About Time, page 2
Nothing she said made sense. “What boom?”
She laughed. “What boom. Christ, like you wouldn’t know!” Seeing his blank stare, she shook her head. “You don’t know?”
Jason looked up and down the street. Everything looked both familiar and yet foreign, as if time had run past him overnight, leaving his home tossed about in time.
Mel rested a hand on his arm. “First there were the Bakken fields to the north,” she said. “Damn near destroyed Williston, before it finally exploded.”
Jason nodded. Ever since oil had been found there, everyone else had it in their mind that they would find a similar find. People came from all over thinking to strike it rich, filling places like Williston and Watford City to the north, turning them from a comfortable farms town into something different, something few really wanted as the tankers and water trucks and the people filled the prairie, all with everyone trying to make a better life. Even Bismarck got in on it, letting the oil companies keep leasing the land, so that everyone thought they had the same chance as the big companies. Problem was, no one did.
“Then the Remsan fields boomed in 2025. Probably all connected to Bakken really, but could never really get at the oil before then. We got laterals running from Tarsten almost all the way to Montana,” she said with a sense of pride. “As the workers moved in Nord became a migrant town and Tarsten exploded. Tried to keep Nord better cared for but….” She shook her head. “So if you’re from Nord, you should know that. Now tell me, Jason,” she said, turning toward him. “Where are you from and why are you fucking with me?”
So much of what Mel said didn’t make sense that Jason didn’t know where to start. “It’s only 2013,” he said. Somehow, looking down the street and seeing how rundown everything was, he knew it was not.
“I should have known better,” Mel said, slamming the truck back into drive. “Shouldn’t ever have given you a ride, but damn if I’d leave you wandering on my land.” She shook her head as she muttered to herself. “Find a guy with dried blood in his hair and probably been drinking and I don’t call the sheriff. Serves me right,” she said. “Well, now I’m taking you to the hospital.”
Jason sat back, staring out the window blurring by. A dust storm kicked up, blowing dirt though the streets, obscuring the confusion somewhat. Something else Mel had said stuck with him, nagging at him.
“Those were your lands?” he asked.
“What?”
She didn’t turn toward him as they headed back onto the wide road that had once been simple blacktop leading though Little Nord. Now it was four lanes and cracked. Signs dotted the road every so often, markers pointing toward Tarsten, a city that shouldn’t even exist. None of this should exist.
“Your lands?” he asked. The question felt important.
Mel nodded. “Everything along Muddy is my land. Why?”
Jason felt his stomach begin to flutter. “What did you say the oil fields were called?” he asked.
She glanced over, the look she was giving telling him that she couldn’t wait to just get him out of her truck. For some reason she wasn’t willing to leave him on the side of the road. “Christ. You’re full of strange questions. What were you drinking?”
Bourbon, but he didn’t say it. “You called the oil fields something.”
“Remsan fields?” she asked. “Used to be Remco rigs all over. Tarsten was pretty much built on Remco money. Now Remco just leases the land. Easier that way. Doesn’t change who owns it.”
Remsan fields? Jason felt his heart leap and pound in his chest. “Where am I?” he whispered. “When am I?”
Mel laughed nervously. She stepped harder on the gas. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but it’s 2038.”
Jason felt the world seem to spin around him. Assuming Mel wasn’t crazy, that would mean he should be fifty-one. Rachel would be fifty.
If it didn’t seem so damn real, he would think this was just a dream.
Or maybe he had actually died when the lightning struck him, throwing him into the night. Maybe Rachel finally got the release from him she deserved.
“Jason Remsan died over twenty five years ago.”
Jason shivered hearing himself described that way as Mel looked at him with hard eyes tinged with hurt. She turned in her seat, angled in such a way to keep him in sight. Her left hand hovered on her thigh, ready to grab the door handle at any moment and leap out of the truck.
Jason had convinced her to pull off to the side of the road just as they crossed through what she called Nord and into the outskirts of Tarsten. The transition was sharp and marked by tall painted concrete walls, as if the planners of Tarsten had wanted to keep the people living in Nord out of their city.
On the Nord side, the walls were covered with graffiti, swirls of color the only bright and vibrant thing he had seen since coming into the town. Just past the border of Nord, on the Tarsten side, the high wall was painted differently, painted all along the wall to look like flowing prairie dotted occasionally with oil rigs, as if hiding Nord from the people living on the Tarsten side.
Everything on the Tarsten side looked completely different. Businesses lined the wide street, bright flashing signs that looked more like flat screen televisions than store signs marked everything from groceries to liquor to home furnishings. There were stranger stores too, places that advertised Chipping and Augments. Even a huge sprawling building, each floor set off with darkly tinted windows, set off the road that looked like a hospital but had a sign for NanoCare. Beyond the main road, new houses stretched as far as he could see, green lawns well manicured, siding painted with blues and yellows and greens. On the road around him zipped cars that looked more like elongated bubbles. Few had logos that he recognized. He saw huge refineries in the distance.
“What do you mean dead?” he asked, staring out the window.
