by MK Alexander
“Okay, I get it. The cracks, the cracks between timelines.”
“Exactly so. You must be especially watchful to any small changes you notice. Perhaps this is the way we can ferret him out.”
“He doesn’t know about me?”
“I’m sure he knows all about you.”
“That’s not what I mean. He doesn’t know about my memory.”
“Ah, this I hope not. It maybe our only edge.”
“What will you do if we catch him?”
“Hmm? Catch him? You’re thinking too far ahead. We have to find him first.”
“I know, but if we do catch him, how do we stop him? How do you stop Mortimer from jumping back to the past or into the future?”
“I see what you’re saying.” Fynn turned to look at me. “Promise you won’t laugh.”
“I promise.”
“Well, it’s really quite simple. We prevent him from jumping.”
“What?”
“Libra lapsus… we prevent him from that and he is stuck in this one place.”
“But how?”
“Chains, shackles perhaps, heavy weights?” Fynn laughed. “I suppose these would do the job.”
“How do we bring him to justice in the present?”
“That may not be possible.”
“That sort of limits our options.”
“Well, there is the law and there is justice. We may at some point have to forgo the present state of law.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Yes, I agree. If we can devise a way to make this present untenable for Mortimer, he might leave and never return.”
“How do we do that?”
“It’s difficult. The threat of great harm or death might do the trick.”
“Hypothetically speaking, you mean?”
“To stop Mortimer once and for all, I would have to strap him down and kill him. But I cannot bring myself to do this. At the very least, I would try to send him far from here, far from this timeline to a wholly unfamiliar place, perhaps by causing him to free fall in an unpredictable way.”
Fynn and I had been walking north and west all this time, funneled towards North Point. The beach was ever-narrowing until we came to a place that was nearly impassable. Huge boulders blocked our path, almost as if some giant had just tossed a handful of pebbles, giant pebbles though.
“Well, that’s it then,” Fynn said with a certain finality. “It’s been a very productive conversation. I believe you are correct about the beach.”
“What?”
“There is not a problem which cannot be solved.”
I laughed at that and we started our return. I walked quietly next to him. The wind was at our backs now.
“Okay, well how did you make this guy so freaking angry?”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“I did nothing really. I thought I was helping him.”
“Well, explain what happened.”
“It’s rather a long story.” Fynn was evasive.
“Seems to be an important story.”
“Yes. Very well…” The inspector put his hands behind his back and slowed his pace a bit. “Mortimer and I have encountered each other several times. It’s difficult to say now which was the first.” Fynn gave off a grave expression. “Most salient perhaps is our encounter at the Bedlam asylum.”
“Bedlam?”
“He was a patient.”
“And you were...?”
“A doctor of sorts.”
“Not a policeman?”
“No. But I recognized his abilities almost at once. I didn’t think he was insane at all. I was quite convinced that he was a fellow traveler. We had a rather long conversation. And, at the time, I thought I assisted him.”
“How?”
“I helped him become aware of his natural proclivity.”
“When was this?”
“The sixteen hundreds, sixteen thirty-eight, I believe.”
“Can you go back and un-meet him?”
“Eh?”
“Revisit that life and avoid him at all costs.”
“That is a possibility… but one for the future, not the present.” Fynn paused. “Such would require extraordinary measures.”
“How did you realize he was like you?”
“He’s not at all like me.”
“I mean, how did you find out about his special ability?”
One of us made an off hand remark, but a remark that could only be made if you recognized that the timeline had changed.” Fynn paused. “I met him again in Istanbul, at the height of the Ottoman Empire, but a hundred years earlier... the mid fifteen hundreds. At that point we both recognized the same abilities in each other.”
“Who was he back then?”
“A rug merchant, of all things.”
“What were you?”
“Me? A policeman, of course, at least of a sort.”
“Of a sort?”
“I do not wish to go into a lengthy history of the Ottoman Empire at present.” Fynn smiled.
“Sorry.”
“We began to run across each other quite frequently… always in a different time or a different place… Let’s say we struck up something of a friendship. We would spend the night together on occasion, share a meal, a drink, a campfire or a hearth, and we’d converse far into the morning… He began to wonder if we were entangled, our destinies so to speak, as it seemed we were entangled in time. But these discussions left me rather cold. My relationship with him chilled somewhat. I began to have my doubts about the man.”
“What, are you two guys entangled in some way?”
“This is the claim that Mortimer makes, but there is no substance to it.”
“When did you see him next?”
“I avoided him for years. If I encountered him in a particular place, I would move on, sometimes quite hurriedly, indeed, even if it meant violating my third rule of travel.”
“Which is?”
“Stay as long as possible.”
“Right, I remember… so, what happened next?”
“Next is certainly not the correct word to use but I take your meaning.” He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I recall him as a minor historical figure... Napoleon’s personal guide.”
“What? Napoleon Bonaparte?”
“Yes.”
