Lost Friday Page 24

  “Got it, boss.” I was out the door, but to where? I sat behind the wheel of one of the Press news vans, and tried to think of my next move. If I were a Johnny Pappas Synthetic, and I’d been sent back to this time, where would I be, and what would I be doing? What was the reason for sending back my twin? Obviously, it would be to take my place, but why? I found out when I went to adjust the rearview mirror and saw myself sitting in the back seat.

  Chapter 31… Darlon

  “Did she believe your story this time?”

  I turned so quickly that I nearly unscrewed my neck from my shoulders. Fuckin’ A: dark eyes, thick tangled hair, wiry stubble; I was looking at myself. The first thing I noticed, besides the incredible good looks, was one of those now all-too-familiar DNA-controlled Glocks aimed at the back of my seat. Remembering that the weapon fired a variety of ammunition, I figured it was loaded with something that would turn me into hamburger. I met his eyes with mine, and saw that they were soulless. “What story?” I asked.

  “Stop playing dumb, Skippy. We’ve been through this before.”

  I thought: we have? Confusion must have crossed my face, and he caught it. This guy was sharp. Then again, he was me. No wonder he was such a fucking wise-ass. “How many times?”

  “Several.”

  “I guess that means this is the furthest you’ve been sent back to undo your previous fuck-ups.”

  He caught me in a glare. “I’m sure I’ll be successful on this attempt.”

  I took a page out of Romano’s book and tried to piss him off to see how he did under pressure. “Yeah, right,” I said. “So, ah, what should I call you besides dip-shit?” Well, that had the desired effect. His face hardened, and I wondered if that’s what I looked like when I got angry. It wasn’t a good look.

  “You can call me Darlon.”

  “Darlon? What is that, like, the name of a prescription drug, or something?” He didn’t think it was funny. “You know, I just don’t understand why you clowns can’t get it right. I mean, you know what’s going to happen, and you still screw it up. If you’re going to risk certain execution, one would think you’d figure it out.”

  Darlon chuckled contemptuously. “We’re not the only ones sending back operatives, Johnny. Do you think your ICTO friends are as honest and socially conscious as they’re portraying themselves to be, and that they’re not running their own operations aimed at undoing our work? They’ll stop at nothing to maintain their monopoly on ITD technology. They’ve killed millions.”

  Old Darlon verified what I’d suspected all along: there were no white hats in this gunfight. “Don’t play holier-than-thou,” I shot back. “I’ve seen the slaughter.”

  “Every one of those people was convicted of a crime, Johnny.”

  “You know, I really don’t like the way you say that.” I could feel my neck muscles turning to ropes.

  “Touché. They were all given a fair trial.”

  “Right. Just like David Robelle was given a fair trial.”

  “David Robelle and those scientists were aware of the fact that their work was going to be used to prevent certain people from being born. That’s a form of murder in the year 2194, yet just like the people you’re talking about, they chose to ignore the warnings. They knew they were breaking our laws, but somehow they felt they weren’t subject to them.”

  “Your laws weren’t their laws.”

  “We’re talking about time travel, Johnny. They were subject to the laws of any time or place to which they were able to travel. In your time, aren’t people who come to your country from other places subject to your laws?”

  Old Darlon had me there, but I tried to evade the point. “And what about the people I saw being turned into fish food?”

  “Those people were convicted of breaking laws they knew were in existence well before having taken residence within our client countries. If they didn’t like the laws, they should never have agreed to live under them.”

  “You make it sound like they had a choice.”

  “Of course they did. They were also given the opportunity to relocate, and they chose not to. We were the ones with no choice.”

  “There had to be other choices besides killing them.”

  “They were aware of the circumstances,” Darlon defended. “Our client nations have fifteen billion people to provide for. They don’t have the time, or the money, to tolerate social criticism. It leads to insurrection and terrorism, a fact that has been proven many times throughout history.” Darlon took a breath, but the Glock never moved. “You probably don’t know that death is the common penalty for many crimes in our time, some of which you might classify as minor. A society of that magnitude can’t function with the endless nonsense that comprises your social justice system. It would bankrupt the system, and there would be utter chaos. And then what, Johnny? Sometimes worrying about the few is detrimental to the many; in this case, tens of billions would die because a few malcontents refused to abide by the rules set up by their own society. We are simply facilitating their wish to not be part of it.”

  While it sounded good on the surface, I was able to see the holes in Darlon’s argument. If there was ever a formula for fascism, this was it. However, I could tell Darlon believed every word he said. “And simply being born of a particular race is a crime worthy of death?”

  “I don’t have time to explain all the lessons history has taught us.”

  I bet most of those lessons involved mass graves.

  “Some people are natural enemies,” Darlon went on, as if he felt the need to explain further, “and have been for hundreds of years.”

  I thought: what was this, a clone with a conscience? “So?”

  “What’s to make us think we can control their hatred after all that time? The easiest way to maintain order is to separate them. Those who refused to be relocated were in violation of the laws of our client countries. We provide the law enforcement functions for those countries, and we had no choice but to carry them out. Those people were given every opportunity.”

