Then it hit me. The viewer couldn’t show a place where someone from my time had been. The problem must have been with the amount of power involved. The machine’s viewer didn’t need as big of a tunnel and so used less electricity. The energy required to send me back was enormous in comparison, so it overpowered the viewer, like trying to see a light bulb in the middle of the sun.
My blood went cold. I’d never actually gone to her concert, not in the machine. That meant someone else had gone, someone from my timeline. Only a few people knew about the lab, but they all thought I was working on spying equipment. Ralph wouldn’t do something like that, even if he knew what the machine really did. I doubted his friends in the underground would try it, either.
My heart raced. Max. Somehow, Max knew what I had created, and he had used my machine to kill Anna. But why? And what else had he done?
I’d killed most of the logging the day before so no one could see what I was doing. Not that the gibberish in the logs would’ve made sense to anyone who wasn’t an engineer, but I had to be careful. However, I always kept certain logs intact, like the one that tracked power output.
I opened the log directory and clicked the power usage icon. A graph of readings appeared on the screen. I saw my power spikes from the past couple of days, but there were also five power spikes from the previous night, the time I’d spent in the parking garage. Someone had used my machine five times!
I didn’t feel different, but then I wouldn’t know if things had changed. I would remember things having always been the way they were, even though they may have been different the day before.
I stared at my monitor. Two possible timelines currently existed, one where Anna lived and one where she died. I’d seen that in the past couple of days when I saved her on three occasions. It was as if time had not yet decided what should happen. When I had gone back and changed things, the duality disappeared.
That meant she still had a chance.
I focused the exit point on the catwalk near the lighting rig. If someone had been there, it was either Max or one of his goons. My bet was on an underling. Max wouldn’t have wanted to risk putting himself in danger. No matter. I still had to try.
I fished through leftover parts from constructing the machine and pulled out a length of pipe made for shielding against high electrical current. More importantly, it was heavy.
I did a once-over on the machine. My invention had seen better days, but it worked well enough for what I needed. I programmed the trip for ten minutes and activated the machine.
~~~~
The music assaulted my ears as soon as I materialized. A massive television screen hung over the stage. Anna’s face filled the screen as she sang. Below the catwalk, she pranced about the stage, singing “Run with Me.”
A man in a long coat stood on the catwalk with his back to me. He appeared oblivious to my presence. He focused his attention on her, his hand resting on the lighting rig. She had moved to the edge of the stage to bend and touch the hands of her fans. If the rig fell right then, it wouldn’t hurt anyone. He was waiting for the best moment.
I clenched the heavy pipe as I crept toward him. She was nearing the end of the song. I was almost on top of him when he spun around. He reached into his coat, and I thought, “Gun!” I brought the heavy pipe down on his head. He collapsed.
I stood over him, my hands still tingling from the impact of the metal against his skull. I didn’t know how bad he was hurt, but he would tell Max he had seen me. I raised the pipe. Dead, he could tell no one.
But I lowered it again. I wasn’t a killer like him, like Max. Anna was safe, and that was all that mattered.
His body shifted. I lifted the pipe again. But he didn’t sit up. First an arm flopped over the edge, and then the rest of him began to slide slowly off the catwalk. I dropped the pipe and grabbed his coat. The fabric tore, and the coat threatened to come open and dump him onto the stage. I took hold of his wrist and pulled, struggling to keep him from going the rest of the way over. As his legs dangled off the catwalk, I planted my heels and tugged at him. I thought I felt something pop, maybe his shoulder coming out of its socket. I kept pulling, and finally, I managed to pull him back on to the catwalk. I grabbed one of his ankles and pulled his feet to the side, making sure he wouldn’t slip off the edge again.
I collapsed just as the song ended. I sat there, trying to catch my breath, as the crowd roared. Anna’s face filled the giant TV screen as she spoke to the audience.
I checked the man. He seemed to be breathing, but I wasn’t sure. I carefully rolled him onto his back. The lights pointed at the stage, but I could still make out his face. My throat went dry.
His ear carried the scars of severe burns. I knew him. He was one of Max’s goons, the one who had taken Rhonda away.
Fear mixed with anger. Max had sent him back to kill Anna. Why Max wanted her dead I had no idea. A part of me wanted to let the man with the burned ear, the man who took Rhonda and tried to kill Anna, fall to his death. From the corner of my eye, I saw something metal glint in the stage lights—a large pair of bolt cutters. He must have been holding it when I clocked him.
I picked up the tool and stood. They looked large enough to cut the cables that held the lighting rig in place. Below, Anna stood in front of the microphone with her guitar. She would stay there for the entire song, which would’ve given Max’s goon enough time to cut every cable and let the rig crush her.
I felt a draft, as if someone had run past me. At my feet, the body, along with the pipe, was gone. I stood alone on the catwalk, holding the bolt cutters.
I leaned over the rail and watched Anna perform. She started singing “Still Falling.” I wished I knew whom she spoke of in her lyrics, what man she had fallen for. The machine pulled me back just as the song ended.
