Chapter 4

When I came back to consciousness, it was rather strange. The strangeness was that I was neither in a plane nor was I reclining.

And everything was so quiet!

I was leaning forward against the sink counter in the men's room down the hall from the stairs leading up to my office. And here's the real shit--it was the office in my old work place, the one from which I had been shit-canned a few months before!

As I was thinking that I had better get out of here before Old Man Thompson discovers that I am trespassing, I noticed my reflection in the mirror over the sink. While my eyes were still doing the left-eye-right-eye dim-and-clear action, I could see, from my reflection that my pupils were expanding and contracting in an alternating manner. At the high point, the pupil would almost completely cover the iris, so that I could not even tell the color of that eye. At the low point, it was as if the eye was almost all color, as the pupil was just a tiny pinpoint.

I washed my hands and rubbed some water on my face as the dimming out began to lessen. After about thirty seconds, I saw from my reflection that the alternating pupil activity in my eyes had subsided and was no longer noticeable.

I panicked for a moment as one of the security guys who had escorted me out of here a few months before came in to do his business. I thought for sure that he would grab me by the scruff of the neck and the seat of my pants and hustle me out of the place via the nearest door or window--regardless of its being open or not.

"Hair yew, Mr. Chandler?" the guy asked in a friendly manner as he headed toward the urinal. The way he had said it was the same way that he might have said it before all the shit began to happen around here.

I took advantage of the guy's distraction due to his having to take a leak and walked out of the men's room, wondering how I had gotten from the turbulence aboard a plane landing in Nashville, Tennessee to the quiet men's room of my old work place in Decatur, Georgia.

The men's room was just off the lobby here on the first floor, so that I could see the television in the waiting area. It was tuned to CNN (hey, this is the Metro Atlanta area, and Ted's networks rule here).

I almost passed out as I saw what was on screen!

There was a live news feed of a spectacular car chase taking place in Houston, TX on the screen. That is not what made me feel the tendency to pass out. It was my memory of the event from months before; also, the date and time were indicated on-screen right above the news ticker that was streaming across the bottom of the screen.

This had taken place almost a year ago--well, seven or eight months ago, anyway. I looked out the windows and did not see the dull brown of the winter-dormant grass around the building, as it should be today in late November. Instead, I saw the smoothly-cut Zoysia grass and budding ornamental trees of mid-to-late March.

"Mr. Chandler, are you all right?" asked Marge, one of the receptionists at Mr. Thompson's company.

I was leaning against the wall and looking gray, I guess. At least that is how I felt. Thank God, I was too shocked by what I was seeing around me to say anything. I would probably have said something stupid or sufficiently off-the-wall to have Marge calling for the guys with the nets and the straightjackets.

"Yes, yes, Marge; I guess I must have eaten something at lunch that disagreed with me," I said lamely. Marge smiled at me and went back to the front desk. I turned down the hallway leading to the stairs and ascended to the second floor. I encountered nothing but familiar faces and smiles along the way to my old office.

What I did NOT encounter was anyone or anything to explain my presence here ... in this place ... at this time!

I closed the door to my office and sat down to gather my thoughts. I looked around my office at the decorations. Nothing had changed from all those months ago. I saw the family pictures on the credenza behind my desk and gloom settled over me once again.

Francine and the girls still smiled at me from the frames there. Also in a frame was an extended family picture from our wedding reception sixteen years ago ... well a little over fifteen if the date on that television had been correct. There was the extended family, including Alicia.

Oh, Alicia; if only ... Now, not only was she still not mine, she was no one's. Alicia had passed away last ... well, earlier THIS year from cervical cancer. The cancerous growth had not been detected early enough, since no one would have believed that someone as young as she would develop it. If it had been detected early enough, and if she could have had a complete hysterectomy, she could have perhaps lived many years longer--even decades. Now she was simply ... gone.

Alicia had left behind not only her own extended family, but also her little three-year-old boy and her asshole of a husband, Frank Deal--an abuser that she had been paired up with by her father well after our breakup and right after her graduation from college. It seems the Deal family, with an extended family base primarily in the Savannah area, was very prominent in business and politics in Georgia; and Daddy had wanted Alicia to marry someone well-connected. Frank had turned out to be less-well-connected than expected--even his own family came close to disowning him--unless one was referring to his connecting to Alicia with a right hook or left jab; the asshole. Yeah, Alicia had left all that behind all right.

Well ... and me, of course; she had left me behind as well. I had never lost my deep emotional attachment to Alicia. My thoughts of 'what if' would often intrude whenever I got depressed over the way my life with Francine and the girls had turned out.

Just then, my worst fear about being discovered trespassing in the Thompson building was confirmed. J. Carter Thompson himself pushed into my office without a knock or any of the other usual courtesies. I stood and braced myself for enduring another of his angry outbursts, as well as his call to security to toss my trespassing ass out of his building.

But, he was grinning at me hugely instead!

"Congratulations, Lou," my supposedly ex-father-in-law said in a friendly voice that was far from the norm--even before the divorce. "You got the Allen Brothers to come around for us. There will be a significant bonus in it for you this month! I'm proud of you, Boy!" Then Mr. Thompson, gave me an arm chuck and turned and purposefully strode out, leaving me almost about to pass out again.

