Paradox

“Doctor Salem,” he heard Doris say, her tone frantic. “Doctor, come here immediately!”

It had been an eventful day already, and the last thing Calvin needed was more drama. But there was real fear in Doris’ voice, and the compulsion to help was unavoidable. He excused himself from his patient, placing the suction tube into her mouth and pausing the plaque removal. Faster than normal, but not so fast as to cause a panic, Calvin walked swiftly the front desk. Doris stood there already looking in his direction as he appeared, and her expression was dumbfounded fear.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He turned his gaze from Doris to the door where he spied a man in a black hoodie already through the door. “Hey! You… Wait!”

Remembering his high school track days, Calvin flung his body towards the desk, slammed his left hand flat on the top, and launched his body over. The gasps of the waiting room broke the general fear of the place following the stranger’s entrance and exit. As he approached the door, he heard the screeching of tires and flash of bright light. By the time he made it outside, the man in the black hoodie was nowhere to be found, but the cars stopped on 13th Street still had drivers in them confused about what they had seen. The lead driver on Calvin’s side of the street got out of his vehicle and looked to the front of his old Toyota Camry. He was a large, black-skinned man with a face full of beard.

“What the hell was that?!” he asked to nobody in particular.

Calvin called to him, “What didya see?”

“Man… some crazy dude in a hoodie just jumped in front of my car and disappeared!” The man shook his head violently. “I gotta be dreamin’!”

Calvin watched as the man shook his head again and returned behind the wheel with a hard slam of the car door. A moment later, as the man sped off, he turned on his heels and walked back into dental office. The whispers were quite loud among the waiting patients, and Doris still stood there, her confusion keen on her face. When Calvin reached her, she held out a green sticky note.

Stay away from the Spiral Deck! Mouth hanging open, Calvin looked up from the note to Doris. He could see that she understood the same thing that he did. The handwriting was his! Doris could recognize his writing as well as he could, and his mind began to reel. He looked at the handwritten note again, his breath heavy.

“Doris, cancel my remaining appointments… and reschedule Brenda to finish her cleaning. I gotta go…”

“Doctor,” her concern palpable in the air between them. “Shouldn’t you stay away? I mean… the note was written by…” And she nodded in his direction.

He looked to her again, “I have to… I…”

“But look who wrote it,” she argued. “Don’t you think-”

“No…,” he was now staring into nowhere. “You know I have to.”

Crumbling the sticky note and shoving it in his pocket, he ripped off his lab coat and and threw it on the floor. He flew through the exit and ran to his bike hidden between the dental building and the house next door. With no concern for traffic, Calvin hung an immediate left on 13th and sped down to Linden Street. On Linden, Calvin was relegated to the sidewalk due to one way traffic in the wrong direction, but there weren’t many people out and about and he made good time.

The Spiral Deck was a parking garage in downtown Allentown, and as Calvin approached, breathing heavy from the exertion, it also seemed eerily quiet. Now, it was only late morning, not quite lunch time, so most people were still at their desks do what they do. But still, there should have been a little more bustle about the place. He entered through the exit gate and heard the raised voices. From the second level they came, he surmised. Something strange was happening. Calvin stepped quietly and made his way up to the second deck, the loud voices not understandable through the reverb of the structure.

He crept as close as he dared to, which was close enough to kind of make out the parties at play, but not close enough to fully understand what was being argued over. Heart racing, Calvin closed his eyes and concentrated on calming his nerves. Was he stupid for going where the note told him not to go? He tried to push the thought out of his mind. No luck… Then he heard Frank Hobbes’ voice.

“I told you jackasses that there is no way to get the weapons out of the building without tripping off the security systems! Jesus! Are you guys for real?!” The sarcasm was heavy in Frank’s voice, and as Calvin took a peek he was even more stunned by it.

Four men stood around Frank, all of them holding pistols aimed at his head. Frank was an old high school buddy of Calvin’s, but he left shortly after graduation for the Army, and now found himself stationed at the local National Guard depot up on Allen Street. Calvin had never known how far Frank’s bravery could go, but it was obvious that he completely underestimated it.

“You better find a way to get those guns out, Frank! We are paying you handsomely, and don’t forget about our insurance policy…” The one who said this was standing directly in front of Frank, and Calvin sneered at him. The man looked like he belonged in a mobster comedy act, short and dressed to the nines in pinstripes, his fedora seemed a little too big on his head and his expression looked like it belonged on the Three Stooges, made even funnier by the shiner he sported around his left eye.

As Calvin shifted his weight, his hand was pricked by what appeared to be an old coin on the ground beneath the car he hid behind. Distracted as he was, Calvin took no notice of blindly putting the coin in his pocket, nor that the small smear of blood was absorbed by it.

