him I screamed, “Everybody get out!”

  But none of them moved. Not even Bobby himself. Well, Connie, who was hunkered in the crash position against the seatback ahead of him, briefly lifted his hands from his face and flashed a tortured expression at me. That was it.

  They had to sense the risk. The gasoline stench alone, making my eyes water fierce—

  “Where did you get that?” Dad asked me, sidestepping along his row. When he reached the end, he came down the landing, drawn to the Flux Stabilizer. “Is that—I mean, the design—”

  My dad recognized his own handiwork, I guess, even though he hadn’t actually invented the device in this reality. With the theater still intact, Kasper Vale’s mad scientist laboratory was still just an item on his Christmas wish list.

  No time for show and tell here. Bobby was surely armed and could start blasting any second. Dad flinched when I screamed again: “You have to get out! Bobby Parker is a maniac. He trapped you here, and he’s got a gun!”

  They all blinked at me, turned to Bobby for a second opinion. Bobby stood up. His hair took on a blue glow from the projection beam behind him, and the shadow of his pompadour was writ large on the movie screen. He shrugged and showed both his hands. Who me?

  “I got nothing, folks,” he said. Lifted his shirt to expose his bare waistline, did a three-sixty, modeling his total lack of a firearm. “Alls I did was bring y’all down here for a show like I was supposed to.”

  “It’s a trap,” I said. “Savannah, you saw him aim a gun at his father.”

  Savannah hugged her purse to her chest and moved farther down her row, away from me, the crazy guy with the weird contraption in his hands, even though we were already on opposite sides of the theater. She was closest to the emergency exit—two seconds away if she turned and sprinted.

  “At Silver Screen Studios,” I told her. “You went there—”

  Savannah shook her head, refusing my story.

  One O’clock tried to calm me with his upraised hands. “You’re confused, bro,” he said. “I don’t know what happened where you came from, but whatever you’re talking about, it didn’t happen here.”

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off Bobby. He was headed down the landing now, just behind my father, and I refused to accept that he was anything less than a maniac, in this world or any other.

  “Where’d you get this movie?” I asked Bobby.

  Bobby shrugged. “Why don’t y’all tell me? You made it.”

  “You know what’s going to happen before I do,” I said. “You’ve known all along, maybe even before you came into the diner. You’re in on this, whatever it is.”

  “Alls I know,” Bobby said, flapping his fingers on either side of his head, “is there’s like a dozen of you dudes swimming around in my head, all telling me a different story. Can’t keep it straight anymore. I’m through with this gig, is all I’m saying.”

  “You had a gun,” I said. “From the shooting range.”

  “Yeah, I left it in my—” Bobby’s words caught in his throat. His eyes bulged like he needed the Heimlich. Just behind me, another surprise visitor had arrived. This one was the cause of Bobby’s shock.

  I turned, fully expecting to find another factory-line model of myself. Instead, there stood a second Bobby Keene-Parker, Clone Trooper, pistol aimed on his target, who, naturally, was me.

  FRESH ON the scene, Bobby Parker Part Deux had the murderous look of a carnivore let loose from its cage. He was shirtless, wearing red breakaway track pants with the seams unbuttoned from the knees down. A hasty costume change, it seemed.

  The implications here zipped through my mind. Somehow, Bobby Parker Deux took a turn with the Pastime Project. Most likely stole my 6:15 wormhole ride, in fact. Somehow, once 7 p.m. rolled around, Bobby was going to get the prize cell phone and make a leap of his own. I didn’t know how, but the details hardly mattered. All it meant was that bad deeds were about to go down.

  Nearly everyone I loved gathered together. Corralled was a better word because this setup was no accidental fluke. It was intelligent design.

  “Give me that,” Bobby Deux ordered—meaning the Flux Stabilizer.

  Meaning Bobby knew the value of my wonky walkie-talkie.

  It was clear now that our child-actor friend (any version) was in the business of killing Russes. I’d seen it done. So I had a pretty dark prediction for what would happen if I gave him what he wanted. The space I currently occupied would be empty air in less than three seconds.

  “I think I’ll keep it, thanks,” I said.

  “Give it,” he repeated, and raised his aim toward my face.

  Original Bobby spoke up, “No way! No way! You are not here. I didn’t do this. I ain’t going through any time warp.”

  “Chill out,” Bobby Deux told his prototype. “Trust me.”

  Original Bobby shook his head—hell no.

  “Look—” I said, but Bobby cut me off.

  “You can’t make me do this, too, you sick freak. I’ve had enough of y’alls games.” He wasn’t addressing his clone-self anymore. His eyes were flitting back and forth—me, Virgin, One O’clock, me, Virgin, One O’clock. He’d lost track of which of us he was supposed to be talking to.

