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1
I KNEW INSTANTLY THAT I had jumped to the wrong time. The question remained: how far off the mark was I? It was hard to gauge anything specific from my surroundings, but the temperature was not the same as in September of 1993 where I had visited before. I stood up and walked around the bar, which was now called “O’Malley’s.” It looked refreshed. I suppose the instantaneous rolling back of twenty or so years would have that effect on just about anything.
I thought about going back to my parents’ house and then remembered that they wouldn’t know me in the past. If I was anywhere close to my target date they’d be much younger and protective of their son who hadn’t yet had a chance to ruin his life. I wondered where I could go. I was still wearing the same sweaty clothes I’d had on me from my initial trip to 1993. I was exhausted. I had been up for far longer than a normal day’s waking hours, and running around in a panic for much of that. Time travel was turning out to be far worse than jet lag.
The more I traveled the more I realized the complications inherent in jumping around in the timestream. My instinct was to jump into fixing my previous mistakes, but I wasn’t sure if my changes might not splinter the universe again, meaning that my original trip wouldn’t take place. That was assuming, of course, that my jump had put me farther back in time. It could very well be the summer of 1994 or 1995 and young Daniel Wells might already be traumatized and on his way to a reckless disaster of a future.
I decided I had to act. Not that I had any idea exactly what I needed to do. I just knew that Jeff Berger couldn’t die at my hands...or my previous version’s hands...hell, any Daniel Wells’s hands. I had a feeling I was going to have to have another face-to-face with a version of myself in order to right this wrong.
I fished my wallet out of my pocket and found that I had brought my remaining cash along with no more difficulty than the last time. I saw a newspaper in one of those boxes along the curb and found that I had been close to my goal after all. It was May 31st, 1993. A Monday. It was a warm day, and the abrupt shift from the cold of early winter had made me think it was summertime. I left the bar’s parking lot and basked in the sun. I felt better, being several months deeper into the past. How could I feel guilt about something that hadn’t happened yet? Something that will never happen, I reminded myself.
Even after everything that had happened, I found myself starting to get excited again about the possibility of hanging around in the past for a while. I knew I should go back to the future and try again to get closer to the mark, but I wondered what harm it could possibly do to spend just a few days? I’d be sure to stay far away from my past self.
As I walked along I changed my plan, making promises to myself in a way that the drug-addicted Daniel Wells could probably understand. I’ll stay for the summer, I thought. Get every last bit of this traveling to the past out of my system and then put it behind me for good. Go cold turkey.
Why go bouncing around through time trying to find September, 1993, when I could just stay put and let the day come to me? It all seemed to make so much sense. I figured I’d have to get some kind of job. A career-type thing would not work without proper documentation, so maybe I could be an undocumented day laborer? It all sounded pretty good at the time.
The specific logistics of my stay didn’t really matter, as long as I stayed out of trouble. Besides, figuring out what to do could wait for the next day. June, 1993 might hold plenty of surprises for me, I thought, but I was going to finish the month of May with the world’s longest nap. I took yet another lengthy walk from the bar down to the Jenkintown Hotel. It took me hours to get there and I was just about asleep on my feet by the time I walked into the familiar lobby. Though I felt a pang of deja vu when I walked through the doors, Carl wasn’t at the desk. There was a skinnier, healthier man whose name tag identified him as Stephen.
“Hi, Stephen,” I said. “Is Carl in?” I didn’t know why I wanted to see him. He wouldn’t know me yet. I guess I just wanted to see a familiar face after a long day, you know?
“Carl’s on vacation for the next week,” Stephen said. His voice was nasal and it made him sound annoyed. Maybe he actually was annoyed, I don’t really know. “Can I help you?”
“Do you have rooms for long stays?”
His eyebrows arched. “How long are we talking?”
“A couple months.”
He actually was so stunned he took a step back. “Um...well, we could definitely set you up with a room. I can work out some kind of a deal with you. If you could, you know, pay every week or something?”
“That would be great.”
He fished behind the desk and brought out a key. You ever have one of those moments where something both shocks you and seems completely appropriate at the same time? That’s how I felt when I saw the “319” printed in black marker on the key’s label. Time travel had its coincidences. It meant that if I was still in the room by September 8th, it wouldn’t be available for my other self. Of course, it was likely that events would play out differently now that the staff at the Jenkintown Hotel would know me the second I arrived.
I gave Stephen my fake information, this time using my “Justin Bieber” alias. I took the key and went up to the familiar room. This time, though it was earlier in the day than the last time I’d sat in room 319, I pulled the shades tight and got into bed. My thoughts spun round and round. I missed Helena. All our issues seemed distant and unimportant. All I could think about was her smile. I felt bad for how much she and I had grown apart. Maybe, I thought, I could give things a real effort when I got back. Really try to improve the relationship. I worried about my parents, both the ones I’d left in my original 2013 and the sad version whose life I’d damaged. I wondered if I should brush my teeth or if I left the plaque and bacteria behind every time I traveled. Still would need a toothbrush if I was going to make it through several months. I was going to need a lot of things. I was thinking about all of that when sleep finally took over.
In my dreams, I saw Jeff Berger bleeding and dying beneath my fists. I heard screams and saw the faces of all my loved ones looking on in shocked horror. These images repeated and circulated for hours. When I woke it was the middle of the night, or quite early in the morning of June 1st, depending on how you looked at it. I was covered in sweat.
I used the bathroom, stretched a little and got back into bed, moving to the opposite side so I wouldn’t have to lie in the dampness from my sweat. I thought about my early, confusing trip to the past outside the convenience store. I had passed out in the bushes and awoken in the present. Now I had made it through one nightmare-filled bout of sleep without traveling. I decided it must have something to do with motivation. In my panic in that previous trip I had wanted to return home. Now I wanted desperately to stay until I fixed things. That, it seemed, made all the difference.
I closed my eyes. I did not travel, and this time I did not dream.