Find Me – Chapter 152

Rolf moaned sickly clamping his hand to his mouth fighting mightily to stop his rising gorge from exiting his body.  “I survived vomiting on Stefano Dimera’s thousand-dollar shoes,” he said after the jump effect quickly passed, “so you cannot possibly think you scare me, Mr. Johnson.”

Steve snickered, and not the least bit in amusement.  “Well, welcome to the party.  You just missed yourself.  Need a little update on when and where you are?”

“I’m well aware of both of those things.”  His accent had improved with this more updated model.  “What I want to know is what you are doing here?  I told you not to look for me.”

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you?” Steve sneered.  “We tried that, but you never called.”

“And whose fault is that, hmm?”

“Yours!” Steve said incredulously.

“No sir!  The fault is yours!  I could not enter the slipstream, the two of you have made it too unstable.”

“You’re joking,” Kayla finally spoke.  “You’re seriously going to tell us we’re the problem?  You’re the one who chose to send us through time!  We didn’t ask for this!”

“Ihr seid fickin undankbar!”   

“What?” Kayla replied angrily.

“Ya hear a lot of German in the Nordics, baby.  He just said we were fucking something, don’t know what ‘a dank bar’ means.”

“un-DANK-bar!  DU BIST UNDANKBAR!”

“Didn’t I tell you to speak English, old man?!”

“Ungrateful!  You are ungrateful idiots!”

“If you want to hit him again, Steve, I won’t stop you.”

“I told you!  I told you not to make changes.  But you did it, anyway.  I told you I would come to you, but you somehow found me here, anyway.  You have had the chance to do it all again and get all the time back that Stefano kept you apart.  But instead of thanking me, you make me the villain!”

Kayla laughed humorlessly.  “You are the villain,” she replied.  “If it was a novel, you’d be the antagonist, Dr. Rolf.  I wish it really was fiction, ya know that?  I really do.  I wish it was just a fantastical science fiction story someone invented in their head where they could just write us right back home with all three of our children.  Not just one in the one timeline or just two in the other, but all three.  Happily ever after.  But it’s not, is it?  It’s not a story, it’s our lives!  It’s not an easy happily ever after.  And if what the other you just told us before you got here is true, then we’re going to have to live like this for six more years unless we want to die instead.  And you want us to be grateful?  Really?”

Rolf cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.  “What did the other me tell you?”

“Of course, that’s what he got out of that,” Steve deadpanned.

Kayla crossed her arms and glared at him across the table.  “You said we could try to break the slipstream, but we told you that you’d already warned us that if we tried that we could be stuck inside of it forever.  So he said we could try dying.”

Rolf ignored the mixed pronouns and shook his head.  “I told you just hours ago.  If you die, I do not know what happens to you.  It is imperative that you not do this, it could implode the framework of your jumps.”

The body Rolf had jumped into was famished.  He picked up the half-eaten ham sandwich on the plate in front of him, eager to have some.

“That’s mine,” Steve said, grabbing it out of the man’s hands.  He was truly pleased at the look of craving disappointment on Rolf’s face as he took a big bite.

“Why?” Kayla asked, ignoring this taunting exchange.  “Why would us dying matter to the stability of the slipstream?  If we’re not alive anymore, what would it matter to the slipstream?  It’s not like we’d be there for it to figure out what to do with us.

“Exactly,” Rolf replied.  “This is a framework, it is built to hold you both.  The quantum mechanics are very specific and prepared with a coding language that I invented.  It is basically hard coded for all that you are.  Without you, it will break like a watch without a gear.”

That was actually a pretty understandable analogy for them.  “But wait,” Steve said with a mouthful of ham sandwich for not the first time that night but for the first time for this Rolf, “Then how did you get here?  Three times?”

“With great difficulty, Mr. Johnson.  It can be done with others for an extremely short time, though that damages the framework.  Makes more cracks.  Weakens its stability just as much as the changes you’ve made.  But with very careful manipulation of the numbers, it can be done.  It cannot be done without the primary subjects, however.  That is not possible.  It won’t weaken the slipstream, it will destroy it.  The experiment will cease.  And I do not know where your awarenesses will end up.  This I must know.”

