MAN FROM TOMORROW

The young woman dashed through the crowd of city dwellers clogging the sidewalks. She was dodging those blocking her path, but not enough to avoid them. No one liked it when she inadvertently hit them with an arm or a shoulder on her way by. Their nasty looks and angry words didn’t faze her one bit.

The Starbucks she ran from was half a block away by the time she lifted her arm and used the sleeve of her jacket to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks. Her momentum faltered, and she stopped dead in her tracks in an attempt to collect herself. But someone else’s arm slammed into her side with enough force to topple her over.

Her body arched sideways to fall, and she did before the man who hit her moved with lightning speed to catch her. His strong arms wrapped around her waist in an embrace, for the briefest of seconds before he pulled back from her, steadying them both on the sidewalk.

He pulled her back up to her feet effortlessly. Both of them remained in the middle of the sidewalk. Due to their encounter, they stared into each other’s eyes, neither sure what words would defuse the situation. Angry walkers still wandered about around them, grumbling and cursing them for taking up much of the walkway.

The man stared at her long enough to see that the woman’s light blue eyes were puffy from crying and that her cheeks were still streaked with tears. More tears continued to stream as they stared at each other, and she was too stunned to back away.

Realizing that he had noticed her distress, she mumbled an apology before turning and fleeing in the same direction as before. Away from him.

He remained standing on the sidewalk, knowing that something more was off about the woman than just her distress. For a moment he only walked, but then he followed.

Anita Williams thought as she walked away from the encounter; that the man looked like no one else she’d seen before. Not that he was attractive- he was, a little. He had dark hair and eyes. That didn’t matter to her.

But in the brief glimpse she had of him, she noticed that there was something about him that seemed off. The intense feelings she experienced while gazing at him during her suspended fall were unlike anything she ever felt before.

She couldn’t quite place what she felt, either.

Awe?

Confusion?

Perhaps a sense that combined both, but its name escaped her; if it had a name at all. She wanted to know why she felt this way.

With more consideration, she realized it was his arms that she noticed. When they were wrapped around her for the briefest of time, she felt how muscular they were. Anita had been with many muscular men in her life, and still she’d seen nothing like it. Felt nothing like that before- never thought it was even possible.

Once he’d let her go, she couldn’t help but glance at his arms. They were covered with a sleek leather jacket. Beneath that, his muscles pressed hard against the expensive fabric. They were incredibly eye-catching and visible. Her thoughts were quickly taken from that track, however, when she swore, she heard her now ex-boyfriend calling her from behind.

Anita at least, kind of hoped her boyfriend would call her back. Because then, maybe she could offer him the same pain he’d given her, by not returning.

She didn’t stop to turn around and see if she was right; there was no way she would be dumb enough to bother risking her sanity by spending another moment in that man’s presence. Only minutes had passed since she fled the coffee shop, and her mind was already clouded with dark thoughts. The thoughts she knew would continue, unless she kept moving and found someplace where she could be on her own. For the moment, she’d forgotten about the man she bumped into on the sidewalk.

Anita focused her gaze on the sidewalk ahead of her, taking deep breaths to slow the tears and erase her thoughts. At first, it seemed to work, but erasing her thoughts was to prove a fatal mistake. Within moments of being calm, she became worse. It would be impossible for her to be better while surrounded by so many people; there was no point in trying.

Her determination stretched in a different direction instead, aiming not to feel better, but to get away from her current surroundings. The loud, busy atmosphere was getting to her head, and she needed to get out before she went insane. At least now she had a purpose in running so fast.

She continued racing alongside her fellow citizens- most of who didn’t like her shoving by- it was getting more difficult to avoid people without pushing someone else out of the way; her pace slowed to the point where she was reduced to walking, and then she was standing still. She was determined to go on, but her limbs began to shake with the terror accompanied by the dark thoughts seeping into her mind.

She had to move on for fear she’d collapse into a sobbing mess in front of a hundred strangers. The thought was horrifying enough, but that her mind was deteriorating by the second was enough to prompt her into shoving her way through the crowd. She pushed through the crowd, but while she did so, she couldn’t quite avoid pondering why she was such a disaster over a breakup.

It wasn’t even that she was particularly hurt by having to break things off with her boyfriend; it was the betrayal that came along with it. Even focusing on pushing through the crowd became a chore. It was difficult to keep her mind off of all the events surrounding her current state.

