In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  “Tonight,” Quickly says. “Tonight would have been the night I died.”

  “Wow,” Francesca says. “How?”

  “Elton Stenger,” Quickly replies. “He came back at the same time you did. There were others as well, but Stenger was the one that really changed things. He’s a vicious human being. He took Malcolm hostage when he met him, and found out much about what we do. It seems the knowledge only enraged him, however. In his few days here in 1986 alone, he had begun to believe himself unique. He was angry to have been deprived of the spotlight of public fame. He found solace in his new ability to know the future. I think he envisioned himself becoming famous all over again, perhaps for different reasons. I believe he saw other time travelers as a threat to that.

  “Carson,” I say. “He killed Carson because he recognized another time traveler in the media.”

  Dr. Quickly nods. “I don’t know all the specifics of that encounter, but it would be in line with other aspects of his motivations. He set up the trap with Malcolm in the lab tonight, to get rid of me. And it worked.”

  “But why did you need us?” I say. “If you knew Stenger was going to kill you, why not just leave?”

  “We couldn’t,” Mym says. “I tried that. Originally Dad had always told me that if he died, I wasn’t supposed to try to change it. He said we all have our time and it has to come to an end.”

  She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “But I couldn’t do it. I tried to just let him go. I tried, but I couldn’t forget what happened. I went back to try to stop it. I tried so many combinations of ways to keep it from happening but I couldn’t find one where everyone would survive. No matter what I did, Malcolm or my dad or someone else kept dying. I saw them die so many times.” She looks at me. “I saw you die, too.” She sniffs again and looks away for a moment. When she looks back, she continues. “But then one day, when I was traveling, trying to research more information, trying to find some way to solve it, I met a man. He told me he knew my situation and that there was a way to work things where everyone survived. He told me the combination of events that needed to happen to reach that timestream. I knew it would be selfish of me to put everyone through that, but I had to try. I didn’t want to go on living in a time where I couldn’t save them.”

  “How did the man know what was going to happen?” Francesca says. “Who was he?”

  Mym’s eyes meet mine again. “He was you.”

  I stare into her eyes, then look at Quickly. Dr. Quickly is studying Francesca’s face. He stands up and disappears into the kitchen. When he returns, he lays a pair of ice packs in front of her.

  “So, I caused this,” I say. “I’m the reason we couldn’t know what we were doing.”

  “If you knew, you never would’ve succeeded,” Mym says.

  Francesca holds one of the icepacks to her face and nods to Dr. Quickly. I snag the other one and press it to my wrist.

  “So what now?” I ask. “Is it done?”

  Dr. Quickly leans onto his elbows. “It’s done for now.”

  “So, these other attempts you made,” Francesca says, “does that mean there are other versions of this story where we didn’t succeed?”

  “Yes,” Mym replies. “There are other timestreams, but in this version, Stenger didn’t win.”

  “But the Stenger that shot Carson,” I say. “That still happened?”

  “We’re in a new timestream now,” Dr. Quickly says. “Stenger is dead, so Carson will live, should he decide to go to L.A. and produce rock music again, but yes, that old timestream still exists. What happened, happened. You can never change the past. Not really. You can just choose to live in a time where things are different.”

  “So, that Stenger, the one who killed Carson and took his chronometer, he’s still out there somewhere,” I say.

  “I’m afraid so,” Quickly says. “But he’s gone from your original timestream. When you get home, he’ll still be gone.”

  “But we can go home now?” Blake says.

  “Yes,” Quickly replies. “If you would still like to go back to your old lives, I can see you there safely.”

  “Getting home perforated is still getting home.” Blake smiles. “Mallory will just have to be extra nice to me for a while.”

  “When would we leave?” Francesca says.

  “As soon as you are ready to go.”

  I stare out the sliding glass doors into the dark backyard. “So, the other versions of us, the ones who are still at the hospital waiting on Mr. Cameron, what happens to them now?”

  “They keep on with the story,” Quickly replies. “They exist in a bit of a paradox at the moment, but if left uninterrupted, they will continue down the same path you have, eventually looping around and becoming you as you sit right now.”

  “But Stenger is dead now,” I say.

  “In this timestream, Stenger was dead the day you three left for Boston. You just didn’t know it, because you hadn’t come back to cause it to happen yet. But had you paid attention to the news that night, it would not just have told you about the lab burning, but it might have mentioned a pileup on the interstate as well.”

  “That’s tonight,” I say. “That news program will probably be on again tonight.”

  “Of course it will. It’s the same news program. Would you like to watch it?”

  I look at his face. His eyes are smiling again. “The timestreams are splitting, but they’ve not separated completely yet. Actually, I can give you all a class on the physics of traversing paradoxical timestreams, if you’re in the mood.”

