Lost Friday

by Michael Bronte

  Evidently, David had learned much during his previous excursions into the future. The ICTO had taken advantage of David’s discoveries, and had built the first Intertime Devices, or ITDs, about fifty years after his death in the year 2081. It took some years to perfect the technology so that it could be used on humans with no ill effects such as incomplete or inaccurate rematerialization. Needless to say, such effects caused some severe problems, but, once perfected, the ICTO used this powerful weapon for several decades to selectively transform the course of historical events to its advantage. The ICTO being an outgrowth of the United States Department of Homeland Security, it was all done in the name of democracy, but it became apparent that even well-intended twists in the historical series of events had unforeseen effects in the course of human development, some of it quite disastrous. As such, the ICTO discontinued its policy of controlling the present by affecting the past, and stopped using ITDs as a military/political weapon. However, the power of the weapon was enormous, and the ICTO guarded its stockpile of ITDs much like governments of the past guarded their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

  The Red Diamond, having been the target of some of the ICTO’s historical tampering, had been trying unsuccessfully for many years to steal the ITD technology, which was ultimately based on David’s research. That is, until they managed to steal one of the actual ITDs.

  “So they do indeed have only one ITD?” I questioned, interrupting David’s history lesson about the future.

  “So says the ICTO,” he replied skeptically. “Even if it is only one, however, they can send back many operatives over time. The devices don’t really wear out, you see. It’s not like they have moving parts or anything.”

  “So both organizations want ultimate control over the technology,” I concluded.

  “Of course,” David replied. “It’s the most powerful weapon the world has ever known, but even though the Red Diamond knows how to use it, they can’t make it. It’s like a third world country that buys war planes. They have them, and they can fly them, but they can’t make them. It’s the same sort of thing.”

  “When did you learn that your formulas proved that time travel was possible?” I asked. I noticed that Roy and the Robelles were dead quiet as they listened.

  “After my first abduction,” David replied.

  “How many times have you been—”

  “This would be the third time they’ve tried to kidnap me,” David said, anticipating my question. Jenna nearly fainted.

  “And you remember the first two?”

  “If you’re referring to the memory cleanses, I don’t think they work very well on me.”

  Probably a result of a 180 IQ, I figured. The questions were stacked in my brain like playing cards, as was probably the case with Chuck and Roy, both of whom were a couple of pretty cool customers. At least I thought so until Chuck got up from the table, and said, “Let ’em try and get into this house.”

  “Won’t do you any good to stop them,” David said calmly. “They’ll just come back another time, and next time there’ll be more of them, and then more after that.”

  “Then I’ll take them all out,” Chuck said angrily, and Jenna sucked in some air.

  “It doesn’t matter, Dad. The Synthetics don’t mean anything to the Red Diamond. And if they run out of Synthetics, they’ll send back real people that they consider to be of lower race, people with real families. The Red Diamond doesn’t care if they die.”

  “The Synthetics are the Barbies and Ken Dolls, right?” I asked, trying to clarify David’s terminology. David nodded. “They’re human clones,” I explained to Chuck. “As I understand it, they’ve been bred from master sets of genes of human origin. They even have different models bred from specific genes that are intended for specific purposes.”

  Chuck said, “You mean a master race?”

  Roy said, “That explains the same DNA thing.”

  “They produce Synthetics by the millions, while at the same time killing off millions of others they consider to be lesser quality human beings,” David explained. “It’s awful.”

  I turned back to David. “I assume there are Red Diamond operatives who’ve already been sent back through history?”

  “I know that’s the eventual goal. They want to send back thousands of Synthetics, tens of thousands even. Can you imagine what they could do if they had the capability of manufacturing their own ITDs? They could send Synthetic troops into certain turning point battles in history, they could affect elections, they could affect history in any number of ways, all of it to their benefit.”

  Such as controlling the president of the United States, I thought.

  David said, “The only way to stop the Red Diamond is to stop the invention of time travel itself.”

  “Then why don’t you simply destroy the formulas?” I asked.

  “Because today is too late. I’ve already corresponded with the scientists, and the Red Diamond has already kidnapped them. If we manage to prevent ITDs from being invented while the scientists are still in the future, they’ll be trapped there.”

  “Are the formulas complete?”

  David scratched his head, and said, “Probably not, but with enough study, and enough time, it’s possible that someone could continue the work.”

  “Do the scientists know the formulas?”

  “No, not completely, and certainly not from memory. As of our last correspondence, they were using their computers at NASA to verify some of the larger calculations. In my opinion, the only way to prevent all this is to go back further in time and destroy the proofs before I’ve even had a chance to talk with those scientists.”

  “But that means that any Red Diamond operatives who aren’t in their proper time and place will be trapped,” I concluded. “Red Diamond operatives who may not know to abandon their missions.”

  “I’d go back myself,” David said, “but I don’t know how I’d get there from here. Plus, I can’t go back and visit myself. A person can only exist at one point on the continuum.”

