by Daniel Price
“Please, sir! Please!”
Evan lowered the weapon. “‘Sir’? Did you just call me sir?” He laughed in amazement. “Wow. Fifty-four times and you never called me sir. I’m not sure how to feel. I mean I like it, obviously. I love it. But how much?”
Staring ahead in whimsical thought, he opened the shotgun. Two fat shells dropped to the floor.
“That much, it seems. Good job, Nico, you silver-tongued devil. You just charmed your way to a minor life extension.”
Just as he tossed the gun over his shoulder, the overhead lights flickered back to life.
“Hey, look at that. Right on cue.”
Evan turned the keylock next to the register, causing the tempic barrier to vanish. Cars and pedestrians became visible on the other side of the glass.
He grabbed his bag and patted Nico’s cheek. “Always a pleasure, my friend. Until next time.”
Evan ventured outside to a City Heights West that—unlike its shabby, old-world counterpart—actually resembled a city. Split-level houses had become replaced with sprawling office complexes. Trees had given way to animated lumic billboards. He chuckled at how he noted the difference every single time.
Soon his smile disappeared and he stopped cold. Evan didn’t let Nico Mundis live very often, and he just remembered why. The fat man’s testimony to the local police would enter the national law enforcement database, where certain key phrases would ring bells among the eagle-eyed federales in DP-9. Most of the Deps were easy enough to evade, but some, like the exotic Melissa Masaad, were annoyingly sharp. She could make Evan’s life that much harder.
He closed his eyes in concentration until his head went light and he felt a full-body tingle, as if swimming in seltzer. Wild colors streaked all around him as the clock of his life reversed ninety-two seconds. Soon Evan found himself back inside the store, back behind the barrier, back with a loaded shotgun aimed at Nico Mundis.
With no memory at all of Evan’s prior clemency, the shopkeeper raised a thick hand, crying. “No! Please!”
“Sorry, buddy. I forgot I had my reasons for doing this.”
“Please, sir! Please!”
Unfortunately for Nico, Evan was no longer surprised or charmed by the honorific. He fired the shotgun. A cracking boom. A spray of blood. A good portion of Nico spattered onto Evan.
“Oh great. Lovely.”
Evan rewound ten seconds, this time killing Nico from a slightly safer distance. He left the store clean.
As a hopeless perfectionist with a very unique talent, Evan Rander was no stranger to repetition. The act of undoing and redoing had become as natural to him as breathing. Sometimes the tedium was enough to drive him crazy. But it sure as hell beat living the one-take life, with all its indelible gaffes and consequences. Regret was something Evan had abandoned a long time ago. It died on his native Earth, with his father, his debt, and his crippling insecurities.
He returned to the street and hailed the first cab he saw. Evan knew the driver’s name before the car even stopped, but chose to play dumb.
“Take me downtown, my good man. Childress Park. I’m on a squeeze, so 10× and aer it.”
Before the driver could question him, Evan pressed two blue twenties against the glass. Proof that he could afford the speed and flight surcharges.
With a steamy hiss, the vehicle ascended forty feet to the taxi level, then folded its tires inward. The doors and windows locked shut, the classic winged-foot icon lit up on the fare meter, and the cab shot off like a bullet.
It took sixty-three seconds to cross five miles of urban scenery. Inside the taxi, eleven minutes passed. Evan stared out the window at his slowed surroundings. He spotted a puffy plume of chimney smoke that, in the sluggish blue tint of the world, reminded him of Marge Simpson’s hair. He sighed with lament. They had nothing like The Simpsons here in Altamerica. Satire escaped these fools.
—
The taxi landed at the edge of an enormous green park, a lush oasis in a field of modern glass office towers. Like the rest of the business district, the place was sparse of life on Saturday.
Evan tossed sixty dollars at the driver. “Don’t go away. I’ll be back in five.”
As he exited the cab, the synchron on his wrist beeped, informing him that it had readjusted to local time. By external clocks, it had only been seven minutes since he and his fellow Silvers crash-landed into this part of existence.
