Now and then Floon put his hands on the keyboard and proceeded to type faster than anyone I have ever seen. That’s what set the kids off laughing so much. Every time he put his fingers down and attacked, they squealed their delight and kept trying to push in even closer to the monitor. I’ve heard the fastest typist can do a hundred and sixty words a minute. Forget it – Floon was eons beyond that. From the look of things, he was going faster than the damned machine could take. I swear to God there appeared to be a kind of infinitesimal lag between what he put in and what showed up on the screen. Typing, he looked like a cartoon character on fast forward.

Eventually he sat back in his chair and waited while the computer caught up and did what he had asked. Seconds later there would appear a burst of words and graphics or a flying myriad of mathematical something. He’d watch it a while and then assault that old keyboard again. Every time the kids cracked up at his frenzy. The interesting thing was, from all appearances, Floon didn’t seem to mind them being there. Or else he wasn’t even aware they were there at all.

But I was—even more so when, turning to Nell Powell, the boy gave her a hard push into the other girl. Nell shoved him back just as hard. Off balance he staggered back from the girls, trying to catch his balance. He couldn’t and fell on his ass. At which point I saw his face and he was me, age nine or ten or thereabouts. Ten-year-old Frannie McCabe was in that room with Floon and the girls. Forty-seven-year-old Frannie McCabe stood outside alone and watched.

When I asked Gee-Gee where are you he had said, “Wherever you need me.” So this was what he meant? That me was no longer only me, and then Gee-Gee, but now other McCabes from all my eras. Including little boy Fran in there with Caz de Floon. A living greatest hits album played all at the same time.

Still on his butt the kid looked at the door. His small face was a mixture of sneaky rat and choirboy. Without the slightest sign of surprise on his face he smirked like we were in on an in-joke together and flipped me a big thumbs-up.

I turned from the door. Back to the wall again, I closed my eyes tight. Okay, go with it. This is how it’s going to be till you die: Chaos everywhere, no answers to your questions, a head ticking like a time bomb, and a different McCabe every time you turn around. So go with it, use it; embrace it if you can. Because you ain’t got time to do anything else, bud.

Once more at the window, I watched as the boy stood up and looked my way again. He made a face that clearly asked, what do you want me to do? Seeing this, Nell turned around to see what he was mugging at. I pulled back quickly, not wanting her to know I was there.

What were my options? What could a little boy do with Floon that I couldn’t, although at the moment the kid probably had more strength and clearheadedness than I did. The blowout in my head had left me drained and very shaky, too aware that I could collapse at any time.

As a boy I had the patience of a housefly. I should have remembered that when I was watching little Gee-Gee in the computer room. After we stared at each other some more he gestured again, all impatient exaggeration. His whole jiggling twitching body asked, what should I do?

As best I could I used hands and charades to outline a computer monitor. He got what I was saying and nodded. Next I showed him what to do. He lit up like a thousand-watt lightbulb. Boy, did he love these instructions.

Without a second’s hesitation he stepped over to where Floon was typing away. With both hands the boy shoved the monitor off its base, and that big fucker flew out into space and crashed on the floor. Time passed. All four of them froze where they were. But then that bastard Floon didn’t do what I expected. I thought he would go nuts, berserk, rip himself in half Rumpelstiltskin-style at the loss of his data or the time he’d already put in on the computer doing whatever the hell he was doing. None of the above. With a coolness that was disconcerting he rose from his seat, moved over to the next computer, and started wailing away on that one, not missing a beat.

My one idea flushed, I shoved the door open, walked over to Floon, and smashed him good on the back of the head with my pistol. That did the trick. Rocking forward, his face hit the screen and cracked it. He had a lot of white hair. I grabbed a handful and banged his head down on the keyboard.

“Kids, get out. Nell, your mom is waiting outside.”

The girls took off like water bugs but not McCabe Junior. “That was super cool!”

“Go outside.”

“No way! I’m stayin’. You think I’d miss this? Hit him again.”

“Go or I’ll tell your mother you stole fifteen dollars from her purse so you could go to the car show in White Plains.”

His jaw dropped. “How’d you know that?”

Trying not to smile I managed, “Because I’m psychic. Go outside and wait for me.”

“Jeez, what a hot turd.” On that note he started to leave. “But I’ll be waiting for you. Just remember that.”

As soon as the door closed, I banged down Floon’s floppy head once more only because I felt like it. Thoroughly unprofessional but I was no longer a professional. I searched for his gun. It was in one of his pockets. I took it out and put it in mine.

“McCabe—” he mumbled.

“Shut up, Caz, or else I’ll dribble your head some more. Don’t think I’m not tempted.”

“McCabe, listen—” He sounded half-in-the-bag drunk.

A blast of pain blew across my brain. Not now! Not now, please not. Raising my shoulders and pulling my head down into my neck, I waited for the worst but none came.

“McCabe, at least look at the screen.”

What was displayed there looked like a densely detailed train schedule.

“So what?”

“Tan—” He took a deep breath and started coughing halfway through it. Blood dripped from his mouth onto the table. “Tancresis. It hasn’t been invented yet! Or if it has, there is no public mention of it. Is that amazing? There’s not even the word for it in the dictionary. Nobody knows about it yet.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Caz. And I don’t much care.”

“Don’t care? Tancretic spredge? Nuclear transmutation? Cold fusion, you idiot! How to do it hasn’t been discovered yet!”

I banged his head down onto the keyboard again. This was getting to be fun. My anger at him brought a good adrenaline load of energy back into my veins and heart. “Don’t fuck with me, Floon—your dick’s not big enough.” And to the tune of the Sam Cooke song “Wonderful World” I sang:

“Don’t know much about cold fus-ion,

Don’t know much about Caz de Floon.

But I do know that I’ll kick your ass

And you do know it’ll happen fast—

“I don’t care what you’re looking for or what you’ve found, Floon. Right now you and I are going to leave here. If you do anything along the way that pisses me off I will kill you without the slightest hesitation. I give you my word.”

“You can’t kill me—you’re a policeman.”

“Past tense, Caz. Past tense. It’s a brave new world. Get up.”

“Please, McCabe, listen to me for two minutes. What I tell you will change your life.”

I snorted. “What little there is left of it. I don’t need my life changed any more than it already is. What do you want? You’ve got one minute to say it. So talk.”

“All right.” He touched his forehead and winced. He looked at his fingers and didn’t appear to know what to do with the big smear of blood there. That made me feel just fine.

I looked at my bare wrist and put an imaginary watch against my ear to check to see if it was functioning. “My watch tells me you’ve got about thirty seconds left on your minute, Caz.”

“Stop! You should be grateful to me for what you are about to see. If nothing else I will show you how to become very rich right now. In five minutes. Just give me five minutes—”