Mel moved her hand closer toward the door handle. “I mean, as in no longer living. Gone. Exploded in a lightning strike, nothing but the charred remains of his truck found. That was when the Remsan discovery was made, when he was found. First it was natural gas, but surveyors eventually found deeper deposits of oil trapped in shale beneath that.”
Jason shivered, thinking back to the storm, of the flames burning in spite of the rain. Had the lightning been attracted to the gas leak or had that simply been chance? Somehow, he had gotten his wish, had died in that storm as he had intended when setting out that night. And yet…he had not died.
“What happened to Rachel?”
“Rachel?”
Jason nodded and turned back to Mel. Her brown eyes looked suspicious and hard, but familiar too. “Rachel Remsan,” he asked.
Mel’s eyes narrowed. “Did you know her?”
Jason kept his face neutral and nodded. “I know her.”
Mel looked down. “Well, she had a hard time after he was gone. Had to learn how to manage the gas fields, geologists and surveyors and even guys from Bakken all trying to convince her to sell.” Mel looked up and her eyes had changed, softened.
Jason recognized the expression.
“She was smart, though, had a business background. Got herself a good lawyer. Secured her rights and only leased them out when she was ready. Started Remco from the ground up.” Mel pulled herself up as she spoke, her eyes brightening.
Jason sighed. Rachel finally got to put her business background to use, finally had a chance to do something for herself. Better than that, she finally got away from him. It was like the lightning storm gave them both a gift.
After he sat there silently for a while, Mel fidgeting with the steering wheel, he managed to get the nerve to ask, “Did she remarry?”
Mel looked down. “Always said she didn’t want anyone that just wanted the land, not her, so she waited. I always thought she just never found anyone she could love as much as…Jason.” Her voice caught as she said the name.
Jason looked over at Mel and saw her as if for the first time. He saw the same dark hair, the same sharp cheekbones, the same eager brown eyes. This was Rachel’s daughter.
“How old are you, Mel?”
She tilted the hat on her head and her mouth tightened. “In case you didn’t notice, oil towns are mostly men. I get my pick and you’re not my type,” she answered. “I don’t go for the drunk and the crazy.”
“How old?” he pressed.
“Twenty four.”
Suddenly he understood why Rachel had been so angry that night—only last night to him. Not because she wanted to fight, but because she had something to tell him, something important. And he was too damn thick to listen.
“And those were your lands?”
“Damn…you really are messed in the head. Didn’t I already say that?” She shifted in the leather seat and looked to shift the truck back into drive. “Time to get you to the hospital.”
Jason reached across and held her arm back from grabbing the shifter. Her skin seemed to tingle when he touched it. “No. I’ll get out here.”
“Here?” she asked. “There’s nothing here but shops. Listen, Jason, I think you need some help. Besides, it’s supposed to finally rain today. You’ve got no place to go and you don’t want to get stranded out there.”
He tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat, suddenly raw. Rachel had done it all without him—raised a daughter, started a company, hell, probably even helped build this city. Rachel had managed to have a life without him.
It hurt knowing that he had been right. She had been better off without him.
Seeing Mel, seeing the confident woman who was so much like her mother, made that even clearer.
Jason smiled sadly, suddenly knowing what he had to do. The lightning strike had given him a gift, but not the one he thought at first. Maybe he could finally manage to do what Rachel had been asking him to do for years.
“You’ve given me plenty.”
As he climbed out of the truck, she looked back at him with eyes that were so much like Rachel’s. “Where are you going to go?”
Jason looked over the horizon, staring back down the road at what used to be simple County Road 5 and was now something more. The shacks of Nord stretched out like a wound across the land. Beyond that was the river, his land, where flames and a lightning strike had sent him here. There was a heaviness to the air, a hint of coming rain. Lightning flickered in the clouds rolling in. Thunder boomed, distantly.
Jason Remsan was dead. There was no reason to change that now.
“Somewhere out there,” he finally answered, nodding away from town, only now able to do what Rachel had asked for years. Only now able to get unstuck.
The First Rule
Smoke greeted me as I stepped into the bar and I just knew it would cling to my clothes like smog, leaving my leather jacket stinking for the next week. Damn her for leading me here; I was ready to end all this jumping and just settle back into my time, get out of clothes I had been wearing for far too long. First I had to catch her. I checked the sidearm strapped carefully to my back as I moved into the room.
Music flooded the place, bass thumping loudly as the jukebox hummed some song that must be popular in this time but a song I didn’t recognize. This was too far back for me, sometime in the 2000’s, before music lost much of the heaviness and anger. Nearly before I was even born.
I didn’t know why she would jump here. Her jumps seemed random but all in the past century, and all somewhat familiar. This bar was no different though I did not know why. That had to mean something, but I hadn’t figured it out yet. This was my third jump trailing her and the one closest to my time.
I knew little about her other than what the agency told me. Age. Appearance. First jump location. Not her name; names didn’t matter, not to jumpers. Slowly I was discovering more on my own: smart, dangerous, and driven.
Damn if I didn’t respect her.
