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  Without You

  by

  Craig Allen

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Without You

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  Copyright © 2013 Craig Allen. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

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  ISBN# 978-1-311881-99-1 (eBook)

  I sat in the dirty, overstuffed chair, pointing a gun at the kid. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, yet a highway of needle tracks laced his arms. The junkie had a long-term relationship with heroin, one he’d been maintaining long enough to give him the shakes, which had started five minutes ago.

  He pulled at the plastic cable ties binding his skinny wrists to a water pipe that stood about six inches from the wall. He’d free himself eventually, of that I was certain, but he only needed to stay put for a little while longer.

  The junkie tugged again then yanked his arms so violently I thought the pipe would come out of the ceiling.

  I waved the revolver at him. “Knock it off.”

  He grimaced, twisting his head to the side with his eyes shut. No telling when he’d gotten his last fix. “The hell do you want, man?”

  I said nothing. I didn’t care what the junkie thought of me or what he did after I left. All I cared about was what would happen if he freed himself before three o’clock.

  A half-dozen beer bottles lay on the couch, stuffed with cigarette butts. Lipstick covered the ends of some of them. The carpet looked as if it might have been gray at one time, but large streaks of black and brown ran through all the high-traffic areas. Something smelled rotten among the garbage bags sitting open in the kitchen.

  “This place is repugnant,” I said. “How do you live like this?”

  “Piss off.”

  I shook my head. I wondered if the boy would actually get cleaned up after he did some jail time. Eventually, his desire for more of his beloved drug would give him the strength to break free from his restraints. I’d be gone by then.

  And Anna would be safe.

  “C’mon, man, what’d I do?” The junkie tugged at the restraints again, but stopped when I gestured with the gun.

  I was glad I had searched the room beforehand and found the weapon under the mattress. That made things much easier. The look on his face when he had seen me standing there with his own gun was priceless.

  “Did T-Dog send you, man?” He gritted his teeth, fighting off the withdrawals. “Look, I got the money, all right? I’ll take you to it, but first I need… I need it, you know?”

  I glanced at my watch, careful not to let the junkie see the 3-D display. No one would believe anything he said about it, but I didn’t want to tempt fate. Two more minutes. I could’ve left the room then and there. The worthless creature wouldn’t break free for a while. But I stayed to be sure. No point in taking chances.

  “God damn it.” The junkie just kept staring at me.

  I kept an eye on my watch, counting the seconds to three o’clock, then waited a few seconds more. When I was sure she was safe, I stood. The junkie recoiled while I adjusted my coat with one hand.

  “You gonna do it now?” The junkie’s breathing quickened. He looked as though he might actually cry. “Oh man, don’t do it.”

  Pathetic.

  I backed away, trying to avoid the bags of rotting garbage while keeping the revolver trained on him. When I made it to the front door, I pocketed the gun. I patted my coat pocket again to make sure I had picked up the junkie’s keys. He wouldn’t be needing them anyway.

  “I can pay you. I swear.”

  I opened the door, slipped outside, and closed it behind me. I moved through the breezeway quickly, wanting to get out of there fast. I turned down the alley, glancing over my shoulder. I tossed the keys through the sewer grate, and they disappeared into darkness. The junkie’s car was parked around the corner. I thought about popping the tires, but decided it wasn’t necessary. His house key had been on the key ring, but he kept a spare key in a wall crack outside the building. I had seen that, along with his car, when I’d scanned the area around the building before arriving. Of course, he’d be spending the next few years in jail, so it didn’t matter if he had a spare key or not.

  I dropped the revolver inside a dumpster and closed the lid gently so it wouldn’t bang shut. I wanted to take the gun back with me, but I couldn’t because I didn’t bring it in the first place.

  A chill wind blew between the buildings. December in Denver was not as bitterly cold as most people thought, but it did get cold enough to keep most people indoors. That was a good thing. One look at my watch would send them into hysterics, not to mention what they would think if they saw me return.

  I walked to the other end of the alley, stopped just short of the street, and waited in the building’s shadow. I thought of going back and watching the junkie further ruin his life. When the boy couldn’t find his keys, he’d try to boost some wheels… right in front of a cop. He’d go to jail where he wouldn’t see his precious lover, heroin, for some time to come.