Some crashed harder than others.
In the middle of the park, on a flat patch of grass between picnic tables, a fetching young blonde lay sprawled on her back. Unlike the scattered homeless dozers who malingered here on weekends, the woman was barefoot in a lacy pink nightgown. The silk was marred with dirt and gashes. Only her silver bracelet remained spotless.
She fixed her cracked red eyes on Evan, speaking through wheezes and bloody gurgles.
“I can’t move. I can’t feel anything. I don’t know what’s happening. Please help me.”
Evan kneeled by her side, clucking his tongue with sarcastic pity. She must have been ten stories up when the whole world changed on her.
“Oh, Peaches,” he said, in a mock Savannah drawl. “I do declare this is not your day.”
Evan made a habit of visiting Natalie Tipton in her dying moments. By his twentieth encounter, he’d pieced together her life in fragments. She was born Natalie Elder in Buford, Georgia, the only child of a waitress and a rail worker. She’d overcome dyslexia to earn a full scholarship to Emory University, where she studied to become a veterinarian until a well-placed kick from an ailing mare shattered her knee and ambitions.
But life had a way of working out for the terminally pretty. She soon met Donald Tipton, a campus football legend. They fell in love, got married, then moved out west when Donald scored a place with the San Diego Chargers.
If there was any drama during her time as a footballer’s wife, Natalie didn’t say. In the face of her demise, her only regret was not finishing college and becoming a veterinarian. She’d confessed this to Evan, back when he bothered to feign sympathy.
Having no recollection of their previous encounters, Natalie stared in terror at this creepy, grinning stranger.
“W-what happened to me?”
“You’ve taken a dreadful fall, sugah. And now you’re bone soup, ah say, bone soup from the neck down.”
“Please. Call an ambulance. I’m begging you.”
“Oh, I’ve tried that, darling. But it’s a big park. The paramedics never find you in time. Shame too, because they have a machine that could fix you right up. Reverse those injuries like they never happened.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m not the pilot of this plane wreck, sweetie. Just a passenger with a better seat. If you’re looking to file a grievance, the people you want are the Pelletiers. Though in their defense, I’m pretty sure they warned you to stay on the ground floor.”
He was right. Natalie had woken up in the utility room of her building, twenty floors down from her penthouse suite. A hand-scrawled note on the floor strongly advised her to stay where she was. She didn’t listen. When the power died, she was stuck in the elevator between the eighth and ninth floors. Then her bracelet shook, the scenery changed, and Natalie Tipton had nowhere to go but down.
“I don’t understand why this happened,” she cried.
“Oh, honey bear. You don’t even have time for the short answer. Trust me. You’re not long for this world either.”
Natalie closed her eyes and wept. “Why are you so cruel? What did I ever do to you?”
For once, her dialogue crossed into new territory. Evan’s smile dissolved.
“Huh. Weird. I usually get that question from Hannah, not you. For her, I have a long list of grievances. For you?” He gave it some thought. “I don’t know. Maybe you remind me of her. You both go wet fo
r dumb muscle. You both seem to confuse lust with love. Now, granted, I never met your husband. But somehow I doubt you would have fallen for him if he was a professional chess player.”
Natalie turned her head, wincing. “Oh God. I just want this to stop.”
“Well, you’re about to get your wish.” Evan checked his watch. “It’s curtain time.”
While her shallow breaths settled and her consciousness slipped away, Evan stroked her arm and stared pensively at the trees.
“You know, I chat with the Pelletiers on occasion. I once asked them why they didn’t stop you from falling. I mean they can see the futures better than anyone. They could have tied you down, broken your foot, done a hundred other things to keep you on the ground floor. Hell, they could still go back and save you. I’m not the only one with a rewind button.
“So when I asked, that crazy bitch Esis just gave me a shrug and said, ‘Natalie’s but one of many.’ Can you believe that? They destroy a whole damn world to bring us here and we’re still nothing to them. Just rats in their maze.”