That’s when it hit Kayla.  The only reason he was keeping them from destroying themselves wasn’t for their own good, it was for his.  So he could see his experiment through till the end.  God, he was sick.  But she also chastised herself for being surprised by this at all.

Kayla bobbed her leg up and down in immense anxiety.  “You’re sure about this?” she asked.  “There’s no way to just end this right now?  You said you would try.”

“Vaht do you think I’ve been doing since I left your home in 1989, having a frolic in the Black Forest?  Every time I thought I might have a way, the lab would light up with a new mess you’d made!”

“Don’t even think about blaming us, Rolf!”

“Mr. Johnson, there is no one else to blame.  I told you not to make changes. You did, anyway.  I can’t see what you do, but this is my party, as you say, and I know very well what causes the ripples.  I could only account for so much variance, because that is how quantum mechanics work.”

“So, what you’re really saying is that it’s Heisenberg’s fault.”  Rolf raised an eyebrow, impressed with Steve’s knowledge.  “Yeah, you told us all about good old Heisenberg, and if I get this right, it sounds like our trip through time means the principle isn’t so uncertain now.  Is that right?”

“It is something like that,” Rolf smiled warmly.  He didn’t resent Steve and Kayla when he’d started this less than 24 very long hours ago, but he did now.  But the fact that Rolf had now proven he could work within, around, and/or in spite of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle was self-satisfying, indeed. 

Kayla took a deep, shuddering breath.  “Dr. Rolf?  Is there any way to send us back to one of our jumps?”  Steve shifted his gaze away from Kayla.  It hurt too much to see her broken heart in the question.

“Your daughter,” he replied.  “You want to see your baby daughter again.”

All she could do was nod. 

“I am sorry, Madam.”  And despite his anger, this was very genuine.  “It is not possible.  The new timelines are not truly written time.  They do not actually exist to jump to.”

“But that’s just not true,” she found her full voice.  “We lived them!  We created life in them!  We had 24-hour days, four seasons, rain, snow, 9/11, Challenger, people lived and died!  They’re parallel timelines, that’s what you said!  Why can’t they be revisited where they left off when we jumped away?!”

“Because they are branches, Mrs. Johnson.”

“It’s Dr. Johnson, Rolf,” Steve reminded for the first time to his second Rolf.  His tone was very menacing.

“Because they are branches, Dr. Johnson,” he repeated.  “You called them perpendicular once, and that is much more accurate, but it’s of no matter, I have built my slipstream around your one timeline, do not mistake that with interdimensionality.  It is a backbone.  Your travel can only be linear on that straight line.  Where you land creates a branch off of the spine, it has a mathematical elasticity, and when you leave the branch, you are pulled back to the spine like a rubber band.  You always then create a new branch, but you cannot then be sent back to an old one.”

“Then why can’t you bring her to us?” Kayla’s eyes stung again.  “She’s real.  She’s of us.  Why can’t you take her lifesource and snap it back to us, send it back through the branch to the spine of our timeline?”

“Because she doesn’t have a body there, Sweetness,” Steve answered with his own affected voice before Rolf could.  “She doesn’t exist anywhere else for her to be imprinted.”

Rolf gave a single nod.  “Zaht is correct.  She is of the construct, not of you.  I am sorry.”

“You’re wrong,” Kayla growled.  “She’s our daughter, and she’s of us.  You’re a monster, and you’re wrong.  Curse you to hell for playing God.”

Kayla got up, the wooden chair legs making a shrill sound against the linoleum.  She picked up the sandwich plate and threw it so hard against the wall that it broke into a countless number of shards that exploded across the entire kitchen.  Then she hurled open the door and ran from the apartment.

In the next moments Rolf and Steve sat in silence.  It didn’t escape either of them that this was exactly what happened the last time he’d come to them.  And like last time, Steve made himself very, very clear in his next instructions.  “You live in a real piece of shit side of town, ya know that?”  Rolf stayed silent.  “So I gotta go after her.  You’re gonna be here when we get back.”  It was a command. 

“I have nowhere else to go,” Rolf confirmed.

It turned out that Steve didn’t have to go far, as he found Kayla sitting on the stairs leading up to the first floor at the end of the short hall, her head resting on the tops of her drawn up knees.  She heard him but didn’t look up, “I’m fine.”

