The Dark Restarter Read online

  He was so preoccupied with the how, he hadn’t even noticed that time had literally stopped. It was the hue of the room that made him realise. A colour that plagued the dreams he was unable to have thanks to the sleep he could no longer indulge in.

  A colour he had fostered an irrational hatred for.

  That colour, of course, was blue.

  *

  Peter’s hand was phasing through his past-self, effectively super-charging the four of them, unexpectedly causing time to slow to a crawl, eventually grinding it to a halt altogether. At least, that’s how it appeared to them.

  ‘You g-guys are gross,’ said Hal.

  ‘To be f-fair,’ said Kara, her teeth chattering and making it all but impossible to hold back the laughter, ‘you co-could have ph-ph-phrased it b-b-better…’

  ‘I ha-hate you all,’ said Hal, his mutual laughter betraying the sentiment.

  *

  Malcolm realised he was beat. He was able to draw off scraps of energy from the other side of the door, but the wood oddly seemed to provide enough of a barrier to prevent him from recharging himself, and the red energy within him eventually dwindled to nothing. His connection to his alive-self lying flat above him on the roof giving little in the way of support.

  He had just enough time to wonder if the physical version of himself he had stationed on the roof had gone AWOL and left his post, as the door flung open. Reality began to stabilise, and the flow of time returned to normal, as a blue lightning bolt shot across the doorway, erasing any doubt he may have had that Harold and Kara were responsible for this. Even though they were gone, free from this place, they had still managed to find a new way to interfere.

  Peter’s past-self entered the room, grabbed a phone charger, then found himself pressed against the bedroom wall, as blue electricity filled his eyes, just as it always had. Not that Malcolm was looking. He was staring at the doorway, a look of thunderous rage on his face. And with that, he clicked his fingers, speeding up the flow of the current Cerebral Reversion, leaving the phantom-like intruders behind him to enjoy their little moment, having ruined what had been a perfect plan.

  *

  ‘Bangarang!’ shouted Hal. ‘And that’s how it’s done! Up top!’ he added, holding his hand up to Kara for a high five, which she responded to with customary reciprocation, a dull crackle repelling her palm.

  ‘Up…top…’ said Kara, almost more as a question than a bookend, in shock that it had all ended so quickly. ‘That was…easy, all things considered.’

  In that moment, Restarting suddenly felt a lot like riding a bike to Kara; the two of them representing a fluttering playing card wedged in the spokes of time, emanating flutterby effects instead of nostalgia.

  ‘So, what next?’ said Hal, rubbing his hands together. ‘Shall we go save the dinosaurs? Or we could go and talk Clooney out of making Batman and Robin? It’d be nice to give something back to the universe, don’t you think?’

  Kara heard a voice that, even after all this time, still sounded alien to her, and it took her a second to realise it was because its point of origin was a duplicated version of her own voice-box.

  ‘Looks like we’re about to take Jerry home,’ said Kara, eavesdropping on the words being spoken by her alive-self.

  ‘And we know we nailed that part’ said Hal, recalling the intricacy of their 165th restart. ‘Which means we’re done here. Everything’s back to normal.’

  ‘Anyone else think that was…I don’t know, a little too easy?’ said Fearne, but her words fell on deaf ears. Literally, as it turned out, due to the sound of rushing air flooding their out-of-phase eardrums.

  But, for once, it didn't signal defeat. It sounded to the four of them much more like something else.

  It sounded like victory.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Three Malcolms

  167th Restart – Friday, August 24th, 12:02pm

  The first thing Hal and Kara noticed was that the aforementioned victory was of the short-lived variety, as they reappeared outside Fir Lodge in a fresh restart to the unsettling sound of “Mr. Sandman”, which was once again blaring from the inexplicable radio occupying the space in front of them.

  Realising he was brandishing his gun, which had re-materialised in the exact position it had been when they first arrived here, Hal once again dropped the weapon into its holster

  ‘Ummm, Hal, why are we back here?’ said Kara.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he replied. ‘We beat him. Undid what he changed, we should be back sipping lattes right now.’

  ‘Of course. Because that would be far too easy, wouldn’t it,’ said Kara sourly. ‘Bench?’ she suggested.

  Hal nodded, confirming that the motion had been carried to adjourn to their make-shift war room.

