577 lines
34 KiB
Plaintext
577 lines
34 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oOOOO OOOO. OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
|
|
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" .OOOOOO OOOOOo OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
|
|
OOOO oOOOOOOO OOOOOOO. OOOO oOOOO
|
|
OOOO .OOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOo OOOO OOOO"
|
|
OOOO oOOOO OOOO OOOO "OOOO. OOOO OOOOo .OOOO'
|
|
OOOO .OOOO" OOOO OOOO OOOOoOOOO "OOOO. oOOOO
|
|
OOOO oOOOOOOO..OOOO OOOO "OOOOOOO OOOOoOOOO"
|
|
OOOO .OOOO"""OOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOO "OOOOOOO'
|
|
OOOO oOOOO ""OOOO OOOO "OOOO OOOOOO
|
|
|
|
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|
|
| |
|
|
| There Ain't No Justice |
|
|
| |
|
|
| #124 |
|
|
| |
|
|
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|
|
- Flashback 2: The Wonder Years -
|
|
by Tal Meta & Angelique
|
|
|
|
|
|
...Oh well. Something would come to me. It always did.
|
|
|
|
It was something of a surprise to me when the Fire department arrived
|
|
instead. They disarmed me, and took me into custody until the State Police
|
|
arrived. Nobody seemed quite sure what had happened, except for Michele and
|
|
myself... she seemed to be in shock, and I was keeping my own counsel, trying
|
|
furiously to decide, at long last, exactly what tact to take.
|
|
|
|
Louis was slow in recovering from the bump on his head. Part of me
|
|
hoped he'd have a scar; maybe it'd serve him as a reminder. Blood was all over
|
|
his face... head wounds have the charming quality of bleeding tenaciously. As
|
|
far as I was concerned, it made him look like the demon I considered him to be.
|
|
|
|
Michele's mother arrived before the police did. She'd never liked me
|
|
before, but I could see the hatred pouring out of her eyes, for what I'd done
|
|
to her son. I already knew her story; she'd protect Louis at all costs...
|
|
Michele's safety was secondary at best. No matter; the family was full of
|
|
misfits. I wondered, for the nth time, how such a group had produced Michele
|
|
at all.
|
|
|
|
The State Police arrived shortly thereafter, and whisked me off to the
|
|
nearest station. Lady got left behind, somehow; I never did get an accurate
|
|
report of what had become of her... Part of me hoped that someone would take
|
|
care of her, but to my dismay I knew it was equally possible that she never did
|
|
find a new home, and that she'd wind up another feral dog preying on the local
|
|
livestock. I'd decided to play ignorant, for the moment. I was just a simple
|
|
runaway, yeah, that's the ticket. I spent several hours in a cell by myself,
|
|
until my parents arrived... all three of them.
|
|
|
|
Predictably, they all began arguing over whose fault this was.
|
|
|
|
For my part, I kept silent, and tried to look confused and scared.
|
|
Well, I suppose the scared part was mostly natural. I had a natural fear of
|
|
police stations; I'd spent too much time in my mid-twenties inside such
|
|
places, and I somehow doubted that the questioning this time would be as
|
|
polite as it had been the last time. Murder was a bit more serious than
|
|
disorderly conduct.
|
|
|
|
Of course, I'd forgotten one important fact... I was a kid.
|
|
|
|
It was kind of patronizing, the way they talked to me; but on the
|
|
other hand, I realized it was for the best. I was very, very careful taking
|
|
any tests they gave me. I kept trying to judge the kinds of answers I'd have
|
|
given a quarter century ago but I didn't really remember the way that kid had
|
|
felt about most things. I didn't have any good explanations for all the bugs
|
|
I'd planted, so I used the story that I'd been using them to keep track of
|
|
when people were out so I could go in and steal food. They seemed to buy it
|
|
well enough, although it earned me my share of long, questioning stares. I
|
|
practiced looking naive & innocent, and the art of gently pushing their minds
|
|
into thinking I was as harmless and juvenile as I looked.
