Faces in Time (34 page)
Authors: Lewis E. Aleman
Tags: #Thrillers, #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
“Go—” he starts to curse but is cut off as a horn blares from the entrance to the parking lot.
The rumbling red sports car is entering the lot just ahead of him.
Jerking the wheel with all his might, Edmund’s front bumper just grazes the corner of the approaching car’s front fascia. Having to turn so harshly, his passenger side rubs the edge of the brick fence.
Unknown to him but moving in his rearview mirror are two women running out of the therapy center, one screaming, the other pulling out a phone.
The car continues its chaotic exit, barreling across the intersection. An approaching pickup truck slams on its brakes to avoid broadsiding Edmund’s smaller, stolen vehicle. Screeching his tires into a hard ninety degree left turn, Edmund is finally in a lane going in the right direction.
“Unff—” pause just long enough for the emotion to simmer, “believable!”
Looking in his rearview mirror, he sees nothing but ordinary traffic waiting at the light several blocks down. The pickup truck has resumed its original course in the opposite direction of him.
“People carjack cars every frickin’ day with no fight. No hero, no damn Houdini girl escaping. Phfff…witnesses. Why’s everything so hard for me? Frickin’ cursed.”
He switches on the air condition, but no air blows out of the vents.
“Un-ff-believable!” smacking the dashboard, “Social worker said dad would’a spent his whole life in jail if he hadn’t got shot—maybe I’m gonna end up back there too. Cursed. Frickin’ cursed.”
“Chester, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up over it. You were just trying to make sure it was all over. It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault. If I had just grabbed your hand and got us the hell awrom there before Manny saw us, he’d think I was dead and this would be over. Now he knows I’m still alive and is going to come after me. How is all this not my fault?”
“Yeah, it might’ve worked for a little while—until he sees a pic of you and me together at one of my events on TV or in some magazine. If I’m ever in the limelight again, there’ll be tabloids and paparazzi following us, another crazed fan in my bushes—already had one. Eventually it would have happened—there’d be a pic of us together. Then, it would’ve started all over again. He’d have come after you—would’ve found you through me. Either Manny would have had to die, or we would have had to disappear—I’d have had to quit acting.”
“You would’ve done it though, right? If we finally had a chance to be free…and safe?”
Looking sad and serious, “Of course, I would’ve, but I would’ve hated it. Happy to be safe with you, but hated having to give it up.”
“Thank you.”
Quiet for a moment then saying, “Well, Chester, you’re doing the opposite for me now, right? That’s almost as hard, isn’t it?”
“I just feel weird taking over his life.”
“It’s not his life. He never had the idea for your new show, and neither did anyone else. This is
your new
life, and it’s an honest one.”
“But, they think I’m him, and he was burned to death.”
“Chester B. Fuze is your name too. You have every right to use it just as much as he did before he died.”
“I don’t know about that. I’m not like anyone else.”
“Of course not, you’re wonderful, and you’re mine. But, what are you talking about?”
“I’m the only person on earth who has no direct connection to his existence in this world.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m the only one who has no chronological or logical right to be here. At least no reason that anyone can see but me.”
“Alrighty…let me think…If I go back in time leaving my timeline in I-don’t-know-let’s-say 2010 traveling back to the year 2002, my knowledge contains my entire experience, but my experience, those eight years that I knew, may never turn out the same way now that I’ve gone back. The present is nothing more than the result of all the actions leading up to it—the sum total of an innumerable amount of actions happening every second. Me going back in time automatically changes that sum total; all of my actions are being added to it, and they weren’t there the first time around. It can never be exactly the same once I go back.”
“Starting to make sense but need some examples.”
“What if I accidentally kill my future wife in a car accident? Or, what if I find a way to start a world war? My original 2002-2010 experience would still be inside me in my memory but would have been completely undone from existence and undone to the rest of the universe’s reality except what else I may have brought back with me.”
“Wow, that makes my head hurt.”
Eyes glossed over, staring at thin air, “It broke mine for awhile.”
Chester feels a hand on his shoulder which seems to pull out the next line that he has been struggling to keep pinned inside, “It gets worse.”
Hand squeezes his shoulder, and he continues, “When I came back, it reset all the years that I traveled through; none of the events are guaranteed to unfold the same way again or even at all.”
