Quondam

 Working at The Tasty Tasmanian Devil sucked. Pure, one hundred percent, no artificial flavors or colors, suck. It was officially the lowest rated restaurant in the town that I lived in, and it was easy to tell why. I don’t know how that place hadn’t been closed down for health hazards, because any customers that weren’t turned away by the grimy windows and cobwebs spreading to every surface like a disease ran out the door as soon as they saw the cockroach corpses littering the dirt-caked floor. If there’s one thing that I learned from this job, it’s that cockroaches mate abnormally fast. 

This was my last day on the job. Half an hour to go, and then I would waltz into my manager’s office and hope that he was sober enough to take my quitting lightly. 

I was close to the end of my shift, manning the cash register alone (a job that consisted of finding creative ways to hide my phone and then pretending like I wasn’t getting lost in the endless void that was TikTok) when the door emitted a high-pitched creeeeeak. 

A man stepped in, looking like he was made from the shadows outside. He was wearing a dark, layered trenchcoat that was torn just above his forearm, revealing tattoos that circled up to his neck. His black hair was tied back into an elegant ponytail, and he had a long scar on his upper lip. He looked dainty and lithe enough to be a dancer, but the way that his two-toned eyes, one brown and one blue, gleamed suggested something darker. 

So I thought to myself: Yeah, this guy is super trustworthy!

I’m just kidding. 

“We don’t have any money,” I said, trying to sound courageous and almost dropping my phone in the process of pausing the TikTok that I had been watching. “Unless you want some spider mommies and daddies and little spider babies, our cash register is empty.” 

The man limped up to me, his eyes darting around the room like a frightened deer. “I need your help,” he gasped, leaning against the counter. “Is there anyone else back there?” 

I leaned back, unnerved by his strong cologne. “Sir, I don’t think that I’m supposed to give you that information.” Truth is, I was the only one in the building other than my manager who was drowning his problems in beer, and I was afraid that this strange man would take advantage of that. “Is there anything specific that you need?” 

“I need-,” the man hesitated, leaving an awkward silence hanging in the air. “I need medical attention. Do you have a first-aid kit?” I looked down, the bloodstain spreading across his lower torso becoming more defined. More blood covered his hands like scarlet gloves.

I pulled out my phone again. “I’m gonna call nine-one-one.” 

“No!” The phone flew out of my hands as a sudden force pushed it, clattering to the ground with the unpleasant crack of a few hundred dollars going down the drain. My eyes, wide with fear, took everything in as I glanced up at the man. He was holding a weapon that looked similar to a gun, although it was much longer and there were several triggers, circling the entire barrel of the weapon. 

“You did that, didn’t you? You pushed the phone out of my hand with that…gun thing. How did you- what even is that?” I stumbled over my words as a thousand questions tried to force their way out of my mouth. 

“No, the guy holding the super suspicious weapon didn’t force the phone out of your hands. It was Osiris coming up from the underworld to scare you.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice, but the whole Osiris explanation would’ve been easier to believe than whatever that weapon was. “Yes, of course I was the one who shot your phone, idiot. Now give me the goddamn first-aid kit or I’ll shoot you.” 

I held up my hands in submission. “Okay, okay, but firstly, will you explain to me what that is?” 

“It moved your phone using electromagnetic waves.” 

“Holy- holy- oh-,” my eyes widened even more than should’ve been physically possible. “And right now, that’s just a theory- because you’d need a crapload of controlled energy from the waves all clumped together, because it moves through objects, right, so to have it affect one-,” 

“Jesus Christ!” the man gaped at me. “If your brain is going to explode, please go outside.” 

“It won’t, it won’t- just one more question, if you please,” I waited for him to scream at me, and when he didn’t, I continued, “Where is it from? I’ve never seen anything like it before.” 

The man’s face turned grim. “That doesn’t matter.” He stalked towards me, reached over my shoulder, and snatched the first-aid kit off of the wall where it clung onto the wallpaper like Mufasa on the edge of the gorge. 

“Wait, wait, wait, hold up, I want answers,” I said, whipping around to follow him. He sat down at a table, tossing the gun down and slipping off his coat. 

“Too bad, you’re not getting them.” He pulled his shirt over his head, wincing. A large gash in his side gaped at me like a frightened fish. 

“Then- then I’ll-,” I spotted the gun, darting forwards and grabbing it before the man could register what I was doing. I pointed it at him, wrapping my finger around one of the triggers. “Where is this gun from?” I demanded. 

“If I tell you, you’ll never believe me.” 

“Try me.” 

“It’s from the future.” 

At that, my confidence wavered. The future? That was insane. That was-

“Look in my coat. As long as you don’t touch anything, you can look at the technology in there.” The man snapped open the kit, looking only slightly dismayed when the decades-old lid broke in his hands.

