Real World
Written by Anakin McFly
« Contents Page + Prologue
« Chapters 1.1–1.11
« Chapters 1.12–1.16
« Chapters 1.17–1.21
« Chapters 2.1–2.6
- Flashbacks are Fun
- Vanished Just Like Elvis
- Luke's Arrival
- What Happened After Breakfast
- If You Put Your Mind to it
- What Happened After What Happened After Breakfast
- Truth Lies Out There
- Logan's Climb
Chapter Seven: Flashbacks are Fun
1982
The Real World
Three years had passed since that fateful day, but the incident remained fresh as ever in then nine-year-old Keith’s mind. Over time, his mother’s films that he used to find such a source of comfort had become loathsome to him. He saw them mocking him as they talked and smiled and laughed: all her characters, fine and healthy and alive, while she, the actor, was dead.
Why couldn’t they have died instead? Keith often found himself wondering bitterly. It wouldn’t have mattered then, because the characters weren’t real and it wouldn’t have mattered to anyone, no one cared about them, they were nothing, they could afford to die.
Rachel Kenselton’s character on the screen giggled merrily at some joke another character had told her, and Keith’s cheeks burned with fury.
How dare you laugh? Why couldn’t you die instead? If it weren’t for my mother, you wouldn’t even exist… Why did she have to die, why couldn’t you, why couldn’t you…
And yet Keith couldn’t bring himself to hate them either, for they looked too much like his mother. Each time he saw her films, he remembered her face, her eyes, her smile, her voice, her touch; the characters on the screen were mere copies, but so like the original, so close and yet so far…
Keith missed his mother so much.
His father didn’t seem to care. He was always out these days, getting drunk, seeing other women and doing goodness knows what with them. Keith heard him coming back sometimes, late at night when he couldn’t sleep.
The next morning, Keith got into a fight in school. It was just a trivial matter; nothing at all, really, but he wasn’t able to control himself. His classmate, Thomas, was telling a friend the Star Wars storyline and Keith just so happened to be sitting nearby, listening.
There was nothing at all wrong with what Thomas was saying, just that he was substituting all the characters’ names with the actors’ names to tell the story. Keith endured several minutes of, “Then Mark Hamill did this, and Harrison Ford did that, and Carrie Fisher did…” before he couldn’t take it any longer.
“His name is Luke Skywalker,” Keith said quietly and clearly, as Thomas was giving a graphic account of how Mark Hamill’s X-Wing starfighter was blowing up the Imperial TIE fighters in the Death Star attack.
Thomas glared at him for interrupting. The two of them weren’t exactly on the best of terms. “It’s the same thing, moron.”
“It’s not.”
“Yes it is.”
“The actor and character are two completely different people,” Keith said. “They have different lives, different personalities… Mark Richard Hamill was born on September 25th, 1951 in Oakland, California, to his parents William and Suzanne Hamill, whereas Luke Skywalker was born on Tatooine a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away to Anakin and Padme Skywalker…”
Thomas gave him a look that plainly said that he thought the whole conversation was a pointless waste of time. “Dork,” he said, then revelation dawned, and he sneered. “You’re thinking about your mother, aren’t you? She really was stupid in all those movies of hers, wasn’t she?”
Thomas turned to his friend, the one he had been telling about Star Wars. “Hey, did you see the one where she was being attacked by the guy in the monster suit, and she was like, “Aaah! Save me! Save…”
The next thing Thomas knew, he was on the ground. Keith was on top of him, screaming and pummelling him for all he was worth. Thomas tried to get up but couldn’t; after three years of hard work, Keith was now a blackbelt in karate and was a force to be reckoned with. Keith had first learnt it as a form of self-defence against Walter, but in times like this his training came in useful too.
Five minutes later, Keith found himself once again in the principal’s office. His fights in school always ended the same way, and as usual, it was all his fault.
Mr. Martin Hopkins, the principal, sighed as he saw him. “What is it this time, Keith?”
“He started it,” the boy muttered, staring at the table and kicking at its legs.
“Really? From what I heard, Thomas and his friends were just having their own conversation when you rudely interrupted him and then beat him up. Is that true?”
Keith scowled. It was useless to try and explain the situation. No one ever believed him, anyway.
“Is that true, Keith?” Mr. Hopkins repeated.
Reluctantly, the boy gave a slight nod. There was no point in arguing. He might just as well get the whole thing over and done with.
The principal sighed again. “You’re a bright student, Keith. Skipped two grades, and still doing better than most people in your class… But all that doesn’t exempt you from the school rules, and as long as you are a student in this school, you have to follow those rules. Knowing karate doesn’t mean you can just go picking fights with people. Don’t abuse your skills, Keith.”
The nine-year-old wasn’t really paying attention, engrossed in the intricate pattern carved into the woodwork of the table. His eyes followed the design along the side, watching as it curved around and came back the other way…
“Are you listening to me?”
Keith started and looked up.
“I want you to apologise to Thomas,” Mr. Hopkins said.
The boy grimaced.
“Don’t look at me like that. You were wrong, you admit it, so apologise to him. Go out now and do it. He’s outside. I’ll be watching you.”
Slowly, Keith got up and went out of the room, where Thomas was sitting and smirking at him. “Sorry,” he mumbled grudgingly.
Thomas’ eyes widened in mock surprise. “What? I can’t hear you.”
“I SAID I’M SORRY, OKAY?” Keith yelled.
Giving Thomas a last glare, Keith ran all the way to his favourite place at the back of the school, where he threw himself against the brick wall, kicking it until his foot hurt too much to continue; then he slid down onto the grass, his arms curling protectively around himself, the hot tears running from his eyes.
Chapter Eight: Vanished Just Like Elvis
21st December 1985, Saturday
Hill Valley, California
“What d’you mean, we have to wait twenty-four hours?” Dave McFly demanded of the police officer, Steven Dent. “Look, my little brother might right now be having his limbs chopped off and be about to be shipped off to Timbuktu or…”
“Or he may have decided to spend the night at a friend’s house and forgotten to tell you about it,” Steven replied with maddening calm and a British accent. “I’m very sorry, sir, but that’s our policy. A person has to be missing for at least twenty-four hours before a proper police report can be made. Two hours is just not enough, I’m afraid.”
Hey, that rhymes! Steven thought to himself. He gave a small smile and stirred his cup of tea.
Dave was starting to look murderous, his hand gestures getting more vigorous. “What if he’s dead, huh? What if Marty’s lying in a gutter somewhere on the brink of death, needing urgent medical assistance in a much shorter time than your precious twenty-four hours, and by the time you guys finally get there, he’s dead? What’re you going to do then, huh?”
Steven sighed. “Why don’t you take some time to look at things from our point of view. We’re all having a nice, quiet morning when all of a sudden you come barging in yelling that your brother has either disappeared or turned into a sheep. Upon further questioning, we learn that this discovery happened less than two hours ago. So who’s the one being unreasonable here?”
