The Future Next Door Boxed Set, page 123
“It’s still early, that’ll be hours! Can you climb down?”
“There’s nothing to climb.” She looked down at the hard cement directly underneath the porch, into which the wooden supports were sunk. Even if she could leap past it, the frozen ground beyond wouldn’t be much softer. “I don’t think I can jump, either.”
“I could break your fall, maybe?”
Tayisha laughed, despite the growing pain in her extremities. “That’s sweet, Mrs. Bell, but look at me, and look at you. There’s a slight size difference. No use in both of us getting hurt.” A gust of wind roared by. “I’m going to go back and lean against the house. It cuts some of the wind.”
“All right. I’ll be right here. Don’t worry, we’ll think of something. I don’t remember you telling me about any problems like this, so we must find a way to get you down soon.”
Tayisha nodded, though she didn’t feel particularly optimistic. If Sylvia remembered her getting back to 1993 without incident, that might mean she had already screwed up and changed history. But she couldn’t see any way out, except waiting in the cold for however many hours it took for everyone to go to bed. She slid back into the chair and pulled her feet up, hugging her knees to her chest, wondering if frostbite was the kind of thing that might slip Sylvia’s mind.
She could just about hear the roommates and herself talking from inside. Dakota’s voice suddenly got louder, cutting through the group’s chatter. “That’s enough planning for tonight. I worked up a hell of an appetite today. Who wants Chinese food?”
Oh, no, Tayisha thought. Oh, no, oh, no, I’m so stupid.
As she heard everyone agreeing to Dakota’s suggestion and beginning to work out their orders, she remembered what was about to happen. She heard Dakota’s words in her mind just an instant before they were said aloud.
“I’ll get a menu from the kitchen. Oh, Tayisha, come and see the back porch.”
She jumped from the chair and grabbed the railing. “Sylvia!” she whispered. “Sylvia!”
“Yes, yes, what?”
“Stick your finger in the hole!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The wormhole! Signal Mark to open it! Now, hurry!”
Sylvia didn’t question her. Tayisha couldn’t see her well, but after a moment she could make out a strange rippling in the darkness below. The light of the hotel room on the other end of the wormhole shone through, murky and diffuse.
Dakota and her past self were entering the dining room behind her as she climbed the railing. “There’s a cherry tree,” Dakota was saying. “It’s bare now, of course, but in the spring it’s really...oh, it’s cold in here! Did somebody have the door open?”
She swung her legs up and over the railing and stood balanced on the small exterior lip. She crouched as low as she could. Just as she heard the door opening behind her, she stepped off.
She plummeted through the cold winter air and dropped one story into the wormhole below. She felt a rush of warmth on her legs an instant before they landed on something soft. Her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the bed. For a moment she was partly in the wormhole and partly out, and she wasn’t sure which parts of her were in the future and which were in the past, but her momentum carried her sideways and she tumbled onto the floor between the two hotel room beds.
“Close it!” she whispered to Mark. “Hurry!”
Mark was standing over her, looking baffled, but he nodded and tapped at the remote unit. The sphere glowed and shrank away to nothing.
Tayisha sat on the floor, catching her breath, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the light. She had never felt so warm in her entire life.
“Good lord!” Sylvia, the younger Sylvia, crouched down next to her. “Are you all right? Did something go wrong?”
“Nope! Everything went off without a hitch.” She smiled and suppressed a shiver. “I’m...totally cool. Who’s up next?”
Chapter Twenty-three
Caitlin feinting
“I’m ready,” Caitlin said. “You got any more info for me, Mark? I feel like I’m jumping in a little blind.”
She stood on the bed, her fists clenched, waiting for Mark to open the wormhole. She had volunteered to pursue Cheek alone. She was the wisest choice for any kind of physical confrontation, and they had agreed that the fewer people who went on each trip, the less the chance of changing past events. Privately, she was also eager for another distraction. She had something to ask Mark after they were finished, and if she sat around the room waiting any longer she’d worry herself to death thinking about it.
