“Really?”
Older Jim nodded. “Yeah, it was all butterfly effect and crap… If I eat a T-bone steak and throw the remainder away, then some dog at the junkyard chokes on the bone, which somehow leads to some nut jumping off the Eiffel Tower in France next month, and as a result some kid who’s supposed to grow up and save the world isn’t born eighty years from now in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
“Okay, that’s a lot to digest,” I noted. “But speaking of Mouse, it sounds like he knows about you.”
“Oh, yeah. I sought him out the minute I stopped moving backwards in time.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me to stay in the lab, stay invisible, and stay phased. Don’t go see anybody, don’t talk to anybody, don’t do anything.”
“Sounds like Mouse,” I noted with a smile. I then gave my older self a hard stare. “You know what’s going on with him right now, don’t you?’
“Of course,” Older Jim acknowledged. “All of this is in my past.”
“And you can’t tell me anything at all?” I asked.
“Just letting you see me is probably too much. Mouse is going to go bananas when he finds out.”
“You’re right about that,” I agreed. “Mouse wouldn’t like it at all.”
Needless to say, that brought to mind the question: why was Older Jim letting me see him then? Why was he even talking to me?
Of course – he’s trying to help, I realized. That said, he didn’t seem particularly eager to volunteer information. However, he didn’t appear to have a problem answering questions.
Bearing that in mind, I asked, “So, how long have you been hiding here?”
“I’d argue that’s classified,” he replied.
“Yeah, but it had to be before Mouse went on the run, because he hasn’t been back here since as far as I can tell. That means you’ve been here every time I’ve come by during the last few days.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Older Jim said.
“So you were here when I came in with Alpha Prime, Luna, and Buzz. You were here when Electra and I found Mouse’s bug-out bag. You were even here when we got the file off the computer.”
As I finished the last sentence, I saw something like acknowledgment flash in Older Jim’s eyes.
Something to do with the computer file, I realized. And then I had an epiphany.
“The computer,” I said. “The one I couldn’t find a power switch for. You turned it on.”
“Not per se,” Older Jim blurted out. “I no more turned that computer on than I turned on the lights in here.”
I frowned. Older Jim seemed to be equivocating. Reflecting on his comments about the lights, I looked up.
There was nothing special about the illumination that I was aware of. The lights simply came on whenever someone showed up in the lab – or rather, a body they could detect, since Older Jim, when phased and invisible, didn’t seem to count. Maybe the computer operated the same way.
“The computer is like the lights,” I surmised. “It comes on when someone enters the lab.”
“Oh, you mean like now?” Older Jim quipped sarcastically.
It was true. The computer hadn’t come on when Myshtal and I had shown up in the lab – at least, not that I was aware of. Now that my thoughts turned to her, I glanced at the princess and noted that she was still frozen.
Tilting my chin at her, I asked my older self, “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing, I promise,” he replied. “I merely put the two of us in a time sheath.”
I gave him a befuddled look. “What’s a time sheath?”
“Think of it as a bubble around us in which time proceeds normally while being frozen everywhere else,” he replied. “It’s a little trick I picked up from the Incarnates, but don’t ask me anything in that regard because I am definitely not answering any questions about them.”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “Back to the computer coming on. Like the lights, it powers up when people are present, but apparently it’s only certain people. Thus far, it’s only come on when Electra and I were in here together.”
I chewed on that last fact for a moment. Why would Mouse require Electra and I to be together for the computer to turn on? If it was just me, I could understand: after all, I was his mentee. I hung out with him in his lab practically every day. But Electra? Sure, Mouse knew and trusted her, but they didn’t spend nearly as much time together as he and I did. Plus, it was common knowledge that Electra and I had broken up. Mandating that we be together for the computer to power up during a crisis didn’t seem reasonable. And if that was the requirement, why hadn’t it turned on when Electra and I returned to look for the bug-out bag? And with that thought came clarity.
“It’s me,” I declared to my older self. “The computer recognizes me in some way and turns on, not me and Electra.”
As I spoke, I reached out telepathically, trying to peek in Older Jim’s mind. It was really a reach, as my – and presumably his – mental shields had always been first-rate. As expected, that turned out to be the case in this instance: mentally, I hit a brick wall and was rebuffed.
“Ha!” my older self barked. “You had to know I was expecting that. Come on, I’ve been here before – right where you are, in fact.”
“Then you already know exactly what you can and can’t tell me,” I shot back. “So stop making me play these guessing games.”
Older Jim just stared at me for a moment, as if deciding something.
“Fine,” he finally stated flatly. “I’ll give you one, and then we’re done.”
“Great,” I replied. “Whenever you’re ready.”
My older self let out