Dave fumed on the spot.
Steven took a sip of tea and savoured the taste of the sweet hot liquid in his mouth. He liked tea. “Twenty-four hours. See you then.”
#
21st December 1985, Saturday
Hill Valley, California
No teenager should ever have to deal with the problem of discovering that his best friend has just vanished into thin air. It’s one of those strange things in life that should never happen to anyone, but when it does, it has a tendency to get that person into trouble.
Bill S. Preston Esquire was painfully aware of this. He’d spent a good five seconds or so just staring at the dangling telephone before it occurred to him to pick it up and see if there was anyone at the other end who might give him a clue regarding Ted’s whereabouts. However, the line was dead and he put the phone back down.
“Ted?” he called out. “Where are you, dude?”
There was no response. Bill walked through the rented house, searching, but all to no avail. Panic started to grow in him. There was nowhere Ted could have gone… and he had no reason to go anywhere. Surely he would have informed him first, or at the very least bothered to put down the phone…
Thoughts of little green men started to enter Bill’s mind. It made him uneasy, and so he tried to push them aside and think rationally. Besides, he doubted Yoda and his friends were in the human-abduction line. Yoda at least seemed more than content to spend his days quietly in a little house on the swampy planet Dagobah.
Ted didn’t seem to be anywhere in the house as far as he could see, and he had no reason to be hiding… so that probably meant that he had left, somehow, unlikely as it might seem. Maybe the phone call had something to do with it… really bad news, perhaps? But even then, Ted would have told him first… they told each other everything…
There weren’t many places the teen could have gone. Maybe he had gone out to the garage where Lewis and the band were practising, but it didn’t seem likely; Lewis had made it quite clear that the two of them were to stay out of the way.
But Bill didn’t have any other suitable leads to follow, so he left and headed for the garage. Loud music blasted out at him as he opened the side door, and it took a while before the band leader noticed his presence.
“I thought I told you to stay out of here!” Lewis yelled over the sound of the drummer happily whacking away at the drums.
Bill said something that Lewis couldn’t quite hear.
“Ivan, shut up!” Lewis shouted, and the drummer finally took the hint. Lewis looked back at Bill. “What did you say?”
“Ted’s missing.”
Lewis gave him an incredulous look. “You interrupted us for that? He probably just went out for a walk or something.”
“But…”
The phone chose that moment to ring. Lewis sighed and went over to the corner to pick it up. “Hello?” He grimaced. “No, I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen Marty McFly at all today, and… what? …Look, talk to this kid, okay? His friend just went missing too.” Lewis held out the phone to Bill. “Jennifer Parker says her boyfriend ‘either disappeared or turned into a sheep’. Speak to her.”
“What?” Bill took up the phone. “Hello?”
“Take the phone outside,” Lewis advised, so Bill carried it out of the garage and then had a hard time trying to close the door on the phone cord. Inside, the music started up again.
Chapter Nine: Luke's Arrival
1st April 2004, Thursday
The Real World
Sitting behind his desk in his office at the hotel and munching on chocolate chip cookies, Keith was feeling particularly pleased with himself. This was fun. He’d watch them crack, one by one… Marty would probably be the first, then Neo. This all could make a rather interesting study on human psychology, he thought. But that was far from the main reason why Keith had got them here in the first place.
Another one of the other reasons was that it gave him pleasure to hear them scream, to see the frightened, helpless expressions on their faces… Keith finally had a chance to get back for all those years when he had been the victim, those years in school where he was constantly being picked on by school bullies, those years where he’d been unable to do anything as they beat him up, took his things and laughed at his feeble attempts at self defence.
It may have been a long time ago; but he remembered. Walter H. Reynolds and his gang – the bane of Keith’s schooldays. It wasn’t his fault that the teachers liked him. He couldn’t even stand them, but it wasn’t as if anyone cared about that particular fact. They just enjoyed having someone to torture, and Keith, the small nerdy Eurasian kid, just so happened to be their favourite target. After going for karate classes, he managed to survive the rest of high school and college much better… but the memories still remained.
But now, now things had changed, he thought with a grim sense of satisfaction. Now he was the one with the power, and he was going to make people suffer as he had suffered all those years ago…
Keith was jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of the door opening. Adwin entered and slumped into a nearby armchair. “I fed them,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“Thanks.”
Adwin raised his head to look up at his brother. “Why’d you bring the four of them here, of all people?”
“Why not?”
“I was just wondering. I mean, there are so many more interesting characters out there. Why them?”
Keith picked up a pen and twirled it absent-mindedly between his fingers as he tried to fudge an answer to Adwin’s question. He couldn’t tell him the truth. Adwin wouldn’t believe it. No one would. “I don’t know…” he said, to stall for time. “Marty because… uh, it was his universe that helped mess up the space-time continuum so much – it was the easiest pa… easiest universe to access. Neo, because... uh, his universe was also affected by the space-time rips… Frank was just so I could traumatise Marty. Ted was living in Marty’s universe too, so it was a two-in-one deal, plus he could freak Neo out and kind of… control him, keep him too traumatised to do anything too dangerous... “
Keith put down the pen and sat back in his chair. “You have to admit that there are a lot of people out there who would die to know what would happen if the two of them got together. There are actually fan fiction stories about that online, written by bored teenagers with no life. One person theorised that they would spend several hours taking turns to say ‘Whoa’.[x] And besides, I can’t stand Keanu Reeves. He spends half his time on screen trying to look cool and the other half trying to look hot. As for his acting… I just thought it might be fun to torment two of his characters.”
“Why don’t you get Han Solo and Indiana Jones together too?”
“I thought of that, but, uh... I don’t deny that it’d be interesting, but it’s too dangerous. I don’t want to risk it. Maybe… maybe another time.”
Adwin swung himself aimlessly around in the swivel chair and nearly hit himself against the wall. Eventually he decided that he should get down to doing something more productive, and left the room.
#
Adwin glanced furtively around as he stepped out of the lift onto the floor of the fourth floor lobby, then wondered why he bothered. Keith was probably still downstairs, and no guests were living on this floor – apart from the four inter-dimensional travellers, of course. Rooms 436 and 437, he thought as he walked past the doors, then stopped and went back to them.
Both doors were still bolted from the outside. What was the fun in that? Adwin mused. Why bother bringing a bunch of movie characters into the real world if you were just going to lock them up?
Grinning, Adwin silently unbolted both doors. He wondered what would happen when the rooms’ occupants found out. If they decided to leave and go outside… he’d like to see how the real world would react to them. The tabloid newspapers would have a field day.
That job done, Adwin turned right and entered the first door in the corridor there; the control room of Keith’s set up. He sat down in front of one of the computers in the room and shook the mouse to get it out of screensaver mode. The screen was full of weird diagrams with weird scratchy lines and scanned-in spidery handwriting that he couldn’t make any sense of, so he got up and tried the next computer instead.
