(no subject)
Chapter 1
The diner was smoky. This came as a surprise to Dylan. It wasn’t that a smoky diner was anything spectacular it’s just his mind had been running through all the possibilities of what he would see in this diner today and some how smoky never occurred to him. Dylan ran through the finalist on the list of possibilities one more time before he made his way to the back corner. The back corner where he would run into a ghost, a con-man, and angel, knowing James it was more likely a demon. As fantastic as all of these possibilities were it seemed more likely than the simple fact that it might just be James, seeing as James died 4 years ago. Yet today Dylan got a voicemail from him today.
Dylan paused at the door trying to prepare himself for the meeting, but found it exceedingly difficult. His emotional response was going to be based entirely on what it was that he saw there in that corner and having no idea what that may be he decided it would be best just to go and see. This sort of thing would normally just be written off in his head as a prank, if it wasn’t for the voice being identical. It had been four years but he recognized it immediately. He tried to take the first step but his body wouldn’t let him move. Dylan took a second, breathed in deep and walked forward.
In the corner sat a man, this man was dressed in a dark purple button up shirt and had dress pants on, his clothes and jewelry looked like they were a style that was big somewhere else and would soon take on here. The man had long hair that was pulled back. The man had one trembling hand holding a lit cigarette covering his face, the man was looking down on to the table at a cup of coffee and badly needed a shave, when Dylan got closer he noticed he needed a shower as well. When Dylan got close enough to catch the mans attention he noticed the man was wearing thin blue tinted sunglasses. Behind those eyes he saw his eyes were wet, not necessarily with tears but perhaps with frustration and exhaustion. Dylan was staring into this mans eyes with more emotions then he though possible at once, confusion, fear, joy, sadness, anger, and curiosity were all fighting to be in the foreground of his heart. All of this was happening because the man in front of him was James.
“How?” was all that Dylan was able to muster.
“Am I? In a bad way.” James responded. His voice exactly how Dylan remembered it.
“How are you here, are you here, am I dreaming?”
James laughed a sick laugh, one that was not pleasant to the ears. “I hate that question, of course you’re not dreaming, if you were dreaming things would be out of focus and details would be sketchy, just look at the forks or the clock or the trees out the window and you can tell you’re not dreaming.”
Dylan was off put by that comment, not because it offended him but because only James could go off on a rant like that about nothing in a time like this.
“Ha now I know it’s you, you asshole.” Dylan said while smiling with tears in his eyes.
“Look sorry man it’s just been a rough… time.” James smirked at that statement.
“James how the fuck are you not dead, you died four years ago, how are we having this conversation?”
“Look I need your help.”
“I’ll say, your dead you need help doing anything beyond rotting and being worm food, how are you here.”
“That is such a silly question to ask when there are far more important questions that you could be asking.”
“Odd I can’t think of anything that is more important to know then that as of right now.”
“How about this one then,” James leans in close so no one else can hear. “If god creates the world does that give him the authority to end it?”
“Did god bring you back?”
“Ha, he wishes he was god maybe, no I came back on my own, not on purpose, really.”
“For fuck sake James you are not making any sense. Please just tell me how you are here right now.”
“Ok.”
“Ok?”
“Ok.” James said, but this time defensively. “Only if you promise to help me though.”
“You’re my best friend who has been for four fucking years of course I will help you.
“Promise?”
“Yes I promise.” Dylan was now more frustrated and confused then he had ever been in his life.
“That’s a bold move sir.” James took a long drag of his cigarette “You don’t know what I am asking for.”
“I don’t care, like I said before you are my best friend I trust you.”
James let out another of his sick laughs; he leans across the table and laughs again in Dylan’s face. “You sure about that.”
“Would it make you feel better if I asked what I was promising to help you with?”
“It would as a matter of fact.”
Dylan stares at James exasperated. “You’ve only been back alive for 5 minutes and I already want to kill you again. Fine James, what do you want me to help you with.”
“Redemption.”
Dylan looks at James his frustration leveled out and his confusion now on the rise, decided it would be best not to say anything, so far it has brought him nothing but more confusion. After it became apparent that James was waiting for some sort of response he finally responded with. “Ok.”
