EMPTY STREETS

The Rapier's cockpit / Forbidden Planets Region / The Edge of dark space

Haunted by the guilt of his earlier words, Toombs was unwilling to look Kearyn in the eyes. He sat in the copilot's seat, idly gazing around at the instrument panels in front of him. "I'll never be able to thank you for what you've done for Eve." He said to the floor.

"Save your praise for someone more deserving than I." Kearyn replied, staring through the windscreen, equally unwilling to meet Toombs gaze. "Truth be told, you wouldn't be so quick to thank me if you knew who was really responsible for Eve's suffering."

"What?" he said, as if either not hearing or understanding. Kearyn and Toombs had only known each other for a few weeks. But Toombs felt as if he had known Kearyn for decades.

"This is neither the time, nor the place for a confessional," Kearyn said, staring into the void outside the starboard observation port as if waiting for something to emerge from the darkness. "Suffice it to say, I regret having to ask you to speak to Eve in such a disrespectful manner. I know it couldn't have been easy for you."

Toombs waited until his eyes cleared, then he turned and said, "I appreciate the concern. But you're right, it had to be done. I can't lose her again."

"In my defense," Kearyn hastily added, fiddling needlessly with a knob on the console to the left of him. He still didn't want to look at Toombs. "I needed to access Eve's most powerful memories, and you were the only way I had to draw them out." I can't lose her again either, he thought.

"What powerful memories?" Toombs repeated.

"Like when you first met in Times Square."

Toombs didn't hear Kearyn's last words. His thoughts had drifted a billion miles away, to a time and place long thought forgotten. He was standing in a busy intersection in the middle of time square surrounded by blaring horns, flashing lights and the sounds of an entire city echoing thru empty streets. He was alone, as if trapped in a nightmare with only his thoughts; where is she? Why can't I find her?

"It's not your fault." Kearyn said, snapping Toombs out of his head as he placed a gloved hand on his shoulder.

"What's not?" Toombs asked.

"Your lost memories. You did nothing wrong. I did."

How could you know about that? Toombs had tried in vain to remember the day he met Eve. The effort felt like rummaging through a giant empty box. It left him with a throbbing headache every time he tried. After years of failure, he gave up, fearing something was wrong with him. But he could not understand how Kearyn knew about his missing memories.

"How do you know about that?" he asked, secretly afraid that if Eve ever learned about his memory loss, she would no longer think he loved her.

"Because it's my fault."

"Your fault!" he said, as if Kearyn's admission had suddenly drawn out a feeling that he had seen something in the crowd the day he met Eve.

"Yes. It is." Kearyn admitted with a nod that ended with him looking at the floor. He didn't want to tell Toombs what he had done. But the time had come to set things right.

Toombs turned to Kearyn and said, "Tell me how you know about Times Square? I've never spoken of that day."

Kearyn squeezed Toombs' shoulder and everything in sight vibrated. Toombs became nauseous and then, without warning, he stood in the intersection where he met Eve. Only this time, it didn't feel like a memory; it felt real.

The entire cityscape was quiet as the grave and Toombs screamed, "Eve!" His voice bounced off the high concrete surfaces above the streets and echoed away as if trying to find her.

"Alone again." he said to himself, shaking his head. But he wasn't alone. This time there was someone else there with him. Someone who should have not been there.

"Alexander," a familiar voice called out from behind him.

Toombs reeled around to find Kearyn standing on the edge of the curb on the other side of the street. He stared at Kearyn, rubbing and blinking his eyes as if trying to remove part of a picture he knew didn't belong. "What the hell are you doing here? What's going on?" Toombs asked, stumbling through his questions the way a drunk stumbled down a sidewalk.

Kearyn didn't move towards Toombs, he just stood on the curb as if letting his presence sink in, "I told you when I first came to see you, if you helped me set things right, I would return the things most precious to you." Kearyn raised his arms, gestured to the city around them and added, "And here, in this place, I will fulfill a part of that promise. I will give back what I unwittingly took from you."

"Guy, there's nothin' more precious than Eve. And she isn't here anymore; this is just an empty memory of days gone by." Toombs said, gesturing around at the streets full of nothing.

"No, Alexander. It is all still here just the way you left all those years ago." Kearyn replied, dismissing the emptiness with a wave of his own, "That is why I brought you here."

"How are you supposed to return anything here?" Toombs demanded. He walked back and forth on the adjacent curb as if afraid to step into the empty street. The city spread out before him like an empty 3 dimensional painting.

Kearyn stepped down from the high curb and approached Toombs. After only a few steps, he stopped in the middle of the 4 lane street and answered, "By giving back your memories in the same way I took them from you." Then, he extended his hands as if pleading forgiveness, "I am truly sorry, old friend; I wanted to watch her grow up. I needed to make sure the two of you were safe and you would stand together through thick and thin."

Toombs stood on the sidewalk with his hands on his head as if consumed by utter dismay, "What the fuck are you talking about? How did we get here? We were just on the Rapier."

Kearyn shook his head and replied, "I brought us here from the Rapier."

