by Ramy Vance
Buzz scratched erratically at his head and fell screaming on the floor of the limo. The rest of them doubled over laughing.
Aki high-fived Rueben. “Best thing all night.”
Buzz sat back up, face flushed. “You guys are assholes.”
Rueben laughed. “Yeah, well, we’re not the ones with parasites.”
Martha teased, “I don’t know, maybe we need masks and gloves to be around you.”
Buzz frowned and folded his arms. “Haha, very funny. You know, intestinal health is not a joke. Our intestines show us a lot about what’s going on in our bodies. When they are compromised, it can wreak havoc on our systems. Do you know that gastrointestinal—”
Aki smacked him this time. “Buzz, do you ever intend to have sex in this lifetime?”
“Huh, what?”
“You’ve seriously got to lay off of words like ‘gastrointestinal.’”
“I do just fine with the ladies, thank you.”
Jack buzzed in on the intercom. “Where to?”
Aki answered, “Let’s all go home, get some sleep. We’ll rendezvous back at Buzz’s this afternoon for a debrief.”
Jack answered, “Copy that. Also, I have a lemon-based cleanse I do twice a year. It’s very healing. You can prevent a lot of illnesses by paying attention to your gastrointestinal health.”
Buzz threw his arms in the air. “Thank you!”
Jack came back through. “You can’t ignore your gut.”
Aki rapped on the divider window. “Jack, roll down the window.”
Rueben was the first one to arrive home. As much as he had been confident about Marshall’s ammo supply, now he wasn’t so sure as he spotted the two capable-looking men in black stationed outside his apartment building. Real subtle…real subtle…would they deter Pete? He had a futuristic glove with an “obliteration mode.”
Rueben took the stairs up to his apartment and noticed his downstairs neighbors Midge and Sheera sitting outside on their front patio, drinking their morning coffee.
They shot him a withering glance. He offered them a fake-pleasant smile and continued up the stairs.
He arrived in the small two-bedroom apartment he shared with Marshall. Plush orange couches and a fifty-two-inch plasma TV took up an entire wall. Marshall lay asleep and drunk in front of the TV. The news reports profiled the agenda at the upcoming U.N. World Summit.
“The delegates have been arriving in New York for the last two days for the U.N. World Summit that will start Monday. Topics under consideration include climate change as well as global poverty. Delegates have indicated they’ll address plans to stimulate the economies of underdeveloped countries.”
Stock footage flashed across the screen of children with swollen bellies with flies buzzing around.
An American politician came on the screen. Yolanda Martinez, the American ambassador to the U.N. “We have a responsibility to work together with these countries to make sure every man, woman, and child has equal access to clean water, food, adequate shelter, and basic healthcare.”
Applause.
“Every person on this planet, rich or poor, young or old, should have access to basic human rights.”
The talking news head returned. “Martinez’s One World campaign has faced challenges.”
A wiry politician with dark circles under his eyes and tiny spectacles spoke from an armchair. Oliver Westin, Senate Committee on Foreign Aid. “No one wants to see people—especially children—suffer, and I’ve seen the video on the One World campaign, and the footage is devastating. Heartbreaking. My wife couldn’t even sit through it because it was so disturbing. The reality is, we have problems here in the United States that we need to fix before we can look elsewhere. We have a national debt that’s so far out of control that it will take generations to fix. We have poverty, homelessness, unemployment… What Martinez’s plan advocates is diverting American tax dollars away from our national programs to help the economies of other countries.”
Rueben listened to the debate about the One World campaign rage on and shook his head. From the news footage he had seen during his basement captivity, Pete’s drones were going to attack the summit on Monday at 7:30 p.m.
He didn’t think Pete’s plan was because of the One World campaign. Pete seemed unhinged, but not in a politically extremist way. At least, that’s what Rueben’s gut was telling him.
Unless maybe Pete was part of some kind of conspiracy-theorist group that thought the One World campaign sounded too suspiciously globalist and believed there was a nefarious intent behind it?
