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by Mike Farmer
There may be a million stories in the naked city, but Interior, North Dakota, only has one and I'm lucky enough to be it.
I remember thinking, just before slipping into a daytime slumber, that the one sole benefit of being a private investigator in a town where no one needs anything privately investigated is sleeping on the job. My worn, brown fedora was tipped low over my eyes to happily prevent me from seeing the dingy office I work out of.
As a consequence, I didn't see the man crash through my door and stagger up to my desk, but I definitely heard the door window shatter and a terrified voice cry out, "Martini, you have to help me!"
In the movies, I would have had my gun pointed at the stranger before the glass had hit the ground. But this wasn't the movies and I was lying in a heap where I had fallen from my chair. I scrambled to my feet and stared past the man at the gaping square hole in the door where my expensive glass marquee had read, "Emilio Martini Investigations."
"Look what you did to my door!" I shouted.
"Never mind your door! I'm going to be killed!"
"What? Who? Did you say killed? Hold on now. Who's going to be killed?"
"I am," he said, pointing emphatically to himself.
"You are?" I asked. "Who's trying to kill you?"
The man tried visibly to calm his shaking. He took a breath, looked me right in the eyes and said, "I am."
I paused. "You are?"
"You are trying to kill me too."
I gave this guy the immediate once-over. He was tall and thin, almost gaunt, eastern European looking. He was wearing a dirty white lab coat and an expression like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Sweating and pale, he looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"Oh, I see," I said, the answer suddenly dawning on me, "You're crazy." I reached over and picked the telephone receiver off the hook only to have the man slap it savagely out of my hand.
"I am not insane!" he screamed.
I didn't take his word for it. I curled my fingers into a fist and let them do the talking, sending the mad doctor sprawling to the ground with a bloody lip. I scurried behind my desk and yanked the top right drawer open, almost pulling off the handle. I reached in clumsily but managed to pull out the loaded .38 and no one needed to tell me who to point it at.
Now a crazy man might have made a break for the door and a complete loony might have made a rush at me, but after a minute, this guy only sat up, rubbed his jaw, and said quietly, "Thank you, Mr. Martini. I needed that."
"My pleasure." I picked up the receiver and cradled it next to my ear. I dialed the first four digits to the local sheriff's office when I was flooded with an overwhelming mix of deja vu and curiosity.
"I'm going to regret asking this," I said, my hand frozen over the telephone, "but do I know you?"
The guy glanced at this watch and shook his head. "Not for another five minutes."
I punched in two more numbers when, in the voice of a man in desperate need of a favor, he said, "Please, let me explain."
With only a moment's hesitation, I put the phone back down. I felt in control of the situation and my sense of curiosity was open full throttle. The man stood up as I sat down on the corner of my desk, the gun still pointed in the right direction. "All right," I said, "the story that explains this could make me a best selling author."
He rubbed his hands together for a moment and seemed to be gathering an explanation. "My name is Tabokovic, Doctor Vadim Tabokovic," he began. "I am a temporal scientist, a researcher into time, in the employ of the United States government. My laboratory is located in a bunker at Davies Air Force Base. You must believe me. We only have minutes."
I lit a cigarette and remained quiet. The Davies base was located ten miles outside of town, smack dab in the middle of the Badlands. I had never thought about it much, but it struck me suddenly that I had never seen any planes come or go.
"I constructed a device, a time travel device." He held up his right hand. On the middle finger was a thick silver ring with a myriad of tiny silver wires piercing into his flesh.
"A real fashion statement, Doctor," I said in mock praise. He ignored me.
"The instant I put the device on, before I had even activated it, my future self appeared before me."
"Your future self," I nodded, flicking some ashes to the floor.
"He was a mad man, a raving lunatic. He kept shouting, 'Death! Death! Death!'"
"Charming."
"Please listen! I understand now what happened. I had always known that temporal movement would produce an extraordinary strain on the Limbic system and choroid plexus areas of the brain, but I had no idea how severe. The shock and fatigue of travel through time caused a temporary homicidal schizophrenia. I did not know that then. I do now."
"You were homicidal then?" I asked.
"No, I will be homicidal in the future."
"But you're all right now?"
"Listen to me!" he shouted.
"Sorry, go ahead."
"My future self and I fought. We wrecked the lab. I ran. He chased me all over Davies. I ran again, fleeing into town. He pursued me still. The chase continued throughout town. Somehow he got a gun. I ran into this building, by chance, into your office. I begged for your help. He came in. There was a gunfight. You killed him."
"When did all this happen?" I asked, reminding myself of the Sheriff's number.
"About two minutes from now."
"Oh."