  “So, it’s off with their heads, no middle ground.”

  Darlon was losing his patience. “Don’t make those people martyrs for their stupidity. With fifteen billion people to protect, our clients do not have the ability, or the willingness, to compromise with insurgents. It’s for the greater good.”

  I understood his point, in a warped way. There wouldn’t be a lot of social unrest if you could be put to death for giving someone the finger, but it sounded way wrong. “And you’ve been sent back for the umpteenth time to defend this paradise.”

  “I’ve been sent back to stop the ICTO from taking us over, or forcing us to merge with one of our other competitors. They’ve tried several times, but we’ve managed to ward off their attempts by going back further and further in time and foiling their efforts.”

  I thought, fuckin’ A. This sounded like a hostile takeover battle. Could it be? I wondered how long the Red Diamond and the ICTO had been trying to steal clients from each other. For all I knew, in the year 2194 countries could switch security agencies like switching phone companies. For the Red Diamond, the ICTO, and their competitors, world domination came down to bringing in enough customers. I figured it was like McDonald’s.

  “ITDs are power, Johnny. The ability to travel through time and affect history is the most powerful weapon ever created. It is better to have the technology and control it rather than be a victim of its abuse. It would enable us to provide more service to our clients.”

  So, it all came down to money. I didn’t doubt Darlon’s point that many governments would want the technology, and would pay dearly for it. For some, it could be the difference between existence and nonexistence.

  “Hopefully, this will be the last time we carry out this mission,” Darlon continued. “We think we’re finally at the source.”

  The source: I understood instantly. I looked at Darlon.
He looked like me, but he wasn’t me, and could never be me on a long-term basis. However, there had to be a hell of a good reason for the Red Diamond to engineer a Synthetic in my likeness, take thirty-one years to grow him, and then send him back. Being the source of this mess could certainly be it. Suddenly nervous, I almost went tinkie in my pants as I realized what he was inferring. “Are you trying to tell me this whole thing revolves around me?”

  “You’re the key to the entire development and existence of ITDs,” Darlon said calmly. “That’s why I’ve been sent back to take your place.”

  “You couldn’t even crap like I could,” I said smartly. “And besides, I thought David Robelle and those scientists were the key to your treasured ITDs.”

  “The scientists are useless,” Darlon volunteered. “The records indicated they were the primary authors of the formulas, but we realized they weren’t as soon as we did brain scans on them. That’s why I’ve come back. Who would have thought a seventeen-year-old was responsible for proving that time travel was possible?”

  So David gets screwed in the end, I thought to myself, not even getting credit for his own work. I wondered if he would really care about that, given what his findings led to in the century after his death. “So what are you going to do with the scientists, kill them too?”

  “We don’t have to do anything with them. They haven’t been taken yet.”

  Oh, right. I got the picture. Today, September 15th, was before the scientists’ abductions, before Lost Friday, before everything, and Darlon came back, looking like me, to do what? Hello. To kidnap David Robelle? They’d already done that, which probably meant that course of action didn’t work, or Darlon wouldn’t be here. “So tell me, Darlon, old pal, what’s up? You didn’t come back here to take a vacation.”

  Darlon repositioned the Glock so that it was no longer pointing into the back seat, but at my head. “I think you know where those formulas are.”

  Ah. That answered the question of how I managed to become the honored guest at this party. I didn’t think I could laugh at someone who was holding a gun to my head, but I did. “What, you’re going to kill me? I won’t do you much good dead, will I? What then?”

  Keeping the Glock trained on me, Darlon climbed into the front seat of the news van. I noticed he was wearing a blue button-down shirt, Dockers, and moccasin loafers. Someone had done his or her homework. Answering my question, he said, “We could go back further and try again, but you can be sure that if we don’t find those formulas, you’ll never be alive again beyond this point in time.”

  First, it was off a bridge with Remington and Romano, and now I was about to take one in the ear. I knew what he was saying, all right, which was that the chances of history being changed to make me un-dead were somewhere around none. I figured the next copy of the Press would have my obituary in it if I didn’t cooperate. But, they knew that David had those formulas. Why didn’t they just go to his house—again?

  “There’s something I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t wait,” said Darlon.

  What a sense of humor. I hated to admit that the bastard was more like me than I thought. “You already have an ITD….”

  “Actually, we have three of them.”

  “Really. The ICTO boys think you only have one.”

  “It’ll be our little secret.”

  “I don’t understand why those formulas are so damned important to you. If you have three ITDs, surely you can find a way to tear one down and duplicate the technology.” Suddenly, my cell phone went off, but just as I looked at the incoming number Darlon took it from me and clipped it to his belt.

  “Actually, we’re in the process of doing that,” he said, “but it’s not that easy. Aside from the fact that ITDs are programmed to self-destruct if someone tampers with them, David Robelle was another Einstein and coming up with his exact calculations by working backward from an end product might require years of experimentation, not to mention loss of life.”

  “Loss of life? How’s that?”

  “We’ve figured out teleportation when the subject is present and able to be scanned. Getting that subject back from the initial teleportation isn’t so easy without the actual formulas. That’s why the Red Diamond has only experimented with Synthetics. You see, no one gives a crap if we never come back.”

