The truckload of victims joggled his way the bumpy road, cleared for passage to a nearby airfield.

Anne and Dr. Ward tended to the wounded while Steve sat in prostration, struggling to keep alert. In a sidelong glance, she noted Steve’s sudden pallor and lunged at him before he passed out.

“Hey!” She tapped him lightly on the cheeks. “ Stay with me now.”

He gasped in a breath. “I’m okay.”

She checked his eyes, frowning with concern at the absence of pupillary reflexes in the left. She then scooted over to him on the seat. “Are you afraid of flying?”

“I’m a pilot. Why do you ask?”

“The reason I’m asking is that we’re going to be airlifted to a hospital in Albuquerque. The nearest one with full capacities still operational.”

“Eight point three on the Richter scale. That tremor must have been felt…”

“All the way to New Mexico,” she finished. “However they didn’t sustain any serious damage. A few cans off the shelves, that’s all.”

“And what about the damages caused by the Tsunami?”

“Considerable. The killer wave reached the shores of the Orient shortly after the earthquake. Also brought devastation to regions alongside the Pacific coastline all the way up to Alaska and down to Chili.”

“How many victims?”

“They don’t have the official count yet. But I estimate in the thousands.”

“I can’t believe this,” Steve sighed dejectedly, shaking his head.

“Who’d have suspected that their equation was mathematically accurate, down the month and day?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The astronomers, seismologists or whatever, they predicted this destructive earthquake in two-thousand-six.”

The year broke into Steve’s haze. He creased his brows. “Two-thousand-six?”

“What’s worse is that it came without warning. The nineteen-o-six Frisco quake was at least preceded by two foreshocks.”

“Hold on, back up a bit. Did you say…two-thousand-six?”

“Yes.”

Steve’s shoulders started heaving in suppressed laughter.

“What? What’s so funny?” she asked quizzically.

“I’m sorry. For a moment I thought you said two-thousand-six.”

“I did.”

Steve broke into a sneer. ‘Here we go again’ he thought to himself, referring to the hoax in 1978.

Saturday May 29th 2123

Steve rose in a shrubbery on the fringe on an impressive two-leveled beach house. He grabbed his throbbing head and groaned in pain. He pried his eyelids apart, squinting at the blinding light before he staggered to his feet and lurched down to the beach, holding his head steady with both hands.

“Oh, my head! If this is the hangover, don’t tell me what the party was,” he joked to himself. He wiped the fog out of his eyes and looked around. “What am I doing here? Better yet, HOW did I get here,” he asked, bewildered.

A fainting spell washed over him, urging him to stretch over to the flight of wooden stairs leading up to the second floor of the house. He flumped down on the step with one hand over his eyes and the other gripping the rail solidly. He drew in a deep breath to dispel the dizziness when a voice broke through his haze.

“Hey!?”

Steve jerked his head up and groaned at the excruciating pain.

“You all right, sir?” asked the young man in a jogging suit.

“I’m…I’m not sure.”

“What happened to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, well, one thing’s for sure, you’re in dire need of a glass of water. Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Up there,” he motioned. “This is my house.”

The second Steve tried to stand on his feet, the world started spinning around him. The man grabbed a hold of his waist before he fell backwards.

“I’ve got you. Hold on to me.” He flung Steve’s left arm around his neck and assisted him up the stairs.

Halfway up, Steve was overcome by another strong wave of queasiness, added by a bout of coughing that left him gasping for air.

“I…I…can’t breathe,” Steve rasped out.

“Come on!” the young man coaxed, summoning all of his strength to haul Steve the rest of the way up.

As they stepped inside the living room through the sliding panoramic doors, Steve lost consciousness. The man dragged him bodily across the floor to the couch where he laid him down and placed an oxygen mask over his nose. With his thumb he raised both eyelids and found disturbing the absence of a corneal reflex in the left.

He went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and then returned to the couch just as Steve was regaining his senses. The man sat on the coffee table across from Steve and removed the mask. “How do you feel?”

