Lost Friday

by Michael Bronte

“We knew what we were doing.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “It doesn’t always take an army of operatives to change the course of an event. We’ve done it many times, Mister Pappas, and our plan called for only one person to go back with you for that part of the mission. It makes us harder to detect.”

  “Oh, like Lost Friday.”

  “That was different. It was complicated, and we had no choice but to conduct the mission the way we did. Perhaps next time we will do it differently.”

  Next time? I was starting to feel like a chess piece. “A lot of good that does David Robelle and the eighteen other people who’ve been snatched, and now you tell me there’s another one of me running around? How the hell did that happen?”

  Vishal looked away. “We were trying to avoid that.”

  Well, if you think I was already angry…. In as controlled a voice as I could muster, I said, “You knew?” Vishal didn’t respond, and if there’s one thing I’d learned in my years of interviewing people, it was when to sense guilt: not something-looked-a-little-fishy-but-I-didn’t-do-anything guilt, but I-got-caught-red-handed-with-a-naked-woman-and-my-dick-out guilt. This was like that. Seething, I walked up and situated my nose about an inch from Vishal’s. I mean, it just didn’t make sense anymore. Either these ICTO guys could stop the Red Diamond, or they couldn’t. Me? I wanted out. This wasn’t my fight.

  “Let’s get to the point. You need me, for some reason; I know it, and you know it. Either level with me, or you can kiss my ass gone and you can handle this mess on your own.” Vishal was probably one hell of a poker player, but just for an instant he let the uncertainty show in his eyes.

  “Without me you’ll be dead within ninety days.”

  I gave him my best smirk, the one I used when bluffing a bluffer. “Without me….” I stopped. I stared at his face for a moment, and stepped back. Up close, without the framework of his long dark hair, without the distraction of his muscular build, I recognized the eyes. They were green, not brown or black as one would expect with someone of his complexion. I’d seen those eyes before—and they belonged to Anne Behari. I took another step back, and I saw the same long, elegant nose I’d noticed on her the first time I saw her. Well, well, well. Could it be? Could it carry through… how many generations? I was starting to get a picture, but a picture of what?

  “How many branches down is Anne Behari on your family tree?” I asked, waiting to see his reaction.

  He blinked. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to know he was itchy about something. Rather than denying it, he said, “She was my grandfather’s great grandmother. If she’s pregnant this time around, she’ll die.”

  Hello. I paced from one side of the lab room to the other, feeling Vishal’s eyes on me the whole time. He wasn’t about to let me out of his sight, literally, and my guess was that it had to do with a Red Diamond ITD locking on to my DNA and zapping me out of there. I didn’t know what he could do about it, but I’m sure there was a lot more about ITDs and DNA scans that I didn’t know. Indeed, everything I’d found out about ITDs and all the other aspects of Lost Friday had been revealed in tidbits, little burps of information that didn’t provide a complete picture of the events. Watching Vishal’s eyes as they tracked me, I suddenly felt that tickle I get when I think there’s a lot more happening right under my nose than I’m seeing. Hell, if the president of the United States was implicated in this, it certainly didn’t happen in a vacuum. Well, a lot of little burps can add up to one big puke, and I went for the whole stinking mess.

  “Tell me, Vishal, why are you having to go back almost two hundred years to stop the Red Diamond from having ITDs? Surely there have been opportunities between my time and your time to accomplish that.” I wondered what Vishal’s time really was. I mean, for all I knew he could have been from beyond 2194 and had been sent back himself. He blinked again, and I could sense the gears turning inside his head. Somehow, I’d just cornered him.

  “There have been many,” he said, “but each time we made progress, they’ve gone back further in the linkage of events to undo our missions.”