|
|
|
|
But not careful enough, it seemed, on the tests. After the Grand Jury
|
|
decided not to prosecute me for the death of Roger (sufficient evidence
|
|
existed to prove that he was high as a kite on cocaine, and his taped
|
|
conversation with Louis was rather to-the-point concerning his intentions). I
|
|
was remanded into the care of Dr. Karen Fitzhugh, at the Shoreline Behavioral
|
|
Center of NJ. For the next 16 months, I kept up with my schoolwork, dreamed
|
|
about Michele, and played a life and death psych game with Dr. Karen, as I
|
|
called her.
|
|
|
|
Dr. Karen tried hypnotising me once or twice, and seemed genuinely
|
|
unhappy that I seemed to be a poor subject. After a while, I tried playing
|
|
along with her about it, but I kept having to mentally push her away from the
|
|
idea that I was telling her what she wanted to hear, which in turn left me
|
|
having to mentally push her away from the idea that I was influening her mind
|
|
about the success or failure of a particular line of questioning. I genuinely
|
|
LIKED Dr. Karen; under other circumstances I imagined that I might want to get
|
|
to know her better... but under the current state of events, she was my worst
|
|
enemy.
|
|
|
|
So we looked at ink blots, and I tired to keep my responses juvenile.
|
|
Word association was a deadly trap; even a precocious preadolescent shouldn't
|
|
know too many outright sexual terms, and I sometimes let myself give honest
|
|
answers just to muddle her results. I'd have to keep myself from leading her
|
|
towards thinking I was possessed or anything metaphysical like that; I often
|
|
wondered how close to the truth that might have been.
|
|
|
|
I think they tried messing with various chemicals in my food once or
|
|
twice, too, but my mind was still keen enough to recognise when I was feeling
|
|
TOO good. The last thing I needed to do was reveal under some drug that I was
|
|
a some kind of time traveller from the year 2000... they'd lock me up and never
|
|
let me go, even if they didn't believe me. What they'd do if they did believe
|
|
me scared me even more.
|
|
|
|
Eventually, however, I was released from the center with a clean bill
|
|
of mental health. In the intervening sixteen months, my father & step-mother
|
|
had gotten divorced (again), and my mother and her boyfriend Jason had moved
|
|
in together in a little house in Jackson, right next door to a certain
|
|
kennel... Jason and I had always had a good relationship, before. Even if he
|
|
was due to leave my mother in about four years, he'd been the closest thing
|
|
I'd had to a real "father figure" during my so-called formative years. I took
|
|
the same room I had, ages before, and prepared to spend the long summer
|
|
getting ready for the seventh grade...
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
|
|
Her name was Kathy Post. We'd never been "friends" before; if
|
|
anything, I'd given her every reason to hate my guts the last time I'd passed
|
|
this way. But I'd looked back on our encounters years later and realized that
|
|
a good part of the reasons behind my tormenting her had been simple childhood
|
|
politics... the thought of admitting to liking a girl at twelve, especially to
|
|
myself, had been the worst sort of heresy. However, my body was slowly but
|
|
surely getting older, and as it aged, it changed. Some of the changes were
|
|
very pleasant; it was nice to be able to look at a woman again and get the
|
|
right kind of feelings... even if they were considerably stronger than I
|
|
remembered. The acne I knew was coming I could probably live without, though.
|
|
|
|
My weeks in the woods had left me lean and hard. I'd decided that THIS
|
|
time, I was going to keep that physique, unlike when I'd graduated USAF Boot
|
|
Camp and Survival School. Being an overweight teenager had more social stigma
|
|
than I wanted to endure again. Kathy and I got along well, which pleased me.
|
|
In a matter of a few weeks, we were inseperable, and I found that I cared for
|
|
her a great deal. We spent the summer of '77 roving the sandpits that abutted
|
|
both our houses, learning about love, and we went to see Star Wars 23 times
|
|
together. I only slipped once, when she asked me if I thought Luke & Leia
|
|
would get together, and I joked that incest was best...
|
|
|
|
We never got past second base, but that was fine... I had plenty of
|
|
time. It was interesting to see how different my life might have been, had I
|
|
ever bothered to walk the half mile that seperated our homes.