Steve blinked heavily and drew in a deep breath that triggered another cough. “I have trouble breathing.”

“Maybe you fractured a couple of ribs?” The man surmised.

Steve felt his chest. “No, I don’t think so.”

“By the way, I’m Christopher Cahill, but friends call me Chris.”

“Steve Austin.”

“Here you go, Steve.” He handed him the glass of water.

“Thanks.” Steve heaved himself up on one elbow and drained half the content before giving the glass back to Chris.

“Haven’t seen you around here.”

“I’m here on business,” Steve said as he sank his head back into the cushion. “I was in San Fernando Valley when…” Steve stopped in mid-sentence as he tried to jog his memory of the events leading up to his waking up on a strange beach.

“San Fernando Valley?” Chris exclaimed. “You sure you didn’t bump your head?” he asked on an amused tone.

“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“There hasn’t been a San Fernando Valley in the past hundred years.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re on Northridge beach.”

“The last time I checked, Northridge didn’t border the ocean.”

“The last time you checked?” Chris tilted his head and squinted quizzically at Steve who was staring at him with an eyebrow raised in incredulity. “You need a doctor, my friend.”

“No, what I need is to get out of here.” Steve sat up on the couch and swung his legs down on the floor. He collapsed into Chris’s arms the moment he rose to his feet.

After settling a senseless Steve back on the couch, Chris stepped over a desk upon which sat a giant computer monitor. He touched the upper right corner of the screen to light it up. With his index and middle finger, he methodically tapped different icons to open a window featuring a smock-clad woman sitting behind a desk.

“Doctor Cahill’s office. May I be of assistance?” she asked through the clear-sharp picture screen.

“Susan! Hi, it’s Chris.”

“Hello Chris. How are you today?”

“Can’t complain. Say is my brother busy? I need to consult him on a medical emergency.”

“He’s just finishing with a patient. I can have him contact you when he’s done.”

“I’d appreciate it. It’s rather urgent.”

“Will do.”

Chris touched the bottom left corner of the screen to turn it off. He walked back to the couch where he sat, worried by Steve’s shallow gasps. He glued his ear to his chest and cringed at the sound of the arrhythmic heartbeat.

A minute later, Chris’s wife, Emalyn, entered. “I’m back,” she announced cheerfully, her smile mutating into a worried frown at her husband’s forlorn expression. “Chris, what’s wrong?”

“Come and have a look,” he beckoned her over to the couch.

“Who is he?”

“A stranger I found outside the house. He was sitting on the steps, looking pitiful. He has difficulty breathing.”

She perched herself on the edge of the sofa and checked Steve’s pulse on the right wrist. “Chris, this man is dead!”

“What?” He was fine just a few seconds ago.” He groped Steve’s neck where he palpated a fleeting pulse. “I feel a pulse. Weak but it’s there.” He adjusted the oxygen mask over Steve’s nose. “I’d better keep feeding him oxygen to help him breathe easier.”

“Did you call your brother?”

“I was just talking with Susan. He’s busy with a patient right now.”

Emalyn groped both of Steve’s wrists. “It peculiar; I feel a pulse in the left arm but not in the right.” She turned the right hand over to look at the palm. Her eyes widened in alarm.” Chris, come have a look at this.”

A similar reaction washed over his face at the startling discovery.

“Chris, we shouldn’t get involved,” Emalyn warned.

“We must help him, Ema.”

A beep sound came over the computer. Chris moved over to the desk to activate the screen, on which appeared the face of his brother, forty-ish, dark-haired, Dr. Michael Cahill.

“Hey baby brother! I hear you have a medical emergency?” Mike asked somewhat concerned. “Is it Emalyn?”

“No, it’s a stranger I found on the beach. He’s prone to dizzy spells and has difficulty breathing.”

“I see you’re still picking up strays,” Mike jested to lighten the tension. “Okay, put his palm on the plate.”

“I don’t think that’ll do any good. We just realized he’s missing the chip.”