  “Shut up,” Bobby Deux said. “God, I can’t even look at you. It’s like you’re some loser fan dressed as me for Halloween. You’re such a fake.” Deux wasn’t aiming at anyone in particular now.

  “Screw you,” Original Bobby said, then he did a magic trick. Flashed his father’s lighter out of nowhere. Thumb on the igniter, gave it a flick. He held the finger-high flame just inches from the back of the nearest red plush theater seat. It didn’t seem like much of a threat,
until I realized—emitting from the seats, the ruffled red curtains on the walls—

  “The place is doused with gasoline,” I said aloud.

  Savannah took her cue. With a high-pitched screech she darted for the exit door, shoved the bar two-handed, and escaped. She never even looked back, and I couldn’t blame her.

  The rest of us, we’d get enveloped in flames if Original Bobby touched his lighter to the seat.

  “No—not yet!” Redux screamed at his old self.

  The fire trap was all part of the plan—former plan. Bobby probably brought the gas can himself, dribbled it around, all in preparation for our arrival. If it wasn’t Bobby, it was whoever was using him to carry out this plan.

  “You ain’t real,” Bobby said. “Just a voice in my brain.”

  “It’s the other way around,” Redux replied.

  Calmly, One O’clock offered his open palm to Bobby, strained his reach across two rows of seats. One O’clock said, “Give me the lighter, man. You don’t want to do this anymore. Plans have changed.”

  Bobby trembled. His lighter flame trembled. Finally, he flinched his thumb away. He snapped the lighter shut and slapped it into One O’s hand.

  “Shoot him,” One O’clock said, cold and clear.

  Redux fixed his aim and pulled the trigger. If he was targeting me, I’d have been dead before the idea of it even occurred to me. But instead I had time to crouch and cry out, just like Dad and Paige nearby.

  Further up the landing, Bobby Parker lurched backward from the force of the bullet. He tumbled into a seat, one leg draped over the armrest, and gawked down at the red flower blooming dead center on his chest.

  Redux lowered the gun and slapped a hand over the top of his head, stunned. However he thought shooting another Bobby was supposed to feel, he clearly wasn’t feeling that way. And he had no idea the worst part was coming next. If he’d known, he never would’ve fired the gun.

  Draped in his theater seat, Bobby Parker went limp. We didn’t need a medic to diagnose him dead. Didn’t even need a pulse check. Bobby’s death was official the instant the gun thumped on the carpeted floor, and the empty track pants gently folded down on top of it. Redux had killed his original and, in doing so, erased himself.

  I wished I could feel relieved. Bobby Parker was just a pawn in a game I played with a hidden opponent. Not just chess but that crazy three-dimensional chess where pieces could jump from one plane to another, appearing and disappearing, attacking where they wouldn’t be expected.

  And my opponent knew all the moves ahead of time. The greatest Game Theorist ever to plot a military strategy, especially with inter-dimensional time travel at his disposal. Careful not to trust, the knight said, just before he was captured.

  “We gotta get out of here,” One O’clock told us all. He moved onto the landing, brushed aside the track pants with his shoe and grabbed the gun from the floor. Just his thumb and finger on the hilt. For a guy who’d only taken one leap, he acted very much in control of the variables here.

  Dad gripped my shoulder to steady my shiver. I was too wiped out to think through even the simplest logic—but something was wrong here.

  “It’s quarter to seven. We have fifteen minutes to use the device or we’re screwed, forever,” One O’clock insisted. “Our last shot.”

  Paige said, “And what’re we supposed to do when you two disappear? How do we explain a dead actor shot by his own clone?”

  “Why did you tell him to shoot—himself?” I asked One O’clock.

  He flashed me the same sneer I used to deflate other people when they asked stupid questions. “To trick him into canceling himself out, and it worked, right?”

  “But why would he listen to you?” I persisted. “All along, I thought I was playing Bobby, convincing him to shoot the movie and all that. But really, he was manipulating us. He lured us to Silver Screens, he showed up at my Dad’s office, but there was no way for him to know—”

  “Time’s wasting,” One O’clock reminded me. He pulled our cell phone from his pocket and showed off the readout. Of course he would’ve taken it from Virgin, knowing what it was worth. All we had to do now was insert that phone into the Flux Stabilizer and get to the radio tower in time. But I couldn’t think about that now.

  “Everything that’s happened,” I said. “It’s a way to make me keep jumping across dimensions. More leaps. More Russes. And the more Russes there are, the more—”

  “Unstable the system,” Dad concluded along with me.

