John Gone (15 page)

“A what?” John asked.

“Your last name,” Ronika explained.

“It’s easy from this point forward, kiddies,”
Kala said. “From the tale of your travels, though it’s admittedly
not perfectly conclusive, it sounds as though someone has set the
watch to a calibration cycle. During this time, the watch is set to
test the limits of the bio-energy of its user. Teleporting
somewhere specific must be accomplished precisely. Because of this,
the device needs to know exactly how much power will be required
from its user.

“Different ages, genders, and brains will
produce slightly different results. Normally, someone like myself
would be directing your jumps and guiding you back once the cycle
completed, or at least that’s how it was designed. I’m not sure
what’s happening now. If you appeared in a boat then I must assume
your jumps are unmonitored. I can’t predict how this turns out,”
Kala said.

“You said it was easy from this point?” John
reminded him.

“Yes, it is,” Kala answered. “I’m going to
tell you the emergency code to point the watch back at my lab.
You’re going to put it in. Then, I’ll take the watch off your
arm.”

“Where would I put in a code?” John
asked.

“You were right in thinking you can set the
time on the watch. The code is nothing more than an hour, minute,
and second. All travel is dictated to the watch thusly. That knob
you pulled out has two settings. You’ve pulled it out to the first
click; that activated this interface. There’s one more, though.
Pulling it further will allow you to change the hands.”

“So my plan would have worked,” Ronika
interjected.

“Not exactly,” Kala said. “Changing the time
is irrelevant. You would just be changing your destination and
point of operation. Since your current point of operation is set to
a warehouse close to your home, I wouldn’t be haphazardly playing
with the hands unless you want it to accidentally become a Chinese
submarine. Additionally, the farther you jump, the more energy it
takes from your body. The body can regenerate this energy, but not
immediately. Use too much in one go, and--”

“And?” John exclaimed, looking down at the
time. Four minutes remained.

“What happens when a battery is drained?”
Kala asked. “It dies. This is what will happen to you if you
accidentally go too far.”

“But that doesn’t matter, right?” John asked.
“You’re going to give me the setting to your lab so you can take it
off.”

“That’s exactly right!” the hologram
exclaimed. “Write this down. Six o’clock, four minutes, twelve
seconds. Set the hands counterclockwise, biggest to smallest. Set
it there, and next time you teleport, we’ll meet face-to-face. I’ll
remove the watch from your wrist, and we can both go on with our
lives.”

“That’s not exactly true, is it?” Ronika
interjected. “If you’re stuck down there, then what happens to John
when you take the watch from him? You get the device, and you know
how to use it--
which is scary on its own
--and John will have
no way out. He’ll be trapped in some lab underground, just like you
claim to be now.”

“Yeah, wait a second!” John said, realizing
the truth of Ronika’s conclusion.

“I’m not going to lie,” Kala said. “That’s
precisely what will happen. I don’t want to trick you into
imprisonment, kid. I’m not an evil man. The situation is simply
thus: each time you jump, the watch is set to take you farther.
There will come a point, and soon, when the watch takes you so far
around the Earth that you actually end up closer to your point of
operation than farther. When that happens, the expenditure of
energy will be so great that no user could survive it. You’re going
to die if that happens, Mr. Popielarski.”

“But you said this was programmed in; you
said it was a test cycle,” John argued hurriedly. He wished Dr.
Kala would speak faster.

“Yes I did. But I also said that it’s meant
to be controlled. This isn’t some commercial technology with a
manual and a 1-800 number. It’s tricky and dangerous. You have no
one to stop you. Six out-jumps and the test cycle goes too far. By
my count you have four left before that happens. And I can’t even
guarantee that the second or third jump from now won’t kill you on
the spot.