“I told you to leave my family out of it… but I knew you wouldn’t,” the devious smile that spread across Frank’s face gave the others a moment of pause.

Frank reached into his jacket and revealed a string connected to a plastic ring now around his thumb.

“You see,” Frank continued, “killing me would mean that, not only do you not get the weapons you’re searching for, but you would then have to contend with the National Guard searching furiously for the killers of one of their own. Sure, their fervor would be dampened by the fact that I’m a criminal, but you can damn sure count on the fact that they will find you.”

His smile widened as he looked down to the ring and string. “You know what this is? This is the pullstring detonator for my C-4 vest. If I kill myself in defense against you, then my family will still get the payout from the military. They’ll get along just fine without me, but you’ll be dead.”

The moment of silence stretched on for a lifetime, nobody seemed to move a muscle, as if time itself was frozen. Then it dawned on Calvin, Frank was gonna detonate the bomb anyway. It was the entire point to this exercise. He had already made his decision… Stay away from the Spiral Deck.

“Shit…” Calvin whispered to himself. He looked back to Frank and the Mobster Stooges and his heart sank. Frank may be prepared to die, but Calvin sure as hell wasn’t! He had to find a way out!

“You should have killed me this morning,” Frank said quietly, then let out a loud laugh and pulled the string.

The explosion was deafening for a moment, and Calvin watched in horror as the fireball made its way closer to him, inch by inch. Then the world was bathed in white light. After a moment, his sight returned, and he realized he was still inside the Spiral Deck. The air was cooler and there were many less cars then just a moment ago. Am I dead?

His watch beeped at him and the chimes at the church across the street began to ring out the hour. Calvin looked at his watch and blinked twice. It had reset itself to the proper time of seven in the morning. He had traveled back in time… to 7 AM… he could hear in his mind his cell phone alarm clock waking him up. What the hell?!

“Frank!” Without thinking, Calvin tore off through the parking garage trying to find the closest exit. He had to save Frank!

Though the pandemic was finally waning, the two years of life upheaval that it caused had also resulted in Calvin being sufficiently out of shape for the long run ahead of him. Even cutting through the Linden Street and West End cemeteries still made it a one mile run, and when he reached the National Guard depot, his lungs were burning, breaths coming gulps. He thanked his lucky stars that it had been a while since he last ate, or he for sure would have had to stop and puke. All in all, he arrived at the depot in about ten minutes, and as he gathered himself, Calvin looked around furiously for the stooges.

“What are you gonna do, Calvin? You don’t even have a weapon…” he said to himself. It felt to him like a bad movie script. Hero dentist travels through time to save his high school buddy from the mob! Laughing to himself, he kept scanning around.

There, at the other end of the block on Fulton Street, Calvin spotted Mr. Pinstripes leaning up against the mailbox. He had no idea what to do, but Calvin began making his way towards him. Halfway down the block, he spotted a black hoodie hanging from a porch railing and decided to take it. Ducking into the alley next to the house, he put the hoodie and on and drew up the hood. He crossed over to the other side of Allen Street and continued on to Mr. Pinstripes. Without any forethought, Calvin threw a haymaker at the mobster and caught him in the left eye. As the man tumbled to the ground, his pistol was exposed. Grabbing the pistol, Calvin heard his fellow mobsters yelling obscenities as they exited the vehicle just down the road and began firing their semiautomatics.

Ducking the flying bullets, Calvin reached his arm back and wildly returned fire. In the confusion he ran straight into the intersection and flashed out of sight. He stumbled headlong into a parked car.

“Have some more to drink, ya putz!” It was Mr. Pinstripes across the street, leaning against the mailbox.

Calvin quickly hid the pistol in the front pocket of the hoodie and pretended to stumble away from the car. His watch beeped at him again and, gazing down at it, he saw that it was, once again, seven in the morning. Keeping up the drunk bit, Calvin stumbled across Allen Street and leaned up against the house on the corner, eyeing Mr. Pinstripes from behind.

It wasn’t long before Calvin saw himself. As his other self approached Mr. Pinstripes, he walked up Fulton to take position behind the stooges in the car. Ambush! he thought. Then he smiled to himself…

He watched Mr. Pinstripes take a fist to his eye and drop to the ground like a ton of bricks. The stooges busted out of the car and opened fire, and so did Calvin. Definitely not a crackshot, he unloaded the magazine with no accuracy. And to his dismay, he found himself once again ducking bullets. This time, though, Calvin intentionally threw himself into traffic.

He flashed back to seven o’clock one more time and took cover further up Fulton Street, keeping himself hidden from the stooges. The weirdness washed over him again as he spied himself leaning up against the house at the end of the block. What was he trying to accomplish here? Did he really think he’d be able to save Frank from these people? He grabbed the gun out of his pocket and sighed. Shaking his head, he realized that it was now empty. So much for the ambush…

But he waited anyway… That was until he heard the cocking of a gun to his left.