  “Yes, like a viral attack, which makes the system—”

  Connie let loose a barrage of coughs, probably from gas fumes.

  “Susceptible to infiltration,” Dad finished for me.

  “The black,” Connie choked out, gripping the seat ahead of him.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The black eye,” Connie said.

  The mere mention of my injury brought the throbbing back to my face. I dabbed the tender flesh just above me left cheek, and as I did, One O’clock slipped his finger through the gun’s trigger guard.

  “Woah—wait a second,” I said. “I got hit at school and—”

  “But where is his?” Paige interrupted.

  Because One O’clock, who was supposed to have caught the same schoolyard smack down I did, should’ve sported an identical shiner. But his face was clear and clean of all but a few whiteheads.

  This Horace Vale wasn’t One O’clock at all. Too late, I finally knew what Future Russ was going to say: be careful not to trust yourself.

  “WHO ARE you?” I asked—whoever he was. The one I’d been calling One O’clock. The one who could not have actually been a former manifestation of me, who was lying to us, who was way more in control than he should’ve been. Let’s call him Wrong Russ.

  “Come on,” he said. “Questions like that make me look stupid.”

  I saw the differences now. A trace of fuzz on his lip that would’ve taken me months to grow. And he looked ten pounds lighter than any other Russ, face stretched thin, like those before-and-after PSAs about meth addicts and how human they used to look.

  “You’re him—the one who sent the first video,” I said.

  Wrong Russ sighed. His gun wasn’t necessarily aimed at anyone, but the threat was there. He said, “Just give me the device.”

  “You point that gun at me and I’ll break this thing,” I said. “Nobody will go anywhere, and your whole plan will be screwed.”

  “Fine, then just come with me. We can both use it.”

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I said.

  “We’re running out of time.”

  “Where’s One O’clock Russ?”

  “Come on… there’s no sense in—”

  “Where?”

  “Gone. Erased.”

  “You killed him,” I said.

  Dad and Virgin positioned themselves at my sides. They were betting Wrong Russ wouldn’t risk hurting them with a wayward bullet—but they didn’t know that his schemes resulted in Dad getting shot once already. Not to mention, he’d arranged for so many Russes to die, I couldn’t keep count. If I had him I.D.ed correctly, he was the first cause, the designer of all this chaos.

  “Sure,” Wrong Russ said. “I broke through into this reality and replaced him right after the car crash. Assumed his identity, you could say. The only real one here is him.” He nodded at Virgin. “The rest of us are eight-bit characters. You know that. We’re as real as Super Mario falling into a lava pit. There’s always an extra life.”

  “I exist,” I insisted.

  Wrong Russ scoffed at me. “I used to think that, but I’ve been stuck in this game so long, I lost count how many times, how many leaps. All I want is to find my way out. Maybe I was the first Russ to use the Project. I’m not even sure about that.”

  “How did you get a hold of it?” Dad asked him.

  “You—or another iteration of you—thought it was a secret, but I found it,” Wrong admitted. I could almost see the
moisture in his eyes when he spoke to our father. “The first time I leaped—it was an accident—a joke. I didn’t think it would work, but then I was lost. I’ve lived this day… God. Five hundred takes of the same scene. You can’t even tell one from the next anymore. You know every line, every angle—but you still can’t get it right.”

  “But the clock—it runs out at seven,” I said.

  “Which is why I’ve had to jump to a new track before the end. I sent messages to other versions of myself, like you, across dimensions. Get them to make enough leaps, destabilize the boundaries, you can break clean through and start over again. I don’t know how many times anymore. But now we’ve got a way to end it for good. Finally. This is what I’ve been waiting for. A Flux Stabilizer. Like I said, all I want is out.”

  I realized aloud, “It was you—the techno-vortex, the knife—you’re the one who screwed with Bobby’s head and lured us here and killed Paige.”

  “He did what?” Paige asked.

  “In another world,” I said.

  “That was an unstable wormhole,” Wrong Russ said. “I could only get partway through. When you’re stuck halfway, there’s all sorts of interference and feedback. But I had to do something to make you leap again.”

  “So you murdered your own friend?”

  “These worlds are dreams, you understand? No more real than dreams, except you keep waking up from one into the next. But I want to wake up for good, and so do you.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want,” I said.

  “Don’t pretend I don’t know what you want,” Wrong said. “The only difference between us is time. I’ve had more time to realize who I really am.”

  Time—all this time, repeated time—and not a second to think, to consider how Wrong Russ played me like an X-Box hero using every available cheat code. He recorded the invitation and mailed it through space and time. He duped me into thinking he was me from some glorious future.