Extra Life (15 page)

“He would’ve put you in the hospital with a panic attack if I hadn’t stopped him. That’s what I prevented from happening. You know that? I’m not him—not anymore. I’m better.”

“All these weird glitches?” he said. “Technical malfunctions? You said how it was like a virus got into the system somehow. Well, I get it now. I see what you mean.”

“
Don’t
…” I begged him.

“
You’re
the virus.” Almost silently, eyes on the ground, but he said it.

“Connie, something’s not right here.”

“You. It’s
you
.”

“No, listen. Paige couldn’t have…” I watched a third shadow lengthening on the sand, and the sight of it shut my mouth. It was the same shadow that followed or led or trailed beside me all my life.

The other Russ came around the corner.

I was there, out in the open. Nowhere to hide from him, from myself. I’d been easing into the idea of two Russes for hours, but the fact of my sudden existence slugged him out of nowhere. He had no chance to prepare himself. The sudden body horror, the dislocating vertigo, the splicing of consciousness—it all came racing across the ten foot span between us.

“
What the
?” said Russ 2.0.

It was too much. I couldn’t face him. I turned and ran, Connie’s stupid flip-flops catapulting sand up my back and slowing my escape to the pace of a nightmare. But if I didn’t keep moving, my molecules would come apart and disburse in the breeze. I was sure of it.

Because I was the copy. I was the virus.

I
STOPPED
running when I hit the part of town that was nothing but empty grass lots and garbage blown against chain link fences. My lungs heaved and my bare toes burned from blisters, and I’d completely failed to outrun the images of Paige in my head. A Paige who wasn’t but should’ve been, who could never have killed herself but supposedly did.

Already I knew it was a mistake to run. I should’ve faced him, the Other Me. I should’ve convinced him to let me have the cell phone back. That cell was my only connection to the Pastime Project, and maybe one more chance. My clock was running down. Because seven p.m. was an hour and a half away, and what came then was the Great Unknown.

I hurried the rest of the way downtown and nearly crawled back into the Silver Bullet, aching with thirst. Sally the waitress was kind enough to sport me some ice water and quick use of the vintage yet functioning phone mounted on the wall. My finger was so shaky, I could barely get it into the slots that spun the dial.

Dad answered on the first ring, like I knew he would. The only person left who might be able to wrap his head around what was happening and forgive what I did.

But to explain this to Dad on the phone would’ve been the quickest way to reserve myself a cot at a drug rehab center. I couldn’t go back to that house, either—because Other Russ might show up before I could fully plead my case. It was his house, after all. He was the
true
Russ, not me—at least according to Connie. I needed neutral territory. So I asked Dad to meet at our old headquarters, the Pastime Playhouse.

“Buddy, that place burned down years ago,” he pointed out.

“I mean the empty lot, the spot where it used to be.”

“I guess you’ll tell me why when I show up?” he said.

I was only a couple blocks away, so I got there first. The place was fully marinated in the coulda-been mood of overgrown grass, scorch marks, and rubble. I belonged there, maybe forever, so I took a seat on a sturdy cinderblock and watched the brick wall where once there was a movie screen.

There was a trace memory under the whiff of gasoline: the scent of buttered popcorn and the low bass rattle of the theater’s cheap speakers. Of course it was just nostalgia, that quieter kind of time machine.

On my imaginary screen was a shot of a little league game. Mom calls me in to replace Paige on the mound. I won’t budge from the bench. “Let her finish,” I say.

But that’s not how it really happened.

Instead, I jumped in, eagerly, and failed.

Here’s another classic blast from the past: Ninth-grade Conrad dials the combo wheel on his school locker. Just before he pulls up the latch I jump in and say, “Don’t.”

But that’s not how it happened, either.

In truth, Connie opened the locker, and out flew a camouflage toy helicopter, piloted by remote from down the hall. The chopper buzzed past his head, and he collapsed with an ear-splitting scream. Everyone doubled over laughing, and I caught it all from a few feet away, play-by-play, on my cell phone video camera.

That sickening prank wasn’t my idea. I was an accomplice. I was the one who figured out Connie’s combo by watching over his shoulder while he dialed it. Just so some other moron I was trying to impress could startle him with a toy. Harmless fun.

At the time, I didn’t know Connie’s father was killed in a helicopter crash. I was brand new to Port City Academy. I didn’t realize how vicious that prank really was. Did my ignorance matter, or my apology and best-friend repentance every day since?

A few minutes into my mental
Worst Of Russ Vale
clip show, Dad showed up at the former site of the Pastime Playhouse. Sweat pants, shirt stains, and scruff—the perfect getup for an abandoned lot. He eyed the place like he could see my past projected on the wall just as sharply as I could.