He checked her pulse, then breathed a wistful sigh. Natalie Tipton was gone.
“Ah, Peaches. You’re better off. I’ve seen the way this story ends, again and again. It never changes.”
Evan reached behind her and unhooked her necklace. The chain ended at a dime-size silver disc, engraved with the electric bolt logo of the San Diego Chargers. Despite his utter disdain for football and the people who watched it, the trinket had become a cherished piece of old-Earth memorabilia. Worth the trip every time.
With a creaky groan, Evan clambered to his feet and clasped the charm around his neck.
“I’d stick around for the wake, darlin’, but I’ve got a meeting with my old platoon commander and he’s a real bear about punctuality. Sorry to say your whole life was pointless, and your death even more so. But what can you do? That’s just the way the peach crumbles.”
He walked away whistling, quietly resolving to be nicer to Natalie next time. In the grand scheme, she never did him wrong. She was the only Silver he could say that about.
—
While the cab soared to its next destination, Evan dumped the contents of his knapsack onto the seat. He stashed the drinking cup between his thighs, then poured himself a cocktail of rubbing alcohol and orange juice.
The noise of glooping liquids caused the cabbie to peer through the mirror. Evan smirked at him.
“Ease it, flyman. I won’t spill a drop.”
He stirred the concoction with his new hunting knife, then plunged his fist into the cup. The moment his silver bracelet became submerged, the liquid churned with hissing bubbles.
Soon the taxi landed in a run-down patch of the Gaslamp Quarter. Evan tossed another pair of twenties to the driver, then made his way down a dingy alley. As he crossed into the dark shadow of an elevated highway, he could hear a man’s heavy breaths.
Evan bloomed a devilish grin. “Hello, hello, hello? Is there anybody in there?”
He stepped on a circle of concrete that was darker than the rest—a patch of the old San Diego, fused into the new. The upper half of a guitar case, complete with upper half of guitar, lay nearby. It had been sliced in a smooth curve. As always, the Great Cuban Leader hadn’t ventured far from his landing spot.
“Just nod if you can hear me,” Evan teased. “Is there anyone home?”
In the darkest corner of the alley, between two metal trash cans, a thirty-year-old man huddled against the wall. Black-haired, olive-skinned, and powerfully built, he wore a silk blue button-down over jeans. Even in his rattled state, the man was disgustingly handsome. Evan had lost count of the number of women who’d made complete fools of themselves to get his attention. Unlike Nico and Natalie, people he’d only encountered a few minutes at a time, Evan had years of experience with Ernesto “Jury” Curado. There were few folks on Earth he knew better, and few he hated more.
Evan watched with great amusement as Jury pressed his fingers against his temples, trying to will the universe back into order.
“¿Qué bola, asere? Welcome to beautiful downtown Other San Diego. Don’t forget to try our Other Krullers. They’re out of this world.”
“Shut up,” Jury said.
“Hey. Ouch. Hostility. What seems to be the problem, officer? Are we having a bad trip?”
Jury rose to his full six-foot-two height, grumbling at Evan through a sleek Cuban accent.
“Look, I don’t know if you’re a hallucination or a street nut. All I know is that someone drugged me and I’m freaking out. So go away.”
Two years ago, upon receiving a Certificate of Commendation for exceptional performance, Officer Jury Curado had been called a “man of absolute conviction” by the Deputy Commissioner of the California Highway Patrol.
Yesterday morning, his twin sister had a different way of phrasing it.
“You’re a stubborn ass!” she screamed, from behind her locked bedroom door.
Ofelia Curado knew better than anyone that when Jury got an idea in his head, there was no force in the heavens that could get it out. When they were fourteen, he was convinced that leaving Cuba was the only way to save Ofelia from their monstrous father. He was right. In Miami, he was convinced it would be better to fight for citizenship than to buy fake papers. He was right. He was right about better opportunities in California. He was right about his sister’s hideous boyfriends. He was right about her drug problems and her eating disorder. He was right. He was right. He was right.
