Destroyer

Book 2: Rewinder

by Brett Battles

Genres: Alternative History Fantasy; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Time Travel; YA Action & Adventure; YA Science Fiction

Synopsis

With the whole of human history altered, Denny Younger may be the last rewinder in existence—and the last person on earth with a chaser unit capable of time travel. While caring for his ailing sister, Denny must discover a way to recharge his device before he’s left with no defense against a past that wants him dead.

Before long, Denny notices a mysterious stranger following him—keeping tabs on Denny, his family, and his friends. Is Denny just paranoid? Or maybe he isn’t alone in this new reality after all…

When his chaser is stolen and his girlfriend is kidnapped, Denny risks everything to get both of them back. Launched into a high-stakes chase that spans continents and millennia, Denny’s responsibility to save our future isn’t over yet. It will take all of his cunning to stop a threat capable of steering the fate of the human race into disaster.

Release date: January 12, 2016

Publisher: 47North

Print pages: 254

Sample

Chapter 1

I live in fear. 

Fear of my past. 

Fear for our future.

Fear that I’ve paid too high a price to save my sister’s life. 

Fear that I will be held accountable for altering mankind’s destiny.

Don’t think destinies can’t be altered. I’ve done it more than once. 

The first incident was an error, but not the second. 

Time travel. It can be…problematic. Even the smallest of errors can result in, well, a place like this.

Don’t thank me, though. What I’ve done carries with it the guilt of millions of erased lives. Maybe billions.

Believe me or not, but the truth is the truth.

My name is Denny Younger, and I am a rewinder.

JUMP.

Chapter 2

This is not the first time I’ve seen the man in the gray suit, but it takes me a moment before I place him. 

Ruby’s Coffee Shop.

The café is near my apartment, and I often go there for an early coffee while my sister is still sleeping, so I’ve come to recognize many of the regular customers. The man is one of them, though I’m pretty sure he’s only started coming around in the last couple of weeks or so.

The thing is, I’m nowhere near Ruby’s right now. I’m downtown walking toward the San Diego Central Library. It’s a place I go to expand my knowledge about this timeline. Though, as my girlfriend Iffy has shown me, I can do a lot of my research on the worldwide Internet, physical books are what I’m used to. 

The man is standing off to the side of the open glass wall that serves as the building’s entrance. He’s holding a brochure as if studying it, but he’s not. He’s watching me approach. When I glance in his direction, he looks back at his pamphlet, suddenly interested in it again. 

It’s possible he’s having the same “I’ve seen this guy before” moment that I just had, but the tingle I feel at the back of my neck makes me think otherwise. I see no hint of surprised or even confusion in his eyes. He’s interested in me. 

Acting like I haven’t noticed anything special about him, I causally walk into the library’s large lobby, but casual is not how I feel. The desire to hurry to someplace private where I can slip my hand into my satchel, press the go button on my chaser, and make a time jump away from here is nearly overwhelming. Only that’s not an option. The device’s battery strength continues to decline with every trip I make. Until I have a way to recharge it, I decided to limit my jumps to only those which are necessary, and have left the chaser in my safe at home. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, I’m not so sure.

I take the escalator up to the second floor where I position myself so that I can discretely watch the entrance below. A few moments pass before the man finally saunters inside. By the way he hesitates near the base of the escalator I know he’s aware of where I have gone. Instead of following me, though, he heads deeper into the first floor where I can no longer see him.

I frown in annoyance. I’d been hoping he’d come up so that I could sneak around him, and make my way out of the building unseen. But now I assume that if I try, he’ll spot me. So, for the moment, I’m trapped. 

Two months ago while Iffy and I were walking around Coronado Island, I saw someone I swore I knew—a veteran rewinder named Carla Manning. She was walking in front of us and hadn’t seen me yet, so we followed her all the way to a restaurant. Through the glass door we watched two teenagers greeted her, their features clearly indicating they were her children. With much relief, I realized it wasn’t Carla at all. Or, at least, not the version of Carla from my world. 

I’m feeling the same panic now that I felt then. It’s the cost of living in fear of being discovered. Some days I can almost pretend I’m like everyone else here, that this is the world I was born into. 

But it’s not. 

I have no idea if anyone else from my old world survived the change, but if they did, they’ll be looking for me. What I can’t figure out is if the man is one of them. Though there’s something familiar about him, I’m positive that prior to the first time I noticed him at Ruby’s, I’d never seen him before. That doesn’t mean he’s not from my former life, though. There were, after all, many rewinders I never met.