This one seemed to display some sort of database – that of the forty-two and counting identified universes Keith had managed to break into, as well as locks on several inhabitants from each. Adwin clicked around and found records of the four characters Keith had brought in.
Adwin scrolled through the universe database again. Cool. Star Wars was one of them? And Keith hadn’t done anything about it? Sheesh. Keith had decided to go play around with two same-actor-different-character pairs when he could have got Luke Skywalker here instead? Adwin couldn’t understand his brother at times.
Shaking his head, Adwin clicked around and activated the machine. It was simple. Keith had everything organized so well on the computer with helpful labels that it didn’t take a rocket scientist with a PhD in rocketing to figure out how to work the machine.
Hitting the ‘Enter’ button, Adwin smiled as the machine hummed to life… and a thump was heard in the next room as Luke Skywalker circa post-A New Hope made his entry into the real world.
#
1st April 2004, Thursday
The Real World
The first thing Luke noticed was the pain, searing through his body as he hit the ground with a roll. It took him a while longer to realise that he could no longer feel the presence of the Force.
A slow panic started to grow in Luke as he tried to sit up and get his bearings. The Force had been a constant he could depend on; it was everywhere in the universe, an energy field surrounding all things… But here, all he felt was a huge void where the Force should be. Though he rarely used it, he had always been subconsciously aware of its being there, always in reach should he need to use it.
Gradually, the pain subsided, but Luke still felt weird. It was as though something had taken him apart and then put him back again not quite properly. Struggling into a better position on the floor, Luke blinked to try and clear the disorientation from his mind.
What happened? How’d I get here? Was it some new teleportation device?
The last thing he remembered was preparing for bed, exhausted after a day’s flying with the rest of Rogue Squadron. Yet somehow, all that seemed a faraway blur: surreal almost. What was real was the present, the feel of the hard white floor beneath him, and the sound of one of the room’s two doors opening as a young man stepped in, gazing with a poorly concealed wonder at the young Jedi-in-training.
“Luke Skywalker?” the man asked.
Luke stared fuzzily back. He still felt dizzy. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered why this person needed to confirm his identity. If he wasn’t sure who he was, why had he taken him in the first place?
“Are you Luke Skywalker?” Adwin asked again.
Luke gave a wary nod. Adwin smiled, seemingly content.
I have a bad feeling about this…
“Your parents were Padme and Anakin Skywalker?” It was more of a statement than a question. “But you never knew them, did you? Because from young the only family you knew were your uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, whom you stayed with on the moisture farm at the Lars homestead. Your uncle wanted you to be a moisture farmer like him when you grew up, but you didn’t agree, right? Because you wanted to join the Imperial Academy like your friends did…”
Luke’s mind was starting to clear a little. “How’d you know all that?” he asked, interrupting Adwin’s delighted recitation of all his Star Wars knowledge “Who are you? Where is this place?”
Adwin grinned. “You want to know where you are? This is the real world, Luke. Over here, you don’t exist. Over here, you’re not real. You’re just a fictional character from a movie trilogy known as Star Wars. A highly successful movie trilogy that spawned one of the largest film franchises ever, but just a movie trilogy nonetheless.”
Most of the words didn’t quite register with Luke, and he dismissed them as unimportant. “Who put you up to this?” he asked instead. ”Are you working for the Empire?”
“I… No.”
“Then what do you want with me?”
Adwin was at a loss for words. Things weren’t turning out the way he had expected. “Uh…” he said, the look on his face turning to one of unease as Luke’s hand moved to his lightsaber.
Chapter Ten: What Happened After Breakfast
1st April 2004, Thursday
The Real World
It didn’t take long for Frank to start to see several good points about the whole situation. They had free food and free shelter, in what seemed to be a four or five star hotel. Of course, the downside was that there was some guy out there who thought it might be fun to see if they died… but then again, everything in life has a price to it.
Frank finished eating and went to switch on the computer as Marty went on with his breakfast. The computer finished booting up, and Frank double-clicked on some icon. “I thought you might like to hear this…”
“What’s that?”
“The Back to the Future theme song,” Frank replied with a meaningful look at the teen, as the first few bars of the Alan Silvestri music began to play, performed in all its glory by the Outatime Orchestra.
Pushing his chair back, Marty slowly walked over to the computer. He sat down on the bed next to it and stared at the Windows Media Player window on the screen as the music played its way through to the final majestic quaver.
For a moment, there was silence in the room.
“Nice, huh?” Frank asked after a while.
Marty nodded slowly, staring down at the carpet. Somewhere outside, a bird fluttered past the window. “I want to go home,” he said quietly. “I don’t belong here.”
“It’s not your fault that you’re here. Keith made you come, and it’s not like you can do anything about it.”
The teen didn’t reply, overcome with a sudden desperate homesickness for a home he wasn’t even sure existed.
Frank, on the other hand, had no real reason to feel homesick. His parents were dead, his wife had been murdered, he was an only child and his girlfriend had been killed when his house collapsed on her. There wasn’t anyone he cared about enough to miss, and it wasn’t as if anyone cared about him either.
Furthermore, he had not much intention to leave the real world until he had learnt exactly how much cash Michael J. Fox had in his bank account and how much of it he could manage to steal with just a signature, a thumbprint, and – if the bank people still weren’t convinced – a DNA scan. (Though maybe he shouldn’t try the latter. His DNA might be different from the actor’s; they had different parents, for one.)
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Then ask for more lemons.
The only problem was that Keith intended him to die, and Frank couldn’t exactly do all that if he were dead.
#
Just a few days before, if someone had told Adwin that he was going to find himself cornered by Luke Skywalker holding a lightsaber blade dangerously close to Adwin’s neck, he would have laughed it off as impossible.
However, that was just what was happening now. The conversation between Luke and Adwin had gone swiftly downhill to the point when Adwin had reached for the tranquilliser gun he had brought along ‘just in case’ and pulled the trigger. The next thing he knew, Luke’s lightsaber had activated, sliced deftly through the tranquilliser dart, swiped against the wall, and ended up mere centimetres from Adwin’s jugular.
It was not exactly the scene that he had envisioned when he’d thought of bringing Luke over.
The tranquilliser gun had been a bad idea, Adwin reflected a little too late. Now Luke probably thought he wanted to kill him, and that was never a good thing; especially considering that the aforementioned Jedi-in-training had a lightsaber with him.
Adwin realised what a pathetic situation he was in.
“Ah…” he said, looking uneasily at the humming blade below his chin.
“What do you want with me?” Luke asked.
“Um…” Adwin’s brain seemed to have gone temporarily on vacation to Singapore.
“You were trying to kill me, weren’t you?”
Adwin wished Keith was there. “I wasn’t,” he croaked out. “That was just a tranquilliser…” – the look on Luke’s face suggested that he had no idea what that was – “you know… like… just to, uh, stun…”
“Why would you want to do that?”
Adwin couldn’t think clearly, knowing that at any moment he could have his head sliced off. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you, okay?” he pleaded. “Let me go.”