|
|
|
|
School held few surprises for me. I got assigned to all the same
|
|
classes, managed to make (I think) most of the same friends. I didn't remember
|
|
the layout of Jackson Middle school nearly as well as I thought I had, so the
|
|
first few days were full of late arrivals and searches for my locker. Even
|
|
though Kathy and I were an "item", I kept looking out for Michele... even
|
|
though I was pretty sure she wouldn't arrive until next year. I did find
|
|
Linda, though.
|
|
|
|
Linda Conneley had been what you might call the class mattress. Even
|
|
at thirteen, she had a reputation for stealing other girl's boyfriends. But
|
|
she and I had been close friends, even if we'd never been lovers. We started
|
|
out just talking in class, and soon thereafter I dumped Kathy and started
|
|
carrying Linda's books from class to class...
|
|
|
|
About mid-November I rode my bike five miles across town to visit
|
|
Linda at home. I have to give Linda's mother this: she allowed us our privacy.
|
|
We spent most of the day exploring one another's topography through our
|
|
clothes, which I considered quite promising.
|
|
|
|
By the end of December, we were lovers. While it felt good to touch,
|
|
and be touched by a woman that way, I kept feeling as though there should be
|
|
something more. I kept turning those feelings over and over in my mind, but
|
|
couldn't come up with any answers.
|
|
|
|
1978 brought two surprises. In late February, Linda broke down in
|
|
tears and told me that I'd gotten her pregnant. Now mind you; I'd always,
|
|
always, ALWAYS used a condom when we made love. What I'd forgotten was that
|
|
the surgery that would close off the "second hole" in my penis hadn't been
|
|
performed until I was 22... nine years from "now". Semen had leaked out,
|
|
and made its way to her womb. The second surprise was that I caught a glimpse
|
|
of Michele in the hall at school.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'd always believed in a double standard where abortions were concerned.
|
|
While I had no problem with women getting them if they so chose, I was
|
|
somewhat less liberal where my own offspring were concerned. I had perhaps one
|
|
of the hardest decisions of my life ahead of me - at thirteen, Linda and I
|
|
weren't anywhere near old enough to raise a child together. Emotionally, I
|
|
knew she wasn't ready, and my job prospects were less than encouraging.
|
|
|
|
I turned it over and over in my mind a thousand times over the next
|
|
three weeks, but the best answer was always the one I liked the least. So it
|
|
was with a heavy heart that I went with her to the free clinic to have our
|
|
child aborted. We cried together afterwards, and I think that started both of
|
|
us healing. We stopped seeing one another quite so often, after that.
|
|
|
|
Seeing Michele did me no good whatsoever. I had expected, given the
|
|
circumstances I'd brought about, that the formerly withdrawn, painfully shy
|
|
and seriously troubled girl would have become at least a shadow of the bright,
|
|
forceful woman I knew she'd someday become once she'd come to grips with what
|
|
had been done to her.
|
|
|
|
It hadn't happened. If anything, she was even more withdrawn than I
|
|
remembered. One especially warm April afternoon, I made the trek over to her
|
|
house; something always stopped me short of approaching her in school. I
|
|
picked a spot near the small barn that housed her family's three horses in the
|
|
back yard, (What is it with me and trees, anyway?) and waited for her to
|
|
appear.
|
|
|
|
Contrary to my expectations, she did not take the trail I expected her
|
|
to. She set out on horseback across the street from her house, off towards the
|
|
power lines that crossed most of the town. I waited for several hours, but
|
|
eventually, I was forced to return home. (My mother had nothing resembling a
|
|
say in my comings and goings, but the last thing I needed was her reporting my
|
|
absence to the local police - it wouldn't take much thinking on their part to
|
|
remember the last time I'd gone missing; odds were they'd put two and two
|
|
together and find me here, since my records wouldn't be sealed for another five
|
|
years.
|
|
|
|
The next weekend brought me better success, if you'd call it that. I
|
|
waited this time along the route I figured she'd take again, and about midday
|
|
she finally appeared astride her horse. Damned if I could remember it's name,
|
|
though... I'd met it maybe once, a decade in the "future".