“Chris, I warned you about harboring fugitives,” Mike hissed.

“How do we know he is one?”

“You just said he was missing the embedded GIDMIC; therefore he’s branded an outcast. They’ll be hunting him down if they aren’t already. And if they catch you with him…”

“I could be eradicated, yes I know,” Chris finished the all too familiar warning.

“You have to report him,” Mike urged strongly.

“Guess this means you won’t help him?” Chris asked sarcastically.

“I can’t without the chip and I won’t. And I strongly advise you against seeking medical assistance elsewhere. That’ll be suicide.”

“So we’re just going to let him die?”

“I’m sorry, Chris,” Mike said with a seemingly genuine concern. “It’s better this way.”

“What if he’s like the other we found?”

“A time traveler?”

“Do you think it’s a plausible assumption?”

“He could have just removed the chip.”

“There’s no apparent scar, like on the woman. The fact that he has difficulty breathing could be evidence that he’s not from our timeline.”

“Look Chris…I love you brother, you know that, but in no way do I want to get enmeshed in this. I have a family to protect.”

“I’ll contact dad.”

“You’re gambling with your very own life over the fate of a complete stranger.”

“I need to do this, Michael. Rest assured, I will delete all traces of our conversation so you won’t be implicated if things turn ugly.”

“Chris, I beg of you…don’t do this,” Mike asked in a last plea to sway his brother’s decision.

“Sorry. Goodbye Michael.” Chris touched the screen to turn it off. He stood, pensive, with a fist over his mouth, his back to his wife sitting by an unconscious Steve.

“Michael is right, Honey. We shouldn’t hide him. It’s too dangerous.”

He turned around and stepped over to the couch where he squatted down. He flattened Steve’s hand against his and brushed his thumb over the palm to detect the shadow of a scar that would indicate that the chip had been surgically removed.

“If he is a time traveler, he could be our salvation.”

Tuesday, August 16th 1977

In the hospital waiting room, sitting stiffly on the couch with her arms hugging her body, Callahan stared vacantly at her feet, unaware that a man clad in a polo-neck sweater and jeans, sporting a baseball cap and a small mustache, was peering at her over his magazine. He was sitting across from her, striving to decipher the meaning behind her stoicism. What was she thinking? He knew she was awaiting news on her friend’s condition, but wondered just how deep the waters ran between the two.

“Don’t fret, Callahan. I’m sure it’s nothing serious or Rudy would have detected it in his last physical,” Oscar spoke reassuringly to allay her qualms.

“What?” she asked detachedly, once his voice had stirred the stillness within her.

He sat beside her put a hand on her knee. “Steve will be fine.”

She heaved out a shuddering breath. “They couldn’t rouse him. It’s like he was in a deep coma,” she quavered, terror mirroring in her eyes as she reviewed the scene in her mind.

“You love him, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

The stranger reacted to the answer he’d been waiting to hear.

Callahan and Oscar sprung to their feet when Rudy and another doctor walked over to them.

“Oscar, Callahan,” Rudy motioned to the man standing to his right, “this is Dr. Correll. He’s a neurologist I called in for a consultation of Steve’s condition.”

“Neurologist?” Oscar was slightly disturbed by the title. “What’s wrong with Steve?”

“Colonel Austin is suffering from a disease called Trypanosiomasis, commonly known as sleeping sickness,” Dr. Correll explained to the two stunned individuals.

“Sleeping sickness?” Callahan exclaimed in astoundment. “But that’s a disease indigenous to Asian and African countries where there are tsetse flies, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. But Dr. Wells tells me that Colonel Austin has traveled to Central Africa last month. And there’s a noticeable sting mark at the back of his neck.”

“Oscar, you reported that Steve had an unusual short fuse lately.” Rudy pointed out.

“His temper was definitely running high. His behavior was odd,” Oscar concurred.

“Irritability is one of the main symptoms. Also headaches, aching muscles and joints, drowsiness, insomnia, tremors…all of which I’m sure he experienced in the last weeks but never breathed a word to me,” Rudy said in frustration.