“Not much more than I told you,” Mark said. “You’re going to my gym, so it’s probably me he’s gunning for. This is his first stop, so to him it’ll be right after he blew up the lab.”
“The date?”
“Wednesday, June twelfth of last year. I mean, last year from when we left. Not 1992. You know what I mean.”
“Right about when we first encountered Amalgamated Synergy,” Dakota pointed out.
“But I don’t remember exactly what I was doing on this day,” Mark said. “Sorry.”
“Try not to let Mark see you,” Sylvia advised.
“And try not to let me die,” Mark added.
Caitlin clapped her hands together a few times. “Got it. And just checking one more time – I can’t beat the shit out of Dr. Cheek, right?”
“No!” Sylvia, Dakota, and Tayisha all shouted at once.
“Okay, okay...”
“Dr. Cheek is trying to change history, Caitlin,” Sylvia said. “We want to ensure it happens just as we remember it. That means he needs to make it to his last stop in Alan’s home town, two days ago.”
“He’s got an exit wormhole pre-programmed for himself, a few minutes after he arrives,” Mark said. “You have to stop him from killing me, but let him escape. Then we’ll do the same thing at the next place he’s headed for.”
“Okay, okay!” Caitlin bounced on the bed. “Let’s go, already! My blood’s pumping! I’m ready to kick some evil old man ass.” Before Sylvia could speak, she added, “Moderately. Moderately kick some evil old man ass.”
Mark had already synced with the tesseract drive and programmed in the coordinates. He tapped the screen and a glowing sphere appeared over the bed. It expanded and turned translucent. Caitlin stepped through.
“Ugh,” she muttered. Mark had dropped her off in a broken sauna. It wasn’t in service, but it was still humid as a swamp. She moved to the door and saw with her peripheral vision the sphere contracting, shrinking down to the size of a billiard ball. It would stay that way, hopefully undiscovered, until she signaled her friends that her mission was complete.
She opened the door and, seeing the coast was clear, stepped into the hallway. She was in Squat, the gym where Mark used to be a trainer. She had been there many times, making use of Mark’s free guest passes, so she knew the layout. This hallway was rarely used while the sauna was out of service. It was a shortcut between the weight room and the cardio room, but most clients didn’t know about it so only the staff tended to use it. Aside from the entrances at either end, the only other door was at the far end of the hall, leading to a small maintenance supply room. That’s where Cheek’s wormhole would appear.
She ran down the hall and pulled the door open. The room had shelves lining each wall, filled with toilet paper, paper towels, and various cleaning products. A wheeled stand-up mop bucket stood in the center of the room, half full of muddy water, the mop standing upright in its basin.
Oh, yeah, thought Caitlin. I forgot about the mop bucket.
The familiar yellow glow appeared in the air in the center of the room. It grew swiftly, swallowing up the mop bucket entirely and overlapping partially with some of the shelves. As the glow faded Caitlin saw motion happening beyond. There was one shaded figure closer than the others, which she recognized as the emaciated frame of Dr. Cheek.
She watched, fascinated, as the events she remembered from the lab played out in front of her, distorted and muted. One figure dived for Cheek and after a brief struggle a gunshot rang out. An instant later, the surface of the sphere rippled and a smooth silver egg sailed through. Caitlin flinched and the egg flew past her, continued out the door, and hit the opposite wall of the hallway. It dropped to the ground and rolled to a stop a few feet away.
A few months back, from her point of view, Caitlin had been cast in a play, a French farce called The Wrong Tart. In the second act, a plate of tarts served as a crucial prop, the key element in a misunderstanding that drove the whole play to its climax. Every character handled the plate of tarts at some point. The plate moved on and off stage in almost every scene as it passed from person to person. During one run-through, Caitlin left the stage with the plate of tarts, but wasn’t certain if she was supposed to have left it behind. Caitlin remembered that moment as she stared at the egg on the floor, and felt the same confused panic as when she had tried to recall exactly where the plate of tarts was supposed to be and whether she had screwed everything up by taking it someplace it wasn’t supposed to go.
