Rainmaker

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
----BURNT NORTON

Chapter One
At that time, I saw Joe stand there, far away from us, despaired. No one could stop Old Joe from killing us. He came from the future, he had known what would happen thirty years later, and he must kill Sid to save his wife.
Old Joe raise his arm, “I am sorry, but your son will became a devil, he must die now.”
I shook my head, “Please, I will take him away from here; I will make him to become a normal person. Please.”
“I am sorry,” Old Joe was ready to pull the trigger. It was impossible for Joe to save us; he was on the edge of the field, out of his blunderbuss’ firing range.
But this time, just as Old Joe was pulling the trigger, a distant shot was heard. And Old Joe disappeared.
Joe turned his blunderbuss back on himself and FIRED.
I knew it was not the only choice of Joe, but the best. ----From Looper: Destined by Sara White

11th July 2044
The house stands on a slight rise just on the edge of a Kansas corn field near the highway. Not a remarkable house by any means-it is about thirty-year old, squatty, and squarish, made of brick, and had no furniture. The only thing in the house is an Indian ausan.
It is about four o’clock in the afternoon. The sky is pregnant with rain.
Now, there is a young man stand in the middle of the house, waiting before the dirty ausan. It is Joe, an executioner, a so called looper. A moment later, Joe takes out his old pocket watch which is swinging from a chain and opens the cover, whispers, “I am very glad that you are still ticking.” He checks the watch again, removes his earbud headphones, stands.
Without much ceremony a bloodied man in a suit appears from thin air, kneeling on the ausan before the young man. Hands and feet tied and a burlap sack over his head. Muffled screams, gagged.
With no hesitation Joe raises a squat gun and blows the man apart with a single cough of a shot.
Joe wraps the corpse with the ausan and then loads it into the flatbed of his truck. Cuts open the back of the body's jacket, four bars of silver taped to the dead man's back reveals. Joe takes them into his pocket.
Joe gets into the truck and drive away.
Hours later, Joe parked his car before a desert factory, and removes the wrapped corpse from the flatbed.
Joe walks into the workshop. It is Cavernous and empty.
He carries the body to an iron hatch, opens it, and dumps him in. The body slides down a long chute and vanishes in a little flare of angry red fire.
Don’t be frightened, it is just his daily job.

11th July 2044
It 8pm. Joe has finished his work and back to his apartment in Wichita. It is time to write his diary. But this time is unusual.

Time travel has not yet been invented. But twenty five years from now it will have been. It will be instantly outlawed, used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations, and then only for a very specific purpose.
It's nearly impossible to dispose of a body in the future. I'm told, for tagging techniques and what not. So when these future criminal organizations in the future need someone gone, they use specialized assassins in our present, called loopers.
And so, thirty years from now, my employers in the future nab the target, they zap him back to me, their looper. He appears hands tied, head sacked. And I do the necessaries and collect my silver. So the target has vanished from the future, and I've just disposed of a body that technically does not exist.
I’ve done this job from 14 and I don’t know when I will retire. 11th July 2014

He doesn’t know why he writes this down, but he just want to.

12th July 2044 “Hey, Bill. What had happened?” Joe entered a room which was guarded by two black men. “Zach is in Andy’s office.” Bill answered with a quarter float above his palm. He is a Tk. About 10% of has this Tk mutation which can blow their mind floating coins or other things. “Why?” Joe rolls his eye. “Closed his loop.” “No shit.” Joe seems astonished. “Excuse me, I am new here. I mean, what is close the loop?” A young man who is standing beside Bill asked. “Get away from me.” Bill shouts. The door at the bottom of the stairs opens, and Zach, another looper, steps out. An older man’s hand pats his shoulder then retracts into the door.
The loopers watch him in awe. “Boy, good luck.” Zach smiles at that young man, “Andy is waiting for you.” He said to Joe.
Yong man steps down the stairs and entered the room with Joe.
“So we’re celebrating?” Zach turns to Bill with a grin on his face.
“Why not?”