“As I said, you weren’t vetted for this. No
one knows your capabilities, and no one is monitoring you for
safety. This is the real thing, kid. You do it my way, and yes, you
get stuck here. But you get to live, and who knows, maybe I can
find a way to come back here and save you after I take care of my
other affairs. No lies, no manipulation, just the logical--”

The hologram lost shape and fizzled. John
began to feel the watch’s drain on his body. Ronika jumped from the
floor, grabbed Mouse and thrust it back into John’s bag. Carefully
avoiding John’s spastic arm, she wrapped his bag’s strap around his
shoulders. A moment later, he was on the floor. Ronika hugged him
quickly and bounded back onto her couch. It was the last thing John
saw before falling unconscious.

John awoke in a grey haze of plastic-diffused
light. The first thing that struck him was the biting cold welling
in his bones. He breathed in strongly, shivering.

“It’s a side effect of the watch,” Kala said,
suddenly perched back atop John’s wrist. “And it’s only going to
get worse the farther you jump.”

“Shut up,” John said quietly, currently the
loudest he could amplify his voice. Carefully, he slid his hand
beneath him. His fingers felt damp plastic. He quickly recoiled his
touch from the surface and wiped the wet onto his jeans.

John opened his eyes and found that his
vision had already returned to normal. A sound rumbled beneath him.
A car honked its horn. His hearing seemed fine as well.

That recovery was faster than last
time
, he thought.
At least
something’s
getting
better.

“John, we need to talk about your situation,”
Kala said.

“No, we don’t,” John answered, sitting up
from his slouch.

He looked around and knew immediately where
he was, a portable bathroom unit, the type people used at public
events. Where the unit was, however, was an entirely different
question. The constant vibration at his feet paired with the
airflow quickly seeping through the small holes in the bathroom’s
sides told him that he was probably experiencing the “portable”
part of this particular portable toilet.

“And what’s with all the bathrooms!” John
suddenly shouted at his watch, not really expecting an answer.

Kala chuckled at the question. “I know it
seems odd, but there’s a perfectly reasonable, scientific
explanation for it.”

“What possible explanation could there be?”
Mouse asked, climbing from John’s bag.

“How did the girl one get here?” Kala
exclaimed.

John turned the watch’s face toward
Mouse.

“Well, you really are a little-miss-science,
now aren’t you?” he said patronizingly.

Mouse sharply bent its right hand upward at
the hologram. Kala was probably intelligent enough to realize that
if the robot had been built with fingers, its middle one would
currently be seated in the upward-position.

“Did you have a nice nap?” Kala asked
her.

“Yes, actually,” Mouse answered awkwardly, as
though the question had been sincere.

“That’s another thing. You never explained
why people around me are passing out,” John added.

“The device is an infiltration unit designed
to operate in secret,” Kala said. “It emits that light as a way of
rendering any potential witnesses near the event unconscious
before, well, witnessing. It’s meant strictly for emergencies.
Normally, you’d use the watch in private, thereby making the
function arbitrary. Don’t worry, it’s not damaging.”

“Where are we, John?” Mouse asked.

“Pretty sure it’s a Port-a-Potty. Maybe on a
truck. Feels and sounds like it, anyway,” he answered. “I’ll
check.”

John stood shakily on the plastic floor,
walked to the door, and tried to push it open. When it stubbornly
refused his first attempt, he pushed harder, eventually inching the
plastic outward just enough to spy a thin, yellow rope tied around
the outside of the unit.

“Try the bottom of the door,” Mouse
suggested. “If there’s no rope there, we might be able to slip
through.”

John bent down awkwardly in the small space,
being careful to avoid backing into the damp toilet space behind
him. He pushed at the bottom corner of the door with success. Its
cheap plastic bent easily, and John peered through the opening he’d
created to the outside.

The only sight available was the swiftly
moving asphalt of a highway and the sides of two other units tied
to his left and right. The unit he was in seemed to be located on
the rear edge of a large truck’s open flatbed, one stall in a large
shipment of portable toilets. There was no tailgate securing him.
John took a moment to appreciate the thin yellow rope he’d been
annoyed with just moments before. He backed slowly to the seat
behind him.

“Well?” Mouse asked.

“Just road,” he answered. “We’re on the back
of a truck tied to the rest of the cargo. Looks like we’re staying
put.”

“Might be a bit boring, but that’s not such a
bad thing,” the robot answered.

