Out of Time by Ryan Matthew Harker (ebooks online reader txt) 📕

“I’ve never seen guns like these before,” I can hear her rise to her own feet behind me and I wish she would just drop the subject.

I turn back towards her, “Please Maybelline?”

I don’t know what she reads in my eyes when she looks into them but she nods, “Sure.” I can tell she’s far from satisfied but she turns and leaves the cabin, the door slamming behind her with a resounding THUNK!

Hurriedly I change my clothes, only dwelling for a moment on the fact that Maybelline’s seen me naked. I make sure the AR and Colt are securely in their places of concealment before I pocket my cell phone and wallet and pick TRU up off the bed.

She must have just enough charge from this last little bit of jostling because suddenly the screen comes to life and TRU says, “Temporal Reconfiguration Unit, Rift Co-ordinates?”

Oh no, I hope Maybelline doesn’t hear her! “Sshh!” I hiss.

“Command not recognized. Rift Co-ordinates?”

“Be quiet!” I whisper more fiercely.

TRU repeats herself and I raise her along with my fist to the sky and rage silently at a god I’m not sure I believe in. What the hell am I going to do about this? I can’t be walking around with TRU squawking at me every time someone says something.

TRU’s not the only thing squawking; my newly awakened survival instinct rears its fully armored head and squawks as well. At least it’s giving me sound advice though and it’s telling me that I need to set TRU’s rift departure time to a new safe time. After all I really have no idea how the Gunman’s tracking me through time. For all I know TRU could be creating some kind of energy trail or something more easily traceable than my actual presence in these various time periods.

I tell TRU which time I’d like set, cringing with every question she poses, and then she asks, TRAVEL? I say nothing and she remains silent. “Okay, now what do we do?” I ask and I’m surprised when she says nothing in return. Great, this is good! Hopefully she doesn’t say anything while she’s in my pocket. And this is where she goes, into my pocket.

With my clothes on, my guns in their place and my futuristic gadgets put safely in their place I feel ready to brave this strange new world I find myself in. Opening the door blinds me anew but my eyes drop instantly to half mast and I step out into the light.

I find Maybelline sitting on a porch jutting from the cabin’s front face and she looks up at me through strands of sunlit honey. She’s beautiful, even when she frowns up at me. “Who were you talking to?”

“No one,” I tell her and it deepens the lines in her forehead.

“It sounded like a woman,” she insists.

I laugh and it sounds forced in my ears. “I was just talking to myself,” I bluff.

Her frown deepens further and she turns away from me to stand up. “Well, you probably ought to go introduce yourself to Mr. Hamerstock,” she says and when she looks at me it’s not with the same open gaze she was giving me earlier. “He’s not going to let it go otherwise.”

He will if I float downstream to another time period. I feel bad that I have to deceive this angelic creature, especially after she’s been so hospitable, but the least I can do is go and talk to this Marshall of hers. Maybe get him off her back about me anyways.

“Ok,” I agree but the look of disappointment doesn’t leave her eyes and my heart misses a beat. I swallow down this feeling growing in my chest and ask, “Where can I find him?”

“Follow me,” she says and steps off the porch into the dry dust of the street.

Without a word I follow.

It’s probably not the best idea I’ve ever had, to stick around and meet the man responsible for law and order in the town I plan to rob, but most robbers don’t have a time machine for a getaway car. Besides I’m a little smitten over Miss Maybelline and if I’m anything it’s a sucker for a pretty woman, at least to a point.

The streets are dusty and the buildings are, for the most part, single story. At least with the exception of the bank (ka-ching!) and what I believe to be the municipal court building/town hall. They’re both sitting next to each other. Must make it convenient for prosecution of bank robbers though, bust ‘em in one building and sentence them next door. Not this bank robber though. They’re going to have a hard time finding me when I snap back to the future.

I start to question the wisdom of robbing a bank in the nineteen hundreds. Cash may be king but, depending on the era I acquire it in, I can only use it in the future following that era. Now if I were to steal precious ore, gold, silver, (oh, oh) plutonium even, now that’s the kind of money that lasts forever! Or gems, how about gems? If I went back to the right time I could potentially corner the diamond market! I guess all thought for preserving the proper continuity of the timestream has completely gone out the window. Yeah, right about the time I became a fugitive, lost my home, my job(s), my LIFE! Well it seems I have a new life now and no matter how crazy it is all I have to do is roll with the punches, ride the tide, and stay alive.

I should’ve thought things through a little before snapping off all half cocked to become a Wild West bank robber. Ha, Wild West, now that’s a joke! I would hardly consider the year 1900 to be the ‘wild’ west, but I suppose it really just matters what part of the country I’m in whether it’s wild or not. This town seems like a pretty Podunk, one horse on the hitching post kind of place. Definitely only has a single dirt track leading through the center of town and, yep there it is, one horse hitched up to the post; in front of the saloon no less.

