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There Aint No Justice 124
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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #124 |
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- Flashback 2: The Wonder Years -
by Tal Meta & Angelique
...Oh well. Something would come to me. It always did.
It was something of a surprise to me when the Fire department arrived
instead. They disarmed me, and took me into custody until the State Police
arrived. Nobody seemed quite sure what had happened, except for Michele and
myself... she seemed to be in shock, and I was keeping my own counsel, trying
furiously to decide, at long last, exactly what tact to take.
Louis was slow in recovering from the bump on his head. Part of me
hoped he'd have a scar; maybe it'd serve him as a reminder. Blood was all over
his face... head wounds have the charming quality of bleeding tenaciously. As
far as I was concerned, it made him look like the demon I considered him to be.
Michele's mother arrived before the police did. She'd never liked me
before, but I could see the hatred pouring out of her eyes, for what I'd done
to her son. I already knew her story; she'd protect Louis at all costs...
Michele's safety was secondary at best. No matter; the family was full of
misfits. I wondered, for the nth time, how such a group had produced Michele
at all.
The State Police arrived shortly thereafter, and whisked me off to the
nearest station. Lady got left behind, somehow; I never did get an accurate
report of what had become of her... Part of me hoped that someone would take
care of her, but to my dismay I knew it was equally possible that she never did
find a new home, and that she'd wind up another feral dog preying on the local
livestock. I'd decided to play ignorant, for the moment. I was just a simple
runaway, yeah, that's the ticket. I spent several hours in a cell by myself,
until my parents arrived... all three of them.
Predictably, they all began arguing over whose fault this was.
For my part, I kept silent, and tried to look confused and scared.
Well, I suppose the scared part was mostly natural. I had a natural fear of
police stations; I'd spent too much time in my mid-twenties inside such
places, and I somehow doubted that the questioning this time would be as
polite as it had been the last time. Murder was a bit more serious than
disorderly conduct.
Of course, I'd forgotten one important fact... I was a kid.
It was kind of patronizing, the way they talked to me; but on the
other hand, I realized it was for the best. I was very, very careful taking
any tests they gave me. I kept trying to judge the kinds of answers I'd have
given a quarter century ago but I didn't really remember the way that kid had
felt about most things. I didn't have any good explanations for all the bugs
I'd planted, so I used the story that I'd been using them to keep track of
when people were out so I could go in and steal food. They seemed to buy it
well enough, although it earned me my share of long, questioning stares. I
practiced looking naive & innocent, and the art of gently pushing their minds
into thinking I was as harmless and juvenile as I looked.
But not careful enough, it seemed, on the tests. After the Grand Jury
decided not to prosecute me for the death of Roger (sufficient evidence
existed to prove that he was high as a kite on cocaine, and his taped
conversation with Louis was rather to-the-point concerning his intentions). I
was remanded into the care of Dr. Karen Fitzhugh, at the Shoreline Behavioral
Center of NJ. For the next 16 months, I kept up with my schoolwork, dreamed
about Michele, and played a life and death psych game with Dr. Karen, as I
called her.
Dr. Karen tried hypnotising me once or twice, and seemed genuinely
unhappy that I seemed to be a poor subject. After a while, I tried playing
along with her about it, but I kept having to mentally push her away from the
idea that I was telling her what she wanted to hear, which in turn left me
having to mentally push her away from the idea that I was influening her mind
about the success or failure of a particular line of questioning. I genuinely
LIKED Dr. Karen; under other circumstances I imagined that I might want to get
to know her better... but under the current state of events, she was my worst
enemy.
So we looked at ink blots, and I tired to keep my responses juvenile.
Word association was a deadly trap; even a precocious preadolescent shouldn't
know too many outright sexual terms, and I sometimes let myself give honest
answers just to muddle her results. I'd have to keep myself from leading her
towards thinking I was possessed or anything metaphysical like that; I often
wondered how close to the truth that might have been.
I think they tried messing with various chemicals in my food once or
twice, too, but my mind was still keen enough to recognise when I was feeling
TOO good. The last thing I needed to do was reveal under some drug that I was
a some kind of time traveller from the year 2000... they'd lock me up and never
let me go, even if they didn't believe me. What they'd do if they did believe
me scared me even more.
