Hello, It's me. Death waits for no one, the end game. Episode #4

 

Hello it’s me. 

Death waits for no one, the endgame.

Episode #4 

I’m hanging out in small towns in South Oklahoma, lying low, moving every couple of days, waiting for my future self to locate someone who can get me a new I.D.  The future me provides lottery numbers and horse/dog race results so I’m a winner every time, but I’ve been forced to use my actual I.D. to cash my winnings, leaving a trail that’s easy to follow.

I’m currently staying at a one-level ancient Motel built years and years ago; it’s tiny with just 16 rooms split in two buildings with a small parking lot between them.  My room is across and two up from the office, with a view of the entrance to the Motel and the Office area. A sagging carport juts out the front of the office, giving you a roofed area out of the rain as you check in.

I’m planning to stay at this little Motel another day, maybe two; it’s clean and quiet with little traffic. I think only three other rooms are occupied.  It sits at the edge of town, makes me think of years ago when these little towns were alive, and the highways were active before the freeways shut everything down. 

I’ve got in the habit of looking out the window when I hear a car pull into the Motel, not so much out of paranoia but out of sheer boredom. 

Hearing gravel crunch from the potholes between the hard top of the highway and the old patched driveway to the hotel, I see a late-model four-door come to a stop under the covered entrance.  I watch for a moment; nothing out of the ordinary, and I slide back to the single chair. The TV is belching out fake canned laughter to a brain numbing story line. I’m no longer hearing the TV but watching a video in my head of the car pulling in under the carport, the sun hitting the rear of the car lighting up the reflective license plate; that’s not right.  I jump up to the window, the cars pulling out from under the cover and heading to the highway.  The rear plate is an Oregon plate, but Oregon doesn’t have that design; that’s a Washington State design, but it says Oregon?  Turning the TV off, I fire up the laptop, pulling up Washington State license plate designs; sure enough, there it is, punching in Oregon’s- nope, nothing like that on the site.  I go back to the window; cars gone, but just short of the covered entrance is an old man shuffling along the little sidewalk, a very old man by the effort he’s putting in, bending over feebly using an equally old cane.  I watch for a minute as he makes his way past the Office door and along the first room.  I haven’t seen him before, and I’m sure he doesn’t belong to any of the three cars parked across the lot; they came in last night before dinner and just after.  Something's just not right here. I pull the curtains closed, just leaving a small opening where I can look out without being seen in the window.  It’s taken a long time for the old guy to get past the Office and now between rooms 1 and 2.  He pauses next to a two-person bench, and I think he’s going to take a seat to rest, but no, he steps next to the bench and backs up against the wall.  This is very strange; he’s straight across the parking lot from my window, and I pull the drapes tighter.  The light fades from the world, my knees go weak, there’s a good possibility I might pee my pants, this is out of the world.  The old man shakes, twisting from side to side and shrinks, head folding down between his sagging shoulders, wrinkled shirt smoothing out, body melting, becoming square and squat; he’s now a garbage can.

My world fades to dark gray; I slide down the wall, sitting with my back against the old concrete. I can’t breathe.  I have tears running down my face; I now know how this nightmare is going to end. 

I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting here; I either passed out or slept.  The room is dark, and faint light is hitting the curtains above my head, casting pale yellow shadows against the wall over the TV.  Do I dare look out the window? Any movement of the drapes could alert the watcher of my presence.  Clearly an observation post, they must have grown tired of the cat-and-mouse chase and are now covering every Hotel/Motel in the greater area.  I hear voices, at least two people talking, laughter, more talking, moving from the Office area towards one of the rooms. I carefully raise and push my face to the drapes, slowly, very slowly, and carefully not to move them.  Two people casually walking, talking, heading to one of the far rooms to my right.  Looking straight across the parking lot, the “Not a trash can” sits in low light, completely natural, age, color, everything perfect except I know the truth.

Options.

As long as I can take a breath, I have options.  Breathe.  Slowly walking around the room, I know there has to be something I can do.  The car is out of the question; it sits in a parking space just right of the window, not directly in front of my room. I parked in that spot so I had a clear view of the Office area, but I can’t get to it with that thing across from me.  I find a small window in the bathroom; can I fit through it?  It’s going to be tight.  Would they be watching the rear of the Motel also? They can’t have enough assets to cover every Hotel/Motel in the area front and back; it’s going to be a gamble just to get out the window, let alone worry about the back being covered.

I gather my stuff, not much; no use taking the keys or anything like that.  I stuff my laptop in my little backpack and drop it out the back window.  I wait a few minutes; nothing moving that I can see.  The window is old, caulking is mostly gone, and the cement around the window is like chalk, soft, nasty, easy to break away.  I take out the entire casing; I’ve got a much bigger opening now, not going to be fun or easy, but I know I can make it.  The landing isn’t going to be pleasant.

