Richard was speechless. Pam was too. Leonard looked confused. He was about to speak when Pam and Richard both said at the same time, “I’ll explain later.”
Earl looked around the room, said, “Where the fuck am I...”, then looked over, eyes bulging at the sight of Pam and Richard and Leonard, clearly just as surprised to see them as they were him.
Richard and Pam walked over to him. The kid stood motionless, his cockiness long left behind in Bledson Hills. He looked like a baby gazelle surrounded by a pair of hungry lions, trembling and unsure of his next move. Pam asked, “How did you get here?”
Richard looked down. Near Earl’s feet was a similar unit to the one Pam had. He bent down and picked it up with two hands, its weight surprisingly heavier than he expected, perhaps thirty-five to forty pounds. It contained a few more bends and curves, and additional casings that substantiated the makeshift hack job of Pam’s unit. Pam and Leonard looked at the unit, their question answered. Of course they all wondered where he got it from, but from the crafty looks they gave one another, it was quickly presumed he’d found it wherever the man in black had hid it while hunting for Richard, somewhere near the place of his death, where he and Richard fought.
An unexpected gunshot blast deafened all those in the room, and immediately, chaos ensued.
Pam grabbed Earl and took him to the floor, her gun drawn but aimed haphazardly in the air. Leonard too had his gun out, but was unable to take decisive aim; he’d been shot in the shoulder, blood filling his shirt like a seep of motor oil on concrete. The cop staggered sideways, and then down into the cover of fog still sweeping the floor. That left only Richard, standing unarmed except for the time-trip unit still in his hands. Brutus appeared around the far side of the time-cylinder, eyes on the low-lying fog in search of his targets, and Richard could only assume that the man attempted to take Leonard out first simply because he was armed, and was now pursuing Pam. Richard knew his seconds were numbered, and that he, unarmed, would be next. Brutus spotted him. Simultaneously, Richard raised the time-trip unit and hurriedly threw it at Brutus. The goon turned, ducked, then stuck his arm out to fire his Smith & Wesson at Richard. From behind, Richard heard Pam screaming and all he could think about at that split moment was returning all the favors she’d paid him in the past twenty-four hours--saving his life, more than once--so he pitched forward, following the end-over-end path of the time-trip unit, sliding down to the floor and avoiding the shot meant for him, hurling his back into Brutus’s legs, and as he collided with the man who was twice his size, he could stop and think in this time that seemed to slow like a video running at half its normal speed, that he had committed himself to this brave yet stupid course of action, yet still, contrarily, even though the man in black was dead, he still maintained a bit of his memories, those of which were stuck somewhere in the subconscious part of his mind. So, he hoped, his efforts might not be in vain after all.
In the next few seconds, time seemed to slow even further, and even more happened.
A loud ping rang out, and then there was an explosion in the air above Richard, who slammed right through Brutus’s legs and tumbled onward, the big man taking the floor in an audible thud immediately after the explosion, and then Richard felt debris raining down on him, burning his skin, and realized that Brutus’s bullet had found the time unit he hurled and made smoldering trash of the miraculous invention, and the screams, the screams, Brutus, Pam, Leonard, Earl, each carrying its own distinct brand of fear and pain, Pam’s, shrilly, she leaping up, firing her weapon at Brutus; Brutus, howling, who’d taken a mighty spray of shrapnel in the face, the bullet from Pam’s gun adding to the bloody mess he’d suddenly become, a gaping hole torn in his throat and gushing like a tapped hydrant; Leonard, nearly crying, the pain from his gunshot wound excruciating as he stood and staggered toward the fray; and then Earl, sobbing, the tearful boy who’d stayed frozen in his footsteps, screaming out of pure fear--not unlike many times in the past while awaiting the wrath of his sheriff father.