The bar was long and narrow and looked crowded. A bright neon sign in the shape of a deer flashed behind the bar. The bartender, a fat stocky guy with thinning hair and a bright red shirt with a crooked collar, worked his way up and down the bar flashing a smile as he went and keeping glasses full. A few bearded men sat along the bar, occasionally looking up when the bartender approached before returning to their drink. Others sat around tables, attempting to talk over the sound of the music. Most had pint glasses—or taller—of beer in front of them but a few held whiskey glasses, drink the color of piss filling the glass. Foul stuff, even for this time.
I squeezed into a small space at the bar, eyes scanning the bar for her. She was here, I could smell the jump about this place even over the booze so I knew she must be, but I didn’t know where. The problem was that she was a goddamn chameleon, could shift her look to match the time that she jumped. Even the best agents couldn’t blend like she could.
The bartender approached, toweling off a pint glass as he did. “What can I get ya?” he asked. He had a wide face and puckered nose. There was a gap between his teeth that wouldn’t exist in my time.
My eyes scanned the taps across the front of the bar. A beer wouldn’t be too bad, but I didn’t recognize any of them. More selection here than in my time. “Just a beer,” I said.
He nodded and pulled on a large tap head with a big S wrapping around it, filling the glass with pale brown beer before sliding it down to me.
I sipped the beer as I turned and scanned the bar. There was only one exit that I saw so I knew she had to be here somewhere.
“You lookin’ for someone?” the bartender asked.
I kept an eye on the others in the bar as I swiveled back to him. “A girl—a woman,” I corrected. At my age, I’d probably look like some sort of pervert saying girl, though she was just a girl. “Came in here not long ago. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Tiny.” I almost said dangerous but he wouldn’t know that. Not yet.
“Ain’t seen someone come through here like that. Know what she was wearing?”
I shook my head. “Not tonight.” Problem was that she could be wearing anything. Even her hair could be a different color, but blond was her favorite. Couldn’t change her eyes, piercing blue and angry, or her size. Not yet, at least.
As I turned back to the bar, I saw her toward the back, near the restrooms.
Her eyes caught me first, a flash of blue that almost seemed to glow. Her hair—now dyed dark—was cut short and framed her narrow face. She wore a pale yellow sleeveless dress that made her look like a pretty pixie.
I steeled myself before lunging after her.
I had nearly cleared the pool table before she first saw me, sliding across the felt top and sending balls scattering. Now was not a time for stealth. I saw that she held something in her hands that she had been looking at. She dropped it when she saw me.
She hesitated, her eyes contacting mine for the briefest of seconds. Under another circumstance I might have withered under the weight of her gaze, but I was already moving and nearly atop her.
Then she moved.
She was like lightning bottled, jolting from one spot to the next faster than I could see. I felt her foot kick off me and she skimmed above the pool table, and then she snapped to the next spot. Grabbing more on instinct, I my hand wrap around her ankle, but then she was gone again.
Shit. A skimmer. That was new.
She darted a few more times, streaking across the bar so quickly that she was not even a blur. And then she was gone.
I smelled the trail of her jump.
I picked myself off the ground, wiping drips of moisture off my coat—beer, I hoped—and flipped out my time disk, setting it on the pool table and flicking a few buttons until it detected her trail. As I waited, I looked around, wondering why she had come here, why this bar? I tried to ignore to stares coming from the bar, the only sound now that booming from the jukebox glowing brightly along the near wall.
Just before the disk beeped, I saw a faded photograph lying on the ground next to a broken frame, glass scattered all across the ground. Other photos lined the wall, but this was the only one the girl had been looking at.
I grabbed it as the steady tone sounded. Wrapping my hand around the time disk, I jumped.
Jumping always seemed to pull me apart, leaving me feeling weak and nauseated. The sensation passed quickly, but in the moment after a jump I was nearly defenseless.
The jump brought me to a wide concrete lot. The sun blazed overhead and I already baked in my leather coat. The air was clear and crisp, free of the dust and smog of my time, pale white natural clouds floating leisurely across the sky. Birds even chirped somewhere nearby. Hundreds of cars parked along the lot, like steel beasts painted in blues and greens in hues I never saw in my own time. Well hell, never saw cars for that matter, other than the rusted heaps that filled the dozens of landfills. I ducked in between a couple of cars to get my bearings.
I pocketed the time disk carefully. If lost, I would be stranded, if only long enough for the agency to track me down and recover me, but I didn’t want to risk relying on the agency to find me.
I unfolded the picture the girl had been looking at. It was a color photo—a real photo and not one of those fuzzy holograms that were so popular now—with faded colors. Five people were in the photo, two couples on either side of a man that looked like a young version of the bartender, both smiling. One of the ladies had a full belly, round and pregnant. Both she and the man standing next to her looked familiar, but I didn’t know why.
I wondered if they were somehow famous later on. Some jumpers thought to make money kidnapping younger versions of famous people. They called it Pasting and it happened often enough that the rich folks even had insurance with the agency on themselves. In my time with the agency, I had reclaimed dozens of those jumpers. Always an easy find and they never put up any real fight.
This girl did not seem like a Paster.