|
|
|
|
"Hello Michele. Nice day for horseback riding, isn't it?" I asked, as
|
|
I bounded up along side of her.
|
|
|
|
"I guess so." she said quietly, her eyes not meeting mine.
|
|
|
|
"Umm, I'm Frank Henderson. We have the same lunch period at school."
|
|
|
|
"Do you live around here?" she asked, still not meeting my eyes.
|
|
|
|
I reached out with my senses, trying to get a fix on what she was
|
|
feeling. The link that we'd shared as adults was gone, of course, but our last
|
|
meeting had proven to me that we could still touch each other, even if only on
|
|
the surface. She was curious about me (even I couldn't stop the rumors that
|
|
surrounded me & Linda, afterall), and she could sense what I was doing. I
|
|
thought I saw in her mind a growing recognition, a memory of our last meeting,
|
|
so I decided to bring that spark to a flame.
|
|
|
|
"No" I said, "but I live close enough. I wanted to ask you... how have
|
|
you been doing, since I, uh, saved you that day?"
|
|
|
|
"That was you?!" I felt her mind click, and recognize me at last. What
|
|
I didn't expect was the sudden flash of guilt, and fear, centered around ME,
|
|
that knocked me off my feet (which was probably a good thing, at that), as she
|
|
whirled her horse around and hissed at me "Stay away from me! Leave me alone!
|
|
I never want to see you again!" as she galloped away.
|
|
|
|
I sat there, in the dirt, trying like mad to figure out what had
|
|
happened. I'd saved her, for chrissakes, and she's afraid of me? I made my way
|
|
home by a different route, pondering this bizarre turn of fate as I walked.
|
|
Echoes of the guilt and terror she'd felt upon recognising me gave me
|
|
nightmares for several days. I tried reaching out to her in dreams (we'd
|
|
always been able to reach each other that way before) but every time I did it
|
|
became a nightmare for her.
|
|
|
|
I tried seeing her again, but was greeted that time by her father, who
|
|
had been chopping firewood in the backyard. Brandishing the axe, he told me in
|
|
no uncertain terms to stay off his property, and to leave his daughter alone.
|
|
As far as he was concerned, I was a murderer, and a psychopath, and that he
|
|
ought to drop me right where I stood for the betterment of the world in
|
|
general.
|
|
|
|
So I tried the dreams again. When we'd first started courting each
|
|
other, in our late teens, our minds became so alike in some ways that we each
|
|
had a "copy" of the other person in our minds whenever we needed it. I drew on
|
|
that old mental image, cloaked myself within it, and appeared to her in her
|
|
dream as she had been the last time I'd seen her, when she and I were both
|
|
thirty-five.
|
|
|
|
Wrapping myself in that illusion, I came to her as herself, and asked
|
|
her the same question I had before; what had her life been like the past three
|
|
years since she'd nearly been raped. The images I saw flicker in her mind
|
|
astounded me. Her brother, in the hospital with a concussion (he did wind up
|
|
with a small scar on his left temple, I discovered). Roger's funeral, with her
|
|
family's eyes turned towards her, blaming her for her part in his death. Her
|
|
mother's voice, insisting, over and over, that Michele -must- have done or said
|
|
something to encourage Roger to act as he had. Both of her parents reviling me
|
|
as a murderer, some dangerous and psychotic waif who had stalked them all and
|
|
brought only ruin. And through it all I saw the picture of myself in her mind,
|
|
twisting from savior to persecutor, and then to tormentor.
|
|
|
|
I had sought to cure her of the greatest hurt that had ever been done to
|
|
her, and in the process, replaced the image of Roger with my own.
|
|
|
|
A few weeks after that incident, I heard from a friend that she and
|
|
her family had moved away. Any hope I had of regaining her trust (or her love)
|
|
was gone. I kicked myself, mentally, and vowed that if I ever had a chance to
|
|
replay this life again, I'd just shoot Roger and get away... playing hero had
|
|
gained me nothing at all, and cost me more than I was prepared to accept.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
Several more months went by, and at long last school ended for the
|
|
summer. Linda and I eventually started seeing one another regularly again,
|
|
although the day I found the box signalled yet another hiatus in our state of
|
|
inseperability.
