Chapter 200: Book 3 Chapter 35: As If Time Travel Weren't Confusing Enough Already

“Ugh, where are those guys?”

Harley checked the time. The other loopers had yet to arrive at their usual morning meeting place. She’d gotten out of bed early and everything.

“Give them time, dear, I’m sure they know what they’re doing,” Lee chided.

Leanne shook her head and then returned her attention to the doughnut she was eating.

“Yeah, see,” Harley said. “Those two are useless. You’ve only been doing this a few weeks and you’re already more in charge than they are.”

“Oh, no, no, that’s not true at all,” Lee said. In spite of Lee’s own protests, Leanne gave a thumbs up.

“See, Leanne agrees with me,” Harley said. “Let’s find Naomi and Dominic and overthrow them in a bloody coup.”

For the first time in the few weeks they’d known each other, Leanne seemed to enthusiastically agree with something Harley had said. She clenched a fist and pounded it into her open palm, signaling she was more than ready for a beatdown.

“Stop, please,” Lee pleaded. “We have enough to deal with without any coups, bloody or otherwise.”

Leanne reluctantly unclenched her fists, and Harley relaxed as well. Lee breathed a sigh of relief and untensed her shoulders. She’d been about to sweat a hole in her cardigan.

“Thank you, now please, just join me in being vigilant for our daily apocalypse,” Lee said. “Anything could happen, explosions, monsters-”

Two loud and somewhat familiar screams filled the air as two figures catapulted out of thin air and crashed into the floor nearby. Lee stared down at the two unexpected arrivals.

“-Us?”

“Of course the one time I get to time travel it’s a cannonball,” Harley grumbled, as she picked herself up off the floor. “Everybody else just gets to stand around and pop into a new timeline, but I have to get launched around and practically land on, uh, myself?”

Harley looked at Harley. Neither Harley blinked.

“Oh dear,” said both Lee’s in unison. Then the Past Lee started to panic.

“What is this? Are you from some- what are you wearing?” Lee demanded. The Future Lee had been wearing shorts and a tank-top at the time she’d been displaced, a far cry from the buttoned up cardigan and long skirt of her past counterpart. The fashion choices were the first major difference past Lee noticed, but not the last. “What have you done to your hair?”

“Oh, bit of a purple ombre in the underlayer,” Lee said. She brushed her colorful hair over her shoulder to show off the dye. “I’ve tried a few things, this is going over much better than some of my- oh my god this is first year.”

The presence of Leanne had finally driven the point home. Lee was looking at herself four years in the past, or four years in the future, depending on which Lee one was talking about.

“Yes! What are you doing, why are you- you need to change,” Past Lee said. She was trying very hard not to panic right now. Her (their?) parents would not possibly approve of how future Lee looked. “This isn’t- you know what it isn’t!”

Future Lee looked at her past self with as much pity as her heart could muster. Once the sadness of seeing her stiff, restrained self became too much to bear, Future Lee stepped up and gave her past self a hug. Past Lee tensed up and stood stiff as a board. This was only the fourth time in her life she’d been hugged, and by far the most uncomfortable, and temporally confusing.

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“What are you- am I doing?”

“Good god, I can actually feel how tense we were,” Future Lee said. She released the hug and grabbed her past self by the shoulders. “Please try to relax a bit, you’re giving us neck strain.”

“I suppose I am a bit- you have a tattoo?”

Past Lee’s brief moment of understanding turned to outrage when she saw the three suns tattoo on Lee’s bare shoulder. The bare shoulder was upsetting on its own.

“You’re going to get us disowned,” Past Lee said.

“Well,” Future Lee said. “I’d love to talk about that, but, well, time paradoxes, and all that.”

“It isn’t stopping them,” Past Lee said. She pointed at the two Harley’s. They were getting on much better than the two Lee’s, and after complimenting each other on their nigh-identical red outfits, had turned to friendly conversation.

“His name’s Vell, and he’s awesome,” Future Harley said. “Like, we think what we’ve got with Lee now is as good as it gets but man, once that dude shows up it’s going to be like a puzzle piece you didn’t even know was missing.”

“Nice. Also, he’s a dude, right, so I’m assuming we-”

“Get to sleep with him? Yes, frequently, even,” Future Harley said. “Leanne does too.”

Leanne had been peacefully chewing another doughnut on the sidelines of the temporal oddity. She nearly choked on some sprinkles and then slapped Future Harley in the face.

“Oh, shit,” Future Harley mumbled. “Forgot how hard you could slap.”

Leanne made a rude gesture to the entire group and then stormed off in a huff.

“Hey, it was your idea,” Future Harley shouted. “I mean, it’s going to be your idea. Later.”

“Harley!”

“What,” said both Harley’s at once. A lot of things about Lee had changed, but the way she scolded Harley was consistent across the years.

“Stop telling our past selves things,” Future Lee said. “You’re going to cause a time paradox!”

“No I won’t,” Future Harley scoffed. “I don’t even remember any of this.”

“You don’t- you don’t,” Future Lee repeated. “I don’t!”

Future Lee turned and pointed to her past self.

“Why don’t I remember being you?”

“I don’t know, I’m not you yet!”

“You’re me in the past, but I don’t remember me from the future being here,” Future Lee said. “I should remember this, remember how I looked, what I felt.”

“Now, obviously I’m the version of myself here that’s stupider by four years,” Past Harley said, gesturing to her future self as she spoke. “But isn’t the obvious solution that there’s just a branched timeline? You traveling to the past changed the future?”

“Nah, that’s not how the timeline works,” Future Harley said. “There’s only ever one timeline, the Butterfly Guy told us so.”

“Butterfly Guy?”

“That’s a very long story and by the time you’re me, you’ll already know it,” Future Harley said. “So I’m not going to tell you.”

“Understandable.”

“If it’s not a branch, then what did happen?” Past Lee said.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Future Lee said. “What day is it?”

“September 30th.”

“Okay, let’s see,” Future Lee mumbled. “That’s only as few weeks in. If I recall correctly...oh, that explains it.”

“What explains what?”

“Well, you see-”

Across the island, an entire building exploded. The laboratory walls caved in, and a massively, fleshy construct of bloodshot eyes and writhing tendrils emerged from the ruins.

“Tremble, mortals! Orkathos the Time-Eater rises!”

“Nice meeting us,” Future Lee said. “This’ll all make sense in four years!”

Then Orkathos the Time-Eater fired one of his chrono-devourer eyebeams directly at Future Lee and Harley, temporally obliterating everything in their general vicinity.

“Was there...somebody there?” Past Lee mumbled. “I have the oddest feeling I’m forgetting something important...and purple.”

“You would look good in purple,” Past Harley said. “Also, one thing you should know, I really don’t like dramatic pauses.”

“Oh, of course, won’t happen again,” Past Lee said. “Now, shall we do something about the giant eyeball monster?”

“Yes please.”

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“And so Orkathos technically removed any trace of our presence in that span of time,” Future (now Present) Lee explained. Thanks to some complete temporal obliteration, their past selves did not remember the visit from the future/present selves, though the mechanics of the time loop preserved that knowledge in their current selves.

“So we were there, but we weren’t,” Harley said. “And I remember having been there, but I don’t remember me being there.”

“Basically, yes.”

“Hmm. I kind of have a headache now.”

“Me too, dear,” Lee said. “Do you want to get some lunch and never think about this again?”

“Yes please.”