Eventually, however, I was released from the center with a clean bill
of mental health. In the intervening sixteen months, my father & step-mother
had gotten divorced (again), and my mother and her boyfriend Jason had moved
in together in a little house in Jackson, right next door to a certain
kennel... Jason and I had always had a good relationship, before. Even if he
was due to leave my mother in about four years, he'd been the closest thing
I'd had to a real "father figure" during my so-called formative years. I took
the same room I had, ages before, and prepared to spend the long summer
getting ready for the seventh grade...
---
Her name was Kathy Post. We'd never been "friends" before; if
anything, I'd given her every reason to hate my guts the last time I'd passed
this way. But I'd looked back on our encounters years later and realized that
a good part of the reasons behind my tormenting her had been simple childhood
politics... the thought of admitting to liking a girl at twelve, especially to
myself, had been the worst sort of heresy. However, my body was slowly but
surely getting older, and as it aged, it changed. Some of the changes were
very pleasant; it was nice to be able to look at a woman again and get the
right kind of feelings... even if they were considerably stronger than I
remembered. The acne I knew was coming I could probably live without, though.
My weeks in the woods had left me lean and hard. I'd decided that THIS
time, I was going to keep that physique, unlike when I'd graduated USAF Boot
Camp and Survival School. Being an overweight teenager had more social stigma
than I wanted to endure again. Kathy and I got along well, which pleased me.
In a matter of a few weeks, we were inseperable, and I found that I cared for
her a great deal. We spent the summer of '77 roving the sandpits that abutted
both our houses, learning about love, and we went to see Star Wars 23 times
together. I only slipped once, when she asked me if I thought Luke & Leia
would get together, and I joked that incest was best...
We never got past second base, but that was fine... I had plenty of
time. It was interesting to see how different my life might have been, had I
ever bothered to walk the half mile that seperated our homes.
School held few surprises for me. I got assigned to all the same
classes, managed to make (I think) most of the same friends. I didn't remember
the layout of Jackson Middle school nearly as well as I thought I had, so the
first few days were full of late arrivals and searches for my locker. Even
though Kathy and I were an "item", I kept looking out for Michele... even
though I was pretty sure she wouldn't arrive until next year. I did find
Linda, though.
Linda Conneley had been what you might call the class mattress. Even
at thirteen, she had a reputation for stealing other girl's boyfriends. But
she and I had been close friends, even if we'd never been lovers. We started
out just talking in class, and soon thereafter I dumped Kathy and started
carrying Linda's books from class to class...
About mid-November I rode my bike five miles across town to visit
Linda at home. I have to give Linda's mother this: she allowed us our privacy.
We spent most of the day exploring one another's topography through our
clothes, which I considered quite promising.
By the end of December, we were lovers. While it felt good to touch,
and be touched by a woman that way, I kept feeling as though there should be
something more. I kept turning those feelings over and over in my mind, but
couldn't come up with any answers.
1978 brought two surprises. In late February, Linda broke down in
tears and told me that I'd gotten her pregnant. Now mind you; I'd always,
always, ALWAYS used a condom when we made love. What I'd forgotten was that
the surgery that would close off the "second hole" in my penis hadn't been
performed until I was 22... nine years from "now". Semen had leaked out,
and made its way to her womb. The second surprise was that I caught a glimpse
of Michele in the hall at school.
---
I'd always believed in a double standard where abortions were concerned.
While I had no problem with women getting them if they so chose, I was
somewhat less liberal where my own offspring were concerned. I had perhaps one
of the hardest decisions of my life ahead of me - at thirteen, Linda and I
weren't anywhere near old enough to raise a child together. Emotionally, I
knew she wasn't ready, and my job prospects were less than encouraging.
I turned it over and over in my mind a thousand times over the next
three weeks, but the best answer was always the one I liked the least. So it
was with a heavy heart that I went with her to the free clinic to have our
child aborted. We cried together afterwards, and I think that started both of
us healing. We stopped seeing one another quite so often, after that.
Seeing Michele did me no good whatsoever. I had expected, given the
circumstances I'd brought about, that the formerly withdrawn, painfully shy
and seriously troubled girl would have become at least a shadow of the bright,
forceful woman I knew she'd someday become once she'd come to grips with what
had been done to her.
