by Sean McMahon
‘This is what we wanted!’ said Hal. ‘This whole time Kara, we’ve been trying to find a way to escape these restarts. If we leave–’ he pressed himself against the wall to avoid Fearne from walking into him. ‘–If we leave Fir Lodge now, we can’t be murdered tomorrow night!’ And then he realised what she meant. The elephant in the room that his conscious mind was trying to hide from him. ‘Shit.’
Kara nodded several times in quick succession, relieved that he finally understood what she was saying.
‘If we leave,’ said Kara, ‘Kevin will die.’
Hal was shaking, there wasn’t much time.
‘We need to get to the restart-point, now,’ said Hal. ‘We can discuss it on the way,’ he added, as the ground shook violently beneath them.
‘Um, Kara? What was that?’ said Hal, as the ground vibrated again, this time shaking the entire lodge with such ferocity that objects fell from the counters. The sound of glass smashing onto the hard, wooden-flooring filled the lodge, along with the tingling and clinking of metal, as cutlery shook in the drawers on the floor above them. The sound of smashing ceramics complemented the cacophony of noises, as cups fell to the ground, shattering with equal fervour.
The consequences of instigating such a rambunctious paradox became immediately apparent, as Hal and Kara began to see multiple versions of themselves springing in and out of existence all around them. The trail of the path that each Hal and Kara took leaving a slipstream of residual echoes. Fir Lodge filled with every and any potential outcome of Hal and Kara’s afternoon, the noise of every possible conversation they would ever have, all taking place at once in a deafening crescendo of banality.
‘RESTART POINT?’ a voice shouted, belonging to who Kara presumed was her Hal.
She nodded, making a break for the entrance doors of the lodge, but coming in hot and colliding with the door-frame. Her speed was unprecedented, as was the dent she had made in the frame of the doors. She looked back at Hal, whose mouth was agape with amazement.
Having no time to discuss Kara’s display of raw, unparalleled super-speed, they ran, taking advantage of their mutually-increased traversal velocity, hoping that their newfound ability would allow them to travel faster than their friend’s cars.
*
Jon couldn’t put his finger on what was happening exactly, whether they were all hallucinating, or if they were actually witnessing some form of attack. In the back of his mind, he hadn’t ruled out the possibility that they were in the middle of a potential earthquake, as the structure shook violently around him. All he knew for certain was that he needed to keep his friends safe, and right now they were anything but.
Something was happening. He could feel it. If he was over-reacting, he knew his friends would forgive him, knowing there would be plenty of opportunity for him to laugh it away with banter, and by plying them with drinks later. But his gut told him that staying here was not the smart choice. Taking charge, he decided to deal with the consequences later. He knew better than to ignore his instincts, and there would be all the time in the world to apologise if he was wrong.
‘I’m not wrong,’ he whispered to himself firmly.
Everything else was immaterial.
*
Reasoning that their current speed was being amplified by their retained charge, caused by them making contact with both of their past selves at exactly the same time, Hal and Kara felt like they were trudging through deep snow, and that something was holding them back. The fog had disappeared, suddenly replaced with the familiar vibrancy of colours, which had dutifully returned to their surroundings.
They took comfort in the fact that they knew the quickest route to take, their muscle-memory guiding them through the winding roads. Their muscles burned at the exertion, a sensation they had all but forgotten until now, and it was infuriating.
They frantically dodged out of their own way, as additional incarnations of themselves sprung up without warning, obstructing their passage to the boundary line. Kara cursed at the quantumly-untangled road-blocks, seriously regretting how many times they must have walked down these roads to justify the existence of so many duplicates.
‘This is bad, Kar’, really bad,’ said Hal, submitting his entry for the understatement of the year award.
‘Ya think?’ said Kara, stopping dead in her tracks, like a rugby player avoiding an oncoming tackle, as another one of her time-echoes popped up in front of her. She turned on the spot, dodging out of its way, then continued running. It was then, as the time-barrier came into view, still many hundreds of yards away, that they saw something truly out of the ordinary, even by their now-lofty standards.