We didn’t talk about the egg, she thought. Is there something we still have to do with it? Does Cheek have to have it? Or should he not have it yet? He has to have it when Danny and Megan do their switch, right? Has that happened yet for him? Is that even the same egg as this one? How many eggs are there again? Shit, I should have paid more attention when Dakota was diagramming her flowchart.
While Caitlin was trying to untangle that temporal knot, the door at the end of the hall swung open and someone walked in. He was short, stocky, and exceedingly muscular. He wore a pair of white shorts and a black Squat t-shirt, and his bare arms and legs were covered in thick black hair. He looked a little like a modern Neanderthal, and Caitlin recognized him instantly. It was Duff, a work-friend of Mark’s who had always had a crush on Caitlin.
Duff didn’t spot her right away, but he did see the egg lying on the floor at his feet.
“Huh,” he said. He picked up the egg and examined it from every angle.
Goddamn it, Caitlin thought. She closed the door to the supply room and trotted over to him. “Hey, Duff!”
Duff looked up in surprise. “Caitlin? Hey, what’s up? Whoa, I almost didn’t recognize you. Your hair looks hot like that.”
Caitlin put a hand to her recently dyed and cropped hair. “Oh, thanks, but...it’s a wig.”
“A wig? Cool. How do they make a wig look shorter than your real hair?”
“Skull cap. It’s an actor thing. I don’t like it so maybe just pretend you never saw it. In fact, don’t bring it up next time you see me, okay?”
“Ohhhhhh...kay...”
She pointed to the egg. “Can I have that? It’s mine. I dropped it.”
He shrugged and handed it to her. “What is it?”
“It’s a...um...massager. Portable massager.” She rubbed the egg against her neck. “See?”
“Oh!” Duff grinned and winked at her. “Right.” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Massager. Gotcha. What are you doing back here? Sauna’s broken.”
“Yeah, I found out. Too bad. I was looking forward to a good sweat.”
“In your jeans?”
“Yeah, of course. More clothes, more sweat. Listen...”
There was a creak from behind her as the door to the supply room opened. Caitlin didn’t turn around.
Duff spoke over Caitlin’s shoulder to whoever had emerged. “Hey man, you’re not supposed to be in there.”
“So sorry,” Cheek said. “Got turned around. I’m...eh...looking for something. Have you seen a small silver egg, a little bigger than my hand?”
Duff looked at Caitlin. She met his eyes and shook her head.
“No,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I don’t understand, it should have been in there...” Cheek muttered. The door creaked again.
“Hey! Buddy, you can’t go in there! Staff only!”
“Yes, yes, all right!” The door slammed shut. “You’ll have other concerns in a moment, you slobbering ape.”
“Watch your mouth, asshole!” Duff started to step past Caitlin, but she put a hand on his wrist and shook her head again. He looked surprised, but stayed where he was. “Just move along, sir.”
“Oh, I will, I will.”
Caitlin tensed as she heard Cheek’s footsteps, but he was moving away, towards the far end of the corridor. She waited until she heard the opposite door open and close before letting out a sigh.
“Okay,” Duff said. “What the fuck? Why was an old guy in a lab coat looking for your weird vibrator?”
“He’s an actor, too. We’re rehearsing a play. It’s an improv exercise.”
“At the gym?”
“That’s where the play takes place. We’re method. Would you mind never bringing this up, to me or anyone else? It’ll ruin the illusion.”
“Yeah, I guess. You actors have a lot of weird rules.”
“Yup. Hey, is Mark here?”
Duff pointed back over his shoulder. “Yeah, I just left him in the cardio room.”
“Great.”
Duff pointed to the other end of the hall, where Cheek had gone. “But he was headed to the weight room, I think. Had a client. Quicker if you go that way.”
“Perfect. Hey, maybe don’t mention you saw me today to Mark, okay?”
“Another weird actor thing?”
“If that’ll convince you.”