Oh baby the saloon, I could use a drink. Oh man, speaking of drink, the heat must have addled my brain more than I thought because I forgot all about my duffle bag. Where the heck is it? Does Maybelline have it? She certainly didn’t give it back to me if she does and why wouldn’t she if she did, she gave everything else back. That duffle has all my meds in it, including my ‘script, my booze, the extra magazines for my guns. Crap, what was I thinking, why didn’t I make the connection earlier.

I’m not very aware of how my strange attire is affecting the town; just about every head in the street is turning to look my way. Conversations are stopping and townsfolk are whispering but I’m too engrossed in my thoughts to notice.

“Um Maybelline, did you find a, um,” I search for a term she might understand. “Travel…”

No sooner is the word out of my mouth and I’m mentally kicking myself. I feel the stretch, the snap and I’m still in the past but it’s a lot farther than I was. Oh Maybelline, why can’t I be true, why must I always be travelling through time away from you-uu?! Oh Chuck Berry, sir, it’s good to know I can keep my sense of humor even under these strange and adverse conditions.

Wow, I could meet him if I want to, Chuck Berry that is. I always did love his music when I was younger. Once I was swimmin’ ‘cross turtle creek, man them snappers all around my feet- Sure was hard swimmin’ ‘cross that thing, with both hands holding my ding a ling a ling! Ha hahaha aha, good stuff! It never ceases to amaze me what insanity goes traipsing through my mind during the craziest of moments.

I chose a period in time when I didn’t expect a whole lot of civilization around as my safe time this time. No cars to dodge. The swaying grasslands blowing gently in the summer breeze is soothing and I sigh at the sight, and at the untimely departure from Miss Maybelline’s delightful company. She’s going to be pretty confused about my whereabouts pretty quick, if she isn’t all ready. Oh well, everything happens for a reason, or so they say.

I’m feeling like maybe I need to reevaluate my priorities in this situation. All my dreams of wealth and success (and women) are well and good but seem somewhat unrealistic when I take into consideration I’m a man on the run, wanted through time by person or persons unknown.

Something has to change here.

Removing TRU from my pocket I start to walk and before long she comes to life. I sit down as she chirps for Rift Co-ordinates. I haven’t taken enough time to study this ‘thing’ that I’ve grown so attached to, so quickly, and ‘it’ keeps on changing, evolving. Somehow it seems to be doing this almost as if in response to me and I intend to find out how.

“Rift Departure?” TRU chirps as I make a nest in within the tall grass.

“No TRU,” I tell her. “No Rift Departure.”

“Command not recognized,” TRU insists. “Rift Departure?”

“No TRU!” I insist back. “No Rift Departure.”

“Command not recognized, Rift Departure?”

“No, No, NO!” I can feel a tantrum coming on and honestly I’m surprised I took this long to reach my breaking point. I haven’t been known for my maturity. Probably a reason my relationships don’t last more than a couple weeks, usually more in the realm of days. Then again it could be the fickle nature of women, maybe? No, probably not.

“Command not recognized…”

I’m almost annoyed!

“…Main Menu?” TRU asks.

Miracle upon miracles, did she just ask what I think she asked? “Yes, yes,” I plead. “Main menu, God yes!”

“Main Menu,” she repeats and her display changes to suit. “Rift Co-ordinates, Temporal Mapping, Timestream Navigation, Dimensional Drifting, Settings?”

Whoa! Now we’re getting somewhere! May as well start at the top, I already know about Rift Co-ordinates so, “Temporal Mapping.”

“Temporal Mapping,” TRU acknowledges. “Temporal History, Virtual Timeline, Timestream Probability Generator?”

My smile hurts my face but I hardly notice. I can’t help but feel like a kid with the coolest toy in the world. “Temporal History,” I say.

TRU’s display shows a list of dates with 09.09.1492AD at the top, closely followed by 09.09.1900AD and so on and so on. I scour the list until I come to my first Rift experience, 08.23.19,191BC. The dates directly after that are 08.22.2011AD and 11.05.1985AD along with a slew of others that mean little or nothing to me. A couple seem familiar and I wish I had paid more attention in my history classes but alas no, and for the most part they’re gibberish. Then I come across some dates from the future, my future that is. Now this is interesting.

12.25.2050, I pretty much stumble into it like a brick wall. I almost gave up on Temporal History to check out Virtual Timeline, now I’m glad I didn’t. Christmas though, for some reason I wasn’t expecting it and it strikes me a bit funny. I wonder, really for the first time, about the identity of TRU’s previous owner. When I picked her up in the apartment I had done it more on reflex than anything. It’s a bad habit I know (stealing) but I can’t help it. Sometimes I think it’s some weird form of Tourettes or something, it’s definitely compulsory. Anyway, so there really wasn’t much thought into TRU at all until after I woke up in ancient history and then the only thing I was thinking was how do I get home? And the rest is, well, history.

Hehehehe, I titter. Man, maybe I’m losing it? Getting some kind of