“When was this?”
“During his Egyptian Campaign.”
“What kind of guide?”
“A tour guide of sorts.”
“You knew him then?”
“No. He told me this.”
“And you believed him?”
“Why would he lie about such a thing?”
“Go on…”
“Mortimer talked to me about the possibility of jumping together. It had never been tried.”
“Jumping together... Like holding hands?”
“Something like that. He wondered if we’d end up in the same place.”
“Did you?”
“Not exactly.”
“What happened?”
“This was a hundred years later or so. We found each other in Paris around the turn of the next century… That evening did not go well. We were drinking absinthe... it was Montmartre… Both of us got quite inebriated. In the end, I dropped him from a rooftop, though there’s a bit more to the story than that…” Fynn’s voice trailed off. He walked on in silence, presumably trying to recall this event. The inspector stopped along the water’s edge and let the surf curl up around his ankles again.
“As I said, we were both quite drunk and decided to risk a rather foolish jump from a great height. How exactly we ended up on that rooftop is still unclear to me. I vividly remember the tiles giving way, sliding one at a time, until it became a virtual cascade. We both lost our footing. I was slipping, he was slipping too. Mortimer found himself at the edge of a roof, dangling. I grabbed him and held on for dear life, but I could not hold on indefinitely— from the strength in my arms which wa
s failing, to the crumbling tiles, which were falling and shattering on the streets below. Nor did he have any way to hoist himself back up. I looked him right in the eyes. He knew I would have to let go. He nodded to me, closed his eyes and seemed to prepare himself for his libra lapsus. It was a long way down and consequently, it would be an unpredictable journey, perhaps even his doom.” Fynn resumed his pace southward. I followed in silence.
“At the very last moment I changed my mind. I decided that if he were to fall, I would go with him. At the very least, my thinking went, we might end up in the same place, and perhaps help each other… Such was not the case. A moment later, I landed, rather injured, but he had vanished. That could only mean one thing. I had made a hard jump, while he took a soft one. He returned to a familiar place, a previous self. I had not. Everything was new to me. Yet, I soon had to ask myself, why in heaven’s name would anyone wish to return to such a place?”
“Where was it?”
“Ah, it was… the prison.”
“The prison?”
“A terrible place. A place created from fear and ignorance, perpetuated eternally and wholly by accident.”
“What sort of place was it?”
“The prison called Flatlands, and it was ingeniously designed. No more than an island, pleasant in that respect, but there was nary a place to climb— not a rock, a chair, a table, a stool, a bed— nothing. It existed in one dimension only.”
“You mean no place to jump from?”
“Yes. We were shackled most of the day and made to wear heavy weights on our legs.”
“We? You and Mortimer?”
“No. I learned soon enough that Mortimer was a warden at this prison.”
“A guard.”
“Yes… but you must understand this place is a morass, a prison for travelers such as myself, such as Mortimer as well. But recall, when we jumped from that Paris rooftop, he disappeared, so I knew he had gone back to somewhere he had been before. I traveled there anew. He was a guard and I was an inmate.”
“That’s incredible.”
“In the end I managed to make my escape.”
“How?”
“This is even a longer story. For another time perhaps. I will only say, that as the result of my stay there, I have developed very strong legs.”
“That’s it?”
“That was quite enough.”
“No, I mean that’s the last time you saw Mortimer?”
“The latest occurrence was at a cocktail party in London, nineteen sixty-four. Mortimer came at me with his cane and a murderous intent, as well as a look of hatred on his face. I barely got free and then he disappeared rather suddenly.”
“What happened?”
“Enough to say this was the first time I became aware that he bore me a grudge and quite a large one.”
“You haven’t seen him since?”
“No.”
“What did he look like?”
“When?”
“That last time.”
“He was a young man, in his twenties perhaps.”
“And he had this cane?”
“Yes, most peculiar. It had the head of a jackal on top, rather ominous, I thought.”
“You mentioned prisoners. How many other time travelers are there? How many have you met?”
“Not many, I suppose… less than a dozen.”
“But there could be more?”
“There could be many more.”
“Could they be working with this guy?”
“That’s doubtful. Of those I’ve met, they’ve all had a deep respect for human life. They are not killers. They are in fact quite normal, if that’s the correct word.”
“And this Mortimer guy, he’s not?”
“No. I believe he’s barking mad. There is certainly not a shred of humanity remaining in the man.”
“It sounds like we have our work cut out for us then.”
“Indeed.” Fynn smiled grimly. “So in the end we might ask, who is manipulating your reality? Him or me? Or even yourself.”
“Myself?”
“Such is a distinct possibility. It’s difficult to say for certain.”
My mind traveled back to our drinking bout at the kitchen table. “Wait a second… what about that magic trick you did?”
“What magic trick?”
“The thing with the paper, when you asked me to choose the inventor of the telephone.”
“Oh yes.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“You manipulated my reality then. Couldn’t this guy do the same?”
