The Mississippi River is one of the longest in the world, second in the United States only to the Missouri, which, itself, is an offshoot of the Mississippi. It’s always been home to countless species of birds, fish, mammals, and other ecodiverse wildlife that provide a precious balance to the biome of not just the Mississippi River Delta, but the world. Today in 1987, it was also home to a houseboat holding two people who were walking a very delicate balance to the biome of their own precious existence; because this houseboat with these two people didn’t belong here. Everything around them felt it on a molecular level, their mere presence resulting in an imbalance that didn’t have much impact by itself; but the framework of the space and time they occupied was already cracked in so many places that every change now mattered. The egrets and spoonbills felt their feathers ruffle for reasons they couldn’t understand. The river otters held their pups more protectively on their bellies. And, the endangered black bears of the Atchafalaya felt something different in the trails they hunted daily. Even the lobsters living in the kelp as far as the great river’s brackish estuaries felt something that made them burrow a little deeper in their hollows.
But much like the two people in that houseboat, lobsters mate for life, and no matter what came their way they would be bonded until the very end of their existence. And so it was for Steve and Kayla.
In the week since they’d left Salem, they’d sailed their houseboat through mostly calm waters down the Mississippi. They stayed in small ports, kept completely to themselves, and let the early June wind whoosh peacefully over them. Something about being in the open air on the small porch-like deck of the tiny, floating home eased their anxiety. Not to mention, actually, leaving Salem. Steve was relieved at how much closer Kayla was to herself when the pressures of wearing the mask of who she was on this jump were removed.
They were also very clear-headed in a way that they’d never really had the luxury for. From the very earliest of jumps it had always been the same: They’d arrive somewhere, it led to crisis of existence, their anxiety would nearly swallow them up, and the harrowing jumps would be followed by a time and place they could find solace and recovery. Those times were either too brief to find the emotional fortitude to think clearly, or they lasted too long, and they were forced to form emotional attachments that made them turn the other way on their reality. In all the many years now that they’d been jumping into their past lives, they should have been figuring out ways to stop. To find Rolf. To get home. But the slipstream’s one arc after another never truly gave them the chance. Now they had that chance. No kids. No one coming after them. Nothing threatening them but the slipstream, itself. They both knew that this jump was the calm after their latest storm, so this time they used the peace to plan. And the foundation of that plan was finding Dr. Wilhelm Rolf. They both knew they were damaged and honestly scared after their jump to childhood, but if they were going to make any progress on finding Rolf they were going to have to bury it. For now.
In a very short time, Kayla had already filled the table in the very small living area with several sheets of paper with hand-written notes. Like her jump project, this one had years from their birth to the day they’d started jumping in 2009, only this time the whereabouts attached to those years belonged to Rolf. Given how much they didn’t know – which was most of it – there was a shocking amount of information.
“Great, more memorizing,” Steve said under his breath as his wife erased something and replaced it with something else. She sat with her back to him, and he peered over her shoulder to look on. “Wait, wait, that’s not right, baby.” Steve tapped her, and she jumped slightly before looking back at him quizzically. “He was back in Salem by then,” he said as he pointed to the year she’d just erased and finger-spelled out “Salem.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, you had it right the first time, I was deprogrammed by then and faking it with him and that Bart bozo.”
Kayla glanced off to her right for a moment then realized he was right. She nodded and changed it back.
These were the easy parts. When they’d had direct access to him. It was all those other years that drove them nuts trying to track him down. Years like this one. It was 1988, and they had no idea where Rolf was right now. Without the Internet, it was going to be so much harder. They thought about waiting until a jump that had the Internet to do this research, but it only took them moments to dismiss that; they were done waiting, they had to at least start now.
It was in St. Louis’s city library that Steve had a breakthrough. He was skimming one of the science journals looking for Rolf’s name when he came across Niels Bohr. He had no idea why, but that name set off his Spidey sense. Kayla practically felt him straighten up beside her. “What is it?” she asked.
Steve looked straight down at the journal with Bohr’s name in the title of the article. “Bohr,” Steve said quietly, pointing to the journal.
“What?” she asked as she leaned her head over to see what he was pointing at. Steve looked at her.
“Niels Bohr.” He pointed to the journal and repeated the scientist’s name.
“Niels Bohr? What about him?”
“Rolf hated him,” Steve signed.
“Ok … I don’t get it, isn’t he long dead?”
“He is now, yeah. But Rolf knew him back in the day. He used to complain about how Bohr got all the attention, while he got shafted.”
“Bit of an age difference. Do you think they worked together?”
“No clue. Just know he truly hated the man. Jealous.”
