Timelooper Ch. 04

"I hadn't realized it until that very moment. But whenever I go back, I am exactly like I was when I first put on the necklace. Gloria's angel was a forty-year younger me. She was sort of surprised that I didn't question that the father was an angel. I could see it in her face, but she didn't say anything. We talked a little about her plans for the future and then I left her."

"The angel me checked in on her regularly, but we never had sex again. Maybe that was because I started showing up in angel robes... and then in regular clothes. I was there for all the important events in the boy's life, but I remained invisible... most of the time. Gloria thought that only she could see me, but it was really that I was very careful about when I appeared and when I bounced back."

David looked at Doc Martin very carefully for several minutes with his face very tense. "You are describing my mother," he finally said as he threw his dinner napkin onto the table and started to rise. "Please stay," Doc said, making a motion with his hands, "there is a very important part of this story that you have to hear."

"What I want to hear," David said angrily through clenched teeth, "is why you didn't save her when her Medivac flight crashed. If you could do all these things, why didn't you just go back and tell her not to go to work that day."

Doc stared blankly at something over David's right shoulder. His eyes welled up with tears. He opened and closed his mouth several times before he finally spoke. "I did," he said flatly. Then he continued in a voice hoarse with grief, "I went back and told her that she had to call in sick that day. When she asked why, I couldn't bring myself to tell her, but she knew. What other reason could there be."

"'Mediflight One is going to crash, isn't it?' she finally said. Then she asked if I could stop the crash."

"I told her that the cause of the crash wasn't known, so there was nothing I could do. They called it pilot error, but I went back and watched the pilot from the time he got up in the morning. There were no pills... no drugs... no booze... nothing that I could change to prevent the crash. I told her that I couldn't bring myself to actually be there at the time of the crash because it would mean watching her die."

"She took my hand and said very softly, 'If I don't go, someone else will die in my place won't they?'"

When I didn't answer, she knew that the answer was yes. We sat there in silence for a long time, then she finally spoke. 'Can you be with me?' she asked. "

"'I will be there,' I promised, and I was. I was visible for a second or two so she would know I was there and then bounced back and came back invisible. I held her arm above her wrist so I wouldn't touch her hand. She could feel me and knew I was there."

Doc's tears were now streaming down his face. He wiped his eyes with one of the table napkins and said, "They were approaching a huge pile-up on the interstate when suddenly there was a loud noise and the pilot yelled out, 'We're going in. Hang on.' He tried to autogyro in, but hit a powerline with the rotor blades and slammed into the ground. The experts tried to call it pilot error, but I forced them to look closer at the turbine. I even paid for some really expensive tests that found small pieces of plastic from some sort of cheap drone that maybe someone had been using to take pictures of the crash."

"The hospital and the community said that your mother died a hero. But they didn't know how much of a hero. She went on that flight knowing it would crash because she wouldn't change things so that someone else would die in her place."

Doc again became very quiet. "I could have saved her if I had ever been able to find out who was flying that drone. I went back again and again, but it just suddenly appeared in front of the turbine intake. The most logical theory was that it had been caught in the wake turbulence of a plane taking off at the airport and had been dragged to a high altitude and then dropped. But I couldn't find anyone flying a drone near the airport either. Maybe it got away from its owner and ran out of battery and fell out of the sky in front of the helicopter. I could never find out where it came from. I tried getting the pilot to change takeoff time or his route, but he was too highly trained. Regardless of what I said or did, they took off as fast as they could once they got the call and he went exactly on the route dictated to avoid problems with other medivacs."

Doc looked David directly in the eyes and said, "I would have saved your mother if I could, but I couldn't. That's another reality of the Timelooper. There are some things that you cannot change... no matter how hard you try." Doc's voice got soft and slightly raspy as he added, "You just have to live with them."

After a short silence, David said, "Why are you telling me all of this?"

Doc said, "Isn't it obvious?" then he intentionally made his voice very breathy and distorted and said, "Luke, I am your father."

"I figured that out," David said, "but why are you telling me this now?"

Doc coughed slightly as if to clear his throat and said, "I told you that I couldn't go back farther than my birth."

David nodded.

"I can't tell you," Doc continued, "what happens after next Wednesday either." He then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Suddenly a tight necklace appeared around his throat. "You just have to think 'appear' and it becomes visible," he said in a soft voice. Then he grasped the necklace with his hands, carefully stretched it, and pulled it up over his head.

"Once it is visible," he said, "you can remove it. Remember to do that if you have to have an MRI or something like that. It's invisible, but it's still there."

Doc held the necklace out to David. "I can't accept that," David said.

"Oh," Doc said, "I am giving you a lot more than this Timelooper. You are my son. I am listed as your father on your birth certificate. I had it changed a few months ago. I also filled out your middle name. I told Gloria to use just an M and the rest would be revealed later. You might want to get a new official copy of that."

Doc held the necklace right next to David's hand. "You are my son," he said firmly. "I have enough DNA proof to prevent anyone from ever contesting it. You are my only child. Deb was never able to have children and she knew that an adoption investigation would uncover that we were Master and Mistress. Not everyone agrees with our lifestyle. It would have been impossible for us to adopt."

Doc used to his other hand to gesture around them, "All this is yours," he said "or will be very soon."

David took the necklace and stretched it slightly. "The jewel goes on the right side," Doc said with a smile. "I think you know what to do."

******

David DeAngelo stepped purposefully into the elaborately-restored ballroom of the Marsden Mansion. He was dressed in a black, western-cut suit with a black polo shirt under the coat. On his feet were black cowboy boots. On his head was a white Stetson hat.

As a middle-aged man dressed in a red suit coat of some sort, black pants, and a frilly white shirt approached him, he said firmly, "Announce me as Master David. Master David Marsden DeAngelo."

The man startled for just a moment and then came to attention and said, "Yes, sir." He pounded his tall, heavy cane on the floor and yelled loudly, "Master David Marsden DeAngelo."

David handed him his hat and said, "Please have this taken to my room. I understand it is next to Master Marsden's. And see to it that my luggage is brought up from the car."

"Yes, sir," the man said as Master David strode across the ballroom to join Master Victor at his table.

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