It hadn't happened. If anything, she was even more withdrawn than I
remembered. One especially warm April afternoon, I made the trek over to her
house; something always stopped me short of approaching her in school. I
picked a spot near the small barn that housed her family's three horses in the
back yard, (What is it with me and trees, anyway?) and waited for her to
appear.
Contrary to my expectations, she did not take the trail I expected her
to. She set out on horseback across the street from her house, off towards the
power lines that crossed most of the town. I waited for several hours, but
eventually, I was forced to return home. (My mother had nothing resembling a
say in my comings and goings, but the last thing I needed was her reporting my
absence to the local police - it wouldn't take much thinking on their part to
remember the last time I'd gone missing; odds were they'd put two and two
together and find me here, since my records wouldn't be sealed for another five
years.
The next weekend brought me better success, if you'd call it that. I
waited this time along the route I figured she'd take again, and about midday
she finally appeared astride her horse. Damned if I could remember it's name,
though... I'd met it maybe once, a decade in the "future".
"Hello Michele. Nice day for horseback riding, isn't it?" I asked, as
I bounded up along side of her.
"I guess so." she said quietly, her eyes not meeting mine.
"Umm, I'm Frank Henderson. We have the same lunch period at school."
"Do you live around here?" she asked, still not meeting my eyes.
I reached out with my senses, trying to get a fix on what she was
feeling. The link that we'd shared as adults was gone, of course, but our last
meeting had proven to me that we could still touch each other, even if only on
the surface. She was curious about me (even I couldn't stop the rumors that
surrounded me & Linda, afterall), and she could sense what I was doing. I
thought I saw in her mind a growing recognition, a memory of our last meeting,
so I decided to bring that spark to a flame.
"No" I said, "but I live close enough. I wanted to ask you... how have
you been doing, since I, uh, saved you that day?"
"That was you?!" I felt her mind click, and recognize me at last. What
I didn't expect was the sudden flash of guilt, and fear, centered around ME,
that knocked me off my feet (which was probably a good thing, at that), as she
whirled her horse around and hissed at me "Stay away from me! Leave me alone!
I never want to see you again!" as she galloped away.
I sat there, in the dirt, trying like mad to figure out what had
happened. I'd saved her, for chrissakes, and she's afraid of me? I made my way
home by a different route, pondering this bizarre turn of fate as I walked.
Echoes of the guilt and terror she'd felt upon recognising me gave me
nightmares for several days. I tried reaching out to her in dreams (we'd
always been able to reach each other that way before) but every time I did it
became a nightmare for her.
I tried seeing her again, but was greeted that time by her father, who
had been chopping firewood in the backyard. Brandishing the axe, he told me in
no uncertain terms to stay off his property, and to leave his daughter alone.
As far as he was concerned, I was a murderer, and a psychopath, and that he
ought to drop me right where I stood for the betterment of the world in
general.
So I tried the dreams again. When we'd first started courting each
other, in our late teens, our minds became so alike in some ways that we each
had a "copy" of the other person in our minds whenever we needed it. I drew on
that old mental image, cloaked myself within it, and appeared to her in her
dream as she had been the last time I'd seen her, when she and I were both
thirty-five.
Wrapping myself in that illusion, I came to her as herself, and asked
her the same question I had before; what had her life been like the past three
years since she'd nearly been raped. The images I saw flicker in her mind
astounded me. Her brother, in the hospital with a concussion (he did wind up
with a small scar on his left temple, I discovered). Roger's funeral, with her
family's eyes turned towards her, blaming her for her part in his death. Her
mother's voice, insisting, over and over, that Michele -must- have done or said
something to encourage Roger to act as he had. Both of her parents reviling me
as a murderer, some dangerous and psychotic waif who had stalked them all and
brought only ruin. And through it all I saw the picture of myself in her mind,
twisting from savior to persecutor, and then to tormentor.
I had sought to cure her of the greatest hurt that had ever been done to
her, and in the process, replaced the image of Roger with my own.
