Book Five, Chapter 121

🔴 REC    SEP 25, 2018 08:08:25    [▮▮▮▮▯ 80%]

When we landed, we were standing in a large industrial complex, right in front of something that could have been a cement factory or a nuclear silo. I had no idea—all I could see were giant metal structures jutting into the sky. It had that generic quality—it could have been anything.

Immediately, Generation Killer let go of Camden and started running along the a path into the structure.

"Come on," Camden said, grabbing my shirt.

So I followed him.

"You want us to follow him?" I asked. "We need to run."

"There's no use," Camden said. "You need to see this."

So I continued to run as a strange smoke started to rise from the top of the industrial building next to us.

"Camden, what's going on?" I asked.

"That building's about to melt down," he said, trying his best to keep pace with the Generation Killer in front of us.

The killer was on a beeline toward a building that kind of looked like a payphone vestibule. He rushed in through the door, and by the time we caught up, all I could see was him smacking a button on the wall—constantly.

Suddenly, alarms started to blare around the building.

"I told you there was no stopping him," Camden said.

Generation Killer came back out to us.

"That was a close one, wasn't it, bucko? You almost tripped me up," he said.

Suddenly, the doors around the building started to open, and workers began to evacuate en masse.

Steam was rising up in the place where the smoke had been, and the workers who were coming out were gawking at it.

One said, "Ohh, thank God."

Guess again.

"Wait a second," I said. "Did he just save all those people?"

That wasn’t really his MO.

"Yes," Camden said. "But they weren’t supposed to be saved."

I looked at him funny—but that, of course, didn’t show up on film.

Then something possibly even stranger than time travel started to happen.

I realized that I could suddenly see the stars. The blue sky was gone. It didn’t get dark—the light was still shining on things, and everything even had shadows—but instead of a blue sky, it was space. With no light pollution at all.

"What in the world..." I muttered as I filmed the sky above.

Purple streaks—cracks—started to spread around.

And suddenly, we were not just dealing with one Generation Killer.

Multiple showed up.

"What did you bring them here for?" one of them yelled out.

I started filming from my pocket, trying to hide the camera, so I didn’t get the best shots. Still, it was better than losing the camera.

"Interrogation. Just followin' orders, fella," the Generation Killer that had brought us said. "Could use a hand, if you're handy."

The other killers laughed.

"Did you hear that? He said he could sure use a hand! You see that—one is missing a hand!" another Generation Killer said.

Some of them laughed. Others rolled their eyes.

I looked at Camden, and he looked very annoyed.

"They have the worst sense of humor."

"Shouldn’t we run?" I whispered.

"There wouldn’t be any point," he said.

I really wanted Camden to start explaining what was happening, but he looked numb. Tired. Still, I needed an explanation.

"What is going on?" I asked.

"That factory—or plant—was supposed to explode, have a meltdown. But it didn’t," he said.

"Okay, but shouldn’t that just put us on a different timeline? One where the plant never exploded?"

"Normally," Camden said. "But this isn’t normal."

I didn’t want to press him. Instead, I just turned off the camera.

■ STOP

🔴 REC    SEP 25, 2018 08:24:25    [▮▮▮▮▯ 80%]

The Generation Killers led us to their hangout in this broken world—it just happened to be the Carousel Casino.

As we were shoved through the entrance, I saw that there were dozens of Generation Killers gambling on slot machines, just passing the time.

It was a large casino, and despite the Generation Killers being there, there were also NPCs—who weren’t completely oblivious but still didn’t seem to care about what was going on around them.

So, normal gamblers.

We were led to the elevators and then brought up to the 13th floor of the hotel.

They took us to one of the rooms, shoved us inside, and closed the door, where two of the Generation Killers stood guard.

I ran to the window, just to see if there was some way to open it—but there clearly wasn’t. That was fairly realistic; in the real world, casino hotels often don’t have windows that open.

"Back in room 1304," Camden said.

He was legitimately upset. He was scared.

I couldn’t blame him, and I didn’t want to seem too jaded, but I knew our best way out was to stay proactive.

He needed a pep talk.

