“I’m going to need a month to recover from all of my scrapes, cuts, and bruises,” he mumbled, as Lee used a card key to let himself in.
Lee, of course, didn’t respond, but pulled the door open, letting himself and Darren into the fluorescent-lit hallway.
Up a set of stairs, down a further hallway, and up to a door festooned with Far Side cartoons, an engraved plate that said “High Energy Physics Laboratory,” and a handwritten sign underneath that said, “Unauthorized Individuals Will Be Vaporized.” A sign next to the door read, “DANGER! When the red light is on, lasers are in use in the lab. DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT APPROPRIATE PROTECTIVE EYEWEAR.”
The red light was off, to his relief. Lee went in, flipped on the fluorescent lights, and hung his coat on a hook. He went past several heavy tables laden with gleaming equipment that sprouted wires and cables like Medusa’s reptilian coiffure. The brushed nickel front of each was festooned with dials, knobs, switches, and digital displays, dark at the moment. Heavy glass windows showed dimly-visible arrays of lenses and magnets. There were legends Darren only vaguely understood—Sync. Frequency scaler. Rate scaler. Event timer. Mode select. Attitude. Beam collimation. Scatter. Magnetic field strength. Freeze/resume. Flux density. Reset.
Lee sat down in front of a row of machines, and flipped a switch. There was a whir and a hum as power began to flow through it. Displays lit up, and something in the middle that looked like a flat-screen television glowed with a gray, neutral light. Lee pulled a notebook from a nearby shelf, opened it, flipped a few pages, and stared down at the page with a scowl of an intensity that looked as if it should cause the pages to ignite.
Darren came up and looked over his shoulder. There was neat, even script at the top of the page. After an indecipherable list of dial settings and equations, it said,
Split quantum state established at 14.5 keV/m3 multiple at 23.8 keV/m3 Projection begins at higher energies—stable threshold achieved. Images appear to be stable and from forward time sequence. Confirmed 9 March 2016.
The brightness on the screen gradually increased, and the whole thing became a pale, flat gray, the color of high clouds on an overcast day. Lee leaned over and adjusted more dials and switches. Digital readouts glowed red, their numbers communicating nothing to Darren other than awe at Lee’s brilliance, something he’d felt during their entire friendship.
Lee used the dials labeled “Rate scaler” and “Flux density,” gradually turning one clockwise, waiting, then turning the other, then waiting, back and forth. The brightness on the screen reached a pure white. Lee stared at blankness, his forehead creased, waiting for something, his eyes registering a combination of anger, frustration, and longing.
There was a sudden crackling noise, and the numbers on one digital display jumped. The solid white image on the screen streaked, fragmented, and rippling ghost images played across its surface. He continued to turn the two dials clockwise. A second crackling noise, then a third and a fourth in rapid succession. The images on the screen darkened, resolving and fading like faces behind a curtain in the breeze.
Another gradual twist on the dials. The images clarified further. They were definitely human forms, but still vague, shifting and merging with the gray background. Then there was a rush of white noise, like a burst of radio static during an electrical storm, and the picture cleared, resolving into sharp-edged faces like pen-and-ink sketches. Three people were there, images surreal and incomplete but nonetheless recognizable. Darren’s heart pounded against his ribcage.
I knew who I’d see. I knew, from the moment I heard Lee talking to his girlfriend. I just didn’t want to believe it.
The three people on the screen were Lee, Darren, and Sherry.
The figures moved around each other in a jerky, angry way, the lines bending and merging on the screen. One, then another of them spoke, to judge by the movement of their mouths, but there was no sound. Lee’s figure gestured with one hand. He was clearly in the grip of some high emotion.
With a swirl and a blur, the images of Darren and Lee collided. They were fighting, wrestling, their faces twisted with anger. Sherry stood a little way away, her mouth open, eyes wide and horrified.