“Oh, my God!” a guilt-ridden Callahan heaved out in despair. “He mentioned them to me, but we dismissed them a stress.”

“Naturally. One wouldn’t expect to issue a diagnosis of Trypanosomiasis.”

“My God!” Callahan gasped, staring wild-eyed at Dr. Correll. “Isn’t that a deadly disease?”

“In advance stages, yes. But fortunately for Colonel Austin, we caught the disease in its early second stage,” Dr. Correll reassured before continuing. “We did a peripheral blood smear that showed he’s infected with the Brucei gambiese strain, less virulent than the rhodesience form, which can cause death within two to three weeks of infection,” he expounded in his best lame terms. “We will keep him under observation for a few days, treat him with Pentamidine and Eflornithine and see how he responds.”

“It’s a stroke of luck that Dr. Correll was here this week. He’s the resident specialist on exotic illnesses,” Rudy said proudly, his praises slightly embarrassing his colleague. “Two months ago, he attended a seminar on African diseases.”

“Can we see him?” Callahan asked.

“Sure, but you can stay just a few minutes. Try not to disturb him. He’s in I.C.U. Room 4. Down the hall to your left.”

“Thank you.”

“You go, Callahan. I want to discuss a few things with Rudy,” Oscar said as he nudged her onward.

The stranger stood up and followed Callahan inconspicuously down the hall, removing his hat and peeling off his fake mustache as he moved along to reveal the 1980 Steve Austin. He stood outside the room as she went in. He peeked at her gazing at his 1977 counterpart lying supine in bed. A sinking sensation formed in the pit of his stomach at the surreal scene unfolding before him. He was actually reliving the nightmarish day from another angle, which felt like an out-of-body experience.

He swiftly retreated from the glass window when Callahan casually glanced his way. The blood pounded at his throat at the fear of having been spotted. He quickly weighed his options and chose the best course of action, which was to scamper out of the hospital before things turned sour.

As he quickened the pace towards the exit, he cringed at the hand gripping his shoulder. He stopped and took a deep breath before turning around to face the woman he wanted to avoid at all cost.

“Who are you?” she asked sternly, utterly flabbergasted by the Steve Austin look-alike standing before her. Her eyes darkened and spat, “I’m calling security.”

“No Callahan! Don’t do that!” Steve hissed.

“You know my name?”

“Of course I do.”

“How?” She was distressed by his staggering resemblance to Steve. Her face contorted with emotional pain. “Why do you look like him?”

“I can explain, but not here. Let’s go somewhere less conspicuous.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” she retorted defiantly, flinging her arm in the air as he tried to grasp her hand.

“Just down to the cafeteria where we can talk in private. I don’t want to risk Oscar or Rudy seeing me.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain.”

On her guard still, she reluctantly followed the stranger. On their way down, she felt oddly drawn to him as he exuded a charm that was characteristic of the Steve Austin she knew and loved. But she dismissed it as pure figment of her imagination.

Steve chose a vacant table in the corner of the cafeteria and pulled up her chair before he seated himself across from her. All the while, she kept her stare welded to his face, scrutinizing his every feature.

He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes and dove into his far-fetched account of how two identical men came to be in the same place simultaneously. He still had a hard time subscribing to the theory of time travel, but the evidence around him was too staggering to suggest otherwise.

“I woke up in the living room of a farm that had supposedly burned down two years prior to my arrival; the owner we’d been tracking down, hovering over me and his late wife handing me a glass of water. Right away I thought of a hoax, like the one they played on me two years ago to pry a confidential formula out of me. But when the doctor drove me back to my hotel, that’s when things got really weird. I called the office and your replacement told me you were on vacation and Rudy and Oscar abroad for a summit, which I was never informed when I left on my assignment.” He heaved a heavy sigh and lifted his eyes to gauge Callahan’s reaction. “Baffling, isn’t it?”

