“I’m so fucking pissed right now,” said Allison Carmicheal.
“And you have every reason to be,” the hobo mumbled. “It’s a whole situation, and…”
“A whole situation? I’ve been talking to you for five minutes, and that’s all you’ve been saying. I’m gonna snap. Dude, I’m gonna freak out at you.”
Allison was sitting a solid metre across from the hobo. She took the occasional sip from a Tim Hortons hot chocolate the hobo had bought for her, but was spending the rest of the time yelling at him.
“So where’s a good starting point? You have all the answers, right? Well go. I’m tired of waiting.” The hobo sighed and leaned back in his seat. “Well, I mean…I suppose I’ll try to be somewhat casual about this, so as not to alarm you…to the best of my knowledge, you’re in an alternate universe. You got sent here upon your death.”
Allison turned up her nose. This information wasn’t exactly surprising to her, but that didn’t prevent it from pissing her off. “Okay. Alternate universe. And why didn’t I get sent here when I died previously? And do you know what’s up with the robot? I’ve got unresolved problems with that bitch.”
“Sorry…died previously?”
“The loop. The time loop. The one I’ve been in for a fucking decade? Kind of like in–”
“GROUNDHOG DAY,” the hobo scream-whispered under his breath. He was smiling crazily. This pissed her off as well.
“I was going to say Edge of Tomorrow, ripoff of the famous light novel All You Need Is KIll. What were you saying?” The words “groundhog day” had no meaning to her.
“Groundhog Day,” the hobo repeated. “Like, the time loop movie? He repeats the same day again and again on…well, on groundhog day.”
“What’s groundhog day?”
“That’s not the point. You were in a loop, repeating the same day?”
“Pretty much.”
“So…that proves it worked.”
“PROVES WHAT WORKED?”
“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. I assume you have two major questions, right? Number one…what’s the time loop and why were you in it.? Number two…what was the robot? Why was it after you and Danny? And the answers to those questions are kind of the same thing.”
Allison was aggravated by the almost expectant pause in conversation. “So what’s the answer?”
“It was…a few years ago. You don’t recognize me? At all?” Allison shook her head. “Not at all.” The hobo sighed. “JOSH NEVCLED! I’m the guy! From tenth grade math? You don’t see it?”
Allison lurched forward slightly. She couldn’t even comprehend…what was even going on in the slightest. “You’re joking. That doesn’t even…”
“IT’LL ALL MAKE SENSE IN A SECOND!”
Allison threw herself back in her seat. “Calm down, geez…the Josh Nevcled…ya hardly look like him…anyhow, go on. Start from the beginning.” Allison tried not to think about it, but she really was surprised. Allison didn’t like it when there were things she didn’t know. The whole situation continued to piss her off.
“So…a few years ago. Me and my wife started up a government sanctioned experiment. My wife…she was the real brains of the operation, I suppose…she had an idea. A time machine that we could control remotely, and send to previous eras. We designed it with the strongest metals the military had to offer, in the shape of a six-legged rover for mobility’s sake. It was dangerous…if it fell on you you’d be pulverized…”
Allison opened her mouth and then paused. She was somehow even more confused than before. “So you made that robot. I get that much. But how does the thing that was killing me fit into this? You described your robot as a spider rover…the thing that murdered me every day looked like a man. A robot man, at least…a steampunk type thing…an automaton…was it just, like, a later model, or…?”
“Nothing so simple,” Josh muttered. “And you really have to stop interrupting me, because I promise everything will make sense in a second…” Allison blew him a raspberry. He sighed, rolled his eyes, and continued. “Time travel was revolutionary. Nobody had even come up with the idea of travelling through time beforehand. But the problem…well, I suppose if there were any other people as smart as my wife, then…”
“Okay, stop,” Allison muttered. “Number one…who the hell’s your wife? Because you really seem to fancy this gal. And number two…nobody had even thought about travelling through time before your wife got involved? Were there no movies? Back to the Future. The Terminator. 12 Monkeys? PEABODY AND SHERMAN?” Josh shrugged. “No idea about any of those. Back to the Future…that name doesn’t make any sense…”
“Okay, shut up…your wife. Why are you so touchy about who she is?”
“Well…it’s kind of complicated…I guess I have proof of the peripheral theory right in front of me, but uh…you wouldn’t like learning who she is, I suppose…” Allison grimaced. “You’ll have to go on.” Josh squinted. “Well…you see…she’s kind of…you?”