I retreat to a table from where I can keep an eye on most of the second floor, pull out my laptop, and pretend to work on it. Nearly twenty minutes pass before the man rides the escalator up. I tense the moment I see him, but stay my urge to get up and run. He walks into the area where I am sitting and chooses the open table farthest from mine. 

Once more I really wish I’d brought my chaser. Who cares about the miniscule power drain a quick jump would cause? Yes, perhaps the man is harmless, but why take the chance? 

I close my computer and shove it back in my satchel. There’s no reason to put off my departure any longer. If he’s here to take me, I’m already lost.

As I rise, I innocently glance around the room and once more catch him looking in my direction. With a sense of calm I don’t feel, I return to the escalator and head down to the lobby. 

The entrance area is considerably more crowded now than when I first arrived, and I have to weave through a mass of patrons to get to the exit. This actually allows me to shoot a quick look back. I expect to see the man descending the escalator or at least standing at the top, but he is nowhere in sight. 

Does this mean he’s used his own chaser and is already waiting for me outside?

I head back into the daylight, my body tense in the anticipation of someone grabbing my arm, but I make it to the sidewalk without any interference. Looking around, I don’t see the man anywhere. 

What I do see, however, is a city bus moving toward the nearby stop. It’s not heading in the direction I want to go, but I don’t care. I run over and jump on just before the doors close. Taking a seat a few rows back, I watch the library as we pull away, but once more see no sign of the man in the gray suit. Just to be sure, I scan the other passengers in case he is already here, but he’s not.

As I slump against the window, I tell myself it’s just a coincidence. He’s not after me. He’s not a rewinder.

For the most part, I believe it. 

When I arrive home, I find Iffy sitting at the dining table. I don’t like to leave my sister alone in the apartment if I’m going to be gone for more than thirty minutes, but while Iffy doesn’t officially live with Ellie and me, she’s here more often than not and is able to play guardian when I need to get away. 

“How is she?” I ask as I pull off my satchel and set it on the dining table.

“Still asleep.” Iffy tilts her chin up and we kiss. “How did the research go?” 

“It didn’t.” I tell her about the encounter with the man in the suit. 

“Are you sure he wasn’t one of them?”

“If he was, I doubt I would have made it home.”

She looks unconvinced, which is understandable given her own encounter with one of my fellow institute members back in early April. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to leave the chaser here when you go out.”

Though I’ve been feeling the same, I say, “You know why I can’t.”

She’s silent for a moment, and when she speaks, I know what’s coming. “Please, let me call RJ.”

She has been pushing her friend on me for a while. Raymond Johnson is someone she grew up with, who is now attending one of the local universities, UC San Diego, where he is studying something called information technologies. She has repeatedly told me he can help with the chaser’s power problem.

To this point, I’ve rebuffed the suggestion. Now, though…

“Can we trust him?”

Clearly she’s been expecting me to shut her down again and looks surprised at my question. “Absolutely.”

I think for a moment longer, and then with the hope that I don’t regret what I’m about to say, tell her, “Let’s talk to him.

__________

My chaser sits on the table in front of us. It looks like nothing special, just an old wooden box that could as easily be from 1015 as from 2015. 

Iffy’s likened it to a cigar box in size, and from the pictures she’s shown me, that seems about right. It even has a similar lid. When opened, though, instead of revealing rows of cigars, it uncovers a control panel.

The device was developed at the Upjohn Institute, a place that now never existed, and yet I walked its halls, studied in its library, and slept in its dormitory. The device is what allowed rewinders such as myself to travel through time.

It was Sir Gregory, one of the institute’s administrators, who told me during training that the chaser is the most powerful thing on earth. “In the wrong hands, can you imagine the devastation one of these could cause?”

I don’t need to imagine now. I’ve done it. But that’s the past. What we’re doing now is trying to figure out the future.

Iffy sits beside me. Across from us is her friend RJ.

While technically I’m no longer employed by the Upjohn Institute, and therefore am not bound by their rules and regulations, I can’t ignore the sense of panic growing in my chest. Revealing the truth about who I really am to an outsider and explaining what a chaser allows me to do are two of the institute’s cardinal sins. 

To this point, I’ve shared these secrets with only two others. Iffy, when I thought she was about to be erased forever and telling her wouldn’t matter; and my sister, Ellie, who I brought to this reality so she could receive medical treatment our former timeline denied her.

Bringing a third person into our circle—someone I have just met at that—is beyond merely difficult. I’m in a mental battle with myself to keep from picking up the chaser and racing out of the room. But like it or not, I need Iffy’s friend. 

