A Second Chance

It’s just another day for Roger Blake. The 46-year-old storage hunter hops into his truck, looking for bolt cutters to pop the lock of the storage unit he won at an auction. Just another day. Another family out of their stuff. Half the time he finds nothing of value. The other half he finds an item or two of value and throws away what’s worthless to him but probably meant the world to the poor schmuck who lost it. Photo albums. Baby clothes. Junk.

The repetitiveness and the nature of his work has left Roger with nothing but regrets and a void in his chest he tries to fill with whiskey. His truck is buried in empty bottles, cigarette boxes, and fast-food wrappers. He finds the bolt cutters buried under the trash and heads to the unit. Once he pops the lock, he stands there for a moment in awe at what he sees: a storage unit set up like an office. Not quite what he was expecting. But this was no normal office. This was a safe space for someone obsessed with theft. There are several newspaper clippings posted to the walls.

“Who was this guy?” Roger thinks.

He skims through the news articles. They were all about high profile theft cases. Article after article about elaborate heists, authorities left baffled, and high dollar items missing. He starts to rummage through the papers on the desk and notices a strange line of dust along the side of the wall. It looks like the desk had been moved recently. Roger slides the desk over and finds a secret compartment cut into the wall behind it. He reaches into the hole and finds 2 zip lock bags full of money.

“Holy fuck,” he exclaims in disbelief.

Roger pulls out his cigarettes and a flask. He closes the storage door behind him and sits at the desk. He takes a swig from the flask, lights a cigarette and opens the zip lock bags, counting out what appears to be $20,000 in cash.

“Well, that’s a first,” he says out loud as he places the money all back into one bag and sits it on the desk. He looks over at the compartment and sees a little black book. He picks it up and begins reading the book. There are extensive plans for several of the heists depicted in the articles on the wall. This is the storage unit of the thief.

He looks in the compartment again and finds a passport. The passport has the name Earl Jones and the picture looks familiar. Roger stares off, thinking about the name. He’s heard it before. Just a few days ago on the news. A guy named Earl Jones, a suspected high-profile thief, had died in a fire in an abandoned warehouse.

Roger takes another drink and continues reading the black book. There’s a page at the back of the book written with fresh ink. He reads and learns that Earl was disappointed. Heartbroken. Destroyed over the loss of the “jewel of his life”. He had finally found a way to get the jewel back. There were plans to steal a device of some kind. Based on the markings it looks like it was already executed. But nothing further is written.

Roger was puzzled. What was this device? How could it get back the jewel? For Jones to have referred to this as the jewel of his life it must have been absolutely priceless. Roger reaches back in the compartment to see if he missed anything else. He feels the edge of a box stuck deep in there.

He goes back to his truck for a sledgehammer and enters the unit with determination. Smashing the wall, he gets the box free. He opens it and finds what looks like some sort of strange stopwatch. He puts it on his wrist, thinking “what is this piece of shit?” He takes another swig from his flask and reaches back for the book. The last page has a strange series of numbers that are meaningless to Roger. “10-02-2013-38.8862° N, 105.1596° W-16:39.”

“What does this mean?”

Roger’s mind was reeling. Why did the story end here? What was the watch about?

Suddenly, Roger hears a car pull up outside. Several men exit, he recognizes the distinct sound of guns cocking. “Oh shit,” he says as he starts to fiddle with the watch, trying to remove it. “What have I got myself into now?” he questions as he pulls a knob on the watch out. The instant he does it a portal opens behind him. Startled, he gazes through it seeing a beautifully green and serene landscape. He reaches for the money and the book. In desperation he closes his eyes tightly and jumps through the portal.

Once on the other side he sees the storage unit behind him still open. Five professionally equipped men wearing tactical gear storm the unit, opening fire at Roger. He pushes the knob on the watch and closes the portal.

As it closes several bullets whiz past him. He lets out a sigh and begins to look around in sheer amazement at what he sees. Reaching for his flask, he hears a screeching sound and finds himself standing in the large shadow of a tetradactyl. His jaw drops. He looks back and forth at the flask and the tetradactyl and finally drops the flask. Forever.

“Yup. That's a flying dinosaur,” he says in disbelief. He takes a set, examines the watch and discovers that the sequence of numbers on it contain a date and time. He’s stuck in some kind of prehistoric nightmare. On top of that, the men at the storage unit had definitely found his truck and identified him by now.

In this moment part of Roger wishes he never found the book and he could go back to his normal routine of plundering people’s lost valuables, sailing through life like a drunken storage pirate.

