Chapter 15 - Mr. Ringer
When I woke up I was strapped to the chair in the testing room. Mr. Ringer was injecting one of his syringes in my arm.
“What about... about Ava? Where is she?" I asked groggily. Her slumped, bloody body had just been in this chair.
"Ava's back in her room. She overdosed on heroin during spring break. No suicide note. Shammas is dealing with the police now," Ringer told me. "Unfortunately for him, the police are going to get a tip in about fifteen minutes to search his home. They'll find evidence of the narcotics Ava OD'd with. He'll be busy for a while."
"So it's you, not Shammas after all," I whispered. John's boss, Professor Hyto, had been right, but not entirely. Ringer was setting Shammas up. Shammas would get arrested and locked up this year, but that wouldn't stop the experiment. I wondered how Ringer managed to escape all the media attention that should have shown up in Professor Hyto's records.
"What do you mean me, not him?" Ringer asked. "Actually, never mind! I don't care. I'm finally done with this God-awful search and I'm ready to go home."
He turned away from me, tossing the empty syringe on a green tray on the counter. Then he opened another cabinet against the wall and knelt down in front of it. I could only see him out of the corner of my eye now, he was nearly behind me. The straps holding me on the chair dug into my arms and legs. They were so tight across my chest I couldn't get a full breath of air.
"What about Mrs. Webster?" I asked.
"What about her?" he asked in return. His voice was muffled.
"Nothing." If he didn't know she'd called the police I wasn't going to tell him. Maybe they'd be here any minute! Some time had to have passed if Shammas had already moved Ava's body. My mind tripped over that. Ava's body... poor Ava.
"What did you do to her?"
"Mrs. Webster?"
"No. Ava. What did you do to Ava?"
"I didn't do anything to Ava. That was Shammas' call. Overzealous idiot. I can't tell you how glad I'll be never to see him again."
"There," he said after a moment. He shut that cabinet and moved to the next one, tossing a short electrical cable on the counter. "Blew some cables when she went. Shouldn't take me long to fix!" He sounded chipper, almost manic.
"Why did you let him kill Ava? You had me and John, how many people do you need?"
"I wasn't sure if I needed you or Ava. Had to rule her out, so I let Shammas have a go. He hoped Ava was getting stronger, but I figured it was you. I knew Hyto would try to interfere..." he trailed off, screwing a new cable into place.
I froze. How did Mr. Ringer know about Hyto?
"You know about Professor Hyto?" I asked, horrified and confused.
"Of course I know him. Hyto and I were partners. We knew Shammas would find his virtuoso sometime around now, his breakthrough student, and we wanted you. I guess Hyto got suspicious of me though, so he sent John back here to spy on me."
My mind reeled. Ringer and Hyto. From the future. From John's future. If they were together, why... ? It was too confusing.
"What about Dr. Shammas?" I asked. "Isn't he the one trying to destroy the world? Isn't Professor Hyto trying to stop him?"
"Shammas is a joke. He's got a crackpot plan to go with his crazy religion, but he's not about to destroy anything. The only reason I came back in time was to find his one success - you. Hyto isn't worried about Shammas either, he's worried about me. Hence John."
Ringer backed out of the cabinet and tossed another cable on the counter. I could see this one. The cable ends were warped and melted. Ringer opened a third cabinet.
"This should be the last one." Then he went on explaining, "Probably I should have noticed John sooner, but I'm not sensitive to time travel like you. Your performance in the airport was priceless." Ringer's laughter was still muffled by the cabinet.
"But why go to all that trouble?" I asked. "Time travel can't be that hard. You and John did it, Ava and Emily can do it too."
"Emily? She never had a bit of talent, I tested her. Ava was decent, but I didn't come for decent. I need the best." Ringer closed the last cabinet. He gathered up the warped cables and dropped them all in the little trashcan next to the door.
"The machine has to recharge for five minutes. Then I can finally go home. Four years and I can finally go home." He walked restlessly back to the cabinets, glanced inside. Most of the lights were green now. He drummed his fingers on the counter, and then came over to test my straps. He couldn't even stick a finger between the strap and my arm, it was so tight. He pulled a tiny flashlight out of his lab coat and shined it in my eyes. I squeezed my eyes shut, but he used his fingers to pry my eyelid up.
"Your're scratching my eye!" I cried. "Stop it, I'll keep them open."
He shined the light again. My eyes teared up but I kept staring at the light.
"Pupil dilation restricted," he muttered. He put the flashlight away in an inside pocket of his lab coat, and pulled two empty syringes from his right pocket. He rolled them, over and under, in his hand, while staring at me.
The sound of his syringes clinking and his jittery behavior was freaking me out. My heart was pounding and I felt very thirsty.
"You're nervous, aren't you?" I asked. I knew why I was terrified, but what was his problem?
"I'm attempting a procedure only accomplished twice before in the history of time. I need it to go right, but I'm realistic. I might die in a few minutes."
I pictured Ava again, her eyes dull and empty. Was I next? Ringer thought I was better than Ava, but did that make any difference? Shammas cranked this machine up so high that it killed Ava. Ringer couldn't be sure he wouldn't kill me. Apparently he thought he might die too.