"After you shot him, I convinced you to help me. You must not listen! At first, I had thought perhaps the time travel had triggered some genetic insanity in myself, but I was wrong. Before I readjusted the time matrix, compensation for the strain, anyone using the device would be stricken with insanity!" He raised and shook his right hand, showing me the time travel ring. "When my other self comes in, you must not listen to him! This is why I've come back a second time. I am warning you not to listen to me!"
"Why?" I asked, really curious now. "What do you convince me to do?"
Vadim started speaking when I caught sight of movement over his right shoulder. With a howl of rage, a man came barreling through the open door of my office, gun first. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but the shots he cracked off in our general direction said plenty. Vadim was hit. I fell over the back of my desk firing back and hit the ground hard. Instinct brought my gun up at the figure bearing down on me and instinct fired until my gun was empty. The lunatic was thrown back as though smacked by an invisible fist.
I stood shakily and glanced at the two bodies bleeding on my office floor. Neither was moving. There was no hesitation calling the police this time.
"Sheriff Harding here."
"Tim," I shouted, "this is Martini! Get over here, there's been a shooting!"
"A what? A shooting? As in a people shooting? You better not be joking, Martini!"
"Yeah, I call the cops and report felonies for kicks. Just get over here!"
"What the hell happened?" Harding stammered.
"Some crazy guy exploded into my office. Some other crazy guy followed him in and shot him. I shot that crazy guy. Now I got a pile of dead crazy guys in my office."
"Don't go anywhere!" Harding kept on talking about something but I was no longer listening. Something else had caught my attention. I was staring at the assassin's body, or I should say-my body.
The dead man lying on my office floor, five bullet holes short of himself, was wearing worn leather shoes identical to mine, and an old brown suit that matched my own, ragged inch for ragged inch. My eyes reached the dead man's face and I almost died myself. Again. It was my face.
"Martini, can you hear me? Are you all right? Is someone holding a gun to your head? Say, 'Everything's okay,' if someone's holding you at gunpoint!" Harding sounded frantic.
"Never mind." I said weakly and let the receiver drop from my hand. I heard the Sheriff's worried shouts from the dangling receiver but I just didn't care anymore. The same thin eyebrows. The same brown eyes. The same thin mustache. The same crescent moon scar on the chin. Everything. No genetic coincidence could reproduce two faces that closely, no amount of plastic surgery could duplicate features that exactly. I took a step toward the body that was clearly my own. A wave of queasiness swept over me like the morning after a tequila bender. Dead bodies don't bug me; dead MEs, on the other hand, do.
Running footsteps beat a warning up the stairs to my office. I spun around to greet whoever was in such a hurry with the business end of my revolver. The mirror image of the man who had first burst through my door came bursting through a second time. This Dr. Vadim Tabokovic looked just as scared.
"Please help me, I'm being-Oh my God!" Vadim skidded to a halt. His eyes went from my gun to the two bodies behind me, one of whom was him.
"Get out!" I ordered. I didn't have a single clue to what the hell was going on, but this guy somehow had dragged me into it and I wanted nothing but distance between us. I emphasized my command by taking a step toward him and pulling the hammer back. He started to edge his way backwards when I realized in a flash that, like it or not, I had a major problem and this guy had to be part of the solution.
"Wait, get back here!" I said, countermanding my first order. The petrified Vadim didn't move, so I walked over and grabbed a fistful of his shirt, spun him around and propelled him into my office.
I looked him square in the eyes. "Listen up. I was sleeping behind my desk when you came in and said that you were trying to kill yourself. You went on to say that I was your accomplice. Before you could explain things, I ran in and shot you dead. In the ensuing firefight, I shot myself and I am now lying dead on the floor behind me." I added through clenched teeth, "Now I want you to tell me what the hell is going on!"
"My name is . . ."
"I know your name!"
"I . . . I built a time machine . . ."
"I know that part!"
"I have no idea why you tried to kill me or why I'm trying to kill myself."
I lowered my gun. "Did you ever think maybe it's because your machine produces an extraordinary strain on the Limbic systems and choroid plexus areas of the brain, causing temporary homicidal schizophrenia?"
"I . . . what?"
"Just a little something they taught us in private detective school."
Tabokovic squinted at me in absolute confusion.
I rolled my eyes. "You, the future you, told me that before I, the future me, came in and shot him." My heart rate slowed down and my muscles relaxed a bit.
Vadim nodded thoughtfully and licked his lips. "That would explain a great many things."
I took a deep breath. "So what do we do about it?"
"For now, I must destroy the device. That is, unless I can repair whatever error there is in the matrix." He held up his right hand, showing me the same silver ring I had seen earlier. With his left hand he reached over as if to pull the ring off. He grimaced, apparently expecting pain.