“Liar.”

“I said I’m fine,” she repeated.

“You scared me when you ran out of there.”

Kayla shrugged.  “Where was I gonna go?”

Steve wedged himself onto the same step between her and the wall and put his arm around her.  “You’ve run away before.”

Now Kayla finally turned her head to look at her husband and nodded very sadly.  “It’s not the same as before.  I’m not saying I’m ok.”

“See.”

“Ok, no, I’m not ok.  But I promised you I’d never run from you again.”  Steve’s eye stung with the memory of the terrible night of Rolf’s first visit.  “I just couldn’t look at him another minute or I’d lose it more than I already have.  But I’ll never run from you, Steve.  I promised. And I never will.”

Kayla tousled Steve’s long hair out of his face, and the last of his resolve not to let his eye water again fell away as he prepared to say what had to be said.  He caressed the back of his hand down her cheek and nodded.  “I promised, too,” he choked up.  “And I’m here.  No matter where time says I should be instead, I’m right here in front of you.”  He kissed her tenderly on the forehead.  “I always will be right here in front of you.”  Kayla sniffled and nodded.  Steve sighed before he went on.  “I miss her so much,” he managed in a strangled whisper.  “I’d give anything to go back to her.  But we’ve only got one home, Sweetness.”

“That’s not true anymore.  That hasn’t been true for a very long time.”

“Yes, baby, it is.”

“But—”

“She’s not Sophie’s Choice.”

Kayla tensed.  They’d never discussed it before.  Not like this.  They’d called it “going home.”  Ending the jumps, breaking the slipstream, putting an end to the experiment; that they’d discussed countless times, and it was called “going home” like tissues were called Kleenex.  But the concept of 2009 being the “when” of home vs. any other year … it was their very deepest pain.  Because it wasn’t moving on from the death of their children.  It was the abandonment of them.  Kayla was afraid to ever talk about it, and Steve was afraid of what Kayla would say when she did.  But now it was here.  It was really here.  In this dingey stairwell in this creepy building in this dodgy area of Copenhagen while their captor by any other name was … wherever he was. 

And they’d promised each other they’d never run.

“We didn’t do this to us, he did,” Steve nodded down toward Rolf’s apartment.

Kayla nodded as the pain stabbed at her.  “But we made Emily while we were here.  She’s our responsibility.  If we don’t go back, we lose her forever.  And if we do go back, we lose Joe or Stephanie, probably both.  No matter what we choose, we have to sacrifice one of our kids.  I can’t take it, Steve,” she cried.  “I can’t take it.”

Steve held her face in his palms.  “We already have,” Steve rasped.  “Lost her forever.”  Kayla shook her head vigorously, but Steve went on, pulling off this band-aid once and for all.  “Listen to me.  He can’t send us back to that jump. And we can’t bring Emily out from it.”  Hearing her name on Steve’s lips was such a beautiful dichotomy to the pain of this moment.  “So, there is no choice.  Do you hear me?  There is no choice.”  No one’s choosing one over the others.”

Kayla bent her head into her arms and sobbed.  “How can we just abandon her there!”  Steve flinched on her use of that word. 

“We’re not, baby,” Steve cried with his wife.

“She’s all alone.”  Steve could barely understand her through her deceptively quiet sobs.  And he really wished he couldn’t.  “She’s there all-all-all-alone.”

“Kayla!”  Steve took her by the shoulders and forced her to look at him.  “She’s not there anymore!”  It was a desperate plea that she hear him.  “She’s not in there!”

“B-b-b-but where did she go?”

Steve shrugged.  “Where they all go when we leave a jump.  Nowhere.  They just … stop.  We’re not abandoning her, baby.  She’s not all alone.  ‘Cause she’s not in there.  I promise you she’s not.”

Kayla whimpered.  “Don’t make promises you can’t be sure about.”

Steve nodded his head.  “That’s fair, baby.  But I know she’s not there.  Ya know why?”

Kayla shook her head.  “Why?”

“’Cause I have faith.”