Anita and her boyfriend had been together for two years now. She’d become comfortable with him, more so in the last one year, and it all turned out to be for nothing. Several days prior he asked her if she’d be interested in an open relationship, something that she clarified she had no interest in. Not that she wanted to limit the man’s sexual pleasure… she just wasn’t comfortable with it, and that’s what she told him. Instead of leaving it at that and respecting her wishes or breaking it off, he’d fooled around with another woman. She figured that, if he so let himself be discovered, he’d been fooling around for some time already. He had stopped caring enough to hide it from her. She had then decided it was time to break it off.

Anita knew that if he didn’t think twice about cheating on her the first time, it would be much easier for him to do it again. Besides, how could she say that this was the first time? Forcing herself to think poorly of her ex didn’t make her feel any better, or make her hurt any less.

Anita’s thoughts shattered into incomprehensible mush when she heard the loudest honk ever. She whipped around to see where it came from. Instead of being down the street or on the other side of the road, it was a vehicle that was heading straight for her.

She realized then, she was no longer on the sidewalk; no longer surrounded by strangers walking along the same path. Her eyes widened with fear, not able to react in any other way while in such a state of shock.

How hadn’t she noticed that she had stepped off the kerb? She became paralyzed at the thought of turning into road kill. Her first thoughts after that realization were all morbid; she is too young to die, too pretty to die, and too smart to die by being such an idiot.

One thought then replaced everything else as she gazed into the speeding truck’s headlights: She was going to die. There was no doubt about it. She surrendered herself to that fate, though she still managed to take a startled step back. Again, the vehicle’s horn blared at her, a deafening sound that made her body shake, but she remained frozen. There was nothing she could do but wait for the inevitable. Finally, she managed to force her eyes shut, no longer wishing to see the incoming vehicle. She opened her pink lips to scream, but no sound came. Maybe she’d already been hit; her voice had been knocked out of her.

Her world seemed to topple over, and everything, for a moment, went black. There was no faint light in a tunnel seen from beneath her closed eyelids. Had she died? Was it over already? She hadn’t sensed anything at all.

She realized that wasn’t the case when her hearing returned, hearing the echo of the horn screaming at her. The sound of screeching tires erased all the city’s other sounds beneath its urgent, terrifying squeal. Anita couldn’t feel anything more than her hair thrashing around her, and it was like she was alone in the center of a storm. Anita didn’t know how much time passed, but finally her head stilled and she sensed her side crumple against something-the ground; it was like a year had passed.

She was dead, everything was either broken, or she was out of it. Time would tell.

She realized then, the force that knocked her away wasn’t the steel frame of the vehicle; instead she felt another person’s arm around her, a familiar sensation, like the ghost of a memory. Her weight fell on top of his body when they both crashed into the edge of the street. She heard a masculine grunt when they landed.

But as quickly as her savior’s arms were around her, they were gone.

Anita was gently rolled off her savior’s arms, and she felt his presence disappear. There was a faint sound of his shoes scraping against the sidewalk when he stepped away. Anita sat up and opened her eyes to see who had risked their lives for her. She only saw his back when she spotted him, but it was someone she recognized. It was the man wearing the familiar, tight leather jacket who disappeared into the crowd. Anita was sure it was the same man she bumped into on the sidewalk minutes before, but she hadn’t gotten the chance to thank him. If she didn’t thank the man who saved her, she would not feel good.

She turned her head from the crowd and the man long gone, to the street. The truck that almost hit her idled on the road, the driver jumping out of the front seat to see whether he’d hit the woman. Anita saw his face first, an expression of pure panic.

There was no one to blame but herself for that; she knew she would feel the same way if she thought she hit someone. She might even blame herself, regardless of who was at fault. Most people with decent morals would do just the same. He rushed toward her, but she was no longer interested in him. In the corner of her eye, she saw a strip of silk stuck to the kerb. Around it was torn pieces of leather, bits that were scraped off of the man’s coat when he saved her. She grabbed the piece of silk rolled it between her fingers, seeing that it was a tag; where the fabric should have been sewn into clothes, there were bits of leather hanging onto the threads. There was no mistaking where it had come from.

