Here and Now and Then

by Mike Chen

  “Not what I think? It’s exactly what I thought.”

  “It’s no big deal—”

  “No big deal? Kin, we needed you weeks ago. I knew you still had it. We should be at the top of the TCB league, but without our best scorer, we’re stuck in the middle. You know how much shit I get from the Operations people? I knew you didn’t need that extra time. Is this what happens when you warm up to classical music? I need a new playlist.” Markus tossed an arm around him, giving him a heavy shake with a laugh. “Sharpshooter. Right on target. Boom.” He continued on, doing a mock play-by-play on Kin’s game-winning goal, and with each passing second, the tension evaporated. “That’s why I wouldn’t let Research take you. I don’t care if you’re working for them now—you’re on our team.”

  “Hey,” Kin said, forcing out a wry grin. “I had to play it safe. Health concerns.”

  “Play it safe? With aim like that, you don’t play it safe. You...” The words, which had been rolling with a raucous momentum, halted as the grin suddenly left Markus’s face. Creases appeared, first around his brow, and then framing his frown. Kin tracked his gaze down to the bag sitting on the grass.

  The glowing smartphone screen. Icons of various apps that died long ago. A background photo of Miranda.

  The camera must have timed out, defaulting to the phone’s home screen. They stood in silence, ten or fifteen seconds passing before the screen dimmed to half brightness. It might as well have been months or years. “That’s your phone,” Markus finally said. “Your phone from twenty-one-A.”

  A single bead of sweat trickled down the side of Kin’s face, and it had little to do with playing soccer for the past hour. “I can explain.”

  Markus grabbed it and swiped through the screens before it could lock out. “These are recent pictures on here. You’ve been using this.”

  “A few. It’s not that big of a deal—”

  “Why would you do this? You can’t have past tech out here. You know this. What are you even going to do with...” Kin could practically see the wheels turning in Markus’s head as he stared at the just-taken selfie. “Tell me you’re not actually doing this.”

  “I’m not actually doing this,” he said with half conviction.

  “Don’t bullshit me. You’re sending these to Miranda, aren’t you? You’ve figured out a way past the system.”

  No words came out as a response, though maybe Kin didn’t need to say anything. His expression gave him away. His fingers began drumming at his side, and a new list of possibilities played out, all of them involving Markus freaking out. “Listen—”

  “You know what happens if you get caught? It’s not just you who’ll be in trouble—they’ll get to her, too. She’s supposed to believe you’re gone. This is reckless, beyond dangerous—”

  “I’m not going to get caught,” Kin said, a defiance in his tone that took even him by surprise, “because I’ve covered my tracks.”

  “You’re gambling with your daughter’s life because you ‘covered your tracks’?”

  Who was Markus to judge him on this? Markus was the cause of all this; he’d had a choice when he showed up on Kin’s doorstep, and he chose to follow the company rules. Pressure squeezed Kin’s teeth together, clenching his jaw so tight that he nearly couldn’t get any words out. “Maybe you missed it in your file, but I happened to work in IT back in twenty-one-A.” The words launched at a rapid clip, and soon his thoughts couldn’t keep up. “I know PHP and Ruby and Python and JavaScript inside and out. You’re telling me that our network people know dead programming languages from more than a hundred years ago? They ask me for help when they can’t crack old code.” The justifications—things that he told himself when this whole thing began—made more sense now than they ever did. This wasn’t just the right thing to do by his daughter, this was the smart thing, the sensible thing, the good thing that righted the wrongs committed by fate. “There’s no way they’ll know. I’ve covered all possible bases.”

  Markus shook his head, a simple side-to-side motion that grew into a regular cadence of rhythmic disapproval. “This is stupid. And dangerous.”

