Overwritten: Instructions (Part III)

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My plan to avoid Horace Reaver goes swimmingly...for almost five years. One day, I’m surveilling him a little too closely when he spots me. Fortunately, Brian and I prepared for this kind of situation. I started taking acting classes. That’s right, I actually went to a high school at night and took lessons from a third-rate acting coach at the cheapest price. I just needed to learn to lie, but to lie extremely well. He taught me that if I wanted to “get into character” I had to believe that I really was the character. I had to convince myself that the lie was actually the truth. If I could fool myself, he said, then I could fool anybody. So far, it was going about as well as could be expected.

“Why are you following me?” I try to get away from him, but he stops me. “Give me that camera.”

“No, it’s my property.”

“Who hired you.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Give me the goddamn camera.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Tell me who you’re working for!”

“No!” I hope I said that at the right time. My teacher also said that the best way to cover up a big lie was to replace it with a slightly smaller lie. If Reaver knew that I came back from the past and was intending on stopping him from becoming a bad person, he would flip out. If he thought I was following him for other reasons, I might be in trouble, but it would work itself out. It was better than him knowing I was a time traveler. I pretend to be disappointed with myself for letting it slip that he was right about me working for someone. “Crap.”

“So you are following me.”

“My clients are confidential.”

“You’re a private detective?”

I hand him my business card. Yes, we made fake business cards too.

Reaver reads it out loud, “Sockdolager Investigations.”

“Yeah, ya see it’s—” I start to explain.

He cuts me off, “yeah, I get it. Your name is Lincoln. That’s funny.” He is not amused. “I don’t need to know who your client is. Just switch sides.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Come work for me instead.”

“Sir, with all due respect, you don’t have much of anything right now.”

“This is true,” Reaver admits. “But I will in the future. I promise you this. If it’s money you’re worried about, don’t. If there’s one thing I’m not lacking, it’s a way to make money. I have a lock on gambling. Just name your price and it’s yours.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I’m not asking you to marry me. Come start work and I’ll get to know you.”

“What exactly would I be doing?”

“I need a bodyguard, and you look like you can take a hit.”

“Expecting some violence?”

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” he says, as if recalling a memory.

“What’s the catch?”

“Never question me,” he answers. “Always do what I say, even if it feels wrong.”

That was not a good start. But I have been waiting for an opportunity. It would seem that his dreams of becoming a billionaire were well on their way. His viewpoint on money mirrors mine, but more intensely. He too must know what investments to make, but in a far more specific way. Perhaps my plan to watch him from the shadows is no longer valid. Maybe it’s time to get right in the thick of it. He doesn’t seem to recognize me as a security guard from the future. I look older then, and we only met the once. But I realize if he does see me for who I am, he might be planning on killing me later on.

I accept his offer, and soon discover that he wasn’t lying about the salary thing. I start making six figures right away, and my life gets good. Brian and I switch places. I become the one on the frontlines while he pulls back so that I have a way out. I funnel him money on the regular so that he can live a modest life of anonymity. Reaver asks me to do a couple weird things, but I comply. There’s very little close protection work, like he first indicated. Mainly he just wants me to keep tabs on his wife from the alternate timeline, Leona Delaney. Of course I don’t know the details of their original relationship, or this one, and he certainly makes no effort to fill me in, but I still do what I’m told. I genuinely believe that he has no intention of harming her. If his experience as a time traveler is anything like mine, he might have screwed up the timeline unintentionally, and is trying desperately to get back on track by engaging with her in some other way. But if I fear that her life is in any danger, then Brian is there to spirit her away.

I continue writing in my journal of my adventures in the other reality, but decide to stop publishing them online. Even though I never used my real name, and I never mentioned anything that would catch Reaver’s attention, it’s just too risky. If he so much as suspects that I’ve had experiences that cannot be traced through the current timeline, he’ll know I’ve been keeping things from him. It would be too great a coincidence for anyone to believe, especially not for someone as smart as Horace Reaver.

Months into the job, he ushers me into the lair of what Brian would call Reaver’s hackette. “Will it be ready soon?” he asks.