Hal stopped, as a humanoid shape flickered into existence in front of him, shimmering at such a high speed that the details were hard to make out; a man, leaning over another, much-shorter man. The out-of-phase man was brandishing an object, aimed directly at the other, who Hal now realised was kneeling.
‘Is that…a gun?!’ said Kara.
‘Oh man,’ said Hal, ‘this guy looks badass.’
‘When you’re done flirting with that time…echo,’ drawled Kara, ‘we need to get the hell out of here!’
‘Time-echo?’ said Hal, his eyes lighting up. ‘Nice!’
‘Hal!’
‘Yup. Sorry. Right. Unimportant details,’ said Hal.
They continued onwards towards the edge of Pentney Lakes, wanting to collapse through exhaustion when they finally reached it, but they fought against their bodies, knowing that their friends could be here in seconds.
Looking back out towards the way they came, they saw countless versions of themselves, phasing in and out of existence. Hal and Kara realized that they were closer than they had ever been to finding out just what would happen if their past-selves crossed through the invisible vortex.
‘Here it is then,’ said Hal. ‘We let ourselves leave, and we’re done. We’ll go home, see Jess and Greg, and probably won’t remember any of this,’ he added, talking fast, and more to himself than he was to Kara.
‘But if we leave, Kevin dies, and a serial killer continues his rampage,’ said Kara, her speech equally frantic. They could hear the sounds of cars revving in the distance.
‘Maybe we’ll remember everything that’s happened?’ said Hal unconvincingly. ‘We can call the police and…and…’ but he knew there was no way of knowing that for sure. They were gambling Kevin’s life on a hunch, one that they didn’t truly believe.
‘Hal, whatever we decide to do, we decide together,’ said Kara. ‘This is too big for just one person to have weighing on their conscience.’
They could see the glistening sun reflecting on the windshield of a vehicle, as the sound of what they assumed was one of their friend’s cars grew louder. Hal stared at the invisible portal that they knew occupied the space in front of them.
‘This is our chance to finally be free Kara,’ Hal said softly. ‘We can go home. It’ll finally be over. No one will know what we’ve done, maybe not even us,’ he added.
Their friends were so close now, ten more seconds and the decision would be made for them. Kara and Hal had no more words to share, the choice they had to make was clear. As the cars approached, they knew this was the hardest decision they would ever have to make. All they had to do was do nothing, and they’d be free.
Kara and Hal looked at each other, noticing they both had tears in their eyes. Hal smiled sadly at her, making his intentions clear, and Kara nodded in agreement, smiling back at him.
‘No one will know…’ she said, her voice barely a whisper as she repeated his words.
They watched, as Jon drove through the barrier, causing it to shimmer, as the ripples of their prison reverberated against his car. Jasmine’s white car was the next in line to pass through, their past-selves clearly visible in the back seat.
And then, as Jasmine’s car moved further and further away from sight, all they could see was the familiar whiteness, as they were erased forever. Nothing more than f
orgotten whispers in time, themselves becoming barely-formed echoes amidst the vastness of the universe.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Heroes and Villains
RI Timestamp Error: Recalculating
Hal was lying on his back in the late-afternoon sun, that was beating down over his garden. He was utterly content, despite not knowing exactly why. He could feel the sun on his arms, the cool breeze ruffling his t-shirt, causing him to sigh deeply.
“This is the life,” he thought.
Shaking his box of cigarettes, he could tell that only one remained inside it.
“No matter,” he thought, “plenty more where that came from.”
Raising his lighter, he lit his cigarette and reached for his phone. Unlocking it, Hal began to scroll through his music, settling on Muse’s cover of “Feeling Good.” He smirked, as a sense of irony washed over him, and pressed play.
The music filled the garden, as he placed his phone back on the grass next to him. The sky was a clear blue, unmarred by clouds.
