Random book chapter : Chapter 10 - The Turning Point

from book "Future Imperfect"

by Adrian Tanase

Alan woke up in the morning. Everything around him was as it had been yesterday. Only that today he had woken up with an almost unnatural feeling of freshness. He didn't know who to thank for that. Maybe it was because Jeeves had been over yesterday and had someone to talk to, maybe it was because he had dreamed something that had soothed him. And what was strange was that he didn't feel like smoking his herbal buds at all, as he usually did.

He went into the kitchen dressed in his sweatpants and the baggy, washed yellow T-shirt he slept in. He put on some water for coffee and he went into the bathroom. He needed to wash his face, and he did that for a good few dozen seconds. This invigorated him greatly; he liked the feeling of the cold water on his face in the morning. As the coffee water warmed up, he went to his terminal and began to read the fresh news from Alandra that were up this morning. Everything was business as usual. Diplomatic meetings between Alandra officials and officials from distant planets, weather explained for the next week, social events, and so on. He liked to read the morning news all the time. It was an activity that awakened him to the reality around him, and since he had started experimenting with the Substance, he did it quite often, to keep him anchored in the immediate reality of the news.

The coffee water had begun to boil slowly. He went into the kitchen and turned off the stove. He put in enough coffee to make it aromatic enough and a little sweetener too. He stirred casually without thinking about anything. Today was a very special day for him. He felt that somehow it was, but he could not explain it.

It was sunny outside and the sky was very clear and blue. He couldn't remember what he had dreamed about but his mind had certainly cleared a lot during his sleep. He felt like running outside or at least take a walk. He began to dress in the clothes that had been left on the chair since yesterday.

He took a pair of light blue trousers, a white t-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt, in which he always felt comfortable. He made himself two sandwiches and heated them in the sandwich toaster. He ate them quickly and got ready to leave. He remembered that Jeeves had brought him a large bottle of Substance yesterday. He was supposed to give him the rest of the money, but that was in the afternoon because the credits hadn't come in yet from the Government.

He hastily put the device on his hand, took the device from Mr. K. in his pocket and went to the table where his terminal was. He took the bottle of Substance and poured enough drops into his mouth. The taste of the Substance flooded his mouth. It tasted like water but with a chemical, metallic, chlorine-like taste. He went to the door and looked around the house to make sure everything was okay. The stove was off and things around the house seemed to be in order. Downstairs, Mr. Bill was at his post as usual.

"Alan! What an early riser you are today! It is a lovely day in Alandra. Thanks to the weather system, I read that we have entered the first summer week. The crops will benefit greatly from this weather. It's going to rain a little bit but otherwise it will be sunny and clear. And it's going to be warm, with a light drizzle," said Mr. Bill Fisher, looking very cheerful today. "Yes, I've seen we’ve got some nice weather today," Alan replied. "That's also the reason I came out so early this morning. Would you like me to get you a coffee? I'll go across the street and be right back."

"If you want to ... I would have one, but I've had quite a bit of work to do this morning and I forgot to get one," Bill said with an amused look on his face that showed how much he wanted one.

"Then I'll be right out and back."

Alan exited the building and crossed the street. The small parlour was open and the salesman was waiting by the open window.

"One coffee." Alan said. "With milk."

The salesman recognized him and greeted him.

"Coming right up," he said. "That'll be one credit."

Alan took the money out of his wallet and handed it to the salesman.

Coffee is usually brewed slowly. The coffee machine was very good and the coffee always had a special aroma and you could smell it even from the outside through the open window.

"It is a very nice weather in Alandra today! Have a nice day!" Alan said.

He walked back across the street and up the block. Bill was as usual deep in his papers, with his glasses on his nose. He didn't have much to do but he liked to be active all day and even if he didn't have something to do, he was re-calculating to make sure sheets were whole or making various plans and schemes for improvements that could be made to the building. He would then go to the authority in Alandra who would check and approve these changes. He had been there many times and usually most of the modifications or repairs he asked for were approved. This building had become his life, and Alan always liked it when he saw someone so dedicated.

Bill Fisher was from Alandra, a normal citizen of the capital. As far as he knew, Bill's wife had died ten years ago and he had taken a job in the Colony to have some extra money in his retirement period. He loved the job, and he had something to occupy his time with, especially since the area where the building was located was a safe one, where you rarely saw anything strange happen.

"Here's your coffee, Mr. Bill," Alan said. He began to notice very fine yellow lines around the concierge desk, almost invisible. The substance had been activated. Alan instinctively checked his device. It was there where he had put it, on his left hand.

"Thank you, Alan. You're very kind. Here's a credit for the coffee back," Mr. Bill replied and handed him the money.

"Ah, never mind. My treat for today. I'm going for a walk, Mr. Bill. It's a beautiful day. Have a nice one," Alan greeted him, turned on his heel and walked out of the building.

