Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (18 page)

He’d taken his eyes off her and was looking up the driveway into the dark streets beyond the light of their homes. Finally, he spoke.

“It couldn’t hurt,” he said.

She found it odd, the way he said it. More like he was afraid of something out in that darkness than excited to see a girl. She frowned as she watched him. He was frustratingly difficult to read.

“Well, goodnight,” he said after a final moment of indecision.

Her smile slumped with her shoulders; he really did seem to be in a hurry. She couldn’t persuade him to stay longer and keep her company.

“Goodnight,” she said. “Good luck, just in case it turns out you need it.”

He walked toward the driveway, but turned a moment before he left her sight and called back to her.

“Oh, by the way, thanks for that advice the other day. I think, well, I’m pretty sure it helped me.”

“No problem,” she called back.

In all honesty she wasn’t certain what advice she’d ever given him. He turned the corner and was gone. She found herself lingering on where he’d walked out of the light.

“Why Leah?” she asked herself when she was sure he could no longer hear. “Why do they always have to be damaged?”

As Jonathan came closer, there was something anti-climactic about seeing Heyer sitting there on the park bench in the dark. He was unmistakable from behind, the blond hair hanging down from that ridiculous fedora.

Jonathan stopped there, a few feet back, hesitantly staring at the back of the man’s head and wondering if he was making the right decision in coming. He had no doubt the man knew he was behind him somehow.

I can’t trust him,
Jonathan thought.

It did appear that the man had told him the truth, or at least a version of the truth. If the time was correct, and it seemed to be, Jonathan could only think of a few possible explanations, all of which were science fiction in nature. Either the events he remembered had all taken place in his head, which was a disturbing thought, or hadn’t taken place at all. Yet, Heyer was here, just as he’d specified he would be. When no one else seemed to be aware that anything out of the ordinary had taken place, Heyer still knew somehow.

Jonathan took another step forward. He needed it to make sense; then he paused again. Heyer had told the truth, but he had certainly left out the part about the blinding pain Jonathan would experience. He reminded himself to keep this omission in mind no matter what the man had to say.

“It’s a nice park,” Heyer said. “I see why you’d exercise here. It’s a good place to think.”

Heyer’s head turned as he spoke. He didn’t look at Jonathan; he seemed to be waiting for him to finish hesitating. Jonathan approached slowly, coming around the bench, keeping his eyes on the man, watchful for sudden movement. This wasn’t a narrow hallway. If he was threatened, he had the choice to bolt.

When he could see Heyer’s face, the man didn’t look up immediately, but smiled to himself knowingly.

Finally those soulful luminescent eyes turned to face Jonathan. Heyer looked relieved. How did the man appear so villainous, yet at the same time so protective? They looked at each other for a moment. It was unnerving to Jonathan to hold his gaze, waiting for him to speak, to see what the man intended to have happen here tonight in this park.

Heyer broke the silence.

“It is a relief to see you, Jonathan,” Heyer said. “I calculated your survival chances to be rather low. In fact, it borders on a miracle that you are standing here now. A good indicator, it would be highly unfortunate to have lost you.”

He paused as if to see if Jonathan accepted what he’d said so far, then continued, “I instructed you to call me by name, did I not?”

Jonathan tried his voice, unsure of it.

“You said it was Heyer,” Jonathan replied, slightly louder than a whisper.

Heyer nodded.

“We do not have much time, and we have a great amount to discuss,” Heyer said. “Jonathan, you must have a considerable number of questions, and since I do not know where to begin; I’d advise you to ask what you will. I will answer as best I can, but I must leave soon; so, I will try to keep us focused on pertinent matters. If I feel you are asking something likely to do you harm, or that I cannot yet trust you with, I will not answer. I apologize for this; some things I cannot tell you for your own good, others for my own.”

Jonathan had no choice but to take that statement for what it was. He doubted he’d be able to tell if the man lied to him, although the way he’d phrased it made Jonathan feel like a child being told that he wasn’t ready to know how dangerous the world was yet, which was ridiculous coming from the man who had put him through the most dangerous experience of his life.

“What did you do to me?” Jonathan asked, still struggling to put volume behind his voice. “After you put me to sleep?”

“Yes, a horrible act, that was. I apologize for the circumstances by which that played out. If I had any other alternative at the time, I would have allowed you to volunteer. Unfortunately, that was not an option. I would not have left you with such a disturbing waking experience, but complications led the implantation process to take longer than I’d planned; then your roommates came home, and I was forced to leave you,” Heyer said.

“What did you ‘implant’?” Jonathan asked, already afraid of the answer. “What do you mean there were complications?”

“The device in your chest is biochemical in nature, so to speak. It serves to cause a number of physical changes to your body and mind when the time is right. Upon insertion into a host; it mimics the cellular structure of the individual it finds itself in, taking on the form of the cells of the body that it is replacing, and then lies dormant. It is complicated, but the simple version is this; I cut out a great deal of tissue from your body and replaced that tissue with an implant that can cause remarkable changes to you once it is activated.”

“Why didn’t it show up on any test they ran at the hospital?” Jonathan asked.