Suddenly, I tensed. "Wait a second! The first Vadim Tabokovic also told me you were being chased . . . "
I saw Vadim's eyes go wide as saucers, staring over my shoulder. It seemed like I heard the shots at the exact same time I felt them slugging into me. For a time, there was nothing but pain.
Over the agony coming from my right shoulder, I became aware of a struggle going on behind me. I blinked through watery eyes to see two Dr. Vadim Tabokovics locked in mortal combat. They were impossible to distinguish; a man in a back-alley brawl with himself. I noticed a black automatic on the floor a short distance from the kicking feet of the combatants and figured it to be the weapon that had ruined my pitching arm. I sat up, trying to ignore the pain and failing, determined to nab the automatic and end the fight. Suddenly, I heard a battlefield roar. I looked up to see one Vadim catch the other with a heavyweight left. Only one Dr. Tabokovic remained standing, and I was desperate to find out which.
"Doc," I ventured, "How you feeling?"
"No talk. Death."
Wrong one. He picked up the black automatic and spun toward his unconscious counterpart. The hammer clicked several times on an empty chamber. He noticed my revolver lying two feet from where I lay. He picked it up and repeated the process. Then he turned to me. His eyes were bloodshot.
"Bullets," he demanded.
"Ah, sure thing," I said. "I think they're in the filing cabinet." There was only one chance. The first Vadim Tabokovic that had burst into my office said the madness was probably temporary. This guy had been busy chasing his mirror image around all day. I could only hope to delay long enough for him to grab a piece of sanity. After that, in the state I was in, my options were extremely limited.
He wrenched the filing cabinet drawers open, spilling the papers on the ground. Needless to say, he didn't find what he was looking for.
"I know," I said again, "they're in my coat pocket by the door."
He ignored me completely, moving out of sight behind my desk. Crazy maybe, but not stupid. I made a mental note that in the next life I would hide my bullets better. It took him only seconds of searching. I heard the "scheck" of metal on metal as bullets were loaded into all six chambers.
He walked around into view toward the prone Dr. Tabokovic.
"Wait! Vadim, I have something important to ask you!" I shouted desperately.
He stopped and turned his head. "What?" he asked, his eyes staring through me.
"If you kill your past self," I said, making it up as I went, "won't you be killing your future?"
"No," he said flatly. Even crazy he knew a hell of a lot more about temporal physics than I did.
"But, I mean, what's the point?"
"Death," he responded and turned back.
"You really want to be a murderer?" I shouted, at the same time wondering if it would be considered murder or suicide.
He raised the gun until it pointed at his unconscious self. Then he paused as if trying to concentrate. Somewhere, some part of his mind was echoing my question.
"Talk to me," I insisted. After ten motionless seconds, I felt the moment easing in my favor. The gun dropped a fraction of an inch. Then his eyes slowly turned toward me and glazed with certainty. The gun swung in my direction. Apparently deciding to get rid of what was confusing him, he took two determined steps toward me and pulled the hammer back. I saw the barrel two feet from my face, I heard the shot, and felt no pain.
The crazy Vadim fell across me, blood oozing from one dime-sized hole in his chest. Sheriff Harding was poised in the doorway of my office, a small puff of white smoke evaporating around his .357 magnum. "Sweet Jesus," he panted.
"Get an ambulance, Harding," I muttered. "And get this guy off me."
Harding pulled the dead man off my chest and holstered his gun. "Call an ambulance," I repeated. He picked up the phone and called the hospital in Mahtomedi, twenty miles to the south of Interior.
"They'll be here in ten minutes, Emilio," he said, checking my wounds, still breathing heavily. "You'll make it."
"Harding," I said earnestly, "you better check downstairs. I heard someone calling for help earlier. Down in the basement, I think."
"You be okay?"
"I'll be fine." Harding pounded down the stairs. With a groan, I managed to get to my feet. As quickly as I could, I visited each Vadim Tabokovic and pulled off the silver ring each was wearing, promising to flush them down the first toilet I came to at the hospital. When the sole remaining Tabokovic awoke, most likely with a broken jaw, he probably would have destroyed the rings. But, then again, maybe he wouldn't. Or maybe someone else would get their hands on these devices. I stuffed the rings into my pants pocket and sank back down into my original position just as Harding returned.
"Nobody down there now," he said.
"Do me a favor, will you Harding? Don't bother asking me what went on here."
Harding snorted and shook his head. "Son, I think it's safe to say I'm going to have to do that."
"Then don't expect a straight answer."
His brow furrowed as he began to notice the similarity of the bodies. "One way or another, I'll get to the bottom of this."
I remember deciding not to argue.