She looked up and met eyes with the truck driver walking toward her and she realized then how surreal everything was. She’d brushed up against death and was thinking about the man with the strong arms. How she wanted to drink a cup of tea and fall asleep for the night! How much she wanted to be home, alone in her own space. She stifled a sigh and with a shaking hand, moved to brush blonde strands of hair from her face. In the same movement, she stuffed the tag into her pocket for later.

“Hey lady, you, all right?” The baffled driver asked her. He stood there, all awkward at first, looking back from the crowd of people on the sidewalk and to her several times before reaching to help her up. Anita hesitated to lift her hand to his, but finally decided to accept his help. Once she was standing, she took a wobbly step backwards, still disoriented from everything that’d happened in the span of the last few minutes. How she was even calm after being in a deathly accident was beyond her.

“Yeah, I…” she looked around, hoping that maybe she could spot the man who helped her. She knew it was a futile thought. A question came out without her even thinking of saying it.

“Did you see who saved me?”

Maybe if someone else had seen him, they could point her in the right direction. Looking up at the driver, she saw his brow furrow, showing he didn’t know what she was talking about, and his mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he spoke.

“Didn’t see anyone else here, miss, just yourself,” he smiled.

Anita knew that he thought she was crazy, but she didn’t blame him. Wasn’t she the one who jumped into the middle of a busy street? She was thinking of herself in the same light.

“Do you want to be taken to the hospital, just in case? They could check for head trauma or internal bleeding if you fell hard…”

Anita knew that he was suggesting she go away, but that didn’t matter to her. She shook her head, much too distracted to respond with words. Plus, that sinking feeling telling her she needed to get away was returning.

Where could she go? The home wasn’t too far away, but it would take her through many busy streets. She needed some alone time, that instant. Her mind needed to be clear, so she could think.

***

The Director of the FBI was puzzled as he entered the conference room at the white house. The previous night, he had received a call from the President’s White House Chief of Staff. A nagging thought troubled him since then. As he entered the state-of-the-art conference hall for this meeting, he glanced towards the chair that was meant for the POTUS- The President of the United States. It was empty. But to the right of that chair was sitting a burly man, the one who had summoned the Director on behalf of the POTUS. The Chief of Staff motioned to the Director to take a seat to his right. The Director smiled- “POTUS not yet back from India, eh George?”

The Chief of Staff smiled back saying nothing.

The Director’s Puzzlement grew to surprise when he saw the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon. He is the highest-ranking General of the United States Military. He was seated to the left of the POTUS’ empty chair. Surely, this was not a defense meeting? And that too when the POTUS was absent. If it was, He was not told about it. There was no specific crisis the Director could think of, that would entail such a meeting. The POTUS was out on a state visit abroad. Surely there was no pressing emergency that the FBI Director wouldn’t know of?

His surprise grew to astonishment when he saw the Head of the NASA seated to the left of the Pentagon General. Strange indeed. The Director sat down in his chair. The door opened. In came a tall man whose face the FBI Director very well recognized. He was the CIA Director. The CIA head took a seat beside the FBI Director.

The FBI Director looked at the surrounding people. He was amused by the thought that the men in this room had enough authority to detonate a nuke on the moon, covertly. He suppressed a chuckle and focussed on the agenda at hand.

With all the five men seated, the Chief of Staff began- “I would like to inform all of you that the minutes of this meeting here are not classified. In fact, it is so high on the list of Top Secret that no minutes will be drawn up and this meeting will never be deemed to have taken place.”

The FBI Director raised his eyebrows as his mental alarms went off. How many times has such a kind of meeting taken place? He thought to himself.

Zero.

Even the meeting to discuss Osama Bin Laden’s execution had minutes, though it was classified at the highest level. This was something different altogether.

“You may now begin”, the Chief of Staff gestured to the head of the NASA.

The NASA head began- “Gentlemen, we have a problem...”

Anita looked around, trying to make up her mind. Then gazed back to the man- the one who drove the truck that almost hit her- and stepped up onto the kerb. The look he gave her was one she knew well. It was the look her boyfriend had given her minutes before inside the coffee shop. A look of expectance, a pleading look that asked her to comply with his request. For a moment she believed him- maybe, she should go to the hospital may be where she needed to be. Wouldn’t it be quiet there?