"Brought us here, where?"

"This may be difficult to understand..."

"You think!" he bellowed.

"What can you remember?"

"Bits and pieces."

Kearyn gestured around and said, "Here, in this place, we are between times. Some memories we brought, like those of the Rapier, and some memories unlocked during our trip here."

"Like headlights, screeching tires and crushing pain." Toombs thought. I died. "Did something happen to Eve? Is she OK?"

"Fear not, Alexander. That memory is not from here. Eve is fine."

"This is nuts, Kearyn! It's hoodoo magic. No one can know what's in someone else's head."

"True, Alexander." Kearyn replied. "But in time you will come to understand this is nothing more than science."

"Science!"

"I had to drop in from time to time; just to see how the two of you were getting along." Kearyn continued, gesturing around the city as if wanting Toombs to understand.

"Where... exactly... are we?" Toombs demanded.

"Where we are is simple; we are in Times Square." Kearyn answered, as the ten story high marquees flickered to life in front of them.

"I can remember." Toombs said, pointing at the crosswalk beside Kearyn. "Right there!" he shouted, eyes bursting wide with excitement. "That's where I saw her."

"It's when we are... that's slightly more complicated." Kearyn explained, walking into the crosswalk. "I brought you here to show you something that's going to happen right over there." He pointed to the same crosswalk.

"The first time I ever saw her."

"In just a few moments, Eve is going to step out into this street." Kearyn explained. "And when she does, I will appear right here in this very spot."

Toombs stared around the empty intersection, spinning in a circle as if Kearyn were blind or dumb, and said, "Well, that'll be a really neat trick considerin' we're all fuckin' alone. And how the fuck are you gonna appear in that very spot when you're already standin' there?"

"We are not alone." Kearyn said, ignoring Toombs' understandable tirade.

"We are!" he countered. "Unless you can pull a couple of million rabbits out of your ass, We are very much alone."

"What if I told you everyone is already here, right now, just the way they were all those years ago?"

Toombs raised his arms, spun around and said, "Oh really."

"We are the ones who are not here?" Kearyn explained from the middle of the empty intersection.

"You're fuckin' crazy," Toombs laughed at the sheer absurdity of what Kearyn was saying. "Because none of what you just said makes one goddamn bit of sense. How are they here, but we're not?" Toombs asked, walking around the empty street as if he were searching for ghosts.

"I'm sorry," Kearyn apologized, "I knew Eve was immune to the effects of temporal displacement. I just assumed you were too, But I was wrong and whenever I reentered the time stream, I inadvertently erased your memories."

"What are you sayin'? You can travel through time?"

"l can only move back through time, however, in rare cases I can occasionally take someone with me; like I just did you." Kearyn answered.

"You did what!"

"It was the only way I could return what I had taken from you."

"Just how the hell do I get back?"

"The same way will regain your memories; you must relive the past to find your way back to the future." Kearyn explained, placing a hand over his heart.

"Hold it," Toombs said. "I can change everything, the Necros, and the mutilation. I can save Eve without her ever knowing anything's different."

"Not possible." Kearyn warned, "When time starts again you will forget your future self and return to the old you. And trust me when I tell you, if you do one thing to alter the past you will lose the only chance you will ever have of regaining the memories of the woman you love."

"You mean..."

"Yes," Kearyn warned, "you will have to relive the good and the bad. So, I suggest you make the best of the time you have with her. And remember, in the future we will save her." And with that last admission, time started moving forward once more.

Toombs watched as Eve and fifty other pedestrians stepped down from the busy curb and walked towards him. Kearyn nodded at Toombs from the middle of the intersection and then vanished in the approaching crowd. Time raced forward as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button on a remote control. The images stretched out like a thinning rubberband moving away, swirled around him like a kaleidoscope folding thousands of images of his past around him. Then, without warning, the timeline snapped and Toombs came to a disorienting halt right back in the seat where he had first begun.

Toombs grabbed his face and cried out, "I can remember. I can remember."

Kearyn turned to him and said, "It's good to see you made it back Alexander, I was getting worried." He shifted in his seat, looked at Toombs and asked, "Exactly what do you remember?"

"Everything." Toombs replied, staring through the front windscreen. "She was there... in the street... wearing a short red dress with her hair up."

"Anything else?"

"She was carrying a white paper bag. She'd just bought a fresh pair of shoes." Toombs answered, touching the camera on the console in front of him. He remembered everything that Kearyn erased.

Toombs turned to Kearyn, mouth hanging in shock, and answered, "I remember..." he paused mid-sentence. "everything... except how I got there. I was 19, I had no job, no home and no memory of Earth or how I got there."

Kearyn offered no further information about Toombs' encounter years ago. But he sensed Kearyn knew more than he said. "Eve came over. She said I looked familiar. She called me Alexi."

"Did she?" Kearyn said. "Interesting. She is truly powerful."

"Why can I remember everything after that day, but nothing prior to meeting Eve?"

"Isn't it obvious, old friend? I knew about your Times Square encounter because I put you in her path. You came together because made it so."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because, like this time. You asked me too."