Kayla stopped crying and just gazed at him.  And she saw the very difficult truth reflected in the deep green of his troubled eye as she accepted that he was right.  Then she let her body acquiesce to him in supplication.  “Steve,” she barely whispered. 

Steve let go of Kayla’s shoulders and wiped his eye with the back of his hand.  Then he made the sign for courage.  “And faith,” he whispered.  “Have the courage to have faith.”

Kayla threw her arms around her husband’s neck and inhaled him.  “I love you,” she said.

“Oh, Sweetness.  I love you, too, baby.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

When they walked back into the apartment, they were fairly shocked to find Rolf right where they left him, surrounded by copious notes, not to mention shards of what used to be the plate. 

“Yes, still here,” Rolf said before Steve and Kayla could speak.  “I did tell you, I have nowhere else to go.”  He didn’t look up, his attention fully on his furious scribbling.

“How could you have written out all of that in just the last ten minutes?” Steve asked.

“Because I know vaht it is that I am doing,” Rolf replied finally visually acknowledging his subject by raising only his eyes up over his glasses.  “Now if you will sit, I will tell you what is next.”

Kayla’s first instinct was to clean up the ceramic pieces, but she had no intention of doing so.  Instead, she and Steve simply cleared their seats and the table top in front of them and sat. 

“Ok.  Gimme our options,” Steve said.

“Options?  None,” Rolf replied.  “One course of action only.  Six more years.”

“No,” Kayla said. 

“Yes, madam.”

“We’re done, Rolf.  Go back to your lab and end it.”

“That is what I came here to tell you.  There is no option to end it.  The framework is not stable enough for me to make the necessary alterations so it can be shut down.  It must now run its course, and it must do so by you following the timeline from now on.”

“Is there an echo in here, Sweetness?” Steve asked like it was a serious question.  “Because we’ve heard this song before.  Next verse same as the first, Rolf, we’re not doing that.”

“There is no other option.  I will not shut it down.”

“But, you can,” Steve barked.  He was out of patience.  Emotionally drained.  And done with this nonsense.  “Just go back, turn off the computers and don’t turn ‘em back on.  Don’t run any backups.  Just let the slipstream slip away, man.  And we’ll wake up in our real bodies back in 2009.  That’s what you said you could do.”

“I said if I could fix the slipstream.”

“So, fix it.”

“There was a time I could, but that time has passed.  It’s too unstable.  If I try it will collapse.”

“Let it collapse, then,” Kayla said.  “Let it.”

Rolf stood up.  “No, madam.  I’ve gone too far and seen too much success to just stop.  This is more than just you two.  You call me selfish, but it is you who are selfish.  You are the mother and father of a new branch of science.  You are the birthplace of immortality.  I could have chosen Roman Brady or John Black.  I could have chosen Princess Gina and your brother, Mrs. Johnson.  I could have chosen anyone else, but I chose you.  You have sacrificed, yes, and I am quite sorry about your daughter, truly I am.  But no progress comes without sacrifice.  This is yours.  For the good of not just you two nobodies in the whole history of the universe.  But for the good of all humanity.”

Kayla was dumbfounded.  She couldn’t believe this was how Rolf saw them.  She took a minute to really think about what he said.  Was it all bigger than the two of them?  In all honesty, yes, it was.  Scientific progression was always a good thing.  How it was used was where the difficulties came in.  Part of her was actually proud to be part of this.  In that moment, she recalled so much joy that the last ten years had given them.  All three of her children, yes.  But also beautiful moments with Steve.  Incredibly good times with family and friends and career.  Righting terrible wrongs.  Learning from mistakes.  Reliving moments that were always perfect to begin with.  And she knew that all of it was more gift than loss.  But there was loss, and it was too costly to risk more.  Experimenting was the bread and butter of science.  But the ethics of continuing an experiment that was doing only harm was where the legitimate science ended, and the mad science began. 

Steve wanted to beat Rolf into a pulp. He wanted to rip his throat out and smother the life out of him.  But all he could do in light of this very telling, very honest disclosure was stare icily in silence.

“Steve has been right about you,” Kayla said darkly.