My chaser’s battery will eventually run dry, rendering the device useless. I can’t allow that to happen. I may be the last of the rewinders, but if I’m not, others will be searching for me so they can force me to bring back the original timeline. Without a working chaser, I can easily be taken. The machine gives me the ability to hide if necessary, or, if I must, fight them on an equal footing. 

RJ looks at the box and then at us. “So?”

“We’re hoping you can help us figure out how to charge it,” Iffy says.

When he lifts the chaser off the table, I nearly leap out of my chair to snatch it back from him. Sensing my unease, Iffy grabs my thigh and gives it a squeeze. This does little to calm me, but it does keep me in my seat. 

RJ turns the box around, studying each side. Finally he asks, “What do you mean charge it? It’s a box.”

“It’s more than a box,” Iffy says.

He looks at Iffy, waiting for her to elaborate. I can feel her glance nervously in my direction, prompting RJ to turn his attention to me. “So, what is it?”

It takes me another couple seconds before I can say, “I don’t see how that’s important.”

Iffy squeezes my leg again, and then asks RJ, “Will it help if you know?”

“Um, yeah. I need to understand what I’m working with here.” He turns the chaser around again. “I don’t even see a place to plug anything in.” 

My discomfort is reaching maximum. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

“Look,” RJ says, setting the device down, “I don’t know what the big deal is, but Iffy said you needed my help. If you don’t want it, fine. No worries.” He stands.

Iffy scolds me with her glare as she says, “Denny?”

I close my eyes for a half second and then let out the breath I’ve been holding. “I’m sorry…yes, we do need your help.”

“Then you’re going to have to tell me what that thing is.”

After another quick glance in my direction, Iffy says, “Actually, it’ll be easier if we show you.”

The plan is one she proposed after she finally convinced me to have the meeting. Reluctantly, I then worked up the information per her instructions and input it into my chaser. What I didn’t do was openly agree to executing her plan. 

While I know in principle this will be the easiest way to convince him, going through with her plan means yet another major institute rule broken. So when she stands, I’m not so quick to do the same.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I’ve never done it with three before.” This is a weak argument at best. Marie, my personal instructor during my training period at the institute, told me a rewinder could jump with as many as five people in a pinch, and that once someone had taken a journey with seven. Three won’t be a problem.

“Never done what with three?” Wariness has crept into RJ’s voice.

Iffy gives him a reassuring smile before saying to me, “I’ll stay. You can go with him by yourself.”

This is not the response I expected, and while RJ seems nice enough, if we’re really going to do this, I’d much rather have Iffy along. “Never mind. I’m, um, sure it’ll be okay.”

RJ’s concern has only intensified. “What are you guys talking about?”

Iffy hands me the chaser as we move away from the table and then waves RJ over. “Join us.” 

He hesitates.

“RJ, don’t be an idiot. Get over here.”

Reluctantly he walks over.

Iffy puts her arms around me from the left. “Grab on to Denny on that side just like this.” 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he says. “I think it would be better if—”

“Quit being such a baby and do it.”

“You guys are messing with me, aren’t you?” He looks around. “Are we on one of those practical joke shows? You’re streaming this live online, aren’t you?”

“RJ!”

Looking like he’s sure he’s being set up, he very tentatively grabs my right side, leaving a gap between us.

He’s probably close enough, but I’d rather not take any chances. “Move in a bit.”

“Oh, sure. Move it.” He steps right next to me and hugs me tight, like he wants to crush my ribs.

“I’d like to be able to breathe.” 

“Too much? Sorry, man.” He loosens his hold, still smiling like he’s in on the joke. 

“Everyone set?” I ask.

As Iffy nods, she locks eyes with RJ. “Don’t freak out.”

“Freak out about what?” he asks.

I raise the chaser and press go.


At Iffy’s suggestion we go for the dramatic.

RJ apparently has a passion for all things space related, so I jump us to a hill in the Mojave Desert within the boundaries of Edwards Air Force Base. The date is April 14, 1981, and as per the protocol I learned during my rewinder training, we arrive in the dark of the early morning.

RJ gasps as he pulls away from me, cringing from the headache of the trip. We all experience one, but we haven’t gone that far back, so it’s not very intense. Since I do this a lot, I barely notice it and am able to immediately assess our surroundings. 

