(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 31

It wasn't a nice day.
I had woken up multiple times during the night, the sounds of branches knocking on the roof and windows, the sounds of what I had to assume were animals running around outside and, in the case of at least two ducks, getting into loud fights. Nakskov was, in many ways, a rural town, surrounded as it was by fields and nature, its most well-established industry perhaps being harvesting beets and refining sugar from them. At times, the whole town was covered in the smell of burned caramel, when the refinery was in full operation. But in spite of all that, in spite of how many would see me as someone living in the countryside, I had never been kept away by much more than a bird hitting a window. Anything else that woke me up was people.
The house was, more than anything else I noticed, big. It was also old, things looking frail as early dawn came and finally added some real light to the place. With one of the many, and still fairly cool, bottles of water in hand, I ventured up on the second floor, finding it mostly one big room. With a balcony. It had a balcony. And I was going to see the sun rise from that balcony. I got there just as the glowing disk was halfway above the treetops, just as dawn truly began to turn into day. Standing there, the only pressure being to not unwittingly lean on the bannister that had a bad case of rot, I breathed slowly. It was perhaps the effect of a tired mind taking a bit longer than usual to wake up, but I felt relaxed. The burden of my situation was a theoretical construct somewhere in the back of my mind. For a brief, glorious moment, all that mattered was me, a bottle of water, and the light of day blooming over distant woods.
About five minutes after I left the house for a bit of a walk into town, the rain began. It seemed to come out of nothing, like an ambush from clear skies, and I was in no way prepared for it. Even if there had been ample warning, I had no clothes for it, everything of the sort still at home. With the copy. I was drenched a minute later.
The walk took perhaps half an hour, and was simple and straight. I never made my way out to the outskirts of town much, but there was a single road to follow, making me perfectly able to handle myself without even a phone with a map in it. House by house passed by as the rain drops beat harder and harder, houses of so many sizes, colors, styles and shapes, not to mention very different physical conditions. Ironically, none of them were empty and in the right condition for seeking shelter in. I just had to deal with the rain, it seemed. At least until I got to the center of town.
The old cinema had burned down a long time ago, and valiant attempts at restoring it had failed for many years. The building always reminded me of tourist attractions in countries of ancient civilizations, a grand and imposing building beaten up by time itself. Posters outside showed the last movies that had played there. Angels and Demons, the one based on a Dan Brown novel. I found myself, for no rational reason, staring at it for a long moment, right before I walked in through the broken door. The place smelled weird, perhaps from the damp insulation that hung down from spots in the ceiling. It was a strange place to be, a place that looked like beauty that had been forgotten and allowed to fade. Part of me felt sad to see it like that. But it was shelter from the rain.
And the rain seemed to have no plans of stopping. It pounded down, and I sought deeper into the place to hide away from the cold air that was now seeking shelter in there, too. Hidden in the dark I took of parts of my clothes and wrung them for water, but it was no use, all they did was become a different kind of cold. They were still the same clothes I had taken from the school flea market, I had nothing else to change into. I had no idea where I even put the bag with my own clothes. Everything from the last few days was becoming a blur, and trying to dig through my memories just made my brain resist. A large part of it, a large part of me, was still refusing to accept that any of this was even real. It was adefense mechansim. If it wasn't real, it couldn't hurt me. My life had become the boogeyman, the monster in the closet, the Evil Santa. If you don't believe in it, you're safe. Weaponized wishful thinking.
The moment I heard the lull in the rain, I rushed out. The shower persisted, but the strength of it was less than half. As I rushed through it, that felt like little comfort, patches of my clothes soon feeling the all too well known cold of water getting in through or around my soaked jacket. By the time I got to the automatic doors of the supermarket, I was just as drenched as I had been when I took shelter.
He was there. I had no idea, no real reason to expect it, but he was there, the boy from Mischa's photo, the other time traveler, or refugee, or whatever these people were. He was manning the register, casually pulling one purchase after another through the scanner. He had to be older than he looked, or he would have classes at this time of day. He looked only a little older than me, about Patrick's age, but if that was the case, he was skipping school, and local employers tried to avoid the reputation for encouraging that.
