Chapter 21
We talked.
We talked about everything. I tried to learn as much as I could about him, about his life.
He was open and detailed about some things, closed and guarded about others.
It was impossible for me to know what would shut him down, so I kept trying.
We talked throughout my dinner—a military-style, vaguely beef-flavored MRE—and on into the night.
We stopped so I could shower in Lyle’s private but barely used bathroom, which was set off from his main chamber.
The soap was ancient and gritty, and the water had a slimy feel to it.
Recirculated, Lyle told me when I asked after I finished. Wastewater, filtered and reused.
We fell back into our conversation after my shower.
He repeated himself, telling me things he’d mentioned before the shower, or going over the same things he’d said on the tape in his hidden workroom.
And he contradicted himself, particularly about events in his past. I didn’t try to correct him.
As hard as it was for me to reconcile, he was over ninety years old.
He was older than Amy had been at the café.
He was older than my own parents had been on the video call I’d made when Lyle was eighteen.
It was amazing his mind was operating as well as it was.
A few memory problems here and there were nothing significant.
He was sick, though. That much was abundantly clear. He didn’t eat when I did and never used the bathroom. I could not help but smell what I had earlier, that scent of death. The chair was keeping him alive in more ways than one. But he shrugged this off. “I lived to see you again.”
He was still elusive about his own children, and I didn’t know why.
Why hold that back? It was as though he feared that if his Second Device failed, and I jumped forward again, I’d go looking for my great-great-whatever-grandchild.
And that was a bad thing. I thought about the intense young man I’d seen in the photos in Lyle’s cabin, and I wanted to know more.
But I didn’t press. There were too many other things to discuss.
And maybe, in a way, he was right. Maybe it was better if I stayed out of my descendants’ lives. I’d certainly screwed up Lyle’s.
He had a lot to get off his chest.
“I gave up on you.” The lights were dim. It was nighttime outside the bunker. We drank tea, and I could tell he was tired. But he refused to go to sleep. “On your problem. The problem.”
“I wanted you to.”
“I know. And I used that as an excuse. ‘Dad wanted me to give up, so it’s okay.’ But that’s all it ever was. An excuse. I always came back to it. My mind wouldn’t let go.”
Tea leaves swirled as I rotated the mug. “I wanted you to live your life.”
“I have. I’ve lived. Look at all this. I’ve lived a dozen lives. I’ve been a famous scientist, a charlatan, a military leader, a prophet. Your prophet.”
I frowned.
“And it’s all thanks to you.” Lyle paused. “Dad. Look at me.”
I forced my head up. I met the yellow-tinged eyes of my ancient son.
“I regret nothing. I. Regret. Nothing.” He held my eyes. I felt the force of him, his strength, his personality, his intelligence, there and vibrant despite his ninety-plus years and multiple illnesses.
I was stunned by him. By his strength. I hated what this thing, this jumping through time, had done to us. But I was awed that he still felt the same way, even now, forty-five years on from when we’d seen each other last.
“Thank you, bud,” I said, and he nodded as though satisfied.
We kept talking late into the night, until he fell asleep.
I sat for a long time, staring off into space, listening to the gentle hum of the machinery that was keeping him alive.
I allowed myself, briefly, to wonder. What if Lyle did stop the transits?
What if I did need to spend the rest of my life standing every morning in the Second Device?
Living out the rest of my days underground, in this war-ravaged and unfamiliar future where I was the focal point of an entire religion.
And where a second group of apparently well-armed individuals wanted me dead.
I was honest with myself, there in the dim light, deep underground.
I was terrified of continuing forward into the future, but I was equally frightened of what could happen if the Second Device worked.
What if the Second Device stopped it, and Lyle died in the next few days?
Was I ready to bury him? My ninety-five-year-old son?
I stared at him as he slept and saw my Lyle in the bones of his face.
It could have been my imagination, or a trick of the light.
But I could see the boy he’d been. My boy.
It took hours, but I eventually let myself go and fell asleep in the chair next to him.
An alarm woke me. It pulled me up out of a deep sleep with a grating, nails-on-a-chalkboard shriek. Lyle woke to it as well and, with an irritated wave of his hand, shut it off. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay, bud.” I stretched. My back ached from the sleep in the chair.