Luke wasn’t too sure if he could trust him. For some reason, he was having trouble sensing anything through the Force. Several seconds passed, then he finally deactivated his lightsaber and the blade withdrew into the hilt with a fwoop. Adwin breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed a little.
“Can you send me back?” Luke asked.
“No… I… I don’t know how to…”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to find my own way back,” Luke concluded, sticking his lightsaber back into his utility belt and heading towards the door.
Adwin felt understandably jittery as he watched Luke enter the lift and make his way to the ground floor of the hotel, where Luke presumably mean to go walk the streets of Los Angeles looking for the nearest spaceport. The thought made Adwin feel faintly dizzy.
Keith was so going to kill him.
The tabloid newspapers would indeed have a field day.
Adwin let himself into his brother’s room – number 439, which had served as Keith’s home for several years – and headed to the fridge, looking for anything with alcohol in it.
He then proceeded to get himself very drunk.
#
Bill Preston ran up the gravel driveway to the garage, where Jennifer was waiting.
“Are you Jennifer Parker?” he asked, pausing to catch his breath.
Jennifer nodded. “You’re Bill, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on,” she said. Jennifer pushed open the metal gate to let them both in, then hunted under the doormat for the keys the way she had seen Marty do. Finding them, she unlocked the garage door and the two of them stepped in.
Bill’s gaze alighted on the anachronistic computer sitting on the desk, which Jennifer walked over to and turned on.
“What do you think happened?” he asked.
Jennifer shook her head slowly, an expression of worry crossing her face. “I don’t know. I’ve got a feeling that it’s got something to do with something on this computer, but apart from that I don’t know anything.” She paused. “But… I guess that before you can fully understand anything, I’ve got to tell you about how this all started…” Jennifer looked up from the computer screen to the fourteen-year-old. “Can you swear to keep this all a secret?”
Bill nodded. “Sure.”
Jennifer gave a short laugh. “I’m actually not supposed to tell anyone these things, but given the circumstances…” She took a deep breath. “All right. Everything started two months ago, around the end of October when Marty’s best friend, Doctor Brown, invented a time machine…”
#
One thing Luke decided was that he’d never seen any planet like this before. Admittedly, though, there were a lot of planets in a galaxy, and lots of galaxies, and so just about anything could be possible. Luke wasn’t sure what it was about this place that felt different, and then he realised that all the people he had seen so far were human. To add to that, most of them were giving him strange looks as he passed, and one couple was just outright gaping at him.
The level of technology here was also strange; on one hand this planet seemed amazingly primitive, but on the other hand it seemed newer, somehow.
Luke realised with a sudden jolt that all this probably meant one thing: the planet did not yet have any form of communication with other planets.
There was only one way to find out. Luke went over to a random guy. “Excuse me,” he asked. “Do you know where the nearest spaceport is?”
The man looked Luke up and down and glared. “Get lost, Trekkie,” he snarled, in a veritable display of movie ignorance which would have angered any self-respecting Star Wars fan.
Luke didn’t know this, but he took it to either mean ‘no’ or that the person he’d asked was in a particularly bad mood. He was right on both counts.
Chapter Eleven: If You Put Your Mind to It
April 1989
The Real World
The hands on the clock read three minutes to four in the afternoon, but the sky overhead was already grey with the oncoming storm. Lightning flashed in the slow-moving clouds. Rumbles of thunder filled the air. A brief pause, then the rain poured out of the heavens to drum out their constant rhythm on the ground below.
Inside, the sixteen-year-old stirred slightly. Eyes still closed, he adjusted the position of his arms and murmured to himself. Then he went back to sleep, his head rested on his arms on the table next to an open book on quantum physics.
A doorbell rang in the distance. Shut off from the conscious world, Keith didn’t hear.
Seconds passed. The doorbell sounded again, more impatiently this time. There was a thud as something fell. Muffled swearing, then the jangle of keys extracted from an inconveniently-placed pocket, and the door was unlocked. The sound of the downpour outside crescendo-ed as water rained through the open doorway; then the door slammed shut and it was quiet again.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway.
“Keith!”
The teen half-opened his eyes and peered at the clock. It was almost four… had someone just called him? Keith lifted his head from the table and yawned. He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair and stared blearily at his closed bedroom door, waiting to see if there was anyone there.
The door burst open and Nathan Fong entered, half-drenched from the rain.
“Dad…” Keith started.
“Didn’t you get my call?” Nathan asked irritably. “It’s pouring out there, and I had to walk all the way back without an umbrella. I borrowed the store’s phone to ask you to bring one over for me, but you didn’t pick up…”
“I’m sorry… I guess I fell asleep…”
Nathan muttered something under his breath. His eyes scanned the room, looking for something he could yell about, but Keith’s room was neat as usual. Nathan picked up the quantum physics book. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Uh… a library book. Just… some extra studying…”
“On parallel universes again, huh?” Nathan asked, glancing through the synopsis on the book jacket.
“I…”
“We’ve been through this already, Keith. It’s not going to work, okay? You can’t just… zap people over from parallel universes. That’s science-fiction. She’s dead, Keith, can’t you just accept that? It’s been eleven years, for crying out loud! Why can’t you just move on?”
“Because there’s still a chance,” Keith said earnestly. “It’s not impossible, it’s been proven by science, other universes do exist, it’s just a matter of… of bridging the… crossing over… other worlds…”
Nathan sighed and put down the book. “Look, even… Let’s say it does work. So what? It won’t be her, just some parallel universe incarnation…”
“It doesn’t matter!” Keith half-yelled. “I just want to see her again, don’t you understand that?”
“So you’re going to waste the rest of your life on this?” Nathan questioned. “Because you think that maybe you can bring some version of her back? Get a grip, Keith. You can’t just throw reality out the window like that. This is the real world. This is reality, and the reality is all this, here, now. You can’t just get rid of it like that. Your mother’s dead. Get over it. You can’t change the past. This isn’t some science-fiction story, like… like Back to the Future or something. You can’t go flying off to 1979 with Doc Brown in a time machine to stop that accident from happening. What’s happened has happened. That’s just life. Accept it. Move on.”
“Yeah, so maybe I can’t change the past,” Keith said. “But I can change the future.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“What if it works, Dad?” Keith implored quietly. “What if?”
Nathan shook his head and tossed the car keys to his son. The teen caught them and looked at them.
“Go pick up Adwin. He’s at Jeff’s house.”
“He can get home on his own,” Keith said.
“It’s not about him, Keith. It’s about you. Get out into the real world. You’re losing touch with reality, spending all day cooped up here on your own wrapped up in all your fantasies. Go out there, see the people, see the streets, the buildings, how normal everything is, and maybe the world will talk some sense into you.”
