Karen D. Badger - Yesterday Once More (47 page)

“Maybe it’s phantom pain. I’ve heard amputees say countless times that they still feel pain in limbs that are no longer there. Maybe that’s what she’s experiencing.”

“I guess that could be it, but still, something doesn’t feel right about this.”

* * *

Jordan stepped into shower and allowed the water to cascade over her body for several minutes. She leaned against the wall of the shower and reveled in the feel of the needle-like spray bombarding the skin on her legs with endless tingles of sensation. Tears mingled with water as the alien feelings overwhelmed her, yet she was reluctant to turn off the water for fear the sensation would also cease. A loud knock on the bathroom door shook her from her reverie.

“Jordan? Are you okay?” Andi called through the door.

Jordan turned off the spray and reached for her towel. “I’m fine. I’ll be right out.” She stepped out of the shower and methodically dried her body from the top down. When she reached her legs, she very slowly messaged them with her towel and was amazed at how soft the terry cloth felt against her skin.

This is fricking awesome!

Jordan stood in front of the vanity and tossed her hair with her fingertips. As she manipulated her wet hair into place, she saw something that disturbed her. “What the hell?” she said out loud as the leaned in closer to the mirror. “Gray hair? That’s odd. Mom didn’t gray until she was nearly fifty. God, I hate getting older.” She scrutinized herself closer.

Lewis, you need to take better care of yourself. I can see the beginnings of wrinkles here. Get a grip, girl, you’re only thirty-two. At this rate, you’ll look like Grandma Moses by the time you’re forty.

A second knock at the door interrupted her scrutiny. “I’ll be out in a minute, Andi.”

“It’s Kale. You’ve been in there an awfully long time. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Jordan dropped her head back and looked at the ceiling. “I’m fine. Really. I’m coming out right now, so if you don’t want to see me naked, you should get out of my bedroom. Here I come,” Jordan warned.

She threw the door open just in time to see her bedroom door close behind Kale. She chuckled as she entered her bedroom to get dressed. Moments later, she joined her friends in the kitchen for coffee.

“What the hell took you so long?” Kale asked. “Usually, your morning routine takes half the time mine does.”

“The truth?” she asked. “I couldn’t resist the feel of the shower spray on my legs. Guys, it’s the most amazing thing to actually feel again. I could have stayed in there all day.”

Andi sat back in her chair and looked at Jordan. “Something’s different about you. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something is different.”

Jordan chuckled. “It’s probably my gray hair. Can you believe it? Look,” she said as she tilted her head for Andi to see the dense shock of gray beginning at the back of her head. “I don’t remember seeing that there yesterday.”

Kale suddenly put his coffee cup down and rose to his feet. He approached Jordan and swung her around to face him, chair and all.

Jordan nearly fell out of the chair at the sudden move. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Don’t move,” he told her as he carefully examined her face, and then the gray hair she pointed out earlier. “Bend over. I want to see your incision.”

“What? Whoa,” Jordan exclaimed as Kale pushed her head down between her knees and lifted the back of her shirt.

The next thing she knew, Kale was pacing angrily back and forth across the kitchen. “Goddamn it! Damn it all to hell. No wonder the implant is working already.” He approached Jordan and dropped to one knee. “I hate to break this to you, but the time travel experiments are over. You got that? Over!”

Jordan’s eyes opened wide. “Why?” she demanded.

Andi looked just as shocked as Jordan at Kale’s declaration. “Kale, I don’t understand.”

Kale approached Jordan once more. “Bend forward again.”

Jordan did as she was told and Kale once again lifted her shirt. “Andi, look at the incision on Jordan’s back.”

Andi looked at Jordan’s back, frowned, and then leaned in for a closer look. “It’s barely discernable,” she exclaimed.

“That’s right,” Kale said. “Any doctor or nurse—hell, any mother who’s put a bandage on her child’s scraped knee would tell you that incision was made maybe twenty years ago, instead of two weeks.”