“I can’t take it anymore!” she yelled. “You make my life a living hell! Just leave me alone!”
Like Jury, his sister was a raven-haired stunner, even on bad days. Sadly, the lingering traumas of childhood had made every day a bad one for Ofelia. She was, as Jury sang, a beautiful mess, and he had frequent cause to rescue her from some not-so-beautiful men. Whether they were lowlifes who exploited her for fun and profit or Lawrence Nightingales who sought to become her savior-with-benefits, they’d all left Ofelia worse for the wear. Some of them had nearly killed her. At Jury’s hands, some of them were nearly killed.
Six months ago, his sister had found solace in the arms of a good woman. Martina Amador was a social worker, a squat and ugly matron who was a full twenty years older than Ofelia. Jury could only imagine their coupling was just another form of self-punishment for his sister, another way to lash out at the universe. And yet under Martina’s care, she actually improved. First she got clean. Then she got hungry. And finally she found employment as a receptionist. She worked now.
Despite all improvements, Jury remained wary of his sister’s lover. When Ofelia declared her intention to move out and live with Martina, the twins fell into strife. They screamed Spanish at each other through her bedroom door twenty-six hours ago.
“How long before she moves on to another fixer-upper?” Jury asked. “How long before she leaves you for a woman even younger, prettier, and more screwed up than you?”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want me to fall back into my old ways so you can be my protector again!”
“You’re wrong!”
“No, you’re the one who’s wrong this time! You’re the one who needs a screwed-up woman to take care of. So just go out and find one already. I can’t be that person anymore!”
Friday was a bad day for Jury Curado, which made it an awful day for the moving violators of Interstate 5. Over the course of his final workday, he reduced three different speeders to sobs and nearly broke the arm of a belligerent drunk driver.
Every Friday night, he played guitar at a tiny downtown coffeehouse. Most of his songs were mellow instrumental numbers, though he’d occasionally sing in Spanish when there was a fetching young woman in the audience. On the eve of his final performance, melancholy and desperation pushed him to snare his chords around a middle-aged bottle-blonde with a screeching, high laugh.
He followed her home for drinks and debauchery, then woke up in her bed at 7 A.M. with the scent of bad sex in his nostrils and a thundering drum in his skull.
On the long walk back to his apartment, the oddities of the world began to stack up and unnerve him—the white sky, the chilled air, the blinking traffic lights. He turned a blind corner and was shoved against a building by an unseen aggressor. The guitar case fell to the ground.
“What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy?”
With cold hands and shocking strength, the attacker bent Jury’s arm behind his back.
“You don’t want to do this,” Jury said. “I’m a cop.”
“Shhhh,” a silky smooth voice whispered in his ear. “You hush now, hermano.”
Jury could feel something cool and metallic clasp around his right wrist. He was sure he was being handcuffed, but the second loop never clicked.
“What are you—”
With a warm blast of air, he was suddenly freed from his armlock. He launched from the wall and scanned the area. The only other soul within eyeshot was a tall man in a black T-shirt and slacks, watching him from two blocks away. He tipped his baseball cap at Jury in mock courtesy, then dashed away at a speed normally reserved for cheetahs.
His thoughts in free fall, Jury grabbed on to the nearest logical explanation. That batty woman he slept with must have laced his drinks with something. PCP. Mescaline. There was no other explanation.
Soon he reached his neighborhood, and the end of all doubt.
The debris of a crashed commercial airliner had turned 13th Street into a hellish horror. A battered nose cone lay in front of his local bodega. A smoldering pile of wreckage stood where his apartment building used to be. Jury covered his gaping mouth, stifling a delirious cackle. No. This was just a psychedelic nightmare. A jet plane never crashed into his home, his sister.
Thus Jury Curado, the man of absolute conviction, rode his fervent denial through the end of the world and into the next one. He kept crouched and still in a quiet corner, waiting for the hallucinations to go away.
Unfortunately, the new stranger—this smirking little imp—made the situation more difficult.