  “But I thought you were in 2194 standing trial?”

  “As of tomorrow I will be, not today.”

  Speaking for the first time, Jenna said, “You’re not going anywhere,” and that was the end of that. No one in that room was gonna challenge that statement.

  I didn’t quite understand. “If you’re here, and someone goes back to talk to you about these formulas, how can they do that if you’re not there?”

  “Ah, but I will be there because when that someone goes back, they’d be talking to me at that point on the continuum and today hasn’t happened yet. Now you’re edging into the substance of my proofs.”

  Okay, now I was in over my head, and I figured that if David said it was a certain way, then that’s the way it was. “How far do we need to go back?”

  “I’m not sure, but it has to be before I started sharing information in that chat room. You know about the chat room, don’t you?”

  “I do, but they don’t,” I said, indicating Roy and David’s parents.

  David looked at Jenna and said, “I’ll explain it to you later, Mom.” He turned back to me. “You’ll need one thing if you’re going to go through with this plan.”

  “What’s that?”

  David got up and said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Roy bounced up and said, “Where are you going?”

  “To my room.”

  “Not alone, you’re not.”

  David just looked Roy in the eye and said, “This way, Chief.” Cool as a cucumber, that David. You could almost feel his energy settle on you. He and Roy were back in less than a minute, but it was long enough for the Robelles to spear me with stares as if this was all my fault.

  “You’ll need this.” David handed me his notebook, the one we found in his room first time around with Corvissi. “These are a couple of the proofs.”

  I flipped through the notebook. A couple?
There had to be a hundred pages there, all filled with numbers and symbols that I didn’t even try to comprehend. “How many proofs are there in total?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” David answered. “But these are the ones everyone is after now.”

  “Tell me something,” I said. “If this is going to be the third time the Red Diamond has tried to snatch you, what happened the first two times?”

  “I refused to provide them with the formulas, so they sent me back to this point with full knowledge of my upcoming trial.”

  I shook my head. “Why?”

  “Because if I don’t come across with what they want, you’ll never see Ms. Kovar, Mister Reemer, those scientists, or the jury of my supposed peers, again.”

  “And they wanted you to know that this time around.”

  David just nodded. Looking at his parents, he said, “I guess you want to hear about that chat room now,” but now never came.

  The first shot ripped through the dining room window and couldn’t have missed Chuck’s head by more than an inch. Roy seemed to know what it was immediately, even though we hadn’t heard a thing except for the breaking glass. Another shot tore through a wall and blasted a doorframe into splinters as Roy wrapped his big arms around David and dove to the floor.

  “Everybody down!” he screamed.

  Chuck grabbed Jenna in his big arms and was on the floor in a second. I didn’t have anyone’s big arms around me, but I hauled my skinny Greek ass to the floor as if I was going to burrow into it. For some inexplicable reason, however, the thought came to me that a shot coming through the wall didn’t necessarily mean that we—we being any of the people in that room—were the targets. I mean, why? Someone wanted to kidnap David, not kill him. Suddenly, all was quiet. I saw Roy, still down, calling for help on his cell phone. A second later he said, “Chuck, do you own a firearm?”

  “Just an old goose gun I got when Jenna’s dad passed away.”

  “You got ammo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get it, load it, and get everyone into your basement.”

  I could hear sirens in the distance. Roy looked at me but said nothing, and I guess he figured I was a big boy and would go into the basement if I felt like it. With his silver .357 in one hand, and his cell phone in the other, he made another call and gave the situation. “Don’t move until we get an all clear,” he instructed.

  Like, where was I gonna go? Two minutes later, the sirens were in the Robelles’ front yard and blue and red blips of light dotted everything in sight. I started breathing again as one of Roy’s men came through the front door and yelled, “Chief?”

  Roy got up and said, “The Robelles are in the basement. Stay with them till I give you the all-clear.”

  “Got it, Chief. You might wanna take a look outside.”

  Roy had planned to, of course, but the comment certainly got my attention. I followed Roy into the front yard.

  “Chief, over here,” someone called.

  I followed Roy to the edge of the yard where a stand of pines swayed in the ever-present breeze off the ocean. There, atop a bed of pine needles were two dark lumps, both of them still as death. Roy barely had a chance to shine a flashlight on them when another call came from the other side of the yard. There, two more lumps were lying face down just outside Chuck’s lawn shed. Bending over one of the bodies and shining his light on one of them, Roy said, “His neck has been broken.” He went over to the other one. “This one too.”

  Suddenly, from beyond the shed, something that sounded like a groan penetrated the night, a groan that sounded distinctly like, “Mister Pappas.”

  Roy heard it too, and signaled for me to stay where I was. I ignored him as soon as he turned his head, of course. He inched forward until another lump came into view. This lump I recognized. It was Aryeh.

  I was beside Roy in a second as he passed his flashlight over Aryeh’s body, illuminating two distinct spots where the flesh looked like bloody ground beef. Wheezing, Aryeh motioned for both of us to get closer.