The Allen Brothers! I had gotten them to come to an agreement on ... shit! The date on the CNN feed from downstairs. I looked outside to see the early spring instead of the late fall. This was that relatively peaceful time just a few months before things had all gone to shit in my life!

Not believing this was possible; I sat down and put my elbows on my desk. I lifted my hands to cover my face.

That is when I saw it!

Around my wrist was the chain of a simple bracelet with a strange stone mounted in a simple setting. There was nothing beautiful or outstanding about it. It was simply there--where I had placed it when I was on a plane from Minneapolis ... months from NOW!

I looked at my Outlook calendar on my workstation. Yep! This really was eight months BEFORE I had gone to Minneapolis! Yet, I had a bracelet that my mind was telling me that I had received there--and then--as a gift from a guy named Mookie.

I had a panicked thought--what if I had not just returned mentally and emotionally to an earlier time? What if I had physically come back--what would I do if I ran into my other self who belonged in this time line?

Nahhh ... somehow I knew that I had simply backtracked on my own time line and was in my own body from months before.

YET! The Nasiib stone bracelet had evidently 'come back' with me. Somehow, some force ... or whatever ... associated with this Nasiib stone had brought my consciousness back in time; along with the Nasiib stone. I could only guess that the presence of the stone was to serve as an assurance that it had really worked and to reinforce the fact that it was truly behind the strange circumstance into which I had been thrust.

But!

Now, I knew about what could have been; and about what would probably be coming down the road in a few months.

Now, if what my eyes and other senses were telling me, I would not go to Minneapolis or meet Mookie or receive this Nasiib stone set in a bracelet from him--yes, I actually knew its name--and maybe I would not be served with divorce papers or fired...

Whoa!

If my dates were correct, then I was only a little over four months from having my world implode on me. What could I begin doing now in order to keep that from happening?

I got out my pen and a legal pad. I had to make plans of some sort, taking into consideration just what my 'loving' wife and my father-in-law were planning for me. I finally reasoned that I could not actually expect the divorce not to happen--I remembered just how quickly in the other time line that Francine had had Steadman Carstairs firmly ensconced in my house and in what was formerly OUR bed.

Anyway, I had not grown balls of any greater size that I had had before. I was still afraid of confrontation and still deferred to my boss and father-in-law's authority; as well as submitting most of the time to Francine's wishes and desires.

No ... it was too late to change the course of events that would lead to my divorce and firing.

But I had a little something extra in this time line that I had not had before. I had forewarning; and I had anger!

I had been divorced and left almost destitute in that other reality. I had been replaced by a guy who had evidently been fucking my ever-loving bride for many years and was evidently still doing it; even now. My girls had been turned against me. My career had come to an end here and I had been forced to find new employment.

Oh, yeah; and I had been sent along my merry way with threats of possible prosecution for sexual harassment if I made things difficult in the process.

And it had all started with a lie; a lie supported by a perjured deposition from some woman named Joan Hartmann, whom I had never met, as far as I could remember. I might not be able to change much of the outcome of my pending divorce--oh, yeah; I was resigned to the inevitable this time. But, at least, I was not going to be kicked out of this company without some sort of repercussions--and a hell of a lot more compensation!

And I was DAMNED sure going to get me a better lawyer and be better prepared!

Oh, and I was going to get some emergency funds squirreled away as well this time. I wanted to be able to do more with my finances afterward than stand around rubbing my last two nickels together in my pocket, as had been the case previously.

I looked for a moment at the Nasiib stone in its mounting in the chain-style bracelet that I wore. This thing had evidently given me a chance to prepare to correct at least a portion of a pending injustice that was coming my way. But, what if things still did not work out? What if I encountered other highly-charged emotional challenges ahead? Was the Nasiib stone going to be able to help me again? Or was it just a 'One-Shot Wonder?'

Well, there was no sense worrying about that now. I had enough on my plate to worry about for the foreseeable future.

I put the legal pad down and thought about things. I was starting to feel less of the emotional turmoil that I had felt during and following the divorce in that 'other' time line. I still did not feel courageous enough to take on all of my adversaries and set about in a scorched earth policy; after all, I had never demonstrated that kind of forcefulness before in my life. But I was now actually feeling just a little bit in control somehow. That left me suddenly feeling a little more at peace about things.

Peace! That Mookie guy had said that his father had told him stories about the Nasiib stone taking its owner to a 'place of peace.' This might not truly be a 'place of peace' in the long run, but I felt a strangely peaceful feeling in this place and time--for the moment, at least. And that feeling was truly a blessing that I had not had for a long-ass time.

It did not take long to make my position for the near future just a little more tenable as the days of trouble approached.

I had already been collecting information about Old Man Thompson's shady business dealings for many years now, almost since the time that he had taken over the small company with which I had been employed and which Francine had infiltrated. In this time line, I was already aware that he had discovered my little electronic cache of evidence on my computer and on the network server and had made plans to deal with that accordingly.

So, within my first couple of days 'back, ' I made backup copies for off-site storage of all my materials to DVD-R, while leaving the files that Thompson knew he would find on my work station hard drive and on the network shared drive. The DVD-R copies went into a safe deposit box at a local bank that was completely unaffiliated with the bank that Francine and I had been using for all these years together.