  As Hal and Kara made their way into the rear garden, they remembered Peter and Fearne were occupying this restart with them.

  ‘You guys too huh?’ said Hal, more than a little confused.

  ‘Looks like it didn’t take,’ said Peter, stating the obvious.

  ‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ said Kara.

  ‘Okay…okay,’ said Hal, the cogs clearly starting to turn in his brain, slipping off his backpack and emptying the majority of the contents onto the table, ensuring that one item in particular remained nestled safely within the bag out of sight. He flicked several of the objects out of the way, looking for something in particular.

  As he did so, his three friends sat around the table, staring curiously and trying to make sense of the items he deemed worthy (albeit sub-consciously) to bring back with him through time.

  Several snacks in the form of energy bars, two bottles of water, two cans of a popular brand of energy drink, an A5 sized notebook and some heavy-duty adhesive tape were visible at first glance. Amidst all that were photos of Jess, his dog Shelby, and pictures of their initial stay at Fir Lodge, featuring all of their friends. A closer inspection revealed a leather wallet, a small box of what appeared to be cigarette filters, a flip-top silver lighter, a packet of chewing gum and bizarrely, hidden beneath it all, a bright pink rubber duck.

  “Correction, flamingo,” thought Kara, utterly beside herself with confusion.

  ‘Were you planning for a trip through time, or a stag do?’ asked Kara, genuinely curious.

  Hal scowled at her.

  ‘Dammit, where is it?!’ said Hal, returning his attention to his bag and rummaging some more, until finally gaining purchase on what he was after, pulling a black biro from the bag. ‘Pass me the notepad would you, Judas?’

  Peter, balked, but chucked Hal the book all the same.

  Hal took a deep breath, grabbed one of the energy drinks, pulled the tab in one swift motion and proceeded to down the entire can.

  ‘Hal,’ began Kara, but her friend simply raised his hand, extended his index finger as if asking for a moment.

  As he necked the remainder of the contents, he crushed the can and threw it over his shoulder, releasing a satisfied gasp, despite there being little in the way of carbonation in the can of caffeine-infused, potential-diabetes-inducing beverage. Reaching for his trusty filter box and lighter, Hal plucked a cigarette from the container and lit up his first smoke in six weeks.

  ‘I thought you quit?’ said Kara, a look of disappointment on her face.

  ‘I’m dead, it doesn’t count,’ he joked, noting that everyone was staring at him disapprovingly. ‘Wow, tough crowd.’

  Hal’s past-self was talking to Jon by the hot-tub, and Hal swiped his arm across the picnic table, guiding all of the objects back into his bag. ‘We’re on the move, let’s roll,’ said Hal, leading the way deeper into the rear garden and sitting down on the grass, waiting for them to join him.

  ‘Are you done?’ said Kara.

  ‘Yup. I think I know what just happened, but you’ll need to bear with me, because this shit is about to get complicated. We’re talking Pre-New-52-DC-Comics-continuity complicated.’

  ‘I don’t know w
hat that means…’

  ‘Nobody here does,’ said Hal reassuringly, scribbling in his notebook vivaciously. ‘So, I think we just experienced a convergence of multiple timelines. By killing Malcolm on our 165 restart, we miiight have just given him the keys to a time machine.’

  ‘Not out brightest move,’ said Kara. ‘We created a bloody Restarter.’

  ‘Worse,’ said Peter earnestly. ‘Some kind of…Dark Restarter.

  Hal blinked, clearly wrestling with sticking to his guns about being mad at Peter and wanting to commend him for coming up with such a spot-on title.

  ‘That…is surprisingly not terrible. Good shout, Pete,’ he said finally, recalling the moment when he flicked Malcolm the bird after they defeated him.

  It had been a pretty glorious sight, seeing Malcolm’s face as he walked up the stairs of Kevin’s basement, utterly unaware at that point they were cursing the killer to an eternity of restarts.

  ‘A sort of…Malcolm 2.0,’ said Kara, unable to think of a better term. It seemed to do the job.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hal with a smile. ‘He’s had God knows how long to change things, reliving our 165th restart over and over. And, somewhere along the line, he’s figured out how to move his living-self away from Kevin’s place.’

  ‘How did he manage that you reckon?’ asked Kara.