“Well, what’s so bad about that? I’m much better off.”
“It could be all undone again. We’ll be here together perhaps for the rest of our lives, but it could all end in a moment and what we are now would never have been.”
“How? What are you talking about?”
“If someone else were to come back in time just one second before I did, it would reset all of the time they have traversed. For most people, their lives are likely to run the same course or at least a very similar one—it’s at least a possibility for them, if not probable. It could be happening right now, and no one would notice even if things were being changed. They’d know nothing different than the reset reality—the new series of events would be all they would have experienced, all that they grew up with.
“Just like you right now—you only know the reality since I reset things. If I wouldn’t have told you about the way things were the first time around, you’d never know anything had been reset at all. You would’ve never known about being married to Dane, or what happened to Tristan, or about you…”
“Losing my face? Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought of that in a thousand years.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, keep going.”
“Okay. If things were reset again, other people’s lives could remain very similar to their past experience. For example, a farmer in Kansas is not likely to be effected at all by my interference so far in Riverview and out here in L.A. But for you and me, if things get reset, I’m gone. There is no way that I could end up here from events that happened even one second before I arrived. One second before I arrived, there was only my past self—the lonely writer who ended up burned alive this time around and in an assisted care facility far away from you the first time.”
“Now wait a minute; I thought you were safe here with me no matter what changes were made in the future. Right?”
“That’s right. My timeline up to the present can’t be changed by future events. But, it can be if someone resets my past. Just like for anyone else, if things are reset, the only bits of my life that would still exist would be what happened before things were reset—before the time traveler arrived in the past. If someone reset things just one second
after
I arrived, I’d still be here because I existed here before they came back, even if for only a second. But, if they come back even a fraction of a second
before
I arrived here, me coming back here has been erased. Remember that where I came from no longer exists exactly the same as when I left because I’m an added element here. So, if someone goes back a second before I arrived, they would wipe out everything that came after. I wouldn’t appear one second after they do or at all, because the place that I came from doesn’t exist anymore—my launching pad is gone. All of the events that have happened a second before I arrived don’t include me. I won’t show up here. I’m an anomaly.”
“That doesn’t make sense to me,” Rhonda says rubbing her right temple.
“Okay. If someone comes back in time two days ago, what we’re saying and doing right now may or may not happen. If the time traveler’s existence here makes little to no interference in our lives or the lives of anyone around us, then maybe it will be exactly the same for us. You existed here before he came back and so did I, so it could turn out the same way for us—saying the same words right now in this room.
“But if the time traveler comes back to even a fraction of a second before I arrived here, I’m gone. I didn’t exist here before I arrived—you did, and you’d exist here without me, so would everyone else on earth for that matter. But, I didn’t exist here then, so I’d be wiped out. One second before I got here, I existed in my future. That future doesn’t exist the same way anymore, so I’m completely erased.”
She slides her arms under his and around his torso and kisses his cheek.
“If things are reset, other people have the chance of their lives following the same basic course—marrying the same person, having the same children, achieving the same accomplishments, but we have no chance of that. Granted, it would all be painless, and we’d never know any different. It’s just a sad thought that I am the only freak whose line of existence is outside of everyone else’s timeline.”
“What would happen if someone reset all of this?”
“The only me that would exist would be the original me of this time without the results of my interference—the timid TV show writer that is likely to pine away over you for years, later working as a technical writer, and ending up half crazy in a home.”
She presses her lips into his shoulder then says, “It had to be so hard for you.”
Nods, “It wouldn’t be me going through it all again; it would be my past self living his life for the first time, or at least what he thought was the first time.”
Her body goes stiff, “And what about me, Chester? Are all those terrible things that you said going to happen? I mean if someone resets all this? That poor boy—my son!”
“Those things aren’t certain, just very likely. That they’ve already happened once proves that there is a strong possibility they could happen again. My past self was trying to kill me—he was obsessed with it. His actions and life were changed dramatically. I never tried to hurt anyone the first time around. Granted, there wasn’t some future version of me interfering in my life, but for there to be a reset at all, things will be altered. It could be so small of a change that nothing noticeable would differ in your life. Or, it could be barely noticeable like the added body of the time traveler standing ahead of you in line at the grocery, which could make you just a few minutes later doing the rest of your day’s activities. But, those few minutes, or even seconds, could put you in a different place in traffic, getting you involved in an accident that you missed the first time around. Those few seconds could kill you, whereas the first time around you lived for decades longer. Even the slightest alteration of events can cause huge changes to the future that the time traveler knew.”