Kayla got a sparkle in her eye. It was the first real possible breadcrumb they’d come up with on finding the man responsible for all of this – and was now the one person who could end it. “Bohr is dead in 1988, but we can research him and find out where he lived and maybe figure out where he crossed paths with Rolf … and maybe from there we can figure out where he went after that and find him that way.”
Steve smiled wide, then kissed his wife. Smart AND beautiful, he signed.
They spent the rest of the afternoon learning more than anyone outside of quantum physics had a right to know about Niels Bohr and guessing where Rolf might have crossed his path through the process of elimination. The next day they spent some long distance cash calling Shane and asking him to get any records for Rolf from the University of Copenhagen where Bohr was for many years, and sure enough, that’s where they found Dr. Rolf.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to ask me for any more favors after that giant swath of cash I gave you.”
“I never said that.”
“I think it was assumed.”
“You know what they say about people who assume, don’tcha?”
“I’m quite sure I don’t.” Steve guffawed. He couldn’t help it. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothin’, forget it,” Steve stifled the childish giggles.
Kayla watched all this and tried to read Steve’s lips but couldn’t really make anything of it. All she knew was she liked when Steve laughed – and since he was talking to Shane, she liked it even more. She also correctly guessed that Steve was probably teasing him.
“So, listen, just get us the information, it’s important.”
“What could you possibly need from some doctor at the University of Copenhagen?”
“’Doctor’ is stretchin’ it, dude, the man’s a mad scientist, and if you don’t do this for us, we’re gonna be runnin’ in circles, so just do it please?”
“You know, I have my own problems over, here, Steve!”
“Shane, come on, man!”
“Fine! When do you want this, tomorrow?”
“Perfect!”
“I wasn’t serious, mate, don’t push your luck with me.”
Steve let out an impatient breath. “Yeah, ok, whatever you can do.”
Two days later the summer rain beat down on the houseboat anchored at the St. Louis marina as they read the small packet of information about one Dr. Wilhelm Rolf’s time at the University of Copenhagen. He was very active in the area of physics, both as a student and as a professor. That was the good news. The bad news was that his path had run dry at present.
Steve pounded on the table in their small cabin and cursed. “We did all that for nothing!”
“No, we didn’t!” Kayla replied. “It’s so much more than we knew before.”
“Where the hell is he, Kayla?! He said he’d find us, and it’s been years!”
Well, that came out of nowhere, Kayla thought. She glared at him askance as he put his own gaze elsewhere. Then she waved her hand up and down between them, signing, what’s going on here?
“I’m tired of hitting one brick wall after another, Sweetness,” he said with a calmer tone. “We’re gonna jump from here and have to start all over again.”
Kayla nodded. “Yeah, but that’s why we’re getting all this information now. Eventually, if he doesn’t show up with us, we’ll show up with him. You remember my phone number in Cleveland?”
Steve raised an eyebrow at her. “’Course I do.”
“Then you’ll study this information like the jump project and remember that, too.”
Suddenly Steve changed course. Something about his wife’s grounding presence flicked the libido switch inside him. Kayla saw when it went on and raised her own eyebrow. “You just turned on a dime, Steve Johnson.”
“Because you just turned me on, Mrs. Johnson.” He made lewd jerking-off motions in a very Steve version of that translation.
“How?” she chuckled. “I didn’t do anything.”
“How many times I gotta tell you, Sweetness, you don’t have to do anything for me to want you.”
They made love on that very table with the once very organized papers now scattered on the floor.
That week, Steve tried to call in one more favor to Shane to try to find Rolf right now in this year of 1988 based on the facts they already knew, but unfortunately, this was one favor that would not come to fruition. Shane and Kimberly were both knee-deep in their own ISA mission and couldn’t be reached in the near term. So, they made some guesses and talked about what to do next.
“I’m not going to Copenhagen on a guess,” Steve said.
“I’m not saying we should. But how long do we wait before we make the decision to be proactive?”
“Depends how long we’re here. Does it feel like a long one to you?”
Kayla shrugged. “It’s already been almost three weeks. Maybe?”
Steve shook his head. “Nah, we haven’t done it in the rain yet. Can’t jump till we do it in the rain.”
Kayla squinted at her husband and his hysterical pigeon ASL. “That’s a rule now? No jumping till we make love in the rain?”
“I thought that was a rule already.”
“Ok, would you be serious, please?”
Steve dragged a palm down his face and exhaled. “Sweetness, I want to find him. Now. Right now,” he signed as he spoke. “But leaving Salem was a lot easier than going to Copenhagen with no plan. We don’t know for sure where he is. If we knew, I’d leave tomorrow.”