In the west, a quarter moon rests just above the horizon, providing more than enough light to see the dry lake in the plain in front of us. At one edge of the lake is a large rectangular area filled with cars and campers and RVs, many with lights on. I have never seen so many vehicles parked in one place before. Surely there are more than a thousand. As for the hill where we stand, we are alone. I look around and spot some large rocks that should hide our presence during daylight, and then use the chaser’s calculator to adjust the location number so that we will pop out behind the boulders next time. 

“Where…what…” RJ stutters as he rises out of his crouch and looks around, wide eyed.

“Grab on,” I say. “We’re not done.”

“What are you talking about? We’re not done what? I don’t understand.”

“RJ,” Iffy says, “do you want us to leave you here?”

I know he’s desperately trying to find an explanation for what has just happened, but he’s obviously coming up empty. The thought of being abandoned, though, is enough for him to scramble back over and grab on to me again. 

A push of the button, and we travel physical backward forty feet and forward in time several hours to 10:05 a.m. The bright sunlight forces me to squeeze my eyes shut. Once I feel them starting to adjust, I slowly open them again. The good thing is, with a trip this short, the accompanying headache is all but nonexistent for all of us.

RJ has once more moved a few feet away from me. He blinks rapidly as he stares up at the sky. “But…but…how…we were just…”

Iffy moves quickly to his side, but as she puts an arm around him, he jerks away and looks at her, terrified.

“It’s just me,” she says.

He swallows hard, and when her hand touches his shoulder again, he doesn’t shake it off.

“I told you not to freak out.”

“You drugged me, didn’t you?” he asks. “This is some kind of hallucination.”

“What? No. We didn’t drug you.”

“This can’t be real.”

She touches the rock we are now hiding behind. “Feel it. It’s real.”

He moves a hand toward the boulder as if he or it or both might explode if actual contact is made. When his fingertip brushes the surface, he freezes for a second and then shoves his palm against the rock.

He turns to me. “Where’s your apartment?”

“A couple hundred miles south,” I say, almost adding that I’m pretty sure it hasn’t even been built yet. Better to ease him in. “We’re in the desert, north of Los Angeles.”

His brow wrinkles as he tries to process this. After a few moments, he sneers and begins shaking his head. “No, no, no. We’re still in your apartment. That box, it’s some sort of VR rig, isn’t it?”

Now I’m the confused one. “VR?”

“Virtual reality. I have no idea how it could work without goggles, but holy crap, this is great!”

“It’s not VR,” Iffy says. “Feel the wind and the heat. Smell the dirt. We’re not in Denny’s apartment.”

RJ shakes his head, snorting a couple laughs. “So, what? That’s some kind of transportation device? Very funny, Iffy. But I’m not stupid.”

“Oh, it’s more than just a transportation device.”

He cocks his head, his mask of denial cracking a little. “What do you mean?” 

Iffy glances at me. “How much time do we have?”

I check the chaser. “Just a few more minutes.”

“Come on,” she tells RJ. “There’s something you’re going to want to see.” She starts climbing up the rock. 

“Oh, no. You tell me what the hell is going on, or I’ll—”

“Trust me, you’re not going to want to miss this.” 

“This is insane,” he says as he starts up after her.

Once I put the chaser in my satchel, I head up, too.

I’m still a long way from understanding all the intricacies of Iffy’s world, but I’m sure our presence here is breaking some kind of United States law. We’re on a military base without permission, after all, on what is a very important day. When Iffy told me her idea, she assured me that while security might be tight, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as strict as it becomes after the New York terrorist attack in 2001. I hope she’s right. While we could easily escape by jumping if we’re spotted, I would rather the military not see us disappear in front of their eyes.

For this reason, I urge caution as we reach the top and peer over it.

The dry lake bed lies before us. Permanent lines are drawn into it, mapping out what look like several wide roads. Off to the side, in the area where all the vehicles are parked, a crush of people now line a barrier on the edge closest to the lake. They’re pressed together a dozen deep at the least, like a giant amorphous snake with one very straight edge.

“What is this?” RJ asks. “Where exactly are we?”

“Edwards Air Force Base,” Iffy tells him.

His mouth opens several times as if he wants to ask something else, but each time it closes again without a word. 

After a few minutes, Iffy points at the distant sky. “See it?”

Both RJ and I look to where she’s indicated. At first I see nothing but blue, then slowly I begin to make out a white dot.

“Is that a plane?” RJ asks.

“Not exactly,” Iffy says.

The dot grows and begins to take shape: wings and a tail connected to a fat body. 

I glance at RJ. His expression is a battle of wonder and confusion. I look back to the sky and see that two smaller aircraft have joined the first. At that moment we hear the distant sound of the thousands gathered on the lake cheering. 

