The Egg Said Nothing - Caris O'Malley [26]
“Listen up, you bastards,” I said, waiting until all of their eyes were on me. “Let’s think this through.”
“You need to kill yourself,” the first one said, struggling against his restraints. “And us.”
“Whoa, fuck that!” said the third one. “Kill him if he wants it so bad!”
“I said listen, not talk,” I replied, losing patience. I waited until their collective mumbling died down. “Okay. There are four of us here. None of you belong. Do any of you know about this time travel business?”
I paused, waiting for a response.
“You mustn’t do this!” the annoying one shouted. I picked up the shovel and walked over to him. I swung it down on his head.
“You must shut the fuck up,” I said to his limp body. “Now, you two. Do you know anything about this shit?”
“A little bit,” one of them said.
“Hit me,” I replied.
He cringed. “Well, you can’t do the time travel thing yet yourself. You have to attain the knowledge first. Just because you will be able to do it in the future doesn’t mean that all of your past selves can. What you need is to focus on changing the present.”
“What about Ashley?” I asked.
He paused for a moment, thinking. “Well, I think you’ve probably got a shot at that. By the looks of it, you’ve already fucked time and space all up. Why not go all out? I’d reckon you could save Ashley by killing an earlier version of yourself.”
“That sounds like a horrible idea,” I said.
“Agreed, but I can’t see any other way. You can’t bring her back from the dead. It just doesn’t work like that. But if you were to destroy yourself before you ever met her, you, or any version of yourself, couldn’t possibly kill her, could you? I guess it comes down to whose life you value more.” He struggled against his restraints. “And we all know which one that is.”
“We do?” I asked.
“We do,” he replied. “That said, I don’t think it’ll be too difficult. There are probably different versions of yourself already hunting down earlier versions. You’ve got no reason to think your particular time or self special.”
“But, if I was attacked in the past, wouldn’t I remember it?”
“Maybe. Like I said, you fucked everything up. No one is supposed to do what you’ve done. And, as such, no one can possibly know of the ramifications. I’m a version of you that is yet to be. Yet, here I am. And I have no fucking clue where you’re going with this shit.”
I was bewildered. “So what should I do?”
“Like I said, go find an early version of yourself and kill it.”
“Where would I find one?”
“Retrace your steps. I’m sure one’ll pop up somewhere.”
“Okay,” I said hesitantly. Picking up the shovel, I reached for the doorknob, but stopped. Turning, I dropped the shovel on the floor. “Just in case he wakes up,” I said. Then I left, making my way quickly down the hall.
* * *
“What was all that bullshit?” the quiet me asked the other out of my earshot. “I can’t remember any of that.”
The other shrugged as well as one can when one is bound in cheap tape. “I don’t know. Fucker was going to kill us. Had to do something.”
~Chapter 13~
In which the narrator starts to retrace his steps, but changes his mind.
I climbed into the elevator and pressed the button for the lobby. Where should I go? The Laundromat? How about the bank fountain? No. The one down the street! I could ambush myself there before encountering Ashley and solve everything.
I hit the emergency stop button. I needed to think.
No, it wouldn’t solve everything. The letter said I had put my revelatory idea into good hands, hands that would bring the idea to fruition. If I died, my ideas would still live on, and so would Ashley’s genetic potential.
I was starting to doubt my earlier certainty that my future self had gone completely nuts. Maybe what I had come up with was so important that it had to happen without me, without any chance of derailment.