“I was never a morning person.” His voice was raw and scratchy. He coughed after he spoke. I tried not to let my worry for him show.
He made me eat another terrible-tasting old MRE, this one flavored like eggs. Then he made me fully suit up with the PDSAS.
“We have to be prepared in case it doesn’t work.
” He watched as I folded myself back into the embrace of the exoskeleton.
I put the guns on, too—the old pistol he’d given me at the cabin, and the new machine dart-gun thing, all wicked curving lines.
He made me strap the spare magazines of ammunition directly to the exoskeleton, as close as possible to my skin.
We’d learned our lesson with the backpack.
Lyle let me leave the helmet off until we returned to the Second Device.
I expected an audience when we got there, but we were alone in the cavern. Lyle sat in the medical chair as the time ticked down. He controlled the Second Device with gestures. Cameras or sensors embedded in the walls picked up the commands.
The headache built behind my eyes.
“Put the helmet on,” Lyle said. “Just in case. Remember, Dad. If this doesn’t work, this chamber should still be here in ninety years, all but untouched. You’ll be safe. Safer than transiting outside. Okay? Step into the Second Device.”
I slid the helmet over my head. It sealed and went transparent, at least from the inside, giving me a clear view of the room. Then, taking a deep breath of the air recirculating within the suit, I stepped into the cage-like structure.
“It’s five forty-five,” Lyle said, raising his rasping voice. I looked at him as a hinged cover—composed of skeletal, dark-metal struts—folded over the opening I’d stepped through. “I’m switching over to active. It’ll feel a little weird.”
He turned the Second Device on.
“Weird” was insufficient. It was pure disassociation, like a god reached inside and plucked me out—pulling me away from my body.
But the thing that was me was stubbornly attached to my body and wouldn’t let go.
I didn’t see my own body from a distance so much as felt it at a distance.
I stumbled, catching myself by pure reflex, one exoskeleton-enhanced hand grasping at the metal structure of the Second Device.
Or rather, my body did—only after it happened did I realize I needed to do it, to reach out and catch myself.
“Dad?”
“I’m okay,” I heard myself say, and a fraction of a second later I decided to say it.
“Are you sure?”
“My headache’s gone,” my body said, and I realized it was.
“That’s good,” Lyle said. “That means it’s working. Hopefully. Just a few minutes of this. I know it’s bizarre.”
My body took a breath and straightened, stepping back from the edges of the Second Device, the dark metal giving off its own purplish illuminance and thrumming.
A heartbeat later, I thought it might be a good idea to let go of the structure of the Device, seeing as how it was glowing and starting to make noise.
“I’m doing things before I decide to do them,” my body mumbled, then I thought about saying it.
“I know, Dad. We all do, all the time. It’s been measurable for a century, although the science is controversial.
There are signs that the nerve signal to move our hand begins before we’ve consciously decided to catch the ball.
Like a subconscious pre-decision. But I discovered it’s tied to the quantum field waveforms that create sentience.
The Second Device radically enhances the dissociative effect.
It’s a part of the disruption process I developed. ”
I tried not to throw up. Or my body tried not to, and I tried after the fact. I wasn’t sure. I decided to stand as still as possible, not look at anything except Lyle, which turned out to be exactly what my body had already done all on its own. “Christ,” my lips muttered, then I said it.
“Five seconds, Dad.”
“I love you,” my lips said, and I realized how strongly I needed to say the words again, just in case.
Lyle nodded. “Three. Two. One.”
I waited.
I waited for the slip, for that impression of sideways movement, to be yanked out of this time and deposited ninety years in the future.
But Lyle was still there, still watching me. His yellowing, crinkled eyes grew wide and excited, as though he hadn’t dared let himself hope. “Plus, two. Plus, five. Plus, eight. My God. It worked! Dad, it worked!”
My body held up my right hand toward him, my lips forming to a wide grin, and I decided to reach out toward my son and smile. “Lyle,” my body said, a moment before I decided to start talking. “You did it.”
The headache flared, white-hot, a spike behind my eyes, and the world
slipped