by Paul Booth
The Leaping in was easy.
The Leaping out was proving more difficult.
Cindy Garratt flinched at the fireworks outlining the locked door. She swatted madly at the Leaper 1G she’d just stolen, intending to toggle the night-vision setting of her contacts off, but it was too late: it felt like sparks exploding inside her eyeballs. The laser cutter finished one side and started on the frame’s outer edge. She heard the liquid flame sizzle and saw it slice through the dense metal like oil.
She was dressed in her cat-burglar finest, but they’d have no problem seeing her. Damn, this was bad luck. For her plan to succeed, she’d need all the luck she could get.
She punched again at the old Leaper 1G on her wrist. This was a first gen model, circa 2053, worn around the edges, buffeted and dingy. Well worn, well used. She knew the feeling. She glanced at her own Leaper 3G, the one that got her here: a third-gen model, 2056, glossy and sleek. Like everything else in this place, branded Leaper, Inc. From out in the corridor, the thunder of boots rampaged towards her.
So. Can’t get out that way. What now? She’d sealed the door after Leaping in, but it wouldn’t take the guards more than a minute to laser through it. Damn. At her unceremonious firing yesterday, Jack hadn’t mentioned any sort of booby trap in the museum. She was sure he’d said the place wouldn’t be guarded. And that code she’d purloined? Obviously set off some alarm, somewhere. He set her up. He knew the whole time. That cocky son of a bitch, always thinking he’s one step ahead.
Cindy pulled her blonde hair back in a tight pony with a deft twist, fastened it so it wouldn’t get in her eyes. Not this time, Jack. This time, it’s her turn to Leap.
Not for the first time, she wished for a reliable partner. Not for the last time, she felt glad Jack wasn’t one anymore. She hated working on her own, but she hated him more. From outside, she heard gruff voices cough invectives. It’s time: the last part of the plan, and the hardest part of all. She slipped the stolen Leaper 1G into her pocket, past the knife she’d sheathed at her side. She swiped back at the surface of her Leaper 3G.
She felt a vibration, heard a pop.
Here goes everything.
One guard kicked open the doorframe with a rough “Freeze!”. Light gushed into the room and bounced off Cindy’s tight, black suit. She pursed her lips, kissed twice. She waved, swooped her hand around, curved her middle finger towards the black-helmeted man, and wiggled it in the air.
She squeezed the side of her Leaper. One last tile to place…
All that greeted the remaining guards were the pedestal and glass case on the ground, the smell of burning electricity in the air, and an empty void in the space where Cindy had been standing.
***
A dozen years earlier, the crowning, amber sun bathed Cindy Garratt in soft light. Her legs branched beneath her on her heavily cushioned sofa, as she clutched a steaming mug of Earl Grey and stared at the empty chair across the room.
She wasn’t the type of person to regret her actions, and she didn’t want to relitigate the past, but last night’s fight with Jack hadn’t ended well. She probably shouldn’t have called his eyes icy— that wasn’t nice— and she definitely shouldn’t have thrown her sweater at him and stormed off. They’d been playing 2-player Catan, and ended up talking about islands, and sheep, and their lab work, and the future of their project…and then their future together… and then…
She cocked her head, brushed a lock of blonde hair out of her eyes. As cool, autumnal air fluttered through the crack under the window, her apartment chilled. The spicy bergamot scent of her tea roused her from her contemplation, and she resolved to go back to Jack’s place and make sure the conversation—no, not just the conversation, the relationship itself—ended well. We can still be friends, right? Maybe.
Either way, she loved that sweater and wanted to get it back.
She shuffled to the kitchen to put the now-empty mug in the sink but paused at the row of framed photographs on the table by the front door. She hadn’t really looked at these photos for years. In one, she and Jack, their faces red and glowing, balanced precariously in a boat on a lake. In the second, the white-coated pair were surrounded by electronics in the University laboratory. She picked up the final one, where two sweaty kids kissed at a music festival. Who were those people? Did she have any memories without Jack? She replaced the photo on the table, the memory a foreign land. She barely recognized herself in these photos. It was like gazing at someone else’s past.
She left her apartment, and the brisk ten-minute walk to Jack’s revitalized her. She wore a white top and light brown skirt over opaque white tights, an outfit Jack had once derisively called mushroomy. It was her small act of defiance on the last day of their relationship. The sun dappled the sidewalk as she crossed the street towards his building.