|
|
|
|
It had been a Sunday, and Linda had to attend her aunt's wedding
|
|
upstate. So I was knocking about the sandpits behind my house, enjoying the
|
|
freedom that summer brings and imagining that the clouds overhead were
|
|
actually a fleet of ships sailing overhead. One of the more "permanent"
|
|
features of the sand pits was a formation I always had called "the island".
|
|
|
|
In reality, it was just a hill at the center of a pit that they'd
|
|
never finished digging out. The water table was often high enough that the
|
|
hill at the center was surrounded by water, sometimes several feet deep. It
|
|
was a breeding ground for frogs and mosquitoes, but it was nonetheless a
|
|
pretty spot. In my original lurid adolescence, I'd imagined that it contained
|
|
a secret chamber where I kept a harem of women to feed my every desire. Even
|
|
after I'd moved away originally, I'd come back to this spot every so often to
|
|
check up on it; I'd had alot of good times around here.
|
|
|
|
Kathy and I even spent a fair amount of time necking there, during our
|
|
brief relationship. We'd even gone skinny dipping there once, late at night.
|
|
Something about the island seemed different that day, and no amount of flexing
|
|
my brain would reveal exactly what was wrong. I had climbed the one tree that
|
|
jutted haphazardly from the southwest face of it, and was almost drifting off
|
|
to sleep in the warm sun when the tree's roots gave way and plunged me into
|
|
the water.
|
|
|
|
Cursing, I sloggged my way back to the shore of the island to inspect
|
|
the base of the tree, and to my amazement found a large metal container of
|
|
some sort. Alarm bells were going off at the back of my brain as I uncovered
|
|
it, raising to a shrill screech as I found the locking mechanism.
|
|
|
|
Rather than a simple key or combination, the seal on the box required
|
|
a certain shape to be fitted into it.... a shape I knew well. For a number of
|
|
years, I'd kept an oddly shaped hunk of metal I'd found in some nearby fields
|
|
as an amulet. The shape required to open the box was the same as that
|
|
amulet... and I didn't have it! I hurriedly reburied the box (it was far too
|
|
large and heavy to drag up the side of the pit in the middle of the
|
|
afternoon!) and set out at a dead run for the fields where I'd found my amulet
|
|
originally.
|
|
|
|
Naturally, it was nowhere to be found. Okay, Tal, lets retrace our
|
|
steps here, a bit, shan't we? You remember about where you found it; but do
|
|
you remember WHEN? I tried remembering, but it was so long ago... I knew I'd
|
|
had it before my Freshman year of High School, but that was still a year away.
|
|
While I was thinking about that, another thought intruded on my consciousness:
|
|
why the shape of my amulet?
|
|
|
|
I had given up trying to figure out how I'd managed to wake up in my
|
|
ten year old body three years before. Whatever had caused it, or triggered it,
|
|
simply was not in my collection of memories. Dwelling on that thought alone, I
|
|
realized that quite a few things might possibly not be in my memory; I
|
|
remembered my 35th birthday, but not much beyond that. Was I older than I
|
|
thought I was, even counting the last three years?
|
|
|
|
Obviously, whatever was in that box was mine, or had been mine, or at
|
|
the very least, was intended for me. I'd never told anyone my "secret chamber"
|
|
fantasy, and it struck me as too much of a coincidence that the box was hidden
|
|
among the roots of the very tree whose branches had, in my fantasy, been the
|
|
instruments for opening the chamber within the hill itself. And the fact that
|
|
the only visible means of opening it was my old amulet (a piece of jewelry,
|
|
it should be mentioned, that Michele had worn for quite some time until she
|
|
lost it in a parking lot a few weeks before one of our more final breakups)
|
|
said that it was mine, all mine.