#
It was ironic, Keith thought as he drove through the streets. Everything looked even less real out here. The vague shapes of people rushing through the rain, the sheets of water cascading down the car windows, the grey thundering sky… It felt surreal. As if things could happen. As If there was more to this world than the normality people always assumed it had. As if anything was possible, as long as you didn’t assume it wasn’t…
Other worlds… what if?
What if.
Chapter Twelve: What Happened After What Happened After Breakfast
1st April 2004, Thursday
Room 437, Kenselton Hotel
Frank surfed around the Internet as Marty paced the room, coming over now and then to peek at what Frank was doing.
Through the walls they shared with the next-door room suddenly came the sound of yelling and what sounded suspiciously like the second censored F-word that day. Frank figured that Neo was probably pretty mad at something or someone.
“What’re we supposed to do now?” Marty asked, sinking down onto a bed.
“Just sit around, wait for lunch, have lunch, sit around a little more, wait for dinner, have dinner, go to bed, then wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.” Frank sat down on the bed next to Marty. “I bet some people would be really glad to have that kind of life.”
More yells from the next room, and loud banging sounds.
“I wonder what’s going on there,” Marty thought aloud, glancing at the wall behind him.
“You could ask.”
“How?”
“Just go over to that wall and bang on it and demand to know what’s going on,” Frank suggested. “Or you could use the phone. Next door should be Room 436, I think. You could just try dialling that… or you could call up the police just for fun and let Keith deal with ‘em.” Frank gave a sly grin. “In fact, why don’t you call up the fire department as well? And the hospital. And room service,” he added as an afterthought, as Marty went over to the phone.
“I’ll just ring up next door.”
#
Seven minutes earlier
Room 436, Kenselton Hotel
Having eaten his fill, Ted wiped his mouth clean and glanced over at Neo. The man still hadn’t budged, staring at the same patch of carpet he had been staring at for the past fifteen minutes or so.
Ted got up from his chair and walked over to the bed. “Neo?”
No reply.
“There’s still some food left, so if you’re hungry you can…”
“Which part of ‘go away’ don’t you understand?” Neo cut in forcefully, not looking up.
Ted blinked. “I…”
“Go away,” Neo asked, voice rising. He lifted up his head and glared straight at the teen. “Is that too hard for you to comprehend? I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to hear you, SO JUST **** OFF!”
Silence filled the room.
An ant crawled along the windowsill.
“Okay,” Ted finally said in a small voice. He trudged over to the other side of the room and sat down, back against the door. A great feeling of loneliness started to wash over him.
He wanted to go home.
Ted dug a hand into his jacket pockets and emptied their contents before him. There was nothing very interesting there: his wallet, house keys, tissue paper, torch, a pen, some strange thing his aunt gave him and a piece of string that he just kept around in case it might come in handy one day. Taking the string, he dumped everything else back into the pockets from whence they came and then started tying the string into knots, wondering how long it would take before it got too short to tie any more.
The fourteen-year-old checked his watch. 9:17. He glanced at the digital clock a little way off – it read 8:43, and Ted ditched the string for the moment as he adjusted the time on his watch.
Neo was still staring at the floor. He evidently didn’t know the meaning of boredom, Ted thought. The teen gazed longingly at the television set in the room, wondering whether or not Neo would yell at him if he turned it on to see what was showing.
Neo probably would.
Ted brushed his hair out of his eyes and turned back to the string. The thing was getting more knotted up by the moment, and he decided to just go turn on the television in a minute’s time regardless of what Neo might think, because if he waited any longer, he was going to die of boredom.
At the other side of the room, Neo continued to stare at the floor. He wasn’t really looking at the carpet; he just found it easier on his mind to have a uniform, one-coloured thing filling his area of vision. It made thinking easier, and it also made not thinking easier. And that was what he was trying to do now – not think. Because if he did, he didn’t think it would have a very good effect on his sanity, and his sanity was something he was currently clinging on to for dear life. His world as he knew it was falling apart, and he felt as thought he was losing control of himself with each passing moment.
Neo’s left hand found his right and held it tightly. It made him feel a little more secure.
For some reason, he felt horribly exposed. He wanted to get off the bed and find a nice, safe corner where he could curl up and forget about everything, but he was too scared to move. He had no idea why; it was one of those irrational fears of the sort you get when you wake up suddenly from a nightmare, and don’t dare to move a muscle for fear that whatever horror in your nightmare might come after you if you did. Your rational mind is perfectly aware that that would not happen, but yet you remain paralysed in fear.
Neo didn’t dare to think. He didn’t feel ready to think the whole situation through and try to sort it out neatly in his head, because he had the nagging feeling that it might be too much for his mind to handle. The night before had been bad enough, but now that Ted was here as well…
Neo took another ragged breath and let it out.
Get a grip on yourself.
I can’t, I can’t…
The sound of the television suddenly cut violently into his mind, rudely disintegrating what little control he had left.
Something snapped inside Neo.
“SWITCH OFF THE F****** TV!”
Ted jumped, startled. Hurriedly, he jabbed the ‘off’ button on the remote control, then dropped it as Neo grabbed him and pinned him against the wall.
The teen gasped for breath, trying to pry Neo’s hand off his throat. “Let me go!”
“What’s your problem, Ted, huh?” Neo yelled, a slightly crazed look on his face. “Is it too much for me to ask that you just… just go away for a while and leave me alone, and… and stop… disturbing me… because… I… I…”
A funny feeling came over Neo as he looked into the teen’s eyes: the feeling that Ted wasn’t really there, but just him, him and no one else, and that he was just talking to himself...
He stared blankly at the struggling teenager, and then he was filled with the overwhelming compulsion to look away. His grasp fell limply off the teen. Neo staggered back, sank to the floor and buried his head between his knees.
Wincing, Ted massaged his neck, suitably relieved to find that his windpipe appeared to be still intact. He inched carefully away from Neo, making his way back to his earlier position by the door. The TV had been a bad idea, he reflected, sitting back down. So much for that.
He looked at Neo, huddled by the foot of the bed. That sure is one strange dude, he thought.
The phone rang.
“You get it,” came Neo’s muffled voice.
Ted wasn’t going to argue. Going over to the table, he picked up the phone and answered it. “Hello?”
“Ah, hi, this is Marty McFly from, uh, next door, and me and Frank were wond…”
“Marty McFly? Hey, aren’t you that dude from The Pinheads?”
There was a pause at the other end, and then Marty’s hesitant voice came through. “Ted? Is that you?”
Ted grinned. “Yeah! What’re you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know, dude. This guy named Keith just sort of zapped me here this morning…”
“What happened just now?” Marty interrupted.
“What?”
“All that noise.”
Ted cast a wary look at his roommate, who had his head up and seemed to be listening intently to this side of the conversation. “Neo was trying to kill me because I switched on the TV,” he said into the phone. “But it’s okay now, I think.”
“Oh, okay then. Bye.”
“Catch you later, dude!” Ted hung up.
“You know Marty?” Neo asked from the floor.