“So I take it you’re the one who left that message on my answering machine, not him?”

“Yeah. My very survival depended upon it. You see…on this day in 1977, the disease had reached a crucial stage, worse than Dr. Correll originally diagnosed, which he’ll soon discover upon further tests. I remained in a coma for nearly a week. They feared the worse, but I managed to hold my own. I owe my recovery to your timely visit that afternoon.”

“If I hadn’t come?”

“I’d be dead.”

“Oh God.”

“I remembered hauling myself out of bed when you rang the doorbell. When I answered, that’s when I collapsed. Only this time, I interfered with the original chain of events. When you saw me standing, healthy as a horse, you drove away. There was no reason for you to double back. Therefore I would have been left to die.”

“And if you had died, you would have ceased to exist,” Callahan surmised.

“That’s how I see it.”

Bewildered, Callahan grabbed her head in her hands and exhaled a thick breath. “This is too surreal.”

“You believe me?” Steve asked with surprise.

“How else can I explain two Steve Austin? Everything about you is the same: hair, eyes, nervous twitch, lopsided grin, voice, scent, down to your overgrown knuckle.” She reached for his left hand. “This feels real.” Her hand groped its way up his arm, causing him to flinch. “What’s wrong?”

“My arm feels a tad sore,” he said with a grimace, rubbing his arm. “Perhaps it’s due to a rough landing,” he joked with a small chuckle.

“If you’re alive in 1980, that means you beat this disease?”

“Yes but I can tell it was no walk in the park. I recall being confined to the hospital for nearly a month. They subjected me to daily batteries of tests and there were those excruciatingly painful two-year follow-ups of lumbar punctures and blood tests.” Steve’s eyes took on a pained look when his mind roved back on those days. “I swear there were days I wanted to die.”

She gave his hand a gentle squeeze to nudge him back to the present. “So, can you tell me what’s happening in the eighties?”

“I don’t think I should tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Simply because I’d be robbing you blind of your hopes and dreams; anticipation, faith that everything will turn out for the best. You’d stop fighting for your convictions, knowing the outcome beforehand. I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I did that, now would I?”

“Guess you’re right. But can you tell me if I’m still working at the OSI?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“You’re not going to tell me.”

“No.”

“But you and I are still friends, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Oh.”

Steve frowned at the obvious disappointment in her tone of voice. “What’s that ‘oh’ mean?”

“Nothing,” she sighed, quickly drawing a breath to perk herself up and change the subject. “Where are you supposed to be right now in 1980?”

“In California on assignment. I have to report to Oscar every twelve hours.”

“Obviously you can’t. If I know the boss as well as I do he’ll soon dispatch an army of agents to locate you.”

“He won’t if I can find a way to return to 1980 at the exact hour I disappeared into that funnel.”

“How?”

“That’s just it. I have no idea. I think I should start by going back to where it all started. In the meantime, I’ll need to lay low for a while; make myself scarce. I can’t risk running into my alter ago or anyone else who knows me for that matter.”

“You’re welcomed to stay at my apartment, if you don’t mind sleeping on the couch?”

“That’ll do just fine. Thank you. I’ll try not to be in the way.”

“If you only knew how I much I wanted you to be in the way,” Callahan mumbled to herself.

Wednesday June 7th 2006

In a hospital, in Albuquerque, Steve was sitting on an examination table with his left arm in a sling, bearing with the constant poking and prodding the attending physician was subjected him to. He kept a watchful eye on the doctor’s every movement, heedful not to let him linger on his right arm or left eye as he studied the corneal reflex.

“It’s an artificial eye,” Steve fibbed to the perplexed doctor.

“I see.” Dr. Whelan thrust the light stick in his breast pocket and began unwrapping the bandage around Steve’s head. He gingerly fingered the area around the deep gash.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry. Yes, it’s definitely going to require a few stitches. I’ll inject you some Lidocaine to numb the area and then I’ll close it up. But before I proceed, I need you to answer me a couple of questions. First, your name.”

