The Apex Book of World SF 2

December 8th ^{Raúl Flores Iriarte Translated by Daniel W. Koon and the Author}

Hello,” I say to John Lennon. It’s cold in Manhattan. Much colder than I’m used to. Madonna is circling around the streets like a maniac in her brand-new Porsche, the one I gave her just a few minutes earlier.

“Who are you?” John asks.

I introduce myself. “I’m here to save your life,” I tell him.

“What’s this about saving my life?” he replies. John speaks impeccable English. As if he had been born in England. And then I remember: he was born in England.

I explain to him about Mark David Chapman. He is the lunatic. He is the assassin. He is the walrus.

“That’s crazy,” John says. I can almost make out the words as they leave his mouth, like the hook of a great pop song. The one that was never written.

“He’s going to come here and kill you today. Tonight. While we’re talking here, he’s lurking out there. Waiting. Plotting. With a copy of The Catcher in the Rye under his arm.”

John looks at me as if I’m crazy, too. Or like he doesn’t understand English. Or maybe both.

“That’s a good book,” he mutters.

“What?” I say.

“Catcher in the Rye. Good book. Salinger is a—”

“Listen,” I interrupt him, raising my voice. “This is no time for literary chit-chat. There’s barely time to explain. I’ll just take your place and try to stop Chapman. Kill him if I have to.”

“And you’re going to do all this because…?” he asks.

A set of lyrics flashes into my mind like lightning: Because the world is round it turns me on. But instead I say: “To change the future. To give you a new life, borrowed time. You could have a Beatles reunion in a couple years, new songs for the old fans. Won’t you please…help me? It’ll be just like starting over.”

His song (Just Like) Starting Over has been rocketing up the charts. I am hoping he appreciates the reference. I continue: “You see that girl driving that Porsche up and down the street like a maniac? Well, her name is Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, but in three or four years, everyone will know her as simply “Madonna”. She’s got a lot of talent, but right now, nobody knows her. I’ve changed all that. Bought her the Porsche, given her the money to bankroll her first LP, and I made her sign two hundred or three hundred autographs for me to sell in the future.”

After losing a couple of minutes in the cold Manhattan air, I manage to convince John Winston Lennon. It took revealing two or three state secrets, describing what Paul McCartney was up to on November 3, 1967, and showing him my portable time machine.

“But, look,” he says, “there’s not going to be any Beatles reunion any time ever. That’s finished. Over. Kaput. Capisce?”

Winter in Manhattan, a few minutes before ten o’clock. I get out of the limo, Yoko stands next to me. Chapman approaches from out of the blue and yells something I can’t quite make out. My mind is as lucid as ever, but my ears are deaf for the time being, or so it seems.

“Mister John!” he shouts and I can understand him this time.

I turn around, and he empties his pistol’s chambers into my chest.

The bullet-proof vest absorbs the impacts.

Then I empty my own gun into him.

The Dakota Hotel, snow falling over a dead man’s body with the swirling precision of a nightmare. Yoko begins to cry. John comes up to me and says, “So, that’s the guy.” Someone out there yells for an ambulance.

Lennon walks out onto the street, maybe to get a better view of the scene, or maybe to hail a taxi to move the corpse to the nearest hospital. Or the nearest morgue. However, at that very instant the ghostlike silhouette of a dark Porsche is crossing the street with the speed of a shooting star. It’s all over in a microsecond. Half a microsecond.

The car screeches to a halt, the squeal of its brakes can be heard all the way to San Francisco, and the body of John Winston Lennon goes flying some five metres into the air before crashing into a lamppost. And that’s that.

Mark David Chapman lying blood-drenched on the sidewalk, Yoko crying over John’s twisted body, and Madonna behind the wheel of the Porsche with those wild eyes, diamond eyes, a material girl watching me, watching the two bodies, and the night, and the snow.

Ambulance sirens pierce the heavy silence that has suddenly settled between us like a blanket of something far whiter and colder than this snow that falls down, and then the police arrive, asking questions and filling out reports. I slink away quietly, consoling myself with the fact that there was nothing I could have done for Lennon, and ain’t that a shame.

But it’s not all bad. Madonna’s autographs will certainly come in handy in my own present, in their own future. Just like the autographs I got out of Lee Harvey Oswald right before I had him ice Nixon.