She knocked on his door, lightly at first, then tried the doorknob. The lock rattled. She pounded on the doorframe. He had to be home: it was early, and he slept in.
“Come on, Jack, open up. I know you know it’s me. I need to make sure we’re good,” Cindy stage-whispered. No sound emerged from the apartment.
“Jack? You there? Seriously, ignoring me? C’mon, let’s be adults.”
The blank door remained motionless, no flicker behind the eyehole. The quiet unnerved her, and a sudden flash—what if he was at some other girls’ house?—made her stomach queasy.
Cindy’s keys jangled as she felt the lock turn over and the heavy door unlatch. She peeked over the threshold before stepping into the room, the half-played game of Catan still on the table.
“Jack. . .?” she began but was too startled to finish. A heavy smell, metallic and organic, stung her nose. She froze. A finger of dark red liquid pointed at her from the floor, and she followed it back to a lake of gummy blood pooling under the body of Jack. He sat upright in the well-worn, secondhand armchair on the other side of the room. His eyes, open and bloodshot, stared through her. A thin trickle of blood had frozen on his cheek. His pallid face, normally ruddy and vibrant, contrasted with the deep carmine puddle beneath him. She followed the line of his body to the black knife pointing like an aerial from his chest. Blood clotted on his white T-shirt; it clung to him, a bizarro superhero’s uniform.
Oh my god— Jack!
As Cindy felt her head spin, she gripped the kitchen chair’s smooth wooden top and rubbed the wood across her hands, the rough grain grounding her. How did the killer get in here? she wondered, and the word killer echoed in her mind. I should call the police came next, but as she felt in the bag for her phone, a shimmer in the corner of her room caught her attention. A butterfly’s flutter atop the bed morphed into a bead of light, then vibrated fast and intensely, and finally emerged as a human-like shape hovering in front of her. Cindy couldn’t see the outline clearly at first; it was too fuzzy. She dropped the phone back in her bag. What the…?
But it sharpened, and a feminine silhouette stepped through the brightness and into the room.
The person, haloed with light, wore a tight, tailored black suit with a black shirt and jacket and cocked her head to the right. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. Cindy froze, staring into her mirror image.
“What—?”
The vision grimaced. “Hello Cindy. Things are about to get really weird, really fast.”
***
Eleven years later, Cindy Garratt burst into Jack’s office. The door echoed as it slammed against the wall.
“What the hell, Jack? My card doesn’t work anymore?”
She spun the Leaper, Inc. plastic ID card across the room. Jack ducked, over-dramatically, and chuckled.
“Whoa, calm down babe.” She hated the way he said babe, with some fake Mafioso accent. “Don’t get hysterical.”
He rose from behind his mahogany and ivory desk. It dwarfed him. He’d aged since their meeting three months earlier: dressed in a thin, grey suit, thin tie, hair greyer but better cut than he used to get. Thin face, thin lips. Everything was thin except his pocketbook. His lime-colored eyes pinballed like a manic animal’s.
“Don’t patronize me. And don’t tell me to calm down. I don’t need to be babysat, Jack.” She spat the name out.
It wasn’t as if this was the first time this had happened. Three months ago, her permissions at Leaper, Inc. had been downgraded from Open Access to Level Two. No explanation. One day she’d been his partner, the next, one of his subordinates. More insulting was the raise it came with. A payoff, more like.
He held his hands in mock surrender, then swung them down to open a drawer. He pulled out a boxy, heavy Leaper 1G.
“Do you remember this?” he said, his gaze fixed on the watch-like device. Battered leather straps with scuff marks hung along two sides. He removed a grey silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and buffed the device.
“That’s our original, the first gen model.” Cindy moved towards the desk. Jack instinctively cradled it.
“Yeah, I kept it. Remember all those early Leaps? The adventures back in time? Back when it was just you and me.” He laughed like he was joking. It wasn’t funny.
“Yeah, well, the good ol’ days weren’t always so good.”
“Maybe not,” he admitted, cocking his hip against the desk to shut the drawer. “But consider the work I’ve accomplished here. Consider my research—” he choked slightly at the resentment in her eyes, “—our research. Time travel, for the masses! And you. . . you want to undo all of that?” He dropped the Leaper onto the desktop and raised his hands like a preacher: “Leaper, Inc. Tomorrow’s future, today. We did that, Cindy. We did that.”