  ‘We’ll need to ask the man himself on that one,’ said Hal glumly. ‘So, Malcolm 2.0 was there at Fir Lodge, pulling the strings of his alive-self.

  ‘Malcolm 1.0,’ said Peter helpfully, eager to contribute to the conversation, sensing he might be on the right path to winning his way back into his friend’s good books.

  ‘Nobody likes a kiss-ass, Pete,’ said Hal, returning to his curmudgeonly mood, still reeling from the weight of Malcolm’s revelation that Peter and Fearne had betrayed them. A fact they would need to discuss at some point.

  ‘Think of it this way; there’s the past versions of us,’ said Hal, eager to break things down. ‘Alive and well on Friday the 24th of August. There’s also a version of us on our last run of restarts, changing time to free ourselves. And then, there’s the four of us right here and right now, a third copy of ourselves occupying the same space, but contained within separate pockets of time.’

  ‘What about the future we came from though?’ asked Kara. ‘Are they still there? That version of us? Alive and kicking?

  ‘I think it’s safe to say that timeline is toast.’

  ‘Well, that sucks,’ said Kara. ‘Although, at least that means Peter’s funeral hasn’t happened.’

  ‘I still don’t get why I don’t remember that?’ said Fearne. ‘If I was dragged from the same future as you, I mean.

  ‘You’ve got me there,’ conceded Hal. ‘But at least we can work out how many Malcolms we have to contend with.’

  ‘Same as us, you think?’ said Kara.

  ‘I’d say so,’ agreed Hal. ‘There’s the Malcolm of the past from the 24th of August, still alive and being all murdery, then the second Dark Restarter version of himself we created…’

  ‘The one we just stopped from sending Pete to the slaughter?’ said Kara.

  ‘Right. All the fun of a vanilla serial killer, but with access to the same sandbox of thirty-three-hours we had access to. What I can’t figure out,’ said Hal, his brow scrunching, ‘is this third version of Malcolm. Where the hell did he come from?

  ‘Well, according to him, he’s claiming to be from the future.’ said Peter.

  Hal wasn’t so sure.

  ‘So, there’s the original timeline,’ began Hal. ‘Before all this started, Timeline Prime. Then what happened to you and Fearne…we’ll call that balls up Timeline Alpha.’

  ‘Hal, I–’

  ‘We’ll get to that Pete. Then the new timeline. Everything was peachy, apart from the part where Malcolm killed us and we started Restarting, right?’

  The three Restarters shrugged in unison.

  ‘We’ll call that Timeline Beta. So, Kara and I go back in time, we begin Restarting. 165 restarts later, we change our destiny and escape, sending us back to a brand-new future,’ the intensity of his scribbling bolstered by an enthusiasm brought on in part by the novelty of having actual writing equipment at his disposal.

  ‘Timeline Charlie then,’ noted Kara. ‘But when we made it home, we didn’t remember any of it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ frowned Hal. ‘I guess because time travel or something. Nothing to remember if it didn’t happen, I guess?’

  ‘But it had to happen for it not to happen?’ said Kara, a headache forming.

  ‘Yeah, let’s not get caught up in that,’ Hal deflected, not wishing to draw attention to the reality of him not being in any way proficient when it came to actual quantum mechanics. ‘So, a glorious new timeline is born. Kevin is saved, we’re saved, Malcolm is deader than disco.’

  ‘Who’s Kevin?’ asked Fearne.

  Hal gawped.

  ‘Seriously? You guys are like the worst time-travellers ever. Anyway, jump to six weeks from now, Peter is erased from the present; and boom!’ said Hal, miming a dramatic explosion with added sound effects.

  ‘Malcolm gets sent back through time and inherits our restarts,’ said Kara, finally getting a good grasp on their current dilemma. ‘Then, having access to an infinite amount of do-overs to get the job done, he finds a way to stop Hal and I from even reaching Kevin’s, resulting in Peter taking Jerry back alone?’ she surmised.

  ‘I think we’re cracking this nut! That’s it,’ said Hal, glad he was making sense despite Peter and Fearne still looking completely lost.

  A new memory was forming in Hal and Kara’s mind which corroborated this theory. A memory of seeing the entrance doors to Fir Lodge close before they could set in motion their plans on their 165th restart. But now that they’d changed those events, their memories were shifting back again, as the new timeline they had created took hold.