Allison almost fell out of her seat. Several surprised patrons glanced at her before going back to their drinks and pastries. A tentacle man slurped up a frappucino in the corner.
“Me, as in…me?” “I thought that much was clear…”
“You’re shitting me. I am being shitted.”
“You’re really not. In the future you marry me, man. Well, not me as I am now, I suppose…you know how complicated it is.”
“I can’t believe it. That’s genuinely…it’s…bro…”
“Well, my apologies. I had no idea you were going to end up looping in the first place! If it offers any condolences, I would much prefer to be helping somebody who isn’t going to grow up marrying a hotter, less homeless version of me.”
“This is really fucked up…if you’re so financially unstable, how did you pay for my absurdly bougie hot chocolate? This stuff has candy canes in it and everything, and it’s June. I was gambitting you, fella, and you paid all twenty dollars in cash…”
“You really don’t need to know where I got that money from…”
“Wait, sorry, I’m just clarifying this now…doesn’t this mean you were getting beaten up by yourself at the beginning of the loop.”
“Pretty much…that’s not even what’s important now. We’re getting off track. So, you got out of college, I got even more buff and started fixing cars, and you came and saved my sorry ass from a lifetime of boring labor…you had a plan, and had already done preliminary experiments. The government was funneling a lot of money into this thing, but there were still concerns…every experiment you did, for one, created an alternate universe that you would be travelling into…and going into that universe caused a chain of events that created more alternate universes, and so on and so forth…”
“Wait. Hold up, just a second…I can guess that the reason there are…well…tentacle people here is because of the experiments, and, y’know, maybe in this universe octopi bred with humans or something and that’s why these fellas are shambling around…You mean there weren’t alternate universes before you started experimenting?”
“To the best of our knowledge. If there were, we had no hope of locating them. Allison..other Allison, at least….had a device which could track multiversal energy from the machine, but any universes not summoned by us couldn’t be found. Again, not important….”
“Weird. So my universe was just a perpetually looping one? That was the whole shtick?”
“No…if you were in a loop as you say, there’s a much more complicated reason behind it. Let’s get started with the basics…the first thing I saw before I ended up in this universe was that grocery store blowing up with you inside. However, I knew that if the robot was in there with you, and it was destroyed in all the noise, it would likely end the hypothetical loop you were trapped in. The robot was the machine, as you know. And the fact that you didn’t die within two seconds of fighting that thing made me suspect as much regarding your looplock…that’s what we call it, by the way, forgive me if it sounds pretentious…”
“It really does…also, you’re saying way too much…you kind of stopped talking about the whole thing with me and the machine…and, y’know, why I was looping…”
“Yeah, that’s what I was getting to. So, as you might have expected, creating a machine capable of both rewinding time and creating alternate universes while doing so wasn’t exactly subtle. Slightly less…tasteful people began to figure out what we were doing, and those people began passing information along to a major terrorist sect. At this point, we had started working below our hometown for maximum discretion, living under false identities and operating a mile underground…I assume you found the tunnels?”
“Yepperoonie…”
“Well, that’s what they were for. Anyhow…terrorists, remember that now, because they aren’t gonna be important just yet…”
“This whole thing is hardly cohesive, man. Have you considered thinking about what comes outta your mouth, or…?”
“On god, man…shut up…the reason the terrorists aren’t important just yet is because the military were really interested in alternate universes. The general in charge of the whole operation, Charles Robbins, ordered his men to begin constructing a machine capable of traversing universes as well. Using your notes, they got started, and after a year the second machine was complete. This one looked like a seven foot tall steampunk man. This was the one that was killing you.”
Allison took a deep breath. “My guy…took you long enough…” Josh exhaled and put his hands behind his back.
“We made five robots for maximum reliability. Five robots with little things in their chests that let them travel through universes…I don’t really know the specifics, even you weren’t involved super heavily on these models…” Josh looked out the window and put his shoulder on the windowsill. He kept fidgeting, Allison noticed. It was rather suspicious.
