The Stranger
“Mr. Han, there’s someone here to see you. Shall I bring her into your office?”
“Who is it?” the man behind the door asked his secretary gruffly, his deep, smooth voice a bit muffled over the phone.
“It’s...I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?” the secretary asked.
“Gabriela Rodriguez.”
“Let her in,” said the man on the other line.
The secretary rose and opened the door, and Gabriela, an olive-skinned woman of about thirty, with flowing, raven hair, wearing a long black dress, cautiously entered the office.
“Mrs. Rodriguez, my sincerest condolences,” said Mr. Han. “How’s the replacement faring?”
“He’s just come out of critical, sir. The hospital wants to keep him there for another few days, still.”
“Please, Gabriela, call me Charles. No need for ‘sir.’” He pushed a button on his desk, shutting down his computer. “Would you like a cup of coffee? Freshly brewed, of course.”
“Thanks, but no. I left my children home alone. I can’t be gone for long,” she said, politely declining.
“Certainly. So, let’s quickly go over the last few hours, just so I know how to go about all this,” said Charles. “Please begin with last night.”
“Last night...we were just eating dinner. The Telenet was on in the living room. We heard a story about violence in the border states, and Desmond just stormed off into the bedroom. I heard nothing from him for hours.”
“Right...” Charles said expectantly.
“I put the kids to bed, and went to check on him. I turned on the lamp and saw him passed out on the floor!” At this her voice trembled; she began to weep.
“And that’s when you called 911.”
“Yes. The ambulance picked him up. I had to wake up the children and take them to the hospital in my car, following behind. They brought him in and kept us in the waiting room. It was an hour, at least. And then the doctor came out and told us Desmond woke up. We went in to see him and...” She broke down, tears streaming down her face.
Charles offered her a box of tissues. “If it’s any comfort at all, you must know it’s not really him in there, right?”
“How dare you say that!” Her eyes turned into fire.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but he doesn’t know you! He thinks it’s 1969, for God’s sake.”
“So he has...amnesia or something! He must have hit his head or had a seizure or something like that!” Gabriela said, her voice breaking.
“Mrs. Rodriguez, don’t insult my intelligence or your own. You found his briefcase open on the bed, an empty needle on the bed, a bloodstain on the floor!” Charles realized he too was on the verge of shouting. He paused. “We must both come to the logical conclusion that your husband injected himself with his temporal serum.”
“But why on earth would he do such a thing? He never told me he was planning anything like this.”
Han sighed. “I had some of my people search his computer in his office at Boston University. He had saved on there several news articles on the death of Marcus Aurelius Nolan, as well as what appeared to be some documentation of his whereabouts on the day of Nolan’s assassination. July 21st, 2099.” Charles laid out several sheets of paper over his desk.
Most of the papers were indeed printed-out Internet articles on the assassination. One, however, contained a list of times and places:
12:00 AM-12:00 PM: Sleeping in bedroom, Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, CA
12:00 PM-4:00 PM: Studying, eating, watching Telenet in living room, Eagle Rock
--sometime around 4:00 I hear about M.A.N. assas..--
--ed.: MSN + CNN corroborate 4:12 I hear news on TV in living room, get as close as possible!--
4:12 PM-6:00 PM +: Watching coverage of M.A.N. death
“I don’t understand,” said Gabriela.
“We can deduce that he was planning to somehow go back in time and stop the death of Nolan from ever having happened,” said Han.
“How would he have done that?”
“Well, there could be any number of ways. He may have thought simply that his being there and knowing the future would change the timeline, he may have taken steps to forewarn Nolan or his entourage, he may have planned to go to the Washington lecture via time-space portal, since they still allowed those back then.” He sighed. “He may have intended to take the bullet for Nolan. I don’t know, just a few hypotheses––”
“You son of a bitch! You––” Gabriela faltered. “I’m leaving. I will no longer require your services.” She rose from her chair and almost ran toward the door.
“I wouldn’t turn me down if I were you. Are there any other professional psychokineticists in the area who will do this job pro bono?”
“I have the money. I can find someone else,” she said, her hand still on the doorknob.
“Not when I persuaded your bank to freeze your accounts,” Han said with a sneer.
Gabriela turned around and stared at him. “You...what?”
“Listen. I respect you, both as a friend and as a customer. Please don’t make it necessary for me to use my abilities.”
“Abilities?” scoffed Gabriela. “You’re a hack! I came to you for help because...because I was being stupid!”
“Stupid how?” Han calmly inquired.
“For some reason I thought...I don’t know, that you could go into the past and bring Desmond back or something! But you’re just psychotic! I’m leaving!” She grasped the door knob.
Han pressed a button on his desk. “Code 2,” he said. “Now, Mrs. Rodriguez, there are two armed men standing guard by your car in the parking lot. You will escort me down there now, or I will not hesitate to force you.”
Gabriela felt repulsed at the mere thought of this man gaining control of her mind, even if she was still skeptical about the possibility itself. She decided she would acquiesce to his orders for the moment. She glared at the man sitting behind his desk, wondering what she’d gotten herself into. “Well, are we going or what?”
“Of course. After you, my lady.”
Charles Han had followed Gabriela down through three floors of the office building when she said, “Why the hell are you so interested in my case anyway?”
“I’ll give you some answers in time, Mrs. Rodriguez, in time...”
Gabriela exited the building, Mr. Han in tow. The sunlight made her squint briefly, and when she could see again, she saw the two black-suited men with pistols he’d promised. They congregated next to her cobalt-blue coupe.