  Again, everything could be undone. That’s why Aryeh was being stored. He could be brought back to life, or perhaps never killed to begin with. I thought: this could go on forever. So how far back did they have to go? Nazi Germany? Before then? And the further back they went, wouldn’t the effects of any change in events flow out like ripples on a pond so that they got greater and greater as the linkages to the event expanded? I suddenly felt like going over and choking Vishal. I mean, millions and millions of lives could be affected, with perhaps millions more over time prevented from even being born to begin with. What arrogance! What gave anyone the right to play God like that? ICTO, Red Diamond, it didn’t fucking matter. Both were evil beyond comprehension. Choking Vishal wouldn’t accomplish much besides making me feel better, however, and I had to find a way to chain down my impulses and keep my head on straight.

  “You said about Anne Behari, ‘If she’s pregnant this time around, she’ll die.’ What did you mean by that?” I really wanted to hear the answer to that question, but just then the goon who’d done my memory scan blew through the door. Again, he gave me about as much regard as he would a twenty-second century dog turd on his shoe. He whispered something to Vishal.

  Vishal turned to me, like, really serious-looking. “This isn’t the first time Anne Behari has been abducted by the Red Diamond, as it hasn’t been with you or your police officer friend. That’s partly why their symbol has seeped from your respective memories. Even with memory erases, things surface over time if there’s been enough exposure to them.”

  So Anne Behari’s, Roy’s, and my recollection of the Red Diamond symbol didn’t have as much to do with us being eidetikers as it had to do with the fact that we’d been through this repeatedly. I guess that made sense. “What about her pregnancy?” I leaned on a lab table, and waited.

  “There have been several attempts to prevent that from happening. The details aren’t important right now, but the bottom line is that if she is found pregnant this time around, the Red Diamond will execute her—tomorrow.”

  Back and forth, back and forth, trying to prevent dominoes from falling. “And that’s how the ICTO and the Red Diamond know everything about each other, isn’t it? It isn’t your damned intelligence; it’s the fact that you’ve screwed around with history so many times that you know where all the players are located.”

  “That’s only partly true. The one aspect of all this that perhaps you haven’t absorbed is that if Anne Behari dies tomorrow, I cease to exist.”

  And if he ceased to exist, I was up shit’s creek without a paddle. Damn! I realized now that he had me by the short hairs as well, and I had no choice but to play his game if I didn’t want to leave them in the twenty-second century. I hate having no options; it makes bullshitting your way through a situation much less viable. “As much personality as I’ve got to spread around, I don’t like the idea of another Johnny Pappas out there snaking my dates. You still haven’t told me how it happened.”

  Vishal took a deep breath, and said, “He’s a Synthetic.”

  “Yeah, got that. How’d it happen?”

  “The Red Diamond had your DNA. They genetically engineered one of their Synthetics—and they raised him.”

  “As in real time?”

  “Yes. They raised him, and sent him back.”

  Okay, I got the picture. It was like: what was, is, and what will be, can be created. I bet the odds makers in Vegas probably wouldn’t like ITDs very much.

  I was about to ask another question, but Vishal held up a hand. “Nothing you could ask now will change the situation, Mister Pappas. You and I have been in this room too many times, and the time for questions has run out.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “What if I don’t cooperate?”

  “Oh, you’ll cooperate. Goo
dbye for now, Mister Pappas. You’ll find your instructions at the other end of the wormhole.”

  Chapter 30… Heeeeeere …’s Johnny!

  The first two things I did were to check the time, and look outside my front door. It was 7:16 a.m. exactly, and, as usual, both the Times and the Press were lying on my doormat. Both showed the same date of Wednesday, September 15th, nine days before Lost Friday. I didn’t know much about this teleportation stuff, and I wondered how I could have rematerialized inside my own apartment. I gave myself a mental eye roll, thinking, fuckin’ A, the Red Diamond bastards had sent two Barbies in here, but there was no telling how many times I’d really gone through this. I figured my place was probably on, like, teleportation speed dial by now, and I was having a hard time remembering what day it was in relation to the Lost Friday date of September 24th. I couldn’t help but recall what Vishal had told me about history happening all at the same time along the continuum, and I think I was getting closer to understanding the concept. I also remembered Roarke, and Vontz, and the human processing plant, and it wasn’t pleasant. I put the thought aside, not wanting to concentrate on anything except what I was supposed to do.