  Markus’s comments were probably meant to keep Kin and Miranda safe. All Kin saw was an affront to his family—a challenge, a gauntlet that pitted the present against the past, and he wouldn’t stand for it. Not now. “Stupid? Her not having a father is stupid. I looked up what happened to her after you pulled me back here, and it’s clear she needed me. Heather died months after I left. Did you know that? Things got worse and worse for Miranda until she killed two people while driving drunk. I don’t care if it’s timeline corruption, Miranda is innocent in all this. She deserves the life she was going to have, not that. And I’ve changed it. The arrests, the DUI, all of it—gone.” Weeks and weeks of bubbling rage geysered out. The momentum practically lifted Kin off the ground, bringing him to his tiptoes and streaming past any discipline or filters to explode on the only person who knew the truth, the only person he could possibly target. “You did this. You took my family away from me. Now you tell me, if Benjamin was ripped away from you, wouldn’t you do anything to stay in touch with him? If his life fell apart because he thought you had abandoned him, wouldn’t you try to change that? I know you would. Any parent would. I had to.” Exhausted, the surge died down, turning down his nerves from boiling to a mild simmer.

  “I was doing my job, bringing you back,” Markus said, his voice barely audible. He swallowed hard, and his forehead was etched into weary lines. “Our job. This is what we signed up for.”

  Another silence arrived; unlike earlier, this wasn’t a standoff. “Look, you’re right. If it was Benjamin, I...” Markus avoided Kin’s eye, instead staring over Kin’s shoulder to some alternative world where it was his son, not Miranda, who was the victim of this. “I would do anything to make sure he had a good life.” By now the field was completely empty, the only noises coming from skycar engines throttling overhead and the occasional dog bark in the far distance. “It’s still dangerous. You’ve gotta be careful.”

  “It’s not, though. I’ve tested it. Remember back at the café, you asked me about what I did at work? I’m doing the same thing here.” Kin launched into an explanation of early twenty-first century technology, one that clearly went over Markus’s head. “As long as I run through my process, everything’s fine. All they see is that a portal is being used, right? I’m in Research—that’s my job. I stay here, I do my job, and I get to stay in touch with my daughter.”

  Emotions cycled across Markus’s face, and Kin knew his friend well enough to imagine the inner monologue that went with each of them—probably focused on rules and how Kin broke them. Kin exhaled as Markus settled on a softer, more thoughtful expression. “How is she?” he asked, his voice tender enough to read Benjamin a bedtime story.

  “It’s been about a year and a half since I left. She misses Heather. I can tell. But she’s come out of this stronger. She’s a survivor.” He arched an eyebrow up at Markus. “She just got her learner’s permit. My little girl. Driving.”

  “A year and a half? You’ve only been back for a few weeks. Is this why...” Markus stepped forward, a suspicious look on his face. “Penny says you flip between being all nostalgic about things you two have done together, then shutting off cold for hours. She thinks it’s the trauma recovery period. But it’s not that, is it? You are literally bouncing between Penny and Miranda. People aren’t supposed to have lives in two eras. You know that, right?”

  Kin searched for an answer that satisfied all facets of Markus: the friend, the company man, and Penny’s brother.

  “Are you having doubts? Is that why the wedding hasn’t been rescheduled?”

  For the first time in weeks—months? Perhaps even years?—Kin let himself be completely honest with someone else. “It feels like I’m getting to know her again. But something’s missing. Something’s different. She still assumes
we’ve been together for the past four years. I’m trying to keep up and I can’t. I’ve had a whole life since I last saw her. I had a family. Things are just different and I can’t reconcile that.”

  Markus broke his normally studious, protective mold. “This is why I never wanted my sister to date a coworker,” he said, his tone half-serious. “Time travel is bad for relationships.”

  “Says the happily married man.”

  “I follow the rules.”

  “I keep revisiting my past with Penny. Trying to relive our moments together on fast-forward. It’s helped me remember her, but I can’t manage to remember us. The information is all there, but the feelings... All the research and analyzing in the world hasn’t solved that.”

  “The rules would solve that. There’s a reason why you’re not supposed to have lives in two eras.”