He sits on a rock. Small prehistoric creatures running around him. “I gotta get out of here before a fucking t-Rex has me for lunch.”

“I don’t know how to use this thing,” he mutters as he looks more closely at the settings on the device. He figures that the long series of numbers are likely coordinates telling the device where to go.

“Fucking great. I have no idea the longitude and latitude of New York. How do I get back?”

Then it dawned on him. This device was how the thief was going to get back the jewel. The strange numbers in the book were settings for the device.

“If I could go back to that moment, I could tell Jones that I found his notes and came to warn him.”

Roger ran the idea over and over in his mind. “I could tell him that he lost his jewel and died in the future. Maybe he would even reward me for it.”

After pondering the possible outcomes, he opens the book and enters the numbers into the device. “Here goes nothing,” he says.

He closes his eyes and clenches so hard you could hear his knuckles crack and teeth grind as he pulls out the knob. A portal opens to a snowy scene in the mountains. He hesitates a for a second before he steps into the new surroundings and walks along what appears to be a hiking trial. This place is desolate. It’s 10 degrees, if that. He searches around, scanning the area desperately with no signs of anyone.

As he begins to lose hope, he hears a man and a young girl’s voice in the distance. He hides among the evergreen trees lining the trial. Once they pass him, he steps out, startling the pair.

“Wait!” he shouts. Startled they turn to him and the man he can now see is Earl.

Earl shouts back over the wind, “Who are you? What do you want?” squinting in the poor visibility as he tells the young girl to keep walking away.

“But Dad,” the young girl whines.

“Do it now!” Earl says.

She begins to walk away. Roger slowly approaches Earl who is now pointing a gun at him.

“Listen, I’m not here to hurt you. You’re Earl Jones, right?”

“Depends whose asking? Now, I’ll ask you again. What do you want?”

Roger carefully tells the man that he wants to show him something and reaches in his pocket to retrieve the book. He tells Earl everything: the storage unit, the heists, the fire, the men chasing after him. As Roger talks, he shows Earl the book.

“See for yourself,” he says. Earl starts looking through the book. He seems surprised to recognize his own writing. Roger starts talking again.

“There was something about this moment when you lose the jewel of your life, man. Something important enough to have a fucking time travel device.” He shows Earl his wrist and the strange device on it. “What was so important, Earl? Why this moment?”

Earl looks up with tear-filled eyes and quickly turns to his daughter. As Earl runs towards her, Roger notices a mountain lion creeping its way through the brush. It all made sense now. The jewel was never a stone. The jewel was this man’s daughter.

Roger realizes if this was the exact moment Earl had lost the jewel then his daughter was about to die. Earl looked terrified as he shouts for his daughter to come back to him. The lion was even closer now and had that look of determination that a predator has right before it strikes. The girl, scarce protein in the cat's eyes.

The cat pounces and Roger takes off, moving faster than he ever thought possible. He runs without hesitation to throw himself in between the girl and the wild animal. He pushes the girl as the majestic beast's claws dig into his back.

Earl aims to take a shot at the cat but it's too late. Roger’s throat has been cut as he fights the lion away from the family. They get closer to the edge of the cliff as they roll around, Roger still trying to fend off the beast. There’s no safe shot for Earl so he watches as this stranger who just saved his family’s life throws the animal off the cliff, nearly taking himself with it.

Earl drops the gun and runs to Roger. Roger is bleeding from his throat. His arm barely still attached.

“Is your daughter okay?” Roger mutters.

"More than ok. Thanks to you,” Earl says as he tries to apply pressure to Roger’s wounds. Theres no service out here. Roger isn’t going to make it.

Earl’s daughter sits down beside Roger, grabbing his hand. “You are a hero,” she tells him. Roger laughs, choking on his blood.

His throat cut badly he barely whispers, “I’m no hero. My life has meant nothing. Until now.” He looks at the daughter and smiles. “I’m glad I was able to do something good. Thank you. Take good care of your daugh-” Roger gargles on his own blood and his final breath. The daughter begins to cry.

Earl looks at the man who just gave his life for his daughter then sees the watch sitting in the snow. His daughter looks at him and says “What do we do, Dad?”

“We make things right, baby.” They hold each other tightly as Roger’s body becomes part of the snow and earth. Earl puts the device on his wrist and grabs the black book. “He died so you could live. Let’s make that mean something,” he says as he winks at his daughter who smiles back at him.

“Let’s rewrite history,” she responds just as a portal opens in front of them.