Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival (15 page)

"I was in the general store."

"Okay," Black responded. "Now, come back to
the tent."

Jesse shuffled ahead, back to where he had
been.

"I'm there now."

"Now Jesse, I want you to try to move ahead
in time. Visualize the future, and tell me what you see."

Jesse moved his consciousness forward now. It
required more effort. It felt like climbing a rope in gym class.
Still, he could manage.

The snapshots came in inconsistent bursts,
gaps between them. He suspected that if he focused on any one
point, he might be able to better understand their context, but it
hurt to do so, like straining his eyes to read very small print by
moonlight. Besides, he was too anxious to spend too long on any one
moment.

He was back at the ranch house, having a
conversation with Wayne. It was heated, that much he could
tell.

Then he was by himself, writing a letter. The
words were fuzzy, and seemed to elude him, like in a dream.

Next, he
was
editing a film. That
seemed odd, because he wasn't back home yet. He still felt like he
was in this period. But he was definitely cutting and splicing
footage together, by candlelight. Holding the delicate strips up to
the light to examine their tiny, repeating images to find just the
right frame...

He had difficulty seeing beyond this point.
There was a certain interference that came over his perception the
farther out into the future he went. He felt as though he were
staring into a box of darkness, trying to identify the contours of
its contents, to no avail. "Is the future already been set in
stone?" Jesse asked. "Is there no free will?"

Black seemed to laugh. "It would take a more
knowledgeable man than I to answer that second question. But as for
the first…"

"Yes?"

"Yes and no."

"I don't understand," Jesse contested. His
grip on the future was beginning to loosen, his attention drifting
back to the tent. "It's an either-or. There can't both be a future,
and not be a future."

"There are many stones casting ripples in the
pond of Consequence. You and I are but two of them. Keep looking
forward, Jesse. Through the static. You'll find the haze of
uncertainty begins to clear up around, oh, somewhere around the
nineteen-forties."

Jesse didn't see how he could look forward
that far. It seemed impossible. But he'd never been one to turn
down a challenge, so he resumed his climb. He felt his mind crawl
through a dense maze of spiderwebs. It was impossible, at this
point, for him to make sense of the cacophony of overlapping
realities he caught indirect glimpses of, like floaters on his
periphery.

When his consciousness at last emerged from
the clutter, he no longer felt bound by any kind of physical form.
His own presence was of little relevance in this place. But it
seemed that, for the most part, the trillions of possibilities
converged and overlapped in one terrifying inevitability:

He saw the whole Earth on fire. Cratered by a
progression of atomic explosions, and cast into a nuclear
winter.

In each instance, whole cities were wiped off
the map. Millions of lives snuffed out again and again, reduced to
skeletal shadow-imprints on the rubble.

"War," Black reiterated. "Nuclear
annihilation. In the world you come from, Jesse, the leaders of the
East and West flirted with disaster, but avoided it." He added,
"Mostly."

"But he's changed that, hasn't he?"

And with Jesse's realization, space-time went
dark. Existence folded in on itself in his mind, and lost most of
its weight.

Everything became flat, and Jesse returned to
the tent. The tea cup quivered in his hand, clinking against its
saucer.

"
Holy fucking shit
," was the most
eloquent thing he could muster.

Black got up, and walked over to his desk,
where he picked up three rocks. He brought them back to Jesse, and
of these, he placed one in Jesse's hands.

"Take a good look at it," Black said.

Jesse palmed it, one eyebrow raised as he ran
his fingers along its rough texture. "Okay."

Black took it back from him, his face
betraying nothing. "Imagine this rock is the universe."

Jesse wasn't even sure what he was supposed
to make of that.

The mystic held his right hand out straight,
looking to Jesse as if readying to deliver a judo chop. He brought
it down against the rock, cleaving it cleanly in two.