“This can’t be,” RJ whispers.

Down the aircraft travels, its shape becoming more and more distinctive. 

“This can’t be.”

I worry that RJ is going to jump off the rock and run, but he stays where he is, transfixed by the event unfolding in front of us.

Iffy pulls her phone out of her pocket and points it toward the aircraft. Using the camera, she magnifies the image until the vehicle rests prominently in the middle. The iconic image is impossible to mistake for anything other than what it is—a space shuttle. We are witnessing the return of the very first one to orbit the earth. 

RJ stares at the camera for a moment and then quickly returns his gaze to the sky so he can watch with his own eyes.

The shuttle is so low when the landing gear deploys that I’ve begun to wonder if the aircraft is going to crash. I am not familiar with the details of this event, but I do know at some point there is at least one disaster involving the shuttle program. I only hope that I’m not about to see it. But the gear does drop down, and the aircraft touches the dry lake bed with a puff of dust. 

As the orbiter slows, RJ finally looks back at Iffy’s camera. 

“That’s…that’s the Columbia.”

I look at the screen, but the only thing I can make out on the shuttle is a red, white, and blue rectangle next to the barely readable words United States. “How do you know?” I ask.

He points to a line of black on the front half of the fuselage. Letters or numbers, maybe, but impossible to read.

“The Columbia is the only one that had its name on the cargo bay doors,” he explains. “All the others were closer to the cockpit. They even moved Columbia’s there later, too.”

As if just realizing what he’s said, he jerks back from the phone and climbs quickly off the rock. When we join him, he backs away a few feet, creating a buffer between us.

“I don’t understand,” he says. “What just happened?”

Iffy smiles sympathetically. “RJ, you saw it with your own eyes.”

“I don’t know what I saw.” 

Iffy lifts the flap of my satchel and says, “May I?”

After I nod, she pulls out the device that has brought us here. 

“It’s called a chaser,” she says. “It allows Denny to travel through time.”

RJ spits out a solitary laugh. “You’re crazy.”

“You just witnessed the landing of the very first space shuttle mission, in person.” She looks around. “We’re standing in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from where we were twenty minutes ago. Not to mention when we left San Diego it was evening, and now it’s midmorning.” 

“No, it’s some kind of…some kind of trick,” he says, though he sounds far from convinced that he is right.

“All right. What else can we do to prove it to you?”

He frowns skeptically. “Right. You’ll take me anywhere.”

“We can.”

“Okay. Let’s go see, um, the signing of the Declaration of Independence.” He crosses his arms as if he’s thrown down a challenge he knows we can’t deliver on.

In a way, he’s correct. There are so many things wrong with this request—from the clothes we are wearing to the type of money we don’t have, not to mention that RJ’s African American ancestry could create its own set of dangerous problems—but it’s the proximity of the signing to the point in history where I already changed the timeline on multiple occasions that concerns me the most. “We’re not prepared for a jump that far,” I say. “Plus it would use up too much of what is left in the battery. Which is what we’re trying to get your help with, after all.”

Looking at me for approval, Iffy says, “How about something a little more recent? Say within fifty years of 2015?”

“That we can do,” I say with a nod.

RJ is silent for several seconds before saying, “1977?”

It is near the far end of the time frame, but doable. “Okay,” I say. “Do you have an exact date and location?”

A mischievous smile grows on his face. “I do.” 

__________

The total time of our journey into the past was several hours longer than I had anticipated, but I don’t adjust for this when we jump home, and instead return us to my apartment only ten minutes after we left. 

Being in the opening night audience for a movie called Star Wars has turned RJ into an enthusiastic supporter of the—as he calls it—“Juice the Time Machine” project. While he and Iffy take detailed measurements of the chaser and the power slot, I check on my sister, and am surprised to find her sitting up, a book in her hand. 

“When did you wake?” I ask.

“A few minutes ago.”

I sit on the bed beside her and touch her forehead, happy to find it cool. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Tired?”

“I’ve been sleeping all day.”

“I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

Her eyes light up. “Yes. Very. How about a hamburger?”

I made the mistake of letting Iffy pick up a hamburger for Ellie one night, and now my sister can’t get enough of them.

“I’m thinking soup tonight.”

She grimaces. “I don’t want soup.”

Knowing even if I win this argument, I’ll lose, I say, “I’ll see what we have.” 