Ted hopped onto the bed and sat down. “Yeah. He plays lead guitar for The Pinheads – that’s his band. We’ve met before, during band competitions and things like that.”
“You’re in a band?”
“Nah, not really. Me and my friend Bill just help out in this band called Disaster Area. We’re trying to learn guitar so we can start our own band one day, but it’s been most difficult. Do you know how to play, dude?”
“No.”
Several seconds flashed by on the digital clock.
“How old are you?” Neo asked.
“Fourteen.”
More seconds went by.
“Any idea who the idiot actor who played us is?” Neo asked.
Ted tried to recall what Keith had said to him earlier that day. “Keith told me, but I can’t remember, dude. He had this totally weird name, though.”
I knew it, Neo thought darkly.
#
Room 437, Kenselton Hotel
One minute earlier
“That was weird,” Marty said, putting down the phone and sitting back down next to Frank.
“Who was that?”
“Ted Logan.”
Frank blinked. “Isn’t that the guy you told me about…”
“Yeah.”
A wry grin appeared on Frank’s face. “Does Keith have some kind of same-actor-different-character fetish going on or something?” A thought suddenly occurred to him. “Hey… I wonder if Han and Indy are around here somewhere.”
“Don’t count on it. That’d be kinda cool, though,” Marty added as an afterthought.
“Yeah.” Frank got up and went over to the television set. He picked up the remote control and the TV guide, then returned to the bed and hit the ‘on’ button on the remote.
Frank flicked through the channels. Some reporter talking… Cartoon Network… a movie… some animal documentary… HBO… AXN… more news… Discovery Channel… Disney…
Marty yelped, and Frank quickly went back to Discovery Channel, just as the screen changed to something else.
“Was that Mike-…?” Marty asked, eyes wide.
“I think so. Want to wait and see if he comes on again?”
The teen shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Chapter Thirteen: Truth Lies Out There
21st December 1985, Saturday
Hill Valley, California
“…but when I came here this morning, Marty wasn’t here,” Jennifer finished.
“So what’s the sheep got to do with it?” Bill asked.
“Oh, that. When I went over to the McFlys’ house, there was a sheep in Marty’s room. His parents… thought that he was the sheep, but I… don’t think so. You believe everything I’ve said so far?”
“Yeah,” came the sincere reply.
“Don’t you even think it’s all a bit too weird?”
Bill shrugged. “Life is always weird.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Jennifer turned back to face the computer, and moved the cursor to click on the Internet Explorer icon. Nothing happened, so she clicked it repeatedly and it opened. The HillValley-Online homepage loaded on the screen.
“Whoa,” Bill said, coming over to her side to join her. He gazed with unrestrained wonder at the webpage, the likes of which had had never before seen in his life. “So you think the disappearances had something to do with what happened here?”
Jennifer frowned slightly in concentration, her eyes still on the screen. “Maybe. I wonder if there’s any way to find out where exactly on the Internet Marty went…”
Bill pointed to the colourful icons at the top of the screen. “What about those things there?”
Jennifer moved the cursor over them and read the text that scrolled down. “Back, forward, stop, refresh, home, search, favourites, history…”
Pausing the cursor, she looked at Bill. He shrugged. “Try that.”
Jennifer clicked, and a sidebar opened up.
“Okay,” she said, reading the newly-appeared links. “Let’s try to start from the beginning…” She clicked on the link that read ‘2 Weeks Ago’ and a list of websites scrolled down the sidebar in alphabetical order.
“We’ve got to go through all of them?”
“Yeah,” Jennifer replied.
“That looks like a most bodacious lot of work.”
“There’s not much else we can do, is there?” Jennifer asked in return, scanning through the first page on the list. Bill pulled the spare chair over and sat down next to her. “What’re we looking for?”
Jennifer shrugged. “I don’t know… anything strange or unusual, I suppose.”
“You don’t know for sure?”
“I don’t,” Jennifer admitted.
Bill sighed. “Bogus.”
They got though the ‘A’s fairly quickly, and it wasn’t long before Jennifer clicked on the link for BTTF.com. The page opened, she caught the name ‘McFly’, and Jennifer took a sharp intake of breath that made Bill look up.
“You found it?” he asked.
“I think this might be it, but…” Jennifer’s eyes narrowed as she scrutinised the page. “I’m not sure what this means. It’s like… they’re writing as though it’s…”
“Like it’s a movie,” Bill finished quietly. “Go to that thing that says ‘Cast and Crew’.”
Jennifer clicked on the link, and it opened into a list of names.
“Try one of them,” Bill suggested.
Jennifer clicked on a random female name.
The page loaded.
She stared.
She freaked out.
She used God’s name in vain.
Loudly.
#
1st April 2004, Thursday
The Real World
About an hour later, several things were going on at the same time.
Frank was suffering from jet lag and was zonked out on the bed fast asleep.
Ted was watching Rocko’s Modern Life on TV as he munched on barbeque flavoured potato chips that he had found in the room larder.
Neo was lying on a bed and staring intently at the ceiling.
Adwin was passed out on Keith’s bed, blissfully drunk.
Keith was having lunch.
The sheep in Marty’s room was curled up next to his bed, the teen’s towel draped over its head as it counted sheep in an attempt to fall asleep.
Marty was sitting in the closet of Room 437. The only light he got was that which came through the slats in the closet’s doors, and he thought that the less he could see, the better. Some time ago he had come to the conclusion that if there was someone out there dictating his every move and making a movie out of his life, there was no reason for him to make that person’s job any easier by doing something interesting.
It seemed unlikely that any movie producer in his right mind would spend several hours of film on some guy huddled in the darkness of a closet, so that was just what Marty was going to do. Something told him that if this were indeed the real world, all he did here would not be recorded, but he had spent the last few hours with the uncanny feeling that he was being watched, and he therefore wasn’t going to take any chances. In the closet, he felt safer.
About fifteen minutes passed, during the better part of which Marty stared into the shadows suffering from his existential dilemma and contemplating the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. He didn’t consider ‘Forty-two’ a satisfactory answer, no matter what Douglas Noel Adams might have thought.
Marty sighed.
Another five minutes elapsed and Marty started feeling a little cramped. The closet wasn’t exactly a very spacious one.
So this is what is has come to, he thought. Sitting in a tiny closet in the dark. Frank was probably more comfortable on the bed, because beds in general tended to be more comfortable than poky little hotel closets.
Frank. Marty realised not for the first time how much of a stranger his roommate actually was. Apart from that little online conversation, the two of them had never met until the previous night. He knew next to nothing about Frank Bannister. For all Marty knew, he could be a murderer, or a terrorist, or a conman, or a vampire, or…
Being played by the same actor wasn’t exactly grounds enough for trusting someone.
But Marty tucked that particular consideration away into a corner of his mind and tried not to think about it. It wouldn’t do to think about substantial things now, he thought, because they might provide material for whatever filmmaker or author was controlling his life. This time was for him to concentrate on nothing but something boring and box-office-worthless like sitting in the closet in the dark.
