Smoke poured from the machine, forcing the ventilation system to work overtime as it tried, and failed, to clear the air. I checked the machine diagnostic. The power levels were way below what they used to be. I couldn’t go back a week, much less ten years to stop Max from killing Anna. Max had won, which meant nothing else mattered. She was gone for good, and the world would be a hellhole forever. I wanted to put my hand through a wall, or better yet a bullet through Max.
“Seriously, did you think she would care for you? Did you think she’d spend the rest of her days with you in some cottage surrounded by a picket fence? That’s a fantasy, Eric, a fantasy you were willing to have at the expense of all of civilization.”
I took a deep breath, letting the smoke burn my lungs. I coughed in the thick air. The ventilation system struggled, but it wouldn’t get rid of the smoke. Soon, I wouldn’t be able to breathe.
“There are lots of girls in the world, Eric. You help me rebuild this machine, and you can have your choice. Trust me. I know.”
I thought of Rhonda, the young girl who had disappeared, and wondered if he was referring to her. Dear God, I wanted him dead so badly.
“We can make things right, Eric. We can make a perfect civilization. With your machine, we can change whatever we want. We can finally perfect humanity.”
Red lights on my monitor highlighted problems, but the machine still worked. I reached for the viewer.
“This has been the dream, Eric. You can share it with me.”
I scanned as far back as I could. The damage was worse than I thought. Given the current power availability, I could go back a day, no more. Through the viewer, I watched myself working on the core of the machine. I could scan right up until Max had visited me the previous night. I watched him leave, and then Ralph arrived shortly afterward. When we both left, the distortion appeared.
The distortion…
It hit me like a wrecking ball. It was so simple I almost didn’t see it. I didn’t have to go back to stop Max. I could stop every change he made in one swoop, and none of this would have happened.
It also meant she wouldn’t remember me, and I might not remember her.
But she would live.
“It’s over, Eric.”
I reached over and shut off the intercom. I focused the viewer on the lab, just hours ago. The machine could manage that much before it gave up completely. I set the timer for a couple of hours, even though I wouldn’t need that long.
I glanced at the door. They’d be through before long. Max still shouted at the camera. I turned my back on him and activated the machine.
~~~~
As soon as I materialized, I ducked out of sight just as the door closed. My past self turned back, as if he had seen something but brushed it off as paranoia—just as I remembered myself doing.
Once the door closed, I glanced at the security monitor. Ralph and my past self walked down the hall, talking. When they rounded the corner, I stood and looked at the machine. It was in much better condition than the one in the future. The table I’d knocked over earlier—at least, earlier from my perspective—remained in an upright position, every tool where it had been before.
I couldn’t have gone back to save Anna, not with the machine I had in the future. But the machine I was looking at was newer, fresher. I had less than an hour before Max would appear to use the machine himself.
I powered it up while formulating a plan. I could appear in the car next to Max and force him to run it off the road, but I wasn’t sure about the repercussions. Max had killed Anna, which caused me to go back and stop Max from killing Anna. But if Max never killed Anna, then I wouldn’t know to go back and stop Max from killing her. I wasn’t sure what that paradox would do to the universe.
When the machine reached full power, I activated the viewer. I scanned back to before the concert, before the events that lead to Anna’s many deaths. I needed to go back to before Max’s changes and warn her. Her security would see me as a threat, but she would remember me from her past, from when I had saved her when she was a young girl.
I focused on the time of her arrival at the hotel on the night before the concert. That would be the best time. That would be before everything else had happened—or would happen, depending on where in time I was. I zoomed out, looking down on her entourage as they arrived at the hotel. Just before she exited my field of vision, the image distorted.
Distorted?
I spun the view around, looking for the source. The center was on top of the hotel roof. Someone had gone back to that point and stood on the roof. The distortion existed until Anna entered the building, then it disappeared.
I pushed the viewer aside. I remembered five power spikes from the future, and I’d accounted for all but one.
I checked the logs, but the only power spikes were the times I had gone back. The distortion meant someone had gone back, yet the log showed only three power spikes—one when I had saved her from drowning, one from when I’d pushed her out of the way of the car, and the last when I had stopped the junkie. If there was distortion on the roof, there should be a fourth power spike, but there wasn’t. That meant whoever went back to the time I was viewing hadn’t gone back yet.
I looked at the viewer again, forwarding to the point where the distortion disappeared. When it did, a single person stood on the roof as if in a daze. He wore my coat, my hat, and my tie. In his hand was a gun that looked like the same revolver I had. I watched myself watch the sun set over the Rocky Mountains. No distortion obstructed my view, as if I belonged there.
I felt a chill wash over me, followed by calm. Everything became clear. I knew what would happen and what I had to do. But first, I needed help.
I pulled up my email and sent a message. I think there’s a rat in here. Come quick.
~~~~
Ralph stormed into the lab, his baton at the ready. When he saw me, he nearly dropped it. “How the hell’d you get in here? I just saw your car pull away.”
