First Day Jitters

Rule Number 25-You may not make it home.

The Traveler’s Cannon contains twenty five rules in total. You recite the Canon multiple times a day at the Academy. The rules provide answers except for this rule. This rule leaves doubt. I recited the Canon over a million times and just now it’s hitting me how troubling that rule is.

Across the street is a row of townhouses with the exact bright cherry red colored door.

Which door? My mind feels like it's been through a meat grinder. The instructors didn’t stress enough how traveling makes your mind mush. How it slices memories and thoughts into jagged pieces and you have to force them together to make sense of it all.

I shut my eyes to focus. Something special about the red door. Something.

Mermaid. Yes! I can see each step of the assignment as if it's written on a chalkboard. It’s committed to memory because you can’t take anything with you when you travel.

Open the red door with a mermaid etched in the archway at 6:14pm.

The screen on my watch flashes the time: 6:10. After what happened earlier, I don’t trust it.

A tanned older woman walking a dog strolls past me.

“Ma’am. Do you have the time?”

She tightens the leash on the tiny dog after seeing the blood on my shirt. “6:10.”

“PM, right?”

She steps off the sidewalk and walks onto the street, pulling her dog as it urinates on the patch of green grass. “Yea, pm.”

I double check my watch. 6:10pm. I cross the street.

Rule Number 4-Precision keeps you alive.

I can’t open the door until 6:14pm. Being early can have consequences.

I see why my instructor, Captain Perry, harped on this while I attended the Academy.

I sit down on the steps underneath the red door. My arms wrap around the duffel bag tightly. The watch ticks off another minute. I wait.

No, I won’t be late again.

I may not make it home because I was three minutes late getting the bag.

My task was to retrieve a camouflage duffel bag out of the trunk of a light blue Honda Accord sedan parked in space 21 at the Walsh Parking Lot in Los Angeles at 11:30 am. I arrived at 11:33 am as two burly men were breaking into the same trunk. Had I been punctual, they wouldn’t have been there.

I would have gotten the bag, no problem. No incident.

So easy.

Rule Number 1-Do not kill, unless explicitly instructed.

The two men approached me and my training kicked in. Before I knew it,a man laid at my feet gasping for air. The other one ran away. I tried to help but I needed to stay on task.

They don’t prepare you for that. Watching life slip away. All those simulations and not a single one showed me what to do when the number one rule is broken.

I dashed out the dark parking lot and into the bright city, nearly knocking over a little girl. But no one followed, no one gave chase.

If I had checked the watch before buying it…. Compared it to another watch or ask for the time, I would have known it was 3 minutes slow.

Too late for that.

Rule No. 2-Be on time, down to the minute.

Two rules broken.

I didn’t want to kill him. I begged them to go.

But I did get the bag. I’m here on time. That should matter right?

Rule No. 6-Good intentions are futile. Stay on task.

6:13pm

The mermaid watches over me as I grasp the door knob. How long have you been there? Waiting for me to open this door? The mermaid’s hand cups her mouth as if she’s calling out to someone.

I countdown the seconds on my watch.

5

4

3

2

And in that space of a second I see the alternatives:

I never went to the Academy but I have a happy life

In love, holding her at night.

-OR-

Fortune lies at my feet but I never go home

Conquering hero, the adversary of time

-OR-

I swim in unfamiliar oceans between now and then

Mermaid sirens calling out to me.

I die tomorrow.

I die an old man.

I never really die.

1

The door opens from the other side. An unusually tall man with dry pale skin, long black hair and a grave face eyes me carefully.

“Examiner?” I ask.

He opens the door wider and his bony index finger points down a long hallway.

Black framed posters hang on the stark white walls.

One is a picture of a cat hanging from a clothesline. It says “Hang in there.”

Another has the word “motivation” in black bold letters. Above it, a man skiing.

I recognize a few of these posters from my textbook: Ins and Outs of Corporate Business Culture: Ladder Climbing from 1980-2000.

Other candidates giggled in that class when shown some of these posters. Me? Anything deemed funny pre-2100 never amused me.

As my feet drag, the soft touch on the small of my back suggests I quicken the pace. Ahead, a black door with a shiny black nob.

The nob cools the sweat on my hand as I turn it and step in.

Jazz plays. According to my Musical Palate of the 20th-21th Century class, Jazz is an improvisation music style popularized in the 1900s. Not my taste as far as music goes.

“Have a seat.” A male voice from the corner says over a saxophone solo.

I take a seat and stare at the last man I’ll ever see. He’s half my size, clean cut with black rimmed glasses. He’s standing at a record player bobbing his head to the music while smiling. As I watch this happy man moments before my demise, I bob my head too for some reason.

The record ends with a soft percussion trailing off.

Satisfied, he returns the record to its cover and places it among other records on a shelf. Above the shelf another poster. A bald eagle soaring through the sky. The word "Success" in bold black letters underneath it.

“Good stuff, you like it?” The examiner asked.

My eyes shift from the poster to the examiner. I shake my head and shrug. “Sure, I remember it from school.”