“After you stole my work, Jack.” Her words sparked like a loose wire.
“I wouldn’t call it stealing. I just saw the, how would you say, commercial opportunities of the enterprise.”
“You sold me out, demoted me, and took the tech for yourself. I don’t know another word for that.”
“Try entrepreneurial. Ty enterprising—”
“—try opportunistic.” Cindy crossed her arms obstinately.
In response, Jack opened his. “Be reasonable, babe. You more than anyone know the historic importance of this little Leaper. The things we could do to save humanity.”
Was he being serious right now? Cindy pressed on.
“Jesus. Just listen to yourself. You sound like one of those cult leaders, the ones in those documentaries that convince hordes of people to donate their life savings to you.”
Jack smiled, but it didn’t reach the sides of his eyes, which froze as though they’d been Botoxed to within an inch of their life.
“That’s so unfair. I’m a man of the people, Cindy. This Leaper, it’s something we should be proud of.”
His smile widened, without moving his face.
“And, as it happens, I’m so proud, next year I’ll be opening a museum and this little Leaper, our first one, will be the prime exhibit! On display for the world! No guards, no fees.” He slipped the Leaper in his pocket. “For all,” he said with a slight bow of the head.
Cindy scoffed. “Of course, a museum for your vanity. I don’t want to put this into a museum, Jack. I don’t even want to undo the past. I just want to make sure our Leaps are clean. We have to stop the temporal implosions: they’re getting worse. There are no rules, no natural laws of time travel. Just those implosions, scarring the world. And that scares the shit out of me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She pressed forward, the words spilling out after having been bottled up for years.
“I’ve been warning you: you need to be more careful. All those people, Leaping into objects in the past, in the future. But you’re doing nothing. You’ve sold out, sold our Leaper tech to a bunch of rich guys about to get richer. You talk about freedom, but who’s freedom is it, Jack?” Cindy voice shook, exhausted by the conversation she’d rehearsed hundreds of times before.
“That’s not true! We do know how to control it, how to develop it. And when it’s ready for everyday use, we’ll open it up.” Jack smiled again, and Cindy was reminded of a cat’s grimace. “For a price, of course.”
“I just want a bit more regulation, Jack. There has to be some sort of—”
“Some sort of what?” He cut her off, his reedy voice a damp handshake. “You honestly believe this country, no, this world, would be better off if some arrogant group of scientists or ethicists controlled Leap technology?” He got close to her face, his minty breath an assault. He cupped her face in his soft, manicured hands. They burned too. “That they know better than I?”
She pulled away from his touch. “If it hadn’t been for my initial calculations none of this would have happened. The only reason you’re sitting in that chair is because of my work.”
Jack waved away her concerns with fluttering fingers. “What has changed, Cindy? What, exactly? Tell me. All these times we’ve gone back, all the moments we’ve watched, all the people around the world that have traveled. What difference has it made to the future?”
“We don’t know, Jack. It could be anything.”
“Exactly. We don’t know. And what we don’t know, we don’t know.”
God damn it, that’s the point. She swallowed the hatred for Jack that rose in her throat. “You’ve changed.”
Memories flooded her mind. When they first moved in together, after that fight on a chilly autumn day in 2045. When they first developed Leap technology in 2046 in the lab they shared in the University of Haver Hill’s Advanced Quantum Informatics department. When they took their first tentative Leap back in time in 2050. They’d wanted to test run at one of history’s greatest moments. Cindy had asked to meet the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, but Jack demanded a more poetic moment: they met Herbert George himself, back in 1895, got a signed first edition of The Time Machine.
When they’d been partners. When they thought they’d save the world.
It was hard to know precisely when that partnership imploded. Had it been after Jack sold the book and made millions on the market? After the Leaper IPO? After he ignored the counsel of hundreds of temporal experts— and the advice of his one particularly experienced partner— and offered time travel to a score of billionaires?
“You’re breaking the universe, and you don’t realize it,” Cindy continued. “You could be changing history and, because you changed history, you immediately live in the new present that your history-change created so you don’t know that you’ve changed anything because you haven’t actually changed it if it’s what always was!” Her voice cracked as she saw the distance in his eyes, like he didn’t even care to try to understand. “Damn it, it’s made you rich, that’s the difference.”
