**Previously in our story...**
*Charles Renault dreamed of lying dead at Alabama Zack’s feet on a train station platform in the Realm, while his friend the doctor spoke to Zack. When he awoke, Renault realized that Zack was a real person. And in the Realm’s tower, a new inquisitor broke with the collective will of its grouping in order to aid Cork McGraw in his endeavor to burn the Claytons’ barn down.*
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The doctor walked in the dust beside the buckboard that carried his friend’s body back to town. His smooth face was distraught, because Alabama Zack had chosen to jump out of his time loop, rather than going back to save Charles from the fate that had befallen him.
“I really can go anywhere, can’t I, doc?” Zack had said on the train station platform, as he realized the possibilities of his gift – the ability to jump dimensions using his mind alone. Then Zack had made his startling choice.
The doctor knew that the experience of time looping ended when the looper made a new choice that broke the cycle. But, though he had never encountered a looper firsthand before, he couldn’t remember an example from his studies where a looper’s choice had been to simply walk away. He had fully expected that Zack’s new choice would be to act on some event of the cycle – and his friend’s death had seemed the obvious choice – but now Zack was gone and Charles was dead, laid out stiff in the wagon that creaked beside him.
The doctor pondered how he could help Charles. He had limited options. The Academy had assigned him to the Realm to identify and train natural dimension jumpers; he had no dimension jumping ability himself. He had a transporter device, of course – in the inquisitors’ cave. But he only had access at the inquisitors’ will, and the inquisitors didn’t even allow regular communication between the Academy and their representative in the Realm; he could not imagine that they would grant him permission to tamper with a timeline.
There was also the receiver to consider. The doctor looked at the two men driving the buckboard he had hired – they were part of the Clayton outfit. According to Zack, Charles had arrived in the Realm through a receiver in a barn on the Clayton ranch. It was the first the doctor had heard of the receiver. It had to be dealt with, to be destroyed – and it was a part of Zack’s loop. So, if he destroyed the receiver, would it save Charles?
It would depend where he stood in relation to Zack’s loop. Zack had jumped to the train station transporting Charles’ corpse with him when he came; the doctor had witnessed their appearance. But, had Zack jumped to a point before or after Charles had been killed – where did the doctor stand now in relation to his death? There would be no purpose – for his friend’s sake – in destroying the receiver at a point after his death. No. He had to get inside the events of Zack’s abandoned time loop. That was the only way to save his friend.
Zack had described the moment of Charles’ death, just steps outside of the little room in the Clayton barn. Using his transporter to amplify that image in his thoughts, the doctor knew he could jump to that point. But he would have to go to the inquisitors’ tower and petition them for access to his transporter.
The funereal procession approached the town, which was just a handful of clapboard buildings lining both sides of a single dusty street. The doctor could read the shingle out in front of Cork’s office. If there was anyone brave enough to partner in a journey to the inquisitors’ fortress, it was Cork McGraw.
His office would be the doctor’s first stop, after the undertaker.
*
On another side of Zack’s time loop, the new inquisitor who had been the doctor had been cuffed and hauled from the tower to the prison below, where it now struggled to retain the identity of its former life.
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*Base image from Pixabay, by geralt:* https://pixabay.com/users/geralt-9301/