“Ok.” James fired back.
Dylan waited again for some sort of response from James. After it became apparent that he was content to leave the conversation where it was Dylan took the risk of speaking again. “Will you please explain to me now how you are alive?”
James paused for a moment debating on how to begin, finally he shrugged and said. “There is far too much, I don’t know how to begin. So why don’t you just ask questions and I will answer them for you.”
“Fair enough, how did you get here?”
“By a bus.”
Dylan had caught on at this point and with out skipping a beat shot back with “How did you come back to life.”
“I never died.”
“So you faked your death.”
“Nope.”
“I watched them bury your body. Were you not really dead?”
“No and yes.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does actually; you just don’t know the story as to how it makes sense.”
“Then tell me the story.”
“Too much, next question.”
“That’s not fair you have to answer the questions.”
“No I don’t, no rules were agreed upon, and I am doing this to you as a favor.”
“A favor!” Anger was now the primary emotion for Dylan. “Are you kidding me, why are you playing these games?”
“I am not playing games, I am just giving the honest answers, and it’s just not what you want to hear.”
“Fine then I won’t help you with this redemption crap.”
“Ah but you see,” James took another long drag and then pointed at Dylan. “You promised.”
Dylan clenched a fist and suppressed this great ball of anger building inside of him. Having no idea how to proceed with out playing this game he decided to concede to it. “Who was that in the coffin?”
“It was me, just not the me me that you know.”
“Did you have an identical twin that you never told me about?”
“Ha, no?”
“Shit man, I don’t know any other way I can make sense of this.” After a pause. “How did you die?”
“I killed myself.”
“You committed suicide?”
“Not really. Well, I never thought of it that way but one could say that I suppose.”
“How did you commit suicide?”
“That time.”
“You’ve committed suicide multiple times?’
“Hundreds.”
“Successfully?”
“Never failed once.”
“Sure then this time.”
“I died of a heroin overdose.”
“I thought you said it was suicide?’
“I didn’t I said that one could describe it as suicide, it is usually an OD of some kind but some times it’s a car wreck or gun shot, things like that.”
“So there is more then one of you?” “At this time no, the one and only one and only.”
“Because you killed the rest?”
“Look at you, I am proud of you fast learner.”
“So is there multiples of everyone?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds, thousands, depending on the person.”
“So what are you from like another dimension or something like that?”
“Nope, that’s just silly, but I guess that would be a way for you to understand it.”
“I don’t believe it. It’s ridiculous.”
“Fine then, I am the second coming of Jesus Christ and I came back from the dead.”
“Point made. Ok so how did you stumble into learning to travel through dimensions?”
“I told you it is not dimensional travel.”
“Then what is it.”
“Time, I travel through time.”
2
Dylan looked at James, trying to figure out, well trying to figure out anything about this situation. A time traveler is that even plausible. He thought to himself it seemed about as plausible as any other scenario that could explain his dead friend’s presence. After a long uncomfortable bout of silence Dylan asked James. “Can I get a smoke?” James passed one over and Dylan light up.
James slides his pack across the table. Dylan took one of the cigarettes and lit it up. He drew in one breathe and savored it, he had quit smoking 5 years ago, but now he relished in the familiar feel. Anything familiar was good to him right now.
“Alright so if you are a time traveler then you have come back from the past?” Dylan asked.
“No, the future, why would you think I am from the past?”
“Well you died, so you can’t be from the future, which means you must be from the past.”
“That is going off of assumptions, which makes an ass out of you.”
“How is that an assumption, if something changes in the past that means the future has to change with it? Even more important if you don’t exist in the future then how can you go back in time.”
“Oh so now you’re the time travel expert it seems.”
“That has nothing to do with it; it’s just common fucking sense.”
“Is it?”
“It is.”
“Sure it is, if you go off of old assumptions about how it works, all of which are wrong might I add.”
“Please James will you stop talking in circles.”
“When you live a life like mine everything is in circles.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“And until you open up your mind to non linear thinking you won’t”
“Please enlighten me then.”
James remained still for a moment and then he reached out to the sugar container on his table. He screwed off the top and poured it out on to the table in one long thick line.