He’d been in the CIA long enough to know there was some truth to some of the more popular conspiracy theories. Although to his knowledge, it didn’t go as deep as people thought. Still, he’d be lying if he said that he believed countries were run only by their respective governments.
Pete had specifically mentioned that he wanted to start a global war—which most likely meant nuclear war since nuclear disarmament between high-tension nations was a big topic at the Summit. He planned to go up to the roof with his satellite phone after the summit bombing to confirm it had worked.
Why a nuclear war? Rueben eventually gave up trying to figure out the reason why. He knew Pete was behind it, and he had to figure out a way to stop it. Of course, what unnerved Rueben even more than the threat of impending global war was the fact that Pete was some kind of alternate future Rueben. Even if Pete was from another universe, it was hard to believe a version of himself would turn to the Dark Side.
Rueben massaged his head. On the limo ride, he and his friends had decided to meet at Buzz’s to formulate a plan Saturday afternoon after they each got a few hours of sleep. There they would discuss everything they knew—including Buzz’s new rules for warpers—and Rueben feared he’d probably have to come clean to Aki about his time-warping ability. The prospect of this sickened Rueben’s stomach. What would she think?
Seeing Marshall asleep, Rueben clicked off the TV. Marshall grumbled and stirred.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Rueben hadn’t anticipated how to answer that. “I…I was out.”
“Out?” Marshall pushed his recliner in. “Don’t bullshit me, son. I know exactly where you’ve been.”
Rueben sighed, and a small ache formed in his skull. “Coffee?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. I didn’t appreciate the guys at the precinct calling to tell me you got mixed up in some shenanigans and popped up on the radar in some county lock-up. What the hell? I raised you better than that.”
That meant Marshall had very little knowledge of what had happened and pretended to know, to milk him for information. Rueben wouldn’t give it to him. It was too complicated.
“I didn’t see you rush to bail me out.”
Rueben grabbed the coffee bag out of the cabinet. Marshall still hadn’t come around to the single-serve coffee movement. Red can of Folgers, just like the old days. Of course, single-use coffee was so bad for the environment…ugh, that One Global campaign must be getting to him.
Marshall followed him into the kitchen and stood on the other side of the counter. “Bail you out? Why should I? You were at the bar acting like a goddamned idiot, going around getting yourself into all kinds of scrapes. And what’s worse, dragging Martha into the middle of it.”
Rueben spooned the grounds into the paper filter. “Ah, yes. Martha, the daughter you never had.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not. Don’t you think she can make her own decisions?” Rueben placed the full coffee filter into the machine, filled the reservoir with water, and flipped it on.
Marshall growled. “She’s a decorated officer and deserves your respect.”
“I do respect her. You’re conveniently avoiding the question.”
“Don’t sass me. It’s bad enough whatever you’re involved in. You can ruin her career by bringing her into whatever kind of mess you’re in. What were you thinking? Were you on d
rugs? Huh? And way out there, trespassing on some farmer’s property? You care to explain that?”
Rueben pursed his lips and leaned against the sink, his father on the other side. “Dad, I promise you, I’m not on drugs, and you have no idea what’s going on.”
“I would hope so, with the way you’re acting. There had better be more to this story.”
Rueben poured the steaming coffee into a mug and set it down so hard it splashed droplets on the counter.
Marshall pursed his lips and twisted his neck. “Do you know how terrifying it is to get a call from a cop in the middle of the night? I do… I was usually the guy making the call.”
Rueben blinked twice. Was that Marshall telling him he was worried? Lately, Marshall wasn’t his usual old self. He showed moments of kindness these days, and Rueben wondered if this was just more of New Marshall coming out. “I’m fine, Dad. You can trust me.” Rueben gave his father a soft smile.
“That’s rich,” Marshall spat, his old self tumbling out with his words.
Rueben shook his head and pulled his lips into a tight line. “Never in my life have I ever done anything to cause you to distrust me. I never even skipped school. So why can’t you trust that I know what I’m doing?”
