Fir Lodge

by Sean McMahon

  ‘Kara, check it out!’

  She too peered into the box, and saw the three pre-rolled cigarettes nestled inside. Hal pulled one out and fished around for his flip-top lighter, the sound of scratching metal filling the currently empty garden as he lit up, not that anyone but them could hear it.

  ‘You want one?’ he said excitedly.

  ‘No thanks, you hang on to them for later,’ she said, wresting her elbows on her legs, and her chin in her hands, in a manner that evoked defeat. Hal tried to break the ice that Kara’s sulk was generating.

  ‘Okay, so time has reset, and we’re back where we started,’ said Hal. ‘You were right, doing nothing did nothing,’ he added.

  ‘Shocker,’ drawled Kara.

  ‘At least we didn’t electrocute each other this time, a successful landing! Which, at the very least, is a change of some kind?’

  Hal’s words did little to lift her mood, but she could see he was trying, and dug down deep to find a way to contribute to the conversation. Taking a deep breath, which she slowly exhaled, Kara responded in a slightly more upbeat tone.

  ‘This…time-loop thing seems to have put things right back to the beginning again. Even restocking your supply of death sticks, apparently.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s weird right? I mean, for all intents and purposes, we assumed we were operating outside of this timeline,’ said Hal, ‘and yet, we’re clearly still…embedded within these…how many hours was it?’

  ‘Thirty hours and change,’ contributed Kara, making a conscious effort to dial down her iciness.

  ‘Right. It looks like when we restart, we start again with everything we had before,’ said Hal, the gentle hum of the hot-tub drawing his attention, causing him to look over his shoulder to see how much time they had before their make-shift boardroom was commandeered by his past-self.

  “We still have time,” he thought, then turned his nose up at the terrible choice of words.

  Kara reached down to her waist and pulled the magnifying glass that was tucked into the waistline of her skirt, confirming his assessment. It was seemingly identical to the one she’d thrown onto the wooden floor and left behind on their previous jump. She tossed it onto the grass with the same level of contempt she had done the first time around.

  ‘Okay,’ said Kara, ‘here’s what I think. We focused so much of our efforts on avoiding our past-selves last time, this time I say we stick as close to them as possible.’

  Given that Hal’s previous plan had been a total bust, he didn’t have much of an argument to make.

  ‘Agreed. We need to retrace our steps,’ said Hal. ‘Literally,’ he added unnecessarily.

  They jumped up off their seats, just as Past-Hal arrived and took over the bench.

  ‘You stay with you,’ said Kara, ‘I’m gonna go find myself.’

  Kara seemed positively reinvigorated now that she had something to do, and a plan of her own design to follow.

  ‘Sounds spiritual,’ said Hal with a chuckle. ‘Catch you in a bit.’

  Kara shot him a smile and headed inside, her mind whirring through all of the data she had obtained so far, trying to organise their experiences into some kind of order. She spun on her heels, a horrifying thought springing to mind.

  ‘Hal, wait! Just how many of us are here now? I mean, there’s our past-selves, then us, but what about the last version of us that jumped back on the first go around?’

  ‘I get where you’re coming from,’ said Hal, ‘but this doesn’t feel like that kind of movie.’ Kara looked at him blankly, urging him to continue.

  ‘What I mean is, when we re-materialised out the front there,’ he said, pointing to the driveway currently in front of them to the left of the lodge, ‘we didn’t land on copies of ourselves right? That’s where we would have been after our first trip on the crazy-coaster.’

  Kara nodded, wrapping her head around his nerdy, but seemingly sound-in-principle, understanding of their current situation.

  ‘So, we’re it? You don’t think we’ve been split a third time?’ she asked, needing him to say the words.

  ‘I mean damn Kar’, it’s impossible to say for sure I guess, but we’re not having this conversation with ourselves right now, so I’m going with the theory that we’re not horcruxes,’ reasoned Hal. ‘Of course, that being the case, that means anything we did in the last thirty-three hours?’ he gave her a thumbs up, then flipped it upside down, blowing a raspberry, and added ‘that’s probably been erased too. Not that we did all that much.’

  ‘Like you smoking all your cigarettes, and me ditching my magnifying glass!’ said Kara excitedly. This time-travel stuff was unexpectedly easy to grasp once she started thinking outside of the box.

  ‘Exactly, hence your sleuthing tool and my smokes being restocked by the time police,’ said Hal.

  He noticed that Kara suddenly looked troubled.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, nothing really,’ said Kara, ‘just…do you think that’s a real thing? Time police?’

  ‘Well if it is, they’re clearly suffering from the same budgetary constraints as the actual police. Surely they would’ve shown up by now?’ said Hal. ‘I think we’re on our own with this.’

  Kara had to agree. If there really was a group of people charged with moderating disturbances and changes to the timestream, they surely would have presented themselves by now. She thought she’d cheer Hal up by saying something she knew he’d get a kick out of.

  ‘I guess that makes us the time cops then,’ said Kara.

  Seeing his gleeful smile, she knew she’d hit the right note, and made her way inside to track down the version of herself from thirty-three hours ago.