Jordan sat upright and looked at Kale. “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Come with me,” Kale said as he took her hand and led her into the bathroom. Andi followed them and leaned against the bathroom door. “Here, stand with your back to the mirror. Now look.” He gave her a hand mirror.

Jordan angled the hand mirror so that she could see the area around the incision on her back as Kale lifted her shirt yet again. “Oh, my God,” she said in nearly a whisper. Jordan put the mirror down and faced Kale. “What does this mean?” she asked.

Kale ran a hand through his hair. “It means that each time we send you through time your body ages by God only knows how many years. That’s why the implant is working so quickly. The time travel is adding years to your body, giving the nerve endings adequate time to grow over the injury site.”

Jordan sneaked a look at Andi. A knowing gaze passed between them as she recalled the conversation they had earlier about how traveling back in time might have a potential affect on the aging process.

“From Einstein’s experiments, we know time is gained when traveling backward and lost when traveling forward. I can only assume that each time we send you back, the actual transfer process accelerates time for you. Once you arrive there, time moves at a normal pace, but during the actual transfer, it moves faster,” Kale said.

“Then why wouldn’t the aging reverse on the return trip?” Jordan asked.

“I can answer that one,” Andi interjected. “There probably is some amount of reversal, but theory dictates that time gained by traveling backward is much larger in magnitude than time lost traveling forward, so the amount of reversal would be minute compared to the aging.”

“Jordan, we can’t risk sending you again. Judging by the change in your physical state just since the last transfer, it’s almost as though the aging effect is cumulative. In other words, it increases with each transfer. At this rate, you’ll die from old age in no time.”

“I have to go back,” Jordan insisted.

“I can’t do it, Jordan. I won’t risk it. Look at you! You look like you’ve aged at least fifteen or twenty years over the past three transfers. You had surgery just two weeks ago, and yet the implant site has the appearance of a scar that healed years ago. Hell! It’s obvious to me that you don’t even need the implant anymore. I’m sure if Peter opened the injury site up right now, all synapse connection would be restored. If we could have accomplished that one thing without causing you personal harm, all of this would be worth it, but I’m not willing to risk your death or be the cause of your premature death from old age.”

Jordan walked directly up to Kale and grabbed the front of his shirt. “Well I’m willing to risk my death and old age because without Maggie in my life, it won’t be worth living anyway.”

Kale put his hands on his hips and closed his eyes. “Jordan, I don’t want to lose you,” he whispered.

Jordan released the front of his shirt and cupped his face. “Sweetheart, you will never lose me—regardless of where I am.” She paused for a moment for her message to be absorbed. “Kale,” she said softly, “I need you to do this for me. Please.”

Kale closed his eyes as if to shut out the war raging in his mind between his own heart and Jordan’s desires. He opened his eyes to find only desperation in Jordan’s blue eyes.

“Please,” she whispered once more.

* * *

“Okay, Kale. You need to use these time coordinates. They should land me very close to when I need to be there.”

Kale took the piece of paper from Jordan and looked at it. “Remember, you promised to come back as soon as you’ve taken care of things, okay?”

“Yes, I remember,” Jordan replied. “I don’t break my promises.”

“And then, no more time travel, right?” Kale reiterated.

“No more. Got it,” Jordan replied nonchalantly.

Kale narrowed his eyes at Jordan. “Why is it that I don’t believe you? What is going on in that mind of yours?”

Jordan adopted a surprise look on her face. “Who, me?”

“Jordan!” Kale said.

Jordan threw up her hands in frustration. “All right, all right. No more transfers. I got it.”

Kale turned his attention back to the control console as he typed in Jordan’s time coordinates. “Good. I’m just about ready to go.”

Jordan took her queue from Kale and climbed onto the platform. Just then, the door to the lab opened.

