Felony

Felony

by Roger Ley

 

Roger Ley has self-published eight novels and one anthology of speculative stories.
He was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. Later, he worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His early articles appeared in publications including The Guardian, Reader’s Digest, The Oldie, and Best of British. His short stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).

Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk

More TTTV Stories by Roger ley: https://talltaletv.com/tag/roger-ley/

‘Guardian’ by Roger Ley: https://talltaletv.com/guardian/

 

To Judge Arnold Petersen, it had seemed like an open and shut case, until the FBI agent appeared. His secretary had led him in before quietly retreating back to her outer office.

‘Judge Petersen? I’m Special Agent in Charge Tomlinson. Do you mind if I sit down? Thanks.’ The agent sat in the chair on his side of the desk before the judge gave him permission.

Nice move, thought the judge. He’s established dominance, or at least equality.

‘I’m not used to receiving unannounced guests in my chambers, Agent Petersen.’

‘Special Agent in Charge, actually, your honour.’

‘Yes, quite. Anyway, how can I help you?’

‘Well, to put it bluntly, your honour, you have to release prisoner Clancy Roper.’

The judge rummaged through the half-dozen files on his desk, pulled one out, opened it, and adjusted his reading glasses. He read the top sheet for a few moments and then looked up.

‘You want me to release a murder suspect? There appears to be a very strong case against this Clancy Roper.’

‘Oh yes, we’re aware of that, but he has to be released and quickly.’

‘When you say “we”, who are you referring to?’ asked the judge.

The FBI man placed the envelope he’d been holding on the desk.

The judge picked it up, opened it, and read the contents.

He looked up. ‘Very impressive, Agent Tomlinson, but I’m afraid the President does not have jurisdiction in my courtroom. Mr Roper has been charged with a serious crime and must appear before the court, stand trial, and if found guilty, face the consequences of his actions. He is accused, after all, of killing his own father. Murder in the first degree, Agent Tomlinson, as I am sure you know, is a heinous crime, and in this State still attracts capital punishment.’ He pushed the letter with its presidential seal back across the desk.

#

Clancy Roper stood in the booth at the laboratory for what he expected would be the last time. He’d been a volunteer time traveller six times now, but the Intelligence Oversight Committee had judged that the highly secret experiments were too dangerous to continue. The whole DARPA-funded university project was to be closed down.

Their boss, Doctor Riley, had explained the situation that morning. He’d called the project’s dozen or so technicians and scientists to the dining hall of the building which housed the time machine, the electronics workshops and their associated offices.

‘We just don’t know what consequences our actions, however careful we are, will have on the timeline.’ He’d looked over at Clancy. ‘Our esteemed volunteer has gone ahead forty years on a number of occasions, he’s bicycled around the local area and taken photographs, but he’s never involved himself with any of the future inhabitants, so we feel that no damage has been done so far.’

How wrong you are, thought Clancy. He’d had plenty of involvement with the locals of the future; he’d had no choice. He just hadn’t told anybody back here in the present.

‘The discovery, first made by Dr Abrahams,’ continued Riley, ‘which allowed us entry to the future was a fluke.’ He nodded apologetically to his second in command. ‘Sorry, Peter, but it has to be said.’ Abrahams shrugged in self-deprecation. ‘The government has decided that the likelihood of our, er, competitors also discovering it is vanishingly small. To that end, they have ordered me to shut our project down. They will seal all our experimental data away for a hundred years. You will all be informed of the generous redundancy package that has been provided, and will be offered help with finding new employment and relocation.

‘On a personal note, I would like to thank you all for your loyalty and hard work. I am as disappointed as you that our association has to end like this, when we were achieving so much. Your termination is effective immediately. I’m so sorry.’ Riley took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ‘Again, thank you all so much.’ He retreated back to his office.

The “time team,” as they’d called themselves, began to collect their personal items and, over the next hour, left the building in angry or subdued dribs and drabs, depending on their personality types.

