Chapter 5 and 6
Chapter 5
Dylan returned home confused and exhausted and he lay down on his couch. He debated on reviewing his article one more time but decided that his brain worked excessively hard today and it was time to give it a break. James was still asleep so Dylan decided to follow suit and soon feel asleep to the sweet lullaby of infomercials.
He awoke to the smell of bacon and the crackling sound of grease. He sat up with his back aching from sleeping on his rather uncomfortable couch; he gave it a good stretch and wiped the sleep from his eyes as he wondered into his kitchen. In there he was surprised to see James cooking with a rather impressive spread of breakfast food, far more then the two of them could eat by themselves.
“Morning sunshine.” James said cooking breakfast with a cigarette in his mouth.
“Holy shit man, I didn’t know you could cook.”
“Occupational hazard, when you have as much free time as I have had you learn to do a lot of different things.”
“No shit, I guess you would yeah. A lot of this is going to go to waste though, I mean I appreciate the selection and all but it is just the two of us.”
“Huh, yeah well I guess that is another occupational hazard of mine.”
“What?”
“You just stop giving a shit about all the stupid stuff that doesn’t matter.”
Dylan couldn’t tell if he was serious or not so he decided not to press the issue.
“So can you play any instruments?” Dylan asked in between bites.
“14”
“Really? What ones?”
“Guitar, Bass, Piano, Harp, Harmonica, Saxophone, Tuba, Harmonica, drums, steel drums, violin, trumpet, obo, sitar and…” James looked up trying very hard to remember the last instrument “and the flute. I tried five others but couldn’t quite get them down.”
“That is impressive; if we can’t get you back at least we know you can make a living being one of those one man band guys in the park.”
“What the fuck do you mean if we can’t get me back?” All humor had dropped from James’s tone. He sounded angry
“Whoa settle down man, it was just a joke.”
“Yeah well it wasn’t funny. If you’re going to tell jokes make it funny not fucking bullshit like that.”
“James, listen man you are freaking out a bit here. I wasn’t implying anything, or anything like that, it was just a joke.”
James seemed to want to press the issue but closed his eyes for one of his long pauses. “You’re right I’m sorry man.” James pointed to his head and shook it. “This shit don’t always work right.”
“It’s cool man. Let’s just eat.” Dylan responded as his heart rate slowed a bit.
James stared down at his food for a bit then responded with “I’m not hungry any more; let me know when you are ready to go find Deckon.”
James got up and started to clear his plate, Dylan sat there eating his awkward breakfast wondering just how many of these awkward moments he was going to have during this trip. He also wondered if this Sam characters head was going to be as fractured as his friends. Dylan then tried to imagine what a conversation between the two might be like and upon this thought lost his appetite as well.
“Fuck it man, let’s go find this guy.” Dylan said.
“That’s the spirit, alright well they never retire by there actual names but Deckon so full of himself he probably used something real close to his own name. He was also a huge reader and loved Moby Dick. My guess is that we will be looking for an Ishmael Deckon.”
“You think he would use something that obvious?”
“Why not? He is not really trying to hide; he just can’t scream out that he is the same guy.”
Dylan pulled up his laptop and turned it on. “So all we got to do is find an Ishmael Deckon and we should be fine?”
“Yeah I am guessing he is in Canada probably Windsor.”
Dylan was searching the name on his laptop and was kind of hoping that James was wrong. He was trying to figure out if it was because he was just tired of him being right all the time. It is true that this aspect of his friend did creep him out but he didn’t think that that was why. If he was right then the short journey would almost be over and his friend would once again be gone. Sure he was all kinds of fucked in the head right now, but still it was great to see him. He was dead for fuck sake and how many people get to hang out with a dead friend. However per usual James was right, there was a listing in Windsor Canada for an Ishmael Deckon.
“Ok, there he is, Windsor, which means it is about a 2000 mile drive from here.”
“Well Dylan, you up for a road trip?”
“You know it man, just like old times.”
Chapter 6
Dylan and Kyle stopped off at a gas station, which was to be one of many. They loaded up on snacks, smokes and gas and headed off towards the great white north. It only took about half an hour before Dylan jumped right back into the time travel questions.
“So it is possible to jump into an already split off time line.”
“Sure is.”
“How can you tell the difference? I mean with thousands of different time lines how do you know which one you are on.”
James held up his arm and displayed that he was wearing two watches. Dylan didn’t get why James was showing him this but upon further inspection Dylan noticed that the times were off by about a minute and a half.
“What does that mean?” Dylan asked
“The slow one is the real time; the fast one is your time. Whenever there is a split there is a one second difference between the last line and the new one.
“Which would make the true time of each line different by one second, which would make it easy to catogrize I suppose?
“Look at you mister smarty pants.”
“So what you’re saying is that my timeline is the ninetieth some odd time line?”
