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Do Over
by Dan Kirk
Note: As each of the individual chapters of this fiction were being converted into one single large
file – to be saved as a PDF – some minor spelling and grammar corrections were performed. If
you happen to notice any further discrepancies they are not that of the authors.
Chapter One
Never, ever, ever trust a mad scientist.
Anyone who has read science fiction stories or watched a few episodes of Outer
Limits or Twilight Zone knows not to trust mad scientists doing illegal research.
I’d done all those things, and knew from the outset that I should have just walked
away. There were ten thousand reasons why I didn’t though.
Yes, ten thousand dollars.
When you’re middle-aged, jobless, broke, with no living relatives to fall back on,
ten thousand dollars is a lot of money and a lot more temptation than I could say
no to and not regret it for the rest of my life. With a life that was full of nothing
but could-have-been, the risk of participating in some mad scientist’s experiments
didn’t seem all too great, if I lived. So far, nothing had killed me like hundreds of
little mistakes should have, so I was fairly confident in surviving to take the
money off of the creep’s hands.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Jones, the risk of death is minimal at best.” The scientist with
the bushy silver-brown hair had told me while looking down his long nose. Some
guy about my age, who almost seemed familiar, was strapping me down on a
chair while the scientist himself injected some drug into an I.V. I knew the table
would slide into the machine that looked like an MRI machine but was not,
according to the scientist. He’d picked me over the other pool of recruits for
several reasons. I’d been college educated, but never quite achieved my degree, I
had a knack for accurately recalling events, and wasn’t into drugs or alcohol (I’d
given them up a decade ago). None of the men in that room had had families or
jobs, but most were uneducated drifters or paranoid schizophrenics. “Now, as the
drug takes affect, you’ll begin to feel dizzy, and maybe a little nauseous. Let me
know when that begins.”
“It’s beginning already.” I had told him as I felt the table drop from below me. It
hadn’t moved, really, and I knew that, but it felt like I was no longer in contact
with the damn thing. The room was spinning slightly, and instead of fighting the
vertigo I let my mind flow with it, and even let myself enjoy the spinning
sensation.
“Excellent.” The scientist had said. “We’ll insert you into the machine and I want
you to close your eyes. When you open them, you should be able to see the effect
of the experiment. I want you to observe things closely and compare them with
your actual memories.”
“You… can’t be… more accurate than twenty years?” I had asked and he just
shook his head. Mad scientists and time travel, I knew I should never have
agreed to this experiment, even if ten thousand would have been enough to get
me back on my feet and a productive part of society. Time travel should be
impossible, as the government had stated when it shut the man’s program down.
He’d probably gotten funding from some rich old bastard who wanted to go back
in time, not just observe a past event of his own life through his own eyes.
“It should be twenty years exactly, but there may be some shift of a few days
either way.” The scientist repeated to me, his voice containing a hint of
exasperation. “You won’t be able to interact, or do anything but observe the
events, and we’ll bring you back after twenty minutes. Once you wake up, we’ll
debrief and I’ll expect detailed accounts of everything you observed, felt, or
sensed.”
“You’ll have it, doc.” I said dreamily as the rate of the room’s spinning had
increased. Minutes later, or an eternity as I floated calmly along with the effects
of the drug, I knew the table had been moved into the machine and it was turned
on. I knew that from the loud clanking, the flashing lights, and then the total
darkness. What happened next was the result of mad science, and really should
not have surprised me at all.
“Davey, wake up, Davey.” The voice was excited, and familiar, and dragged me
out of the blackness of sleep instantly. I expected to be dizzy, but I wasn’t. When
I opened my eyes, I could see a face I hadn’t seen in over a decade.
“J-Jenny?” I stuttered in surprise, and felt my jaw drop in shock at seeing my
sister’s ten-year-old face staring back at me with that wicked smile.
“Shh!” She hissed warningly, smiling that wicked smile again. “We can’t wake up
grandma.”
“W-what?” I asked her in confusion. This wasn’t supposed to be happening, I was
supposed to be seeing events, not interacting with them. Jenny had died three
years ago, murdered by her husband along with their two kids, and seeing her
now, at ten was more painful than I could ever have imagined. I wanted to warn
her of so many things, but it wasn’t the right thing to do, was it?
“MTV comes on in ten minutes, you dolt.” Jenny’s voice was barely above a
whisper, but full of scorn like only she could do. “Aunt Bev’s down in her room
with Michele and they’ve got the TV set up. We’re going to watch it on her big
screen.”
