In part 15 Squint fought for his life in an epic showdown with the vampires and barely survived, only thanks to a large and mysterious triangular UFO in the sky. But is he really saved? Or did they only show up to get a piece of the action?

If you missed part 15 then click here. And if you'd like to start from the beginning of Why I Don't Punch Dolphins Anymore, then click here. Just for fun I've included a music video to serve as the sound track for this chapter, scroll down to the bottom and then click to play it when you're ready to listen.

And now for the feature presentation:

Part 16 - Up In The Air, A Time Traveler In Space Jail

An even brighter spotlight shone down on me from the triangle in the sky. And then I was in another place, indoors, but in a very large well-lit room with no vampires anywhere to be seen. “Squint!” my mom yelled and ran towards me. But something was different, she wasn't wearing the same clothes, and she didn't have a scratch on her.

“Hold on!” a stern voice commanded, and she stopped in her tracks. “He needs some attention first.” the voice went on, “Take him to medical.” Armed guards came forward and told me to follow them. I looked at my mom and she nodded as if to tell me to do as they said. I was just glad that she was alive, so I went with them. They led me down a long corridor to something like an elevator, then they pushed a lot of buttons and the next thing I knew we were in some sort of hospital area.

One of the guards pointed down a hallway and explained that I was to go to the room at the end of the hall and wait for a doctor. It felt like I was waiting forever and then a young woman came in and said, “Hi, you're Squint right?” I nodded and she told me that she was going to wash my cuts, but first I needed to close my eyes while she disinfected me with a special light.

She put on a tight pair of wrap-around sunglasses over her eyes and made a gesture for me to close mine. I closed my eyes and could hear her flip a switch. Instantly an intense pain shot through my veins. “Ouch ouch ow!” I began to yell, “Turn it off! Quick!” I cried, but the pain persisted. “Help!” I pleaded, “Help me! God! It hurts!”

“Just a little bit more,” she said calmly, “You're almost done.” My skin felt like it was melting off, but I didn't resist. And it seemed to go on a lot longer than just a little bit. But after a while the light eventually stopped hurting. Then she slowly turned off the light and said I could open my eyes again. “What was that?” I asked. She told me it was just an ordinary black light, they use them all the time to disinfect wounds.

Then she opened a drawer and pulled out a small tube of cream. She put some of the cream onto a long swab and applied a tiny amount to all of my cuts starting with my face. Soon, within seconds, each cut that she had put that magic stuff onto was quickly healing closed without needing for any stitches. And there were no scars left behind either. She didn't seem nearly as impressed by it as I was.

I almost completely forgot that less than an hour ago I was waking up to a fight for survival against an army of immortals. Then I looked down at my arm and saw that she had placed a needle into my vein without me even noticing it. “You really should have come back up five years ago, instead of showing off.” she whispered to me with a very serious look on her face. “Oh...” I felt myself saying, and then I woke up from a dreamless sleep, on a cot, alone in a different room.

There was hardly any furniture in the room, and for a second I almost expected Rebecca to show up with a whole bunch of other people again. But then I remembered that today was my seventh birthday, and I didn't meet Rebecca until I was at least twice that age. But now, the way things were going, it sort of looked like I would never meet her or any of my other friends again.

I was in a completely uncharted timeline. It looked as though the breakaway civilization had me on one of their star ships. I wasn't sure yet if I was their prisoner or their guest, but I was just grateful that they saved my life from the vampire attack. I began thinking of my mom. I was glad she was safe, but I couldn't help wondering why she looked different. She didn't look like the same person I had seen just moments before. But if she wasn't the same person, then which one was real?

Eventually there was a quick knock at the door, “Mom?” I asked out loud. Then a young man in a military uniform stepped into the room. He introduced himself as Lieutenant Hossbeck and asked me to follow him. He led me down a hallway into another room where there was a large wooden conference table with nice cushy chairs. There was a large flat-screen television in the corner of the room. “Have a seat,” said Lieutenant Hossbeck, “I want you to watch this video and pay attention.”