Soon the noise dissipated, and silence ruled. The stink of fire hung heavily in the air. Brutus’s escaping blood met their assembling feet in a wide crimson flow. Pam went over to Brutus and examined him. Why not? In this world she’d also learned not to doubt any possibility. Even now. Despite the fact that half his throat was gone. She checked his pulse. Dead, thank God.
She and Earl immediately went to work, ripping his pants away and making a tourniquet for Leonard. Earl expertly bandaged his wound, tying the torn fabric around his chest to stop the bleeding.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Earl said. “You’ll need to get to a hospital though, otherwise infection’ll set in.”
“How is it you know so much about first aid?” Richard asked, breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath.
“Daddy couldn’t put me to work with no experience. He made me take EMT classes, and I ended up kinda liking it.” He paused while tightening a strip of fabric around Leonard’s right arm. “I am good for something, you know.”
Richard grinned, wondering if this was the real Earl he knew, and not one from an alternate timeline. This timeline, perhaps. After all, anything was possible, right?
When Earl was done with Leonard, and the cop seemed to be all right for the moment, Pam grabbed Earl and asked, “Where did you get the unit?”
“I went snooping in the woods after the body was taken away. Figured I might stumble across something else the detectives didn’t find, maybe even some money. I found this machine-thing about a half mile away from the scene, hidden under a bush. I didn’t know what it was...actually, I still don’t. I figured if I pressed enough of the buttons something would happen. Little did I know.”
Pam looked perplexed. “I believe you Earl...I just find it amazing that you ended up here, right where we needed you. It’s just that...well, your timing was perfect. That’s too much of a coincidence.”
“Well, it wasn’t my first try. I played with the thing for hours before I got it to work, whatever the hell it did to me. First I ended up in a dark alley, then on someone’s front lawn, then in front of the police station in Fairview, and then here.”
“I think understand now,” Pam said. “It has a memory. When the man in black made it, he probably built a feature into it that had it record all the places he’d been to before. Earl here just started triggering all the locations in its memory. That’s my best guess, anyway.”
“Like bookmarks on a computer,” Richard said.
Pam grinned. “Right.”
Leonard grimaced. “What now, Pam?”
“We need to get all of you home.”
“Somebody want to tell me where the hell we are, and just what’s going on?” Earl’s arms were spread in question, face ruddy and triangled with perplexity.
Pam paced away towards one of the doors. Richard followed. She called out, “When you get home, look up Officer Moldofsky. He’ll be happy to fill you in. Won’t you, Leonard?”
Leonard nodded.
“Just give him a few days to heal and get his life back together.”
Richard stood next to Pam in front of the door marked “3”. She stared at it for a moment then said, “I’m afraid of what we’re going to find.”
“Is this your husband’s quarters?”
She nodded. Then, retrieving the key-card from her jeans, she slid it through the slot beside the door. A green light ignited, granting them access.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Richard asked.
She went inside. Richard followed.
And beneath the pallid glare of a single overhead lamp, they beheld the man who started it all. The scientist. The original Richard Sparke.
Finale
Putting aside the horrendous stench in the room, frail was the first word that entered Richard’s mind. But it was a fair description. One thing that had completely slipped Richard’s mind was that Richard the scientist would look exactly like him. After all, he was him. But despite ha
ving identical inborn features, that’s where the similarities ended. Disease had made a monster of the poor man before him, limbs withered away to mere sticks, the bones twisted into unfathomable shapes that made a mockery of the pain wracking his body. His torso was a backwards C-shape in his wheelchair, the left collarbone jutting through the withered skin like a boat’s mast at sea. His hair had been reduced to a few wispy strands, gray not from age but from fear. His shriveled skin had taken the appearance of a rotten apple, brown and spotted, poised to slough off at even the slightest touch.
Richard could only see portions of his twin’s face, thankful for the shadows camouflaging his features. Pam went over, grabbed his broomstick-thin wrist and felt for a pulse. The scientist’s head bobbed a bit, revealing his eyes. They were black like coals, sunken far into his head.
“Is he alive?” Richard asked, realizing now that his responsive concern was fruitless.