“James what the fuck are you doing.”
“Visual aid, I think it will simplify things.”
“I don’t think the waitress will be happy with that.”
“She doesn’t fucking matter.” James yelled in a surprise fit of anger. “That is what I am trying to explain to you.”
The quite buzz of chatter and people eating were suddenly silenced. Dylan waived to the waitress as if to imply he had the situation under control, when he knew the truth was far from that.
“Is everything alright?” The waitress asked.
“Yes I’m very sorry I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Oh but it will it will happen again and again and again and again.”
“Ok, just go ahead and show me what you were going to show me.”
“Ok then, look at this stream of sugar. Now let’s assume this stream is what we know as the time stream.” James took the knife from the table and ran it up the center of the stream. “In my time, time 1, they invented a machine that allows us to jump back in the time stream.” James then took the knife raised it off the table and moved it back towards the middle of the stream. “Now as long as you don’t do any significant changes then you will continue traveling through the stream and time will self adjust where needed, however, if you make a large change that is too impacting then,” James uses the knife to separate part of the sugar from the rest. “The time stream splits and a new time is formed.”
“I’m confused, so what happens in the future then if time splits.”
“To your future, nothing, which is how I can kill myself in the past and still be here right now.” James makes more paths in the sugar arching out like a palm tree.
“Wait, so by changing the past you don’t actually affect the future, well not your future at least?”
“You really are a quick learner Dylan; this is why we were friends.”
Dylan leaned back in his chair trying to soak it all in. His mind was whirling with all the new thoughts trying to grasp the situation as well as trying to decide if he believed in it. “Ok, well if you can’t change anything in this world well what is the point for time travel?”
“Vacation, mostly and retirement.”
“Why would someone want to retire in a different time stream or whatever?”
“We refer to it as branches. See that is the beauty of it when you are not on your branch time doesn’t apply to you.”
“What does that mean, like you stop ageing or something?”
“Exactly. You can live forever.”
“Bull shit, that can’t be.”
“Once again it seems you are the time expert here. Please purge me of my ignorance.”
“How does that make sense?”
“Look I’m not a scientist, I am a researcher, I didn’t invent the machine I just was paid to use it.”
Dylan finished his cigarette far quicker then he had anticipated and debated on asking for a second then returned his attention to James.
“Fine moving on, what did you do then, I mean what did they pay you to do?”
“Set up and maintain time funds.”
“You’re a banker?”
James laughed. “One could say that sure. One of the benefits to working for my company is that they have the perfect retirement package. What I do is go back into a different branch and set up a bank account, I take the money and invest it with a mapped out pattern to earn the retiree a set amount of money based on there level with in the company. I then stay in that time and make sure that all of the investments pan out correctly and adjust accordingly. Eventually when the retiree retires I relinquish the account to them and then I am off to my next assignment.”
“That’s insane, so you stay here frozen in age and get to live a life of little to no responsibility. How does it pay?”
“A lot, I get to drain off of the investments and use the money as I see fit, I can’t take it with me across worlds so I can’t save anything. It usually winds up being about five million that I spend over twenty years or so.”
“Are you kidding me? How much do the retirees wind up with?”
“You don’t want to know, but a fuck ton.”
“That sounds like you hit the jackpot man, that job is insane, how did you luck out with that?’”
“Luck out? You got the insane part right but the rest, fuck man, you are lost beyond lost. The job makes you insane. Time is something that we take as a truth, something that we know and understand and is simple. Can you imagine what it is to wake up one morning and it is twenty years ago. Or to go to bed in one time and wake up in another, to only age some of the time. I mean the future becomes the past and the past doesn’t happen and you start to just fucking be gone, because nothing else makes sense why the fuck should you.” James started to laugh or maybe it was cry. Regardless Dylan took it as a sign that he needed to intervene somehow.
“Alright, I’m sorry, I am not going to tell you I understand because I have no clue what you must be going through, but what do you need me to do to help you with.”
“I was done, but I lost it. I can’t get back; I need to find a man named Sam, Sam Deckon.”
“What did you lose?”
“The anchor, it’s what allows us to get back home. Without it I will be stuck here forever.”
