prologue

Lilly describes how Timothy met Joe.

If I really want to tell you about what I believe, it may help to look at what all took place from the beginning. True, I wasn’t even present at the time, but you can’t just ignore what Timothy said about events that happened to him in the Legacy Towers corporate office parking lot when he was there, that night.

How we all came together IS slightly relevant; so just bear with me a moment here…

To start with; Timothy Creed and my brother Robert Aldern are co-owners of a small two-man detective agency located in a suburb near Dallas, Texas, called C&A.(according to my brother it’s Creed & Aldern, yet I’m pretty sure Timothy has gotten it officially filed as Creed and Associates, just to mess with Rob; daring him to try and change it with a bit of computer hacking…) Robert’s detective work consists mainly of online spying on the target companies we’ve been hired to take a look at (their adherence to legal working standards, safe manufacturing practices, fair dealings with their partners + competitors), along with the occasional semi-legal observation of their target’s bank/tax/business reports. Timothy does the actual ‘real’ detective work of spying on people and the occasional firsthand checking out of physical properties.

I thought the whole idea of a detective agency was somewhat corny at first, sounding a bit like nothing more than a little kid game. I suppose in some ways it is; after I agreed to come on as their secretary, there has been no lack of prospective clients who want little more than to have someone spy on their husband, or wife, or children. That isn’t the type of matter that we are normally willing to handle, though.

As I described, we deal more often with corporate lawsuits. If it is taking place, the job is to try and catch it when one business is stealing manufacturing protocols from another. Or, when some disgruntled employee has taken to selling confidential information that the company needs to stay ahead in their market. There are even cases where a trusted employee is caught making a hazardous change to their own product, all in an attempt to drive down the manufacturing cost.

So it really isn’t a surprise that we’re often hired by lawyers. In many cases it’s not even because they suspect an opposing client to be doing anything wrong. These people often want us to check out their own clients. Not that it proves a lack of trust or anything; they often just want to get a quick heads up on what their plaintiffs may be planning to surprise them with, come mid-trial.

I don’t even know exactly what this company, Legacy Towers Inc., had been accused of precisely; it’s just that their lawyers, the Baker Partners, seemed a little worried about their own client’s honesty. Rather than possibly insult the sensibilities of their paying interest by demanding a full blown throw-down of the truth, the attorneys confidentially hire us to make sure there is no undeniable legal wrongdoing by their client taking place. If there might be, they could find a way to deal with it before it was used as proof of malpractice in court; if not, they often easily write off the expense of hiring us to be nothing more than a little bit of ‘research.’

So this ‘research’ is exactly what Timothy was working at when he came upon a small building in the back of the Legacy Towers corporate headquarters. As it looked like some type of storage shed or garage, quite naturally Tim became a little curious to see what could be inside. (As Legacy Towers is a small privately funded aerospace firm, most of what they build seems almost exotically futuristic, and is just kind of fun to look at.)

Unfortunately, because their work is able to attract a more than steady stream of gawkers, Legacy Towers Inc. has their own private security force. He had barely even touched the door to the shed, when Timothy Creed found a hulking guard standing on either side of him. Very efficiently, the man on his left had pulled my intruding boss’s left wrist behind his back with one hand; while pushing Creed’s head forward and down with the other. This guard’s partner pulled Tim’s right wrist to the left one, and started handcuffing him without saying a word.

Timothy did start to protest, until the strongman who seemed to be in charge let up on his head and stuck a gun into his face, to shut him up. This is why he was left looking into its dark barrel as the other one of his captors moved to open the storage shed door.

The moment the door was opened, a new man who had been within the outbuilding was jumping through the doorway so quickly it seemed he had already been running towards the closed door; in mid jump  this fellow slammed his foot into the neck of the guard who was at the door. The gunman released his hold on Timothy and brought the weapon around saying, “Don’t make me shoot you, Joe…”

This man, Joe, turned to face him with what I’m told was one of the most insane/angry expressions that a human can manage as he started yelling back; “Oh yeah? How do I know you haven’t already shot me before? And just what do you plan on doing with this one here, anyway?” He held his palm out to Creed; “You just gonna shoot him like all the rest? I can still remember that!”

At this point Timothy says he started to notice this new man’s wrinkled clothing and messy hair. It wasn’t as if this other fellow had just been working out, by his slight fragrance and the dry-looking sweat stains on his clothing, it didn’t appear as if Joe had showered or changed outfit in days. As if to confirm what Timothy was starting to suspect- that the man was being held captive in the shed against his will, this prisoner turned to the one without a gun and pointed back towards Creed, adding; “Or is he special like me? You just like locking people in your secret little back shed where you can try out fun s**t with their heads, is that it?”