“Woah.”
“And that’s only if the time traveler is benign. If he or she wants to, coming from an advanced society and knowledge, mass destruction is possible. Knowing exactly when and where disaster will or could happen and then making it worse.”
Silence. He turns to face her and hugs her to him.
She asks, “Will there be a flash or some sign if it happens?”
“I don’t know; I can’t imagine there would be anything, but no one knows.”
She makes a muffled sound between a squeal and a sigh.
“Hey! Don’t worry, Rhonda. None of this can affect us yet: we get to live our lives without any interruption.”
“What! What about all you’ve just said?”
“I was talking about things being reset and having never existed for everyone except the new time traveler. I was talking about things turning out the same way if someone resets our timeline—what would happen to us if my coming back here was wiped out by someone resetting things before I got here. That’s all about us not being together the second time around. Well, I guess it would actually be the third time around now. But, none of that can affect us until someone goes back.”
“But you came back and reset all of this. Why can’t someone else?”
“Because I was the first to figure it out, that we know of anyway, and it took me twenty years from now to make it work. I had to live those twenty years, as did the rest of the world with me, for my trip to be possible. During those twenty years, everyone’s lives were real, and nothing could affect that until the day that I reset things and wiped it all out. Even if someone else figures it out on the same day that I did, we still have twenty years until someone can develop the technology to reset things and bring this timeline to an end. And, who knows how long it will take for someone else to figure it out?
“Time has to run its natural course for a time traveler to have a runway to take off. There has to be one uninterrupted passing of time for someone to develop the idea and technology of time travel before anyone can come back in the first place. You have to invent the invention before you can use it, and that takes time. This is why we haven’t seen any signs of successful time travel even though it is obviously possible and will happen one day. Well, excluding evidence of my trip of course. Any evidence at all of time travel means that everything we’re doing and everything we’re going to do up to the moment that the time traveler left his present to go back in time, his point of origin, has already happened once and has been reset. Just like right now. This is the second time that this day has happened. The first time we weren’t together, and now we are.”
“So if we can detect any signs of time travel, it means we’re doing things all over again?”
“Yeah, although it will be done over again at least slightly differently.”
Her eyebrows stretch upward, thin red rainbows, and she poses, “Is that what déjà vu is? Us doing something over again and remembering before it was reset? Like when the new experience is the same as what happened the first time around? Could we feel that somehow?”
Thinks for a moment, “That’s interesting, Rhonda, and I guess no one really knows. But, I don’t see how it’s possible to remember anything that’s been reset except for the time traveler,” noticing she looks mildly wounded, “But it’s a wonderful thought. I surely don’t know everything, and there’s no way to tell just how lucky I was in having the conditions right to get back here—variables may exist to the traveling that I don’t even know about. So, I could easily be wrong. I’d sure love it if you could remember me if things were reset.”
His smile breaks through the intellectual overload, and her body relaxes. A slow smile of her own emerges on her face and doesn’t stop widening until it can grow no further. She rubs the tip of her nose over his shoulder, and he knows something has tickled her heart.
“What is it?” asks Chester. “I can see it on your face.”
“You trust me; you really trust me.”
“Of course I do.”
“No, I mean with all of this. All of this dangerous information that you’re hiding from the whole world—you’re just giving it to me.”
“Well, without wanting to get back here to you, I don’t think I ever would have put it together or had the guts to try it out.”
She buries her face into him, “And, you didn’t dumb it down; you talked to me like an equal. Never had a man talk to me like that about something so hard to understand, especially ‘bout all of that crazy resetting stuff. Made my head hurt—and I don’t get every piece of it, but I think I got the big picture. Don’t know how a computer works either, but I know how to use one.”
“Well, to keep anyone from resetting things earlier than in the next twenty years, we can’t let anyone get their hands on this device,” patting his pocket, “much less make any slip-up on our part.”
“See! That’s something that no one else should know, and out of all the people in the world, you’re only trusting it with me.”
He tenses up, and she looks at his vexed face.
“Chester, what is it?”
“Don’t be upset, but there might be another.”