“Well?”
Childs held his hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “I have already told you that you bear a striking resemblance to Richard Dreyfuss. Nevertheless, the facts of reality are against you.”
“Screw reality.”
“If that’s going to be your attitude, Roger, there’s not much point in continuing these sessions.”
“All right,” muttered Roger. “Go on.”
“Look at the facts, Roger. Dreyfuss was born in 1947. If you were he you’d be a hundred and forty years old. Look at yourself. You’re not even thirty yet.”
“A hundred and forty-three.”
The therapist’s eyebrows arched slightly. “Again?”
“If I was Richard Dreyfuss I’d be a hundred and forty-three, not a hundred and forty.”
“Exactly. That vid, Close Encounters, was made over a century ago. Unless you’ve found the Fountain of Youth, you can’t be Richard Dreyfuss and you couldn’t’ve been in that vid.”
Roger flopped back into the chair and held the bridge of his nose as the sides of the chair sloshed against his thighs. “Then why can I remember the film being shot? Why can I remember who was in it? All of them. I can remember who I kissed, who I couldn’t stand. Every argument, every shining moment, every lousy single detail. Why do I remember getting the Oscar for The Goodbye Girl?”
“This is all public information, Roger. Your mind has processed these things and mutated them until they fit your current reality. It proves nothing. Doesn’t it ever make you wonder why you only remember his early films? Why don’t you remember What About Bob?, the Beverly hills down and out thing, and the rest. Did you watch What About Bob? as I asked?”
Roger nodded, his gaze cast down. “Yeah.”
“Well?”
“No, I don’t remember it. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
The therapist shook his head as he air cushioned his seat over to the window wall behind Roger and looked down upon the teeming masses of Portland, Maine sixty-five stories below. “Look at them out there, Roger. Most of them are hitched to Hell’s rocket, and most of them try to cope the best way they can. Some blot out on drugs, some do the same thing with religion, others fall into fantasy worlds and never come back. Some take their own lives, some take on the lives of those they admire to avoid having to deal with who they are themselves. There is a sad, sad world out there filled with minor Napoleons, Christs, Rambos, Mohammeds, John Waynes, Buddhas, and,” he concluded as he glanced back toward Roger, “at least one Richard Dreyfuss.”
It’s all wrong, thought Roger.Close Encounters . The pieces of the film. The stuff that was left on the cutting room floor. The stuff Spielberg whacked out and more he put back in for the special edition. That incredibly boring version that was put on TV. Have I made it all up? Is this smug fart in the chair behind me right after all?
He might be.
Roger was the only one he knew that still called farts farts. Everyone else either called them braps or pats. “Isa,” he began, but there was a tone beep that interrupted his comment.
“This is the important call I’ve been waiting for, Roger. Please excuse me,” said the therapist as he touched the armrest of his chair and answered, “Yes?”
Roger could hear nothing as Isa Childs nodded and silently screened the audio from the room. He watched the therapist for a moment, then rose from his own chair, walked to the opposite window wall, and looked out upon the polluted expanses of Back Cove. The glass on the Preble St. office tower needed cleaning and the cove was further hidden by a veil of drizzle and haze. He looked down to see the early afternoon shoppers, muggers, and druggers hurrying to get out of an increasing rain.
He frowned deeply as he thought. If it was all in his head, why did he remember Brooklyn, a place he supposedly had never been? The heartbreaks, the victories? That Oscar? If he had won it, where was the damned thing? If it was all a fantasy, then who was he? Who in the hell was Roger Alfred? He was an actor, and luckily he was doing very well in the vids. It was all that he ever wanted to do. Those familiar with Richard Dreyfuss’s work, however, were always startled by the resemblance between Roger and the actor from the previous century. It was not only a physical resemblance either. The acting styles, mannerisms, even the voices were similar.
But not exact, as the therapist had established. He had taken Roger’s voice prints together with prints from Dreyfuss’s film work, and Isa had reported that the prints didn’t match. Of course, he only had Isa’s word for that. Right then he didn’t trust the therapist very much. It was a suspicion that had grown ever so more intense over the past year. Of course, that was simply another manifestation of his “skeptic within,” according to Isa Childs. The therapist was contradicting the reality in which he wanted to hide; hence, mistrust. And he did remember grade school, high school, and college as Roger Alfred. All of that had been in Maine. It was the details that kept fuzzing over. He not only didn’t remember his first girlfriend, he couldn’t remember any girlfriends. Hell, he couldn’t even remember his parents except as some poorly drawn stick figures. To be sane, the only explanation for his mush of memories had to be time travel, and there wasn’t any time travel. It looked as though all that was left for him was the banana farm.
“Roger?”
His thoughts interrupted, Roger turned and looked at his therapist. Childs had finished his call and was standing. The man looked quite pale. “Is everything all right?”
His face grave, Isa Childs walked over to his desk and thumb triggered the print lock on his center drawer. “No, Roger, I’m afraid things are quite serious.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“Not just yet.” The therapist reached into his drawer, withdrew a greenish silver weird sort of comb that seemed vaguely familiar, aimed it at Roger, and pulled the trigger. Roger felt as though a high voltage line had been thrust into his belly button.
“God damn you!” he croaked.
Childs smiled sadly and said, “Congratulations, Roger. That was a very healthy response.”
As Roger took a ragged step toward Childs, the room began growing dim. His skin seemed to tingle all over and he saw himself fall into the office’s thick gel floor covering, but didn’t feel the impact. Instead, he was carried away into the dark by a thousand invisible arms.
It was like a movie reel running in his mind’s projector frame by frame.
Time surfers.
There was the wave and the stream. Wipe to get into the wave, wipe again to go back in the stream. After years in the wave, he had chosen the stream.
He was Richard Dreyfuss!
He had been in Close Encounters! He had been there for all of those movies! The memory was vague, but at the end of it, they said they had to replace him. He couldn’t be Richard Dreyfuss anymore. He was needed elsewhere for another mission. Another Richard Dreyfuss would do What About Bob? and the rest.
Things he had done for the time wardens: things that hurt, things that killed.
The killing.
Usually, that was the job. Go back, take someone down, thereby smacking some ill defined rogue event into line with the natural stream.