A few weeks after that incident, I heard from a friend that she and
her family had moved away. Any hope I had of regaining her trust (or her love)
was gone. I kicked myself, mentally, and vowed that if I ever had a chance to
replay this life again, I'd just shoot Roger and get away... playing hero had
gained me nothing at all, and cost me more than I was prepared to accept.
---
Several more months went by, and at long last school ended for the
summer. Linda and I eventually started seeing one another regularly again,
although the day I found the box signalled yet another hiatus in our state of
inseperability.
It had been a Sunday, and Linda had to attend her aunt's wedding
upstate. So I was knocking about the sandpits behind my house, enjoying the
freedom that summer brings and imagining that the clouds overhead were
actually a fleet of ships sailing overhead. One of the more "permanent"
features of the sand pits was a formation I always had called "the island".
In reality, it was just a hill at the center of a pit that they'd
never finished digging out. The water table was often high enough that the
hill at the center was surrounded by water, sometimes several feet deep. It
was a breeding ground for frogs and mosquitoes, but it was nonetheless a
pretty spot. In my original lurid adolescence, I'd imagined that it contained
a secret chamber where I kept a harem of women to feed my every desire. Even
after I'd moved away originally, I'd come back to this spot every so often to
check up on it; I'd had alot of good times around here.
Kathy and I even spent a fair amount of time necking there, during our
brief relationship. We'd even gone skinny dipping there once, late at night.
Something about the island seemed different that day, and no amount of flexing
my brain would reveal exactly what was wrong. I had climbed the one tree that
jutted haphazardly from the southwest face of it, and was almost drifting off
to sleep in the warm sun when the tree's roots gave way and plunged me into
the water.
Cursing, I sloggged my way back to the shore of the island to inspect
the base of the tree, and to my amazement found a large metal container of
some sort. Alarm bells were going off at the back of my brain as I uncovered
it, raising to a shrill screech as I found the locking mechanism.
Rather than a simple key or combination, the seal on the box required
a certain shape to be fitted into it.... a shape I knew well. For a number of
years, I'd kept an oddly shaped hunk of metal I'd found in some nearby fields
as an amulet. The shape required to open the box was the same as that
amulet... and I didn't have it! I hurriedly reburied the box (it was far too
large and heavy to drag up the side of the pit in the middle of the
afternoon!) and set out at a dead run for the fields where I'd found my amulet
originally.
Naturally, it was nowhere to be found. Okay, Tal, lets retrace our
steps here, a bit, shan't we? You remember about where you found it; but do
you remember WHEN? I tried remembering, but it was so long ago... I knew I'd
had it before my Freshman year of High School, but that was still a year away.
While I was thinking about that, another thought intruded on my consciousness:
why the shape of my amulet?
I had given up trying to figure out how I'd managed to wake up in my
ten year old body three years before. Whatever had caused it, or triggered it,
simply was not in my collection of memories. Dwelling on that thought alone, I
realized that quite a few things might possibly not be in my memory; I
remembered my 35th birthday, but not much beyond that. Was I older than I
thought I was, even counting the last three years?
Obviously, whatever was in that box was mine, or had been mine, or at
the very least, was intended for me. I'd never told anyone my "secret chamber"
fantasy, and it struck me as too much of a coincidence that the box was hidden
among the roots of the very tree whose branches had, in my fantasy, been the
instruments for opening the chamber within the hill itself. And the fact that
the only visible means of opening it was my old amulet (a piece of jewelry,
it should be mentioned, that Michele had worn for quite some time until she
lost it in a parking lot a few weeks before one of our more final breakups)
said that it was mine, all mine.
I spent most of that night swatting mosquitoes and dragging that
damned box up the side of the pit and then home through the woods. A handle
somewhere would have been a nice touch, I chastized myself. Obviously,
whatever purpose the damned thing was designed to serve presupposed that I'd
be able to open it when I found it. It was slow going; the damned thing
weighed nearly 200lbs, and was the size of a refrigerator. Whatever was inside
had damned well be worth the effort, I decided.
I stashed it in the garage that ran alongside my room. Stopping in the
fields on my way to Linda's house became a daily ritual, one I followed even
on days I couldn't see her. Even still, it was six long weeks before I found
what I was looking for, and then it was on a day that I couldn't very well
just turn around and go home. When I finally did make it home, later that
night, I wasted no time slipping into the garage and putting the amulet to
use.