Marshall was quiet, then rubbed his nose. His words were barely audible. “Because you’re too much like her.”
“Her? Mom?”
His mother, Carolyn, had suddenly and mysteriously left when Rueben was ten.
“You’re more like her than you know. Mr. Hash Brown.”
“Hey,” Rueben said. “You don’t get to call me that. Only Mom could.”
At that, Marshal swallowed, then turned and padded down the hall to his room. “Turn off the kitchen light when you finish. The electric bill was through the roof this past month.”
“I know, Dad. I pay the bill.”
“Don’t act like I’m a charity case. I pay my half.”
Marshall shut the door to his room, and Rueben sipped his coffee. He added more cream to mask the bitter taste. Folgers had been the smell of his childhood, his parents happy and in love over the scent of coffee and bacon.
Carolyn had left after the “incident.” It had started as a normal day of fifth grade. Well, sort of anyway. Rueben had replayed that day over and over in his head and found more odd inconsistencies with each passing year. But at the time, it had felt normal.
Rueben had stayed up late the night before writing some paper he’d waited until the last minute to finish. Carolyn had lectured him about the quality of his work and sent him off to the school bus. But her goodbye hug had lingered too long, and she had seemed desperate and sad when she told him, “You know I love you, right?”
He wiggled out of her embrace. He was too old for this kind of stuff. “Sure, Mom.” Then he left for the bus.
When he got on the bus, Martha was already there. She lived the next street over. Most of the ride was uneventful, but toward the end of it, a crazed gunman hijacked the bus.
In later years, Marshall’s cop buddies would tell Rueben that Marshall had overheard the dispatch and recognized the bus as Rueben’s. He’d jumped up and run out the door without even being assigned the case.
Some reports had him jumping over a desk, yelling, “I’m saving my kid.”
Marshall denied that part and said he was assigned the case and did his duty for the kids of New York. “I have a responsibility to all the citizens of this city.”
In any event, Marshall apprehended the gunman and saved the children on the bus. But as they evacuated, Rueben swore he saw Carolyn at the scene. She wore the same light floral print dress she’d had on that morning, with the same sandals, and her wavy red hair blew in the wind. That was odd because all the parents had instructions to wait at the school and that the police had the situation under control.
All he saw was her walking away, and he instinctively ran after her, yelling, “Mom.”
An EMS worker herded him back to the safety zone of the officers standing around the bus, understandably trying to maintain order between thirty traumatized schoolchildren. From the bus window, Rueben watched her departing back. As the bus pulled away, she turned toward it one last time. The wind blew her hair and obscured her face, so Rueben was never completely sure what he saw or if it had truly been her or an overactive imagination. If it had been her, it was the last time he saw her.
When they reached the school, Marshall was still at the station filing paperwork, and Carolyn was nowhere around. Martha’s mom took Rueben home to an empty house.
Carolyn had packed her clothes and left a weird note that Rueben didn’t understand.
And that was it.
The first Christmas without her, Marshall threw the note in the fire. “Fuck that.”
It killed Rueben inside to watch the note burn, but Marshall had turned into such an ogre, he didn’t dare argue with him over something like that. From time to time, Rueben tried to remember what was in that note, thinking that maybe adulthood would give him better insight into what had happened. The whole thing was cryptic and weird. But, he still never had real answers.
He sipped his coffee. “Whatever.”
After setting his empty mug in the sink, Rueben headed to the shower to wash off his jail funk. Maybe Buzz was onto something about the whole parasite cleanse. The warm water eased the tension of what he had been through. It couldn’t hurt.
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday, May 20, 3:30 p.m.
Later that afternoon, Rueben pulled up at Buzz’s mansion in his Mazda, unsurprised when he saw the CIA men in black standing outside. It was a stately home, originally built by an investment banker with roots in the Vanderbilt fortune. He had subsequently lost the house in a messy divorce, and his ex-wife sold it to unload the emotional baggage.