“Or fog,” he noted to himself.
‘A bit on the nose, don’t you think?’
He opened his eyes, and saw Kara leaning over him, casting a shadow, as she blocked the sunlight. He knew she was referring to his choice in music.
‘We did a good thing Kar’. I mean, sure we’ve totally fucked ourselves over,’ said Hal, ‘but it was the right choice coming back for Kevin. The only choice really.’
She plonked herself down on the grass next to him, and picked up his phone, studying the vibrant home-screen.
‘How much longer do we have?’ she asked, trying to learn the new rules.
Before he could answer, the music lowered in volume, then stopped abruptly, the screen turning black in an instant. The feeling of the afternoon sun against her forehead lessened until, eventually, she could no longer feel it at all. The all-too-familiar static fog appeared from nowhere, engulfing them once again.
‘Damn, my bad,’ said Hal apologetically, and sitting up. ‘I was looking through my photos, must’ve drained the battery. Fog’s back,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Yes Hal, I’m aware of things that happen directly around me,’ said Kara, with a smirk.
He smiled back, knowing she wasn’t really angry, and was just having him on.
They had spent the last two restarts experimenting with their newly-discovered ability to super-charge themselves, ensuring they remained a safe distance away from their past-selves so as not to cause another temporal apocalypse, and doing so had some interesting side-effects. Whilst super-charged, they could interact with living things, albeit minimally. They could also interact with inanimate objects to a much higher degree, even breaking them if they wanted. It was as if their density was increased by the energy, and they were more whole, allowing them to interact with the past over a greater distance. Lastly, it seemed to bring them more in-phase with time itself. The fog retreated for up to several minutes at a time whilst they held a charge, and they could utilise their senses again. They could smell the air, feel the sun on their skin, and for the first time in a long time, they felt hunger, and even fatigue when exerting themselves. Once their retained charge dissipated, however, it was business as usual once again.
‘Right,’ said Hal, standing up, and pulling his boiler suit back up from around his waist, pushing his arms through the sleeves, and zipping it back up over his black t-shirt. ‘I think that’s enough practise, I think we’re ready. Shall we go top-up and head over to Kevin’s? We need to check out the basement.’
It was the reason Kara had approached him in the first place, and so they set off, to look for inspiration on how to prevent Kevin’s future imprisonment.
*
For once, they didn’t mind waiting for the day to play out, as they killed time waiting for Kevin to return on Friday evening. They had a lot to unpack after their recent foray into accidentally becoming weapons of mass destruction.
‘What did we do?’ asked Kara. ‘I thought after each restart, the time-loop started all over again?’
Hal looked troubled by this new revelation, he knew she was referring to what they were now calling the “Time Echoes.”
Up until now, they had logically assumed that every restart wiped what had come before; namely everything they had done within the thirty-three hours leading to their untimely demise. Having ruptured the continuity of the timeline by overloading it with the blue energy they had been attempting to harness, it appeared the truth was a touch more sinister than they had first suspected.
Every jump they had made into the past had seemingly been catalogued, as evidenced by the appearance of every incarnation of their past-selves to date, who were going about their day, completely oblivious to the existence of their temporally-distorted time-echoes. There even appeared to be instances of things that hadn’t happened yet, though it was hard to tell, due to the overwhelming noises surrounding them at the time. Hal was certain he had heard snippets of conversations that he and Kara hadn’t even engaged in, as if every single one of their choices was recorded, even the ones they hadn’t followed through on.
‘Do you think the echoes could see us? Or each other for that matter?’ asked Kara.
‘I doubt it,’ said Hal. ‘I mean for one thing, I don’t seem to have any new memories of seeing a hundred us’s roaming around during our earlier restarts, do you?’ he asked, genuinely curious.
Kara scrunched up her face, as if doing so would help her scrub through her memories faster, like sliding the progress bar of a video, skipping over the adverts. Eventually, she came to the conclusion Hal was secretly hoping for.