~~~~
My ears were still ringing when I reappeared in the lab. No one was waiting for my return. Smoke had filled the room as the machine worked overtime to crank out the power necessary to send me on my trip to the past. The ventilation system struggled to clear the room. For some reason, the fire alarm didn’t sound.
I tossed the bolt cutters aside and looked over the machine. Insulation on wires had melted, and fuses had burned out altogether. I took several minutes to replace the fuses, and I even managed to wrap electrical tape around the melting insulation on the wires. It would work, but not for long. What I needed was to tear the thing apart and rebuild it, but I didn’t have the time or the parts to do that.
The air had finally cleared. I looked up at the smoke alarm. The light blinked, indicating it was active, but the alarm never sounded.
I went to my desk. The camera showed the hall was still clear. I pulled up my keyboard and brought up the machine’s viewer. I scanned where I had just been. The distortion was still there, but the duality had disappeared. All I saw was Anna performing to the end of the show. I took a deep breath. She was safe, for the moment.
I shook my head as I looked at her image on the machine’s viewer. Why kill her? It made no sense. She wrote beautiful songs and made people happy. How could that matter at all to someone like Max?
My phone rang. I automatically reached for it then remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be there. The caller ID display read “Security office.” It might’ve been Max, but it was probably Ralph. I chanced it and picked up the receiver. “Lab.”
“Hey, Doc, you expecting a package?”
I clenched the phone tighter. “Yeah, Ralph, I’ll be right down.”
“Bring a pen. You got to sign for it, and mine’s dead.”
I hung up after he did. Our code was basic, but it worked. He wanted to meet, and telling me to bring a pen meant he wanted to meet outside the break room. Ralph had found a gap between camera ranges in the hall, where we could talk without anyone spying.
I locked down the computer and left the lab, hoping I didn’t run into any of Max’s men.
~~~~
I kept on the lookout
as I tried to walk nonchalantly, but I only saw a couple of building security guys. Each gave me a nod as I passed. I trusted Ralph, but walking around the facility knowing Max was after me was nerve wracking.
When I reached the break room, Ralph nodded me over. A man carrying a stack of file folders walked past but didn’t give us any notice.
I didn’t speak until he was out of sight. “I take it you dealt with the smoke alarm?”
He nodded. “It lit up on the board, and I figured it was you, so I shut it off right away. I investigated it personally and reported it as a malfunction.”
“I owe you,” I said. “But you know if Max sees me out here I’m in a lot of trouble.”
“He’s not even here.” Ralph let out a frustrated sigh. “He found the garage. He and his people are there now.”
“Just great.” I didn’t think there was anything there that would give away any of Ralph’s friends, but it still meant I couldn’t stay much longer.
“Doc,” Ralph said, “something’s wrong.”
“No kidding.”
“I’m serious.” Ralph gestured at the air, as if figuring out the best way to explain it. “Max went in last night with three guys. He only came out with one who had a bandage on his head. I double checked all security tapes and confirmed it. Two guys never checked out of the building. Also, the guy who was left carried something heavy wrapped in a blanket. It looked like…”
“Like what?”
He worked his mouth for a minute, as if he didn’t want to say it. “It looked like a body.”
My mind raced. So the guy I pounded on the catwalk had lived. At least, I assumed his bandaged head was because of me. Three guys and Max had been in the lab and used my machine, but the log showed five power spikes. Who else had gone back? And what had happened to the other two guys with Max? Maybe one of them was dead, as Ralph suggested, but if so, that meant one was still unaccounted for. He had to be in the past somewhere. And who had killed one of them?
I wanted to ask Ralph for details, but I couldn’t tell him about the machine, not yet. He’d want to use the machine, and if he couldn’t, he’d destroy it. I’d do that myself, but I had to be sure Anna was safe first.
“So where’d they go?” I asked.
Ralph shrugged. “Usually when Max’s guys go off the grid, it’s because they’re up to something bad.” He sighed. “Look, I don’t know how long I can keep them out. You need to finish what you’re doing and get out before Max catches you.”
“I will,” I said. “It shouldn’t be long now.”
“Good. Watch your back.”
I nodded, turning to head back to the lab. “Always.”
~~~~
I managed to get back into the lab without incident. After I locked the door, I pried open the locking mechanism and attached my tablet. I hacked it, making sure that only my access code would work.
I sat down at my computer and scanned the time period after the concert. I had to figure out the other four power spikes, who had caused them and why. Then I could destroy the machine.
The next duality occurred the morning after the concert.
An SUV drove out of the Hyatt Regency hotel garage, turned onto California Street, and headed south. The distortion started at that point. I fast-forwarded until the blur disappeared, and I saw the two timelines.
The first one showed an ambulance. The old light rail train sat motionless on the track, partially blocking the intersection near the old Hyatt hotel. Debris littered the road and sidewalk. Paramedics wheeled a stretcher toward the contemporary restaurant attached to the hotel. The SUV rested on its roof inside the restaurant, having rolled through the front plate-glass window. The light rail had crushed one side of the vehicle. A woman’s hand protruded from under the SUV.
I ran my hand over my mouth. I was so tired of watching her die, but I had to know what happened. I focused on the other half of the duality.