Dark, he thought.
Marty scratched his hand.
Closet, he thought.
Time slowly ticked several seconds into the future.
Dark closet, he thought.
Marty sneezed. Dust.
Sitting, he thought.
Three minutes vanished into the past.
Marty wondered what was happening now to the sheep he’d seen in his room. He wasn’t too sure now that it had really been there. Then he wondered if his room even existed in the first place, and his house, and Hill Valley.
This made him sink back into depression.
Another five minutes later, Marty figured that at least an hour must have gone by and perhaps it was enough unless he wanted to start aching all over. Nudging open the closet with his left knee and toppling out onto the carpeted floor outside, he gingerly got back to his feet only to discover that one of them had gone to sleep.
The teen hobbled around a while to wake his foot, looked at the clock and discovered to his dismay that it had only been half an hour, then walked over to the door, turned the handle just for the sake of doing so, and discovered to his surprise that the door was unlocked.
Marty just stood stupidly in the doorway for a few seconds, staring dumbly out at the corridor and feeling too stunned to believe that the door was actually open. Not knowing what else to do, he went back in and shook his roommate awake.
“Hey, Frank! Wake up!”
The man half-opened his eyes, and closed them again. “Go ‘way,” Frank murmured sleepily.
“The door’s open!”
“Go ‘way.” Frank clamped his pillow over his ear and ignored the teen, leaving Marty standing there helplessly. He had no idea if the door had been unlocked on purpose or whether it had been an accident. For all he knew, it could be a trap and Keith could be waiting outside to do him in if he left the room.
There was only one way to find out, but Marty didn’t dare go out alone.
What’s the matter, McFly? Chicken? he wondered angrily to himself, made up his mind, opened the door and went out. It was only as he heard the door click shut that Marty realised he had just locked himself out.
Marty gave himself a mental smack on the forehead. He turned back around, meaning to bang on the door and yell until Frank woke up and let him in, but then he thought about the pointlessness of doing that. He had wanted to get out of the locked room, and now he was out. Might as well have a better look at the place. He turned right and started walking.
Chapter Fourteen: Logan's Climb
Neo pushed open a window and stuck his head out as wind blew past him into the room. From here, he could just make out the window that led to the lift lobby… and it was open. Neo looked downwards, mentally charting a path to that window via the ledge that ran along the side of the building. It was kind of narrow, but he supposed it could hold…
Neo unstuck his head out the window. “Do you think you can reach that?” he asked Ted.
The teen looked up. “What?”
“Get over here.”
Ted scrambled over. “Yeah?”
“Do you think you can reach that?” Neo repeated, pointing at the distant window. “Climb along there… then you can go through that window, get to this room from outside, and unbolt the door.”
Ted gazed doubtfully at the not-quite-sturdy-looking ledge hanging four floors off the ground. A fall from there would be more than enough to break his spinal cord, rack up a huge hospital bill, and paralyse him for life.
“Why don’t you do it?” he asked instead.
Neo hesitated. “I’m afraid of heights,” he muttered some time later.
“What makes you think I’m not?”
“Are you?”
“Not really,” Ted admitted.
Neo looked at him. “Then what are you waiting for??”
“Are you sure it’s safe, dude?”
“There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
#
It was one thing, Ted decided, to be unafraid of heights when you had both feet planted firmly on the ground. But it was another thing altogether when you were hanging four floors from the ground, with nothing to support you but a crumbling ledge that, width-wise, had barely enough space to accommodate both your feet.
Four floors. It might not sound like much, but in reality a fall from that height can be much worse than a fall from a greater distance. If you were to fall from, say, the top of a hundred-storey building, you would black out seconds from taking off, be unconscious when your body reaches its terminal velocity of over a hundred kilometres an hour, and remain unconscious when you magically transform from ‘free-falling human being’ to ‘what-the-*insert expletive here*-is-that-bloody-mess-on-the-floor?’
If you were to fall from a height of only four floors, however, there’s a much higher possibility that the meeting with the ground would not kill you, but rather render you a vegetable for the rest of your miserable little life. And not even the kind of vegetable that can be made into vegetable soup or consumed for its high vitamin and fibre content, but the kind of vegetable that sits in a wheelchair all day long.
It was therefore perfectly understandable that Ted Logan felt a little freaked out.
He turned his head to look at the ground below.
Bogus, he thought.
Gripping tightly onto the windowsill, he moved sideways to the right, one foot at a time, and kept on for about a metre before reaching a protruding brick column that ran all the way down the building. The ledge continued on the other side, before hitting another column. The window after that led to the lift lobby.
Holding on to the windowsill with his left hand, Ted released his right and reached out, keeping both feet still on the ledge. His fingers barely reached halfway round the column.
Ted glanced at Neo, hoping for some advice. All he got was an unreadable stare, so he returned his attention to getting to the other side of the column. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d have to jump for it…
Ted reached out his right hand again as he released his right foot from the ledge, swinging himself over. His left foot slipped off the narrow edge on the other side, and he braced himself against the column to prevent himself from falling any further, right hand gripping onto the windowsill for dear life.
Gritting his teeth, the teen regained his footing on the ledge and just stood there for several seconds to regain his composure. A brief grin flashed across his face in light of his minor victory – he’d done it. One more column to go…
Slightly more confident now, he moved along the ledge a little faster than before. He reached the column, steeled himself, and swung over. Right hand grasped hold of the windowsill, right leg found the ledge…
Then the ledge broke, and Ted yelled as gravity slammed him against the column. His right leg kicked around in mid air and found the ledge again, but the moment he shifted his weight over, that portion of the ledge broke off as well and fell four floors down to fatally crush three very pretty petunias.
Ted pressed his left hand against the column, fingers digging painfully into the cement that held the bricks together, and pressing the sides of his right shoe against the wall beneath his right hand, still gripping the windowsill. The teen was now dangling a considerable distance off the ground, held up only by his right hand and the phenomenon known as friction – not that he knew what it was, because he never really paid attention in science class, but it was what had ensured his survival so far. To make matters worse, he just so happened to be left handed, which meant that the right hand his life depended on wasn’t particularly strong.
He tried the ledge again, but succeeded only in kicking off more bits of cement that went on to commit several grisly acts of botanical murders.
Bogus, Ted thought again for the second time in five minutes, only this time it was a much larger understatement. If the windowsill he was holding onto crumbled now, it would mean saying hello to a life either as a quadriplegic or a dead person.
This was turning out to be a most egregious day.
There was no movement he could make without running a fairly high risk of falling… and just as Ted thought things couldn’t get any worse, a mosquito landed on his left arm, gave it a welcome bite, and flew off. The spot it had stolen blood from started to itch, and Ted couldn’t even scratch it. Well, technically he could, just that if he released his right hand to do so, there would very soon be a whole lot more things to worry about than a mosquito bite.
It was about then that Ted decided it was time to call for help.
“NEEEEOOOO!”