Clancy knew that DARPA would send people to dismantle the equipment, possibly as soon as the next day. He hung around in one of the smaller workshops until everybody had left, then let himself into the main lab and fired up the equipment. It was quite a simple process; the time machine was always left in sleep mode rather than shut down. He stepped into the booth, the quantum controllers charged up to their maximum, and he felt the usual moment of dizziness as he was thrown forward forty years into the future. At the same time he was projected along Earth’s complicated path the correct distance, speed, and direction, to keep him in the same relative position. As a technician, Clancy didn’t fully understand how the controllers could do these simultaneous operations, but he could appreciate how difficult the latter one was, and it never failed to impress him. He’d left a note that would ensure he’d be collected from a week ahead of his start point.

#

Unbeknown to his boss, Clancy had been running a small project of his own forty years in the future. On his second visit there, he couldn’t resist cycling around to the house where he and his wife lived. He’d been shocked to discover that Paula had died in a car accident ten years before, and that the older version of himself was living alone, in squalid conditions, half starved, and suffering from dementia.

Posing as the old man’s son, Clancy had arranged for him to be admitted to a local care home. He began paying the eye-wateringly expensive bills by buying gold coins and bringing them with him on his visits from the past. One of the jewellers in town didn’t ask questions and in return offered a slightly reduced exchange rate. Clancy wasn’t looking forward to explaining the expense to his wife when she did the next audit of the family accounts. But anyway, all that had to end, now that he wouldn’t be able to visit the future anymore.

As usual, he arrived at the empty abandoned building that was the future version of his workplace. He mounted the collapsible bike he kept there and made his way to the Maple Meadows care home. He left the bike outside, tapped the combination numbers on the panel beside the entrance door, let himself in, and nodded to the receptionist. She recognised him and smiled back. He walked along the corridor to Clancy Senior’s room and stepped in quietly. He stood looking at the poor skeletal figure of the old man as he lay sleeping, with various tubes, drips, and collection bags attached to him. The life support machines beeped quietly.

Clancy leaned over and kissed the old man’s forehead, switched off the various machines, and silenced their alarms as they began sounding. He sat holding the old man’s hand as his life drained away and his breathing stopped.

Ten minutes later, one of the nursing staff came to check on her patient. She found him dead, with Clancy still sitting, holding his hand, and quietly weeping. She went back to the reception desk. The police arrived soon after.

‘I couldn’t just leave him with no support,’ he told the cop who cuffed him and led him out to the black and white. ‘He has no health insurance. God knows where they would have sent him. It was the kindest thing to do.’

#

‘The security cameras recorded everything, from the moment he entered the building,’ said Agent Tomlinson to the judge.

‘What happened at the police station?’ he asked.

‘He told the cops the whole story and asked them to get in touch with DARPA to confirm it. At first they thought he was nuts, but eventually they did as he asked. DARPA checked back on the project and found a note explaining the situation. It said that he wasn’t to be held under any circumstances. That’s why I’m here.’

‘So, he’s telling the truth? He really is a time traveller?’ asked the judge.

‘He surely is, your honour. He’s from forty years in the past. If we hold him, we risk all kinds of damage to the timeline. The situation would become completely unpredictable.’

‘I assume you tested his DNA and fingerprints?’

‘Absolutely. Moles, birthmarks, scars — they’re all identical within the limits of the age difference. They are definitely the same person, but one was forty years older than the other.’

‘Okay,’ said the judge as he scribbled a note on one of the forms in the file, signed it, and handed it to the FBI man. ‘He’s all yours.’

#

They kept Clancy under lock and key for the rest of the week, although Agent Tomlinson took him to attend the old man’s funeral at the crematorium a few days later. They were both aware of the irony of the situation.

I wonder how he feels, thought the agent. It’s not every day that a man attends his own funeral.

At the end of the week, Tomlinson escorted Clancy to the abandoned laboratory. He stood in the requisite spot and at the appointed moment disappeared, to the sound of a small pop as the atmosphere filled the empty space where he’d been standing.

The FBI man walked back to his vehicle and pondered the last words the judge had said as he’d left his office.

‘I can’t just release a murder suspect on my own authority, you know; the law doesn’t work like that. But if, as you assert, the assailant was indeed the same person as the victim, then the charge must be dismissed. Suicide is not a felony in the State of New York.’