Suddenly I remembered what day it was, or rather what night. It was July 31st,
1981, and in a few minutes Music Television would broadcast for the first time
ever. Somehow Jenny and I had gotten our parents to let us stay over at
Grandmas this night, our way of sneaking around dad’s absolute forbidding of us
to watch this new ‘devil station’. Aunt Bev had been paralyzed seven years ago
and the garage of Grandma’s house had been converted into a bedroom/living
room for her. She had a big screen television, cable, and along with our cousin,
Michele (who helped take care of her), had agreed to let us watch the start of the
new era that MTV would represent. We didn’t think of it as a ‘new era’ back then
of course, it was just that MTV was cool, and all the cool kids would be talking
about it when school started. Some vague memory told me that the first of
August had been a Saturday, which was how we’d gotten away with this trick.
“Come on.” Jenny hissed again and I threw the cover off of the bed. We were
staying in the back bedroom of grandma’s house, and had to sneak past her
bedroom, and Uncle Ron’s bedroom in order to get down to Bev’s room. We made
it though, without waking up our notoriously light-sleeping Grandmother.
I noticed as I had stood that I was wearing an oversized t-shirt and pair of white
fruit of the loom underwear. I’d given up on regular briefs decades ago, and they
felt strange. What was even stranger was how my body worked at the age of
twelve. The little aches in the joints were gone, and it felt like each step was
lighter than it had been in decades. Jenny was wearing her flannel nightgown and
her blond hair was still long. As we passed through the living room I noticed my
own reflection in the big mirror and stopped for a second to stare. The moonlight
from the large living room windows provided enough light to see my bleach-blond
hair and I fingered the medium-length hair with fondness. It had long since faded
to brown while I was in my early twenties, and I’d spent a lot of money through
the years trying to dye it back to this color.
“What are you looking at?” Jenny’s whisper was full of scorn and dragged me
back to the present.
Or the past, or whatever this was. Stupid mad scientists! ‘You’ll only be able to
observe.’ He’d said but this was way past observing. I knew that, and wondered
when the twenty minutes would be up. A wild desire hit me to warn my sister of
the things that were to come, but I didn’t. I knew better than to mess with the
time continuum, or whatever it was called. I may have been lured to this
experiment by the money, but I knew my sci-fi and I wasn’t going to mess up the
time-line and return to a world worse off than the one I left.
“Let’s go.” I whispered back to Jenny, taking her arm and suppressing the thrill of
delight at being able to touch my sister again. I wanted to hug her, but it would
be too odd. We were at that sibling rivalry stage of growing up and showing
emotions was just uncool.
“I wonder what they’ll play first.” Jenny said softly as we reached the door to
Bev’s room. It was between the kitchen and dining room, and I was surprised at
the difference in the kitchen. Grandma had had the kitchen redone ten years ago,
or was that ten years from now, and seeing it again like it had been made me
smile with fond remembrances.
“‘Video killed the Radio Star’ by the Buggles.” I answered Jenny’s rhetorical
question and mentally slapped myself in the head. It had been the first question
on the final in ‘Modern American Musical History’, and the only question I knew I’d
gotten right. The ‘D’ on the test had shown how much I really appreciated the
course material, but that little bit of trivia had stuck with me. Jenny stared at me
with an open mouth and a look of total shock, her hand frozen on the door
handle.
“You’re just saying that.” Jenny finally concluded aloud and I just shrugged. It
was too late now and she’d find out in a few minutes that I was right. She opened
the door and we snuck down into Bev’s room, the ramp creaking slightly as it
always did under our weight. Michele was sitting on the couch to the left and Bev
was on her hospital bed to the right a few feet back from the ramp. Both of them
were sitting up and smiled as we made our way into the room. Jenny went
instantly to sit on the floor in front of the big-screen television that had some sort
of signal test pattern on it and I went to give Aunt Bev a hug.
“You two aren’t going to tell your parents, are you?” Bev teased me as I gave her
a hug. She wrapped her arms around me in return and I took a deep breath to
hold back the sob that almost escaped me. She’d been paralyzed from the neck
down in 1974, only able to move her arms, not able to flex her hands or move
her legs at all since that time, and she’d died about five years ago. I’d missed her
humor; her zest for life and just seeing her, touching her, feeling her was almost
too much for me. “You okay there, Davey?”
“Fine.” I mumbled, pulling out of the hug and smiling at her. “Thanks for letting us
watch this with you.”
“Just don’t tell your dad.” She reiterated. “He’ll kill me if he finds out.”
“You’re an evil influence on us youngins.” I said in a mock southern accent, and
she laughed while her eyes widened with some surprise. I’d been a smart kid, but
I was pretty sure I’d never been so openly scornful of dad until I’d become an
adult.
“It’s on!” Jenny cried out from the floor as the screen changed to the MTV rocket
launch logo and the beat of the theme song from the channel filled the room.
When the video actually started playing, I almost groaned aloud. Jenny shot me a
look full of murderous intent.
“How did you know?” She demanded.
“Know what?” Bev countered from her bed. I was sitting on the edge of that bed
and she was resting one of her arms on my shoulder in a loving contact that I
never realized how much I had missed until that moment.

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