Then her image was rocked backwards. A dark, jagged mark appeared in the middle of her torso. She looked downwards, the horror in her expression changing to astonishment, and then her knees buckled and she collapsed to the floor. The two men separated, their chests heaving with exertion, and turned toward Sherry’s inert form.
Darren held a small, but deadly-looking, handgun.
Lee—the real Lee—pressed the button marked Freeze/Resume, and sat for a while as motionless as the image on the screen. Darren looked in wonder at the lines depicting his own, familiar face, lines twisted almost out of recognition by rage. Or was it fear? Or a sudden, dawning comprehension? It was impossible to tell. Drawings were only that—a bunch of lines, about which you had to create the underlying meaning. But there was no denying what else the image depicted. Sherry, bleeding her life away from a gunshot wound to the chest. Darren, standing over her holding a gun. Lee, his back to the viewer, only a part of his profile visible, but every pixel in the image radiating grief.
So, that was it. He was not going to have an affair with Sherry. He was going to kill her. And Lee decided to kill him first, to stop it from happening.
A voice in his head, sounding breathless and terrified, said, It can’t be. It can’t be true. I would never kill anyone.
But he had. He had killed Crenshaw. He had him pinned down, helpless and injured, and hit him over the head with a stone. He’d killed once, he could do it again.
But that wasn’t the same thing. Crenshaw was a rogue murderer. He’d done it to protect Jane.
Could there have been a reason that he killed Sherry? It was in the future. There was no way to tell how far into the future it was. Maybe between now and then, he’d have come up with a perfectly good rationalization for killing her.
Just like he’d done with Crenshaw.
A wash of vertigo swept over him. He felt disassociated, like he was floating. He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs, and the shuddery sensation of adrenaline pouring into his veins, but a part of his brain just let go. Separation, floating upwards and away.
No. Get a grip. The voice in his mind sounded a little like Maggie Carmichael. You have a job to do. Don’t you dare go weak sister on us now. You know that the future isn’t written, isn’t locked into place, until the people who make the decisions get there and decide what it’s going to look like.
That was Lee’s mistake—he got a glimpse of the future through his fancy machine, and decided that it was inevitable, that he had to do everything he could to stop it. And look what happened. His actions created a paradox that wiped out everyone.
Don’t like the idea of this being the future? Then use your brains, Darren Ault. Lee propelled himself from one horrible possibility into another, worse one, one where not only his girlfriend but the entire human race was destroyed. You’ve got more perspective, Darren. You’ve learned how this works. Maybe that’s why you ended up in the Library. So you could understand enough to make the right decisions when the time comes. So you could see enough of how our decisions now create the future that you will do what it takes to make sure that everything is put right again.
But that would mean that there is one right path, and that everything is meant to happen a particular way. Right?
Don’t think about it too hard, came Maggie’s voice. It’s a mystery. There’s a way in which we are free to choose, and a way in which what will happen a billion years from now was foreordained one microsecond after the Big Bang. That’s what the proponents of free will and the proponents of predestination don’t understand—they’re both right, and they’re both wrong, and neither one really understands the reality. As for you, you have to trust that when you act from your heart, guided by your brain, that things will unfold as they should.
Really?
Yes. Maggie’s voice became a little wry. Of course, you must also remember that this is all just a bunch of voices in your head. Probably best not to put too much stock in what they tell you.
He gave himself a little shake, and looked back down at Lee, who still stared at the screen. His face was wet with tears, but he wasn’t sobbing. He sat there motionless, eyes streaming, looking at the image of his best friend holding a gun that was still pointed at the crumpled body of his dying girlfriend.
How do I stop this from happening? And why did it happen in the first place? I don’t even own a gun…
But Lee did. Darren knew that. Because in eighteen hours, it would be pointed at the middle of Darren’s forehead, propelling him into the Library of Timelines and the rest of humanity into oblivion. But even if it was Lee’s gun, it was Darren’s hand that it rested in, Darren’s finger that pulled the trigger.