“I’m so disappointed in you, Cindy,” Jack said in a robotic monotone. He opened another drawer and removed a sleek, clean Leaper. “But I still want you to be the first to appreciate this: the Leaper 4X-Max. Hasn’t hit the market yet.”
It was no bigger than a quarter. He pressed a few indentations on the side, and the opaque black glass flashed red and yellow.
“If you won’t listen to reason, I guess I’ll have to fix this. Fix you. I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but I’ve made the executive decision to Leap to that first morning in October, the morning we founded Leaper, Inc. And I’m going to make sure you don’t get involved.”
Cindy could feel her heart pounding in her head. “Jack, you can’t do that.”
“Actually,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her, his eyes wild, “I might as well make sure I don’t get involved either. With both of us gone, I can take my own place in the past. If I can take care of him, my past self, replace him, I could take my future knowledge and work twice as fast, three times!” He cackled and rubbed his hands together. “I’ll take over from him, live the last ten years over! Make billions with my knowledge of the future.”
Replace himself? Jack’s not just crazy, he’s criminally insane.
“Jack, what are you talking about? Replace yourself in the past? Even in our wildest experiments we never screwed with the past like this. Jesus, the universe might tear itself apart. That’s my point. We don’t know what will happen.”
Jack laughed over her concerns. “Babe, it’s perfectly safe. The future never changes. You’ll be fine.” He sniffed at her, winked. Her stomach dropped.
“I can’t believe this. I’ll follow you. I’ll stop you!”
“See you yesterday, babe,” he said as he Leapt, the sharp and acrid tang of electricity left behind his desk. His chair spun in the silence.
She slammed fingers to her Leaper, trying to trace his movements back in time. Nothing. Damn, the 4G must have blocking tech. She ran around to the desk’s back, threw open the drawer where the prototype Leaper was. Double damn: he pocketed it earlier. But at the bottom, a scrap of paper with a diagram of the Leaper, Inc. museum he’d mentioned.
An idea sprouted. That original Leaper, one that he hadn’t fiddled with. It was here, just not now-here. God damn it I can’t believe he’s making me do this. He might be able to stop her from going to the past, but he couldn’t stop her from going to the future. The prototype. It would be there, a year from now, in the museum.
A plan formed in her mind. It might take her back, back to stop him. But it wouldn’t truly be her. Not this her. She programmed her Leaper 3G, was greeted by green, flashing lights. All systems go. The tang of ozone doubled as the room grew silent in her wake.
***
Cindy Garratt watched her other self pull a white sheet over Jack’s rapidly cooling body. She pushed the cards and tiles of Catan into the box lid, her hands needing activity. Two mugs of coffee steamed on the table.
Cindy contemplated the other Cindy Garratt, the mirror that was the other her, the future Cindy, the Cindy wearing the tight, black suit at the kitchen table. She doesn’t really look that much older than me, so what, 40? Her face, Cindy thought, had aged well. She enjoyed the confidence she projected, and her light brown eyes still had the specks of green that sparkled when she smiled. Her body looked pretty much the same too: taller, more assertive, more in control. She looked good in that black suit.
Making coffee had helped, the aromatic roast forcing a facade of normality in the face of the ghostlike mound in the chair. When faced with two problems—her dead ex-boyfriend and the appearance of a version of herself from the future—Cindy had to prioritize.
“What the hell is happening right now? My future self is here, and my dead boyfriend is right there. . .and not just dead but stabbed dead. Murdered dead.”
“Well, dead ex-boyfriend,” the older Cindy said.
“That isn’t funny!” She slammed the box down. “This is some real Star Trek shit. I’m sitting here talking to myself from the future, who appeared in the corner of my boyfriend’s apartment, and I’m supposed to take it as normal?”
She inhaled the earthy scent of her coffee, felt the past hour’s emotions crest and fall. A hot mixture of panic and curiosity coursed through her. She wasn’t used to that, nor was she used to the deep guilt she felt at discovering Jack’s body, or the out-of-body awareness she should feel remorse about it, but only really recognizing that as grief a few seconds later. Is recognizing that you are feeling grief the same as actually feeling it?
“Ok, alright, sure, sure.” The Cindy in Black stroked the side of that black disc on her wrist, although she never broke eye contact. “The fact is— and I hate to be cliché about it— but it’s possible the entire universe is at stake.”
“Don’t give me that. You know who you’re talking to.”