“Where's my mom?” I asked as I sat down. I didn't want to waste time with questions about how they had a flat screen TV in 1987, we were in space after all. Without a word the Lieutenant reached across the table and pressed a button on a small panel. The TV flickered on and began to show President Nixon talking about something he was calling a 'master plan'.

The video was super boring. Nixon was explaining how Atomic bomb testing over Nevada and New Mexico in the twentieth century had permanently altered the Earth's climate patterns. And the half life of Uranium 238 was approximately the same amount of time that the Earth had left before the Sun grew and swallowed it and all of the other inner planets in the ultimate fiery apocalypse. Apparently that meant that if humanity remained on the Earth we would be doomed to face an overwhelming struggle against the forces of nature, and in the end it would prove to be a fight that humanity could never win. The planet Earth would eventually become completely uninhabitable.

But not all was lost. The atomic bomb tests had gotten the attention of an extraterrestrial race, and in 1947 the US military was finally able to shoot down one of their spacecraft. What we were able to learn from the wreckage was absolutely priceless. Just when the video was starting to get interesting the door swung open. “Stop the tape!” a voice shouted into the room, and Lieutenant Hossbeck pressed another button to turn off the TV.

“Place him under arrest.” the voice commanded, and four armed guards rushed into the room putting tight straps on my wrists. “I didn't do anything!” I protested, but “Shut up!” was all I heard back. The next thing I knew I was in some kind of a holding cell with a lot of angry people on the outside looking in. “What's going on?” I asked.

“I don't even know where to begin.” said someone with a lot of decorations on their uniform, “Squint, we scanned your memories while you were sleeping.” He looked me right in the eyes and asked, “Do you have anything you want to say for yourself?”

I was shocked, “Me?” I shouted back at him, “What about you? Why were you scanning my memories? You had no right!” He hushed me in mid-sentence and looked at me with an angry face, “That's nothing compared to what you did!” he snarled, “Somehow you managed to smuggle top secret time travel instructions into an unsanctioned dimension. Not only that, but the civilian who you gave that information began freely teaching others how to time travel too. Now the genie is out of the bottle, and there's an entirely new faction of time travelers out there, bumbling around, causing all kinds of trouble. They don't know what they're doing, they're just a disorganized, undisciplined grass-roots movement, and they're growing in numbers exponentially. Soon, the plagues will start showing up earlier and earlier, but unless we do something, they'll eventually infect the very earliest humans over a million years ago!”

I felt a sudden chill as I realized how badly I had screwed up. I thought I had been solving an unsolvable problem by sending grandpa back in time, but instead I just created an even more unsolvable problem. The decorated man glared at me with such a fierce look of anger as I had never seen before. Without a word he stormed out of the room, silently followed by nearly everyone else who had been there, except for a few guards who stayed behind to watch me.

It's amazing how long forever seems to take when there's no clocks anywhere and none of the guards would talk to me. The lights were always on and I had no way of knowing how much time was passing. I never got any visitors, not even my mom. I slept when I felt tired and cold food and warm water were dispensed as I needed it from a machine in the wall. I could tell that the guards worked in shifts, but I had no idea how long each shift was. After a long time someone would come to cut my hair, but they never spoke except to tell me what to do. Occasionally someone would give me a fresh pair of clothes, just plain white loose fitting pants and shirt.

In that time I had thrown as many fits and tantrums as I could possibly manage. I may have had the memories of countless timelines, but I was still young. And I couldn't stand the isolation. I tried to escape a few times, but quickly learned that there was no place for me to go while I was on their space ship. I lost track of how many haircuts I had after the first ten. After a long time, they eventually started shaving my face when they cut my hair. I had asked them how long I was there, but never got any response back. It was as if years were passing by.

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Is this the end for Squint Crusher? What could possibly happen next?

Sound Track Music Video (Up In The Air, by 30 Seconds To Mars):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrFQRn2yYWs

Did you enjoy reading today's chapter? If so then stay tuned for more tomorrow.

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