  It would be amusing to watch it happen in real time, but I’d already seen it happen earlier.

  ~~~~

  I materialized in my lab. Nothing had been disturbed during the hour I was gone.

  The machine wound down as I sat at my desk and brought up the viewing apparatus. I zoomed in on the hotel where she stayed. I’d seen her there in the duality I saw before going back, a duality that no longer existed. Only one timeline remained, the one where SUVs pulled up to the hotel. She’d actually arrived the day before but had done an interview at the local radio station that morning, plus a fan signing. Buckets of security people poured out of the vehicles, followed by her. Her fans cheered when she waved at them. Her security detail guided her into the hotel as if she were a Fabergé egg.

  I grinned. I did it.

  I stood and removed my coat, absently feeling for the lighter my dad had given to me when I headed off for engineering school. I didn’t have any butane for it, as that was illegal. For that matter, the lighter didn’t have flint, either. But Dad had given it to me, so I’d kept it. But when I reached into the coat pocket, I didn’t feel the familiar rectangular lump through the material. Nothing. The lighter was gone, forever. It was probably at the bottom of the ocean, along with my favorite hat and the tools that had fallen out of my pockets when I had rescued Anna from drowning the day before. The tools I didn’t care about, and Dad would understand about the
lighter if he were still around, but getting another hat would be tricky.

  At least, I looked better than the last time I had come back from the past. If anyone had walked in and seen my wet hair and damp clothes the day before, my forays would have been halted. But Max knew I worked better undisturbed, and he had given orders that the lab was off limits to everyone—except for him, of course. Thus, no one came in to see me waving my coat back and forth over the air vents. I had actually dried pretty quickly for a guy who’d dropped into the ocean. Lesson learned: weight matters when going back and forth in time. The mass of water and sand equal to the mass of my tools, lighter, and hat had come back with me because my pockets had emptied while I swam in the ocean.

  I checked my clothes. My coat was frayed, but no more than usual. I still saw the places where I had mended my tie and slacks, but I doubted anyone else would notice unless I pointed out the irregularities. And my shirt was still white. Well, mostly. Given that I’d worn the same shirt, tie, slacks, and coat for over five years, I looked pretty good.

  I hung up my coat and made sure the video loop still played. Earlier, I had recorded myself working for hours and then looped it, sending the recording through the hidden cameras. That way, if someone spied on me while I was out of the lab, he only saw me working diligently. I let it run even though I’d returned. I didn’t want anyone to see me watching her.

  I set the machine’s viewer to the concert, a performance she would not have done if the junkie had managed to get behind the wheel of his car and race through downtown, searching for his dealer. I watched a concert that hadn’t existed an hour ago. Before yesterday, her music didn’t exist. After my changes in the past, I had a wealth of new songs and movies to enjoy, and by God, I was going to enjoy them.

  The lights dimmed, and the crowd went wild. Anna started with “Guardian Angel,” singing the opening lines in complete darkness. Then the lights came up again, and she marched out of the fog. She was an angel singing to a poor soul, telling him everything would be fine.

  Too bad things in my world were far from fine.

  The day before, while my coat dried, I had listened to her music instead of doing work. By the end of the day, I knew the words to every song and had begun to sing along. Then I wondered if I should. Max trusted me, but I wouldn’t put it past him to bypass security and bug my lab on his own initiative. What I worked on was important to him and the government, but she was far more important to me.

  I had deactivated the logging system a couple of days before. My trip to the beach would have recorded anomalies that might tip someone off. So I jumbled logs from previous testing and set the machine to send random entries to the mainframe. Since I was the only one who really understood the machine, everyone would assume the log was meaningful only to me.

  I glanced over at the core. A faint, acrid smell remained even after the circulation systems cleared the air. The electrical short had happened yesterday, after I saved Anna and her friend from the truck—which I had done just after saving her from drowning. If I hadn’t been there, the truck would have killed her friend. Anna would’ve survived, but she would have also been restricted to a wheelchair for life—a life that would have ended shortly after the accident due to complications. That past was gone, thanks to my having pushed them out of the path of the out-of-control truck.

  But that action had only revealed another tragedy. The duality involving the junkie, like the previous one involving the runaway truck, had shown two possibilities. In one timeline, the junkie ran her off the road, sending her SUV toppling over the edge of the viaduct to the road below. After losing her spleen and spending weeks in the hospital, she succumbed to an infection and died. In the second, she performed a new concert. Saving Anna was becoming a full-time job.

  I fast-forwarded a little on the viewer, but some sort of distortion appeared in the middle of the next song. Crap. The machine wasn’t as reliable as it used to be. After the burnout the day before, I had been limited to the downtown area. I managed to patch things up somewhat, but it didn’t work the way it used to. The farthest back I could go was, luckily, to the junkie.