  ‘Creating a fourth timeline,’ said Peter, sort of getting his head around it.

  ‘So,’ said Hal, picking up momentum, ‘We’re living happily in a new future of our own making, Dark Restarter-Malcolm kills Peter, changes the future–’

  ‘–and frames Kevin for Peter’s murder whilst he’s at it!’ added Kara, remembering her Velma-like Googling back in their now-erased future. ‘But if Malcolm escaped the restarts, why is there a version of him from the future? Still here, at Fir Lodge?’

  ‘And on top of that,’ said Fearne, eager to address a huge plot-hole in Hal and Kara’s rambling, ‘none of this explains why you’re both here, or me for that matter.’

  ‘Good point,’ agreed Hal. And she was right.

  If past-Malcolm had indeed altered time so Peter was his only victim, something else must have occurred for Fearne, Hal and Kara to wind up back where they started. Not to mention the mystery of a Future Malcolm.

  And then it dawned on Hal. Another part of the puzzle slipping into place.

  ‘Maybe…maybe we’re not in The Dark Restarter’s final restart?’ posed Hal. ‘Future Malcolm said it himself, when we asked him when he figured out how we beat him the first time. What was it he said?’

  ‘He said that happened much later,’ said Kara. Everything had moved so fast since they got here, but she had picked up on at least that much.

  ‘That was it,’ agreed Hal. ‘Wherever Malcolm has brought us, I’m fairly certain it’s early on in past-Malcolm’s restart chain. Based on all that, I’d wager the four of us and Future Malcolm are existing in a fourth timeline…’ said Hal, wrapping up the minutes for their team meeting on his notepad with an exaggerated underlining, before spinning the book around and chucking it on the ground between them to show them all. ‘Well, fifth, if you count what you two did before Kara and I got caught up in this mess.’

  The writing was hastily written in a style that drew immediate comparisons to a chicken that had walked through some ink and inadvertently across some paper:

  Timeline Prime – Arrive at Fir Lodge.


  Timeline Alpha – Peter and Fearne ruin our lives.

  Timeline Beta – Hal and Kara Restart.

  Kick Time’s ass! #Timepolice

  Timeline Charlie – Dark Restarter Malcolm changes

  future. Kills Pete. Karma. Hal and Kara survive.

  (Because awesomeness.)

  Timeline Delta – Whatever this thing currently is.

  Fearne scowled at the crude little diagrams in the margins. Notably the one of Peter and her, holding what appeared to be boat paddles, carrying out the act of pushing Hal and Kara into a portal situated next to a sign that Hal had handily labelled as “Welcome to Shit Creek.”

  ‘You spent that whole time with the notepad,’ said Fearne, ‘and this is what you've came up with?’

  ‘Oh, I'm sorry,’ said Hal, showing the signs of someone who was clearly not sorry, ‘how's your thesis coming along, Fearne?

  ‘I was expecting, I don’t know…’ she replied, somewhat lost for words. ‘I guess, at least some mathematical formulas or something.’

  ‘I feel like you're missing the point.’

  ‘And I feel like you messed up Peter's strong jawline,’ retorted Fearne. ‘It’s like a seven-year-old popped on a blindfold, got drunk on cough syrup and tried to finish his homework on the bus ride to school. During an earthquake.’

  ‘In fairness, I put all my energy into nailing the picture of you stabbing Kara and I in the back. Which I feel is reflected perfectly. What do you think, Kar’?’

  ‘Oh no, don’t you drag me into this, if you two want to thrash it out, be my guest,’ said Kara, clearly wishing to remain neutral until she possessed more facts on that particular time-bomb.

  ‘So,’ said Peter, intervening in the hope of diffusing the apparent hostility that was forming between Fearne and Hal. ‘Five timelines, huh?’

  ‘That’s my best guess,’ said Hal, seeing what Peter was trying to do, and not wishing to fight him on it. ‘And three Malcolms. Based on all the information we have.’

  ‘So, what do we do now?’ Kara’s brain felt fried by the prospect of the three Malcolms that were the personification of the past, present and future. She struggled to balance her life when there was only one clock to worry about, yet here she was, apparently in a fifth iteration of an entire universe.