Lee reached out and pushed Freeze/Resume. The images started moving again. The figure of Darren dropped the gun, turned toward Lee. Lee ran to Sherry, partly lifted her from the floor, his form curled over her as if he could shield her from death. Then his face turned toward Darren, his handsome features pinched with hatred and rage, and his mouth opened to snarl words that neither of the men standing there could hear.
Lee grabbed both of the dials, gave them a sharp twist to the left, and the screen went dark. Then he sat there, staring, his eyes still flooded with tears he did not even bother to brush away as they spattered his shirt.
It was a glimpse of the future. Of one possible future. Somehow, Lee’s machine had allowed him to see one thing that could happen, and finding that out changed everything. But how could he fix it?
The first thing to do was to stop himself from going over to Lee’s apartment. Maybe that wouldn’t fix things permanently. It wouldn’t stop Lee from hunting him down somewhere else. But at least it might give him a little more time. That’s what he needed… time. It was after midnight, already the Big Day. Doomsday for Humanity. Homo sapiens had survived the Rapture and the Mayan Apocalypse, but this one was going to be the real deal, tonight at a little after 7:30.
And then an idea—a tiny flicker, like a firefly in the woods on a moonless night—shimmered before him. At first, he pushed it away as ridiculous, facile, a deus ex machina that couldn’t possibly work. Could it be that simple? To stop the world from ending, that was all he had to do?
But that’s what it boiled down to. There were millions of events that had virtually no effect on anything, and a small handful that had profound ones. The problem was, you never knew ahead of time which were which. But he knew one thing that could prevent a catastrophe, at least for a little while. After that… well, there still remained to be determined why Lee shooting Darren had caused a paradox that had destroyed the entire human race. But right now, stopping it seemed more important than figuring out why it had happened.
Lee suddenly backed his chair up, narrowly missing running the wheel over Darren’s foot. He stood up, then with the side of his hand pressed three switches simultaneously. With an electronic sigh, the hum of the machine died into silence. He strode over to the coat hook, retrieved his jacket, and was through the door of the lab almost too fast for Darren to follow him.
He tailed after Lee at a near-run, down the stairs, down a long half-darkened hallway lined with the closed and locked doors of classrooms, labs, and offices, toward a sign marked Exit. Lee thrust the door open, and Darren slipped out behind him into the raw March night.
It was still completely dark. He guessed the time was about 3:30, and there wasn’t even a hint of pearl gray on the eastern skyline. Lee’s long stride propelled him across the parking lot, there was a flash of light as he used his remote to unlock his car, and he opened the door of the silver Audi.
Darren leaped toward the door, and missed. The door slammed shut, narrowly missing his arm, but it closed on the strap of his backpack. He struggled to free it, unsuccessfully. He thought, briefly, about casting aside Fischer’s command not to mess with things, and opening the car door.
But before he could talk himself into it, Lee threw the Audi into reverse, and he was yanked backwards. His butt made solid contact with the blacktop, but the impact dislodged first one arm and then the other from the backpack’s straps. Lee’s car glided away, the backpack, and the food it contained, still hanging from the door, invisible to everyone but Darren.
He struggled to his feet, brushing off the seat of his pants, as the Audi disappeared around a bend in the road.
“Well, fuck!” he shouted. “Now what do I do?”
There was, of course, only one thing he could do. He started walking back toward the bridge across Portage Bay and his only way to get back to his apartment.
As he trudged down Pacific Avenue toward Roosevelt Way and the bridge to Capitol Hill, his face set in a scowl, it started to drizzle.
“This is ridiculous,” he said, pulling his windbreaker closer around him. “Fischer should have chosen someone tougher than me to save the human race.”
But of course, Fischer hadn’t chosen him. He had been chosen because, improbable as it seemed, he was somehow the linchpin. What he did, whether he lived or died, mattered.
Cars swished by, their drivers invisible shadows in the dark. The blocks slid past in the chill, damp night, most buildings only illuminated by streetlights, their owners away or asleep.