“As I said, while dormant, the device mimics the cells of your body. Upon waking, you likely experienced an inexplicable discomfort in your chest. This was part of the process still occurring,” Heyer said. “In a manner of speaking, your nervous system was becoming acquainted with its new cells.”

“But, mankind doesn’t have that kind of technology,” Jonathan said.

“You are correct, mankind does not,” Heyer replied, pausing to let his meaning sink in.

“Then you’re not human?” Jonathan asked, slowly taking a seat on the bench next to Heyer, his reluctance to continue staring down into his eerie eyes finally winning out.

“No, Jonathan, but I’d advise that my background will not assist you in your current endeavors,” Heyer replied.

Jonathan wasn’t sure what to make of such an answer. His endeavors? What did that mean? This evening was terrible, but at least it was over. He wasn’t endeavoring to do anything but understand it. He felt like he should have been surprised to find out he was talking to an alien, but after spending an evening the way he had, it hardly seemed like a revelation.

“When does it come out?” Jonathan asked.

Heyer’s face looked surprised for a moment, but it quickly returned to a placid calm.

“It is not removable, Jonathan, it is a part of you now,” he said. “Well, to be more accurate, I could not recover it without killing you. You should not be distressed, though. The implant will function exactly as your normal cells, except when triggered.”

Jonathan didn’t like the sound of that. A part of him had been torn out, replaced by something alien, something that he didn’t understand and couldn’t control. He didn’t want to hear that it was permanent. Seconds passed in silence. Heyer seemed to be allowing him time to absorb this fact.

“What were the
complications
?” Jonathan asked. For a few moments his voice hadn’t seemed meek, but now he was struggling to get words out again.

Heyer sighed at this question.

“You bled out too much during the procedure and your heart stopped. I was forced to resuscitate you as I waited for the device to adhere. The implant repairs the damage done to the body during the installation process, but only if the subject remains alive.”

My heart stopped? I died
? Jonathan thought.

Again, this required time to sink in. It was upsetting the way Heyer spoke of this procedure, as if he were upgrading computer hardware. He could ponder his mortality later; Heyer had said they were limited on time.

“Why?” Jonathan asked. “Why me? Why not someone else?”

Heyer smiled, he almost looked proud.

“You were selected by an artificial intelligence, a computer, predominately based on a number of genetic factors that make your body highly compatible with the implant. From a genetic level, choosing you was obvious as there were no other potential recipients nearly as well-matched for the device. However, there were also psychological considerations that were weighed...”

Heyer seemed to ponder his next words carefully.

“Psychology is not easily computed. I made that call. I knew I had made the right choice when I saw you entering the park tonight, I knew you must have found a way to survive,” he said.

“I don’t understand, you knew I survived back on the dock. After I’d drowned that thing,” Jonathan looked at Heyer incredulously. “You pulled me out of the water; what did coming here prove?”

“Is that how you succeeded?” Heyer said. “Yes, that would have worked, I suppose, if the creature had not realized it was close to a deep body of water. Water is not present in large supply on their planet.”

Heyer nodded at Jonathan as if to congratulate him.

“Clever.”

Jonathan didn’t have any interest in the compliment; the alien still wasn’t making any sense.

“What do you mean, is that how I succeeded? You pulled that thing out of the water yourself. You ripped the stone out of it, you made me destroy it, you made me agree to come here!” Jonathan said, surprised his voice was becoming louder than a whisper again.

“Jonathan, know this now. Only one person will ever remember what happened tonight,” Heyer said. “The time between the moment you became activated and the moment you destroyed that
stone.
I instructed you to come to meet me at the park because I had planned for the contingency. I was sitting here tonight because I knew that, should you succeed, I would instruct you to meet me here.”

“How is that possible?” Jonathan asked. “I mean are you telling me I time traveled?”

“Jonathan, this will be difficult to grasp, but I will try to explain. The device in your chest is activated and powered by the presence of the portal stone that was within the creature’s body. Once that beast became present on this plane of existence, with that stone inside of it, you became activated. When this occurred the device began recording physical changes in your body, as well as endowed you with certain talents necessary to engage the beast on a physical level.” Heyer paused and raised an eyebrow as if to ask if Jonathan followed him so far.

“A monster came here with that
portal stone
inside of it. From a ‘different plane of existence,’ as you put it, and it being here while I have this device installed in me,” he asked pointing to his chest, “activated me?”

“Yes,” Heyer said. “When you destroyed the stone, all the events that transgressed while it was present on this plane were wiped away.”

“But, how do I remember then?” Jonathan asked.

Heyer took a deep breath. “The memories that form in your mind result from physical changes to your brain while you experience your life, Jonathan. When you make a new memory, your mind is physically changed; webs of neurons in your brain reach out and touch each other in a manner different than before you created that memory. When you destroyed the portal stone, you didn’t time travel so to speak, but for you time was returned to the moment the stone first became present in your world. The only thing that is doing any time traveling is your memories. The device sends this information back to you before that time line is closed off. The information about the state of your brain is applied. The result is, you retain the memory, but you are returned to a version of time where the portal stone never existed.”