ALL NOVEL Loop 255 - Part 3: Harold
“No solicitors, go away. I’m busy,” Harold yelled at the door. Their incessant knocking had gotten to him. Typically, he just ignored the random visitors. He had much more important things to worry about. One of these days, Mel was going to find Henry, and when that finally happened, he needed to be prepared.
The knocking continued, and even more to his annoyance, Roger was now hissing. “Fine, I’m coming!” He yelled from the other room. On the other side of the door stood a man in a suit holding a cat. It was not at all a combination he had expected.
Things became even stranger for Harold when the man opened his mouth and said one phrase. “Gristled steak is delicious this time of year.” Harold’s annoyance turned into a discerning stare.
“Come in now,” He ordered, not willing to say another word until they were in a secure room. He slammed the door behind them and led them silently through the house into the basement and through a hidden passageway before finally sitting down at a table. “Who are you, and how do you know that code?”
“I imagine this is going to all sound a tad insane, so I think if Trashcat here explains it, that will cover some of the implausibility parts quickly,” Bart replied, setting the cat down on the table.
“The cat?” Harold looked at her suspiciously. He knew some of the weirder experiments that existed in the world. Had Melissa managed to steal one and get them smuggled to him for safety?
“Yes, I will. We are in a series of time loops. Your granddaughter is in them with us, but when this loop started, she and most of our friends went missing. In the last loop, you gave a friend of mine, Gus, information that you said could be used to convince you we are telling the truth without you remembering anything. Uncle Andrew said it was very important to find you and get your help; you are some kind of retired spy, and we really need your help to find Bug. Someone took her, and we have to help her,” Trashcat explained.
Harold managed to keep his face looking at them without any sort of shock showing, the opposite of what his brain was doing. This cat was far more intelligent than any experiments he had heard about. She seemed more capable than even the poor people he had met in the Ogre program, but she was right. Having that passphrase did likely mean he gave it to them, whether he remembered doing so or not. That meant he would have to take the idea of a time loop at face value.
“Okay, and did I give any direction for myself and what I can best do in the last loop?” Harold had trouble getting the question out with a straight face. While he was prepared to go along with it for now, at least until he determined if something bigger was going on, the concept of time manipulation in any way was a new one for him.
“No, well, maybe, but not about this specific thing. The disappearance of our friends happened newly at the start of this loop, and it trapped some of our other friends in the void house. We are the only two free to act, so Gus and Uncle Andrew thought finding you would help us investigate,” Trashcat continued.
“One second,” Bart said before vanishing in front of Harold’s eyes. So much for a secure room. He hoped this didn’t attract any unwanted attention to his residence. He would need to prepare to leave the moment they finished this conversation.
“Where did he go?” Harold asked the cat, keeping the annoyance out of his voice as best he could.
“He should be back soon, likely to talk to Gus,” As Trashcat spoke, Bart had reappeared in his seat before she even finished speaking.
“Yes, I did do that. Gus says he wants you to get off your old ass and help us track down what happened to our friends and, if possible, find a woman who may be a tentative ally that could potentially further help us. He also said to say that the fields of marmalade run with the koala through the dreams of field mice. I assume that’s more of your code? What else do you need before we start planning a rescue operation?” Bart asked.
That second phrase sold the story for Harold entirely. It wasn’t something anyone else in the world knew. It was one of his security codes, meant only to be used on himself if he had to tamper with his own memory. So either that had happened, or they were telling the truth, and he was leaning towards the second. And if he understood what they had said correctly so far, telling the truth essentially meant the first part was explicitly true as well. He needed to hear their story told in full, or at least a very complete summary. For all he knew, the time loop had been going on for millions of years, so a full retelling may not be possible at the moment.
“I need you to explain to me, from the beginning, all the high-level points of this time loop. How did it start, who is in it, what transfers over, etc. From there, I need to know exactly which of your friends are missing and all theories as to who could have taken them,” Harold instructed the pair.
“Can do, boss, but do you have any tea? It’s going to be a long night,” Bart replied.
Harold sighed, “Follow me. I want to do this conversation in an even more secure location anyway.’
Several floors deeper into the hidden complex Harold had built into his home, in a room full of food supplies, they spent the rest of the day and well into the night explaining everything that had come before as best they could. Harold tried to keep his endless questions to a minimum, but as they talked, he understood just how dire the situation was. The world was in real danger, and they had been fighting a war alone against an invading force, and even more importantly, his granddaughter needed his help.
Finally, after what felt like his millionth question, he said to them, “Alright, I have what I need for now. Get some rest. Tomorrow, we will be loading the sub. Tonight, I have plans to make.” Once they boarded and were secure on the sub, step one was to track down an old associate. He needed to learn just what Clark knew.