She’s furiously typing on the keyboard and staring at the screen with intensity, but when we round the corner, the monitor is completely blank.

“What the hell is this?”

“You boys have this image in your mind of a hacker typing code at the speed of thought, but it’s a little more complex than that. There’s a lot more trial and error than you would think. Also, we do use mouses. I don’t know why people on TV act like they have a macroinstruction for literally everything.”

“The plural is mice,” I correct her.

“No!” she screams. “It’s mouses! You shut your mouth! You shut it! You shut it now!” She’s a little weird.

“Why aren’t you working on my program?”

“Because I finished it days ago,” she spits. Micro, as she prefers to be called, pulls something up on the screen, and it’s all Greek to me. Well, I mean it would be Greek if I couldn’t read Greek, but I can, so it’s...computer code..to me.

I realize that they’re looking at me curiously.  Reaver snaps his finger in my face. “Still with us?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry about that, sir. I was just...inspecting the perimeter.”

“Nice save, Sergeant.” Micro’s nickname for me.

Reaver leans over and rests his hand on the desk. “Are you absolutely sure that you’re done with this? It is imperative that it be deployed tonight.”

“Yeah, March 29, 2022. I get it. It’ll work.”

“It’ll work?” Reaver asks, feeling no confidence in her words.

“It’s perfect,” Micro assures him. “As long as you don’t turn off the machine, the program will run continuously on its own.”

“Show me the machine.”

Micro hands him a tablet that was plugged into her workstation. “I am warning you that the program eats up battery like a mother, so I recommend having some portable chargers on hand. I have some ready to go in the locker by the door.”

Reaver passes the tablet to me. “You need to get up to Lincoln, Nebraska. Your train leaves just after midnight. If you’re not on it, or you don’t fire up the program once on board, you’re dead to me.”

“This isn’t going to cause the train to derail or something, will it?”

“I seem to remember saying you could have this job as long as you didn’t ask questions.”

“I know, I just...I think I’ve earned your trust by now.”

He looks distracted as he shakes his head. “I have work to do.” He starts to walk away. “Be in Lincoln by midnight.”

“You don’t find it strange that your name is Lincoln and he’s sending you to Lincoln?”

I ignore her and start to fiddle with the tablet.

“Don’t touch that!”

“What does it do?”

“It’s an artificial intelligence that seamlessly takes control of the automated locomotive network and directs it as needed.”

“Obviously,” I say sarcastically, “but what does it do?”

“It doesn’t control where the trains go, but it controls when they get there. Basically we want the the train you’re on to be at a certain point at a certain time, but if we don’t manipulate all the other trains in the area, it will have no reason to be there so late. We have to alter them little by little so that everything seems organic and unavoidable.”

“Why are we doing this?”

She turns back to her workstation. “That is not my job.”

I leave the room and start driving to Lincoln, Nebraska. I dread getting there, and all the jokes I’ll hear from the train workers about my name.

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Microstory 235: Perspective Ten

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Perspective Nine

My pot dealer is an idiot. I mean, of course he’s an idiot; I don’t know what I should have expected, but it’s pretty irritating having to deal with him. He’s always trying to tell me stories, especially about his FBI agent roommate, but he bungles them up because he can barely remember his own name. I would like to find a new dealer, but this isn’t my world, so I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’ve actually tried to hint to him that I’m interested in taking my business elsewhere, but he lacks the brain capacity to understand subtext, and if I were to just straight up ask him, he would be offended. I don’t know why I should be worried about offending a stoner, but I guess a part of me is afraid that he’ll turn me in, even if it means he gets caught too. He’s that dumb. We live in a state where marijuana is completely illegal, and in a part of the state that’s too far from states where it is allowed. When I was first diagnosed, my doctor prescribed me certain medication, but warned me that it was only going to take me so far. She said that my best option was medical marijuana, but admitted that this put me in a pickle. My worsening condition has made it impossible to continue being driver, and so I had to drop down to an entirely different field. Because of the decrease in pay, I can’t just up and move to somewhere that can serve my needs, especially not since I’m still responsible for taking care of my aunt. And so I’m stuck with this doofus. I think I got lucky with him, though. I’m all right with further decriminalization of marijuana, especially for medical purposes. My problem with it is that everyone wants to smoke, which is disgusting. My dealer has an inventory of edibles which work just as well, and don’t muck up the air around me. And bonus, I get to eat brownies and cookies all day without feeling guilty about gaining a few extra pounds. Why people insist on lighting things on fire and putting them in their mouths is something I’ll never understand. The truth is that they think it’s fun, and the damage to their physiology is apparently irrelevant. I’m not saying that I want it to be me, but I do think if we changed the face of weed legalization to someone legitimate, things might actually change. If it weren’t so terribly obvious that the majority of people in favor of such bills were just wastoids in their parents’ basements, we might have something here. Promote your cause by pointing out the medical and psychological benefits of this medicine, and people who would otherwise be against you might actually start listening. I would give almost anything to not have to interact with this moron again.