I stood calmly. “Ralph, I don’t have time to explain. Max is going to be here in less than an hour.”
“What? How…?” Ralph put his baton away. “Doc, you better clue me in fast.”
“The machine works.”
He stared at the contraption that filled most of the lab. He thought my comment meant that Max could spy on anyone, including our people. If he knew the truth, he’d be even more horrified, but that’d take too long to explain.
“Ralph, I need you to help me destroy this thing.”
He looked thoughtful then nodded. “Be right back.”
He ran out the door. Five minutes later, he returned with a cloth bag full of canned peas.
“Hungry?” I asked.
He didn’t acknowledge me as he set the bag down on my desk. He removed the canned peas from the sack. It turned out they were only what was on top.
When he emptied the rest of the sack, I whistled. “Where’d you get C-4, Ralph?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
Finally, he relented. “My friends thought it’d be safer to torch this place than to wait for whatever information you got out of it.” He put the empty bag on the floor. “I was going to tell you about it, I swear.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets, and it didn’t matter anyway. “Will that blow up the machine?”
“It’ll destroy most of this section.” Ralph started connecting what looked like kitchen timers to the blocks of C-4. “How long?”
I held up my watch. “Max will be here in thirty-five minutes. Maybe set it off a little before that.”
Ralph nodded. “I guess it won’t break my heart if he gets caught in the blast.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
Over the next ten minutes, we worked on the bombs. I placed three of them around the coils of the machine and a fourth near the computer that controlled the machine.
“You know,” Ralph said, “I never thought I’d sa
y this, but I really miss the time I moved furniture for a living. At least my life wasn’t in danger.”
“I hear you.” I walked toward the door. “Ready?”
Ralph nodded. “Time to go.” He fell in step behind me.
I held up a hand and stopped. “I just forgot one thing. I’ll be right behind you.”
Ralph looked up at me, his face grim. “This ain’t a suicide mission, Doc.”
“I know that.” I had the coordinates entered. I just had to activate the machine.
“Doc—”
“I’ll be all right.” I looked at Ralph, knowing it was the last time I’d ever see him. “I’ll meet up with you guys tomorrow, like we planned.”
Ralph regarded me for a moment before nodding. He extended his hand. “See you there.”
“You too.”
We shook hands, and he left. I watched him run down the hall on the monitor. I knew he’d hit the fire alarm to get everyone else out of the building. For a Hater, he was a pretty good guy.
If I was right, then the whole place would never have existed, at least not as a branch of the government. I would never have met Ralph or any of his friends. The resistance wouldn’t have existed. It would never have been needed anymore.
If I was right, Anna would live, but she wouldn’t remember me.
I set the controls and gave myself an hour. The bombs would go off long before that. I took one last look around my lab, doing something I hadn’t done in over a decade—I prayed.
I turned on the machine for the last time.
~~~~
The first thing I saw when I materialized on the rooftop was Max. His presence startled me, though I should’ve known. I had seen myself holding the gun. I must’ve had it in my hand for a reason.
He stood on the roof edge, cradling a revolver. The sun had begun to sink over the Rocky Mountains. Max cocked his head then spun around. He smiled that winning smile, a smile I would happily never see again. He ignored the gun I pointed at him. “Son, you don’t give up. I respect that.”
“Don’t start, Max. Just back away from the ledge.”
He shook his head and showed me his own gun, but he didn’t point it at me. “Not going to happen. This is too important.”
“Haven’t you killed her enough times?”
“Apparently not.” He gestured at me with his hand that was in the sling. “I saw you in the machine. You came back to warn her, didn’t you?”
I clenched my jaw while running my finger along the revolver’s trigger. “You found her when she turned on her phone, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “That machine of yours seems to have a limited range. But it didn’t matter. I pulled up the cell phone records. I’m sure glad the phone companies tracked all that information. I used that to pinpoint her last known location, and you remember the rest.”
I did remember. I wanted to shoot the smug bastard right there.
“After I shot her, I saw two timelines through your machine. I didn’t know why. In one, we perfected society, and in the other, we didn’t.” His grin broadened. “I figured maybe you were trying to stop me by going back in the machine, or rather, you would go back. So I decided to send a man back earlier to set up the light rail accident. After he went back, I sent a second man to chase her down just in case she managed to survive.” He raised an eyebrow. “The first one never came back, though. I’m guessing resetting the machine stranded him.”
I just nodded and let him ramble.
“Nice work at the light rail,” he said. “And how did you manage to send my other man back with two bullets in him? He was a professional.”
“You didn’t give me any choice, Max.”
“There’s always a choice.” Max narrowed his eyes at me. “By the way, you didn’t know I shot her later, did you? You didn’t know you were the one who shot me when you first saw this.” He pointed his wounded shoulder. “Interesting. I shot her then set up the light rail crash. But from your perspective, you saved her from the light rail accident and then saw her get shot.” He held up his hands. “Whatever. Neither plan worked.”