He said he wasn't trying to destroy the world like Shammas, but I still didn’t know what he wanted.
Honestly, I didn’t care what he wanted. He’d killed Ava.
“You realize I’m not going to cooperate in this test, right? Isn’t that kind of important for this kind of thing?” I said, trying to suppress my panic. It’s hard to sound confident when you’re stuck on your back. I didn't even try to pull at the straps cutting into me. I wasn’t an excessively strong seventeen year old, and I doubted I would be able to summon a surge of adrenaline to pull myself free. My best bet (my only bet) was to figure out what Ringer wanted and bargain for it.
Don't be stupid," Ringer said. "If you don’t cooperate and create a bodycopy, all the energy building up inside you will flash burn your brain. That’s what happened to Ava.” He paused. “Ava didn’t mean to thwart us, of course, she would have done it if she could. She was quite the little devotee. Thoroughly committed to Shammas.”
I remembered Ava's description of the world she'd seen. The dead women who weren't her mother, but made her feel like her mother's death had meaning.
"You - " I trailed off in an inarticulate growl. My panic was gone. Ringer's sick indifference to Ava's death made me furious. I couldn’t stand it that she'd been lured to her death with promises of truth. If she’d struggled, if she’d despised them for what they were making her do, the risks they were taking with her – somehow that would be less horrible. But instead she’d gone willingly into their heartless, destructive plot.
Something shifted in my brain. I would say I made up my mind, but instead it was as if I suddenly saw my mind for the first time. I’d always lacked the faith my parents and others had. I'd doubted God's power and His goodness. I'd been ashamed of my faith. I'd wondered if I was really saved or not.
But now I looked at my mind, and there was faith. It wasn't big or little, it was like a dye that had colored everything about me. I couldn't measure it. It was there, and it was everything.
I saw my decision to come here, my relationship with John, learning about time travel, confronting my shame in God, even John’s sudden removal in the airport - and I saw the will of God. I believed God was absolutely in control of everything. I knew that I was meant to be here, and meant to stop this. I might die, but somehow or other I was going to stop to what was happening at Rosemary Choate. I’d never been violent, or even hot-tempered, but my anger over Ava’s death burned to a white hot point between my eyes. Whatever it took, I was going to be the last one Ringer tormented.
Learning Ringer was from the future had totally overwhelmed me, but that was gone too. What was time travel to God? He was outside of time, beyond time. I was meant to be here, to hate what was happening, and change it.
I'd been letting things happen to me since my first day at this school, now it was my turn to make a few things happen.
The machine beeped three times in succession. I suppose Ringer took my silence as fear or acquiescence. He left the room without talking to me. I heard the machinery hum to life, but then Ringer came back in.
"I almost forgot," he said. He reached into my jeans pocket and felt around. His nearness made me feel ill, but not nearly as much as having his hand feeling around in my pocket. He got out my keys and the metal rod I had there, the one I found in the woods. I had taken to carrying it with me, like my wallet.
"I reviewed the tapes of your last test and I saw you messing around in your pocket. Not this time." He tossed my rod and keys on the counter beside the door and left again.
That didn't matter. I didn't need those things. I wasn’t planning to stop the process this time. I’d had an idea, along with my fury over Ava's death.
Ringer didn't fool around with photographs this time. The big screen on the wall stayed blank, but I knew the machine was going. I felt my body become lethargic, my eyelids drooped, and I embraced it all. I tried to look for a tunnel in my mind, but I saw nothing. Random images of my life and my family popped into my head. I must be over thinking it. I quieted my mind, and I said a brief prayer for wisdom.
I thought of one of my favorite verses, “If any of you lacks wisdom let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach. But let him ask in all faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, he is double-minded.” I knew at this moment that I had no doubts, (well, as much as possible this side of heaven), and the promised wisdom would be there for me.
I breathed deeply until the rippling tunnel began to grow across the blackness. The tunnel was purple this time, and more solid. It twisted and grew and began to resolve itself into a huge corridor. I could see individual stones in the walls. Each stone pulsated with light, and I felt the familiar urge to travel down the tunnel.
Maybe later. For now I held myself in the entrance. This tunnel could connect me to a new time, to a new body. But what about the man in the next room? Mr. Ringer had traveled down a similar tunnel from his own time. His real body lay inert somewhere in the future. According to John, it was still connected. Where was Ringer’s tunnel?
I tried to look outside my tunnel, but the walls were opaque. I felt hideously alone and also… slippery. The tunnel was slowly pulling me inward, like a tilted slip-n-slide. I tried to grab onto a stone, and found that I had some semblance of arms, of fingers. They didn’t seem entirely connected to me. I couldn’t see my body, but when I thought of grabbing the stone my fingers appeared, faintly, and grabbed at the rock. As I focused on the rock I clung to, I could detect other colors behind it.
I pushed (with my hand? my mind?) and suddenly the rock fell away. I could see outside my tunnel and I flinched back. It was so colorful. There were swirling masses of color rioting about. There might have been a pattern in the violent dance, but if I stared at any one clump of color it fizzled out.
