August 27
Lisa screams in rage and frustration as she’s led to the long black LTD parked in the alley. “I can’t leave!” she screams. “I’m in a loop! I can’t–”
“You said yourself,” I call back. “If I get you out of the loop, it collapses. Turns out, there’s another way around it.” Peter chuckles at this. “Goodbye, Lisa.” With one last wail, the back door to the car is shut, and the two goons get into the front seat.
“I believe this is yours,” Peter says, handing me the notebook. “I can’t believe you would try pulling something like that off. What made you think of it?”
“You did, actually,” I say. “Couple days ago, when you mentioned that I did something to the notebook. Didn’t say what, of course, but it wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“So when you asked me to swap for the notebook we found, you knew you weren’t going to put any more entries in it,” Peter says. He flips to the last page in the notebook, past a bunch of blank pages– far beyond where Lisa looked– and points to a handwritten entry saying that a second notebook had been needed. I’d written that in before handing Peter the notebook last night. “I was as shocked as you are.”
August 26
“It’s such a little favor,” I say, producing the long-barreled candle lighter from my pocket. “It’s really such a trivial thing.”
“And this trivial thing is?” she says.
“One sec,” I say. I set the coffee can on the ground and put the notebook in. “Could you stand over here for a second? The wind is making it hard to light this.” Lisa nods and obliges. I click the lighter two or three times before it finally catches, producing a tiny, flickering yellow flame. I lower it gently onto the notebook. Within a moment, the fire spreads through the pages, and it becomes a little blaze in the coffee can, in the snow. “And now, what I’d want from you.”
“Anything you desire, Fran,” Lisa says. “You’ve earned it.”
“I want you to turn around and put your hands on your head,” I say, grinning. Lisa’s face becomes a mask of confusion for just a moment, before she’s forcibly turned around by a rough pair of hands. The two big guys flanking Peter have her in handcuffs within seconds.
“I hope I’m not too late,” Peter says.
“What… what?” Lisa stammers. “That’s the notebook! I saw you burn it! I watched you… How?”
“Think about it in prison,” I growl. “You’re gonna have plenty of time to figure it out.”
August 25
“All right, then,” Lisa says. “Let’s get this over with.”
We step out through the back door, which Katie opens for us, shivering. Lou hands me the empty coffee can as we go out, and the chilly air strikes me, I reach for the lighter in my pocket. “We won’t be long,” I say. Katie nods, and I smile.
“Well, where is it?” Lisa asks. I pull the notebook out of my satchel and show it to her. “Wait,” she says. “Let me check.”
“It’s the real deal,” I say, frowning. “I’m not like you. I keep my word.”
Lisa flips through the notebook, reading entries and glancing at the notes stuck in between the pages. She lifts the two black notes out of it and peers at them. “The ink is illegible on these,” she says.
“Yeah, that’s my fault,” I say, shrugging. “I put them in when the ink wasn’t quite dry. Maybe you could use a different kind of pen.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says, handing me the notebook. “Well, all right. Let’s get this done so I can get out of here.”
“You never asked me what I wanted,” I say.
“I thought you’d tell me first,” she says, frowning. “So, what do you want?”
August 24
“I’m not following,” Lisa says.
“You ever wonder why satellites don’t get retrieved once their effective life is over?” I say. “I got to thinking about that, too. If you stuck a manual or two in a satellite as it was being launched, once it was space junk, it would float in a decaying orbit for hundreds of years until it eventually came crashing down. Doesn’t have to be anything digital. In fact it’s best if it was handwritten. Paper, in a vacuum, doesn’t degrade or decay. Stick that in a heatproof, airless capsule in a few communications satellites, and you’ve got yourself a pretty future-proof bookshelf. That way, even if there was, say, a war or a few dozen natural disasters, human science– including time travel– could continue.”
“You’re speculating,” Lisa says.
“And you’re lying,” I reply. “There’s no way to overcome the forward-progress rule. There’s no way to set up a non-decaying time loop. And, most importantly, there’s absolutely no reason for me to destroy the notebook.”