Ignoring this, Rolf continued his instructions.  “Now you will live the remaining destinations you arrive to.  If you do as instructed you will avoid most jumps to unshared time.  I know what you are going to say,” he held up a hand to stay the remarks that he’d heard many times before.  “No matter where you jump, you will conceive no new children.  You will engage in no new sexual activity.  If you are children, you will speak when spoken to.  If you’re married to other people, you will stay that way until you originally weren’t anymore.  If you are kidnapped by Stefano, then you will go.  If you are in prison, you will stay.  And if you are injured, you will allow it.”

“No,” Steve said very calmly.  “We won’t.”

Failure to do so will result in further breakdown of the slipstream.  If all goes well, you will be snapped back to your bodies in a matter of hours in my real time, six years for your shared experience here.  If the slipstream implodes you may snap back.”  He shrugged.  “Or you may be trapped inside of it forever.  There is no way for me to know unless it happens. And then I will learn from the experiment.  There is no way for it to continue without both of you, so if one of you dies, I do not know what happens next.  If your lifesources do not fulfill their destinations for the duration of the code, it will create a paradox.  And there is no telling what happens to your awarenesses if they have no vessel in which to reside.  This will surely create a catastrophic failure.  And I then learn nothing.  So, do not waste all the time you have already invested here by doing something rash, like ending your lives.

Everyone was quiet for some time before Kayla spoke up again.  “How many more jumps will we have?”

“I have lost control of time.  It is a mystery she alone knows.  I cannot tell when or where or how long they will last.  I can only tell you how long this one is.

“Since when?”

“Since always, Mr. Johnson.  I can’t see what is to come, but I can see the duration once it is here.  It is how I am able to insert myself safely.  With a finite beginning and end to calculate.  And that end is here,” he looked down at his watch, “in 17 minutes.”

Kayla wasted no time.  “I have more questions, and I want you to answer all of them before we go.”

“Zaht is fine. Tell me.”

“Why are we getting so much sicker with every jump?”

“A newfound discovery of the experiment.  The fabric of time is literally affecting your equilibrium. It is like being on the sea.”

“I’ve been on the sea lots of times, and this is a whole different level of seasick, man.”

“I will add it to my notes.”

“Why are you even bothering?  You can’t take ‘em with you when you jump.”

“Because I can take them with me here,” Rolf said tapping his temple.

“What about the arcs?  Our jumps are almost purposeful.  We have a terrible experience, and then time takes us somewhere safer.  Without the stress.  How does it know?”

“It’s not alive, Mrs. Johnson,” Rolf chastised her.  “It doesn’t ‘know’ anything.”

“Then how is it adapting?”

“I have not had time to look into this, I do not know.”

“it’s been five years, Rolf,” Steve said.

“Zaht’s seven and a half hours for me.  I have not slept.  I have barely eaten.  There is too much data to analyze, and I haven’t gotten to that yet.

“Right,” Steve mocked.  “Far be it from me to take you away from your beauty sleep.”

“Could the slipstream be learning?” Kayla pushed.  “Could it be learning what we need and giving it to us?”

“It cannot learn.”

“How do you know?  Time is a branch of science.  Science is alive.  What’s to say time isn’t alive, too.  Maybe it doesn’t like being folded.”

My wife is a goddamn genius, Steve thought to himself, truly awestruck by her.

This was very intriguing.  Rolf’s lips parted, but rather than say anything, he made more notes on the paper he’d be leaving behind in 15 more minutes.

“Where is your lab?” Kayla continued.

Now Rolf laughed.  “I am not a stupid man, Mrs. Johnson.”

“Ya can’t be that smart,” Steve replied, “I keep tellin’ ya it’s Doctor.”

Now Rolf was having enough, himself.  “I will not be making it easier for you to find me here.  Next question.”

“What about when we get home?  You’re going to want to talk to us.  For your experiment.”  Her words were filled with rancor.

“And I shall come to you for zaht, as I’ve always done.”

Before they knew it ten more minutes had ticked by, and Rolf was constantly checking his watch.  During this time, they learned that everything they experienced was a result of the ripples they were creating.  Every question they asked him resulted in the same answer: the slipstream trying to find stability.  Suddenly, Steve sat straight up, the sudden action startling Kayla and Rolf.

“Hold the phone,” Steve said.  “You’ve lost control of time. That’s what you said, right?”

“And?”