I remembered Dr. Hendricks, my physics teacher, talking about the difficulty of observing electrons. Just observing them changed their path. They appeared to pop in and out of existence whenever scientists were watching. This looked a lot like that.
Focus, I told myself. Look for Ringer's tunnel.
I scanned for something stable in the swirl of motion...and there it was. Far away at first, then zooming towards me, like something from The Matrix. The solid, unmoving structure was out of place among the swirling color. It looked organic, as if each stone of the passage grew out of the one before it, a mingling of green and gold and brown. A giant tree that - Oh! It suddenly hit me- this was John's tunnel. It looked like him.
I'd forgotten that Mr. Ringer wasn't the only one around who was from the future. John lay on the cot down the hall, not much further away than Mr. Ringer in his office.
I wanted to stay and ponder John's tunnel, but I could feel the suction of my tunnel increasing. Definitely I needed to work fast. I looked around again, feeling the rhythm of the swirling vortex of color, and easily found another tunnel. I was sure this one was Ringer's. It felt unfamiliar to me, and it looked weak. How long had he been here? Four years, he'd said. That must be a long time for a tunnel to last. His tunnel looked bumpy and old.
I examined it closely, weighing it in my mind the same way I gauged the center of gravity on my toys at home. But now I was looking for weakness - structural weaknesses I could maybe exploit. I had no idea if my plan was possible, but if Ringer thought I was "the best" then maybe I was.
I chose my spot and pushed. The whole corridor thrummed like a guitar string. I pushed again, kicked it with my mind (or my foot), and it shook and vibrated more. It shrunk and grew in muddy ripples.
Ha! I was exhilarated that my plan was working so far. I got in one more good kick, before someone started slapping my face, my real face, hard. I snapped out of the tunnel world to the real world. Ringer was slapping me awake, sweating and red, his eyes huge.
"What the hell did you do?" he yelled at me, shaking my shoulders as well as he could, considering how tightly I was strapped down. He looked awful, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling. "Talk!" he shouted again. "What was that?"
I'd found a way to threaten him! Surely I could use this. Of course, I was still strapped to the chair. I didn't want to antagonize him any further until I was free.
"It's confusing in there," I said. "You've done it, so you must know. It takes a lot of concentration to do it right."
"I know exactly what it takes, and none of it involves what you did to me!" He took a few breaths, and let go of my arms. "If you don't cooperate I can make this really unpleasant. I thought John might be useful, but I'll cut his throat if you try to choke me again." He looked entirely serious. I hadn't realized my little stunt would shake him up quite this badly.
Wisdom, I reminded myself. Think, don't just react.
"Look," I said, "I don't know what your plans are. For all I know, you're going to kill me anyway. These straps are making me extremely claustrophobic. Maybe we can compromise."
"Or I could kill your boyfriend," he said, still looking shaken and angry.
"You could," I said, "but that wouldn't do much would it? That body of his down the hall is only a copy, and he's not exactly in it right now." This was a gamble. I had no idea if killing John's copy here would hurt him or not. Ringer glared at me and clenched his lips together; his frustration confirmed my guess.
I nearly cried in relief. As long as John remained in the future it wouldn't matter if Ringer hurt his body here.
"So why don't we compromise?" I asked. "I don't want to get hurt, and neither do you." I was going to say more but I was distracted by something I saw trailing in the air over Ringer's head. It was a lumpy, uneven shadow, like a rope of smoke rising off the top of his head. A snake of shadow stretching from Ringer's head into- well, into nowhere. It turned a corner a few feet over his head and disappeared.
The thing felt familiar. Was this the tether to his real body? Was I still seeing Ringer's tunnel to the future?
Then I realized I could still hear the hum of machinery. Ringer hadn't turned off the time machine before he came in here to slap me into awareness. So maybe this was another version of his tunnel. I focused on it, thinking of choking it off between my hands.
Ringer's eyes bulged and he grabbed me again. "What the heck is that?" he gasped. "You're going to cut me off -" and his body went limp and fell to the ground.
Oh darn.
Surely I hadn't killed him. I didn't mean to! I just wanted to get some leverage to bargain with. I definitely wanted him to undo my straps before he passed out or anything. With a cold shiver down my neck I realized that the machine was still on. I could hear the humming.
I needed to get out of here. John was only a few rooms away, but I couldn't expect him to come save me. There was no telling what he was dealing with. Professor Hyto had been partners with Ringer. The whole time Hyto had been lying to John. If he had discovered Hyto's lies he might be in worse danger than me. I forced that thought away. Surely John was taking care of himself. Anyway, there was nothing I could do for him until I got myself free.
I listened intently and realized I could hear Ringer's breathing. So I hadn't killed him. In fact, his breathing was getting heavier. He sounded like John when he was coming out of the time travel. Had Ringer made a quick trip to the future? Maybe I'd pushed him out of his body. That could be useful.
Ringer stood up and I watched him warily. He was disoriented, squinting at me and rubbing his forehead absently, and then circling to take in the whole room. He examined his hands and labcoat, and then looked back at me.
"You must be the famous Dara," he said, smiling with a triumphant twist to his lips. "I am Professor Hyto."