“Steve Austin.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-eight. I live in Washington D.C. I was in California on business. My mother’s name is Helen; my father’s Jim. They live on a farm in…” Steve’s eyes widened in alarm. “Oh God! They’re in Ojai. I need to know if they’re all right.”

Dr. Whelan gripped Steve’s shoulders to stop him from sliding down the table. “Easy! You’re not going anywhere until I fix that gash. You give me their full names and I’ll make enquiries for you.”

“Jim and Helen Elgin. Fourteen seventy-five Lonestar Lane in Ojai, California.”

Whelan scribbled down the information on his note pad, then requested Steve to lie back on the table as he prepared the injection. “We can safely rule out amnesia. Any dizziness?”

“No. Not anymore,” Steve answered distractedly as he poked around the sensitive wound. “Just a bit disoriented.”

“I’ll do an MRI to be on the safe side.”

“I’d appreciate if you would consult with my personal physician before you do. I had a horrific accident a few years back in which my skull was severely bashed in and they put in some vitallium plates.”

“Sure, what’s his name?”

“Doctor Rudy Wells. He’s in Washington.”

“I’ll look him up in the computer.” He walked back to his patient with the syringe. “This is going to prick a bit.” He pinched the skin on his forehead to inject the local anesthetic. “All right. We’ll give it a few minutes. You stay put. I’ll be right back.”

Steve nodded and closed his eyes.

As he waited for the Lidocaine to take effect, Dr. Whelan walked back to the nurse’s station to access Steve’s personal file. Sitting down at the computer, he caught a glimpse of Dr. Fowler treading up to him with ponderous steps.

“How’s Mrs. Holland?” he enquired of his weary colleague.

She leaned her elbows against the counter and rubbed her strained eyes. “I lost her,” she informed woefully.

“You did your best, Anne,” he sympathized while typing in Steve’s name on the keyboard.

“Yeah, can’t win them all, right?” she said sarcastically.

“Precisely, especially in such an unprecedented cataclysm. We’re not Gods, you know.”

She filed the medical chart in the rack and sighed ruefully. “No, just feels like we are. And then something like this comes along that brings us crashing back down to earth.”

“Better get used to it.”

“Maybe it’s just as well that she died. Her fourth vertebra was crushed. Plus which we would have had to amputate both legs and arms.

“Ummmmmmm, that’s strange,” Whelan observed, frowning at the data appearing on the screen.

“What?” Anne crossed over to the other side of the counter.

“I just accessed Steve Austin’s personal file and it says here that he died in a car wreck four years ago.”

“There must be some mistake.” She leaned over his shoulder to peer at the monitor. “It’s another Steve Austin.”

“The computer gives me three: One was a boxing champion, died of a massive stroke in two-thousand four. One is ninety-four and living in England and the third is a former astronaut and test pilot for NASA. Parents are Jim and Helen Elgin like he told me and he…wait a minute. Something’s not right.”

“What?”

“He asked me to check if his parents survived the earthquake. It says here they died in the late eighties. And he told me he was thirty-eight years old.” He pointed to the screen. “Says here he was born in nineteen forty-two.”

“He sure doesn’t look like a sixty-four-year-old man to me.” Anne remarked.

Whelan typed in a code to access a photograph. “Oh Anne! Do you see what I see?” he exclaimed at a nineteen-eighty picture of Steve.

“That can’t be! He hasn’t aged a bit. See if you can access a recent picture of him.”

He fingered the keyboard to retrieve a 2002 picture. “That’s him just before he died.”

Anne was positively dumbfounded. Then it suddenly dawned on her that the explanation for the conundrum might lie in the fact that Steve has shared the same journey through time as she did two years ago.

“Paul, can you hand this patient over to me? I think I can get to the bottom of this.”

“Be my guess. I’ll just suture his head gash and then he’s all yours.”

“Thanks.”

As he left for Steve’s room, she sat in his vacant chair and delved deeper into Steve’s background.

...Continued