“But you said…”
“I know what I said,” I say, “and I am going to burn it in front of your eyes. I promise. Wanna know why?”
“I’m dying to find out,” Lisa says.
“It’s to prove to you that it won’t solve anything,” I say. “I’m always going to be an Interloper, and I’m always going to do the right thing, no matter how many times I have to do this.”
August 23
“We all leverage our knowledge to our advantages,” Lisa says. “You’re the Interloper. You do the same thing.”
“Except,” I say, “I don’t have foreknowledge. All I know is what’s happened in the past.”
“Same with me,” she says.
“Except you have a hell of a lot more past than I do, or anyone else here,” I say. “And your ‘past’ is our future. How much of that future isn’t clear, but it doesn’t matter. Because, I know you’re lying.”
“What?” Lisa says, feigning shock. It’s so obvious it’s pathetic. “I’ve told you nothing but the truth, Frannie.”
“That’s right,” I say, “you’ve told me nothing. You say you’re from beyond Peter’s time, and that his theory of time travel is wrong. Except that, from a logical standpoint, if there’s already a way to travel through time, why would anyone bother researching it further? It’s like the wheel. Once it’s invented, there’s no reason to waste effort improving it. Time travel’s a scientific dead end. Once you can do it, the interesting bit becomes what using it does, not other ways to do it.”
“An interesting hypothesis,” Lisa says, “but what if there was a catastrophe that precluded the use of Peter’s method?”
“There isn’t,” I say. “When you can time travel, you can squirrel away knowledge in places that no catastrophe could ever reach. For example, say, a satellite.”
August 22
“Sure do,” he says. “Lookin’ to do some crafts?”
“Something like that,” I say, grinning. “When you get a moment.” He nods and walks towards the back of the cafe, as I sit down across from Lisa. My back’s to the door, inverting my usual position.
“You’re right on time,” Lisa says. “I hope I wasn’t too presumptuous in ordering for you.”
“No, no,” I say. “I really need this now. Didn’t sleep too well last night.”
“I hope it wasn’t on my account.”
“It was, actually,” I say, “but that’s the past. I think I’ve come to a decision.”
“Oh?” Lisa says, leaning forward. “Do tell.”
“I’ll burn the notebook,” I say. “I brought it, and I’ve asked Lou for a can to do it in. We can do this in the alley out back if you’d like.”
“That’d be just fine,” she says, starting to stand.
“Not so fast,” I say. “This doesn’t come without a price. You need to do something for me.”
“Oh?” she asks. “And why should I? Getting us out of the time loop should benefit us both. We can’t afford to be playing games with this, Fran.”
“It’s funny you mention games,” I say. “This all goes back to games. You’re a con artist, a scammer. You prey on people who can’t fight back, who don’t have the knowledge you do.”
August 21
“You’d think, and I thought that way for the longest time. But it doesn’t, ’cause you can’t undo something that’s already been done. You have the better armor, and you’re probably wearing it at that point, so preventing it from being there doesn’t matter, because you already have it,” she says. “I guess they just thought programming something like that would be too much trouble. But, in the end, it works out.”
“Kyle, that is the silliest hand-wave I have ever heard,” I say, half-believing it. Maybe this will work out after all. Whatever’s guiding us both just earned a little bit more respect in my book. “I can see why you’d think I’d hate that game.”
Wednesday, January 31, 2001
Lisa’s waiting for me at my table when I enter the Beanery, just around noon. Lou nods and hands me a cup of my usual as I pass by. “That woman there’s been expecting you,” he says. “Paid your tab, too. Enjoy it.”
“I will,” I say. “How long has she been there?”
“All morning,” he says. “She said you’d be coming in around now. I didn’t believe her, but hey, everyone gets lucky sooner or later, right?”
“Sometimes we have to make our own luck,” I say. “Oh, one last thing, you got an empty coffee can I can use? Metal?”