“Oh yes, you’re the newbie.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Don’t get too many of you.” His smile drops as he looks at my hands and notices the streak of blood on my shirt.

I lurch forward. “I didn’t mean to, he was coming at me and I think the other one was reaching for the bag. I know that-”

He puts his finger over his lips and I stop. He opens one of the desk drawers, pulls out a cloth and hands it to me. I wipe my hands and toss it in the trash. I miss. He tells me to sit down.

I continue to plead my case.

He clears his throat and with an air of stern professionalism he asks: “What is your name Candidate?”

I hold back tears and straighten my posture. Chin up, shoulders back and eyes straight ahead. Captain Perry told us to always look a person straight in the eyes, even if you’re taking their life or they’re taking yours.

Rule Number 3-Emotion must be withheld.

“Eric Moor.”

“What is your task, Candidate Moor?”

“Task 22 Alpha.”

The examiner pulls a large blue spiral notebook from the shelf. He licks his index finger and flips through the pages.

Each page flip sinks my stomach further into a black pit. I pick at my nails to avoid looking at him.

You are never told what happens if you fail your Initial Operating Experience. Only that you never return. Stories and rumors float around on campus. Stories of candidates dying on IOEs or being erased from time. Rumors that your memories are wiped clean and you are left to wander in a world that doesn’t belong to you.

When asked, instructors make you recite the canon or you are punished.

One rumor I heard was about a candidate named Leo Harris. He never returned from his IOE. He was erased but someone found a lost photo of him attending the academy but none of his classmates remember him. Not even his family. Supposedly, an instructor let it slip one night at the bar after a few too many vodka tonics.

“Yes, The Retrieval Test. You have the bag?”

I give him the bag.

He takes it and places it on the table, opens it and peers inside. With his index finger, he counts out loud to the five, pointing at the items. His emotionless face makes my stomach spin.

“Is everything in there? There were two guys and….”

“Everything is in there.” He zips up the bag. “We know what happened. We see all.” He points to the door I entered. It’s now white with a white nob. He gets up from the chair as he tells me to open the door.

The hallway is now black with light seeping from the ceiling, almost glowing. Posters gone. At the end of the hallway lies another door.

“What happens next?”

“Just follow me, son.”

“Listen I know I broke the rules but….”

“Rule No. 13?”

“No excuse for failure.”

“And Rule No. 23?”

“Accept judgment.”

I follow him down the hallway.

Most people apply several times to the Academy before getting in. I got in on my first try and was a rockstar. Aced everything. So few of us get accepted into the program, even less graduate and even less than that become official. I beat the odds, until now.

A warm breeze touches my skin as I get closer to the door. The light around the door pulses.

He opens the door. In the center of the small white room is a rectangular table with eight black straps connected to it.

He motions for me to get on the table.

I back up into the door. Tears flowing now. “Please don’t do this. I can try again.”

“You can’t. Sorry, Candidate Moor.”

I turn my back and pull hard on the door knob. It’s locked. I keep pulling until my arms are sore. My throat burns crying for help.

“Eric! Eric!” He puts his hands on my shoulder, softly laughing. “You passed. It’s alright, you’re going home.”

“What?”

The examiner laughed. “Just having a little fun. Didn’t peg you for a runner.”

He straps me to the table one limb at a time.

“Thank you.” I say repeatedly.

“For what, you got the bag. You completed the task.”

“But I violated rule number 1. In class they always say…”

He straps my legs down. “That’s not the real world, Eric.” He paused for a moment before going pulling the next strap. “The rules are more like suggestions, if anything.”

“So the guy I killed…”

“Inconsequential” He pulls hard on the strap across my stomach. “That’s not what matters.” He opens his mouth but then closes it as if thinking it’s better to stop talking.

“What?”

The examiner’s eyes cornered mine. “He doesn’t matter, the act of killing him doesn't matter. That’s not the thing that matters. Understand?”

“But the rules.”

“I know, that’s what they are testing you on. For that, you’ll make a good agent. “ He makes air quotes while saying “good agent.” He tightens the straps on my forearms. “You follow the rules, you obsess over the rules. Like a well behaved dog expecting a treat.”

“Wait , what?…”

He tightens the final strap across my forehead while gently shaking his head. “Nevermind.” He walks over to a keypad on the left side of the table and types in a four digit code on the keypad.

A red button emerges from the wall.

“So his life isn't important?”

He shrugs. “Not in the grand scheme of things. Him dying now or later makes no difference.”

“Then what does? They tell us…”

“Still don’t get it do you?”

I stare at the ceiling, scanning the Cannon in my head. No rule can answer this. I stutter and stammer hoping to stumble into an explanation.

He walks over to me and lets me out of my misery.

“Had you looked in the bag Eric.” He opened my mouth and placed a mouth guard in it. “That would have mattered. That would have made a world of difference, perhaps even THE difference.” He winked.

I have no response other than my eyes widening.

“Fortune lies at my feet but I never go home. Conquering hero, the adversary of Time”

The Examiner threw his hands in the air as he walks away. “No one ever thinks to look in the bag.”

He presses the red button and everything goes black.