  “Or was that sixty-six hours ago?” she thought, instantly deciding that she was not going to count previous time spent between their first and second leap through time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Just Passing Through

  2nd Restart – Friday Afternoon, 12:08pm

  Kara had cornered her past-self in her bedroom, the latter of whom was throwing her bag onto her bed. Kara stood there, trying to take everything in, every little detail that might just reveal some kind of Easter-egg that she could somehow exploit. But as far as she could tell, there was simply nothing to see. Her past-self turned around suddenly, and began to walk towards her. Kara clenched her fists and stood there, her feet firmly planted. Her past-self continued on, a game of chicken she didn’t even know she was playing. As they passed through each other, Kara heard a sound reminiscent of one of those memory-altering devices used in that movie; about a secret organisation that protected the universe from alien invasions.

  As every one of Kara’s currently out-of-phase molecules began to resonate, infused with an interdimensional energy that somehow tasted like the colour blue, Kara’s past-self seared all the way through her and out the other side, seemingly unaware of the encounter, bar the faint indication of a shiver that she immediately shrugged off as she left the room.

  Kara noticed that her saliva now tasted like copper, and that she suddenly felt very different, though she couldn’t quite define the reason why. Spinning around, she rushed from the bedroom, feeling the need to confer with Hal. She immediately stopped in her tracks, as Jasmine took over the doorway.

  Taking a few steps backwards, Kara allowed Jasmine to pass, then set off into the rear garden, ensuring not to bang into the pool table outside her bedroom in the hallway.

  Frustratingly, Hal was nowhere to be found, then she kicked herself realising he must be upstairs. She ran back into the lodge, and up the wooden staircase, where all of her friends were currently congregating.

  ‘Hal!’ she shouted, ‘have you walked through yourself yet?’

  She had to dodge her past-self once again, who began to unknowingly encroach on the space Kara was currently occupying. Pressing herself against the kitchen island, which was laden with food and drinks, her hand accidentally brushed against a packet of biscuits, causing them to rol
l off of the counter and onto the floor. She stared at the packet, then turned to face Hal.

  ‘How did you do that?!’ he said, with a look of awe and confusion.

  Her eyes were wide with the implications of what had just happened.

  ‘Holy shit…’ she said, ‘We can move things in the past!’

  *

  They were standing in the entrance hall as Hal’s past-self, along with Rachel, were greeting his brother Alex. Hal knew what he had to do, but was clearly putting it off for as long as possible, causing Kara to grow impatient.

  ‘Hal, just do it already and stop being a baby.’

  Her words did little to expel his unease, as he swallowed dryly, taking up a stance similar to that of a professional runner, aligning himself behind his past-self. After another several false starts, Kara tried a different approach.

  ‘The sooner you run through yourself, the sooner we can test this thing.’

  Seeing no sign of him taking the leap, Kara pushed him, a blue spark erupting from in-between his shoulder blades and her hand. Adopting a persona akin to that of a spooked horse, he was off, his hands outstretched in case things went south.

  As he passed through himself, he heard a sound that reminded him of the repulsor-blast generated by that superhero who wore a suit made of iron. He felt an odd sensation of tingling all over, as a current of energy flowed through him, and then he was through. Kara noted that Hal’s past-self shuddered slightly.

  Hal looked at his hands, expecting to see some kind of visible transformative evidence, but was left disappointed, as he clicked his tongue trying to make sense of why he could taste the colour blue.

  ‘I don’t feel all that different…’ he said. ‘I thought I’d feel different?’

  Kara sped past their friends in the hallway and onto the drive where Hal was now standing.

  ‘Finally,’ she said. ‘Now we can take this thing for a test drive.’

  *

  It didn’t take them long to realise that there wasn’t anything to move on the driveway, so they instead followed the path at the side that led into the rear garden. Staring excitedly at the various items spread out before them, they decided it was best to start small, settling on the beer bottles that lined their favourite picnic bench, which indicated that Jon had clearly started early on the beers. Kara ran at them like an Amazonian warrior, her arms flailing wildly as she attempted to swipe at them. One of them wobbled, but only barely. Rubbing her hands together at chest level, she dived in for a second attempt. This time, the bottle didn’t move at all.

  It was Hal’s turn next, and he swiped diagonally at a nearby bottle, his carefully composed judo-chop resulting in an embarrassingly non-effectual anti-climax.

  ‘Hey, at least you made one of them wobble,’ said Hal, sensing his fellow time-traveller’s frustration.

  After twenty-or-so minutes, Kara was close to giving up, as she swung a killer right-hook once more for good measure, causing the bottle to fly off the bench and onto the grass. As she turned around to make sure Hal was watching, she noticed her past-self walk past, making her way to sit with the girls, who were laying down towels in the rear garden to do some sun-bathing. She put two and two together and presented an observation to Hal.

  ‘Waaaait a second…we have to be close to ourselves! It won’t work if we’re not close!’

  Kara took another swipe, knocking another bottle over. Her past-self looked over her shoulder and looked at the propelled bottle. Realising she must have been imagining things, she shook her head, and continued on her merry way.

