The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014 (21 page)

“I never saw her again.”

I stared intently at Janice Kawcak as she stood on her porch, eyes become far away and her mouth in a frown.

“Are you a religious woman?” I asked.

“I didn’t used to be. But … John and I go every Sunday now.”

“How old are you?”

“I turn fifty-two in November.”

“And your family? How have they been since the … visitor … came?”

“Fine.”

“No problems with drugs or alcohol?”

“Doctor Clayburn, what kind of question is that? No, of course not.”

“Yes ma’am. I think I have everything I came for. So terribly sorry to have troubled you.”

* * *

The reek of embalming chemicals and ozone slapped me awake.

I’d dozed. My ability to stay up past dusk isn’t what it used to be.

Christopher was standing over me when I looked up.

“Did you see her?”

“I did.”

“Is she healthy?”

“Remission. And five years older than she was when she died.”

“Excellent,” he said, and began walking away from me down to where the western corridor branched.

I wheeled quickly after him.

“How many, old friend?”

“Only ten so far. But there are others.”

“I’d imagine they’re lined up to infinity.”

“Not that far.”

“And He doesn’t care, eh?”

The Nechronomator stopped short.

“As I said last night, God’s got nothing to do with this.”

“What about … the other guy.”

“Lucifer Morningstar? Can’t say I’ve made his acquaintance.”

“So you’re doing all of this under the noses of both the Lord and the Devil? That’s a neat trick, Christopher. Tell me, why are you the first? Surely Einstein and numerous others could have—should have—figured it out, too.”

“I asked the same question. To hear it told in the After, Einstein and the rest never had the notion. They were too puzzled, fearful, or awestruck by the After to care. And then, once they’d moved on from Limbo, it was too late for them to change their minds.”

“So the Catholics are right?”

“Not exactly. Limbo isn’t anything like what they might have thought it was. Mostly because
everybody
goes there first. It’s when you’re in Limbo that they sort you out. Like a gargantuan class of freshmen, being funneled through a registrar. It’s in Limbo where my people came and found me, and asked me to start the experiment.”

“Which was successful,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. He was grinning—an appalling expression on a dead man.

He began walking again until he reached the seal on another crypt.

“Robert Davis Maynard,” he said. “Bob will be next. Heart attack got him.”

“You’re talking to him now, aren’t you? In the After.”

“Very perceptive, Matt. Many things become possible in the After. You’d be amazed at how easy multitasking becomes once your intellect is freed from the confines of your brain.”

“What’s Bob’s plan?”

“Same as most of the others. He’s going to try and convince his younger self to change. Give up the daily quarter pounders with fries. Get an exercise regimen together.”

“And if he’s successful—like Janice—what happens to his body?”

“Since Janice didn’t actually die, her corpse then ceases to exist. Only the knowledge that it once existed, remains.”

“And you don’t care a whit about how this is affecting the timeline?”

My friend ran a skeletal finger along his now-pronounced jaw line.

“I did at first. But then I thought, why not? Why isn’t He letting everybody go back and have a second chance, anyway? I got pissed. For Him to have the power and not use it … He’s a bastard, you know. A regal, timeless, limitless bastard. Who doesn’t use His power when He should.”

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get caught? Get sent to Hell?”

He laughed.

“You of all people, Matt! A Sunday school lecture?”

“A matter of practical concern,” I said. “Every person who successfully alters the flow of their lives through the timeline, alters the present away from its original course. How far back are you going to go, and how many will you let go back? Do it enough and things will get very, very messy.”

“Don’t worry, Matt. I can’t send people back if I can’t physically touch them. So far the only ones I’ve done have been in this cemetery. All ordinary people. I seriously doubt allowing them to have another shot will disrupt things too much. Especially since their living selves won’t have any memory of the After, nor me, because they never died in the first place.”

“Then how about sending me,” I said.

The Nechronomator considered.

“Haven’t tried it on a living person. No idea what it might do to you. For all I know it might strip your soul out and scatter you insensate across the ether. Do you want to take that chance? Remoting in from the After provides me—us—with a degree of insulation I can’t guarantee if I try it on you.”

I looked down at my legs. Useless for the last forty years.

“You think I care about that now? Send me back, Chris.”

“Let me guess. To before the climbing accident.”

“Yes. You were there. You remember.”

“Yes, I do. I helped carry you to the ambulance.”

“Then do me one more favor and let me go back and fix the one fuck
ing mistake that has haunted me worse than all the rest. Please, Chris.”

“What if your current self continues to exist alongside your young self?”

“You really think that’s a possibility?”

“I don’t know, to be honest.”

“Fine, then. I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

* * *

I didn’t feel a thing when the Nechronomator touched my forehead.

One moment his stink threatened to overpower me, the next I was sitting alone, still in the mausoleum. Only this time the smell of cigarette smoke was much more pronounced, and there was a new smell. Like recently-poured concrete.

My tires squeaked on the brand new tiles and I stared at the seals to the crypts—most of which were blank—where there had been placards before.

I remembered how Janice’s corpse had flinched when she’d been sent back.

Signal disruption?

For me, it’d been effortless.

I wheeled myself through the dark to the mausoleum doors, which opened easily. Outside, the late summer night air was humid and palpable, like a potter’s damp room. Crickets hummed pleasantly in the distance, and the other side of the street across from the cemetery was an empty field, not apartment buildings.