“We sent the first one…codename Bruté, because everyone was sure he would go rogue on us. Thankfully, he didn’t. The mission went off without a hitch, at least at first. We soon realized that the universes we had created were all trapped in a perpetual time loop. The same day, repeating endlessly. Except, everyone in the universe in question wasn’t aware…the robot was trapped too, and eventually stopped working and shut off. Once it had travelled, we couldn’t get it back. The program we had designed for it meant it couldn’t be controlled remotely, all we could do was send it to the universe and make it do its predetermined walk cycle before self-disabling.”
“Mmm, and how does my death figure into this?”
“Well, it’s all rather simple…the terrorists I mentioned earlier…less terrorists I suppose and moreso psychos for hire, they found our headquarters on word from a rat. They were dangerous folks, and they…massacred almost the entirety of our group. There were only four of them…they were almost superhumanly powerful…I tried to fight them off as best I could, but somewhere in the struggle you just…disappeared…I never saw you again…I killed the smallest one, but in all the confusion one of the other men managed to do…something to our second universe-hopping robot. He did some sort of complex procedure using a device I had never seen before, and by the time I was done the automaton had become one with the rover in a sloppy metal fusion of some sort and it was gone. To the best of my knowledge, he sent it both back in time and to another universe. That universe looped eternally, and something in the automaton’s code had warped to activate its self defence protocols.”
“Self…defence protocols?”
“We had the automaton’s code rigged so that if anybody tried to harm or destroy it while it was travelling, it would automatically kill that person. That was why we always sent it to other universes in wide open areas, like fields or something, so it would meet as few people as possible and lessen the risk. We even sent it down to the Saharan Desert for some of our most productive tests yet. And my best guess is that somehow the robot became locked onto you. I really don’t have all the answers…”
“That’s fine, I suppose…so how did you survive the initial attack?”
“I hardly did. I passed out and the men took me…they brought me to some sort of warehouse. I remember looking outside and seeing these big purple buildings…and they told me they had travelled forwards in time or something. They said they were from the future, and they wanted the old prototypes for the machine. I looked over and there were hundreds of glowing blue cubes, all emanating this strange pulse, and every now and then one of them would disappear from the pile and return somewhere else in the warehouse…and then they started torturing me for information, I suppose. I won’t get into the details, but after a while I did give them the information they requested…when I woke up, the men were gone and I found this…”
Josh pushed back his coat and rose up in the seat. He lifted up his ratty yellow shirt and underneath Allison saw a mess of glowing metal, beating like a heart, embedded into his skin. Haphazard screws and bolts were placed unflatteringly across the whole display, and something organic was wedged into a small open crevice in the middle of the whole thing.
Allison gasped. “What the hell, man?”
“Yeah, I know…I can’t really comprehend it either. When I first got this thing installed, it was a mess. What it did, at least in my perception, was send me around random universes nonstop. Sometimes I’d be in one for an hour, sometimes a mere two seconds. All I know is that the pain I experienced was more immense than anything I’ve ever felt…it wasn’t a forever thing, though. In one of the universes, which happened to be more…technologically advanced than our current one, I managed to get some surgery. The people in that universe had machines similar to this one, and were aware of alternate universes to boot, so they added a few things to make the whole situation run more smoothly, shall we say…And also, like these guys stole all my cash. I was broke when I escaped. So yeah, that’s why I was dressed like a hobo. I just happened to come across a hundred bucks in a gutter one day and have been conserving that since. It helped that it was a universe where all money was put in street gutters as opposed to banks. Really confusing stuff.”
“Dude…I’m sorry…”
“I don’t know what to say. But you know everything you need to know right now…what’s important is…”
“Actually, what about all the weapons?
“What weapons?”
“You know…the weapons in the tunnels…?”
“There were weapons in the…? I mean, we had a defence protocol where if you went past a certain point a robot would get sicced on you, but…someone was leaving weapons there?”
“How do you think I blew up the grocery store?”
“I suppose…I have no concept of that. Whoever was leaving the weapons there, I’ve got no idea…”
“Oh yeah, and one other thing…what was in that bag you carried around with you at the start of each loop?”
“Churros.”
“Just churros?”