“So – Jesus – Rolf, how can you be sure that we’re gonna ‘snap back’ at the 16-year mark?”

“Because I have coded it zaht way, do you think I don’t know my own code?!”

“Oh, I think you know your code.  I think you know your code real fuckin’ well.”  Steve got up and immediately felt dizzy.  Whether it was from the impending jump or what he’d just realized for the first time he’d never know.  He fell back to his seat and dragged a hand down his face.  “You know every bit of that code.  Every keystroke.  You know it so well that you don’t even have to take these goddamned pages with you!”  Steve crumpled one up in his hands and threw it at the scientist’s forehead.  “But time doesn’t give no nevermind to your code.  Does it?”  Rolf was silent.  “DOES IT?!” If it did we wouldn’t be going to unshared time in the first place!  If it did, what we do or don’t do in our jumps wouldn’t matter to time, would it?!  Because you’d be controlling it.  Instead, it is controlling you!  And do you know what that means?!

Kayla’s mouth dropped open in shocking understanding.  She didn’t know how it could get worse than it already was, but her husband had just doubled down on it.  For his part, Rolf had the decency to look sheepish.

“The slipstream’s already gone blue screen of death, Rolf!  It means that we could be good little lab rats for the next six years, and it still wouldn’t guarantee that it would send us home!”

“My code is—”

“Save it, man!  Jesus, how did we not realize this before, Kayla?”

“You’re right,” she said.  “Dear God, Steve, you’re right.” 

“You will snap back, Mr. Johnson!”   

“Or,” Kayla replied, “we won’t.  Or maybe,” she continued, “we’ll keep going and jump somewhere else on Day 365 by 16 plus one!  Or maybe we’ll just disappear!  Because your experiment has been very successful, Doctor.  It’s told you that time travel exists and that it works and that we can be imprinted on our own ‘vessels,’ she air quoted.  “And it’s also told you that it can’t be controlled.  At all!” 

“Zaht is not zee likely outcome.”

Kayla ignored his attempts at persuasion.  “Breaking it isn’t a sure thing.  Dying isn’t a sure thing.  And now your 16-year sure thing isn’t a sure thing.  The unlikely worst-case scenario just became a lot more plausible.  A literal eternity of serial existence.  It’s worse than death.”

“It’s Purgatory,” Steve said.  “It’s torture.  Forever.”

“Dr. Johnson,” he appealed to her, “I vahnt you to listen to me!”  Rolf’s accent bent to his own anxiety at the truth in their revelation.  “Ziss is not, necessarily, so!”

“You know what?  We can’t listen to you anymore.  Because we’re out of time.”

Rolf stood up and said his final peace.  “Do nothing rash!  You will snap back!  Time is not a simple matter, it takes skill to harness it.  I have done so, you must trust me!”

“We’re done relying on you!” Steve bit back.  “We’re ending this!”

“You have children waiting for you in your apartment!”

Steve’s face darkened, and he was dangerously close to actually killing the man.  “You don’t talk about them.  You don’t go near them.”

“I am telling you.  You. Vill. Snap. Back.  You vill.  Do vaht I tell you.  Please.  For the sake of seeing your children grow older than the day you left zem.  Believe me vehn I say that you vill snap back.  I’m begging you.”

“For our benefit, Dr. Rolf?” Kayla asked in clear accusation, “Or for yours?”

As he’d done in the past, Rolf debated if he should answer this entirely truthfully or not.  And he decided that the best course of action here to preserve his work was to not feed them any bullshit.  “Both,” he replied truthfully.

It was then that the tug of his impending jump brought Steve to his knees.  And based on the fact that it knocked the wind out of him completely, he knew it was going to be bad.  “Kayla,” he squeaked.  There was no breath in his lungs to form speech.  His survival reflex drove such desperation to breathe that he didn’t even feel the sharp piece of plate that had dug into his knee.  He also didn’t notice when just three seconds later Rolf followed him with his own pull of the slipstream.

“Look at me,” Kayla insisted as she fell to the linoleum floor beside him.  Steve gasped for breath but he looked his wife in the eye.  “I’ll see you on the other side, and I love you!”  Now the tug had found her, and she, too, lost her breath with the strong contraction of her diaphragm.  Steve leaned against Kayla, Kayla leaned against the kitchen cabinets, and Rolf observed with the attention of the mad scientist he was.