Andy’s office
“This is why we called loopers.” Joe stops and looks at Andy.
“It’s enough.” Andy raises his head up from the desk, “tell him something about closing the loop and then we can sign up.” “Cakework.” Joe turns to the young man called Mark. “Boy, there is reason we’re called loopers. Time travel in the future is so illegal, that when we sign up for this job, taking out the future’s garbage we agree to a very specific proviso. If our employers in the future get busted up by the law, their first priority is going to be erasing any trace of their relationship with us ever existing. So, if they're busted, and if we're still alive 30 years from now, they'll find our older self and zap him back to us, and we’ll kill him like any other job. This is called ‘closing your loop’.”
“Another kind of suicide?”
“No, job.”
“Don’t worry boy, you will get paid out a mythic amount of money, then enjoy the next 30 years.” Andy smiles, sign his name on the paper, and pass it to the young man.

29th July 2044 “What's that, sixth loop closed this month?” Bill casually makes a coin float above his palm, lifting his eyebrows at passing ladies.
“Sixth.” Joe murmurs. “Who’s the next?”
Bill snaps the coin, “Plus this fucking boy there are only ten loopers and six of us have closed their loop. Shit.”
Seth, the new in loopers put down his wine, “I may be the last, who knows?”

2nd July 2074
“Next one should be Bill. That’s his destiny.” A man in a ghost mask stands in the shadow with a gold coin floats above his hand murmurs.
“Yes, Boss.” An unknown voice haunts around the darkroom.
If all the victims still alive and see this man, they must shout out, “Rainmaker!”

30th July 2044 It is 16 pm. A hog-tied man with a sack over his head appears, singing.
Bill, with his gun raised, hesitates. Through the gag and mask, he could hear the tune. In his deep memories, his mom lay in the dark room, singing the same tune. And he knew... it was he himself. Bill pulls the sack off the man's head. 30th July 2044
A harsh pounding rings out.
Joe flopped on the bed, stirs. Then he wakes with a jump, shaky on his feet.
Joe slides the window open, “Jesus, Bill”
“Christ, Joe, Christ.” Bill tumbles in off the fire escape.
“Sit down here, quiet down.” Joe points to the bed.
“Christ, Joe. You can protect me a little, right, Joe? Just so they don’t...
“What did you do?”
“Jeez, this is like a nightmare. This is a night mare.”
Now, Joe has known what he did.
“You know, Joe, he was singing, singing, the tune which my mom would sing to me. That is how I knew... it was me.”
“I couldn’t Joe, I couldn’t. I had to see. I pulled the sack off his head.”
Joe closes his eye.
“I don't even remember the words, but I remember believing every one of them, or not even believing, but submitting. I've never felt that small before. He told me, I remember, there is a new holy terror boss in the future, and he is closing all the loops. The rainmaker, they called him.
Then he wanted a cigarette and I untied him, and he gives me this look. And he just starts running.”
“And I had my blunderbuss so I know he's got about fifteen strides till he's out of my range. And they come and go, and I just watch him till he's gone.” Bill breaks down and begins to crying.
“Joe, you are my only friend, Joe. You gotta help me.”
“Fucking idiot coming here.”
Several pounds rings on the door, short and heavy. Bill makes a sound like he's going to die.
“Shut up, you fool.”
Bill crumples to his knees, grasping Joe's hand. “You gotta hide me! Joe, hide me, please Christ, please Joe, please hide me, buy me some time and I'11 leave, please.”
“Open this fucking door, Joe. Or I will break it down.”
Joe looks Bill into his eye.
Watching Bill, Joe's face breaks in a moment of decision. He flips the lights on, and briskly pulls back his oriental rug.
A FLOOR SAFE with a touch pad appears. He enters a code, opens it. Wide and deeper than you'd expect, lined with gold bars. It is big enough for a man. Bill scrambles in.
Joe takes one last look at Bill's frightened, grateful face, framed by the gold bars, then closes the safe and smoothes the oriental rug.
Joe opens the door.
Kid Blue storms in, his gun drawn, sweeping through the apartment with over-eager purpose.
One gat man stays outside; the other casually sits at Joe's kitchen table. Kid Blue gets in Joe's face.
“Tye is going to watch your apartment while we go have a talk with Andy.”
Joe grasps his jacket, “There's coffee in the tin. Tye.”
“Thank you.”