“They’re my favorite
BANG
Josh Nevcled’s head was splattered into a fine paste in front of Allison Carmicheal. His now headless body slumped out of the seat in a gory mess. Various diner patrons began screaming. Allison hid down in her seat, not knowing where the assailants could be coming from- she sorted the facts in her head. There was a gunshot, yes…and it hit Josh. Were they aiming for him? Were these the terrorists he was speaking of? Actually, Josh had something he was trying to tell her before she got him sidetracked…something presumably rather important…
Allison peered out the window again. Two men were approaching the Tim Hortons. One was short and fat, the other was gigantic and muscular, with garish blonde hair styled in a mullet. They both wore tuxedoes, brown and green respectively, both with a checkerboard pattern. There was a hill in the distance…could it have been a sniper? Allison didn’t have much time. She dashed out of her seat and kicked open the door of a utility closet across the store. She was surprised no one else had thought of this already. A tentacle person nearby stared at her with a look that reeked of “please take me with you,” but the offhand glance failed completely.
Allison slammed the door shut, and just in time- she could hear the door being swung open outside the door. She got herself antiquated with the claustrophobic mothballiness of it all.
“HELLO LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” bellowed a voice (which she assumed belonged to the short fat guy- it was impossible for a seven foot tall musclebound behemoth to sound that theatrical). “WE’RE MEN OF TASTE, SO WE’LL MAKE THIS QUICK. I’M MR. MISTER, AND THIS IS MY GOOD FRIEND MR. TROUT… AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED, MY FINE ALLY MR. ROBBINS IS SITTING ON THE HILLSIDE AS WE SPEAK, PRIMED AND READY…IF WE GIVE HIM THE ORDER, ALL OF YOU WILL BE DEAD…”
Somewhere in the distance, and obviously quieter- “Can you stop being so loud?”
BANG. Allison flinched again.
“WWWOWWW, LOOK AT THIS GUY! PRACTICALLY BEGGING TO HAVE AN EXAMPLE MADE OF HIM. NOW, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, YOU’VE BEEN SO LOUD WITH YOUR ABRASIVE REQUESTS THAT YOU’VE HARDLY GIVEN US THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPLAIN WHY WE’RE HERE. WE ARE SADISTS FROM AN OBJECTIVE STANDPOINT…IS THAT NOT CORRECT, TROUT?”
Allison did not hear Trout’s response, but assumed it was a yes.
“BUT WE ARE NOT SADISTS WITHOUT MORALS, SADISTS WITHOUT PURPOSE. WE’RE HERE FOR A GIRL. A GIRL WE SIMPLY DO NOT INTEND TO KILL. NOW DO ANY OF YOU LITTLE SCOUNDRELS KNOW WHERE SHE IS? TEENAGER? HAIR COLOR…WE ACTUALLY DON’T KNOW…”
There was a pause. Allison waited with bated breath.
“SHE’S APPARENTLY WEARING A TRULY AWFUL OUTFIT…”
They were talking about her.
Quickly, Allison began searching in the cramped closet for an escape route. The people outside would likely sell her out as fast as possible so as to keep alive. All she needed to do was keep quiet as she searched, and she’d be just fine. The short man’s voice continued booming outside the door, he seemed very uninterested in pausing his rant. His words began to lose legibility as Allison started moving brooms from one side of the closet to the other. And lo and behold, after about two minutes of searching, Allison located a large squarish hole in the wall. She couldn’t believe her luck, it took all her mental energy to keep from jumping with joy. As she crouched down and prepared to maneuver through the hole, she noticed a yellow sticky note haphazardly attached to her hopeful escape route. In messy handwriting, she made out a few sentences-
Hey there. We’ve done all this before, and I’m an enterprising fellow so I’d like to keep you alive, if permissible. I’ve set up a car for you outside. I assume you know how to drive- you had plenty of time to practice, after all. Meet me at the Orange Debacle at 8:00. You want answers, I suppose I can provide a few more than that dumbass Josh could ever give.
Yours truly, Danny Callahan.
PS: Trout has a bum leg. Get one good kick in and he’s down for the count.
Allison was well and truly shocked for the second time that day. Danny Callahan. Danny Callahan. It could just be a lie, she supposed. Perhaps an elaborate trick by a friend of the short man. But how could she know? She hardly had any proof, and besides, they had no idea she would go in the-
Suddenly, from outside, a man spoke up. “She’s in there. The closet. I saw her run. She knew something about you, I guess.”
Allison got the fuck out of dodge.