“Do I?” Cindy in Black raised an eyebrow. Cindy was startled: she couldn’t do that. “Fine.” She glided over to Jack’s body. “You can’t think of this as Jack,” she said. Cindy crossed her arms and glared back. “I mean, it is Jack, but it’s. . .” She paused, spinning her hands, trying to form the words.
“So help me, if you say It’s complicated.”
“It’s, uh, problem. . .atic. . .al. Problematical. Uh, it’s a problem.” She sighed. “There’s no easy way to say this, but. . . .” She walked back to the table, stood next to Cindy. She put one hand on her shoulder while the other dug at her belt, pulled out her black knife and placed it on the table in front of her.
Cindy started: it was the same knife that five minutes ago she had seen sticking out of Jack’s chest. The same one that was currently inside of him.
“This is hard to understand, but the universe really does hang in the balance. I’m sorry, but you have to go back in time and kill him.” She said it abruptly and indicated the body with a nod. “You have to be the one to do it.”
The words hovered like sweat on a humid day. They dripped up her back, squeezed her mind. This couldn’t be happening. There’s no way she could do it. No way.
“I’m not a killer.”
“Yeah, well, neither am I.”
Cindy jumped up, the past hour flooding out of her. “Don’t lie to me. Of course you are. If you’re back here, telling me I have to go back in time and do this,” she said, gesturing to the body, a drop of red spreading like a rhizome on the sheets. “You must have already done it. Don’t patronize me. You of all people know what that must feel like.”
“Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry,” Cindy in Black said, sounding contrite. She dropped her hand but left the knife on the table. “If there was any other way, I promise you, we’d do it.”
Cindy shook her head. “I don’t believe it. There’s no way I could do this. I can’t have changed that much. Who are you? You can’t be me.”
Cindy in Black sighed and rubbed her temple. “I know, it doesn’t make sense. I understand how you feel. You’re you and I’m you too, but we aren’t the same you.”
“Don’t give me that Ship of Theseus crap.”
“I’m not even talking about that. The truth is, we are the same person, but we aren’t the same, at the same time. Are you the same person you were when you were twelve? Eighteen? Twenty-two? We’re always changing, Cindy. Physically, sure, but psychologically too. It’s the one constant in life, change.”
Cindy in Black glanced around the room before her eyes settled on the game box on the table. “You’re used to those neat time travel stories where the game being put away at the beginning was actually set up by the guy at the end. Those neat bows that get tied up at the end work on TV, but real time travel doesn’t work that way. Real life doesn’t work that way. The Jack from my time wants to control time. The consequences could be disastrous. He must be stopped.”
“Wait, what? Jack’s alive in your time? But dead here?”
“As I said, it’s messy, it’s weird, it’s uncomfortable, and it doesn’t. Make. Sense.” She emphasized the last words by poking her finger at the table in rhythm. “And Jack’s determined to exploit it.”
“I don’t understand why this Jack has to die. And why I have to be the one to do it?”
“You’re too concerned with causes, not with effects. Jack, my Jack, has consolidated the whole temporal industry. He’s not concerned with the effects of time travel. Anyone with the tech can go pretty much anywhere. . . Any when. As far as we can tell, the universe is holding together but for how long? Scientists say each Leap has the potential to be disastrous. But my Jack has decided to come back, back to a few hours ago, to start again. Only this time he’ll have complete control over the future shape of. . . well, the future.”
Cindy narrowed her eyes as if to indicate she didn’t quite believe it.
“It’s like that game,” Cindy in Black explained, pointing at the pieces of Catan on the table. “When you start, all those pieces fit together perfectly. Each tile sits next to the others and makes this complete, beautiful island. But whenever we Leap, those tiles shift and move.” She jostled the table with her hip, and the pieces shimmied, leaving gaps. “I’m afraid eventually the whole island will leave these holes in the world, until all we’re left with is. . .” She gestured to the box, half full of pieces.
“. . .a jumble,” Cindy finished.
“Exactly. A jumble.”
“And to stop that, we have to kill Jack?” It was strange: now she was taking this in stride, like listening to her own voice had a calming effect.
“Exactly. We have to stop him because Leaping is a four-dimensional version of Catan. Too many people have died already.”
Cindy crinkled her eyes. “Died?”
Cindy in Black grimaced. “The one thing we know? Leaping into something— a rock, furniture— it isn’t pretty. We call it a temporal implosion. It’s the one truth we’ve figured out, and it’s not pleasant.”