Pressing the amulet into place, I held my breath and waited. A very
quiet clicking sound began as the amulet fit into the mechanism, then slipped
down and inside the box, and with a snap and a whoosh of air, the container
opened.
Inside was a mass of styrofoam packing material, which I clawed away
with a vengence, revealing a dozen metal attache cases, a monitor, several
peripherals, a laptop computer, and another, larger tower case. My breath left
me in a gasp when I saw that case; it had been mine, back in 2000, which was
as far "back" as I could remember. The familiar OS/2 Merlin sticker gleamed at
me as I rocked back on my heels and began to laugh.
Forgetting the computer parts for the moment, I turned my attention to
the attache cases. Each bore a label, and on each label was a year. The
earliest one I could find was marked 1985 in my own handwriting. Each one had
a combination lock on it as well. The lock looked as if were designed to
accept a date as the combination... but nothing about 1985 rang any bells for
me. So I reached for the one that read 1988. Trying to think like myself,
which is no mean feat with the holes my memory seemed to have, I pondered what
the most important day had been for me, in 1988.... it had been a busy year. I
typed in the date I lost my virginity... nothing. I tried the date when
Michele and I had broken up, vowing never to see or speak to one another
again... again, nothing. Finally I tried the day we'd first... my fingers
tapped out 010188... and it clicked open. Inside, I found it full of vaguely
used $100 bills... over $250,000 worth.
All of them dated 1988.
Each of the other containers probably contained a similar amount, I
knew, bearing the same date as the year on the label of the box. Okay; I was
now a multi-millionaire. Or would be, in another seven years. On a guess, I
reached for the 1993 case and punched in 090593, the first time I'd spoken to
her since she'd called me in 1989 to tell me she'd gotten engaged, and was
unsurprised when it, too, opened and revealed another quarter-mil in somewhat
abused 1993 currency. Whatever the intent, the dates that had worked thusfar
were dates that had a common thread... Michele.
---
The computer posed the biggest problem, in the end. The attache cases
were easily hidden around the property. The laptop I could hide under my bed.
But the computer and its attendant peripherals would be hard to hide, and
harder to explain. I cast about for quite some time, and finally located a
large console-style TV someone was throwing out, and had Jason help me drag it
home. Once there, I tore it apart and gutted it, replacing the majority of its
internal components with the contents of the tower case. The printer I stuffed
in the back (nobody in 1978 had even HEARD of LaserJets). I mounted the
monitor in the cavity where the original 19" screen had been, and surrounded
it with duct tape to keep it in place. The speakers were still in fair shape, so
I wired them to the SoundBlaster card, making the system complete.
It looked ugly, but it worked... or at least, it worked when I was
alone and threw the right switches, which I'd hidden underneath. Any other
time it showed a fancy mess of low-rez static. I doubt anyone ever even
noticed that phone line that snaked into the back. I even managed to get the
phonograph portion of the console working... although I completely disabled the
radio. Who wanted to listen to disco?
Finally armed with some familiar technology, I set about exploring the
data I'd brought along for whatever purpose my trip back in time was supposed to
accomplish. Several of the CD microdisks contained extensive stock market
reports, dated from 1985 on (no big surprise there). Several others were of a
more personal nature; all six GodNet CDs, and all 666 issues of TANJ. There were
also alot of games that I'd never gotten around to playing... and I'd have bet
my pancreas that my friend Andrea (the ultimate Star Wars groupie) would sell
her soul to be able to play _Fall of the Republic_ (let alone read the scripts
to any of the five movies that had yet to be released!)
Only one file remained barred to me; C:\DIARY\TM_MEMORIES.ASC. It
contained a single PGP'd file that refused to unlock to my normal passphrase.
Something told me that if I could unlock that file, everything would suddenly
become very clear to me. Whatever I'd done to get to this point, I'd -expected-
a memory loss! If only I could remember the passcode!
Since I had basically everything I needed information-wise at my
fingertips, I tried calling the "great" boards of the past; Metal Shop, Dragon
Fire, RipCo, P-80 Systems, you name it. Some of them didn't even exist yet; on
others I gained something of a reputation as being omniscient... usually by
refering to people by their real names, courtesy of files they'd written years
in the future. I half considered putting up a BBS of my own again, and leaving
every single file from each of the GodNet CDs online for the modeming public to
gawk at, but that would have attracted all the wrong kinds of attention.