Black separated the two halves like coconut
shells, presenting their interior out to Jesse. Inside, brilliant
purple geodes glimmered along the linings of the hollow object. It
was apparent to Jesse that the rocks must have come from Devil's
Peak. There was no mistaking that vibrant hue.

"The inside of this rock is fascinating.
Structurally rich," Black said, and took a breath. "But you
wouldn't say it's changing. It's not in flux."

Jesse was struggling to understand if there
was some point Black was alluding to that he was missing.

"You are like an ant, Jesse, crawling along
the inside of the geode. To you, it's all ups and downs, peaks and
valleys. Constant, unexpected change. But if you could only pull
back far enough and take a good look, you'd realize it's static.
Eternally whole."

Black leaned in close, and
lowered his voice. "There is no
now
," he said. "Past, present, and
future are one. That's the truth that you just witnessed. You went
beyond the veil."

"Okay," Jesse said. "I buy it." He'd come to
far weirder cosmic revelations long before meeting Mr. Black. "But
if that's the case," he countered, "Then nothing ever changes. And
we were always meant to fall through the rabbit-hole. But that's
impossible, because Wayne's changed so much from how it was before.
If we always went back in time—"

"Ah, but wait," Black said,
an excitement spreading across his features that was disconcerting
only because it seemed so unlike him. He then placed the two halves
of the bisected geode back together and set it down before Jesse.
Then he slid the other two rocks alongside, so that the three
formed a set. "There are so many universes. You, Jesse, you and
your friends merely hopped across to another one. That's why the
history of this place is unfamiliar to you, even though you retain
your memories of your old world. You were always going to hop over
to another rock,
this
rock, the one you're living in right now. That much is set in
stone."

"Then how can I stop a war that was always
meant to be?"

"There's no such thing as meant to be," Black
countered, almost cutting him off. "Have you ever heard of
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?"

Jesse thought back to his general education
days, before becoming was an upperclassmen. The name sounded
familiar.

Black didn't wait for an answer. "In the
world that you know, a few decades from now, a very smart man by
the name of Werner Heisenberg publishes his uncertainty principle.
Heisenberg will state that the very act of observing activity at
the quantum level affects that activity.

"You are a component of a system, and as
such, you cannot change that system. But once you step outside your
universe and look at it directly, you change its structure. Because
you change your own behavior from that moment on. The question is,
which script have you written for yourself?

"Your friends splintered the world the day
they fell from the sky. They made a new rock. And now the three of
you own the moral implications of whatever happens to it. But it's
my job to fix it. To try to save the billions yet unborn who may
very well die in a global fire."

Jesse tried to process this. It was
grounding, in a way, to think of Black as just a man trying to
protect his rock collection. It was, however, less grounding when
he considered that Black was a man trying to protect a rock from
changing on the subatomic level because an ant named Jesse
time-traveled to another rock. Still, he'd take what he could get
as far as helpful metaphors went.

Black sat, monk-like in his grave stillness,
a question perched on his lips. "Do you think you can reach
him?"

Jesse pondered this in earnest. "I don't
know."

"I've tried," Black said. "But he's stubborn.
Foolhardy. Driven by a greed that blinds him."

Jesse nearly took another sip of the tea
before remembering what it had done to him. He still felt woozy
from the effects of whatever had been in the cup. "I can get keys
to the factory, or inside information. Whatever you need. But I
just have one thing to ask of you."

"I will do what I can to help you return to
your home," Black answered. "I will make sure that you either leave
this place for good, or die so that you cannot cause any more harm
than you already have." He stood up, and walked over to his
desk.

"Just don't kill her," Jesse said after
him.

The man, or whatever he was, turned to face
Jesse. "As I said, I will do what I can to see that you leave this
place." He then picked up an ancient-looking device, seemingly
constructed of copper, off his desk. Jesse could see it held great
intrigue for Black; he could just imagine Black's solitary nights
in this tent, contemplating whatever unimaginable mysteries he
occupied his mind with.