|
|
|
|
I spent most of that night swatting mosquitoes and dragging that
|
|
damned box up the side of the pit and then home through the woods. A handle
|
|
somewhere would have been a nice touch, I chastized myself. Obviously,
|
|
whatever purpose the damned thing was designed to serve presupposed that I'd
|
|
be able to open it when I found it. It was slow going; the damned thing
|
|
weighed nearly 200lbs, and was the size of a refrigerator. Whatever was inside
|
|
had damned well be worth the effort, I decided.
|
|
|
|
I stashed it in the garage that ran alongside my room. Stopping in the
|
|
fields on my way to Linda's house became a daily ritual, one I followed even
|
|
on days I couldn't see her. Even still, it was six long weeks before I found
|
|
what I was looking for, and then it was on a day that I couldn't very well
|
|
just turn around and go home. When I finally did make it home, later that
|
|
night, I wasted no time slipping into the garage and putting the amulet to
|
|
use.
|
|
|
|
Pressing the amulet into place, I held my breath and waited. A very
|
|
quiet clicking sound began as the amulet fit into the mechanism, then slipped
|
|
down and inside the box, and with a snap and a whoosh of air, the container
|
|
opened.
|
|
|
|
Inside was a mass of styrofoam packing material, which I clawed away
|
|
with a vengence, revealing a dozen metal attache cases, a monitor, several
|
|
peripherals, a laptop computer, and another, larger tower case. My breath left
|
|
me in a gasp when I saw that case; it had been mine, back in 2000, which was
|
|
as far "back" as I could remember. The familiar OS/2 Merlin sticker gleamed at
|
|
me as I rocked back on my heels and began to laugh.
|
|
|
|
Forgetting the computer parts for the moment, I turned my attention to
|
|
the attache cases. Each bore a label, and on each label was a year. The
|
|
earliest one I could find was marked 1985 in my own handwriting. Each one had
|
|
a combination lock on it as well. The lock looked as if were designed to
|
|
accept a date as the combination... but nothing about 1985 rang any bells for
|
|
me. So I reached for the one that read 1988. Trying to think like myself,
|
|
which is no mean feat with the holes my memory seemed to have, I pondered what
|
|
the most important day had been for me, in 1988.... it had been a busy year. I
|
|
typed in the date I lost my virginity... nothing. I tried the date when
|
|
Michele and I had broken up, vowing never to see or speak to one another
|
|
again... again, nothing. Finally I tried the day we'd first... my fingers
|
|
tapped out 010188... and it clicked open. Inside, I found it full of vaguely
|
|
used $100 bills... over $250,000 worth.
|
|
|
|
All of them dated 1988.
|
|
|
|
Each of the other containers probably contained a similar amount, I
|
|
knew, bearing the same date as the year on the label of the box. Okay; I was
|
|
now a multi-millionaire. Or would be, in another seven years. On a guess, I
|
|
reached for the 1993 case and punched in 090593, the first time I'd spoken to
|
|
her since she'd called me in 1989 to tell me she'd gotten engaged, and was
|
|
unsurprised when it, too, opened and revealed another quarter-mil in somewhat
|
|
abused 1993 currency. Whatever the intent, the dates that had worked thusfar
|
|
were dates that had a common thread... Michele.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
The computer posed the biggest problem, in the end. The attache cases
|
|
were easily hidden around the property. The laptop I could hide under my bed.
|
|
But the computer and its attendant peripherals would be hard to hide, and
|
|
harder to explain. I cast about for quite some time, and finally located a
|
|
large console-style TV someone was throwing out, and had Jason help me drag it
|
|
home. Once there, I tore it apart and gutted it, replacing the majority of its
|
|
internal components with the contents of the tower case. The printer I stuffed
|
|
in the back (nobody in 1978 had even HEARD of LaserJets). I mounted the
|
|
monitor in the cavity where the original 19" screen had been, and surrounded
|
|
it with duct tape to keep it in place. The speakers were still in fair shape, so
|
|
I wired them to the SoundBlaster card, making the system complete.
|
|
|
|
It looked ugly, but it worked... or at least, it worked when I was
|
|
alone and threw the right switches, which I'd hidden underneath. Any other
|
|
time it showed a fancy mess of low-rez static. I doubt anyone ever even
|
|
noticed that phone line that snaked into the back. I even managed to get the
|
|
phonograph portion of the console working... although I completely disabled the
|
|
radio. Who wanted to listen to disco?