31st July 2044
Midnight.
Kid Blue leads Joe down the stairs and into the door at their base.
“Andy wants to you to wait for a minute.” A guard man says.
Joe and Kid Blue then sit on benches, facing each other. The Kid stares daggers and spins his gun. Joe tries his best not to engage.
“You know why they call that pea shooter a blunderbuss? Cuz it's impossible to hit anything farther than 15 feet, and impossible to miss anything closer.”
“Alright, cut it out Kid. You're gonna blow your foot off again?”
“You're right; it'd be real easy for it to accidentally go off. Don't disrespect a gat man, Looper.” Joe falls back. The Kid raises his gun at Joe. “What the hell is going on out there?”
The high door swings open fast, SMACKING Kid Blue hard on the side of the head. His gun goes off, firing into the wall.
Out of nowhere three gat men burst into the room, guns drawn. Andy, a sallow man in his 50s, appears in the high doorway.
“Come in, Joe.”
Joe climbs into the doorway. Kid Blue stands shakily.
“My great grandfather always told my grandfather, men's like spiders. It's the little ones you gotta be careful of.” Andy said.
“I agree with that.”
“You're expecting we're gonna break your fingers with a hammer or something awful, and I'm going to diffuse that tension right now, that isn't going to happen. What's going to happen is, I'm going to talk for a little, not even that long, then you're gonna give up your friend.”
“My friend Bill? I'm confused.”
“Well then I'll talk a little. You know you were the youngest looper I ever hired? You looked goddamn ridiculous they said, the blunderbuss up to here on you. But I remember they brought you in, I forget what it was for.”
“Watch shop.”
“That's yeah, you had rolled one of our fronts, a watch shop. And they had you, your arms pinned, this kid. Like an animal. But you looked at me, your hair stuck to half your face so just this one eye looking at me. And I thought what this kid has lived through, what he had taken away from him.”
“I cleaned you up and put a gun in your hand. I gave you something that was yours.”
“I gave you something that was yours. And I remember that kid, and I think when you ask yourself you ask who would I sacrifice for what's mine, I think Bill is deep and cozy inside that circle.
Show you how much I know you, I'm not even gonna break you, just set you back a ways.
We know you've been stashing half your bars which are smart. You give up Bill, or you give us half your stash. FOR BILL.”
“Will you kill him?”
“No, that will change the future. All we want is to kill the man who comes from the future.”
The room keeps silent.
“Floor safe, beneath the rug. 6742.” Joe closes his eye.

Chapter Two
In my beginning is my end.
In my end is my beginning.
3rd August 2044
Young Joe stands alone in the house, in his stance, ready to draw. But nothing happens. Joe checks his watch, confused. 2:30 and change.
Watching the blank space where the man is supposed to appear, Joe puts his hand on his gun, breathing shallow. Something is wrong. 2:32. Then, there he is.
But something is different. The man is not kneeling. On his side, so he flops over and has to straighten himself. The man's hands are UNTIED.
Joe raises his gun, scared. Time slows. Finger tightens on the trigger.
Then he sees: the man has no sack on his head. And the face that stares back at Joe is his own.
And for just one split second, Joe's face slackens, and his finger eases on the trigger.
It's all the hesitation Old Joe needs. He throws his body into a spin.
Joe snaps out of it, and pulls the trigger.
The shot catches Old Joe square in the back and the impact blows him forward. But instead of blood beneath his torn jacket's back, the layered gold bars spill out. They caught the blast.
In what seems like one fluid motion, Old Joe's fingers grab one of the bars; he spins again, throwing handfuls of dirt and the bar back towards Joe.
Joe flinches, again just for a moment, and when his eyes focus again and his arms steady the gun it's too late.
Old Joe is on top of him, with a heavy blow knocking the gun aside, and with an even heavier one swinging down on Joe's head, Old Joe runs out of the house.