I knew Dad could game-theory a solution, just like the time he drove me over to the Bower house and pressed me to apologize to Connie and his mother for the remote helicopter incident. I was gut-twistingly sorry, but Dad made me prove it. And Connie’s forgiveness turned out to be the deciding factor that kept me from getting kicked out of yet another school.

When I stood up, Dad hugged me and asked, “What’s going on, kiddo?”

“What do you think are the limits to what’s possible?” I asked.

A slight grin. Subtext:
you worry me, but you’re talking my language.

“In a shoot-the-breeze kind of way,” he asked, “or scientifically?”

“Hard core science.”

“
Well
, anything’s possible as long as there’s no explicit physical law against it. That’s the uncertainty principal, the basis of quantum theory. An electron can exist in several places at once until it’s observed. Wave-particle duality, and all that. Even things that are against the rules could happen, theoretically, in another dimension, if there is such a thing.”

“This is going to sound nuts, but what about a person?” I asked. “Is it theoretically possible for a person to be in two places at once, like an atom?”

“A person’s neither a particle nor wave, so things are a bit more complex—”

“What about time travel?” I asked.

Dad’s hesitant smile dropped. He glanced at the street behind him like he just realized we were far too public for a top-secret chat. “Wh—why would you ask me something like that, Russ? Have you been talking to anyone?”

“About time travel?” I asked.

“I just mean… it’s a strange question.” Dad grasped my forearm and led me further away from the bustle of the street. He was twitchy, watchful. He made us look like a pair of downtown junkies waiting on our dealer. Somebody was bound to call the cops any minute. “Why are you asking me about time travel?” he whispered, leaning so close his breath was on my neck.

“It’s hard to explain…”

“My God, Russ. Has there been a temporal anomaly?”

So there it was. No need to convince a man who’d already convinced himself. He was baited. It was as if he’d been confined in his attic for weeks waiting for this moment, just jonesing for a
temporal anomaly
the way other folks look forward to packages from Amazon.

So I told him what happened—fast and plain, everything except for Paige because I couldn’t bring myself to admit just yet how catastrophically I messed up. There was no delicate way to couch such information, but he listened with such laser-eyed intensity that I almost stopped talking, afraid I’d given him an aneurysm. He didn’t say a word until I was done.

“The other me is probably back at the house right now,” I said. “If you called the house, chances are, I’d answer.”

He scratched his facial scruff and paced in the grass. “It’s not impossible, but also not technically possible. You’d need to have cylinder technology, for one, but that itself is only theoretical. You’d also need a massive quantity of negative energy, which is far too rare to harvest, unless you could somehow produce your own miniature black hole.
Then
you might be able to generate an infinitesimally brief wormhole…”

“Dad,” I said.

“…but sending a human subject through it? Without total cellular disintegration? And with any degree of temporal accuracy or continuity—no, it’s just not—”

“
Dad
!”

The way he blinked at me, it was obvious he’d forgotten I was there.

“I’m clueless about quantum mechanics,” I said.

“The concept’s ultimately rather simple because—”

“I know. You tried to teach me, but the truth is, I’m stumped. All I can tell you is the tech
exists
, and it’s been developed into a program. Because I received it on my phone. Some future-me sent it to present-me with a video explanation, starring
me
, which I know
I never made
.”

“You said the name of the company was The Pastime Project?”

“Yeah. Like the theater that used to be here. Pastime Playhouse.”

“Curious,” he said. “But no one else could be working with these developments, not so soon at any rate. Not unless it was stolen. But even then, nobody else could’ve worked out all the variables so quickly. It would require a radical discovery, or a genius greater than Einstein.”

I couldn’t believe how lightly he seemed to handle the emotional weight of what I was telling him. “So you’re not slightly floored by the part where I said it was sent
to me, by me
?”

For a second, he seemed stumped, but then he waved off my buggy question. “That part makes perfect sense,” he said.

“
Really?
Why’s that?”

“Well, because I’m your father, and I’m the one who invented the program.”

F
IFTY MINUTES
to spare before seven o’clock,
zero hour
, but Dad did not take me home to confront Russ 2.0. “That’s not the strongest angle,” he said. “I’ve got a better plan.” His certainty hit like the waft of air conditioning from the dashboard vents. Off we rushed to Rush Fiberoptics, the software firm where my father, it turns out, invented a time machine. Or designed a prototype, at least.

It was breaking news to Dad that his former employer had obviously taken some steps beyond the blueprint in the two months since he left. Like, massive, reality-altering breakthroughs. Dad’s aim now was to see what the hell happened inside that development lab, and why the program was leaked, or
would be
, to me. Back to the source, and hopefully a solution.

I couldn’t process what was happening. The forefathers of science had led the way to the necessary quantum theories, but time travel was a greater breakthrough than anything Newton or Einstein or Bohr or Heisenberg or Schrödinger could’ve dreamed. And
my own father
was the mastermind.