Devil's Paradise

19: Outcomes: Failure

I don't remember dreaming. I was taking the doorway at a run, so I didn't have any backward movement. As I approached the field, it suddenly got very bright, and my eyes and testicles hurt. It was a good thing I was running, or it would have been impossible not to stop halfway through the door.

After an instant of stark terror, I seemed to be coming out on the other side, in my lab. Just as the picture coalesced in my brain, I heard a sound like the old cartoon sound effect of an anvil dropped on someone's head. Everything went black.

* * *

"Louis." A hand was shaking my shoulder.

I opened one of my eyes. The other one was pressed against a hard wall. Who the hell is trying to wake me up? I can't even remember the party last night. Worst hangover ever.

About that time, I realized the wall was a floor, and I must be lying in beer. As the room rotated, I almost passed out. Every part of me hurt, but my nose was the worst.

"Louis!" The hand was shaking more urgently, pulling. Someone was trying to turn me over. I got both eyes open, and saw that I wasn't lying in beer. I was lying in blood, and there was a lot of it.

I groaned, and managed to get a hand under me. With that assistance, the hand was able to get me to flop over onto my back.

It was Delilah, and I was still in the lab. Something about that wasn't right.

"Are you okay?" She said anxiously. "Merlin says you appeared out of the machine. I came in and found you. I've been trying to get you to wake up."

She got me sitting up, and started wiping the blood off my face. As I blinked some more, she said, once she was done with that, "Let's get you where you can rest more comfortably. Can you walk?"

If I had thought about it, I would have said no, but all I comprehended was that she was asking a yes/no question. I nodded.

She hauled me to my feet. I cooperated, still dazed. My knees started buckling as soon as they got vertical, and I leaned hard on Delilah. With her support I managed to stay up. I braced myself on the counter with both hands.

"Merlin," I said, surprised by the croak I made. "How long ago did I come out of the machine?"

"Thirty-eight minutes and seventeen seconds."

"Why do I feel so awful?" Delilah started to unbutton my shirt.

"I surmise that traveling through the time field has a shock on a human nervous system."

"I guess it must. Delilah, what are you doing?"

She was pulling my shirt off. "Your clothes are soaked in blood, Louis. It looks like you broke your nose when you fell. It isn't bleeding now, so I don't want to do anything to it. You've got a bed in the next lab, right?"

I nodded again as she unbuckled my pants. "Delilah, wait."

"I need to get you lying down," she said. "There are warm blankets in there, and I don't want you trailing blood all over the place. You're lucky I found you before the rats."

I wasn't in any shape to object. She got me stripped down and walked me down to the next lab. She sat me down and gave me some water while she dabbed the rest of the blood off my face and chest. Then she tucked me in, saying, "I'm going to clean things up in there." She kissed me on the forehead and went out.

It might have been three o'clock in the morning, but to the time clock of my body, it was just after noon. I was dazed but not sleepy, and recovering.

What had happened? I had jumped back in time, and I wasn't dead. That much was clear. Was I the world's first time traveler? Maybe. Probably.

"Alicia! Martin!" Merlin had been right. I could not jump farther back in time than the machine existed.

My wife and child were lost forever.

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