  On any normal day, I would have been stumbling out of the shower about this time, and I wondered if I’d gotten any sleep anywhere along the way. I mean, I actually couldn’t remember. I didn’t feel tired, though, and as far as I could tell, my memory was intact. I figured I might as well get on with the mission, which was… what? Vishal’s last words to me were, “You’ll find your instructions at the other end of the wormhole.” Okay, so where were they? I didn’t feel much like playing find-the-instructions, but I had no other choice. Maybe they would take the form of another of those hanging text messages, and I checked all the rooms just to be sure. Nothing. Ah, those sly bastards: the newspapers! Nothing doing there either, however. I checked every page in both papers, actually recognizing some of the stories inside the Press, which led me off onto another tangent, which was: what was I supposed to be working on? I looked around for my notepad, comfortable with the fact that I found it right where I normally put it next to the phone. I flipped through it, seeing lots of notes on a three-part story about commercial development in the Pinelands. I remembered working on that: dull, boring shit, no clues there. I started wondering why Vishal had sent me back to this specific day, and that’s when I remembered that there was another Johnny Pappas running around somewhere. Ah. Maybe he’d been sent back to this date too. But where? Maybe the cocksucker—wait, even in that context I didn’t want to think of myself like that—maybe the bastard was at the Press, going through my stuff. I mean, if I was a Synthetic and I’d been sent back to take my place, that’s where I’d be. Suddenly, I knew where I had to go.

  * * * * *

  Everything seemed normal along the way. The ’Vette was parked right where I always parked it, Norm was at the Wawa, and I recognized all the recent calls, both incoming and outgoing, on my cell phone. I blew through the doors into the newsroom, and did a visual sweep before going to my desk. I mean, what if I was already there?

  Romano shuffled past me carrying a cup of coffee. “What are you, standing there like that? A new superhero? Super Greek. No, wait a minute. Super Geek. Yeah, that’s it. I like that better. Super Geek. Hah!”

  Romano moved off, chuckling and muttering, “Super Geek,” under his breath. Bite me, Romano. I made my way to my desk, sneaking peeks at every corner of the newsroom as I did so. I took my chair and fired up my computer, my mind ablaze with a thousand thoughts. I don’t know why, but I thought maybe the instructions I was looking for were in my e-mail. I clicked into my Outlook and noticed that I had sixteen unopened e-mails. Eight were spam, six were interoffice bullshit, one a message from my car dealer telling me it was time to change the oil on the ’Vette, and one porno that exploded into half-a-dozen pop-ups as soon as I clicked on it.

  “Nice,” someone said behind me as they passed my cubicle.

  It was Remington. I’d completely forgotten about her. “Wait,” I called out.

  “Not a chance, Pappas. Been there, done that.”

  I realized she was talking about the porno. Looking at the computer, I thought: really? I scrambled from my chair before she got too far away. “I need your help,” I said, touching her elbow from behind. God, she looked hot, like she’d just come from doing a shampoo commercial, or something. Despite everything else that was on my mind, I felt the blood drain from my brain and flow down to you-know-where.

  She looked at my hand on her elbow and kind of snarled. “What? Need someone to do some research on the upcoming oil wrestling championships?”

  “No,” I said, seeing by her expression that I was facing pre-Lost Friday Remington. She had no clue about it, and anything I said now would be construed as just another attempt to get her to touch my pee-pee. “This is gonna sound strange,” I said.

  “You’ve already asked me if I was double-jointed.”

  Ignoring her, I said, “I want you to let me know if I show up here again.”

  * * * * *

  Instructions or no instructions, I had to figure out what I was up to. Remington treated my request as she did everything else about me—with contempt—but I think I got her attention when I gave her the keys to the ’Vette, and said, “Do me a favor. If another guy shows up here who looks like me, find out how he got here because he didn’t use this.” I held up my big, fat, obnoxious Corvette key ring, with the big, fat, obnoxious Corvette logo that I really liked, and dropped it into her hand. “I need you to drive my car.”