I scurried over to his coat, spreading it out on the floor, where it was quickly joined by my jaw dropping down. 

“Well?” 

Honestly, I had nothing to say. This stuff looked like it belonged in Doctor Who or Star Wars. There was a tiny staff hanging down with buttons going up the sides, labeled “Expand”, “Magnet”, and “Shock”, and a small half-sphere that had a glass covering over it and was glowing with a faint blue light. 

There were also different screens sewed into the sides. The man was preoccupied with cleaning out his wounds, so I clicked the button on the side of one. A woman beamed out of it, wearing a tuxedo adorned with gold jewelry. Full-color, high-quality, 3D vision. It looked like a miniature version of someone in real life. Her mouth moved and she paced around the screen, gesturing animatedly with her hands. I clicked the button again and the hologram disappeared. 

It was incredible. It was impossible. There was no logical explanation for it, but even so, my brain searched for an answer. Was it possible that technology like this had been hidden for so long? Unlikely- technology of this level could advance healthcare, and it would be unwise to keep that from the public. 

So this man really was from the future? “Holy shit,” I whispered. It wasn’t hard to believe, but that didn’t make it any less shocking. Something that had been on the bucket list of scientists for decades got accomplished. Something out of sci-fi movies. God. This was so fuckin’ cool. 

“What’s your name?” I asked, straightening up a placing the gun on the table, sliding it closer to him. 

“Virgil,” he replied, not looking up from the gauze he was attempting to apply to his wound. 

“Here, let me help.” I outstretched my hands, pushing his out of the way. “Get the tape,” I ordered, fixing Virgil’s crappy job at dressing his wound. “My name is Tyler Knowles, if you care. You know, the polite thing to do in that situation is to ask for my name in return.” I looked up to grin at him, but he had gone completely pale. 

“Virgil-?” 

“Wh-what?” he glanced down. “Oh, haha. Sorry. Here’s the tape. Sorry- sorry about that.” 

I took the tape, wrinkling my nose. Yeah…something was up, if you couldn’t already tell by the whole thing with Virgil freezing up suddenly and not having any explanation for it. “So…how did you get this?” 

“Robots,” he answered.

“Of course. Why didn’t I see that coming? It’s the future, it’s always robots.” 

“What, you want the long story explaining everything?” 

I grinned. “Sure, I’m up for it.”

“I’m part of a society of time-travelers. We work in the shadows, going to the past or future when the need arouses to fix our present. It’s a dangerous job, but my present needed it. There was a man…he was an inventor, a genius. He invented a source of renewable energy that was not only one hundred percent clean but was also affordable and accessible to everyone. He saved the earth.” For a second, I thought I saw admiration in Virgil’s eyes, but then his expression fell. 

“We were too trusting. The man’s heart had been poisoned, poisoned by the disease of ambition and pride. He wanted to take over the earth, rebuild humanity. He made advanced A.I. devices, and we all incorporated those into our daily lives, too. We became dependent on them. A few years pass, and it turns out that the A.I. was even more brilliant than we had thought, because they were also the perfect murder machines. Taking over the technology and turning it against the owner, slaughtering thousands. Millions.

  When I left, our population was just over a thousand. Completely cut off from the technology that we had depended on for so long, forced to hide in shelters and bunkers. A complete apocalypse. So I-,” Virgil’s voice caught in his throat. “I did what I had to do. I went back into the past. I’m going to kill this man before he can even have a single thought of harming the world.” 

I paused, the silence screaming in my ears, pounding on the windows, slamming against the walls. “What was the man’s name?” I asked, my voice like a single snowflake of sound in comparison to the blizzard of quiet. 

“His name-,” I could feel Virgil’s gaze on mine, ice-cold stone. “His name is Tyler Knowles.” 

I had a second to register the name, a moment to understand what that meant, a heartbeat to realize what I had done, what I was going to do. 

My knees pressed into the cold floor. One brown eye, one blue eye, both staring at me. Devoid of whatever grief had been in them before, they now stared. Empty. Unforgiving. He took the gun from the table, his hands moving with the grace of someone who had done this countless times before. 

I stared at the man whose life I had forced into a living hell. How could I have done that? How could I have destroyed almost all humanity? 

Poisoned by the disease of ambition and pride, were Virgil’s words, and they echoed in my head now, along with the heartbeats that were counting down the seconds until I breathed my last. 

At least I had made my mark in the world, even if not by heroism. I could marvel at that, kneeling on the tiled floor of the lowest rated restaurant in town. Late at night when everyone else was safe in their homes, focused on the present, not worrying about who they might become in the future. I used to be that, I realized. Maybe it’s what doomed me in the end. 

Virgil pointed the gun at my head and pulled the trigger.