  “So why are you doing this, Sherlock?”

  “I have no choice, Sherlock. It’s this, or the fish food factory. What would you do?”

  Sarcasm and righteous indignation; for a second, I thought I could actually grow to like this guy. “So you need the formulas to get the teleportation thing right, right?”

  “More precisely, we need the formulas to prevent the ICTO from getting ITDs.”

  I shook my head. “But the ICTO already has them.”

  “Think,” said Darlon, tapping my head with the barrel of the Glock. His eyes narrowed.

  I mentally reviewed what I knew about the formulas, which wasn’t much. I’d crossed paths with them a couple of times. The first time was at the Robelles’ house with Corvissi; the second time was after I’d been sent back by Vishal, and I was living through the Thursday before Lost Friday for the second time. That’s when David actually gave me the notebook. I recalled that David had indicated that the notebook contained only a couple of the proofs, and that he hadn’t even completed the work yet. As such, there had to be more stuff out there than what was in that one notebook. I wondered if Darlon knew that. I wondered if Darlon even knew there was a notebook. With all the historical tampering that had probably taken place in the 190 years between Lost Friday and 2194, who knew how, or where, David’s work ended up being disseminated? I recalled that the last time I saw that notebook it was inside Officer DiNardo’s squad car about a week from now. Obviously, however, time meant nothing, and I knew I would have to prevent Darlon from finding it. I looked at Darlon one more time. He was me, all right, and I just hoped that I could outfox myself.

  Chapter 32… BLAM!

  To say that I was still having trouble figuring how several pieces of this puzzle fit together would be accurate. To say I was cruising toward a I-was-totally-fucked-up rating in the logic department would be more accurate. Vishal had provided the answer to how Anne Behari fit in, but what about husband Robert? I mean, if the Red Diamond was trying to prevent Vishal from being conceived, why did they have to go back seven generations to do it? Couldn’t they have started with Vishal’s mother and/or father? It did take two to tango, after all. But maybe they did indeed try to undo Vishal from both his maternal and paternal sides all the way back to the Behari’s. Or maybe Anne liked the UPS man and Vishal’s bloodline didn’t emanate from old Robert. Interesting. And if they did go back seven generations, did that mean the Red Diamond had tried to undo Vishal six previous times with each attempt having been reversed by the ICTO?

  That question served up several others. What about Roy? How did he fit into this whole thing? I remembered Vishal telling me that Roy had a hand in uncovering the plot that led me, Remington, and Romano to take our Christmas party plunge, but what did Roy have to do with foiling the Red Diamond’s attempts to obtain David’s formulas? And what about the teachers? And the twelve jurors that were taken for David’s fair trial? None of those actions made any sense to me. I wondered if somewhere along the way they’d become products of some historical meddling that no one had bothered to correct as the Red Diamond and the ICTO moved further and further back in time to undo each other’s deeds. Maybe they were like some sort of leftover historical chum caught up in the wake of ITDs blasting through time. If that was the case, I’d never figure it out, but maybe I didn’t need to. Today was September 15th, and none of the events I was remembering had occurred yet. Talk about screwed up: how do you remember something that hasn’t happened yet? Anyway, I needed to come up with a plan quickly, or the whole chain of events would start happening again. Then, if
things didn’t work out to everyone’s approval—and how could they?—either the Red Diamond, or the ICTO, or both, would hippety-hop even further back in time and jack around with the events, and peoples’ lives, even more. I thought: what an f’ing mess. It could be endless, and I had visions of myself being dead one day, and undead the next, never knowing the whole time if I got to take a sponge bath with Kelli Remington. Well that wasn’t sitting quite right with me, and I’m sure Darlon wouldn’t have blinked an eye at making me dead as opposed to undead, so I decided that I had to manipulate some of my own history, especially since the instructions I was supposed to find, according to Vishal, had yet to materialize. I figured those also could have been intercepted, or altered, in some way, but I didn’t know if that was good, or bad. I mean, Vishal himself could have teleported his hairy ass back in time and tried to take care of this mess; why didn’t he? Hmmm. Now, there was no Vishal, and no Aryeh, and possibly no instructions either, and Vishal, that four-eyed futuristic bastard, was using me somehow, instead of risking his own neck. I suddenly had the feeling that I was on my own and that I couldn’t plan on anyone showing up from God-knows-where to help me out of this little conundrum. Talk about your dirty job.

  “Give me your identification,” Darlon ordered.

  “I’m guessing the plan is for you to take my place,” I said as I handed Darlon my wallet and my Press ID badge.

  Darlon said, “Come now, Johnny. Why else would I look like this?”

  You know, I was really getting annoyed with the way he said things. “You could never swing it.”

  “I don’t have to swing anything, whatever that means. All I have to do is take something that is important to you if you don’t do what I want.”

  I laughed. “What? My car? Get real. I was thinking about getting a new one anyway. I like those new Mustangs. What do you think?”

  Darlon’s face got real serious. “Don’t take me for a fool, Johnny. There’s something much more valuable to you than that.”