Implosion. Killer. Paradox. The words wrapped around Cindy’s memories of Jack. An image of him— smiling, laughing, must have been at a party—appeared in her mind. He twirled in wild colors until the smile turned maniacal. She thought of the photos sitting on the shelf in her house, those ephemeral fragments in time. Each one reflected a moment, but with each reflection, a deflection as well: all the words unsaid, all the moments before and after the flash. Two dimensions that left out a third. Or a fourth.
Cindy ran towards the cracked-open window. “I need some air,” she said as she fumbled with the latch. The rich, smokey smell of a neighbor’s firepit wafted into the room on the breeze as Cindy grasped the sill underneath the glass, stroked the wood surface. A dog barked a few houses down, but in the room was the silence of someone alone with their thoughts.
She squeezed her eyes tight. If she couldn’t trust her self, who could she trust?
Wait. Herself. If time really was malleable, all of this wasn’t predestined. She could take the knife, go back in time, and simply not do it. She could convince Jack to disappear or get away instead. He would understand, he couldn’t be that crazy. Yet. Her Jack wasn’t insane. That future Jack was. That future her as well. Yes, she could reason a way out of this. She could solve both their problems without resorting to murder.
But she couldn’t let her future self realize what she was planning. She had to do this on her own.
She turned, straightened, felt the breeze at her back. “Okay, what do I need to do?”
Cindy in Black pulled the first-generation Leaper 1G from her pocket and held it out. “Take this. I’ve preset it so that it will take you back to this morning, to about an hour before my Jack gets here. If my Jack sees me, he’ll realize I’m trying to stop him. You won’t be noticed because you have a good reason to be there.” She squeezed Cindy’s hands, and warmth surged from one to the other. “You have to go back in time and make this happen. You must stop Jack. He’s going to ruin the future.”
Cindy straightened her shoulders; Cindy in Black stood and embraced her. “You can do this,” she said, her cheek pressed against Cindy’s own. Cindy felt the softness of it, so unlike Jack’s rough stubble. It comforted. She liked the feeling.
Cindy in Black tied the Leaper 1G on Cindy’s wrist as Cindy picked the knife off the table. But I won’t do it, I can’t do it. I’ll tell him to leave, I’ll convince him it’s for the best.
The machine beeped, and Cindy felt her arms move back. She felt a quick squeeze and heard a sound like thunder in her ears.
“Oh boy,” she whispered, and closed her eyes.
***
Two hours earlier, a rush of wind on a humid day cascaded over Cindy Garratt’s body as she tried to decide whether falling or dropping would have been a better term than Leaping. The experience only took a few seconds—how odd that time travel takes time—and yet it felt like days had passed until she coughed in the new, familiar environment.
The table, chairs, bed, and armchair were identical to the ones she had just left, minus the body, of course. She picked up her sweater, crumpled in the same spot where she had thrown it the night before, and slid it over her shoulders. She navigated to the kitchenette to pour a glass of water. The kitchen felt familiar—of course it did, she had been there, and would be there, in a few hours—but more like returning to her childhood home. The objects now had a sheen of uncanny foreignness, more distant than memory. She paused at the refrigerator to pick a photograph magnetized on the dimpled white surface, that image of Jack and her on a sunny day sitting in a dinghy on a lake, both smiling against the glare. One of Jack’s arms draped around Cindy’s shoulders while the other stretched beyond the camera, hand out of sight. She’d seen this photo this morning—was it really only an hour or so ago?—but this time Jack appeared different. Was he smiling, or glaring? Or, maybe it wasn’t him. Had she changed? She knew more now, felt a bit more confident. Stood taller.
She tried to raise an eyebrow.
She rubbed her eyes and hung the photo back on the fridge. Last night, she would have cried at the memory; now, it seemed another life. Another her.
She heard the door open, and Jack sauntered into the room, a brown paper grocery bag in his arms. “Cindy?” He started. “What the hell, babe? You surprised me. What’s…up?” His initial shock morphed into a grin, but one that his cold green eyes, staring at hers, didn’t match.