■ STOP

We were silent at first. I had trouble reading what was going through his mind, so I didn’t want to say anything.

I didn’t want to assume that he had trauma he didn’t have, and I didn’t want to ignore him if he needed to talk.

Finally, he spoke.

“Plot Armor 36, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Suddenly, I’m a hard worker.”

We made our way to the couch in the room and sat down.

“How long has it been?”

I could tell that he was afraid of my answer.

“A year, plus or minus a few time skips,” I said. Then, after thinking for a moment, I asked, “How about for you? What do you remember?”

He looked up at me and said, “Everything.”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything more, but then he elaborated, leaning back on the couch and setting what remained of his arm across his chest as if to relax it.

“I had to do it all twice,” he said. “They cut off my arm. I fought like hell. I learned everything there was to know about what was going on. I had a whole battle plan—we were going to get the Atlas and send it to you guys. I managed to escape and meet up with Anna, and it worked. We found the Atlas. Then she escaped as they caught up with me. I took out a few, and then they killed me.”

“That’s what Anna said,” I said.

“And then I woke back up. Right back here. With both my arms again. But this time, everything was different. This time I was in a suite and not a basement. This time, the rules were all switched around, and there were dozens—maybe even hundreds—of Generation Killers instead of the twelve I originally had.

"I thought that this was what death was going to be like—that we were just going to repeat over and over again until rescued.

"It all happened over again. They cut off my arm again. And this time, I researched—and everything was different. They were filming things, and the rules are bigger, grander. And this time, you showed up before they killed me. It hurts my head to even think about. Like the memories are raw and touchy.”

I had not considered that Carousel might go that route. Anna had a trope that allowed her to perform in her own rescue. Camden didn’t, and though the mechanics of time travel allowed him to, there would have to be a price.

“Well, I don’t think we were originally supposed to rescue you,” I said.

“Probably not,” Camden agreed.

“You’re a scholar, and you were set up to have a lot of knowledge, but then all of the facts changed.”

“So I had to do it again. That was my punishment. You know, as soon as I said to Anna that you should try to rescue me before the storyline was done, I knew it was going to be trouble. I really hate these guys, Riley. It’s like they intentionally try to creep you out with their weird sense of humor.”

I nodded. “They have a trope for that,” I said. I must have had an awkward manner or something.

He took a deep breath.

“You know, for me, it’s only been a couple of weeks. Maybe a little more. You don’t have to talk to me like we’re at a funeral. You’re the one that’s been missing me.”

He didn’t like pity. He was the first of our group to die. He hadn’t handled that well and he hated when people tried to comfort him.

“And you’re the one who’s been on vacation,” I said.

He smiled. “Exactly. So I don’t need any more pity, all right?”

“I didn’t mean to pity you,” I said. “It’s just… rescuing you has been on my mind every waking hour in recent memory. It can be a little hard to remember that you have been taking the ‘nap’ part of ‘dirt nap’ seriously.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” Camden said. “It’s all fun and games. They even let me gamble. No one wins or loses, but they still do it because they’re degenerates, and ninety percent of them are idiots.”

“So what’s their story?” I asked.

“Discovered time travel. Somehow, they got trapped in our group of timelines, and they don’t like it. They’re really mad about it, and they want to destroy things just because.”

“The one I talked to said he wanted to go home,” I said.

“Oh yeah? And did you know that it’s our fault that they can’t go home? That anytime you beg them to stop hurting you, they’ll bring that up as if it’s justification? The pain is one thing, but the fact that you can’t even debate with these meatheads is worse. Luckily, they’re easy to trick.”

“They have a trope where they fail every moxie check, but it ends up coming back to bite you.”

“You get the willies,” Camden said. “They’ll apologize for that. They’ll say, ‘Sorry if I gave you the willies, I was just checking in.’”

I started to laugh.

“As soon as we get out of here, we’re going to find a serial killer who’s actually well-adjusted,” I said.

“Yeah, someone you could have a conversation with,” Camden agreed. “A Hannibal Lector.”

We laughed and continued with the small talk for a little while longer.

But we had work to do.