“Mrs. Rodriguez, you will now hand over your keys to the man nearest the drivers’ side door.”
She did as she was told.
“Now, you will get into the back with my other associate. I will ride shotgun,” said Han.
The man on the left unlocked the car door by pressing a button on the key, and pressed another button to make the door swing open. He did the same for the passenger door. Once each person had buckled himself in, the driver started the car, pulled out of the space, and drove down the street in the direction of the hospital.
* * * * *
The two gunmen stayed with the car while Charles and Gabriela went into the hospital. The lobby was relatively uncrowded, and the front check-in desk was being worked by just one person, whom the two approached.
“Good afternoon. We’re here to visit Desmond Rodriguez,” said Mr. Han.
The woman searched her computer. “Yes. Room 440. Take the elevator and take two turns to the right.”
“Thank you.”
St. Jerome’s Medical Facility was one of the few buildings in Boston with a so-called “modern” look. The large complex was comprised of three large, plexiglass domes. In what seemed to be some strange psychological experiment, the floors, doors, and walls were all made of a reflective glass. Gabriela and Mr. Han boarded an elevator, which she promptly noticed was octagonal. This had the effect of showing each of them in several different profiles at once. It was a bit unsettling to say the least.
The elevator ascended slowly, issuing from tinny speakers a fairly recent, harmless pop song. After several seconds whose identities as mere seconds Gabriela questioned, the doors finally parted, and she turned right, the song’s mildly catchy hook fading from her mind. The two people didn’t speak until they’d turned the next right and approached the door to Room 440.
Mr. Han said, “A funny little thing, it is, the soul.”
Gabriela didn’t respond.
“Philosophers, men of religion, poets and writers, even scientists have tried to characterize it; to explain it. Did any of them know its true nature? Obviously not. Even when you walk inside this door you will only see its façade, its physical manifestation,” said Charles.
“I don’t care what you have to say. What will it take to make you get away from me and my husband?” She pleaded.
“A stronger psychic than myself.” He opened the door and motioned for Gabriela to proceed before him.
She walked into the room, and saw, on the farthest side, her husband’s form propped up in a bed. His eyes, normally bright and excited as a dancing flame, were now dark and inscrutable, though they stared right at her. Gabriela walked slowly and unsteadily toward him, all the while maintaining the gaze they shared. The man in the bed finally spoke in a language unfamiliar to her ears. She had little clue as to what he was saying, but she picked out a few words here and there. Charles Han stood by the entrance.
The door opened, and a short, stocky man in a ragged, patched brown jacket and slacks bustled through, dragging a wet umbrella behind him. He coughed and wheezed for a bit, and shook water off his copious mustache. “It was a downpour, I’m telling you, the moment I pulled into the parking lot. Had to...had to run in. Sorry I’m late,” he said between gasps for air. “Elevator was broken.”
“Who are you?” asked Gabriela.
He formally introduced himself as Professor Linus Calder of the Boston University School of Theology. He’d never been personally acquainted with Desmond, but he had some grasp of the Old American dialect, so he’d been called in to act as an interpreter for the man in the bed.
“Who called you?” Gabriela said.
“Mr. Han, actually,” he said, his buggy eyes surveying the man with a strange, academic hunger. “He told me this was a very interesting mental case. Apparently your husband has acquired the 1900s American English dialect and no longer remembers the current year or any details of his life. Am I correct? I’d just love to begin the interpreting,” the little man said with eager, bespectacled eyes.
Gabriela wasn’t surprised at this lie. She wondered if Han had used “his powers” on this man. “Can you ask him his name, please?”
He muttered something incomprehensible, followed by the other man. “Mark Leopold,” said the man in Desmond Rodriguez’s body.
“What day do you think it is?” She asked.
More gibberish. “Sunday, the 20th of July, 1969,” said Professor Calder.
“What was the last thing you remember?” asked Gabriela.
“He was in his apartment in Boston, eating pizza and watching a news story about some lunar mission. Then, he says, he blacked out for hours, and woke up in a bedroom, on the floor.”
Mr. Han approached them. “Thank you, Professor. I’ll take it from here,” he said. “You may leave now.”
He seemed surprised that his session was over so quickly. “Alright, then. Would you like me to come in again?”
“Actually, just wait in the lobby for a bit,” Han said inattentively. He turned to Leopold. “Describe the inside of your apartment.”
At this Mark became confused. Gabriela also said, “Why’d you just throw Calder out? Don’t you need him?”
“I said describe the inside of your apartment!”
Gabriela could not see Mr. Han’s face, but the eyes of her lost husband widened, and the pupils dilated. His mouth hung slightly, and he lay perfectly still. This continued for several seconds until Han turned away, and Desmond’s head lolled back and rested on the pillows. He slept.
Gabriela then found Mr. Han’s gaze. She could barely see the whites of his eyes because his pupils had also grown large. His face was expressionless Still walking, he said in an imperial voice, “Mrs. Rodriguez, please describe your bedroom.
She opened her mouth to protest, or to begin giving him the answer, but her muscles suddenly seized. She found herself instead thinking about her bedroom: The king poster bed with silk curtains and sheets, the soft shade of misty green on the walls, the van Gogh prints, the 90 centimeter Telenet in the front, the vaulted ceiling, the––”
“That will be all, thank you,” interjected Mr. Han. He then snapped his fingers and Gabriela returned to full awareness. She was absolutely mystified, but she didn’t have much time to think about what had just occurred. “Now, please excuse me while I rescue your husband from his misbegotten journey in time.” He turned around and strode out of the room.