“But Steve,” Kayla added carefully, “we can’t let this be like all the other jumps. We can’t get – comfortable. If we do we’re going to just fall into the same vicious cycle. Some horrible jump will happen and we’ll wake up babies.”
“Don’t even say that, Kayla.”
“Why? We already jumped to being kids, we can’t ignore this. We don’t know how far back this machine or whatever the algorhythm or whatever the hell he called it is capable of jumping us. He’s lost control of it. We have to get to him before one more terrible jump happens. Before the whole thing just breaks, and we break with it.”
Steve stood up and paced. She was right. But he didn’t know what to do about it.
She got up and took her husband’s hand. “We said that we’d end this. That we’d go find him and make him end it. We knew it wouldn’t be as easy as looking him up in the phone book. He’s not even going to know us if this is the year we find him. But whatever he’s done, it’s in him, and it’s better than not finding him at all.
“So, you’re saying you do wanna go to Copenhagen, then?”
“Ideally, not if I’m deaf. I’m saying we do more research and narrow it down as much as we can, and when we can’t narrow it down any more, we go. We just go and put ourselves in the driver’s seat for once. Worst case scenario, we know where he is a year from now, so if we have to wait, we do.”
“But if we jump first—”
“Then we pick it up from there.”
Steve plopped down into the booth across from his wife. “I’m not a patient man, Sweetness.”
As it happened, Steve didn’t have to test his patience long. Exactly a month and a day after they arrived here, Steve felt a punch in the gut. The usual signs of impending departure had been absent, so this came as a surprise. Panic filled him immediately, because he was on deck with a fishing rod while his wife was directly below him in the cabin sleeping. “KAYLA!” he yelled into the early dawn before cursing at the futility. He had no time to waste if he was going to get to her before the jump took him.
Steve leapt from the chair and practically flew down the veritable ladder that served as the stairwell into the living quarters of the houseboat that had been their home for the last four weeks. He was already dizzy and, by all rights, should have taken a header down those stairs but somehow stayed upright.
“Kayla!” he yelled urgently as he shook her, “I’m jumping! Baby, wake up, we’re going!” He shook her again, but instead of startling upright as he expected, she remained still. “No … no, baby, wake up!” Steve lifted her from the pillow and embraced her around her back as he held her face in his hand. “Be in there, be in there!” But it was clear that she wasn’t. She’d jumped first in her sleep. It was the worst way to jump.
Steve held her dead weight against him, cradling the back of her head and waited the few remaining moments for the jump to take him.
Kayla was completely disoriented as she inhaled a lung full of warm, Mississippi River air. She flailed for Steve beside her and stumbled when she came up with air instead of bed.
“Are ye a’right, lass? What’s wrong?”
Kayla startled at the sound of her father’s voice, the first one she’d heard in weeks, and it was loud in her suddenly working ear. She instinctively held her hands up to her ears and squinted up at him through the very bright, noonday sun. Shawn had her in his strong grasp as the vertigo took its course, and she realized that she wasn’t on the houseboat anymore.
I jumped. Where am I?
Shawn continued to question her, her eyes began to adjust, and then she heard the music. It was a true sensory overload that the amplification effect latched on to with a hike in her blood pressure. Finally, Kayla took a deep breath and had her first real look at her surroundings. And those surroundings were a shock. Like some kind of twisted, lucid dream, she marveled at the fact that she could still be shocked at a destination after all this time.
“Can ye hear me? Are ye ok?”
All Kayla could do was shrug. She bobbed her fist at him and said, “Yes to both,” as she signed it. Now it was Shawn who was momentarily speechless. “You’re talkin’, lass. I knew ye had it in ye! Oh, thank the Lord, lass, thank the Lord!” He hugged her to him and kissed her on the temple before holding her back out from him. “You’re sure you’re ok, then? Just nerves getting’ to ye?”
“Yeah, Pop,” Kayla said. “Just nerves.”
“Surprise wedding. I told yer mother I’d never heard of such a thing. But if you’re ready, that’s our cue.”
Before Kayla could respond, Shawn escorted his daughter around from the side of the yacht and out onto the massive deck where everyone they knew that was ever important to them at this time was sitting before them. Kayla locked eyes with Steve immediately. He was beaming at her with pride, happiness, and devotion. And for the life of her, she couldn’t tell which Steve it was doing the beaming. Had he jumped before her? Was he in there about to marry the other her? Or was he still in bed, leaving her to marry the other him? She wasn’t sure which of those two scenarios was better – or worse – but she didn’t have any time to ponder it, because every eye was now upon her, waiting for her to walk down the white, wooden steps toward her groom.