“You got it, so when you jump to a new line all you have to do is check the atomic time and do some math and you know which time line you are on.”
“That’s crazy. Can you travel into the future?”
“Not really, I mean you can jump to a different time line which is farther then your time line but you can’t go further then your time line has progressed.”
“So right now, in my line, is this the present, I mean as far as my line is concerned I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“So the future is uncharted territory. That’s exciting.”
“Wasn’t it before?”
Dylan laughed and had a moment of silence worthy of James.
“Yeah I suppose it was. So how did you get this job anyways?”
“Well like I said they recruit junkies, which I’m sad to say I used to fit in the category of. I had spent my first night in a gutter waiting outside a dealers place for him to get back with me stuff.”
“Yeah that’s the night you died.”
“In this time line yeah, he came back and I was jonesing so bad I OD’d right there. However in my time line a van came by and picked me up. They brought me to a detox facility that was more like a prison then the Betty Ford clinic. There they detoxed me and did mental conditioning which I am willing to bet was not legal, but it should be because it worked. There weird part was no one would tell me who they were or why I was here. I would ask every goddamn day but they never said shit, the other crazy part was that there weren’t any other junkies around. It was just me and the staff. Once I was clean they sat me in a room with a loaded needle. I was in that room for five hours before anyone else showed up. I didn’t shoot up, I really fucking wanted to but I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“In all honestly I don’t know why. I mean the whole situation was so surreal and fucked that I knew there had to be something more behind it all. Who just picks up a junkie breaks him of the shit and then throws it right back at him. So after five hours a man comes in with a coat and congratulates me and tells me I’m hired.”
“No shit.”
“Swear to god, he tells me that all of this was a big application and resisting this temptation was the final test, I was ready to begin.”
“Then right like that you became a researcher.”
“Well I tried to become a tour guide at first.”
“A tour guide?”
“Yeah like I said earlier the biggest thing my company does is sell vacations, can you imagine being a classical music fan and seeing Beethoven perform? Or be a history buff and seeing one of Hitler’s speeches. What about being an adrenaline junkie and watching Mount St. Helens blow.”
“You’ve seen all of these things?”
“No, like I said I am a researcher not a tour guide. I tried to get that but it turns I out I have more brains then charisma and I got stuck with researcher.”
“So what is you time like?”
“It sucks, the world is going to shit and people are corrupt.”
“Sounds like the present.”
“Yeah well they are better at it in my time.”
Dylan reflected on this bleak outlook for a moment, Dylan was a relatively optimistic kind of person, generally speaking and decided that couldn’t be the whole story.
“You know what’s funny to me?” Dylan asked. “In all the old movies and through out the generation’s people always seem to think that the world is going to shit, but it never really does. Now what I wonder about is, is it really the world that goes to shit or is that just how those people perceive it.”
“It is trust me I have been all different places throughout history and the world is going to shit.”
“See I disagree, if you look at the quality of life it has consistently improved for the majority of people. Sure there are fucked up things in the world but they have become less while the willingness and ability to improve them has improved.”
“Yeah well if you make it to my time you will understand.” James said
The word if in James’s statement bothered Dylan a great deal, for the first time in a while he felt like James was holding something back.
“Look I have to tell you something really important to tell you.” James said quickly changing subjects.
“Sure what is it?”
“You can never print that story you are writing on this.”
“How did you know I was writing a story on this?”
James looked at Dylan annoyed by his silly question. “I am serious, never print it, not even anonymously, don’t ever put it on the internet in anyway either.”
“I wasn’t planning on it. Like anyone would believe me even if I did.”
“Never, I mean that in the very purest form in the way, never anonymously, not upon your death, never even in the dirt rags. Never, never, never. Never on the internet h either, not even in a private locked blog, not even to e-mail it to yourself, never.”
“Why?”
“Ready to hate me? I can’t say why.”
“Fuck off.”
“I’m serious.”
“Bull shit. That is not fair; I have to keep this whole thing a secret my entire life and you can’t even tell me why.”
“I never said it was fair, it’s just what needs to be done.”
“How can you expect me to do that?”
“Because you are my best friend and I need you to do that.”
Anger washed over Dylan, it was ridiculous for him to pull that out especially with how much he has done for him thus far. Dylan hated it because he knew he couldn’t argue it. He was starting to wonder how much pull a back from the dead best friend really had, because so far it was a fucking lot.
“Fine.” Dylan said reluctantly.
“Good man.” James responded.
For a moment neither of them spoke until Dylan spoke up.
“Hey James.”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck You.”
“Fair enough.” James responded then went back to looking out the window. James started to make short suppressed snickers, the absurdity of the previous conversation sinking in. Soon it was light laughter and Dylan started to laugh with him, before too long they were both laughing so hard that Dylan had to pull over and stop the car.