The diner was smoky. This came as a surprise to Dylan. It wasn’t that a smoky diner was anything spectacular it’s just his mind had been running through all the possibilities of what he would see in this diner today and some how smoky never occurred to him. Dylan ran through the finalist on the list of possibilities one more time before he made his way to the back corner. The back corner where he would run into a ghost, a con-man, and angel, knowing James it was more likely a demon. As fantastic as all of these possibilities were it seemed more likely than the simple fact that it might just be James, seeing as James died 4 years ago. Yet today Dylan got a voicemail from him today.
Dylan paused at the door trying to prepare himself for the meeting, but found it exceedingly difficult. His emotional response was going to be based entirely on what it was that he saw there in that corner and having no idea what that may be he decided it would be best just to go and see. This sort of thing would normally just be written off in his head as a prank, if it wasn’t for the voice being identical. It had been four years but he recognized it immediately. He tried to take the first step but his body wouldn’t let him move. Dylan took a second, breathed in deep and walked forward.
In the corner sat a man, this man was dressed in a dark purple button up shirt and had dress pants on, his clothes and jewelry looked like they were a style that was big somewhere else and would soon take on here. The man had long hair that was pulled back. The man had one trembling hand holding a lit cigarette covering his face, the man was looking down on to the table at a cup of coffee and badly needed a shave, when Dylan got closer he noticed he needed a shower as well. When Dylan got close enough to catch the mans attention he noticed the man was wearing thin blue tinted sunglasses. Behind those eyes he saw his eyes were wet, not necessarily with tears but perhaps with frustration and exhaustion. Dylan was staring into this mans eyes with more emotions then he though possible at once, confusion, fear, joy, sadness, anger, and curiosity were all fighting to be in the foreground of his heart. All of this was happening because the man in front of him was James.
“How?” was all that Dylan was able to muster.
“Am I? In a bad way.” James responded. His voice exactly how Dylan remembered it.
“How are you here, are you here, am I dreaming?”
James laughed a sick laugh, one that was not pleasant to the ears. “I hate that question, of course you’re not dreaming, if you were dreaming things would be out of focus and details would be sketchy, just look at the forks or the clock or the trees out the window and you can tell you’re not dreaming.”
Dylan was off put by that comment, not because it offended him but because only James could go off on a rant like that about nothing in a time like this.
“Ha now I know it’s you, you asshole.” Dylan said while smiling with tears in his eyes.
“Look sorry man it’s just been a rough… time.” James smirked at that statement.
“James how the fuck are you not dead, you died four years ago, how are we having this conversation?”
“Look I need your help.”
“I’ll say, your dead you need help doing anything beyond rotting and being worm food, how are you here.”
“That is such a silly question to ask when there are far more important questions that you could be asking.”
“Odd I can’t think of anything that is more important to know then that as of right now.”
“How about this one then,” James leans in close so no one else can hear. “If god creates the world does that give him the authority to end it?”
“Did god bring you back?”
“Ha, he wishes he was god maybe, no I came back on my own, not on purpose, really.”
“For fuck sake James you are not making any sense. Please just tell me how you are here right now.”
“Ok.”
“Ok?”
“Ok.” James said, but this time defensively. “Only if you promise to help me though.”
“You’re my best friend who has been for four fucking years of course I will help you.
“Promise?”
“Yes I promise.” Dylan was now more frustrated and confused then he had ever been in his life.
“That’s a bold move sir.” James took a long drag of his cigarette “You don’t know what I am asking for.”
“I don’t care, like I said before you are my best friend I trust you.”
James let out another of his sick laughs; he leans across the table and laughs again in Dylan’s face. “You sure about that.”
“Would it make you feel better if I asked what I was promising to help you with?”
“It would as a matter of fact.”
Dylan stares at James exasperated. “You’ve only been back alive for 5 minutes and I already want to kill you again. Fine James, what do you want me to help you with.”
“Redemption.”
Dylan looks at James his frustration leveled out and his confusion now on the rise, decided it would be best not to say anything, so far it has brought him nothing but more confusion. After it became apparent that James was waiting for some sort of response he finally responded with. “Ok.”