Without leaving him out of my sight for more than seconds at a time, I went in and started pacing the aisles, picking up things to pretend to look at them, then putting them back, always making sure I knew where he was. I had a few coins in my pocket, but nothing else, no money I felt ready to burn just for an excuse to walk up to the register and face him. So I watched, from a distance. I watched for long enough to lose track of time. And when he finally got up, I slipped through another line to follow him.
I was a bit confused to see him walk out the main entrance to the store, but I managed to keep up without getting too close. He fumbled with something from his pocket, perhaps a cigarette, and I did my best to look calm and casual, hoping that not only he but everyone else would ignore me. And as he turned a corner,  I only walked a little quicker, not wanting to be seen running after him.
"So, you're the one Emilie talked about," he said, leaning against the wall around the corner, holding a small lollipop. "You look like a drowned puppy, you do know that, right?"
The rain had turned to a drizzle, most people now walking around as if it wasn't even there. Before I could catch my subconscious in the act, it had me wiping and patting my jacket for water.
"Where's your buddy?" he added, and I felt foolish the second I unwittingly looked around myself.
"He's not here," I answered, trying to recapture some dignity.
"I can see that," he said, slowly, "and that's why I asked."
I found myself stretching a bit, trying to stand up a little more straight. The young man seemed utterly unimpressed, almost as if I was the third one today to come snooping around. His nicely kempt hair, the supermarket uniform, his rigid stance, all of it oozed with an annoying confidence, making it feel more like a stand-off than a conversation. Perhaps, on some level, it was.
"Who are you?" I asked, deciding to try and turn the table a bit. He just smiled.
"I thought you knew. I thought you knew who we all were."
"No, just Emilie and a few others. How is she?"
His smile shrank and grew a bit more bitter. "She's doing fine. We fixed the legs after your little skirmish, but she's adapting."
"Skirmish? What skirmish?"
For a brief second, his impeccable facade slipped, but just for a second. Then, the subdued smirk was back on his lips.
"She said you and your little sidekick cornered her, started trying to press her for information."
"What?!"
I had no intend for my voice to crack the way it did, but the sincerity of it apparently hit a nerve in him. His expression shifted to distrustful confusion, and his arms across the chest loosened, then fumbled a bit, and finally went thumbs in pocket on his pricey-looking jeans.
"So, what, you just corner random girls on the street? And there are some who say you take pictures of us, you some kind of weird perv or something?"
He made a quick glance, scanning the parking lot for unwanted listeners, and my eyes briefly followed suit, out of some kind of reflex. We were standing around the entrance of the supermarket, in an odd corner nobody had a reason to linger in. For the time being, peolpe passed by seemingly unaware and completely disinterested in us.
"I got..." I made another check, just to be absolutely sure not to be overheard. "I got copied. I helped a girl get away from some goons and they #*@!ing copied me. You got any idea how #*@!ed up it is to have someone running around, living your life?! I've slept in abandoned houses for several days, for christ's sake!"
He went quiet, looking me over like I was some store mannequin, making me think he could see on some part of me if I was telling the truth.
"You got copied?" he asked, eyes narrowing and his head tilting as he asked. "Like, they made one of those robot things of you?"
I nodded, suddenly feeling less defensive about the whole chat. He, on the other hand, looked like someone who just found out they were victims of a bad prank.
"If you were copied," he said, slowly, taking a few ominous steps forward, "then why are you not dead?"
Something in my stomach turned heavy and sank deep. I had more or less known the whole time that the woman in white didn't leave those she replaced alieve. It had all but been said outright. But he said it flat out.
"I'm pretty sure it was a mistake. One they've tried fixing a few times since."
He took another step towards me, ending up very close, and looked at me again. This time, though, it felt like he was not so much looking at a mannequin, but rather looking for something hidden on my face. I could smell his breath. It smelled like spearmint chewing gum.