  It didn’t matter. Going back farther would accomplish nothing. So far so good, but when Anna left Denver, she was on her own. Unless, of course, I could fix the machine. All I needed was to dig through the mess I’d created, find all the shorts in the system, and replace six transformers. I could do the work in a week, but to go through all the channels to get the parts I needed—even on a top-secret project like mine—would take at least a month.

  I thought about moving forward a day to see if she would leave—or had left, depending on one’s perspective—her hotel without incident, but the door chimed and slid open. I hit a key on my keyboard, and the view switched to a series of meaningless logs that I’d set up as a decoy.

  Max strolled in, grinning from ear to ear. He wore a dark suit and a red tie. “Hey, Eric.”

  I nodded. “Max.”

  “How’s my favorite inventor?”

  “Pretty thrilled.” I made every effort to keep the sarcasm from my voice. “How’s things?”

  “Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  The smug bastard was trying to be clever, but all he really wanted to know was my progress. The last thing in the world I’d ever tell him was that his spying machine was actually a time machine.

  “We’re not where we want to be, but look at this.” I brought up a simulation I’d constructed earlier. “Following alternating current is tricky. It’s like swimming upriver. However, under proper conditions, I can manage to pick up some things.”

  Max brought his fingers to his chin, appearing thoughtful. He was good at faking sincerity.

  I pointed at the wave forms I had put together from initial tests. “These fluctuations are just the system moving through the power grid. But this”—I pointed at a spike in the graph I’d added for dramatic effect—“is what’s interesting.”

  “What are we looking at?”

  “This is a medical device.” I displayed data yanked from a medical database. “Specifically, a pacemaker that’s sending wireless signals back to the hospital.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yes. It belongs to my neighbor.”

  Max raised a hand. “Well done. And you said it was impossible.”

  I shrugged. “I had a little motivation.”

  “This is wonderful news, Eric.” He gestured at the screen. “How soon before we can access illegal devices?”

  “Those are a little more complex.” I spoke from the script I’d planned in my head, most of which was nonsense. “I know this device is a pacemaker because I know my neighbor has one. I can detect the wireless signals it sends, but I can’t discern what they mean. Once I figure out how to decode the signals, I can begin to separate legal devices from illegal ones.” I faced Max. “But we have the basic idea down. We need to have better control over our signal as it sniffs its way through the power grid. Also, we need to be able to track devices while roaming.”

  “Yes, but how soon?”

  “Well, tracking technology has improved over the years, and no one’s even built a smartphone since they were made illegal, much less designed a better one, so we’re ahead of the game. I think we can start tracking devices by February.”

  Max smiled, patting me on the shoulder. “That’s good news. It’d be nice to have some arrests before long. They’ve been causing far too much dissonance lately.” He shook his head, pretending to be genuinely upset. “Spreading all that hate around, it’s just awful.”

  “True.” I’d gotten good at lying to Max. “Not to mention identity theft.”

  “Oh, boy.” He grinned, pointing at me. “You’re not going to tell me that one again, are you?”

  I faked a laugh and shook my head. “No, I think I’ve told it enough.”

  Ten years ago, someone had stolen my social security card from my safety deposit box then proceeded to clean out my bank acco
unt. I was a student at the Colorado School of Mines at the time, and I really needed the money. I was so disgusted that I left the state when I graduated. I wouldn’t have come back, except someone found out I was one of the best engineers in the country. Next thing I knew, federal agents were banging on my door. They dragged me back to Colorado to work on a special project, under Max.

  “I get your point.” He held up his hands. “We definitely put a stop to that sort of thing, though.”

  The government had stopped identity theft by preventing people from accessing their own bank accounts without government permission. The Bureau for the Betterment of Society tracked every dollar meticulously. My money was so secure even I couldn’t get to it.

  Max gestured at the machine. “Looks like I have an excuse to give the people upstairs for why we’re using all the power.”

  “We’re on our own supply, though.”

  “Yeah, but the engineers are screaming about the power spikes, saying we’re taxing the grid.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “They causing you trouble, Max?”

  “What? No.” He frowned, waving his hand in the air. “I just tell them to cram it.”

  I laughed. “Thanks for backing me up.”

  Max winked then glanced at his watch. “You weren’t planning on being here all night, were you?”

  I glanced at the clock on my computer—9:18. “Oh, hell.”

  Max’s laugh was almost too boisterous. “I do appreciate your diligence, but it’s not like you have all the time in the world, you know.”

  “Right.” For a moment, I thought I heard an emphasis on the word “time.” I wrote it off to paranoia. “I just need to close some things down before I head out.”

  “Good. Have a good night.” Max pushed the button to open the lab door. “And Eric?”

  “Yes?”

  Max flashed another winning smile. “Good work today.”

  “Thanks, Max.”

  The lab door shut behind him. I watched him on the wall monitor as the security camera tracked him heading down the hall. I absently wondered where Anna was now… or rather then. But it was late, and I could always check tomorrow. I had started putting my tablet away when I saw movement on the monitor. Ralph was walking up the hall. He waved at the camera. Max wouldn’t even let the head of security have access to the lab, so I had to buzz Ralph in.