“That’s not what happened, Joe!” The man with the gun started walking towards the bedraggled, angry man who was claiming to be held prisoner; “I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to tell you, you volunteered! We only moved you to the empty shed when you started spazzing out and trashing the expensive equipment, inside. Even if that wasn’t a bit more costly than you’re really worth, no one wanted to risk that you’d be hurting the other employees.”

“Oh sure, can you tell me why I should just believe any of THAT!?! 10 days remember! Or close to it… I don’t even really care about the why anymore, anyway; you’ve just certainly had me in your little shed here I can’t really remember how much longer than the hellishly short amount of time you people’ve walled me into. I don’t recall who this guy is at any rate (Christ, am I losing that too, now?), but I’m not gonna stand here as you kill him like all of those other guys that wanted to let me out.”

As he was saying this; the guard that had been kicked, almost fully recovered from Joe’s attack by this time, was approaching his attacker quietly from behind. Timothy says that Joe suddenly threw a wild punch backwards, over his own shoulder, and hit the approaching predator hard enough to leave the man stumbling and grasping his head, without even making a glance behind himself.

The gunman took aim, as if he were going to shoot Joe’s leg; but Timothy, seeing the opportunity for escape, rammed this man in the side with his head. At the moment of impact, the guard’s gun fired; perhaps the gunman just was knocked off target, but according to Tim, the used-to-be prisoner effortlessly jumped out of the way. Now the jump was possibly just lucky; but even though the bullet might have had a new trajectory from where its shooter had originally been pointing his weapon, the man who seemed to be claiming some sort of abuse from these other two, was calm the moment he landed, almost as if he had already been expecting to jump successfully.

Without even looking around to see how everyone else was now positioned, Joe took one step and picked up the gun that had gone skidding across the ground as the gunman dropped it when he was unexpectedly hit from the side.  Moving over next to Timothy, Creed’s unknown ally kept it aimed at his two fallen supposed ’coworkers’ that had been acting like they wanted him to happily stay in the shed.

“Give me the handcuff keys,” Joe demanded of the man who had them. Unlocking Timothy, he bolted the two other men together. Putting the ‘cuff key in his own pocket, he held up the gun before those two on the ground. “You two better just stay quietly right down here for a minute. If I look back and see either of you up, I’m going to come back shooting.”

Turning to Timothy, Joe signaled him to follow and started walking to the front lot. “If you have a car here, I can’t bum a ride off you, can I?”

“Of course!” Creed was somewhat dumbfound that the man even felt he had to ask. “Where do you want to go?”

Now the other man acted slightly uncomfortable; “I don’t know… with what they did to my head I really can’t remember…”

Timothy looked at Joe for a moment, there didn’t look to be anything wrong with him; but then again, not all head wounds are readily apparent. “So, what exactly did they do to you?” Tim said, pointing to his car in the parking lot of a gas station across the street.

“It was an experiment with memory…” Joe sighed; “I’ve been told they were attempting to shift it forwards.”

“I don’t get it.” Timothy was lost. “What do you mean, shift

memory forwards?”

“What if you could remember what hasn’t happened yet? That way you could patent a competitor’s product before he even dreamed it up! Or at least I’m pretty sure that was the main idea….

“ In a business like ours, where the market is generally controlled by the newest technology, where what looked futuristic yesterday is old today and stone-aged tomorrow; anything that pushes you just the smallest bit ahead can be worth millions! Not to mention that by just knowing what will fail, instead of guessing wrong, you can probably save lives. Reliable foresight could be invaluable.”

“So wait,” Timothy said, unlocking his car. “Are you trying to tell me that you can see into the future?”

Sitting in the passenger seat, Joe covered his eyes with his hand; “That’s what I’m told was supposed to have happened, and I guess in a sense, it kind of is; but do you think that the future is already set? What if the future is only a web of possibilities? What if for every variable that could possibly go two ways, I now have two memories. And for an awful lot of stuff more than TWO things can happen. And after the memory branches into two or more possible timelines at each and every single guess of what could actually happen, each new timeline branches again. At every possible variable.”

“After just about 10-15 minutes forward there are so many possibilities that attempting to make any sense of it all is enough to drive you downright bonkers! And if that uselessly short clarity isn’t already bad enough, because my term of memory has been pushed forwards, I’ve started to lose control of my real memories. Now, my actual recollection of events has become horridly short term. I do seem to remember most commonly used terms and phrases at least, and usually I can remember the names of people that I’ve met before (Please tell me that before tonight I’ve never seen you, yeah?); but truthfully, I am just living right here, right now.”

Author's Note

What would you do with this power?