“Ok.” James fired back.
Dylan waited again for some sort of response from James. After it became apparent that he was content to leave the conversation where it was Dylan took the risk of speaking again. “Will you please explain to me now how you are alive?”
James paused for a moment debating on how to begin, finally he shrugged and said. “There is far too much, I don’t know how to begin. So why don’t you just ask questions and I will answer them for you.”
“Fair enough, how did you get here?”
“By a bus.”
Dylan had caught on at this point and with out skipping a beat shot back with “How did you come back to life.”
“I never died.”
“So you faked your death.”
“Nope.”
“I watched them bury your body. Were you not really dead?”
“No and yes.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does actually; you just don’t know the story as to how it makes sense.”
“Then tell me the story.”
“Too much, next question.”
“That’s not fair you have to answer the questions.”
“No I don’t, no rules were agreed upon, and I am doing this to you as a favor.”
“A favor!” Anger was now the primary emotion for Dylan. “Are you kidding me, why are you playing these games?”
“I am not playing games, I am just giving the honest answers, and it’s just not what you want to hear.”
“Fine then I won’t help you with this redemption crap.”
“Ah but you see,” James took another long drag and then pointed at Dylan. “You promised.”
Dylan clenched a fist and suppressed this great ball of anger building inside of him. Having no idea how to proceed with out playing this game he decided to concede to it. “Who was that in the coffin?”
“It was me, just not the me me that you know.”
“Did you have an identical twin that you never told me about?”
“Ha, no?”
“Shit man, I don’t know any other way I can make sense of this.” After a pause. “How did you die?”
“I killed myself.”
“You committed suicide?”
“Not really. Well, I never thought of it that way but one could say that I suppose.”
“How did you commit suicide?”
“That time.”
“You’ve committed suicide multiple times?’
“Hundreds.”
“Successfully?”
“Never failed once.”
“Sure then this time.”
“I died of a heroin overdose.”
“I thought you said it was suicide?’
“I didn’t I said that one could describe it as suicide, it is usually an OD of some kind but some times it’s a car wreck or gun shot, things like that.”
“So there is more then one of you?” “At this time no, the one and only one and only.”
“Because you killed the rest?”
“Look at you, I am proud of you fast learner.”
“So is there multiples of everyone?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds, thousands, depending on the person.”
“So what are you from like another dimension or something like that?”
“Nope, that’s just silly, but I guess that would be a way for you to understand it.”
“I don’t believe it. It’s ridiculous.”
“Fine then, I am the second coming of Jesus Christ and I came back from the dead.”
“Point made. Ok so how did you stumble into learning to travel through dimensions?”
“I told you it is not dimensional travel.”
“Then what is it.”
“Time, I travel through time.”
2
Dylan looked at James, trying to figure out, well trying to figure out anything about this situation. A time traveler is that even plausible. He thought to himself it seemed about as plausible as any other scenario that could explain his dead friend’s presence. After a long uncomfortable bout of silence Dylan asked James. “Can I get a smoke?” James passed one over and Dylan light up.
James slides his pack across the table. Dylan took one of the cigarettes and lit it up. He drew in one breathe and savored it, he had quit smoking 5 years ago, but now he relished in the familiar feel. Anything familiar was good to him right now.
“Alright so if you are a time traveler then you have come back from the past?” Dylan asked.
“No, the future, why would you think I am from the past?”
“Well you died, so you can’t be from the future, which means you must be from the past.”
“That is going off of assumptions, which makes an ass out of you.”
“How is that an assumption, if something changes in the past that means the future has to change with it? Even more important if you don’t exist in the future then how can you go back in time.”
“Oh so now you’re the time travel expert it seems.”
“That has nothing to do with it; it’s just common fucking sense.”
“Is it?”
“It is.”
“Sure it is, if you go off of old assumptions about how it works, all of which are wrong might I add.”
“Please James will you stop talking in circles.”
“When you live a life like mine everything is in circles.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“And until you open up your mind to non linear thinking you won’t”
“Please enlighten me then.”
James remained still for a moment and then he reached out to the sugar container on his table. He screwed off the top and poured it out on to the table in one long thick line.