‘No, I don’t remember seeing a ridiculous amount of Velma’s running around.’
‘Well that’s a relief,’ said Hal, ‘means we haven’t completely broken our own timeline.’
‘I really thought we were home, that we’d made it back, you know?’ said Kara, the sadness in her eyes nearly breaking Hal’s heart, as her eyes glistened under the water being generated by her acceptance that it wasn’t meant to be.
‘I know,’ croaked Hal, ‘me too, Kar’.’
*
Kevin finally arrived, and Hal and Kara followed him into his lodge, watching as he carried out his predetermined routine. He finally made his way to the basement door, and with the basement now unlocked, they headed down the staircase. Hal made his way into the small room that would soon be the lodge owner’s prison cell. Meanwhile, Kara remained outside the storage area in the basement, ready to open the door for when their past-selves were in close enough proximity, knowing that they would be just close enough the following afternoon, when they went for their walk in the woods.
Kevin closed the storage-cupboard door behind him, locking Hal inside, and retreated upstairs to feed Jerry, encumbered with a large bag of dog food. The Restarters had spent their afternoon siphoning off the energy from their significantly-more-corporeal past-selves, ensuring that they remained in contact with each other, to make sure no displaced energy went to waste. Hal, surrounded in darkness, pulled his phone from his boiler suit, and hesitated before hitting the power button. He was confident the charge would have held, but if he was wrong, it was going to be a long and boring evening for him. Shrugging off the self-doubt, Hal held down the power button, bracing himself for the pang of disappointment. The last time he had tried this was with his lighter, which failed to illuminate his surroundings. Hal surmised that a retained charge may just change the way in which light refracted between phased and non-phased objects, but he honestly had no idea of knowing if that would be the case.
The familiar logo appeared on the screen, and he waited impatiently as the phone booted up, then activated the built-in torch function. As the light bathed his surrounding environment in an eerie blue hue, he sighed in relief that his theory held water. Seeing the light from under the threshold of the door, Kara was first to speak.
‘So, what do you see?’
‘Well, we’ve got walls�
��a shelving unit with old paint tins on it, and a sheet covering–’ he placed his hand on the sheet and felt resistance, ‘–a table I think.’
Kara gave it some thought, running the problem through her mind, trying to envision how anything in that room could help someone who was bound and gagged. She decided to start small.
‘Anything around the door frame? A key on the inside on the ledge, or whatever?’ said Kara, waiting patiently for a response as he checked.
‘Oh yeah, there’s a key!’ said Hal.
‘Really?!’
‘Of course not,’ said Hal, ‘that would be a ridiculous plot-contrivance don’t you think?’
Hal checked the power on his phone. It had dropped from one-hundred, to thirty-three percent already. He made a conscious effort to stop wasting time with irreverent sarcasm.
‘Okay, we’ve got three brackets holding the door to the frame…’ he ran his fingers over them, checking for anything useful. ‘Huh…’ he said out-loud to himself.
‘What do you see?’ asked Kara, hearing his mind churning.
‘We may have a winner,’ he said, as the light from his phone died, plunging him back into darkness. ‘Go check the table behind you, will you?’ he added.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The Dog-Walking Dead
59th Restart – Saturday Evening, 8:51pm
The focus for the next two restarts was all on Jerry. They had toyed with the idea of trying to keep him away from the lodge entirely, but could only keep his attention for short periods at a time. The allure of humans who were in-phase enough with his reality were, understandably, far more enticing than them, given that they couldn’t offer him food, or a good scratch behind his ear. It was only when they tried to interact with him on Saturday evening, minutes before their death, that they started to yield results.
Walking alongside their past-selves, Jerry was far more attentive. They felt sorry for confusing the poor dog, who must have felt like he was seeing double. Torn between following the instructions of their fully-alive counterparts, and the odd facsimiles that were fighting for his attention.