---
Summer eventually ended, as summers always do, and I entered the eighth
grade for the second time in my life. Linda and I were still together, but we
seemed to be cooling towards one another; she was constantly accusing me of
seeing other girls (actually, I was spending my time trying to beat Wing
Commander X) and was generally becoming entirely too possessive for my taste.
After a few more weeks, we both just stopped calling each other, and we sought
out different seats in the classes we shared.
With Linda gone, I was surprised to suddenly have the attention of Lydia
Boswell. Lydia wasn't really my "type"... she was popular, a tad bit flighty,
and was generally the type of girl I avoided getting involved with at any age.
However, her slim, athletic build and gorgeous long blonde hair offered a
pleasant change from the steady diet of brunettes I'd been involved with in
the past few years. She was Captain of the cheerleading team; watching her
practice became one of my favorite extracurricular activities pretty quickly.
Lydia was also a "good girl"... not generally the sort of woman who'd
have much of a hold on my attention for very long, I knew only too well. But she
was a surprisingly passionate kisser; I had enough hopes of getting her to go
farther to keep seeing her, at least for a little while longer.
About mid October, we had an away game at Freehold, which I planned on
accompanying Lydia to. I'd been having odd dreams lately, and random snatches
of memory would come and go, usually too quickly for me to hang onto. Many of
those dreams seemed to center on or around my daughter, Moire, giving me a
completely new spin on what my future might be.
Janice.
Janice had gone to Freehold, and had played in the band there. She would
almost certainly be at the game... as the day got closer and closer, my mind
seemed to become very focused, almost as if some great and momentous event were
about to come to pass. My mental abilities hadn't diminished any over the past
few years, but as my body changed, they grew more and more erratic, seeming to
ebb and flow with my body's production of hormones.
One of the things that had always bothered me in my relationship with
Janice was that there always seemed to have been something in her past that
she'd never speak about, some hurt that had never quite healed. Might things go
differently for the both of us, if I intervened in her life now, before any of
that had a chance to happen? My failure with changing Michele's life made me
cautious, but I had high hopes that this might, indeed, be possible.
I shrugged off any reservations I felt about it; I doubted it would
involve having to shoot anyone this time. But I was feeling anxious and edgy as
we rode the bus to the game. Something wonderous was going to happen, I felt
certain.
The game was going pretty well for our side; by the last five minutes of
the fourth quarter we were ahead 14 to 6, and the team seemed pretty certain of
its victory. I'd spent most of the game on the bench next to Lydia, alternately
admiring her lithe body as she contorted it through the motions of the cheers,
and making attempts at catching Janice's eye from across the field.
I'd spotted Janice at half-time, and she'd looked just the way she had
in some of the old pictures I'd seen of her at the time, with long, straight
auburn hair and a smile that could light up the night like only one other I
knew. I'd caught her eye once or twice, and imagined that I could feel that she
was as interested in me as I was in her.
In the final play of the game, our side had just hit Freehold's
quarterback hard, and the ball shot into the air and practically dropped into
the arms of one of the running backs. He started running with it, and the twenty
yards seperating him and the goal posts were as clear as the autumn sky. As he
crossed the goal line, he threw down the ball as the crowd on our side of the
stadium cheered to the sound of the final buzzer, ending the game.
The crowd from our side swarmed out onto the field, lifting him up and
carrying him for several dozen yards, amid a chorus of whoops and cheers. Losing
myself in the press of bodies, I started towards the opposite side, where I
could see the band from their side was beginning to put away their instruments,
so I made my way across the field to where I'd seen Janice was seated.
As I walked up to her, I could see two of her friends giggling and
whispering behind her, making her blush. When I was about five feet away, that
feeling I had before intensified tenfold, and just as I was about to speak, I
heard a familiar voice behind me, saying "If you think I'm going to let you take
one more step, Tal, you're out of your mind."
Slowly, I turned....
It was Michele.
And she'd called me by a name I wouldn't use for eight more years.
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