Anna raced down the street in an old-model Honda Civic. Her eyes bulged as she drove erratically, cutting across lanes. She glanced up at the mirror, then her car jolted to the side of the road. She turned her head to see what happened, and the distortion appeared. I fast-forwarded several minutes and saw a police car parked in the road next to the Honda Civic. Anna wasn’t there, at least not in the immediate vicinity.
Two possible futures lay before me. In one, she died when her SUV rolled through a glass window. In the other… I wasn’t sure. She was in a car accident, and then she was just gone. I could probably find her, but it would take hours. I had located her before because I knew she stayed in that particular hotel. But I had no clue where she was scheduled to stay after that.
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the machine. I had completed what repairs I could, but without a full overhaul, the thing was on its last legs. I couldn’t make many more trips back, and I had four more power spikes to investigate before the machine short-circuited completely.
The smart thing to do was get out while Max was away. The longer I stayed, the greater the chance I would get myself and Ralph in a lot of trouble. How many times could I save her with a broken machine I could never repair before Max got his hands on me? She wrote songs that moved people to tears, but if Max got his wish, she’d be dead, though I had no idea why he would wish that on her.
But I couldn’t stop. I had to keep trying to save her for as long as the machine worked. I didn’t want a world without her in it.
I scanned the area of the light rail accident before the distortion began, and I put together a plan. I set the destination and timer on the machine.
~~~~
I materialized in an alley. If I had timed my arrival correctly, I had about ten minutes before Anna left the hotel.
I picked up a brick sitting in the alley and stepped out into the street. While downtown traffic was heavy most of the time in that time period, Sunday mornings almost always had light traffic. That worked in my favor. I walked across the street toward the parking lot near the seafood restaurant. The only car present was a Honda Civic, identical to the one Anna drove in the duality.
I shattered the window of the Honda with the brick and unlocked the door. Hotwiring it took a little more than a couple of minutes. I checked my watch. I didn’t have much time.
I hit the gas and spun the tiny car around. The tires squealed as I pulled out of the parking lot. The intersection where Anna would die lay just a block south. The light rail crossed California Street at Fourteenth Avenue. Where the tracks turned onto California was the place the accident would happen. In the duality, the train slammed into the side of Anna’s SUV at that exact point. The street was one way going south, which meant I had to make sure I blocked both lanes.
Just before the intersection, I turned the wheel and stopped the car sideways, blocking as much of the two-lane street as possible. With luck, Anna’s driver would take another route.
I jumped out of the car, ran for a set of umbrella-covered tables that decorated the outdoor eating area of the hotel restaurant, and sat in one of the chairs. If the first timeline of the duality came to pass, I’d be right in the path of the flying SUV. It probably wasn’t the best place, but I didn’t need to wait for very long.
The SUV spun around the corner. I held my breath. The driver might reverse into the parking lot and turn around, or he could simply wait a few minutes, which I hoped was enough. He did neither. He just kept driving.
A loud electronic bell caught my attention. The train pulled away from the Convention Center Station and turned onto Fourteenth Avenue. The driver of the SUV took his time. The light changed at California, which meant the light rail had to wait before turning onto California. Normally, it would have stopped at the light, but instead, the light rail operator stopped after the first car turned onto Fourteenth. It’d been a while since I had ridden the light rail, but I knew that behavior was wrong. The operator had blocked traffic on the street behind him. Normally, he would pull forward to the light, which would line
all of the light rail cars along Fourteenth Avenue, allowing traffic to move unimpeded behind him.
I squinted. The operator had pulled far enough ahead for him to see the SUV along the street, as if he had been expecting it. The driver of the SUV veered into the left lane to avoid the Honda. He never slowed.
The light rail accelerated, heedless of the red light. The SUV had the right of way, but the light rail plowed on.
Damn it. Nothing had changed.
I took off at a run, waving my hands. The light rail never slowed, but I knew he wouldn’t bother. I only cared about the SUV.
The SUV’s alarmed driver stared at me through the passenger window. I shouted and pointed at the train. The driver looked at where I pointed as he passed me. Through the back window, I saw Anna staring at me, her eyes wide. The SUV screeched to a stop.
The train slammed into the front of the SUV. I dove across the sidewalk as the light rail spun the vehicle around until it faced the opposite direction. The SUV sat half up on the curb. Smoke poured from under the crushed hood. I stood, rubbing my elbows from where I had tumbled, and glanced at the guys in the front seats. They looked bad, but paramedics in that decade were pretty good about showing up quickly.
A back door of the SUV popped open. A man who must’ve been one of Anna’s bodyguards stumbled out, looking none the worse for wear.
He shook his head, and then he saw me. “Who the hell are you?”
Gunfire erupted before I could answer. The back window of the SUV exploded into fragments. Over the gunshots, I heard Anna scream. Her bodyguard was good. He spun around, his pistol drawn, but he didn’t get the chance to use it. His body jerked several times as three bullets ripped through him. The pistol fell from his grasp.
I darted forward to catch the bodyguard as his legs gave out. He mumbled something, but the words didn’t make sense. I didn’t see any blood, which meant he was wearing a vest. I couldn’t focus on that right then. Anna was still in the vehicle, and there was a man out there with a gun.