Perspective Eleven

Microstory 234: Perspective Nine

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Perspective Eight

My roommate and best friend is a cop. Well he’s not really a cop but he’s a FBI agent. Now I know what you’re thinking, dude how could you possibly live with a pig given what you do? But he’s cool. We actually started doing weed together when we were kids. I moved on to pursue the business side of things and ever since then he helps me keep me covered. It’s a pretty choice deal. I don’t know how he hasn’t gotten caught yet or I haven’t but I’m not really that worried. I think most of the time he doesn’t deal with dangerous things that much but he come home the other day and tells me about how a guy kidnapped a girl and then she paid a cop to kill him. Or something like that. Like, I don’t really know if I got that right but I know something like that happened. Truth? It’s kind of hard for me to remember things when I’m in my testing phase. Now I don’t normally do drugs myself that’s not my thing. Not anymore at least. But I do have to sample my own product so I know it’s good. But I’ve grown up from being like that. But I feel like it’s, like, my job to foster the young youth ya know? But to make them understand how to smoke properly and safely. But they need to know that they shouldn’t go out driving and stuff because that’s dangerous and I had this friend when I was just getting into the business who was also trying to get the business and he just didn’t realize that he should probably stop getting high so he could keep track of his business affairs and he also didn’t quite never get the fact that he shouldn’t drive and he drove and he died. It was pretty sad I was at his funeral. He had the coolest collection of those cards where the little slave animals live in balls and are only let out so they can fight each other. And all I’m saying is that I don’t get how they live in those balls. Yeah sure it seems like they have some kind of shrinking technology but, like, it doesn’t seem like they use it to shrink anything else? It seems like it would be pretty handy to, ya know, make things go smaller. I was thinking the other day if you could shrink things then you should be a doctor and shrink yourself and then you could go into a patient’s body with a gun and shoot a tumor or something. That would be pretty cool. Have you noticed that the word tumor kind of sounds like a place, like people should live in Tumor, Germany or something. But I guess it would be weird.

Perspective Ten

Microstory 233: Perspective Eight

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Perspective Seven

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m corrupt, but I’ve certainly broken a rule or two. Or three. There are some laws-slash-suggestions that are just too inconvenient—nay, impractical. Trying to follow every single one of them just wouldn’t be good for my heart—I mean, the populace. But now my superiors are asking me to keep quiet on a matter relevant to a case involving the local police. The fact is that we were investigating a suspect for an entirely separate case, and found him to be innocent. There were some things we determined based on the profile we made about him, but it’s not like we had anything definitive. We had no evidence; we only had suspicions. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really care. The police officer who shot and killed him is not a concern of mine. I just wish the FBI would realize that I have their best interests at heart. Someday, the truth will come out. It won’t be tomorrow, it might be ten years from now, but at some point, someone is going to be in a position to catch a file that indicates what we knew and when we knew it. It would be better for them to just reveal this bit of information now and assure people that there was no way for us to stop what happened to the girl he ended up kidnapping. No law enforcement agency is responsible for preventing crime, or worse, carrying out justice on crimes that have not yet happened. But we should tell them because they need to have all the facts before they make a determination for what happens to the officer in question. I just don’t want to be the one to have to speak up about it. It would be tragically ironic if the one time I went against the bureau by doing the right thing is the one time I get caught. Well, it would be less ironic, and more annoying. Never mind. I’m just gonna let it go. But I am going to make a copy of the evidence, just so you'll at least know:

Perspective Nine

Microstory 232: Perspective Seven

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Perspective Six

As a therapist, I understand that it’s my job to be patient, unbiased, and careful. It can get pretty hard, though. One of my clients is a chronic cheater. I’ve tried to give him my best professional opinion on the matter, but in the end, he’s an adult. At some point, you just need to grow up and make the decision to stop your destructive behavior. I admit that I kind of tried a little experiment with him. I kept altering my diagnosis little by little. Each time I did, he would be able to resist his temptations for a while, but then he would regress. His brain was excellent at finding loopholes to his condition, so that he would never have to actually change his ways and commit to being a better person. When I first went to college, I had every intention of studying philosophy. I knew this upperclassman girl in high school who happened to be taking philosophy class while I was a freshman. She gave me her locker combination, and I would regularly go in and take her textbook to read ahead of time. Once I actually took the class for myself, I was a superstar, and already knew the “answers”. But then I got to college and realized that I no longer cared. I don’t know what happened in the short year between my formal introduction to the field and starting summer classes at the university, but I was done with it. I understood the value of asking questions with no answers, but I was no longer personally interested in the matter.

I spent a couple of years trying a few things; English literature, film and theatre, and even art history, the biggest cliché of all. Upon starting psychology, time was running out, and I really just needed to settle on something. It was a relatively small program, if you can believe it, so I chose to trust the devil I knew. I continued to pursue the subject in graduate school, and here I am. I considered going after the research side of the field, because I’m not a particularly warm and inviting person, but there’s too much math. I kind of have to push myself to talk to these people every day. But now I find myself trying to figure out the solution to a dilemma. After some deductive reasoning, I’ve discovered that my newest client is one of my oldest clients’ most recent extramarital affair. I suppose it was bound to happen, with statistics being what they are. Both of them are aware of some vital information regarding an ongoing case involving a kidnapping and a police shooting. The new client is an FBI agent who’s being told to hold back the evidence while the old client just overheard it, and is married to the cop involved. Suddenly I’m feeling like I should have at least kept going with philosophy for one more semester, so I would have had the opportunity to take Ethics.

Perspective Eight

Microstory 231: Perspective Six

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Perspective Five

Image courtesy of Jay Highfill.

My wife has been on the job for too long. She claims to be years from retirement, but she could do it now, and we would still be fine. I suppose I shouldn’t say that we would be fine. I’ve been stepping out on her off and on pretty much since our relationship began, so we haven’t ever felt truly together. I justify my actions by pretending that she knows about it, but the reality is that I have no idea if she has any idea. We got together when we were young, before being gay was socially acceptable. She was my beard at the time, but I failed to inform her of the position. It’s a bad excuse anyway, because I don’t only cheat on her with guys. I thought I might be addicted to sex, but my therapist suggests I’m really addicted to the thrill. Apparently the sex itself isn’t relevant, but I just like knowing that I could get caught at any moment. The fact that my wife owns several guns and is smart enough to know how to get rid of a body makes it that much more exciting. I didn’t know if I believed that theory, but any idea to get me to stop what I’m doing is a good one. I actually did manage to stop for almost two years, but then I met this hot young thing at a bar frequented by my wife’s colleagues, and I just couldn’t resist. I guess my therapist was right. My wife is in hearings all day after an officer-involved shooting by her partner, so I decide to meet my lover at “the usual place”. While I’m drying off after a shower, I overhear my latest fling on the phone with his superiors at the FBI. I can’t hear the whole thing, but I do learn that the suspect my wife’s partner killed was previously under investigation for sex-related crimes. I don’t hear when or why the investigation was dropped. I feel the need to tell my wife the new information, but how do I explain how I found out about it?

Perspective Seven

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 3, 2057

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“Prince Darko,” Leona said.

“Why does he call himself that?”

“He hasn’t explained it,” she replied.

“And he wants to see me?”