  With every step past-Kara took further down the garden, the remaining bottles increasingly took on the apparent mass of cast iron, refusing to budge no matter how much Kara tried.

  *

  They spent the remainder of their Friday this way, trying to move mundane objects around when no one was looking, with varying degrees of success, though this meant splitting up in order to maintain proximity to their past-selves. As their friends went to bed, they eventually held a meeting on the roof of Robert’s car to share their findings, and to determine any discerning limitations to their game-changing new abilities, with Hal leading the charge.

  ‘Well, I’ve learnt that we definitely can’t physically interact with the gang, or our past-selves. Not in any tangible way anyway. How about you?’

  ‘Nope. Same. It seems like we can only move, like, non-living objects or something,’ said Kara, pointedly.

  Hal dropped some more knowledge about another one of their discoveries.

  ‘You were right about having to be close to our past-selves to interact with stuff,’ he said. ‘The further away we are from them, the harder it becomes. Did you notice that even if they were right next to us it eventually took more and more concentration to move things? Almost like it’s draining us every time we move something?’

  Kara agreed. She’d experienced the same sensation of feeling increasingly more exhausted as the day went on.

  ‘I tried walking through my past-self a few times to see if it would…I don’t know…recharge me or something, but it seems like it makes no difference how many times we do that,’ said Kara. ‘I’m not even sure we needed to do it in the first place. I think maybe we could move things all along,’ she added, casting her mind back to her first restart, when she had inadvertently bumped into Robert’s wing mirror, forcing it inwards.

  Inside the lodge, someone turned off the last light, casting them into darkness. Their improved vision still afforded them the ability to see clearly, despite being enveloped by the night, and only having the solar system’s nightlight, the moon, for illumination.

  They had also intentionally avoided interacting with Jerry that afternoon, noting that he didn’t stop at the side of the lodge to sniff at where they were standing during their last time-jump. This seemed to validate Hal’s theory that things they set in motion were erased once they restarted their weekend.

  ‘How you feeling, anyway?’ Hal asked Kara, wondering how she was dealing with everything that had been thrust upon them.

  She laid on her back, her feet gently kicking against Robert’s windscreen, as she stared at the stars.

  ‘I mean…I feel fine, physically. Or is that meta-physically?’ she asked.

  Hal shrugged, not really sure how to answer that, allowing her to continue.

  ‘Either way, I’m okay,’ said Kara. ‘I just don’t know how we’re going to get out of this loop, you know?’

  Hal knew exactly how she felt, because he felt the exact same way.

  ‘I was thinking,’ said Hal, ‘maybe we could follow ourselves into the woods tomorrow? Get a change of scenery…might do us good?’

  ‘Yeah, can do if you want,’ said Kara. The more she thought about it, the better it sounded.

  ‘I like that idea, actually,’ she added.

  And with that, they decided to turn in for the night, jumping from the roof of the car and onto the gravel in a soundless leap. They made their way to the front door, and immediately realised they were locked out.

  ‘Oh bollocks,’ said Kara.

  Forced into making alternative arrangements for the night ahead, they made their way around to the rear garden, taking up a spot on the top of the hot tub, which was now fully covered for the night with a solid plastic protective shell, and spent the rest of the night staring up at the stars and waiting for sleep to take them, despite knowing that it wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Lost

  2nd Restart – Saturday Morning, 11:01am

  Their trip through the woods wasn’t nearly as thrilling as Hal had hoped, though the excursion did present an unexpected opportunity. The walk took them directly past Kevin’s lodge, another piece to the puzzle that they had yet to investigate. Deciding that having daylight on their side could be useful, they broke away from their past-selves to check it out.

  The front door was locked, of course, so all they could do was peer through the windows into the per
fectly ordinary home. By the time they had made their way around the perimeter and discovered a back door, their past-selves were too far down the road for the time-travellers to try turning the handle. Deciding it was a fruitless endeavour, they cast the idea aside, and joined up with their friend’s to continue onwards into the picturesque woodland.

  Kara was thankful that the copious amounts of stinging nettles that lined the walkways couldn’t harm her exposed legs, though Hal noted the practicality of her attire was hardly any different from the shorts her past-self was sporting. They followed several paces behind their friends, as they ventured deeper into the woods, chuckling at the dramatic irony as their past-selves realised that they’d reached a dead-end and had to turn back.

  Upon returning to Fir Lodge, the remainder of the morning went unusually quickly. As destiny dictated, everyone adorned their iconic costumes, and Hal and Kara decided to split up, determined to observe the afternoon from different vantage points. An unfortunate by-product of doing so was that it made it slightly more difficult for Hal and Kara to identify which one of themselves was who. More than once, Hal had engaged in conversation with Kara’s past-self, only for his Kara having to resort to signalling him, so that he was aware that he was talking to the wrong person. Despite being out of phase with time, visibly they looked identical, in both opacity and density, to their more corporeal twenty-eight-hour-old selves.

  “Or was that fifty-six hours?” thought Hal.

  He hadn’t decided if it was advisable to keep count of the exact measure of time they’d been there, but it was already giving him a headache. Kara seemed equally vexed by something time-travel related, as Hal noticed she was rubbing her temples again.