I land with a thump, grab my bag, and head for the lights of town, only about a hundred and fifty yards glowing in the distance.  Gas station with a grocery store attached, signage lighting up the entire area.  As I get closer under the lights in the shadows, “Trailways.” Are you kidding me?  Is that still a thing?  I come up to the side of the building in the dark, sliding around the side. I step through the front door.  “Do you still have buses that stop here?”  “Sure do. The bus should be here in about ten minutes. Where are you going?”  “I’m headed north. Any chance of that?”   “You're in luck; just pay the driver.”

Ten minutes on the head, the old dirty bus pulls into the service station right up to the front doors.  No one gets off, and the driver does the three steps down and lights a cigarette. I step out of the grocery store up tight against the bus.  “How far North are you going?”  “I go to Lamar, and then another bus goes West from there to Pueblo, then North towards Colorado Springs.”

“I’ll take it to Lamar.”

“Great, $22 cash.”

The driver and four others make for lots of room on the bus.  Before we get out in the open Country, I make a fast phone call to my future self and catch him up on what I’ve seen.

The bus ride was uneventful, and I catch the Western running bus from Lamar to Pueblo.  The bus stops at nearly every little town along the way; you get enough time to use the bathroom, get something to snack on or a gas station hot dog, and get back on the bus just to stop ten minutes later, repeating all night long.  I stayed on the bus hidden from sight until I had to get off for bathroom breaks.

I get a text as we go through another small town that looks just like the last two hundred little towns along the route.  I get a name, address, and hours for a fake paper guy in Colorado Springs, same one guy my future self used 25 years in the future, just different town and a much younger guy in my time zone.  End of message: get your I.D. and disappear.

Colorado Springs.

The bus drops you off just about in the center of the city.  I ask around and find a discreet hostel; most clientele are college kids or foreign tourists vying for very cheap places to stay for just one night on their travels.  All I can do is hope that “they” haven’t thought this far down from Hotel/Motels.  I haven’t slept in nearly two days now, and I know I’m not thinking clearly and missing everything going on around me; I could walk right into a shooting gallery and never see it coming.  I’ve got to hole up for a while.

I hit my hard bunk in the early afternoon and sleep regardless of noise or movement until midmorning the following day.  My head hurt, and I felt like I had a nasty hangover; the front desk just happens to have Tylenol for sale in little one-time servings. Oh lucky me.  The desk gives me directions to a crappy all-you-can-eat place a few blocks away; food sucks, but I ate enough to call it my last meal- not funny, but I’m starting to think that way.

It's just after noon, and figuring my guy probably has somewhat normal hours, so lunch between noon and one. I time my arrival to be in his Office at 1pm.

I take an Uber ride, and even the driver makes a couple of comments about the shitty side of town, and under his breath I hear “What a shithole.” as we pull into a strip mall that has never seen better days.  Number six sits towards the end of the building against a huge brick wall of the next larger building.  The cars in the parking lot may or may not be drivable; they look like they’ve been sitting here for a long while.  Garbage is piled up by the wind in the corner, two feet deep, and seems to be moving on its own.

Have you ever walked up to a door with a pull handle and thought to yourself, I should be wearing rubber gloves?  Well, I was; the dust and dirt made the clear glass of the door impossible to see through.  I pulled on the door and thought it was locked to begin with, but it screamed out of its dirt-crusted tracks and swung open, hitting me in the face with hot barf-smelling air.  I nearly gagged.

I stood at the counter, finally I called out. “Hello, anyone home?”

“Give me a fucking second, OKAY, I’ll be right out!” Yelled from someplace behind the magic curtain.  Oh, this is going to be fun.

Out from the back comes a guy that hasn’t shaved in days, dirty shirt half tucked in, greasy wavy hair that just won’t put up with a comb; like the shitty mall, this guy has never seen better times.

“Hi, I need some help,” I croak, still wanting to barf, especially after getting a whiff of his non-washed scent.

“You better have cash; that’s all I take. What do you need?”  he says, showing brown teeth.

“I need the new life packet, Social Security Card, Driver's License, and whatever else you have.”

“Two thousand.”  He says with a grin.

“No, that’s 2048 prices; I’m thinking more like one thousand and while I wait.” I’m grinding my teeth.

“Fifteen hundred and two hours.” Big frown on his face like I just stole his lunch money.

“Fine.” I hand him the information I want on the I.D.  I’ve got to get out of here.  Ugh.

Pictures on one of the oldest cameras I’ve seen outside of a museum, my signature on a white card.

“Two hours, be back at four or you're going to miss me; I have other business today.” He turns and disappears.

“Ummmm…… that’s two and a half hours,” I say to no one.

“Fuck off.”  from behind the magic curtain.

4pm.

I’ve been standing across the street for a good half hour watching the garbage blow in slow spiraling circles along the front of the crusty shit-smelling strip mall; not one person has come or gone.  It almost looks like the other businesses are closed up tight.

Time to make the donuts.

I pulled on the door but this time held my breath as long as I could; it’s hard not to gasp when the stench hits you full face, but you have to breathe even if it’s totally toxic.

With the scream of the door, he comes out from the back area.  Somehow it looks like he’s cleaned up a little and the shirt isn’t the same as two and a half hours ago. 