  “You need to get David out of town,” he said with a ragged breath, and his head lolled over.

  Roy checked for a pulse, but I knew he was already dead.

  Chapter 27… History Repeats

  I said to myself, “Oh, shit,” but it wasn’t Oh, shit like I’d broken off a cork in a wine bottle, it was Oh, shit like I was skydiving and my parachute didn’t open. What the hell were we going to do now? I mean, Aryeh had come back to stop what he thought was a single Red Diamond operative. Now, I was looking at four more on top of the four he’d already blasted on the boardwalk.

  Roy seemed frozen in his shoes. I mean, eight dead operatives with the same DNA, futuristic crime fighters, changing the course of history; it was a lot to handle. I had to get him off the dime.

  “They were here to take David,” I said. “There could be more on the way.”

  That seemed to click in. “Or already here,” he responded.

  I wondered how we were going to communicate to Vishal that Aryeh was dead. I figured that had to be important, but I still had this gnawing uncertainty about their motives. I tapped Roy on the shoulder, and pointed at Aryeh’s body a few yards away. “You two spent a few hours together. Do you think you could have trusted him?”

  Roy hesitated before taking off his hat and scratching behind his ear. “Why are you asking?”

  “Humor me. Do you think Aryeh was telling you everything?”

  Roy put his hat back on, and said, “I think talking to him was like talking to one of you.”

  “You mean reporters.”

  “Right. You never know how what you say is going to be interpreted.”

  That wasn’t exactly a compliment, but I knew what Roy meant. Trust no one and move forward cautiously, my dad would have told me. In essence, Roy had just told me the same thing.

  “Speaking of which,” Roy said, “I’d like to know how you’re going to report this story.”

  “Huh?”

  “I assume you’re going to write about this.”

  A story. I still worked for the Press; I was still on the job. How could I not submit a story about eight dead Synthetics and one dead Mossad agent from the year 2194? This was huge, especially considering the fact that Lost Friday hadn’t happened yet. It would also back up Remington’s piece with Romano. I hadn’t even thought about writing a story. Geez, talk about your density factor.

  “I guess I should make some notes,” I said, realizing I didn’t have anything to write on besides David’s notebook. I certainly wasn’t going to write on those pages. I saw that Roy had a notepad where he was supposedly writing down details about the crime scene. “Can I borrow some paper?”

  He said, “Sure,” and handed me the whole pad.

  I wasn’t surprised to see that Roy had written almost nothing. As a matter of fact, the first page read: milk, eggs, dog food, OJ. I guess there were some things he didn’t remember. I flipped the page and saw a rough sketch of how the bodies were laid out at the scene, the position of each marked by a small filled-in diamond shape on the page. Hmmm. Okay. I flipped again, expecting to find a blank page. Instead, on the left, were more diamonds, perhaps ten of them, all strung together down the side. I said, “Well I’ll be a sum’bitch. You’ve already been taken.”

  “Something wrong, Johnny?”

  I said, “What’s with the diamonds?”

  Roy looked at me oddly. “I dunno. Mean something?”

  That’s when I realized the whole thing was happening exactly as it had the first time around. While the rest of the town was taken on Lost Friday and came back remembering nothing, Roy, Anne Behari, and I all came back to regurgitate the Red Diamond symbol in our own ways, and here it was again. It also verified that there’d been several Red Diamond operatives in Sea Beach on the first Lost Friday, just as there were now. History was repeating itself, and we didn’t have a prayer of stop
ping anything that was about to happen.

  * * * * *

  Roy said, “Who the hell is Anne Behari?”

  “There’s a new dentist that moved into town about six months ago. She’s his wife.”

  “Okay, now I know who you’re talking about. So?”

  “So she remembered the Red Diamond symbol. Don’t you see? She was taken too.” I had poor Roy tied in knots. I looked at my watch and saw that it was getting close to midnight. “Ya know, I’d love to stay and chat, but it’s important that I find her as soon as possible.”

  The Robelles’ back yard was awash in lights from the ambulances and police cars that littered the area, and the smell of nervous sweat penetrated my senses. I mean, four killings on the boardwalk the previous night had been a damned scary scenario for Sea Beach; five more tonight made it a war zone. The fact that the bodies were being treated like dead robots instead of human beings made the situation even more unnatural for those close to the action.

  “I’ll need one of your men to go with me, Roy. I don’t want her thinking I’m some kind of crackpot.”

  “No can do, Johnny. I need everyone on the scene.”

  I pointed to Aryeh’s body, which was being zipped into a body bag. “That man’s blood is real, Roy, and there will be more of it if you don’t do what I want.”

  Roy’s eyes froze, and you could tell he wasn’t used to anyone talking to him like that. “I’ll give you some rope, Johnny, but not much. You don’t go out of my man’s sight. You got that?”

  “Not a problem, but I want your word that you and David will meet me outside the boro limits when I’m done.”

  “Where outside the boro limits?”