  “That’s okay. I trust you.”

  “What about Mr. Cameron and Robbie?” Francesca says. “Will Mr. Cameron survive?”

  “In this timestream, he will. If I take you home to your original timestream, he has to have always died. You won’t find him there. Robbie has a choice to make. If he would like to continue his relationship with his grandfather here, he is welcome to, but he won’t be able to go home.”

  “That really sucks,” Francesca says.

  “You can’t change the past,” Quickly says, “you can only—”

  “Choose where you want to live,” I finish for him.

  Quickly nods. I stand up and look at Blake. “Well, I know where you want to live.”

  He smiles and stands. “Yep. There’s only one home for me. She’s got brown hair and blue eyes, and she might not be getting a diamond ring, but she’ll be getting a whole lot of me.”

  Francesca sets the ice pack on the table and gets to her feet. “Can we at least say goodbye? To Mr. Cameron, I mean?”

  “If we get you there after the three of you have left for Boston, it will be a new timestream from there on out. You can do what you like after that point, until we take you home,” Quickly says.

  Francesca smiles. “Good. I like the sound of that.”

  25

  “‘Time is Money’ is an inaccurate statement, unless you are using it in the early twenty-first century connotation of the word, meaning ‘outstanding’, or ‘excellent.’ In that case, I’d be pretty ‘money.’”

  -Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2009

  Carson, Robbie and Mr. Cameron are still in the backyard, staring at the space around the bike handle, when we walk around the corner of the garage. Carson bends down to pick up one of the anchors we left behind. Spartacus barks and bounds over to us at full speed. Francesca has to fend off his licks until he gets distracted sniffing Dr. Quickly and Mym.

  “That was quick,” Robbie says.

  “It really is like magic,” Mr. Cameron says. “You even multiplied.”

  “You know, you guys,” Carson shakes the piece of chain link fence he’s picked up, “there’re fines for littering in this state. You really ought to learn to clean up after yourselves.”

  I’m too happy to see him alive and breathing to come up with a response. I walk over to him, grinning, and give him a hug.

  “Good to see you too, dud
e,” Carson says. “It’s been a long five seconds.”

  “Oh man, you have no idea,” I say.

  Dr. Quickly extends a hand to Mr. Cameron. “It’s good to see you again. This is my daughter, Mym.”

  Mr. Cameron shakes her hand and smiles. “How do you do, young lady?”

  Mym smiles back. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot of great things about you.”

  “Clearly from gullible parties.” Mr. Cameron winks.

  I fist bump Robbie.

  “So what happened?” he says. “It didn’t work?”

  “Oh, it worked all right,” Francesca says. “Well, most of it.”

  I scratch Spartacus behind the ears as he leans against me. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “The important part is we met you in your forties,” Francesca says.

  “Really?” Robbie says. “What was that like?”

  “Pretty bizarre,” I say. “You were really happy, though.”

  “And you had a hot wife,” Francesca adds.

  “Really?” Robbie says. “Huh. You sure she was mine?”

  “You had the ring to prove it,” I say.

  He smiles. “Damn. Sounds like a fun trip.”

  “It had its moments,” I say.

  “Why are you guys back so soon?” Carson says. “Did you really miss us that fast?”

  “We came back to get your punk ass,” Francesca says. She stops and hangs her head just a moment, then looks back up. “Sorry. You see what you do to me?” She walks forward and gives Carson a hug. He looks to me in surprise as he pats her on the back.

  “Is the world about to end or something? What’s with you guys?”

  “How about we tell you inside?” I say.

  Mr. Cameron invites us indoors, and he and Dr. Quickly and Mym take seats in the library while the rest of us linger in the kitchen.

  “All right, tell us what’s up,” Carson says.

  “Yeah,” Robbie says, pulling some cups out of the cupboard. “Explain the speedy return trip.”

  I open the refrigerator to pull out the pitcher of water. “Okay, so the short version is this. We went home, only it was the wrong version of home. It turns out time is a fractal, and you can go to all kinds of parallel timestreams. We went to the wrong one.” I pour water for the others as they hold out their glasses. “The other versions of us were still in the other timestream, because we never left from there. Robbie was old and married.” I look at Carson. “You moved to L.A. to become famous, but you died.”

  “Famous for what?” Carson says.

  “You missed the important part of that sentence,” Francesca says. “The ‘you died’ part.”

  “Well, okay,” Carson says. “But what was I famous for?”

  “Robbie said you produced Independence Day but it sucked,” I say.

  Carson shakes his head. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

  “In any case, we had to come back,” I say. “We had to stop Stenger from killing Carson.”

  “Stenger? That guy’s a tool. I could totally take him in a fight,” Carson says.