#
Several minutes ago…
Thomas ‘Neo’ Anderson stared out the open window of Room 436, the fingers on his left hand rapping out some obscure rhythm on the windowsill, and generally spacing out.
He vaguely wondered what would happen if Ted lost his footing and fell – he guessed there was about a fifty-fifty chance of that happening. What would the police think when they found the teen on the ground, smashed to a pulp by the force of gravity? More importantly, who would they think he was?
It could get interesting.
Although Neo realised that if Ted did indeed get smashed to a pulp, he wouldn’t be so easy to recognise. But Neo decided not to let his thoughts go any further down that path, because his conscience was already chastising him for sending some half-witted teenager on a dangerous task like that, let alone hoping that he fell.
So he went back to thinking about nothing. And he continued to think about nothing for about half a minute or so, pausing only to wonder when he noticed the inhuman slaughter of a trio of helpless petunias by a chunk of crumbly cement.
Then the doorbell rang, and Neo jumped.
For quite some time he just stared blankly at the door, wondering who that could be. Then the doorbell rang again, and he decided that he should at least see who it was. He went over to the door, looked through the peephole, and saw Marty McFly standing there.
Wait a sec… if Marty’s outside, that means…
Something clicked unpleasantly into place, and Neo pulled at the door handle. It gave way, the door opened, and he stared out the open doorway, suddenly feeling very stupid.
“Hi…” Marty said, but Neo didn’t really hear him.
“The door’s open?” he mumbled in a daze.
“Yeah, I just found out they were unbolted… Where’s Ted?”
A wave of guilt suddenly washed over Neo. “Uh…” he said, glancing in the direction of the open window.
Marty followed his gaze, and understanding finally dawned on him. His mouth fell open. “You mean he…”
That was when Ted yelled.
#
Mr. and Mrs. Freeman of Room 537 in Kenselton Hotel were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were from England, and like any self-respecting Briton, they enjoyed a nice cup of tea from time to time.
Their little holiday in America had been perfectly normal and uneventful, just the way they liked it. Early this morning, they had had a nice, normal breakfast (with tea, of course), and gone out to do some sightseeing before returning to their room, because there was a programme on television that Mr. Freeman wanted to catch.
Half-past ten that day thus saw him sitting on his bed in front of the television set, watching whatever programme it was that he had wanted to see. His wife joined him for a while, then went over to open the window and let in some fresh air.
She stood by the open window for some time, watching birds fly around in most delightful manners and enjoying the breeze. Then her gaze wandered downwards and her eyes opened in horror.
“Blimey, Julian!” she gasped. “Look at that!”
“What is it, Anne?” her husband asked, eyes still on the screen.
“There’s someone climbing around outside the building!”
Thankfully, the commercial break chose that time to come on, and Julian Freeman went over to see what his wife was making such a fuss about. He looked out at where she was pointing, and his face paled as well.
“What on earth does that young fellow think he’s doing out there?”
“Do you think he’s going to fall?” Anne asked, face ashen.
“No doubt, if he carries on like that.”
“Should we…” Anne broke off in mid-sentence with a sharp intake of air as she saw the ledge break away under Ted’s foot, and she gaped as she watched him struggle to regain his footing.
“I’m going after him,” Julian muttered with a last glance at the teen one floor down.
“Shouldn’t we call for help?” his wife asked.
Julian was already out the door. “There’s no time!”
#
The ache in Ted’s right arm grew more intense with each passing millisecond. He had considered moving his left hand over to the windowsill as well to see if he could hoist himself up from there, but that would mean transferring all his weight to the windowsill, which didn’t look like it could take much more. He didn’t dare risk it. Besides, the window wasn’t open wide enough for him to enter. He needed his hands free to push it open further…
Ted yelled for Neo again, though he knew it was pointless. Neo was locked in; what good could he do? Climb out the window as well? Then they’d both be stuck out there…
For the umpteenth time, Ted gazed downwards and wondered if he’d be able to survive the fall. Maybe if he aimed for the bushes… but even those looked so far away. Though it wasn’t as if he had a choice – he doubted he could hold on much longer.
Another wild urge to let go and let gravity take over came upon him again, but he resisted it. He was going to hang on to the very last moment when he absolutely could not take it any longer, when every joule of energy had been sapped from his body, when…
Then the most beautiful sound he had ever heard reached his ears. The window was pushed open from the inside, and a voice came through.
“Give me your hand, son. Looks like you need some help.”
Ted turned his head up to look at his rescuer, a middle-aged British man with a kindly face who reached out towards the teen. Pulling his left hand free, Ted grasped hold of the newcomer’s wrist. His feet slipped a little from their awkward position against the brick column, and he tightened his grip in panic.
“Take it easy now… I’ve got you.”
Gradually, Julian helped Ted through the window and into the lift lobby on the other side, where the teen collapsed into a sitting position on the floor and gasped out a thanks.
Julian crouched down next to him. “Are you all right?”
Ted nodded breathlessly. “Yeah.”
“I saw you from my window upstairs, and you looked like you were in a bit of trouble there,” Julian continued. “I’m not going to ask what you were doing, climbing around like that, because I doubt you’ll tell me the truth… but whatever it was, it was still highly dangerous, and I advise you not to do it again.”
“Yes sir.”
Julian smiled and stood up, and Ted got to his feet as well, albeit a little unsteadily. The man gave the corridor a quick look-over, pausing when he thought he saw a door move, then attributed it to his imagination and ignored it.
“You shouldn’t stay here so long,” he said, gesturing to the line of red tape that blocked off the lifts. “This floor’s supposed to be closed off for refurbishment or something… but since you’re here, I guess there’s no harm in you looking around a little.” He pressed the lift call button, and the little red numbers above one of the lift doors started to move. “Well, I’ll be off then,” he said. “Do you want to come along, or do you want to stay here and explore?”
Ted had a sudden impulse to follow Julian off the floor, away from everything that had happened since that morning, and be considered a part of the normal world out there… but the feeling passed.
“I really appreciate your offer, sir, but I think I’ll… uh, just hang around a while more,” the teen said with a smile.
“All right then,” Julian said, as the lift arrived. “Take care.”
Ted watched the lift doors closed, then turned left into the corridor. Now to do what he had come all the way to do…
He headed for Room 436, then stopped, staring in stupefaction at the unbolted door. Suddenly wondering just what he was there for, he was about to try the door handle, when the door opened from the inside and Marty peeked out.
“Is he gone?” Marty asked.
Ted just stared blankly at him. “The door’s open?”
Not answering his question, Marty glanced both ways down the corridor, decided that the path was clear, and opened the door a little wider. “Yeah, someone unbolted the doors, but we just found out about it.”
“I did all that for nothing?” Ted asked, more to himself than anyone else.
Neo ignored him. He pulled the room’s key card out of the socket by the door and stuck it into his pocket. “Come on. Let’s go next door.”
Chapter 2.15 »
#