Steve reached up and held Kayla’s face in his right hand while he signed I love you with his left.  “I’ll find you, Sweetness,” he managed with literally his last breath.

Rolf was dizzy as the scene in front of him tilted awkwardly, but he was not gasping for air like his subjects.  He watched in abject amazement as the light literally went out of Steve Johnson’s eye and his body became dead weight in his wife’s arms.  “Faszinierend!” he declared, then he left 1987 and privately hoped his calculations for himself were as sure as he’d said they were.

Kayla couldn’t get a breath, the punch in the gut was that severe.  She writhed in desperation to breathe and finally got enough air to take Steve’s hand and place it back on her cheek.  Just take me, she begged time, please just take me. 

12.2 seconds after the tug, she followed Steve out of this hellhole.

=========================

Dr. Wilhelm Rolf sucked in air and swallowed hard to avoid vomiting.  Then he opened his eyes and was relieved to see that he was back in the lab where he’d left himself, and the exact amount of time he’d coded for his jump had passed, no more and no less.  “I knew it!” he declared.  It was only when he went to the computers to check the numbers that his heart sank.  “This … is bad.”

=========================

Kayla inhaled so desperately that it startled everyone at the table.  “You ok?” her friend asked.  In an instant she could breathe again, but the nausea was serious.  Kayla gripped the table and held on for dear life as the jump threatened to push her off the barstool.  “How could you get that drunk that quick?” the girl chuckled.  “Lightweight.”

“No, I’m fine, just—,” she started, but she had to stop before the contents of her stomach were returned to sender. 

The folks at the table, some she’d long-since forgotten, were laughing good-naturedly at their friend’s apparent state while The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” buzzed in her ears.  In far longer than it had ever taken before, the room stilled and the jump effect passed.  Her eyes darted around desperate to get her bearings, but before she could take it in, he was there.

“Kayla.”

She whirled around to see Steve directly behind her.  He was very young.   

“Do you remember Stockholm,” he asked very quietly.

Kayla nodded in relief.  “What is this 20 questions?”

“Um.  Who’s this guy?” another girl at the table asked, her face a clearly negative reaction to a man wearing an eyepatch deigning to talk to them.

“Deb, be nice,” the first girl said.  “So, you two know each other?” she then directed to the guy who’d just showed up out of nowhere.

Steve nodded.  “Yeah.  We do.” 

Kayla got goosebumps.  Something was off.  “I … I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go.”  Steve nodded with a sad smile and held out his hand to her.  She took it, and Steve’s reaction to her touch was deeply meaningful.

“Go where?” Deb asked protectively.   Kayla, you’re a little too drunk to let this gnarly guy pick you up.”

“I’ll be fine,” she cut her off, the entire encounter with Rolf occupying all thought.  “I’ll explain later.”

With that she followed Steve out of the bar and into the parking lot.  It wasn’t a familiar location at all, but based on the people she recognized at the table, she knew with disappointment that they were in unshared time when she was in Cleveland.  More alarming than that, however, was the way Steve was holding on to her hand.

The moment they got outside Kayla closed her eyes and hugged her husband around the waist.  When she laid her head on his chest, Steve closed his eye and slowly held her back.  She burrowed into him, but rather than his usual response what she felt from him was apprehension.  There was a possessiveness in his embrace, as well.  Like if he didn’t hold on tight she’d disappear.  Which, for all she knew, she just might.

“Cleveland,” Kayla said, “Right?  “’83 or ’84?”  She lifted her head to take in as much as she could, but there wasn’t much to see in the dark of the late night, non-descript parking lot.  When Steve didn’t answer, she looked up.  “Steve?”  The nape of her neck was suddenly very hot with the realization that he wasn’t meeting her eye, and something was definitely very and extremely wrong.  She took his right hand and clutched it to her chest as she cupped his face with her opposite hand.  Steve’s reaction to was to tense up with the connection.  “Steve …,” she repeated in what was now a very wary tone, “… how long have you been here without me?”

Now Steve let his eye find hers.  “Two years.”

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