“Wait. Don’t you dare leave without saying good-bye to me,” Andi shouted as she entered the barn and hurried over to the time machine. She reached forward and embraced Jordan warmly, then kissed her full on the lips. “Take care of you, girlfriend. I love you.” 

Jordan smiled. “I love you too, Andi. And you too, you pain in the ass,” she shouted across the room to Kale.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Kale responded teasingly.

Jordan drew her knees into her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, then lowered her forehead to her knees. “Okay, blastoff,” she shouted as Kale powered up the rings.

Moments later she was gone.

“I love you, Jordan,” Kale whispered.

* * *

As usual, Jordan landed on the dirt floor of the barn with a thud. She pushed herself into a seated position and looked around to be certain she had not been seen. Suddenly she heard a voice.

“Hey, Shawny-baby. How’s Mommy’s good boy this morning?”

Maggie!

Jordan crept toward a cluster of hay bales near Shawny’s stall to get a better look. Half way there she stopped and stared at the woman already hiding behind the cluster of bales.

Damn, it’s me. That’s where I was hiding the second time Kale sent me back. I can let her... er... I mean... I can’t let me see me.

Jordan hid behind a nearby saddle rack and watched as Maggie saddled her horse.

“How about a ride, sweetie? It’s a beautiful morning. The air is crisp, and the sun is shining off the snow. A nice fast ride will do us both some good. That’s a good boy.”

Jordan waited impatiently as the scene she’d witnessed before unfolded.

“Okay, dumpling, let’s go for a ride,” Maggie said as she gently prodded the steed forward through the barn. Soon, she was gone.

Jordan watched her other self remove the Faraday belt and make her way to the tack room. As soon as she was out of sight, Jordan emerged from behind the saddle rack and ran as fast as she could to the house. She threw open the kitchen door and ran directly through the house and into Maggie’s bedroom.

“Jordan! Jordan, get your ass out of bed.” She flung the door to the bedroom wide open. It hit the wall behind it with a resounding bang.

“What the hell?” the sleeping Jordan exclaimed as she quickly sat up in bed.

“Go after her, now! Quickly, or you’ll lose her forever,” Jordan screamed.

“Who are you, old woman?” Jordan demanded as she scrambled out of bed and pulled her jeans and boots on as fast as she could.

“Never mind who I am. Just hurry. For God’s sake, please hurry. She just rode off. You have very little time.” She scurried out of Jordan’s way as quickly as she could to avoid the two of them making bodily contact as the younger Jordan ran past her.

Without stopping, Jordan grabbed her canvas barn jacket on the hook by the kitchen door. Within moments, she had run the distance between the house and barn and flung the barn door open. She ran directly to the pile of tack being held for repair and realized Maggie’s saddle was no longer there.

Oh no! Maggie, please don’t tell me you are using the defective saddle.

Jordan desperately searched several empty stalls until she came across one containing a magnificent mustang steed. She talked soothingly to the animal as she first threw a blanket and then a saddle over the horse’s back.

“Come on, big guy. We’ve got a job to do.”

Minutes later, she led the horse out of the stall and climbed into the saddle. With a quick jab to the horse’s ribs, she was on her way in a full gallop across the snowy fields, heading for the western edge of the property bounded by Lake Champlain.

On her way through the now-empty farmhouse, the old woman stopped in the kitchen and retrieved the note Maggie had left for Jordan. Without reading it, she folded it in half and slipped it into her pocket, then stepped onto the porch outside the kitchen door. From her vantage point, she could see Jordan speeding across the plains.

“Godspeed, Jordan. Please reach her in time. This is her last chance. This is our last chance.”

Then she slowly descended the stairs and walked toward the barn.

As Jordan rode across the plains, she anguished over how long it was taking to cover the distance between the house and the lake. In her desperation, she was oblivious to the biting cold that chafed her cheeks as she rode. Nearly a half hour later, the frozen lake came into view. The sight encouraged Jordan to dig in her heels and push her steed nearly beyond its limits as their speed increased and she felt airborne.