I smiled in spite of myself.

Not bothering to close the door behind me, I wheeled out of the mausoleum, only coming to a halt when I realized that the ramp which had existed in 2019 didn’t exist in not-so-disabled-friendly 1979.

Shit. Even in my younger days I’d not have risked a ride down the mausoleum’s front steps.

I sat there in the portico and fumed quietly for a long time.

Then a skeletal child presented herself, quiet as a ghost.

I nearly fell over.

“Did Christopher send you?” I asked, heart hammering.

“Yes. He wanted me to see if you’d made it
OK
. I just told him you did.”

“And what will you do now?”

“I’ve got to go home and keep Daddy from backing over me with the station wagon. But first, I’m going to help you down the stairs.”

“I’m afraid I’m too heavy,” I said.

“Not when I’ve got power from the After.”

She was right. It was like being manhandled by a pint-sized wrestler.

I was wheezing by the time she got me back into my chair down at the bottom of the stairs. And I’d almost thrown up from that damned smell. They all had it, apparently.

She didn’t bother to say goodbye before she loped off into the moonlight, pursuing an objective I myself also intended to pursue.

In my head I knew exactly how far I had to go. I patted the lump in my jacket where I’d put my wallet. I’d have been screwed if not for the collection of vintage bills my late wife had kept under glass on the wall of our bedroom. Nancy had admired the artistry, and collected them. Now they were my meal ticket across the country.

Roll down to the street, keep going until I found a pay phone.

Call for a cab. Hope the cabbie didn’t have an issue with gimps.

Cab to the airport. Flight to Colorado.

The rest I’d have to figure out by the time I got there.

* * *

Even after all these years, I still remembered the address.

442 Pinewood, unit 15.

A ground floor condo. Fortunately for me.

I arrived via cab late into the evening, with the sun just setting. It’d been an exhausting day, and I’d almost convinced myself to get a motel for the night and tackle things in the morning. But then again, no. There was too much of a chance things could still go wrong. If I got my point across, I could rest afterward. Or not at all, depending on how temporal elasticity worked. Chris had said that Janice Kawcak’s dead self had ceased to exist the moment she went to see the doctor. What would happen to me?

I kept looking down at my legs as I gradually made my way up the sidewalk toward the first block of condos in the complex, all of them brand-new 1975 construction. The wood-strip siding still smelled heavily of stain. Marijuana was also in the air. I thought I saw a couple out on their second-floor deck, passing a roach. They quickly went inside when they noticed me looking up at them.

I smiled. Nobody wanted anyone from the older generation around, especially back then.

As I rolled into the hallway that led to units 14 and 15, a shadowy shape stepped out of the laundry room into the light cast by the single lamp over 14’s doorway.

I stopped cold.

“Do you think dying made me stupid, Matthew?”

The Nechronomator wasn’t smiling. He looked murderous.

I kept my hands fastened to the wheels, taking reassurance in the solid steel.

“I don’t know what dying has done to you, Chris. I really don’t.”

“Your apartment is twenty blocks from here. Why aren’t you over there?”

“I think you know,” I said.

“You can’t speak to me. I won’t allow it.”

“Why not?”

“
Nothing
must occur which might interfere with my ordinary progression. I lived a full life, and had a natural death. You have no right to be here.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. I let it boom out, as best as my 70-year-old lungs were able.

My dead friend flinched and waved his hands as if to shush me.

“Chris,” I said, “I think we’ve both passed the point of caring how we’re affecting the flow of events. What harm could possibly come from me having a chat with the younger you?”

“If there were no harm in it, you’d not be here. You plan to stop me.”

I looked up at the Nechronomator, his ugly gray flesh especially horrid in the dull bulb’s light.

“Not stop you,” I admitted, “but maybe talk you into thinking about a few things. I checked the papers on the way here and it’s only Friday. The accident isn’t until Sunday. Time enough to avert that, if I can. But before I rolled over to Nancy’s place—I was shacked up with her at the time, if you remember—I thought I’d stop in and see how you and Carol were doing. You should never have divorced her, you know. She was good for you.”

Christopher advanced on me, his hands looking like claws.

“You leave Carol out of this,” he hissed. “Look, Matt. You’ve got one choice. Turn yourself around and never come back this way again. If you do, I will know, and I will stop you. I sent you back once, I can send you forward too.”

“Against my will?”

“Damn right, against your will.”

“I wonder what He would have to say about that,” I said.

Just then the light for 15 popped on, and the door came open.

The Nechronomator turned and watched himself saunter out of his condo, boxers disheveled and a long-necked beer in his hand.

“What the fuck?”

Young Chris’s eyes focused on his older, dead self, and it was like a silent lightning bolt passed in the air between them.

“Chris,” I yelled from my chair, “I’ve got to talk to you! You’ve got to call off the climbing trip! You’ve got to—”

The Nechronomator spun and lunged for me. I reflexively rolled my chair in reverse. Just as Chris’s dead hands reached for me, the chair caught on the curb at the end of the sidewalk and flipped over. I slammed hard on my back and toppled out, the Nechronomator hitting the chair’s legs and pitching over me. Dead, brittle bones crunched as he came down in a heap. With my arms—made strong over forty years of wheeled effort—I righted myself and ignored the pain where my head had impacted the asphalt.