Pam shook her head. “He’s been dead for weeks. And I’m sorry to say that he died of starvation. Brutus stopped feeding him.”
Pam started to cry. Richard walked over and hugged her. Even here, he was instantly reminded of their lovemaking session just hours earlier; it seemed like a year ago. “It was the man in black that made him do it, you know that.”
Pam said nothing until her tears dried up. She looked at Richard, then one last time at her deceased husband. “Looks like you won’t have to kill him after all,” she said.
The only way he could gain complete control of his being was to kill off the four other Richards...
That was the plan...Richard would have had to kill the only remaining duplicate in order to gain control of his life. Well, not his life, but that of the family man, whose body was killed and taken away by the man in black. Samantha, his wife, still presumed her husband to be missing. Not dead. He’d take Julia his mother and his daughter Debra back through and replace the family man in his timeline, but using his own healthy body, something Richard the scientist could never do because of his degenerating health.
“Let’s get out of here,” Richard said. “The smell is making me sick.”
~ * ~
They searched a second room, which was empty. The third revealed two beds in which Julia and Debra Sparke lay motionless, eyes closed. Tears welled in Richard’s eyes, not because they might be dead, but because seeing them after all this time...his mother who’d been dead for three years, now alive, before him; his daughter, who in his world died of SIDS as an infant, now the four year-old girl with blonde curly hair that had haunted his dreams for so long. He took a step forward.
Then, beside their beds, on the floor, he noticed two plates. Scraps of food remained.
Debra stirred. She opened her eyes.
Looked at Richard.
“Daddy?” she murmured.
He ran over and hugged her, a million emotions racing through him. Julia awoke, staring at him with suspicion. Fear and uncertainty had her, and she remained quiet, at a distance.
Richard loosened his hug on Debra. The little girl turned around. “Look Grandma, Daddy’s back!”
Richard smiled. “Good to see you, Mom.”
~ * ~
A search of the remaining two rooms revealed pretty much what they expected. One was empty, the other held the body of Richard Sparke the family man. Pamela kept that grisly sight to herself, then shut the door and assembled everyone near the cylinder at the center of the room. Leonard and Earl had been keen enough to remove Brutus’s body from the room, placing it out in the hallway so Debra and Julia wouldn’t have to bear witness to any additional tragedy.
“Earl, you’ll go first,” Pam said. She punched up some keys on a computer built into the side of the cylinder. “We’re in luck. The man in black built into the master unit--he incorporated his own technology into it.”
“Which means?” Richard asked.
“It means that I can send you all back to where you came from. Remember I told you that Richard, my husband, was only able to peer into the other timelines? That through long-term bleeding he was only able to exchange consciousnesses with his counterparts? He was never able to trip through...that’s the man in black’s technology. As I’d hoped, he built and programmed it into my husband’s machine. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.”
“Good thing he did that,” Leonard said. “Otherwise we’d be stuck here.”
“Enough with the kudos already, ” Earl said. “Where am I going?”
“You’re gonna end up in the woods in Bledson State Park.” She punched the keyboard feverishly. Data streamed on the monitor like a fireworks display. “The location is already preset, and it’s isolated enough so that no one will see you going through. Leonard, you’ll go through after Earl. I suggest you find a hospital as soon as you get back.”
Leonard grimaced, then nodded an agreement.
Richard asked, “Are we going to remember anything of this experience?”
“As I mentioned before, without a ‘twin’, so to speak, in this timeline, there can be no bleeding, so eventually all memories will fade since the universe will not exist for you any longer. This is not unlike the fact that when a twin dies, so do the memories. We can only assume that Earl has no twin here, since he hasn’t had any odd memories or thoughts entering his mind. Isn’t that right, Earl?”
Earl looked confused. “Uh, I guess. Yeah.”
“So, it’s safe to say that Earl won’t remember anything about this experience by tomorrow. No bleeding, no memories. Same goes, thankfully, for Debra and Julia. They don’t exist in this world. Their memories will immediately fade by tomorrow.”