“So, about this time travel thing… I hear there are no paradoxes. Surely, I misunderstood something.”

“That is a whole barrel of monkeys,” Camden said. “That’s what they call it—a barrel of monkeys. Every time you try and work on it, one will walk up, look at what you’ve been researching, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s a whole barrel of monkeys.’ One after another.”

“That sounds like torture,” I said.

“And I can’t even cover up both of my ears,” he said, straining against the pain in his arm.

We laughed again, and laughing hurt his stump, so he tried not to do it for too long.

“If you want to know how time travel works, look behind you,” he said.

And I did.

What I saw was a drawing on the wallpaper of the hotel room.

“You did this?” I asked.

He nodded. “They wanted me to explain it to them. Just to check their understanding. And they have none. The smart ones kind of get it, but the dumb ones just make jokes.”

“Well, it is a whole barrel of monkeys,” I said.

Straining, he got up from the couch and went over to the diagram he had drawn, trying to walk me through it.

It started out pretty simple. On the far left, there was a node labeled Event A.

On the far right of the diagram, there was another node labeled Event B.

Between them was the typical diverging branches timeline illustration you would see in any time travel movie. The only difference was that, eventually, these branches started to converge at one point—Event B.

Any of the branches that did not lead to Event B were crossed out.

“All right, so buckle up. We need to practice this so I can say it on film,” Camden said.

“I’m all ears,” I said.

“Good. Event B will happen. Always,” Camden said. “There is nothing that can possibly prevent it. Any reality where Event B is no longer possible ends up like this.”

He pointed out the window to the stars in the sky, despite the daylight.

“Broken. Set aside. The rules don’t matter anymore. These guys made it into their own little kingdom. This is their hideout.”

“A place out of time,” I said. “So if the plant doesn’t melt down, Event B can’t happen?”

“Right, but hold off on calling this a place out of time. The place out of time is something else. You might have seen it when we were traveling to get here.”

“The Shores of Time,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “How did you know that?”

“Oh, Dina has this whole subplot where her teenage son—who was your friend, Gabriel—got lost on the other side of time at the same time that you guys left the roller rink.”

“Gabriel…” Camden muttered. “I’ll have to make note of that,” he said.

“Yeah, she’s got her own thing going. As always,” I said.

"I copied this diagram directly from what the smart ones already had written," Camden said.

He had a trope that allowed him to copy visual information onto the red wallpaper directly. It was quite the cheat code.

"So, here’s the thing about Event B—if it doesn’t happen, that is the paradox of all paradoxes. That’s what I meant when I said there were no paradoxes. It’s because… Oh great, I don’t know how to explain this to the audience."

"Well, just try to explain it to me, and then I'll work with you on it. We did the same thing with Anna," I said.

"Okay," he said. "You know how gravity works, right? How everything puts off a gravitational field? This couch and that desk over there are both putting off gravitational fields. You and I are both putting off gravitational fields. So why are these things not attracting to each other across space?"

"It’s because we’re just friends," I said.

"Ohh, haha. What I’m talking about is—why does this couch not gravitationally attract to that table over there? It’s because of the Earth, right? The Earth is so massive and has such a big gravitational force that all of these other gravitational fields are basically canceled out."

"Yes," I said. "Robin Williams explained that in Flubber. Go on."

"Right. Well, I think that this paradox—the forces of physics that we can’t even begin to understand—work substantially the same way."

He paused for a moment as if struggling to put it into words.

"The physical forces that work to prevent the paradox of Event B not occurring are so massive that other paradoxes basically don’t mean anything in their wake, right? They’re not causing any problems because they’re in the—I don’t know—paradoxical field of Event B… I already lost the audience. This doesn’t even make sense, but it’s how things work here, I swear."

I thought for a moment.

"I understand," I said. "So it’s like—if you’re at a river and you throw a giant rock into it, it could cause all kinds of ripple effects. But if the river is about to go off a waterfall, nothing ends up mattering."

"That’s… That’s good," he said. "Anyway, that’s why you can go back in time and do pretty much whatever you want. You won’t trigger a real paradox because the forces pulling all causality toward Event B will fix anything that you break."