Black continued idly inspecting the artifact.
"Your brother has spent the last five years causing a commotion.
Wristwatches, radios, telephones. I've done everything from sending
him telegrams to bombing his factory, trying to convince him to
stop. He cannot think I'm merely crazy. I've proven to him that I
know the world you both come from. At this point I'm certain he is
willfully ignoring the obvious truth of the matter.

"When the first car rolls off that factory's
assembly line, it will lead this civilization down a path of rapid
industrialization that will punctuate in global chaos. I cannot
abide it any longer. That factory must burn. Cole Company must be
destroyed."

* * *

Wayne was livid, the image of that burning
oil field still fresh in his mind. Someone had a lot of explaining
to do. And that person was Mayor Edsel Sheldon.

Wayne had more than one reason to be testy
where the mayor was concerned. Sheldon had recently constructed an
upscale neo-grecian two-story in the hills for his homely wife and
himself, situated—to Wayne's chagrin—within eyeshot of Wayne's
patio. His was one of the few homes in the newly-booming Bridgetown
that could rival Wayne's for its size and price tag.

But Mayor Sheldon didn't seem too interested
in spending much time at home with the missus. Wayne knew he had
developed quite an expensive and time-consuming hobby: opium
addiction. This habit was nearly matched by his appetite for exotic
and carnal delights.

Sheldon was wise enough not to get familiar
with any of the local prostitutes. Instead, he sent away for
working women from Los Angeles to visit him in his dingy drug den
in the outskirts of town. This unassuming hovel was a factory of
iniquity and sin worthy of Caligula himself.

He preferred Oriental girls. For one thing,
they didn't speak much English, and weren't likely to go running to
the papers or start asking too many questions. Sheldon thought he
was being quite sneaky about the whole thing, but with the opium
clouding his mind, rumors about his marriage began to circulate
through Bridgetown's sewing circles and beer halls.

So Wayne knew exactly where to find the
mayor's love shack.

He pounded on the door, and barked at Sheldon
to show his face. From within, Wayne could hear a gramophone's
muffled music coming to an abrupt end. He could just imagine
Sheldon inside, naked, pantomiming to the girls to hide behind the
sofa.

At last, the deadbolt slid back, and Sheldon
opened the door, his eyes bleary and bloodshot. "Cole? What is it?"
he managed. In his addled state, he was either unaware or unashamed
of the erection visible underneath his untied velveteen robe.

"No more 'fifteen percent.'"

Sheldon had the audacity to laugh at this.
"We have an agreement. Cole Company pays me my fifteen percent,
pre-tax, off the books."

Wayne grabbed the mayor by the wadded-up
robe's equivalent of a collar. "Listen, you scumbag, you may be the
mayor, but I'm the boss in this town. And do you know why that
is?"

"Fuck off," Sheldon slurred.

"Because I make the money. I bring home the
bacon. And yet, you continue to extort me." He released Sheldon,
pushing him away and making a broad gesture with his outstretched
arms. "Why should I put up with it, Ed? Because from where I'm
standing," he said, making a point to look down at the mayor's
rapidly-deflating member, "It sure seems like I've got the home
field advantage. You need me to help you win elections now. Now
that you're screwing up things for yourself so bad."

Sheldon spat at Wayne's feet. "I got you that
land you so desperately wanted. A year ago, you were groveling at
my feet to send White and his deputies around to get you those
deeds."

"Yeah," Wayne said. "You haven't done shit
about those bandits burning those fields." Wayne got in Sheldon's
face again. "You know, when I asked White why his men are having
such a hard time with the Lotus Boys, you know what he told
me?"

"What?" Sheldon seemed barely-engaged with
the conversation.

"He told me you refused his last three
equipment and personnel requests."

Sheldon gave an unimpressed look. "Well,
you're the big spender! Why don't you buy him his new toys?"

Wayne smacked Sheldon across the head with an
open palm. The blow barely registered in the addled mayor's mind.
"Because it's your job, Edsel."