Max looked over the ledge, but I knew she wouldn’t arrive just yet. “To be sure, I sent my last man back to drop the lighting rig at the concert. I couldn’t watch it happen, though. The damn machine wouldn’t let me. Everything was distorted.” He frowned. “I thought it was a simple plan, but next thing I know, my boy returns with a concussion and a metal pipe in place of the bolt cutters I sent with him. I suppose you could explain that, but it doesn’t matter now.” Max shook his head. “A lot of people got hurt on this one, but that’s how it is. Omelet, eggs—you know how it works.”
“They’re people, Max. But you never could understand that, could you?”
He covered his heart with the hand holding the gun. “You wound me, sir. I care. We all do. Why do you think we want to perfect society?”
“Killing girls perfects society?”
“Killing that one does, yes.”
I gritted my teeth. “You’re a sick man, Max.”
“If trying to save civilization makes me sick, then so be it.” He shrugged. “I wanted to go back further and try more changes. But I’d spent so much time trying to figure out the machine then sending people back, I knew you’d be in the office soon. I sent people to round you up, but you’d disappeared. I guess you like taking precautions.”
“Everyone does in our time, Max. Thanks to people like you.”
He shook his head, making tsk-tsk sounds. “I should have figured you for a Hater.” His smile lessened, but didn’t disappear. “How’d you get back into the lab? I had your clearance revoked. Was it your friend Ralph?”
“Like you said, I like taking precautions.”
“I’m sure you both do. Like when you disabled the cameras in the lab?” He wagged his finger at me. “If you thought those were the only ones, then you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
“That’s how you found out about the machine, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “You gave yourself away. When you watched her concert on the machine’s viewing system, the camera angles were wrong, as if someone set up their own camera to float around the arena.”
He took another quick look at his watch. He wasn’t about to miss his appointed time. “I realized you were watching it in real time through that machine of yours. I confronted you about it that night, but you lied to me.”
“What’d you expect?”
“I expected you to act like a Hater, which is what you are.” He spoke as a father would to a naughty child. “Still, I need you to fix the machine.”
I snorted. “You think I’d help you, Max?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” He held out his hands, still holding the gun in one of them. “Think about it. We have our own time machine. Think of what we can do.”
“Kill more innocent girls?”
Max ignored the insult. “With enough power, we can go back as far as we need. We could influence elections. Hell, we could influence the writing of the United States Constitution. But first, I’ll make sure that woman of yours stays dead.”
“You’ve got a fixation, Max. Why her? She’s just a singer.”
Max’s smile finally disappeared. His anger was the only part of him that seemed genuine. “No, she isn’t just a singer. She’ll destroy everything.”
“You said that already. Now tell me how.”
His face turned so red it was visible even in the fading sunlight. “It’s what she says. She convinces people to oppose us. Oh, not on purpose, she was just speaking her mind. But that’s why you can’t let people say anything they want. They can’t be trusted to deal with the consequences.”
I shook my head. “You’re not making sense.”
“Her words, Eric. The things she says inspired enough people to prevent the perfection of society.” He took a step toward me but stopped when I waved the gun at him. “I saw it in that second timeline. She spoke her mind, and the people listened t
o her like the sheep they are, and our way of life ended.”
Max shook his gun hand, as if swinging at something that wasn’t there. “You had to save her, didn’t you? It just had to be her, of all people. Now her words threaten everything we worked for.”
“A young woman speaks her mind, and your golden society falls apart.” I chuckled. “If your grand plan falls apart that easily, then it wasn’t worth much to begin with.”
“You say that because you don’t care,” Max said. “That’s why they call you and your kind Haters.”
“We’re not the ones killing people.”
“No, you were just destroying everything we’ve worked for. But those days are gone. You’re stuck.”
I cocked my head to the side. “What are you talking about?”
“The machine was switched off.”
I didn’t get it. The machine was off permanently, or it would be soon. But he couldn’t know that.
He laughed. “I didn’t come here from the point we broke into the lab. I just went back earlier in the day to when you met Ralph outside the lab.”
It took me a moment to register what he was saying. He had gone back a short way to use the machine at a point where it was still able to send him farther back—just as I had done. He thought he had me.
I forced myself to remain tense, even though I knew I’d won. I just needed him to babble another few minutes. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw where you went to meet that idiot security guard, and I went back to that point in time while you were gone. I then used the machine to come here. When I go back, I’ll be in the lab before you even return from talking to the security guard.” He thought for a moment. “Of course, I set the timer on the second trip longer than the first, so I may have stranded myself in your lab. No matter. It would only be for a few hours. I can wait around until my other self uses the machine.” He winked at me. “Genius, eh?”
I glanced down at my watch. Anna would be arriving in minutes, but Max would never get to take his shot.
“I agree,” I said. “Genius. But you’re wrong. You didn’t strand me.”
Max frowned. “I reset the machine after we broke into the lab. I had to before I could go back a day.” He pointed at the roof between his feet. “You are stuck here, my friend.”
“Oh, I am stuck. I agree. But not by you.”