Fear engulfed her; a few hours ago—a day ago—she had broken up with him. Now, she was nervous for a kiss so she turned her head at the last minute, and his lips brushed against her cheek. She felt the scratch and burn of his stubble as she pulled away and thought of Cindy in Black. “Jack, I don’t have a lot of time.” She hesitated. “Ugh, it’s such a cliché to say, especially under the circumstances. I’m sorry,” she said, gesturing to the table, “but you might want to make some coffee. Life’s about to get really weird, really fast…”
***
Half an hour later, Cindy finished recounting her doppelganger’s plan to murder him, and her plan to save his life. “She might be crazy. I mean, I might go crazy in the future. I feel crazy thinking about all this—”
“Wait,” Jack interrupted, putting down his coffee so quickly it spilled on the table. “Let me get this straight. In about five minutes, some dude who looks like me—”
“—Who is you—”
“—Who is me, a future me, will come through a beam of light into this room, and to stop him, you’re supposed to kill me? But wait, that’s the Hitler paradox, right? Could you kill a baby Hitler before the Holocaust?”
Cindy rolled her eyes. “I am aware of the Hitler paradox.” She continued, “We have to get you out of here: there’s no way I’d murder you, and I have no idea why she—why I—would make me. That’s why we have to get out of here. . . why we have to leave, disappear, before the other you shows up, and make sure that none of this happens.” She sipped from her half-drunk glass of water.
“Why don’t we kill him instead of me?”
Time stopped as Jack’s words buzzed. Cindy froze, the glass half-raised. Does everyone turn into a murderer when they travel in time?
Jack grimaced. “Yeah…yeah, that’s gotta be it, right?” He plucked the knife from her hands. “We could stab him when he gets here. Lay a trap for him, jump him when he jumps in. Wrestle him to the ground, steal his Jumper.”
“Leaper.”
“Whatever.” Jack indicated his bookshelf, the well-thumbed, creased bindings of Koontz, Crouch, and King prominently displayed. “I’ve done the readings. I’m sure I can figure it out. Give me that device—”
“—No, it’s been pre-programed. We shouldn’t mess with it—”
“—I’m sure I know how to do this, I got this babe.” He dropped the knife and leapt for the watch-like device on her wrist at the same time as she fiddled with the strap, and their hands collided on the instrument. Instinctively, she pulled her hand back, the Leaper 1G still attached, and knocked into her half-drunk glass of water. Time dragged, a slow-motion pull of reality as they both grabbed the teetering glass. The resulting collision of fingers met the glass’s downward journey, and the water splashed onto Cindy’s hands, arm, and the Leaper itself. It fizzled and crackled, hot sparks jumping outwards, until a single plume of grey smoke signaled its demise.
Cindy and Jack glared into each other’s widened eyes.
“What did you do?” she cried.
“Me?” he yelled, leaping from the table and running to the bookshelf near the bed. “This isn’t my fault! Why did you have that glass near here? You should’ve been more careful!”
“I told you to wait!” she exclaimed.
“What am I going to do now?” He paced, the room shrinking the faster he walked back and forth. “How am I going to Leap? Think of the missed market opportunities. I can’t believe it! Damn it! My only chance to time travel has been. . .” He struggled for the words. “. . .has been ruined.” He shot arrows at her from the unmade bed.
Cindy shot back, “It’s not your last chance. Future Jack is going to Leap in here any time and we can take his. . .” She stopped, hearing the words she’d uttered. “Jack. Jack! No, get back!”
A butterfly’s flutter appeared inside Jack, a beam of light that pulsated and vibrated and grew. A glowing rhythm emanated from inside his being. His panicked eyes expanded, shock giving way to pain. Cindy screamed and jumped back from the table, holding her hands to her face to shield her eyes from the light. The light grew brighter, and stronger, until it outlined a silhouette of a man.
She didn’t see it happen, but she heard the boom, felt the splat. She collapsed on the ground, the implosion knocking her unconscious. The light faded out, and then she was alone.
***
Two hours later, Cindy Garratt opened her eyes, her vision blurred as she struggled to clear the mist. She pulled herself up to the table where the glass lay in a pool of still liquid. She didn’t want to look at the back corner but couldn’t help it. Fearing the worst, she turned her head, but the bed was made-up, clean, and empty.
A loud pop jolted her out of her stupor. Cindy in Black appeared, her Leaper glowing. “It’s done?”
“What the. . .what the hell happened?”
“You did it! I knew you could.” Cindy in Black stretched her hand over to the chair in the room’s corner, now empty. There was no trace of blood, no knife, and no body.