“Tryin’ to get the drop on my boys, are ya?” The Italian accent was unmistakable.

Calvin saw his previous self about to wallop Mr. Pinstripes and smiled, “I already did.”

As the first shots rang out, he ducked down to his knees, grabbed the Italian guy by the foot and pulled with all of his might. The man fell to the pavement immediately, the dull thud of his head hitting the concrete nearly sickening to Calvin. He quickly took the gun and ran towards the stooges’ car. The other two Calvins had already disappeared by the time he reached the Caddy, but the stooges were down at the corner tending to Mr. Pinstripes. He turned the ignition and squealed the tires as he took off down Fulton Street and away from the scene.

He had to find Frank! But where was he? Was he already in the armory? Is that why Mr. Pinstripes and the stooges were waiting? Everything was a blur… Calvin still didn’t understand what was happening to him. He decided to head back to the Spiral Deck. The compulsion to go back there made no sense to him, but perhaps it was the nexus of this ordeal that he found himself in?

As he pulled into the parking garage, Calvin did his best Luke Skywalker to reach out to the source of the compulsion. After a few minutes, he found himself on the top level of the Spiral Deck and driving up to two men standing at the edge, their backs to him. His heart began to thump not because he knew the one man to be Frank, but because the man next to him was wearing a black hoodie. Calvin hoped it was not himself, for seeing his past selves was strange enough. But to meet a future self?

He parked the car and got out, his heart pounding and his stomach queasy. Walking slowly towards the men, he watched as his future self turned around and greeted him with a smile.

“Well now,” future Calvin began, “isn’t this an expected surprise? I remember what your feeling, it’s like I felt it just a couple of hours ago.”

Frank turned to Calvin, then looked at future Calvin, his expression knowing and disbelieving at the same time.

“Cal,” he said to future Calvin, “this never happened with me when I had the coin. Are you sure this is safe?”

Future Calvin sighed deeply, “Frank, I’m trying to figure out how to save you. You gotta go with me on this!”

“What coin?” Calvin asked them.

No answer needed to be given, it was as though the thought that just occurred to him about the coin in his pocket was something he had always known. He reached in and pulled it out, and, looking to Future Calvin, he saw that he had his coin out, too.

“This is the current bane of your existence, Cal,” he said, flipping the coin awkwardly in his hand. “You feel that sharp point on the edge? Cut your finger with it and see what happens.”

Again, the compulsion was too much to ignore, and he did as he was told. He felt the pinprick and saw the blood smear get absorbed into the coin. The rush of knowledge about what was happening was thrilling and frightening all at once. A woman of extreme power flashed into his thoughts, and he knew who she was in an instant, Urth. She was the Norse Goddess of Time, and the coin he held in his hand was a paradox amulet. It prevented him from dying while in his possession, but the cost of that immortality was to be transported back to the beginning of the day in which it came to him.

“Now,” Future Cal demanded, “you need to jump off of this building. When you come to, you’ll just happen to run into Frank, and you’ll learn all about his story.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Think about everything that’s happened, Cal! Remember sitting at home this morning eating breakfast. What did you hear on the news?”

After a few moments of thought, Calvin’s eyes grew as big as saucers. He remembered hearing about the shooting at the National Guard Armory, the reporter stating that witnesses identified two, possibly three, men in black hoodies that opened fire for some as of yet unknown purpose. He let his thoughts run through the rest of the morning before he arrived at work. Because of the shootout at the Armory, Calvin had decided to take 18th Street all the down to Linden on his bike ride to work, and as he was passing by West Park he was nearly hit by a sedan that had burst out of Fulton Street. It hit him that the man driving was wearing a black hoodie… I almost ran over myself?!

The compulsion was now overwhelming as Calvin knew his immediate future. He looked from the pavement beneath him to the two men before him, shook his head, and made his way to the ledge of the parking garage. The city lay beneath him, its reality no longer as solid to him as it was when he woke up this morning. Then stepped into the air. The transition from the present moment of freefall to standing still on the sidewalk at 7 AM was jarring, and Calvin needed a little time to let the vertigo subside.

Opening his eyes, Calvin looked up and down Linden Street hoping to see Frank. He didn’t see his friend, but he did see himself. It seemed a lifetime ago, but Calvin remembered vividly the panic he felt after the explosion and his first transition. He was mildly amused that his old self didn’t look the madman as he sprinted from the Spiral Deck’s exit and on to his run-in with Mr. Pinstripes.

Calvin’s smile faded a little, and, without turning around, said, “Hello Frank. How ya been buddy?”