I tilt my head and read the title off the spine of her book. Oliver Twist. Charles Dickens. He was a writer in our timeline, too, though his canon of work is different than it is in Iffy’s world. Ellie likes reading this version of him better, she’s told me. Even though his stories are more than 150 years old, she says there are things about them that remind her of home and the friends she will never see again. These are the same friends who stopped visiting her as she grew more and more sick, but Ellie doesn’t know this. That occurred to the version of her I watched die when I was still a boy. I grabbed this Ellie before her friends turned their backs on her. 

“Where did you go?” she asks as I stand up again.

“Go?”

“Someone was knocking on the door. I went to check, and you and Iffy and her friend were gone.”

“Did you open it?” I ask, instantly concerned. When she is here alone she is, under no circumstances, supposed to talk to anyone.

She shakes her head. “Just peeked out the window.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. By the time I looked, no one was there.”

With the exception of Iffy, who has a key, and this evening, RJ, the only visitors we usually get are either our landlord, Mr. Castor, or people trying to sell us something. I assume it must have been one or the other, though my sense of unease does not completely disappear.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she says.

“We took a quick trip.”

“Back?”

“A few years.” 

Ellie still struggles with the idea that I jump through time. The only trips she has taken with me were the jumps we made when I brought her here, and she was basically unconscious through all of them. But she realizes that the world here is completely different than the one we were born into, and she can’t ignore that the brother who had once been two years younger than she is now five years older. It’s actually surprising that she hasn’t had a mental breakdown. Thankfully, she’s only fourteen and still has a bit of wonder about the world.

“Let me go see what I can whip up for dinner.”

“No soup,” she says.

“No soup,” I agree. 

When I return to the other room, RJ is looking over several pages of notes. 

“How’s it going?” I ask.

He looks up, surprised. “Great. You wouldn’t consider letting me open it up, would you? I’ll be very careful.”

“No way.” 

While I’ve opened one of the smaller interior cavities to disconnect my chaser’s companion function, I’ve never opened the main area. And with the very real possibility that this is the last chaser in existence, I wouldn’t want anyone else to do it either, unless there was absolutely no other choice. 

“Figured as much,” he said. “It’s okay. I have a couple ideas that might do the trick. We’ll have to do a little testing, though.”

I frown. This is treading into the same waters as opening the box. 

Before I can respond, though, he says, “Don’t worry. Nothing invasive. I just need to check power levels and make sure we’re sending the right type of electricity in so that we don’t fry any circuits. I assume it uses DC, but who knows? Don’t suppose you’d be open to bringing it by the lab at school? They’ve got everything I need there.”

“I’d rather we do what needs to be done here.” I can’t chance others getting curious about what RJ is working on.

“You’re not making this easy, are you?” He thinks for a moment. “Give me a couple days to see what I can come up with.”

“Sure,” Iffy says. “Call me when you’re ready, and we’ll set up a time to meet again.”

For months, the weight of the chaser’s diminishing power problem has been sitting squarely on my shoulders, but now, at least for the moment, it’s almost gone. So it’s with relief that I offer him my hand. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he says, smiling broadly. “‘May you live in interesting times.’ Sure fits, doesn’t it?”

I cock my head. “What?”

“It’s something a friend told me once. Said it’s some kind of Korean or Chinese curse. I can’t remember what. It doesn’t sound like a curse to me.” He nods at the chaser. “And with that, man, you get to live in multiple interesting times.”

His words are truer than he even realizes.

He starts to turn for the door, but then stops. “Oh, I’ll, um, probably need to get some parts. They might not be cheap. And, well…” He points a thumb at himself. “Student.”

“Of course. How much do you think you need?” 

He considers the question for a moment and then says, “A few hundred?”

“Wait here.”

I go into my room and open the safe I keep in my closet. It’s where I put the chaser when I’m not using it. It’s also where I keep some of the cash I’ve collected on hand. Usually there’s between $5,000 and $10,000, but I’ve recently had another bill from Ellie’s doctors, and at the moment there’s only $1,800. 

I pull out ten one-hundred-dollar bills and return to the other room. “If you need more than this, let me know,” I say, handing the money to RJ.

His eyes widen when he sees how much it is. “This should be more than enough. I’ll bring you receipts and change.”

“Don’t worry about it. Whatever you don’t spend, you can keep.”

“I can’t do that,” he says uneasily.

“We’re not asking you to do this for free. Keep the money.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Thanks, man.” He walks over to the door, but hesitates before opening it. “So, um, if we can power that thing up, any chance we might be able to go back and watch an Apollo launch?”

“If you fix the charging problem, I’ll take you anywhere you want.”