|
|
|
|
Finally armed with some familiar technology, I set about exploring the
|
|
data I'd brought along for whatever purpose my trip back in time was supposed to
|
|
accomplish. Several of the CD microdisks contained extensive stock market
|
|
reports, dated from 1985 on (no big surprise there). Several others were of a
|
|
more personal nature; all six GodNet CDs, and all 666 issues of TANJ. There were
|
|
also alot of games that I'd never gotten around to playing... and I'd have bet
|
|
my pancreas that my friend Andrea (the ultimate Star Wars groupie) would sell
|
|
her soul to be able to play _Fall of the Republic_ (let alone read the scripts
|
|
to any of the five movies that had yet to be released!)
|
|
|
|
Only one file remained barred to me; C:\DIARY\TM_MEMORIES.ASC. It
|
|
contained a single PGP'd file that refused to unlock to my normal passphrase.
|
|
Something told me that if I could unlock that file, everything would suddenly
|
|
become very clear to me. Whatever I'd done to get to this point, I'd -expected-
|
|
a memory loss! If only I could remember the passcode!
|
|
|
|
Since I had basically everything I needed information-wise at my
|
|
fingertips, I tried calling the "great" boards of the past; Metal Shop, Dragon
|
|
Fire, RipCo, P-80 Systems, you name it. Some of them didn't even exist yet; on
|
|
others I gained something of a reputation as being omniscient... usually by
|
|
refering to people by their real names, courtesy of files they'd written years
|
|
in the future. I half considered putting up a BBS of my own again, and leaving
|
|
every single file from each of the GodNet CDs online for the modeming public to
|
|
gawk at, but that would have attracted all the wrong kinds of attention.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
Summer eventually ended, as summers always do, and I entered the eighth
|
|
grade for the second time in my life. Linda and I were still together, but we
|
|
seemed to be cooling towards one another; she was constantly accusing me of
|
|
seeing other girls (actually, I was spending my time trying to beat Wing
|
|
Commander X) and was generally becoming entirely too possessive for my taste.
|
|
After a few more weeks, we both just stopped calling each other, and we sought
|
|
out different seats in the classes we shared.
|
|
|
|
With Linda gone, I was surprised to suddenly have the attention of Lydia
|
|
Boswell. Lydia wasn't really my "type"... she was popular, a tad bit flighty,
|
|
and was generally the type of girl I avoided getting involved with at any age.
|
|
However, her slim, athletic build and gorgeous long blonde hair offered a
|
|
pleasant change from the steady diet of brunettes I'd been involved with in
|
|
the past few years. She was Captain of the cheerleading team; watching her
|
|
practice became one of my favorite extracurricular activities pretty quickly.
|
|
|
|
Lydia was also a "good girl"... not generally the sort of woman who'd
|
|
have much of a hold on my attention for very long, I knew only too well. But she
|
|
was a surprisingly passionate kisser; I had enough hopes of getting her to go
|
|
farther to keep seeing her, at least for a little while longer.
|
|
|
|
About mid October, we had an away game at Freehold, which I planned on
|
|
accompanying Lydia to. I'd been having odd dreams lately, and random snatches
|
|
of memory would come and go, usually too quickly for me to hang onto. Many of
|
|
those dreams seemed to center on or around my daughter, Moire, giving me a
|
|
completely new spin on what my future might be.
|
|
|
|
Janice.
|
|
|
|
Janice had gone to Freehold, and had played in the band there. She would
|
|
almost certainly be at the game... as the day got closer and closer, my mind
|
|
seemed to become very focused, almost as if some great and momentous event were
|
|
about to come to pass. My mental abilities hadn't diminished any over the past
|
|
few years, but as my body changed, they grew more and more erratic, seeming to
|
|
ebb and flow with my body's production of hormones.