“Ha, that was merely sleight of hand, a magic trick. An illusion.”
“Oh,” I said glumly, but then thought about it. “Wait a second. That was more than sleight of hand. I checked the internet… it was right there on my computer.”
“Yes, you did.” Fynn started laughing.
“You changed my reality right then and there, and I don’t remember any jumping… neither of us free fell.”
“Ah, but you don’t remember jumping over the breach, or along the boardwalk in the swamp? Or perhaps you slipped on the stairs? I believe you manipulated your own awareness. This trick only works because of your extraordinary memory. You have the ability to recall the differences. You slide back and forth without even realizing...”
“So it wouldn’t work on someone else? On Durbin say?”
“Not at all. To him the inventor of the telephone could not change depending on which scrap of paper he chose. He cannot remember two choices… just the one.”
That sort of made sense to me.
chapter 30
no picnic
Believing Fynn, believing that he could travel through time was a relief. This was completely unexpected. I felt a great burden had been lifted. All doubts erased, and even if my own timeline was completely screwed up, at least I knew I wasn’t insane. And now I had a clear purpose, a certain goal, an objective. Somehow we would find this madman, this Mortimer, and bring him to justice for his crimes, especially for the brutal killing of Alyson and Emma. I felt motivated and sure of myself, though a bit confused about the next steps to be taken.
Saturday morning found me impatient and restless. The weather had turned as well. The last couple of beach days ended abruptly. The cool air returned, and rain was a definite possibility for the afternoon. I telephoned the Blue Dunes and tracked down Fynn, asking if he’d like to go for a jaunt. He readily agreed. It was unseasonably cold, and the clouds looked pretty threatening when I picked up Fynn from his hotel.
“Where are we bound today?” he asked with some enthusiasm. “It looks like rain perhaps.”
“I thought we’d try something a little different. It’s off the map.”
“Well, off the map, I am intrigued. The sanatorium?”
“No. Call it a picnic. To a place that is all my own. I think you’ll like it.”
“A picnic... and what’s on the menu?”
“A thermos of coffee… and sandwiches. And there’s some single malt if you want.”
“Sandwiches… what sort? Irony sandwiches?”
“What?” I turned and stared at Fynn. “What are you talking about?”
“Sorry, it just popped to mind.” He smiled apologetically. “Such things happen to me on occasion.”
“They’re from Nora’s Bakery… ham and munster, or turkey and Swiss.”
“I think you have the cheese wrong.”
“What?”
“Turkey and munster, or ham and Swiss would be better combinations all around. Mayonnaise or mustard?” he asked.
“Vinaigrette, I think.”
“Well then, I’ll come along for the company and the conversation at least.”
I pulled onto a sandy strip just off the road before North Hollow Beach. Technically there was no parking here, and in another week it would actually be enforced. Durbin was expecting his reinforcements just before next weekend, Memorial Day. The Sand City police f
orce would at least triple in size, though most of the new recruits were auxiliary police, hired on for the peak season.
“I have an admission to make,” I began as we walked up the quiet path.
“What’s that?”
“In the beginning, when we first met, I didn’t believe a word you said— well, barely… and so… I was lazy, I didn’t have to think about time travel very much. I said to myself, it’s just impossible and put the whole thing out of my mind. But now—”
“But now, you have many questions… and you begin to realize that it is quite complicated.”
“Yeah… And um, I did a little research on quantum theory and all that.”
“Well done.”
“I did some reading: entanglement, space-time, probability…”
“Have you? Well, that’s a good thing, I suppose. And you understand it all?”
“Not really.”
“But you’ve reached some conclusions.”
“Yup. I’ve decided you are an Einstein-Bose condensate.”
“Am I now? And why is that?” Fynn gave me a broad smile.
“Well, you are a complex set of single atoms that works as one.”
“I am at that.” Fynn began to laugh.
“You are the Quantum Detective.”
“Am I? That’s a good title for my book.”
“Your book?”
“Yes, the book you mentioned. The one I am writing and revising all the time… always changing the characters’ lives. You are the editor or someone— now I’ve forgotten...”
“Oh that.” I felt embarrassed by my previous slightly drunken analogy. I led Fynn to my private pine grove, that spot in the dunes where the scrubby trees hung low to the ground and offered shelter in almost any weather. We each found a tree to lean against, facing each other, and even if it did start to rain, we’d be the last to get wet. I poured out two cups of coffee and the inspector added some scotch to his. The pungent pine needles were soothing enough for me.
“So what’s it like being Fynn?”
“How do you mean?”
“What’s your life like?”
“I have many lives.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. I still can’t wrap my head around it.”
“Think of it this way: every minute of your life is exactly like every minute of mine, only I have many lives to choose from, hundreds of lives which I can visit when I wish. It all depends on where my awareness goes… But the only life I am truly living is the one in the flux of the now, in the present.”