  “I’m not getting headaches—”

  “I’m not talking about headaches. Staying late at the office to communicate—illegally, I might add—with your secret daughter—also illegal—is not helping. Is. Not. Helping. We aren’t meant to be pulled from two time periods at once. Emotions can’t go in two directions.”

  Markus built a blunt wall of Rules with a capital R. But Kin was far too deep to turn back now. “What do you want me to do? Give up on Miranda? She’s already lost her dad once.”

  “You’re hurting her, too. Can’t you see that? Do the math. From your perspective, you get a new email every time you refresh your screen. But from her perspective, she’s getting your email, going on with her life for a day or two, then responding to you. You’re experiencing seconds while entire days are passing for her. Think about it—if you answer four emails a day from her, that’s only one day for you, but, what, a week, two weeks for her?”

  In this case, Markus’s attention to detail made sense. If Kin kept this up, her life could pass her by without him even realizing it.

  Time travel indeed.

  “Her life isn’t a novel that you can sit down and read in one sitting,” Markus continued. “Every time you email her, every time you read her replies, your time with her grows shorter. And every time you work late, Penny knows. She knows something’s up. Because you won’t talk about it—because you can’t talk about it. And you know her, she’ll never tell you it’s irritating her, but it is. You have to rein this in. For Miranda. For Penny. Bloody hell, for yourself, man.”

  In Kin’s exuberance over communicating with his daughter, these facts had never occurred to him. Her messages had become his daily habit, the thing that drove him to go to the office. Penny asked him why he seemed so preoccupied at times, but his mind pressurized with thoughts and lessons and nuggets of wisdom to pass on to Miranda—things he should have been saying and doing all along.

  Still, Markus was right. On most days, the emails spanned a few weeks of her life. At this rate, she’d age fifty years in one passing year for him. Then he’d lose her forever. “Any ideas?”

  “Go in real time. If a week passes in her era, let a week pass for you before writing back. Like how we schedule missions to prevent aging conflicts. You can’t unsee her life. And you owe it to Penny to be more present.”

  He’d been home for weeks now, and yet every step forward was then met with another late night at the office, running back to Miranda and his old life rather than give Penny his all. No amount of reflecting on their past would fix that.

  A week for a week.

  The words sank in while they silently walked back to the main TCB building. They stepped past the sliding glass doors and looked up at the ocular scanner. A disembodied voice greeted them by name, and the security doors in front of them unlocked. “That’s what I would do. Theoretically. If it was Benjamin I was trying to reach.”

  They stepped out in unison, and Markus pulled him aside before parting ways. “Listen. Don’t screw this up. You do, and you lose everything—your career, your daughter, Penny. Be careful.”

  The floor clicked and clacked as the spikes of his cleats hit the tile. Kin walked down the narrow hallway of offices until he got to his desk.

  An urge crept up from his gut, one to log in and read Miranda’s next message.

  Except he didn’t. Markus was right about this, and Kin reminded himself that he nearly lost his daughter once; he didn’t need to repeat that so quickly again.

  Rather than log in, Kin continued down the hallway toward the department showers, his cleats echoing with each step. He told himself that his desperation for Miranda had to be tamped down if he wanted to hold on to her, especially since she’d moved far past the acute trauma of losing her mother. For now, Penny was where his focus should be.

  CHAPTER 14

  A dinner party.

  Not just a few friends over for drinks and laughs, but a full-blown party with cocktails, appetizers, and a large guest list. Kin had suggested it. He’d had to.

  Nothing else was working. Each time Kin tried to recreate a moment from their past, flashes of empathy and affection arrived, but nothing captured the same burning desire he’d felt for her in his dream. With each progressive attempt, the question of why—or perhaps why not—loomed larger in his mind.

  While he’d managed to get his connection to Miranda under control—a comfortable once-per-week relationship that provided stability to his days—every time he looked at Penny, all he saw was the gaping hole he wasn’t fulfilling.