“Where are you precisely?” Kala asked.

“No idea,” John said. “All I could see
outside was the road.”

The doctor sighed loudly. “Stick your arm
outside for another moment,” he said.

“What, no G.P.S.?” John asked.

“We were missing the whole “S” part of that
in the seventies,” Kala answered snidely. “Not very subtle shooting
them into the sky from underground silos, you know?”

John followed Kala’s suggestion without
further comment and stuck his arm out from the bottom of the
bent-open door.

“Either Vermont or Montreal,” Kala said
confidently as John brought him back inside the Port-a-Potty thirty
seconds later. “Probably a trucker’s route on whatever highway
they’ve built up here since my day.”

“You can tell that just from the road?” John
asked.

“The trees,” Kala explained. “Plantae,
Magnoliophyta, Magnoliopsida, Fagales, Betulaceae, Betula,” he
rattled off quickly. “Birch trees. Judging by their height, yield,
health, coloring, and positioning, we’re most likely moving north
from Vermont to Canada. Somewhere in the middle of there, anyway,”
Kala said.

“I could have told you that,” Mouse mumbled
quietly.

John raised an eyebrow toward its visor.

“Okay, maybe not,” it relented. “But I knew
the genus.”

“We got lucky this jump,” John told the robot
and hologram. “I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the quiet.” He
sat back down on the shoddy plastic toilet seat and tried to find a
comfortable way to position his body. “Maybe I’ll even take a
nap.”

“Someone else in one of these things?” a
voice called from somewhere else on the truck.

John tensed at the sound of an unfamiliar
voice.

“Come on, now,” the voice said, “I heard you
in there. You and your girlfriend. Don’t worry, now; I’m not with
the fuzz.” The voice laughed wildly as if someone had just told an
extremely funny joke.

“Who are you?” John called back
accusatorily.

“Just another rider like yourself and your
lady,” the voice responded. “Name’s Boone. King of the Open Road!”
He laughed again.

“Are you in one of the units?” John
asked.

“Sure am. Got one of those urinal cakes in
here putting off a good flame to fight the cold. You got one of
those over there? It’s a little pink disk. Lookalike a hockey
puck,” Boone said.

“No,” John answered without checking. “What
are you doing here?”

“Don’t know what the confusion is,” he
answered. “Just riding the train.”

“This isn’t a train.”

“It’s better than one!” the man replied
enthusiastically. “Goes about the same speed and I got myself a
private room to travel in style with. It’s got a fire, a bathroom,
and a sun roof.”

John looked up and saw vented slats that he
assumed Boone was referring to.

“Train bums never had it so good,” Boone
continued. “Kings never had it so good. I once knew a guy who took
the ... ” He paused. “More of you guys back here?”

“No, just me and the girl,” John answered
back.

“There’s just some banging going on toward
the back here,” Boone explained. “So much for my quiet ride.”

John stood and cocked his head slightly to
one side, hoping that directing one of his ears to the open venting
at the top of the Port-a-Potty would help him hear what Boone was
referring to. His experiment was a success, but soon the noise
became frequent and loud enough to have been heard by anyone
nearby.

“John,” Mouse said quietly, “not to be an
alarmist, but--”

“I know,” John answered in whisper. “I’m
thinking the same thing. We need to get off this truck.”

“I’m just going to assume you two are
speaking of the men who gave you such chase the night before,” Kala
chimed in. “You’re probably right, you know. If the Advocates knew
how to track you before, they could certainly use the same method
again.”

“Advocates?” John asked.

“There’s no time to explain them to you, Mr.
Popielarski, and there would be nothing much to explain even if
there was. Everything you need to know about them you’ve already
personally experienced. You need to get away from here. If they
catch you, you’ve doomed both of us. Move, now!” Kala shouted. The
banging was getting stronger, and the loud sound of a man’s violent
cough sounded between them.

“Boone, you need to start getting out of
there!” John shouted.

“Shut up, you imbecile; right now those men
are fishing blind,” Kala exclaimed. “There must be fifty units on a
truck this large. Is it your intention to telegraph which one is
yours?”