Like I’d like to be. Like I will be first chance I get. Because what I need to do can’t be done till this evening, so I’ll be damned if I’m not going to find a dry place to have a nap first.
He crossed the Roosevelt Way Bridge, staying as close as possible to the guardrail to avoid being sideswiped. The cars could easily kill him, even if their drivers couldn’t see him. He made it across Portage Bay safely, then followed it down toward Capitol Hill and his apartment building.
It was 4:30 and the eastern sky showed a faint streak of light by the time he once again stood in front of the Kingswood East Apartments. His doppelganger would still be inside, sound asleep under a down comforter, and wouldn’t wake for several hours. The bookstore didn’t open until ten, and except for days when he had to do inventory or work on his tax papers, he could sleep in until nine and still get there with plenty of time to spare.
But someone must have to get to work early, and would come through the door to let him in. He sat down on the bumper of a car facing the entrance, and composed himself to wait.
Forty-five minutes later a very grumpy-looking middle-aged man with a briefcase and a paunch came through the door, and Darren by this time was so cold and miserable he almost didn’t react in time. But he made it through the door before it closed and locked, into the comparative warmth of the foyer, then bounded up the stairs toward the third floor. He stood in front of the door for a moment. Phase one of his plan was complete. He could relax for a little while. With a sigh, he lay down on his back on the floor with his hands cupped behind his head. He was soaking wet and still chilled to the bone, but even so was asleep within a minute.
• • •
Darren woke up after several hours of uncomfortable and fitful sleep to the sound of someone thumping around on the other side of the wall. He opened his eyes slowly, feeling once again that confusion that came from a combination of insufficient sleep, stress, anxiety, and time travel. It took him a moment to realize that the sound was his alter ego opening the coat closet, as always banging the external door with the closet doorknob. There was the sound of a door closing, and then the outside door being unlatched.
He sprang to his feet, and as soon as the door opened, he jumped forward, and he and his other self switched places. The door closed and locked behind him.
Maybe he was getting the hang of being a ghost. He glanced around the inside of his apartment and tried to catch his breath.
He walked over to the window, and watched himself exit the building, and disappear around the corner toward the parking lot. After a moment, his blue Toyota Corolla
pulled into traffic and disappeared toward the bookstore.
Okay, dry clothes. Food. Nap. In that order. He went into his bedroom, and retrieved boxers, t-shirt, and cargo pants, and pulled off his clammy, damp clothing. He trotted off to his bathroom, toweled dry, and then returned to the bedroom to dress.
Won’t I notice the wet clothes in the hamper? He paused with one leg in the boxers. Then he shrugged and thought, Oh, well. If I notice, I notice. They’re my clothes in any case, and it’s not like I usually think much about what I’m wearing. Then he stopped, his eyes widening a little.
The clothes in his dresser belonged to this timeline. So if he put them on, when the other Darren came home, he’d see empty clothes walking around. Like the Invisible Man, or something. But he couldn’t spend the rest of his time here bare-ass naked, even though it was his apartment, and no one could see him.
And he didn’t even want to think about Fischer’s reaction if he showed up back in the Library with no clothes on.
He pulled off the boxers, and stuffed them and the clean, dry clothes back into his dresser with a disgruntled snort. Then he picked up his wet clothes, still lying in a heap where he’d dropped them on the floor, and brought them over to his little clothes dryer, which stood in an alcove near his bathroom, on top of an equally tiny washing machine, pushed them in, set it, and pressed start.
The clothes would take a while to dry. He could walk around naked until they were done. Next order of business, though, was food. Fischer had cautioned him about eating anything. Why? He was ravenously hungry. The last thing he’d eaten had been the peanut butter and jelly sandwich the previous evening, and before that, he couldn’t even remember.
What possible harm could eating something do, other than there being food missing? Like with his clothes, he was only minimally aware of what was in his fridge. The idea of his recognizing if an egg or a couple of slices of bread were gone was ridiculous. A real hot breakfast, that was what he wanted.
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