“I can’t believe it.” Cindy collapsed in her chair, dropped the blackened Leaper on the table. “God damn it, I was going to save him! I wasn’t going to kill him at all, I was going to get him out, I was going to rescue him. But I couldn’t even do that right.”
“Yes, I knew you were. Well, I knew you thought you were.” Cindy in Black sat in silence for a moment. She put her hand on Cindy’s, the warm touch reassuring. “I’m sorry for making you go through that. I’m sorry for misleading you. If it makes you feel any better, this is exactly what should have happened. And I am proud of you. So, so proud of you.”
“It doesn’t make any difference. I tried to save him but ended up killing him anyway.”
“No, no Cindy, you didn’t kill him. He did that. He did that to himself. It had to be him that did it: he’s always been so full of himself.”
“What difference does it make? He’s gone—both of him—and I’ve got to live with that.” Her rage propelled her to the kitchen. “How am I supposed to live with my memory of this?” she yelled, as she snatched the photo from the fridge and threw it towards Cindy in Black. It fluttered to the floor as she slid, balled on the tiles.
“Oh no.” Cindy in Black walked over to her. “You don’t think I’d leave you like this, do you?” She helped her stand. Putting her arms around her, she clutched her tightly. “I’m here.” The two faced each other. Cindy could feel Cindy in Black’s breath as she cupped her face in her hands, her soft fingers brushing back the blonde hair from her eyes. Their faces were inches apart. Cindy felt her breath catch in her throat.
“It was never about killing Jack,” Cindy in Black whispered. “Not really. I knew you’d never be able to do that.” She leaned back. “But I had to remove Jack. Both of him. I had to make sure he was stopped for good. The only way to do that was a temporal implosion. Killing him, that wouldn’t have changed a moment. But the implosion? It gets rid of both throughout time. Not my Jack, but yours too. All Jacks, imploded, forever.”
“I know what your life would have been with him for the next decade,” Cindy in Black continued. “What the world would have been. I knew you could never kill him, that you’d try to think of a way out. You’re clever, like me. But I figured how he’d react as well. Figured he’d want to take control. So, I had to make sure he took himself out. To keep you—to keep us—out of it. I’m sorry for manipulating you, but it was the only way to make sure Leaper technology was secure. The only way to make sure our future was secure.”
Cindy gazed into Cindy in Black’s eyes. They glistened and comforted her.
Cindy in Black continued. “We’ve spent our entire life trying to make all this”—she spread her arms and spun around—“safe. But at every step, we’ve had to deal with Jack. And not just him, but all Jacks everywhere. All those folks who say they know better, whose limited knowledge is as meaningful as our experiences, our familiarity. Our expertise. And now they’re gone. Completely out of time. So, let’s trust each other, Cindy. Let’s trust us. I need a new partner, and who better than. . . me?”
Cindy felt like she’d been on a roller coaster, her breath and heartbeat mixing like colors in the air in front of her. She wasn’t sure if it was fear or excitement throbbing through her, but she felt the warmth spreading outwards through her body.
Cindy in Black picked up the lid of the bright red Catan box and shuffled through the tiles. “Every time we reset this, we change the island. We put them out in a different order, make a different landscape, but it’s always an island. It’s always a home. That island is a moment in time. There are other moments, other times, other you’s out there at different points in time. They won’t be the same. An infinite number of other me’s out there too. And we won’t be the same either.” Cindy stared into her own brown eyes, the green sparkles flickering in brown depths.
“But, what about the timeline? With Jack gone, doesn’t that mean someone has to put the timeline back together? Someone has to make sure this tech actually gets made.” Cindy picked up the discarded Leaper and thrust it towards her double.
Cindy in Black lit up, her smile broad and deep.
“Exactly. I knew you’d get it. We can do this together. Finally, forever, neither one of us needs anyone else. We have each other. All we have to do is Leap. And we can do it, together.” She took Cindy’s hand. “Right now, all we have is right now.”
With her other hand, she began to lay the tiles on the table, a new island forming in front of them.
“Take a Leap with me, Cindy,” she said.
Cindy squeezed her hand. Then, they Leapt.
Paul Booth is a speculative fiction author and academic living near Chicago. His stories have been published by Big Finish Audio, and in The Stygian Lepus Magazine, Killer Nashville, and Freedom Fiction. He is currently enjoying a cup of coffee. You can find out more at https://www.paulboothauthor.com/.