Forty Leap Read Online Free PDF

corpse.”
    She was right, of course, and I could offer
no response to her allegations but the truth. I tried very
delicately to explain that these were not simple blackouts, but
that I was being swept from one moment to another, skipping large
chunks of time in between. The explanation meant little or nothing
to her. She took it as a poorly conceived lie, but gave me credit
for originality. In the end, she chose not to fire me. As I said, I
was just the kind of employee she liked, and she hated to give that
up in favor of some young go-getter looking to move up the
corporate ladder. There was no official policy of probation in my
company, but she used that word when she described my status. One
more screw-up and I was out. To me that just meant it was a matter
of time before my job was taken away from me. To date, I could
neither anticipate nor prevent the jumps.
    Morty had arrived by the time I got back to
my desk. He didn’t seem so surprised to see me so I can only assume
that he had heard I was back. But he did stare straight through me
from the time I came into view until the time I just couldn’t take
it anymore.
    “It happened again?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    “For a week?”
    I became irritated, but I had learned to
control it. For a time, we didn’t speak. I went about checking my
files and figuring out what I was supposed to do. The items on
which I had last been working were completed or mostly completed.
There were no new items, which meant they had been ferried out to
other people. If it was true that my boss was about to start
interviewing, that meant she couldn’t afford to have my position
vacant. Sure enough, as I sat trying to get my bearings, new
assignments kept popping up on my computer via the company’s
intranet. There wasn’t anything too taxing, but I was still so
disoriented that I couldn’t manage to focus.
    “Where do you go?”
    “I don’t go anywhere,” I snapped back at
Morty, who had done no work in thirty minutes. He just kept looking
at me. “It’s not a vacation.”
    “I didn’t mean that,” he apologized. “But you
have to be somewhere, right?”
    I had never really given that any thought. In
truth, it didn’t seem as if my location changed at all. When I was
supposed to pick up Livvie at the train station, I didn’t move.
When I was at the hospital, changing clothes, I didn’t move. Or, at
least, I didn’t appear to move. What if there was some other
personality inside of me that simply took over, living its own
life? And when its periods were over and done with, it returned me
to the same place as before.
    And yet, that made no sense. That particular
personality would have to be aware of the charade in order to set
my watch back to the proper date and time and put me in the very
same clothing and make sure that I was just as tired or hungry or
that I had the same urge to go to the bathroom or not. It was too
impossible.
    “I don’t think I actually do move. I’m pretty
sure I just stay in the same spot.”
    “I went by your apartment over the weekend,”
Morty said. “You weren’t there.”
    “I don’t think I can answer the door in the
middle of it.”
    “I didn’t think so. So I went inside. You
should have your super fired. He takes bribes.”
    I dismissed that last bit. “So I wasn’t in
the apartment? Anywhere?”
    He shook his head. “I asked around, too. No
one had seen you leave or anything.”
    An idea struck me. Again, it seemed
unreasonable, but I pulled out my credit card and dialed the
customer service number on the back. After negotiating my way
through the automatic phone service and providing nineteen pieces
of personal information, a representative was able to tell me that
my card hadn’t been used in the week during which I was missing. It
confirmed my suspicion, but didn’t provide any answers. What did happen to me during those times? Was I safe?
    Time passed. I was very busy at work. It took
me almost a week to catch up. I had to