  He’d traded his guilt over Miranda for guilt over Penny. And if this party didn’t trigger those feelings that should have been there, maybe nothing would. After all, it mirrored their last big event—but this time, there would be no engagement to announce.

  For Penny, that moment was just a little more than a year ago. But for Kin, it was a lifetime, an entirely separate wedding and relationship had come in between then and now. That night had been a celebration, with toast after toast in their honor, every time he’d looked at Penny his chest felt ready to burst. When Markus held everyone’s attention, delivering a speech about all the ways Kin and Penny were so different and yet they still worked, they’d stood, hands folded together, the world seemingly before them.

  So much of tonight echoed that day. The guest list was the same. The apartment looked and sounded the same. But he had changed, and the only one who knew just how much was Markus.

  Penny grabbed his hand when the first guests arrived. “Nervous?” she asked.

  He turned to face her, and though she was just trying to reassure him, her own anxious tells surfaced behind her smile and nod. “Looks like I should be the one asking that.”

  “I just want this to go smoothly.”

  “Your dinner parties are legendary. Everyone loves them.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Her hand squeezed his, the tips of her nails pressing into his skin. “For you. You haven’t seen these people since the accident. I just want you to be comfortable.” She faced him, her eyes bright and wide. “I just want you to be happy.”

  “Me, too.” Kin leaned in, planting a polite kiss on Penny’s lips.

  “Okay then,” Penny said, sucking in a big breath, and Kin reminded himself to smile, too. His stomach had fluttered all afternoon at the weight of the evening.

  And he hadn’t even considered seeing so-called friends again.

  “Open front door.” The apartment’s door beeped in acknowledgment and slid open. “Come on in,” he said, motioning in the couple as he surveyed them.

  Padma. An old coworker of Penny’s. Wide smile to go with blank eyes—forced stare. Threw her arms out for a hug after a sharp inhale.

  Her boyfriend, Devin. Ten years or so older than Padma. In prime shape, triathlete, though some marked wrinkles from too much sun exposure. He hugged, too, after he spent a split second too long studying Kin.

  Kin reminded himself to expect this and turn agent mode off. He spouted out a practiced laugh when Padma s
aid, “I don’t know what Penny was talking about. You don’t look different at all. Actually, you should have kept the spectacles. Retro crown, you know?”

  “Appreciate it,” he said, taking their coats, “but you can be honest. I won’t be offended.”

  “Hey,” Devin said with a gentle tone that was probably meant to be comforting, “as long as you’re healthy. That’s all that matters. Now, what smells so good?”

  Devin and Padma returned to their normal voices when they greeted Penny, comments about great smells and brilliant recipes thrown around. The door chimed again; it slid open, revealing more people, including Markus hovering in the back.

  Exaggerated greetings filled the space, hugs and soft pats on the back coming with a delicacy that made Kin wonder if they all worried that a hard hug might snap him in half. Markus avoided all this, instead offering a simple nod, his expression demonstrating a different type of sympathy. More familiar faces arrived and moved on to either the drink table or Penny’s appetizers.

  Penny and her brother exchanged quick greeting pecks. “Sorry,” Markus said, “Benjamin’s sick. Enoch’s on kid duty tonight.” He looked around, neck craning as he surveyed the room. “Mum and Dad haven’t stormed in yet?”

  Penny stood up straight, mouth twisted like she chewed the inside of her cheek. “They’re not coming.”

  “They canceled?”

  “I didn’t invite them. This is my thing, not theirs. You know what they’d do. Nitpick. Backhanded compliments. This party is for both of us,” she said, nodding at Kin, “and I’m not going to let them turn it into something about them.”

  “Penny,” Markus’s voice took on a serious tone that Kin rarely encountered. “They will give you more grief for not inviting them. I’ll call them now, they’ll come over, just ignore whatever they say—”

  “No. They’re not coming.”

  “I’m just trying to protect you. I know how they get—this is the path of least resistance. Let me call them.”