Outside yellow blueprints had already appeared everywhere. It seemed that in this potential future the buildings were set up completely differently. At least on the street in front of Alan's block, there was no street. There was a building of yellow blueprints that seemed to go all the way up to about the 60th floor. He crossed the street and started walking slowly. The coffee he had brought with him from home was very good. What was a little strange was that his mind felt stimulated as if he was in the middle of a complex project, or in a company where many people were working on a very complex project. He felt as if in this alternate society somehow things functioned differently. He felt like he was living in a world almost identical to his own, but much more interesting.

He kept walking down the street with no particular destination, taking advantage of this strange feeling that he had never found in any other alternate. He had the impression that all the people were somehow intertwined at some level of consciousness, where they all thought together. He thought that perhaps this was even achieved with the help of technology. It was probably possible that a certain device emitting a certain frequency that the brain naturally perceived could interconnect all the people within the range of the capital city or even on the planetary scale, with high-energy repeaters placed in key points. His imagination was very vivid now, and he was giving that away clearly on the use of the Substance. He continued to walk lightly. He felt the urge to light a cigarette. He fumbled in his pants pocket and found a half-full pack. He took a cigarette, stopped and tactically lit it. He remembered that he had intended to quit last time, but he could make an exception in this case.

He stopped next to a shop that had just opened. He savored the thin tobacco cigarette as he experienced this new sensation of the alternate world he had entered. All the buildings looked the same, yellow blueprints and a few blue ones were everywhere, plus that feeling of connection to the people around him that he hadn't experienced in any other timeline, made him feel like they were all in the same interesting game where everything was orderly and everyone was doing their part. He wondered what this world would be like. Was there a lot of bureaucracy? Or was it a liberal society, where everyone developed according to their level of intelligence, while sharing their experience with others?

He couldn't wait any longer and started fiddling with his device. After finetuning it easily, he heard the ascending sound. Suddenly, he saw the bright flash that announced the switch to alternate. The landscape suddenly changed and he suddenly found himself in an elevator. The elevator was going up at a fairly high speed. He could tell because the walls of the elevator were transparent, and he could see through them as the elevator went up.

Outside it was night and it was a clear sky in Alandra. Somewhere in the distance he could see colorful fireworks. Something was being celebrated, but he didn't know exactly what. Apparently he was in a very tall tower that had two large turbolifts going up and down where from you could see almost a tenth of the capital through the windows of the elevator. He looked up at the gauge that showed the level. It read 121 and rising. He was looking at the button that was pressed. It read 149. As far as he knew, no tower in Alandra had more than 110 floors. But that was in the timeline he was coming from. He felt he was running out of patience. He had the impulse to stop the elevator and select the ground floor, but realized he'd better let his alter-ego in this alternate go his way, to minimize any temporal altering. The elevator continued to rise for another 10 seconds and at some point he felt a slight deceleration. He had reached the 149th floor. Instinctively he reached into his pocket and pulled out Mr. K.'s device. It read 4219. He instinctively flinched when he saw the number. It was exactly one year before the year he was banned from travelling. The elevator doors opened.

He looked to both sides on the corridor and got out of the elevator. It was a corridor that looked similar to that of a hotel, carpeted in a restful pattern. On the floor there was a dark red carpet, with a very soft and smooth feeling. The elevator door closed behind him and he unwittingly peered into its shiny silver metal doors, close in clarity to a mirror. He was a man from the service staff of a hotel or office building, from the blue-gray overalls he was dressed in. He was walking towards a table on wheels with various things to clean, picked it up and continued down the corridor. As he walked, he looked around. He noticed that there were many doors, each with something written on it, in letters he didn't understand. He imagined that the rooms were quite large, because the hallway was quite long, and from what he could see from the elevator, the building itself was very large. He noticed that one of the doors was ajar. He didn't know whether to stay in this alternate because things looked a little strange. But curiosity pushed him and he walked to the door and stopped, next to it. Inside, two guys were talking relatively loudly to each other. He couldn't help but listen to the conversation. It sounded pretty violent as the two were arguing.

"You will do as I say! Otherwise you just know..."

"NO! I will never allow that. I'm not here to listen to your nonsense. Everyone behind you is a puppet!"

Then he heard a noise as if someone had knocked something over on the desk. He instinctively poked his head around the door to see what was going on, and accidentally made a noise, banging with his hand into the door frame. He saw a man standing backwards holding a gun pointed at the man sitting in the big chair behind the massive wooden desk, dressed in a very fine corporate suit. The man turned in a split second and saw Alan in his outfit standing in the doorway. He then turned around lightning fast and pulled the trigger a few times. The gun sounded very faint, and dispersed what might have been a purple energy discharge. The man sitting at the desk fell to one side. Alan had time to watch as he fell inert over the large desk chair. That was all he had time to see. He quickly turned and ran down the corridor. He didn't have time to take the elevator. In his back, it sounded as if the assassin tripped over something and fell.

He continued to run desperately down the corridor. At the end of the corridor he found a service door, opened it and before he could run down the stairs, he wedged the rolling table inside the service door.

