part was explaining to Karin once again. Jake was starting to find it tiresome to go through the whole situation time after time, but for his wife, this was all entirely new, and she had many questions. It turned out also that Janna had been sick for the past several days, something he’d forgotten about, and as a result Karin was tired and a little irritable. Jake could feel the tiredness in his own body from the sleepless nights endured the last couple of days by the ‘him’ his memories had moved into.
Despite being eager to check on Ray, Jake realized that he had promised Karin to watch over Janna so she could go into work to catch up on an important task of her own. The daycare wouldn’t accept children who were sick, and while much improved, Janna still had a bit of a temperature. Somewhat reluctantly, he knew he had to forego running off immediately. He had time. Coming back a week was more than had been necessary. He’d wanted to be certain that he caught Ray under somewhat normal conditions, not just his last day at the old newspaper. It might have been better to go back several weeks, but Jake hadn’t felt ready for another long jump just yet, and something in his gut told him this transition period was unique somehow. This was where the real Ray was going to disappear, Jake was certain of it. That made this a critical time. All he had to do was first verify he was watching the real Ray, and then see how he did it. Jake didn’t think it would be complicated. Ray had setup the fake disappearance a couple of months in the future from this time as a diversion in case Jake checked and wouldn’t have expected Jake would discover the ruse that a man working at the San Francisco paper was a fake. The situation showed that Ray really didn’t fully understand how Jake’s ability worked. Actually, it was surprising that he understood as well as he appeared to. For anyone who hadn’t experienced it as Jake had, it was confusing. Even Carlson, and Karin for that matter, still got it wrong sometimes, and they had been involved more than anyone.
While Karin was away at work, Jake spent most of his time in the study. Janna was a cooperative child, spending most of the afternoon sleeping. Jake completed a programming task in a couple of hours that had taken him several days the last time he’d passed through this period, because he recalled the solution he had stumbled upon after several iterations. That meant he wouldn’t be late on the delivery to his client if he spent the next couple of days away and chasing his problem.
Then he jumped on the Internet for a bit of research. Jake’s frequent back-tracking over the years had honed his memory skills, and he recalled the name of the Oakland newspaper where Ray worked from the briefing Carlson and Laney had given him so many months from now. It took only a short time to learn all he needed, including locating the facility on a map and choosing the best route. Like the San Francisco paper, this one wasn’t one of the major papers in Oakland, actually somewhat lower on the scale than where Ray had moved, making the transition a step upward.
The next morning after Karin had headed off to work with a now fully recovered Janna, Jake set off to see what he could learn about Ray’s situation before he’d made the move to the far side of the Bay. He didn’t need to work his way to the City and then across the Bay Bridge this time. Before, when he’d made the trip to Oakland, he’d been at the southern edge of San Francisco and it made sense to use the Bay Bridge to cross to the eastern side. Starting from his home in San Jose, it made sense to travel up the east side of the Bay, and approach Oakland from the south. It didn’t matter much. The traffic on the eastern side was horrendous as well. As a result, it was nearly ten thirty when he pulled into the parking lot of the ancient buildings that housed Ray’s current employer. Jake had decided he might as well use the same approach he’d found successful before. It wouldn’t matter, because at some point he was certain he would be going even farther back, and