“James what the fuck are you doing.”
“Visual aid, I think it will simplify things.”
“I don’t think the waitress will be happy with that.”
“She doesn’t fucking matter.” James yelled in a surprise fit of anger. “That is what I am trying to explain to you.”
The quite buzz of chatter and people eating were suddenly silenced. Dylan waived to the waitress as if to imply he had the situation under control, when he knew the truth was far from that.
“Is everything alright?” The waitress asked.
“Yes I’m very sorry I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Oh but it will it will happen again and again and again and again.”
“Ok, just go ahead and show me what you were going to show me.”
“Ok then, look at this stream of sugar. Now let’s assume this stream is what we know as the time stream.” James took the knife from the table and ran it up the center of the stream. “In my time, time 1, they invented a machine that allows us to jump back in the time stream.” James then took the knife raised it off the table and moved it back towards the middle of the stream. “Now as long as you don’t do any significant changes then you will continue traveling through the stream and time will self adjust where needed, however, if you make a large change that is too impacting then,” James uses the knife to separate part of the sugar from the rest. “The time stream splits and a new time is formed.”
“I’m confused, so what happens in the future then if time splits.”
“To your future, nothing, which is how I can kill myself in the past and still be here right now.” James makes more paths in the sugar arching out like a palm tree.
“Wait, so by changing the past you don’t actually affect the future, well not your future at least?”
“You really are a quick learner Dylan; this is why we were friends.”
Dylan leaned back in his chair trying to soak it all in. His mind was whirling with all the new thoughts trying to grasp the situation as well as trying to decide if he believed in it. “Ok, well if you can’t change anything in this world well what is the point for time travel?”
“Vacation, mostly and retirement.”
“Why would someone want to retire in a different time stream or whatever?”
“We refer to it as branches. See that is the beauty of it when you are not on your branch time doesn’t apply to you.”
“What does that mean, like you stop ageing or something?”
“Exactly. You can live forever.”
“Bull shit, that can’t be.”
“Once again it seems you are the time expert here. Please purge me of my ignorance.”
“How does that make sense?”
“Look I’m not a scientist, I am a researcher, I didn’t invent the machine I just was paid to use it.”
Dylan finished his cigarette far quicker then he had anticipated and debated on asking for a second then returned his attention to James.
“Fine moving on, what did you do then, I mean what did they pay you to do?”
“Set up and maintain time funds.”
“You’re a banker?”
James laughed. “One could say that sure. One of the benefits to working for my company is that they have the perfect retirement package. What I do is go back into a different branch and set up a bank account, I take the money and invest it with a mapped out pattern to earn the retiree a set amount of money based on there level with in the company. I then stay in that time and make sure that all of the investments pan out correctly and adjust accordingly. Eventually when the retiree retires I relinquish the account to them and then I am off to my next assignment.”
“That’s insane, so you stay here frozen in age and get to live a life of little to no responsibility. How does it pay?”
“A lot, I get to drain off of the investments and use the money as I see fit, I can’t take it with me across worlds so I can’t save anything. It usually winds up being about five million that I spend over twenty years or so.”
“Are you kidding me? How much do the retirees wind up with?”
“You don’t want to know, but a fuck ton.”
“That sounds like you hit the jackpot man, that job is insane, how did you luck out with that?’”
“Luck out? You got the insane part right but the rest, fuck man, you are lost beyond lost. The job makes you insane. Time is something that we take as a truth, something that we know and understand and is simple. Can you imagine what it is to wake up one morning and it is twenty years ago. Or to go to bed in one time and wake up in another, to only age some of the time. I mean the future becomes the past and the past doesn’t happen and you start to just fucking be gone, because nothing else makes sense why the fuck should you.” James started to laugh or maybe it was cry. Regardless Dylan took it as a sign that he needed to intervene somehow.
“Alright, I’m sorry, I am not going to tell you I understand because I have no clue what you must be going through, but what do you need me to do to help you with.”
“I was done, but I lost it. I can’t get back; I need to find a man named Sam, Sam Deckon.”
“What did you lose?”
“The anchor, it’s what allows us to get back home. Without it I will be stuck here forever.”