"Stand still," he said, reaching out a slow hand. As it moved towards my neck, I flinched, and the hand stopped. But as soon as I looked at him, seeing the calm and focused look in his eyes, I just held my breath, and the hand continued. Two fingers ran along my jawline and up to my throat. With a little bit of force, he poked me between the jawbone and the muscle in the left of my neck. It hurt, but only a little. The worse part was that it somehow made me feel like burping.
"You're real," he said, standing up straight again. In a brief fit of foolish wonder, I poked my neck at roughly the same spot, more than once, but found nothing that helped me make sense of his odd test.
"Don't sweat it," he mumbled, walking around the corner and into line of sight of the supermarket entrance, "I've dealt with those copies before, I know how to check for them." He looked over at the entrance, his mind clearly churning through some heavy questions.
"Come back around six. I'll see if we can help you out."

The trees were still dripping from the rain earlier in the day. Many of them could do with a trim, their heavy branches hanging low and looking ready to snap under the weight of their leaves. They ran along the edge of where apartment buildings were clumped together, perhaps one of the densest populated parts of Nakskov. Some called it the city inside the town, but only when someone even talked about them. Plenty lived here, including friends of mine from school, but for the number of people living there, it was about as quiet as any other place, at times perhaps moreso. None of that was why I was there, though. Lavender Road was close by, and the idea of the robot copy living my life was torture. It was at school now, but something drove me to walk by my house, even if I had to make sure nobody recognized me. Something pulled me home, even if I couldn't actually go home.
"I'm so sorry."
The voice came out of nowhere, startling me and making me jump from my seat on the old bench! My brain never even took the time to wonder about the words themselves, instantly thinking it had to defend itself. Adrenaline pumped through my body and my heart nearly seemed to double its rate.
"Karen?" I asked, spotting the smallish black woman stand near the treeline, looking like she would rather be somewhere else. She clearly had to think for a moment to remember her recently given name, but she eventually nodded.
"I'm sorry about all of this," she said, emphasizing the message even more.
"That's funny," I grumbled, my body and brain calming down, "Vera said the exact same thing before she..."
The words failed me, the fresh memory still a bit too uncomfortable to bring up. But Karen's reaction was different, and a bit weird. More than anything, she looked a bit embarrassed, like someone remembering that she spilled a drink on someone else. But what she was feeling more exactly was hard to tell.
"We still... need you," she managed to stammer, clearly not liking to have to say it. Whether it was the words she spoke or the act of talking to me, or talking at all, that bothered her was impossible to say.
"Yeah... I felt really needed back when you, what was it, left me behind!" I replied in the most sarcastic voice I could muster. Reading her actual, honest reactions remained a nightmare, her eyes flicking around the place and every fold in her face shifting, coming and going like it had a curfew to obey.
"We need you to fix the machine out at the old building."
I stared long and hard at her, thinking I could perhaps make her feel uncomfortable. That was until I realized that she was about as uncomfortable as humanly possible. Assuming she was, of course, human.
"Are the others nearby`" I asked, throwing her for a bit of a loop, judging by the surprisingly normal look of confusion she briefly had.
"Uh, no, they're..." She looked behind her, almost like she was trying to find Lisa and Elmer, perhaps even Cindy.
"Fine," I said, stopping her twitchy mumblings. "I'll fix your goddamn machine. But not until you tell me why you're so hooked on the damned thing. What's it do?"
I could swear I could see her dark skin redden as she became even more twitchy and nervous, but in the end, she nodded, apparently agreeing to the terms.
"It's... It calls for help..."
"No," I said in a cold, hard voice. "No, it doesn't."
"It gives us energy so we can..."
"No, not true, either."
She was close to bursting into tears, her hands picking and pulling on each other, making it seem likely that a finger would snap off at some point. Her eyes were on everything except me.
"It's.... It can..."
"Leave the lying to Lisa," I said in a hard voice, watching her every move. "You're not good at it."
"It's a time machine," she finally said, sounding somewhat honest.