Julia, frail and frightened, remained silent, trembling. She held Debra close, staring about as if testing the reality of the scene. Clearly she didn’t believe everything was finally coming to an end.
“I can’t say the same for you though, Leonard. You’ll always have some memories from your counterpart here, as long as he remains alive. Your knowledge of the lab and this experiment may fade, since the Leonard Moldofsky from this world had no experience here, but there will always be some residue in your mind from the bleeding that occurred.”
“I understand...just get me home.”
“And Richard, well, all the other Richards are dead. Again, there’ll be a bit of mental residue, but most of your memories will fade.”
He stepped forward, grasped her hands, looked deeply into her crystal eyes. “I don’t want to forget about you.”
She smiled. “Then don’t. But remember, you have a wife and family now that needs you. And, you need them. This is the life you’ve always wanted to lead, right?”
“But what’s going to happen to you?”
“Don’t worry about me.” She turned her sights to the computer screen even though she pressed no buttons.
He squeezed her hands harder. “Tell me, please. What are you going to do?”
“Richard, my life here isn’t all that bad. I have money, security. I’ll do okay.”
“What about the timeline machine? The experiment.”
She stared at the cylinder, at the dancing colors within its translucent body. “It’ll have to be destroyed. The timelines have intersected too much already. They must be permanently separated. Once you all go through, I will disengage it, then destroy all its parts.”
Richard pulled Pam to him, hugged her. She buried her face in his shoulder. “Pam, I love you. I’ll always love you. Thank you for all you’ve done for me. I’ll never forget. Thank you.”
He backed away from her. She then guided Earl to a spot on the far side of the unit. They all stood back as Pam worked her magic on the computer keys.
First the burning smell, hot wires. Then the high whistling noise. Finally, the blue light. It came, grew, swallowed Earl, and then he was gone.
“Leonard, you’re up.” Silently, bravely, Leonard Moldofsky walked to the spot on the far side of the room. A repeat performance ensued, and in thirty seconds, Leonard was gone.
Richard w
alked over to Pam again. Kissed her long and deeply, held her with all the affection he could muster, then stepped away. “Time to go home,” he said.
He crouched down next to Debra. Her face was dirty. She looked shaken, but unharmed. Jesus, she looked like just Samantha. Yet he could tell, just tell that she was his daughter. Perhaps it was the shine in her eyes, the happiness found amidst all the turmoil. “Honey, we’re gonna go for a little trip, and then we’ll be back home, okay?”
She nodded. “I miss Mommy.”
A tear ran down Richard’s face. “She misses you too, baby.”
And then she hugged him, her face squeezed against his neck. “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too,” he said, rubbing a hand through her golden locks. He stood, looked over at Pam. “Let’s do it.”
With Julia holding one arm and Debra in the other, he walked to the other side of the room. Pam looked at him one last time, mouthed good-bye before putting the machine into final action.
The blue light came, grew until it engulfed them, and then they were gone.
Healing
Leonard awoke, sat up in the hospital bed, grimaced at the pain coursing through his shoulders, arms, and legs. His chest had been fully bandaged, among other parts of his body that had apparently caught some bits of shrapnel. It took a bit of time for his eyes to adjust to the light, and when they did, he saw himself surrounded by his family.
The people that love me the most, my wife, my son.
“Hi, Janice,” he said, attempting a smile through the pain.
Janice Moldofsky returned the warm gesture. She ran a tender hand through his mussed hair. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like shit.”
“Doctor says you’ll be able to go home in a few days.”
Leonard smiled. Home. My books. My clean house... “Janice, is...is the house clean?” He still couldn’t get the image of the other Moldofsky household out of his mind. The mess, the craziness within. And then Janice. Her attitude. The sores on her arms. He looked at his wife long and hard. Clean, proper, soft-spoken. Yes, this is the real world.
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