It only took half a second to change her mind. She needed to leave, now! And the hospital wasn’t where she needed to go. Where she did need to go, however, still remained a mystery. She thanked the driver for his thoughtfulness. Before he could respond, she rushed back into the crowd that had gathered by the road. Even if he had said something, it would have gotten lost in the sound of everyone else’s muttering. Plus, Anita was no longer listening.

Though her destination remained unclear, the tag in her pocket felt like a hot coal. It made her mind focus on one terrifying fact: She should be dead.

Someone had saved her. But who?

Anita thought the tag was in some way a relic of the man who saved her, she just didn’t know who.

Martin Phillips was a man of many talents. The downside to that was he expected way too much of himself, and thus, especially as of late, let himself down. But he knew that mental exhaustion was playing a large role in what he saw as not only underperformance but failure. The thought of being a failure made him miserable, a thought he couldn’t share with anyone else.

For the last few days, he was beginning to believe it would be the end of his career. Weeks before that, he was believing it was the end of his life. He hadn’t yet been able to decide which was worse, or if he would survive the possibility of them both being the truth. If he was older, neither possibilities would have bothered him, but he was the young age of thirty-seven. Before he’d began to think of himself as a failure, he had neared the status of a legend amongst his peers, superiors and co-workers.

He had the pleasure of working as an agent for the FBI. That alone was a feat that anyone would be proud of, and he was. There wasn’t a day on the force that he wasn’t immensely proud of his position. He jumped to his feet in panic and surprise when the secretary chimed in on the speakerphone.

“Martin, the Director is ready to speak with you.” Her voice would have been pleasant on any other day. He lifted his head and looked at the black speakerphone sitting on his desk. The thought of grabbing it and throwing it from the desk seemed appealing. Summoning all his self-control, he grumbled to himself reaching for the phone and held the button down. He summoned the most pleasant voice he could.

“I’ll be right in.”

While Martin planned on seeing the Director soon, he needed a few more minutes to himself. He wasn’t quite ready to face all of his fears. Martin resumed his previous resting position. This time he let his cheek sit against the shiny wooden desk, with his hands clenching bunches of his short, light brown hair.

Stressed was a minor word to describe how he felt. He wasn’t sure there was any expression capable of articulating his emotions.

The previous night his Director informed him they had something to discuss. In the past, his Director had directly contacted him only once. That first time was about something positive, he wasn’t thinking that was the case with this second call. Because of his performance as of late and the wording of the request, he didn’t consider that whatever followed now would be pleasant. He had no clue what the Director wanted. Naturally, he couldn’t help but contemplate the worst. Since the moment their call ended the previous night, he was increasingly worried over the Director’s intentions with their meeting.

That morning he’d been eager as ever to get to work and speak to the Director. He wanted nothing more than to get the conversation over with. Considering how things always went, Martin wasn’t surprised. He’d come to work early and he would still to have to wait a large part of the day. The man was so busy, he had a month-long waiting list. Martin was only getting to speak to him because of something important that couldn’t wait.

Martin remained in his office brooding- or grieving, depending on how you looked at it. He was worsening the record, he was spending all his time worrying about. There was no way to hide how poor his performance had been over the last couple of months. Martin feared that he would lose the job he spent his entire life in, any day now. Losing that job was only his second fear.

Martin’s worst fear was losing the woman he loved. He’d known her for quite some time. But it was only two-and-a-half years ago when they got married. He’d always thought she was the woman of his dreams; he still thought so even now, when they were on the verge of a divorce. Over the years, even before they married, the two of them had spent a lot of great time together laughing, having fun, and just enjoying each other’s company. He had thought, naively, that everything between them would be perfect forever. He wanted to live with her and wake up next to her for the rest of his life. But he’d managed to only get less than three years with her before he’d gone and lost her.

One thing, in particular, irked him. His soon to be ex-wife was intent on not telling him what went wrong with their relationship. She wouldn’t admit that she wanted something different, that she’d fallen for someone else, or even that she wanted something better. Instead, she only told him it was his fault. He could have saved their relationship. The more he thought about it, he believed that she was the one who stopped caring. If she didn’t want to tell him what the problem was, things between them were already doomed.

He sighed, annoyed at the thought. There was much he would have done for her. Even thinking of letting her go sent his heart spiraling into the depths of sorrow.