4th August 2044
Joe runs into a café. He has just escaped from Kid Blue’s chasing. He must find Old Joe.
Then he sees a man sitting in his table.
It is Old Joe.
“We have the same enemy—The Rainmaker. He killed Lucy, my wife, maybe yours.”
“That is the future.”
“We can change it, just kill the boy! Now, The Rainmaker is just a little boy!”
“Jesus, you are ruining my life!”
“No, I am helping you and myself.”
Joe pulls out his gun, but he fails to kill Old Joe.
Again, he escapes.
Joe finds a map on the table, Old Joe forgot to take it.
Yawn Cottage.

8th August 2044
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Joe sits in front of cottage. Old Joe hasn’t come yet.
The boy here lives with his mother. He is a lovely Tk who will always show his performance to Joe. A lovely boy.
“How he would become a devil?” Joe asks himself.

The dusk is coming.
A man appears far in the corn field.
It is Old Joe.

Joe raises his gun. Shoot.
But is missing.

Sara, Cid’s mother, runs out of the house, “Cid is still in the field!”
“Find him and take him to hind in a safe palce.”
Sara rushes to the field.
Old Joe hasn’t notice that.

A fighting is going on. Unfortunately, Joe loses. Unconsciousness Without Joe, It is easy for Old Joe to find Sara and Cid.
“Cid, listen to me, I need you to run into the field.”
“No, mom, I don’t want to leave you.”
“It’s Okay, baby. Go, go.”
Cid runs ahead towards the corn.

Sara is standing her ground, directly between Old Joe and Cid.
Old Joe trips in the mud, fumbles his gun, Seeing Cid approaching the safety of the corn stalks and was blocked by Sara.
“Move.” Old Joe shouts.
“No, please. NO.”
Joe sobers up.
Joe is running.
“I'm sorry.” Old Joe pulls the trigger. Joe is running, but is all in vain. Time slows. Everything is a little surreal, Dream-like. Slow.
Old Joe shoots Sara. We hear no gunshot, just the wind in the corn field and young Joe's breathing. Sara falls, giving him a clear shot at Cid. Just as Old Joe gets him in his sights, Cid breaches the corn fields and is gone, vanishing in the stalks.
Old Joe lowers his gun, stunned but still frantic. He stumbles towards the corn, still far off, his face breaking. Tripped over, he falls in the mud. The corn field is vast in front of him.
Cid is gone. He lost him.
Old Joes holds his pocket watch, Sobs. There is no photo in it anymore.

“Then I saw it, I saw a mom who would die for her son. A man who would kill for his wife. A boy angry and alone. Laid out in front of him, the bad path. I saw it. And the path was a circle. Round and round.”
Joe watches, Sees, in his mind's eye, all of the tragedies. And through all of this we have only heard the wind and Joe’s breathing. Time is hanging, slowed nearly to a stop. Joe is waiting, maybe. Waiting for a miracle of God; waiting for Old Joe being stung by conscience; waiting for what he himself is uncertain about. But he knows all those are based on an illusion, an illusion that Old Joe won’t kill Sara and Cid to save his lover. “I can cut my finger, and then Old Joe will not be able to shoot Sara. (Old Joe comes from future and will be influenced by the action of Joe who lives at present) No, he won’t stop killing, no one can stop his action of saving his lover. No one! He is me.” Joe stops, standing still. He has no time.
All we see is in Joe’s mind, and we all still in the moment where Old Joe is about to shoot Sara. But this time, just as he's pulling the trigger, a distant shot is heard. And Old Joe DISAPPEARS.