“He says you and he have something in common.” That can’t be good. The Cleanser said that he would be contacting him again in the next few days, not the very next day. But it would be odd to have two different nicknames anyway, so it probably isn’t The Cleanser come calling. No, but it is an unusual coincidence. They have to be wary about everyone they meet, but when a strange young man interrupts Leona’s walk with her little big brother, there is an even greater cause for concern.

“He didn’t say anything else?” Mateo asked.

“No, but he claims to be a salmon, just like us. He stressed the part about being just like us, in fact.”

“I don’t like you talking to people who come out of nowhere in the park. How the hell did he find you?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Well,” Mateo began,” send him in, and cancel my 10:30.”

“Yes sir,” Leona said, snickering.

Mateo grabbed the miniature bat from the corner while Leona opened the door and let the stranger in. Prince Darko took a look at it and said, “you don’t need that.”

Mateo did not respond, because it was an obviously stupid remark.

“May we speak alone?”

“She’s my partner. I don’t like to be away from her.”

Darko looked at Leona like he did not approve of their relationship.

“She stays, or you go. Or she stays and you go. That would be even better.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“No der,” Mateo spat. “I don’t trust anybody. But I especially don’t trust anyone who claims to be a prince.”

“I’m not actually a prince. That’s just what my mother always called me, and now that I’m a salmon, I have trouble answering to anything else.”

“You mean...” Leona started.

“Yes,” he answered before she finished her question. “The powers that be implanted the name in my brain so that I can’t use anything else, just like they do with resurrected salmon. I’m sure they get a good laugh out of it.”

“Well, Prince Darko,” Mateo said. “How can we help you?”

He was struggling to come up with the right words. “I’m your...third leg.”

“My what?” That was inappropriate.

“Of the tripod,” he clarified. “We’re a tripod. You, Leona, and I are three of a kind. I’m on your pattern.”

“Since when?”

“To be honest, I was on this pattern before you were, so technically it’s mine.”

“Where have you been?”

“It’s a big, big world,” was all he said.

“That’s not an answer,” Leona said.

“I lived in Ohio,” Prince Darko explained. “I don’t know why, but only recently did The Delegator contact me and inform me of your existence. I’ve been doing this alone for forty-five days.”

Mateo looked over to Leona who told him that he would have begun in 2012, a full two years before Mateo’s first jump. “What have you been up to then?”

“Nothing interesting. I was in my house when it happened. When I jumped back into the timestream, there was another family living there, which was a lot of fun at midnight. Fortunately, I had paid for an entire year of self-storage, so I took all my camping supplies, and I’ve been living off the land ever since.”

“Just like that?” Mateo asked suspiciously. You realized what was going on within one day, which is not yet a pattern, and took the opportunity to start a new life. How could you have known that it was going to happen again?”

“I didn’t. I just...needed somewhere to live, and my tent was already there. It was only after I jumped again that I discovered my timeslipping wasn’t going away.”

Mateo looked to Leona again who only shrugged her shoulders. His story was believable enough, but it was still weird that they had not yet heard of him before. Why did the powers that be wait to bring them together? “Why did the powers that be wait to bring us together?”

“I was told that you were busy running for your lives. I guess they didn’t want to interrupt that.”

“You seemed to have been told a lot. How long was your conversation with the Delegator?”

“Look, I understand that you need to feel me out and size me up, but I’m just telling you what I know. I’m not here to hurt you, or step on anyone’s toes. I’m just trying to keep my head down and do what I’m told.”

“That’s not really our style,” Leona said. “We question everything, and we resist.”

“That’s fine,” Prince Darko said with some excitement. “When I say I do what I’m told, I’m referring to you. Tell me what to do. This is your show.”

“Please wait outside,” Leona told him dismissively. “We need to discuss your application.”

“Very well,” Prince Darko said humbly, with a bow.

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” Mateo argued after the stranger had gone.

“Never do anything without having an answer for why,” Leona argued back.

“Never assume you already have the whole story.”

“Never be surprised.”

“Treat everyone you meet with respect.”

“Do not relinquish control of your own life.”

She had a point there. He had no answer to it. “Um...pack the essentials?”

“Did you hear what he said about it being midnight?”

“Yeah, he jumps at the same time we do, which would make sense.”