"Like when you kill a copy of the Generation Killer, and he gets washed away to the Shores of Time," I said.

"That’s it," Camden answered.

"You’re right; that is confusing. Maybe we shouldn’t try to explain this to the audience. Just leave vague so that the nerds can pretend to understand it for clout."

He shrugged.

"So what happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather?" I asked.

"Your grandfather dies. Your dad was never born. And neither were you. You’ll be fine because you have your own personal timeline because of the jewel."

"It’s a meteorite," I said.

"Meteorite," he repeated. "But even with your family line completely butchered, all of the things your family did will still happen. The forces are so strong that causality will just stitch together some alternate reason for everything that needs to happen to happen… That’s why only mass death creates appreciable timeline branches…”

He stopped and thought for a moment.

"We view time as being this delicate thing, where a butterfly can flap its wings and cause massive effects—but that’s just not true. Time is powerful. It’s all-consuming. It’s inevitable."

He looked at me seriously.

"Riley, I think it’s the real monster of this storyline."

"Yeah, but that’s cheating," I said. "Time is the enemy in every storyline."

"No, I mean it," he said. "Here, there is one rule: Event B happens. Always. And these guys? They’re scared out of their minds about it."

"Go more into that," I said.

"They’re different ages because when they came to this group of timelines, some of them stopped time traveling as much—so they aged in whatever year they were left in. A lot of them took a while to figure out how time travel worked in the first place. But any of them that lives past the year 2025? Never comes back. So that is when Event B is supposed to happen."

“2025,” I repeated. “Massive inevitable event that must happen.”

"They think it’s the end of the world," he said. "I just don’t know."

"What do you think they mean when they say they’re trapped and they want to go home?" I asked.

"I’m still working on it. There are pieces of information I haven’t had time to sift through. Look at this," he said.

He pointed to another illustration he had made—this one was a map of the Carousel River Valley.

He grabbed the marker from his pocket, took off the cap with his teeth, and started drawing little squiggles all over the map. Then, taking the cap out of his teeth, he said:

"I don’t know what these squiggles are. They’ve got this map inside of their little study area. I got a good look at it, and I have it on the red wallpaper—but I don’t know what they mean. This wasn’t there the first time. In fact, the wall that it was on was just blank—which leads me to believe that it was supposed to be there, but maybe we didn’t do something, so we didn’t get that information."

"We’re learning a lot about how stories work," I said. "If you don’t activate a subplot, it just isn’t going to be there. And some subplots are really necessary."

"So, what do you think the squiggles are?" Camden asked. "There are more—I could draw them all day."

I looked at the map.

"Well, this squiggle here is right on top of the original Carousel settlement," I said. "You can tell because it’s right there where the river hooks."

I stared at it a little longer. I still wasn’t sure.

We tried our best to come up with theories, but we were running short.

The good news—if you could call it good news—was that we were technically not part of the main character group, which meant we had a lot of Off-Screen time.

I spent a lot of it wearing my headphones and listening to what other people were doing.

Logan was sassing a KRSL agent who was interrogating him.

Interestingly, the agent didn’t seem aggressive or mean—just curious. Almost friendly.

Maybe they were playing good cop, bad cop. Or maybe they weren’t antagonists, which would be wonderful. It made sense that they would arrest Logan—not only did he have a criminal background, which would make for a good back-and-forth, but he was the one who activated the KRSL subplot by talking to his museum scientist friend.

When it cut away from him, it cut to Anna. They were mostly in a hideout phase right now, planning how to rescue the rest of us.

I also heard dogs barking—a lot.

And I recognized the dogs.

Bobby’s two hounds were leading him around on the other side of time. And he was so polite to those dogs. When he talked to them, it was like he thought they were people.

Heck, if they helped us win this story, I’d let them eat at the dinner table.

I stared at the diagrams Camden had made and asked myself how important a command of the time travel rules had to be for us to win.

Event B… something that occurred in all timelines but would not occur in this one because the plant didn’t melt down. Curious.

It was a whole barrel of monkeys.