“I got your stuff done.”  He throws it on the filthy counter, as it slides, dust jumps in the air.

I notice two things: his voice is different, his teeth are white.

I turn on my heels to flee the two steps for the door; it’s blocked from the outside by two large men.  I turn and nearly step into him.

“I’ve got something for you.”  He jams a huge knife in my chest.

“What?”  Is all I could get out as the world dimmed and blacked out.

Phone ringing.

Me #2: “Hello, did you get the I.D?”

“Hello, Mr. Ryan, or should I call you Mr. Spencer? Isn’t that the new name? It’s time for you to come home.”  The voice said.  “Your younger self seems to have run out of air.”

Me #2: “You’ve killed him?”

“It would seem so; where are you? We can make this fast and nearly painless.”  The voice was getting deeper; the laugh chilled my spine.

Me #2: “You’ll be hearing from me.”  I threw the phone in a garbage can.

The final solution.

The plane touched down in LAX with a scream from the tires; arrival 10:00am, it was 10:05am.  Taxi towards downtown but pulling up short at a nice Western Hotel ten minutes from the old Office.

Powering up the brand-new laptop with all the new features, time to do some safe cracking.  For a numbers guy, it took way longer than I thought; they’d really worked over the security package since my run for my life. Funny thing was I was the lead on the security package in the very beginning and left a backdoor only I knew how to find.  It was a slow go working through all the chains and coding, but it was still there, and I told security to allow my old I.D. access at all hours or days.  It was now Friday at just before 4pm, so if any alert came in, the Office was closing down for the weekend in just a half hour, and with the lackadaisical security they’d hired, I wasn’t very worried about anyone noticing a late card access coming in until at least Monday or Tuesday.

I had an expensive dinner at one of the downtown restaurants, only one glass of wine.

I walked to one of the not-so-used entrances to the building and tried my card.  Green light and I was in.  If they’d been tipped off, I’d make it ten feet before I met my maker.  Walking to the elevator, things were looking good.  I hit floor eleven, one short.  I’d walk up the last using the stairs.

Just cracking the door from the stairs, I peeked down the hallway, empty.  The labs were one floor above on fourteen.  The only access to fourteen was from the interior of twelve.  I’m sure there are going to be people in the lab; they can’t run this big of an operation 24/7 without it.  I keyed my way through the front door and picked up a lab coat, mask, and a hair net from the store room.  Two minutes in the blower, into the vacuum, up the stairs to fourteen and the lab.

Wow, things have changed.  Two long rows of supercomputers have been added; in the distance, large tubes that looked a lot like the transporter room in Star Trek.  When I made a run for it, we were just opening up the project to a new A.I. program.  Looks like my number sequence sure took off.

I stepped behind one row of computers and laid my briefcase on the floor, popped the lid, and filled my pockets with mini incendiaries that would blow into massive fireballs.  Next stop was the fire suppression station that was wide open; anyone could just walk up and put their hands all over it.  I turned it to test, standby, and placed a grenade behind the front panel.  I placed grenades all over the floor.  No one even gave me a look; I guess they thought they were indestructible?  Sure, I was covered from head to toe with clothing to keep any hair or dust from ruining the equipment, but the lack of real security was amazing.  No one spoke to each other, and heads were buried in computer screens.  I had nothing to do, everything was placed and timers set.  I walked up to a tech and asked how the new tubes were used and operated.  She gave me a full rundown on how to set them and run them.  Said they had a busy day and it had finally slowed down, so all the tubes were set in idle, ready for the next job.  She left me and headed to her computer station.

The screen was all just normal stuff I’d programmed before; setting the date/time was straightforward, with the exception that you’d be going back in time. That was a new concept to me, but they’d proven over the last weeks it was working fine; even the earlier bugs we’d seen had been worked out.  They could send anything back in time; I wonder how far back?

One last thing before I go: the mainframe where all the programs were held needed some hardware.  I placed two charges and returned to the tubes.

I had exactly five minutes; if my timing was off, I’d go up in smoke with the rest of the two floors.  I hope I haven’t missed anything; this was a one-way ticket; I won’t be able to return, and if I’ve missed anything, they’d rebuild, and we’d be under the gun again.  My only concern was duplicates of my initial work; I’d kept it under lock and key, and when I was forced to run, I hit the button to delete part of the code.  I was the only programmer on that part of the project; it was my baby, and I didn’t let anyone touch it. I made it; I thought it up and hoped no one else could remake it, even A.I.

Time to go.

It was short work to program in the time/date; hit the button and the five-second delay would give enough time to get in the tube.  I hit the button and ran inside the tube.

My last thought was “Beam me up, Scotty.”

The landing was soft; I just popped into being in a strange place 25 years, a few weeks, and a couple of days in the past.  Turning around in a circle, I remembered exactly where I was; my house was just around the corner from here.  Looking at my watch, it was 5:00am.  I had a few minutes to walk around the corner and meet myself.

Ringing the doorbell on my own front door, I saw myself walking with that look on my face, wondering who in the world would be ringing my door at 5am in the morning. 

Hello, it’s me.

From the Ramblings.

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