Alan was running almost desperately. After he had made it down four flights of stairs, the service door slammed and the man that was chasing him was heard running down after him. Alan was speeding down the stairs. After two more floors he noticed another service door. He thought it was his only chance. He quickly entered it, closed it and locked it with the key that was on the inside of the door. Inside, the sensor activated a pale yellow service light. He could make out several mats and shelves on which were various cleaning substances and other boxes. On one of the shelves was a clock showing the time: 23:58. To his amazement he saw the date. It was December 31, 4219. It was two minutes to the New Year. Two more minutes to 4220! The assasin could be heard speeding down the service stairs. He reached the locked service door which was apparently reinforced with metal and started banging on it. Two or three energetic discharges could be heard in the solid sheet metal door. Instinctively Alan reached out and activated the device. The flash that followed lasted only a fraction of a second.

He was back. He found himself on the street where his building stood, in front of the coffee parlour. He had his travel mug of coffee in his hand and a cigarette, half smoked. He drank more than half of his coffee and felt good, in the warm spring sunshine of Alandra. Beside him, a young girl asked:

"And since when do you write?" she asked him.

Alan, still shocked by the alternate's event, was trying not to look strange.

"Well ... for a long time. You ... write, or do you just like to appreciate written works?" he asked her back, not knowing exactly what they had been discussing until then.

"I ... you know ... I appreciate authors very much. But writing, less so. I've tried it, but I don't seem to have the talent, you know ... "

The chick was very nice and Alan really didn't know what she was doing in the Colony, or if she was still an outcast like him. The shock of the alternate incident had largely dissipated, because the woman in front of him was extraordinarily beautiful, with fine, smooth features, thin but very charismatic.

"I do ... and I appreciate those who write, as well. And that's why I started writing too. I wanted to see if I could. And it was hard at first, not to mention messy with all the papers I was throwing away, but with time I got used to it and it's already one of my permanent occupations. At least in the Colony, so I have something to occupy my time sometimes..."

The conversation had become very interesting, and Alan felt he didn't want to miss the opportunity to make a new friend. He couldn't even fathom how he'd gotten into conversation with her, who she was and where she was from. But the incident in the Alternate had to be investigated immediately.

"You know. I'd like to talk more about it. Would you like to resume our discussion perhaps ... next few days, over a cup of coffee?" Alan asked in a low, quiet voice.

"Yes! I'd like that very much. I'm Loreen, and I live relatively close to you. Still in the Colony. It seems we're all outcasts here," she said in a quieter voice, dropping her gaze. "I've been seeing you around this area all morning, and I thought ... " She said and smiled a little embarrassed.

"Look, here's my contact number," Alan said and handed her a business card with his name on it and the communicator number.

"Thanks! I'll call you back in a few days. In the afternoon, is that ok? And when would you like it? Tomorrow? Or are you busy?" Loreen asked.

"Well ... tomorrow's fine. Two in the afternoon is actually perfect."

"I'll call you. Thank you for buying me coffee. You know, it's not the money, it's your gesture. Have a nice day!" Loreen waved and walked up the street.

Alan was still caught between two realities. It had been less than fourty-five minutes since the Substance had taken effect and he was already back in his own time. Apparently he hadn't been sitting around for nothing and had even made a new friend, but what had happened in the alternate made him feel very guilty. It was the year 4220. He hadn't realized that the fireworks marked the end of the year. A crime had probably been committed and he wondered how much of it was his fault. He thought his curiosity had played a trick on him this time. He shouldn't have come into the room. Thus, the discussion between the two might be resolved, but the fact that the assassin had been frightened of him had caused the other to be eliminated sooner than he should have been, that much was clear. Three shots and the man probably died instantly. What was worse, Alan thought, was that it had all happened on the 149th floor of a tower in Alandra, probably the tallest. And whoever worked in the tallest, or one of the tallest towers, certainly had great economic or political power in the capital. He had helped assassinate a politician or perhaps even a very important corporate executive in Alandra, and this was in 4220, the very year that Mr. K. had forbidden him to make incursions. He had somehow changed the course of history in one of the alternates, and that was just when a team of temporal agents were hard at work.

He arrived in front of his apartment building and hurried up the stairs. He entered the lobby. Mr. Bill's room was empty. He quickly climbed the stairs, opened the door and entered his apartment. Everything was very quiet, just as it was before he left. Remi was chirping loudly, playing around in his cage. He waited every second for Mr. K to appear in his room. He was sure he was going to tell him some pretty big news.

He took the device out of his hand and put the other device showing the year on the table. He waited for Mr. K. moment by moment. He tactically began to roll an aromatic cigarette as he thought that might relax him. It certainly would. He thanked Jeeves in his mind for that as he rolled.

Something strange was going on in his mind. He felt as if he suddenly was free of all the stress he had ever felt and felt the whole world open up to him. He didn't know if he was guilty or not, but he understood that he was now part of a bigger plan, much bigger than he had ever thought. And he somehow felt that what had happened was simply written into his destiny. He felt as if an essential piece of his life had been fulfilled, and he didn't understand why his life had been the way it had been, but somehow, everything made sense. That's why he was waiting for Mr. K. He wanted to understand. He knew that only K. could explain him why things where this way.