Duff laughed. “Yeah, sure, whatever. I’m a monkey, I see no evil, talk no evil. Or however that goes. Shit, I gotta hurry, I’ve got this really old client who’s already pissed at me for keeping him waiting. I just came in here to make sure my shorts were tied tight – he’s always trying to grab my ass. Good to see ya, Caitlin.”
Duff turned to go back the way he had come, but Caitlin impulsively grabbed his wrist and stopped him. He paused, and she leaned in and kissed his cheek.
He smiled and touched where she had kissed him. “What was that for?”
Caitlin had never paid much attention to Duff. On the rare occasions when she would be out somewhere with him and Mark, Caitlin would barely acknowledge his presence. He was gross, and crude, and a little sexist. She had never seen many redeeming qualities in the man.
In seven months, he’d be dead. He’d be cut in half by a collapsing wormhole while saving the life of a little boy.
“Just a thank you,” she said. “You’re a good guy, Mike Duffy.”
Duff blushed. “Aw, come on, Caitlin. Hey, I got a girlfriend, don’t go giving me ideas. I’ll see you around.”
“See you, Duff.”
She waited for him to leave before turning. She paused at the supply room and looked in. The sphere had vanished. The mop bucket and several chunks of shelving were also gone, displaced forward in time to the wormhole generator room. Caitlin placed the egg on the ground in a corner near the door, hoping Cheek would think it had rolled there. She thought she had finally gotten its timeline right in her head – Cheek was jumping backwards through time, and he would eventually land in Townsend, Indiana. He needed to have the egg on him, so that the events of the fire could play out as they were supposed to.
She hesitated, crouched on the ground, her fingers touching the egg. If she kept the egg, Cheek wouldn’t be able to impersonate Alan’s parents. She might save Alan’s father’s life. Of course, in the process, she might destroy all of reality.
It was one thing, she thought, for Alan to make the attempt, in the moment, to save his father. If he was dying right in front of her, she’d have done the same, and fuck the consequences. Hell, she had done the same, in attempting to convince her mother to get a cancer screening.
She knew there was no practical or ethical difference between Alan’s choice then and her choice now. But when Alan had tried to save his father, he was still alive. Now, he had been dead for twenty years. It felt different, in her gut.
Caitlin stood, leaving the egg where it lay. She had learned to trust her gut. Lenny Lennox wasn’t in imminent danger, but Mark Park was.
She pulled the door to the supply closet shut and hurried down the hall to the far door. She opened it a crack and peeked out.
She was looking out onto Squat’s large weight room. It was midday and the gym wasn’t too crowded, so she had no trouble picking Mark out from the other trainers and customers. He was at a weight bench with a client. The client was flat on his back, lifting a barbell over his head while Mark spotted him.
“Good work, man, keep it up.” Mark stepped slightly back, away from the bench. His client didn’t notice, totally engrossed as he was in his exercise.
Caitlin caught a glimpse of the client’s face as he grunted with exertion. It was Pete. Pete, whom she had last seen as a drunk twenty-year-old college student the night before, and who was now a beefed-up forty-something lawyer. Pete, who’d be dead in a few days.
“Oh, come on,” she muttered. “Enough with the moral dilemmas.”
She put Pete out of her mind and looked around the room for Cheek. She spotted him nearby, grabbing a hefty round weight from a rack. He lifted it with some difficulty and began to creep towards Mark.
Mark had inched his way around to the opposite side of the bench, near Pete’s feet. He had taken out his phone and was crouching down to take a picture of Pete’s legs. Caitlin suddenly remembered what day it was. Mark used to snap pictures of his hot clients, upload them to Facebook, and tag Alan, all as a weird running joke between the two of them. In a moment Pete would catch Mark in the act and, in order to justify his actions, Mark would pretend to be trying to set Alan and Pete up on a date. That was how Alan and Pete met.
None of that would happen, she realized, if she didn’t stop Cheek from braining Mark with a forty-pound weight, which is what he seemed intent on doing. The old man in the lab coat looked extremely incongruous amid all the fit young men in work-out gear, but nobody paid him too much mind as he walked briskly towards Mark and Pete. It wouldn’t occur to anybody that a brutal murder was about to take place.