|
|
|
|
One of the things that had always bothered me in my relationship with
|
|
Janice was that there always seemed to have been something in her past that
|
|
she'd never speak about, some hurt that had never quite healed. Might things go
|
|
differently for the both of us, if I intervened in her life now, before any of
|
|
that had a chance to happen? My failure with changing Michele's life made me
|
|
cautious, but I had high hopes that this might, indeed, be possible.
|
|
|
|
I shrugged off any reservations I felt about it; I doubted it would
|
|
involve having to shoot anyone this time. But I was feeling anxious and edgy as
|
|
we rode the bus to the game. Something wonderous was going to happen, I felt
|
|
certain.
|
|
|
|
The game was going pretty well for our side; by the last five minutes of
|
|
the fourth quarter we were ahead 14 to 6, and the team seemed pretty certain of
|
|
its victory. I'd spent most of the game on the bench next to Lydia, alternately
|
|
admiring her lithe body as she contorted it through the motions of the cheers,
|
|
and making attempts at catching Janice's eye from across the field.
|
|
|
|
I'd spotted Janice at half-time, and she'd looked just the way she had
|
|
in some of the old pictures I'd seen of her at the time, with long, straight
|
|
auburn hair and a smile that could light up the night like only one other I
|
|
knew. I'd caught her eye once or twice, and imagined that I could feel that she
|
|
was as interested in me as I was in her.
|
|
|
|
In the final play of the game, our side had just hit Freehold's
|
|
quarterback hard, and the ball shot into the air and practically dropped into
|
|
the arms of one of the running backs. He started running with it, and the twenty
|
|
yards seperating him and the goal posts were as clear as the autumn sky. As he
|
|
crossed the goal line, he threw down the ball as the crowd on our side of the
|
|
stadium cheered to the sound of the final buzzer, ending the game.
|
|
|
|
The crowd from our side swarmed out onto the field, lifting him up and
|
|
carrying him for several dozen yards, amid a chorus of whoops and cheers. Losing
|
|
myself in the press of bodies, I started towards the opposite side, where I
|
|
could see the band from their side was beginning to put away their instruments,
|
|
so I made my way across the field to where I'd seen Janice was seated.
|
|
|
|
As I walked up to her, I could see two of her friends giggling and
|
|
whispering behind her, making her blush. When I was about five feet away, that
|
|
feeling I had before intensified tenfold, and just as I was about to speak, I
|
|
heard a familiar voice behind me, saying "If you think I'm going to let you take
|
|
one more step, Tal, you're out of your mind."
|
|
|
|
Slowly, I turned....
|
|
|
|
It was Michele.
|
|
|
|
And she'd called me by a name I wouldn't use for eight more years.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
� �� � � �� �
|
|
�������������� � � � � � � ��������������
|
|
��������۲������� �� �� ������ݲ����۱���
|
|
�������������������� � � ����������۲��������
|
|
���������������������� ���������������۲�����
|
|
������� ����������� ����������� �۲����
|
|
������ � � � � �۲���
|
|
����� �۲��
|
|
����� �۲��
|
|
������ �۲���
|
|
��������� ���۲����
|
|
����������� Phoenix Modernz Systems: 908/830-TANJ �۲��������
|
|
�۱��������� VapourWare BBS: 61/3-429-8510 ۲����������
|
|
�۱��������� underworld_1995.com 514/683-1894 ۲����������
|
|
����������� RipCo ][: 312/528-5020 �۲��������
|
|
��������� etext.archive.umich.org ���۲����
|
|
������ �۲���
|
|
����� �۲��
|
|
����� ���������������������� �۲��
|
|
������ � � � TANJ Mailing Address � � � �۲���
|
|
������� ����������� � PO Box 174 � ����������� �۲����
|
|
���������������������� � Seaside Hts, NJ � ���������������۲�����
|
|
�������������������� � � 08751 � � ����������۲��������
|
|
��������۲������� �� ����������������������; �� ������ݲ����۱���
|
|
�������������� � � � tanj@pms.metronj.org � � � ��������������
|
|
|
|
TANJ Distribution List: Send mail to talmeta@cybercomm.net to be
|
|
added to the TANJ-DL!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|