“No,” Leona complained. “He’s from Ohio. Midnight there is eleven o’clock for us. He’s not on our pattern.”

“So, he’s an hour early. He can’t control that. What exactly is the problem?”

“Don’t you think, if the powers that be wanted him to be part of the group, they would have us on the exact same schedule?”

“Since when do we do something “just cuz the powers say so”.

“That’s a good point,” Leona said hesitantly. “I guess.”

“I feel something for him,” Mateo said. “It’s the same feeling I had when I first met Danica. I think we may be related.”

“Funny that didn’t work when you were dating your sister, Frida.”

“We’re not gonna talk about that!” Mateo yelled, likely loud enough for Prince Darko to hear.

“Whatever.” Leona crossed her arms like a little child.

“Darko is a Croatian name,” Mateo said. “Just like Daria, just like Mario, just like Danica, and just like Mateo.”

She closed her eyelids softly and shook her head slightly. “I suppose I didn’t know that. That would be another odd coincidence. And I imagine, if you two are related, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for the powers that be to keep you apart, just for funsies.”

Mateo stuck his head out the door and looked down the hall to Prince Darko. “Hey, are we related?”

“I am the illegitimate son of Mario Matic.”

Without saying anything else, Mario pulled himself back through the doorway. “Well, there you go. That was easy.”

“Why didn’t he say that when he was pleading his case?”

“Why’s the sky blue? Why does it always fall butter side down?”

“Light scatter and half spin,” Leona said, like he was a dummy for not knowing the answers.

“We’re letting him into our group,” Mateo said, taking charge. “And we’re going to see where it goes. “Treat everyone you meet with respect,” he repeated.

“I sure hope you’re right,” Leona said in a cautious voice.

“If he kills us and where’s our skin, then that’s life. I’m seventy-one years old.”

She scoffed and shook her head. “You’re such an idiot.”

“Were I you,” Mateo said to her lovingly.

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Overwritten: Confused and Grumpy (Part II)

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Brian and I make some big decisions. If I’ve been given a second chance at life then I have a responsibility to go full force. College was nice the first time around, but it didn’t really help me in the end. One thing I do know is what companies are going to succeed and when. Sort of. I don’t exactly have perfect recall, so it’s not like I can invest in a company and sell it off the day before it makes a big dip. I also feel the need to keep myself particularly anonymous, in case Horace Reaver or his sponsor realize that they weren’t the only ones who went back in time. Instead, it’s my job to tell Brian what stocks to buy, and give him by best estimate as to when to sell them. Everything is in his name. Lincoln Rutherford is nobody.

While we’re living off of our investments, we move to Kansas and try to keep tabs on Horace Reaver. Our families are shocked by our massive shifts in lifestyles, but the money I send to my parents on a weekly basis is enough to keep them from asking too many questions. I assure them that it has nothing to do with guns or drugs, and they consider that to be a satisfactory answer. It’s fairly easy to convince them since there is a paper trail, and I’m not lying. We don’t do anything too big because, again, we don’t want to raise suspicion. The IRS and the FTC are threats to us as well. As far as we can tell, Reaver isn’t killing anybody. But then again, he’s just a kid at this point in the timeline. He does check himself into a mental institution, but we don’t quite know why.

After a few months of being completely confused and grumpy about sometimes having the knowledge of two conflicting outcomes of events, Brian makes a suggestion. I start to keep a journal, and even later publish my writings to a public blog, under the guise of fictional stories. I write down anything and everything I remember from the alternate timeline, so that when this timeline overwrites my memories, I have some reference to go back to. I half believe the timey-wimey ball will erase my stories from the web just because, but it keeps rolling and leaves me alone. I spend a not insignificant amount of time rereading my own work after the memories in question have left me. The stories feel like just that; stories. They don’t seem real to me, and I barely recall even writing them down. It’s like another person’s life, but everything he does is what I would do. This gives reliable ol’ Brian yet another bright idea. Since my memory loss is giving me a fair amount of stress, he helps me check myself into the same mental institution as Horace Reaver. This allows me to get a closer look while also hopefully actually helping me feel better. Again, it’s not like I’m lying.