  “What do you mean, drive your car? Like, where?”

  “Anywhere. It just needs it to be visible.” Now, anyone who knows me also knows that I’d rather give up a kidney than let anyone near my ’Vette, so my giving her the keys and asking her to drive it was like, whoa! She didn’t exactly acknowledge that I was trying to be honest and upfront with her, and not trying to get her to eat a banana in front of me, but she didn’t walk off all huffy and disgusted with me either.

  “You want to tell me what this is about?”

  “Someone is trying to impersonate me.”

  “Now why the hell would someone want to impersonate... you?”

  I didn’t really like the sound of that, but I also didn’t really have time to go over the upcoming Lost Friday events again, so I said, “It’s a new identity theft scam that uses look-alikes. I don’t know exactly how they do it yet, but it rips people off big time.”

  Remington shifted her weight to one leg, and gave me an x-ray eye. “How’d you get into this mess?”

  I figured an arrogant offense was the best defense, so I gave off some severe attitude. “I don’t have time to explain every little detail. All you need to know is that I’ve been working on this story for three months, and they think I’m worth millions.” I paused, like, really dramatically. “I’ll give you a piece of this story if you help me out here, but, hey, if you don’t want in, that’s okay. I’ll ask Pritchard. He works the local beat, too, doesn’t he? Give me the keys.”

  She smelled a story, and hesitated. Good reporter. “And how does driving your car have anything to do with the story?”

  “Anyone who knows me also knows that me and that car are inseparable. If someone is trying to impersonate me, they need that car to pull it off. I’m hoping you can lure them into the open, and find out who it is.” That was weak, and I knew it, but it was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment. I hoped it was enough to keep her engaged. So far, I had her by the thinnest of strings, which meant that she could have dropped my car keys into the nearest trash can and walked away any second. As with any greedy reporter, however, the possibility of glomming onto a big story proved to be just a little too intriguing to not sniff around the edges of it.

  She mulled for a second. “I’d have to clear it with Romano.”

  “What, just so he can say no?
You know how Romano is. He doesn’t even know I’m working on this. I need your help, specifically.”

  “Why me?”

  I said, “I need someone with connections with the local PDs. You got any pull with the county crime labs in Toms River or Freehold?”

  “I can probably get a favor or two out of either of them.”

  I pulled an envelope off the shelf of the nearest empty cubicle. I licked it, and sealed it, and give it to her. “If you can get close to whoever is trying to impersonate me, or if someone who looks like my twin brother shows up here, find a way to get a DNA sample from him, and have one of your connections run it and compare it to this. Just remember I’m an only child. There are no other Johnny Pappases running around out there.”

  “Thank God for that,” she said sarcastically, but she didn’t walk away. I still had her. Identity theft using look-alikes,” she said curiously. “A look-alike with a driver’s license could clear out bank accounts, establish credit cards, do all kinds of things. How do they do it? The likeness would have to be pretty exact in order for something like that to work. Plastic surgery? Do they kidnap the victims beforehand?”

  She was asking too many questions. “I told you, I don’t have all the details yet. Does this mean you’re in?”

  She hesitated. “Then what, I mean after I run the DNA?”

  “I told you, call me.” I held up my cell phone. “I’ll find out where the imposter leads us from there.”

  Remington gave me a skeptical eye and moved off, which was fine because she held onto the keys rather than telling me to kiss off. I walked into Romano’s office and told him my car was in the parking lot with a dead battery, and I needed to sign out one of the Press vans in order to work on my assignment.

  “Aren’t you doing a wrap-up on that fascinating Pinelands development story?”

  “Uuhhh, yeah, but I crossed paths with the word payoff, and I want to check a couple of things out, just in case. You never know.”

  “Don’t take all fucking day,” Romano responded. “I’d like to meet today’s deadline without scrambling for it.”