Scrambling through the cramped hole (she had no concept of how it was made- maybe some sort of strange tech, if Josh’s story was true), Allison experienced true claustrophobia, something much worse than the closet. The walls closed in. The dirt got in her hair and water dripped slowly from an exposed pipe somewhere. The closet door banged open in the distance. “ALLISON CARMICHEAL,” the short man screamed, “YOUR TIME IS UUUUUP!”
Allison shot a hand out and grabbed the edge of the hole. She pulled herself outwards into the afternoon light and was finally free. She could still hear faint whispers of the short man’s voice from the other side-
“SHE WENT THROUGH THERE. GO OUT THE FRONT.”
Allison ran, and before long she saw a red car of some unrecognizable brand parked a few metres to the side of the hole’s entrance. Scrambling, she hopped in. She had taught herself a little bit about how to drive even before she began looping- her mother didn’t really care, Allison was fourteen anyways and a mere two years away from the law’s definition of vehicular responsibility. And the loop had given her plenty of time to practice, as Danny’s note predicted. Allison stuck her neck out and glanced around to the front of the building. Trout shambled out, followed by the short man. Bum leg, Allison recalled. Slamming on the gas, she rummaged around in the glove compartment and eventually found a knife. There was yet another note on it, which she sped-read.
Hey there! It’s me again. I can imagine what you’re thinking- wow, something to slow down that guy you told me had a bum leg! So, uh…use it for that. I’m being rather terse here, because he’s probably outside the car right abou
Allison glanced to her left and saw that Trout was indeed running full speed at the car. Mister walked slowly behind him. Trout was still about three metres away from the car- she had enough space to land a hit- it was a relatively small knife anyways, the kind you would use to chop up vegetables in the kitchen. She wound up and threw.
The knife hit Trout square in the thigh. He collapsed to the ground, but his face did not change, not even twitching in pain. She could see him mutter “bitch.” He ran at the car even faster, but collapsed again. Mister was yelling at her now, she realized slowly- “Allison, my dear, you seem to have forgotten about my associate, up on the hill over there…RobbINS!”
The sniper. She had almost forgotten. She glanced out the window trying to account for the position of the hill, and was greeted by another note from Danny.
A sniper? That’s probably what you’re thinking, and you’re completely correct for doing so! However, I’ve met this Robbins guy, and he isn’t as cool as you’d like to believe. His right eye is in permanent infrared sensor mode, so it takes him a while to line up shots from there. Drive to your left. Nice talking to
Allison was getting really fed up with Danny at this point. Nonetheless, she too was interested in her survival. She grabbed the wheel and swerved. Three gunshots rang out and bounced off the hood of the car. The windshield cracked. Allison spiraled out. She couldn’t lose her bearings- she had to keep going. Four more shots. Trout was up, prying the knife out of his leg. He was now running, perhaps even faster than the car. Allison slammed on the gas. Three more shots. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, ROBBINS…ROBBINS…!” Allison sped forwards. She was on the outskirts of town, there was nothing but musty flatland around this area. There was a farm somewhere in the distance, to her memory. All she had to do was go forwards.
The car bumped along the flat plane. Trout was still coming after it. In the rear view mirror she could see Mister polishing a pistol. He knew her ploy. God dammit, she thought to herself. Still slamming on the gas and watching both directly ahead of her and in the rear view mirror, Allison began rummaging around the glove compartment again. There was a single dart, with no note attached to it. Danny had no plans for this specific dart.
It feels important to note that driving was not the only skill Allison had gained in the loop, she had also perfected guitar playing, memorized the entirety of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, became capable of quoting the first six chapters of James Joyce’s Ulysses from memory, and read two and a half thousand books. Another skill she had gained was dart-throwing. She felt as though it might be important in her then-hypothetical future. And now it was.
Allison stuck her upper body out the window, with the wheel in her peripheral vision. Her foot was on the gas and she was now twisted up like a pretzel. She knew Mister would aim and fire, so she was keeping more of an eye on him. À shot rang out. Allison ducked. The shot missed. Allison threw the dart, aiming at Trout’s face.
“What do you think you’r”
The dart went directly into Trout’s mouth. He fell over, gasping for breath and muttering indistinctly. Mister was now running up to him. Vomit seeped out of Trout’s mouth, mixed interchangeably with concerningly colored blood. Allison felt like barfing herself. Nevermind that, she thought to herself. She had to get away. In the distance, Mister screamed profanities at her and shot three haphazard bullets, all of which missed.
The car continued.
The road went on.