Carl's Adventure, The Exciting Conclusion

Part II (Continued from the July 22 Post)

After three months Carl located his family. Those were three months of stress, toil, and adaptation. The adaptation was the hardest. There were some technological differences to cope with, but mainly the change was physical. He got tired faster. His appetite was gone. His back hurt. His “teeth” were always missing. And nobody respected him.

But who was it that they didn’t respect? Who was he? Every day Carl would take a long look in the mirror, and wonder who stared back at him. There was some resemblance of feature to the young Carl: the strong jawbone, the blue eyes, even the scar on his lip. But when he looked at an old photograph of himself he had found in his wallet, he almost saw a different person.

He was a different person mentally as well as physiologically. He was lost. His life had been lost. He had catapulted through time, and time had changed him. Suddenly, people treated him like an old man. Women used a motherly tone with him. Men sounded awkward around him. Officials offered him a helping hand with a hint of kindness and a hint of condescension in it; after he thanked them he would remember how they used to attentively follow the young reporter’s every move.

And what moves did he have now? He could barely move across the room without getting tired. “Lord, how did this happen?” Was the young Carl someone else? Was this Carl just an old man in an apartment with memory loss and a TV? A lonely man without family or connections?

What was the thread that connected the two Carls, the element that made them one person? Was it the blue eyes? No, blue eyes were not a person. His blue eyes could be destroyed, and leave Carl behind. Was it the old interests, hopes, beliefs? They were all gone. Was it the memories? They were fading, and even if they hadn’t been, what is memory but a shadow of reality? A person is more than a shadow.

Why should he even try to find his family, his home, his friends? What did they have to do with this Carl? They were important to the young Carl; what difference did they make now?

But he found them. One sunny afternoon he walked up the neat front lawn of his brother's house and fell into the arms of a man nearly as old as himself.

Why Carl," exclaimed the man, "It's so good to see you!" He pulled up and grasped Carl's shoulders at an arm's length, with glistening eyes. Where have you been these past three months?

Carl started. "Only three months? Steve..." His voice broke.

"Three long months." Steve's voice was husky. "That's too long, Carl. What were you thinking? Why didn't you at least call us?"

Whadda you mean three months?" Carl blurted, choking. What happened before that? Why are you so old and wizened? Where's the rest of the family?"

It was Steve's turn to choke up. Trembling, he gripped Carl's hand in both his own. "Carl." He spoke softly, forcing down tearful agitation. "Come inside. You're safe now. We'll take care of you. Everything will be all right."

Carl crumbled to the ground, sobbing. What had happened? Had he lived a whole lifetime and forgotten it? He clutched the grass, and his eyes swam in blackness.

When Carl regained consciousness, he was lying on a couch, a woman daubing his forehead with a cold, wet towel. She was a stranger. Beside her was another woman, whose face recalled twleve-year-old Margaret, his sister. Mother and father were no where in sight. Steve was sitting nearby. He had looked up from his newspaper as soon as Carl opened his eyes. Strange people - men, women, and children - stared at him.

"Steve, I want to talk too you alone," Carl rasped. "Please."

The strangers glanced askance at each other, but silently filed out of the room.

"Steve," Carl began. "I don't know what happened. The last I remember I was twenty-three. Help me."

Steve sighed. "You're my brother, Carl. They all want to hide it from you. Even your wife. You're dying." His eyes filled with tears, and he swallowed. "I don't know what you remember, but believe me, there's a family around you that loves you, that lived a lifetime with you. Remember that, Carl."

Carl's breath came faster and faster, and his eyes widened with shock. The room grew dimmer. All was black.

Carl's opened his eyes in an instant. He couldn't hear anything, and strained to see through the darkness. It had been a dream. All a dream! What had seemed so real was now patently mere vapors of his imagination. He let out a long laugh of relief, and turned over to get out of bed.

Then he stopped. His hand and side had hit something hard above him. He tried to sit up, and bumped his head on the same surface. Evidently, he was trapped in a small, cushioned box. "Help," he shouted, and pressed on the lid with all his might. From outside came a hundred screams. The lid broke open, and he jumped up and found himself standing in a coffin at the bottom of a newly-dug grave. Terrified mourners had fainted, gone into hysterics, or set off running to the cemetery exit. He recognized not a single one of them. In the midst of the chaos, Carl jumped for joy. He was as young as he had been on the streets of California.

"Ma'am," he demanded of a distraught old woman collapsed on the lawn. Her mouth formed an O and the tears had frozen in her eyes.

"U-u-uncle Jeff?" was all she could manage to croak.

Carl only replied, "No Ma'am. Who is Uncle Jeff?" Then he smiled, and reached into his pocket. The reporter's notebook was there.

Carl's Adventure, Part I

So my brother and I were talking in the car, and he said, "Wouldn't it be weird if..." I already had my notebook out, and from his bare idea produced a story in two parts. However, one of the parts isn't finished yet, so you'll have to come back to this blog to see what happens. Mwahahahahahah.

Part I

Carl blinked. He was not easily perturbed, but this was a bit much. He was sitting alone in a big white Buick Le Sabre, speeding down a rural freeway at ninety miles an hour. The speed was normal, but the car was a bit strange. Even worse was the seeming transformation that had occurred to his clothes and body. His skin was wrinkled, his muscles shrunken, and his back a bit hunched. He reached up to his head, and blinked again. He was almost bald.

If Carl had been an old man, none of this would have mattered a lot. Time does its work. All the more reason to do ours energetically, he reasoned. The problem was, Carl was a spry, twenty-three year old journalist who hoped to live a few years yet before the fire and ambitions of youth had passed.

The last thing he remembered was driving his BMW through teeming Los Angeles—horns blaring, lights flashing, helicopters roaring above. Now wide fields dotted with rolls of hay reached out on either side of the pavement. The noon sun made him notice that the air conditioner was broken. Carl reached to his pocket for the reporter’s notebook he always carried. It was gone.

Two hours later he arrived at the outskirts of a city. At a gas station he had his first real shock. He glanced in the mirror to see how he looked, and he hardly recognized himself. That was not Carl, that was—well, that was Carl. But fifty years older. This time, he blinked twice.

Carl hopped out of his vehicle and stumbled onto the pavement. His feeble legs trembled as he walked around in search of the office. Then came another shock. There was no office, no attendant, no person in sight. All purchases were presumably to be made electronically. After looking in vain for a place to swipe his credit card, he wearily sat down again on the imitation-leather seats of the Buick.

Not only was he fifty years older; apparently the fill-up station was as well. But how had it happened? He had been zooming through downtown on an assignment one moment, and he found himself zooming through Iowa or somewhere the next. He hadn’t drunk a magic potion, he hadn’t opened a door to another world—he hadn’t even fallen asleep like Rip Van Winkle. And yet he had obviously aged, and technology had advanced. Funny, he thought, how people fall apart over time but things get better—or at least get replaced. Replaced! What if his family weren’t alive?

He reached into his pocket again, to see what was in there in place of the notebook. His old cell phone was gone, but he found in his hand a sleek little computer. It was ergonomically as well as aesthetically appealing. Figuring out how to use the thing wasn’t hard, but finding a way to make a phone call on it was difficult. Maybe phone numbers were obsolete.

Feeling strangely weary, Carl started the engine and drove through town, stopping finally at a hotel. He lay awake a long time that night in the $500 room, thinking.

To be continued...