“My name’s Kyle,” a man several years older than me says with his hand outstretched, like we’re meeting for a business lunch.

“Lincoln.”

“You don’t like to talk in group.”

“No.”

“You’re losing memories?”

“I am.”

“I think there’s something more to it.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Kyle eyes me curiously. “I’m just gonna throw something out there. Know that I’m a lawyer, and I can tell when you’re lying. So it doesn’t matter how you answer. I’ll know the truth from your reaction; your microexpressions.”

“Give it a shot,” I say, trying to sound as cool as possible. Does he know?

“Are you a time traveler?” He does, what the hell?

“No.”

He smiles and lifts his head in understanding.

I take a chance, “I mean, yes. How did you know?”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“How do you know they weren’t lying?”

“No, I mean I literally saw it. A few years ago, my friend disappeared before my eyes in a cemetery. I just saw him about a week ago. He came to prove that he’s still alive and well. But I can tell that he’s the same.”

“What do you mean he’s the same?” I repeat.

“I mean for me it’s been years, but I can tell that it’s only been a few days for him, not because he hasn’t aged, but because he hasn’t grown. He’s been skipping time. I don’t know why since I’m not in his circle of trust, but he’s not my concern. I only used him as a template so that when a second guy told me that he was in a similar condition, it just confirmed it. Time travel is real. That second traveler actually lives here.”

“Horace Reaver,” I say.

“He’s talked to you too,” he says, only half as a question.

“As far as I know, he does not know about me. I would appreciate it if you kept me to yourself. It’s possible I was sent back with him to keep him in line.”

“Why would he need that?”

“He killed people in the future.”

“So you’re not having memory problems?” Kyle asks, not as worried about learning that his little friend is a murder.

“No, I am,” I clarify. “But my memories of 2038 have yet to be overwritten, so they’re still there. I know what he is, and I have to stop him.”

“We can do that together. As long as it means you’re not planning on killing him.”

“My friend says that you can’t kill Hitler.”

“He’s as bad as Hitler?”

“No,” I say, holding back a terrible laugh. “It’s just an expression. If I tried stopping him before he becomes what he becomes, then I could end up being the one who makes him what he becomes. So for now, I’m just going to watch.”

“He has big ideas about the future, Lincoln,” Kyle admits. “He doesn’t want to take over the world, but he wants to make it a better place. Whether he’s capable of this is yet to be seen, but he certainly believes that to be his destiny.”

“I see.”

“Since you apparently know what he turns into, should I stop him? Should I crush his dreams?”

I think about this for a moment. Brian says that Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act is not to be taken so literally. If time doesn’t want you to do something, then you won’t be able to do it. One thing to keep in mind is that Reaver is in the same boat. He knows the same things as me, if not more. He’s apparently already shown an interest in doing things differently. Perhaps his entire goal is to prevent his own murders by making his life better, so he’s not necessarily fated to become a maniac. There’s a chance to save him, but I have to be in it for the long haul. No single moment makes someone who they are. This is going to be a fulltime job, and I’m going to need help. Kyle is perfect, because I don’t have to convince him of the truth. I just need to stay with him, and make sure that we’re making the right decisions. But from behind the scenes. It is absolutely imperative that Horace Reaver know nothing of my involvement, or the plan fails; whatever that plan may turn out to be. “Foster his dreams,” I say, almost like an order.

“How’s that now? He wants to build a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. Are we sure that’s wise?”

“All the better. He wasn’t a billionaire in the original timeline, and that’s the one where he kills people. I was never familiar enough with the case to fully understand his motivations, but if he’s rich, maybe that’ll be enough. At the very least, we’ve stepped on a number of butterflies by helping him. We must diverge from the other timeline as much as possible. I understand this now.” I grow very serious and start pointing my finger at Kyle. “But you have to stay with him. You have to make him a better person. Don’t give yourself away, but don’t slack off. Give him what he needs, even if he doesn’t know what that is.”

“What are you going to do?”

I shrug. “I’m going to do what I already know. I’m going to become a security guard. And if he ever does build that conglomerate, I’ll be the first in line to apply.”

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