"I know that, but what does it do?"
Her eyes finally looked up, meeting mine. They were still confused, but this was a different confusion. She wasn't scared, just trying to understand the question.
"It's... a time machine. It sends people through time."
I sighed, rubbing my temples.
"I get that. I want to know what you..."
Suddenly, everything came into focus. Crystal clear answers stared me right in the face, painfully obvious.
"You're running. You're running away."
My voice was no longer harsh. This one final fact brought me down to her level, the last piece fallinhg into place and the resulting picture pulling the ground away from under me.
"We failed," Karen mumbled, sounding like she could cry at any minute. "We failed, and we need to leave."
"There's somethng more. There's something you're not telling me," I said out loud, having only planned to think it. "Karen, how does the machine send someone through time?"
"It... There's a... It boosts your particle energies through..."
"No, I mean, how do you use it, physically, to send someone through time? I saw the machine. It has a platform and a chair, but the chair is...."
Her eyes were wide and beginning to redden, even as they looked away.
"Holy #*@!," I muttered, no longer managing my words carefully. "Someone sits in the chair and sends someone else through, isn't that right?"
Karen nodded.
"Meaning someone has to stay behind."
She nodded again.
"And something tells me neither Lisa nor Elmer is ready to make that sacrifice. And Cindy can't. Am I getting close?"
She nodded, tears now starting to run down her cheeks.
"That leaves you. They're leaving you behind."
She neither nodded nor answered. Even her hands had stopped wringing.
"What the hell is wrong with all of you?!" I more or less shouted, completely losing my cool. "You just left Vera to die, too! Is it some kind of rivalry or a suicide pact or something?!"
She looked as much scared of me as she did sad about having to be left behind.
"We're all the same," she said, never meeting my gaze.
"That's horseshit," I bellowed out, forgetting for a moment that I might attract unwanted attention. "What kind of militant time cult are you in? You have as much right as..."
I stopped, on my own accord, noticing that she had raised a trembling hand, as if asking for permission to speak. Which, considering my words, was a bit ironic.
"No, I mean, we're the same. We're the same person, sent back multiple times. So it doesn't really matter if one or more dies, we're still the same person coming back in the end."
She looked as if there was nothing remotely wrong or odd about what she had just said, as if she had simply read the news or recited some flimsy pop tune. I, on the othre hand, had an open mouth but was completely lost for words.
"But," I finally stuttered, "you're... different."
She nodded, hesitantly. "The body never really makes it back in one piece, the jump back is too grheat. So I go back, get fixed up with a new body, have my memories from the last trip wiped to avoid overlap, and get sent back again. It's a bit more complicated, but yeah..."
I was still not shutting my jaw right as I looked at the small woman. She looked perfectly normal, just a bit taller than my own short self, the dark skin, short dark curls, five fingers on each hand and, I somehow assumed, five toes on each foot. She could have been a friend of my mom's, had I known nothing else about her.
"Wait, Elmer's a... I mean, you know, he's... a guy. Right?"
She nodded, more casually than I liked for the very confusing subject.
"New body means new body," she said, adding an awkward tone to her words, as if she had her own reservations about the idea of being one day turned into a man without her explicit consent. "All they need is our report, then they can repair us whichever way they see fit. Women time travel best, but sad fact is, in your time and place, you sometimes need a white guy to get through to people."
I nodded, but mostly at the last part. Everything else she said was still hurting my brain in new and interesting ways!
"But... you live here, you become different versions of the same person. Right?"
Again, Karen hesitated greatly as she nodded, but she did nod.
"Karen," I said, breathing a deep sigh as I rubbed my face in a very inelegant way, "I don't care about how you all got here. Hell, I barely even understand it."
Her eyes were watering up again, and her hands starting to wring. She seemed to feel that I was angry at her. She couldn't have been more wrong.
"No," I just said, turning the whole thing over one last time in my head. For a moment, her tears stopped, and she just looked up, a living question mark.
"You're not getting left behind, Karen. Here's what we do..."