“About the same as you, I think,” Frank answered with a mild chuckle. It’s strange to see yourself, isn’t it?”

“So, the coin was yours?”

Frank reached into his pocket and pulled out the coin that Calvin knew was also in his pocket. “It still is.”

This time travel thing was very hard to follow sometimes, and Calvin didn’t imagine that it would get any easier. “What the hell is going on here, Frank?”

“Let’s go to the top deck, I prefer the sunshine.”

“I should’ve known that it would be your idea. I’ll be along shortly to meet us up there.”

In any other situation, that would have been a prime example of extremely poor English grammar. As it was, Frank only nodded as they began their walk. Calvin learned that Frank had lost track of how long he had the coin. Following his first transition, he had been as safe as he could be and made it several weeks before he transitioned the second time. The idea of having to stay away from his family for several weeks, because he was already with them, proved an impossible task. Frank had found himself camping outside his home, watching his life as a rerun and knowing that he couldn’t do anything about it. He had decided to do some risky things with his alone time and found himself making bets, and it dawned on him that he was the identity thief that he and his wife, Donna, had run into. But the bets weren’t always successful, and that’s when he had his first encounter with Mr. Pinstripes.

Frank thought that selling weapons would be an adequate way to pay back his debt to the mob’s bookie. And so he found himself here, ready to be rid of the coin and end his life. Calvin’s demeanor was on edge, his whole focus had been trying to save Frank, and here he was preparing to die. It was maddening. That’s when Calvin’s other showed up.

As weird as it had been for Calvin to speak to his future self, it was even more odd speaking to his past self. This conversation had just happened, so there was no being able to deviate from the conversation that he remembered. The fear it invoked in him caused his heart to skip a beat. If I can’t even change this conversation, then can I actually save Frank? This thought ran through his mind even as the words he remembered poured from his mouth as though they had never been spoken before.

The men looked on as Past Calvin stepped up on the ledge and dropped to his next transition. After a few moments, Calvin asked, “I can’t save you, can I, Frank?”

“I’m sorry, Cal. But I gave up the coin before the explosion. You can’t change the future.” He held out his hand to Calvin and said, “Thank you for trying to save me, but I fear what will happen to you now that you have the coin. I never meant for that to happen.”

“I don’t have what you do. I am alone. I’ll be fine.” Calvin took Frank’s hand and shook it solemnly.

He glanced at his watch as he heard the squeal of tires from a lower deck. That would be Mr. Pinstripes…

“You better find some cover, Frank, the gang is here.”

He laughed heartily at Calvin, “I have to go get my C-4 anyway. It’s gonna be rockin’ here in a few hours.”

Calvin made his way to the car that his old self had left behind and climbed in. He drove the car slowly, heading towards the spiral which would let him out. This had to be a good car chase, which meant that Calvin needed Pinstripes and the Gang to be close to him. It was only a few seconds later when the chase began, and he intended to have as much fun as he could.

Taking random streets, Calvin found that he was pretty good at driving recklessly. Sure, he pissed off a lot of other drivers as he cut them off, but the mobsters kept up with him well. Eventually, he ended up on Hamilton Street and knew that the most daring part of the chase had arrived. Fulton Street was a one-way, but the traffic flow was southbound. Calvin intended to go northbound, and his old self was nearly to West Park. The interaction went exactly as he had remembered it, the sedan bursting out of the tee intersection and into the park itself. Calvin was so intent on the near-miss with himself, though, that he was unaware that his pursuers had hit another car nearly head on. The sirens of pursuing police cruisers, however, was getting louder and louder.

Calvin ditched the car at the far corner of the park, doing his best to hide the fact that he was the driver. Letting go of the fact that he couldn’t save Frank, he felt that it was also time to let go of his own life and take on the responsibility as ‘Keeper of the Coin’. He didn’t even realize that he was at the Farmer’s Market, but he understood why he was there. He needed some sunglasses and some food. When he paid for his food, he also asked the cashier to borrow her pen and a sticky note.

Remembering the note that Doris had handed to him, Calvin now wrote the note itself. Giving himself a moment of levity, he pulled the crumpled note from his pocket. This time travel thing will never cease to amaze me!

Alas, the time had come. Calvin put on the sunglasses and began the short walk to the dental office where Past Calvin was now working diligently on Sarah’s cleaning. He walked in nonchalantly and handed the sticky note to Doris. He tried his best to disguise his voice, saying, “Give this to Dr. Salem, now.”

He turned quickly and left, but not before hearing Doris’ frantic voice, “Doctor Salem!... Doctor, come here immediately!”

The Toyota Camry was speeding towards him as he approached the curb. Here we go! And he threw himself in front of the car and disappeared to 7 AM.