Having become an overnight millionaire after selling some proprietary video game software he’d developed, Buzz had swooped in on the sale. Now the picturesque columns, rising arches, and dignified brick had become a bachelor’s pad.
Rueben parked in the cul-de-sac and rang the bell. For a moment, he wondered if Aki knew how to get here. So far, they’d never invited her over here to join him and Buzz and Martha. Aki had been completely in the black during the Pout operation at the Canadian border.
A large Hispanic maid answered the door, wearing a black and white skirt and apron combination. “Mr. Rueben.”
“Hello, Rosa. Is Buzz here?”
Rosa paused a little too long for Rueben’s liking as if her processor was stuck. Not that he knew for sure if she was a robot. Jesus, being friends with Buzz fucks with your head.
After a long moment, Rosa finally said, “They are all here, even the new girl. Come in.”
Rosa held the door wide, and Rueben walked into the expansive marble lobby. A winding staircase led to the upper floors, and Rueben smiled as he remembered Buzz and Martha chasing him around these stairs with swords, guns, knives, and there was once a guillotine attached to the door. Of course, he’d time-warped backward each time he’d died, so there wasn’t any evidence of any of his messy deaths. So Buzz and Martha remembered none of it. Luckily the two of them were able to watch the nanobot footage of his deaths in Buzz’s secret computer room—the room that housed a recording of all Rueben’s adventures in the timeline before his numerous deaths.
Rosa yelled across the lobby in heavily accented English, “Mr. Buzz, Mr. Rueben is here.”
That seemed to be about the extent of Rosa’s job—that and buying Twinkies.
Buzz yelled from the living room, “Thank you, Rosa.”
Rosa nodded to Rueben, and he turned to her. “How’s Pedro?”
She clasped a hand over her heart. “Ohhh, Mr. Rueben…remember how he died on the hospital bed?” Rosa twisted her body both ways as if to check if anyone was eavesdropping. “He faked his death! He’s alive, and guess what? Now he has found himself in the arms of another woman. These twists and turns. Dios mio, the writers have no mercy o
n my soul.”
Rueben found it almost comical, the parallel between Pedro’s cheating death and Rueben’s time warp ability or genetic mutation or whatever it was. “Remind me. How did he wind up in the hospital bed?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Because he impregnated his sister.”
Yeah…luckily his life didn’t share that in common with Pedro’s.
She continued. “But he didn’t know it at the time. She was his partner’s daughter, and his partner was Pedro’s father, but neither of them knew it.” She drew a breath. “Then, Pedro faked his death and left her for Catalina, a…how you say…hussy…from Mexico City.”
“Damn, that’s cold.”
Buzz yelled from the living room, “Rueben? Get in here.”
“Right.”
She winked at him. “I’ll get you some Twinkies.”
Rosa left, and Rueben went into the living room, passing under the massive rising dome. The dome was a wildlife fresco with zebras prancing through the Sahara.
Rueben stared up at the dome and whistled. “What a shame.”
He entered the living area, a huge cozy room decorated in exquisite detail with cream couches and plush rugs under a glittering chandelier and strategically placed lighting.
Martha and Aki were already sitting on the couches, and Buzz flitted around in his usual bathrobe and silk pajamas.
“You may not be getting laid anytime soon,” Aki said, “but this is a damn nice mansion.”
“Why, thank you.” Buzz handed out tumblers filled with a fluorescent yellow liquid. “All right ladies, drink up. This is a specially formulated potion to clean out your intestines and balance the pH.”
They tentatively sipped their drinks.
Martha spat hers out. “Buzz, what’s in this?”
Aki squealed and jumped up and searched for a napkin. “This is awful. Where did you get this recipe?”
Buzz sank into a leather chair and crossed his ankles as he swirled his glass. “It’s a formula I concocted myself.”
Martha stared at the glass suspiciously. “Formula? Concocted? Did you create this in a test tube?”