  “He obviously pulled some sort of shady shenanigans, because you died,” I say. “But we got him. He’s dead now. At least the one from here is.”

  “You got him?” Robbie says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “But there’s a problem.”

  “What?”

  “If we want to go home, we’re going to have to go home to the time when your grandpa died when you were a little kid. That’s what happened in our timestream. There’s no changing it if we want to get home to where we came from, and not another alternate reality.”

  Robbie sips his water slowly, then looks toward the library. “He can’t come with us?”

  “I don’t think so, unless Quickly can find a way to turn him into a time traveler somehow. I don’t know how that works.”

  “Huh. But you said in the other timestream I got old?”

  “Yeah, you stayed and kept living here and never went back.”

  “And I was okay with that?”

  “You seemed pretty happy,” Blake says.

  “Actually, you gave us a message to tell you,” Francesca says. “You said to tell you that everything was going to be okay.”

  “So, what am I supposed to learn from that?” Robbie says. “Am I supposed to go or stay?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply.

  “That future sounds kind of lame if you ask me,” Carson says. “I can’t see me messing up a movie like that, but I guess I’m more of a music guy . . .”

  I walk to the door of the library and poke my head in. Quickly and Mr. Cameron are laughing about something. “Excuse me, Doctor?”

  “Yes, Benjamin.”

  “Would it be possible to take Mr. Cameron back to 2009 with us if he wanted to go?”

  He looks from me to Mr. Cameron and back. His eyes grow serious. “The process of infusing a human being with gravitites is pretty dangerous, Ben. Robert here has just been through a rather serious medical condition. I’m not sure his body is in a state to handle that kind of additional trauma.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility,” he adds. “But I wouldn’t try to do it at the moment.”

  “I see.”

  Mym catches my eye and smiles briefly. Then she looks back to the others.

  Still gets me with that.

  I return to the kitchen. I tell Robbie what Dr. Quickly said and he nods. “Maybe we could try it later on,” he says. “You never know what might happen down the road.”

  “Do you want to come with us then?” Francesca says.

  Robbie shifts his feet. “I don’t know. I don’t think so just yet. We just got him back from the hospital. I’m not sure I should leave him alone. I know it’s been a while for you guys, but we just had this conversation last night. We decided I should stay.”

  “You just want the hot wife, don’t you?” Francesca says.

  Robbie reddens. “No! I mean, that doesn’t sound terrible, but I mostly just want to make sure he’s okay. I’m kind of the reason he didn’t die. I think I need to stick with my decision.”

  “It’s okay. We understand,” I say.

  “What are we going to tell your family back home?” Francesca says.

  “Oh,” Robbie says. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  Mr. Cameron emerges from the library and asks us if we would like to stick around for some lunch. We agree and he starts getting out barbeque fixings. Over the next hour, we mill about the kitchen, helping prepare the food and running things up and down the stairs to the veranda where we’ll be eating. As I carry a pair of drink pitchers through the glass doors, I find Mym setting out silverware on the table. Finally I get her alone for a moment.

  “So, what’s next for you now?” I ask. “More meteor showers with Cowboy Bob?”

  “Hmm. That was years ago,” she replies, as she straightens a place setting.

  “Oh. It was only a couple of days for me.”

  She glances up and nods, then goes back to setting knives around the plates. I set my pitchers down and realize I’m out of excuses to be standing there. “Maybe I should grab a broom and sweep this veranda off a bit. There’s a lot of leaves.”

  “Okay.” She doesn’t look up this time.

  When I get back to the veranda with the broom, I’m disappointed to find that she’s gone again. Our conversation under the stars that night was so effortless. What happened? I sweep the leaves off the veranda with a little more violence than necessary.

  Lunch is delicious but I don’t get as much enjoyment out of it as I should, since I keep casting glances down to the other end of the table. Mym is chatting happily with Mr. Cameron, but seems to avoid looking my direction. On the couple of occasions our eyes meet, she immediately looks away.

  After dinner, Blake and I are doing the best we can to wash some dishes with only two good hands between us, when he suddenly changes
the topic of conversation. “Hey, you okay, man? You seem a little off.”

  “Yeah. I’m fine,” I say. “Just feeling clueless again.”

  Blake sets another plate in the drying rack. “Don’t worry. If women made sense, it would take all the fun out of it.”

  “Hmph.”

  Dr. Quickly rounds us up after we’re done cleaning. “It’s decision time.” He looks to Robbie first. “Have you decided what you would like to do?”

  “Yeah. I did.” Robbie walks over to the roll top desk and picks up an envelope. When he comes back he hands it to Francesca. “Will you give this to my mom? I know she’ll be upset, but I explained everything as best I could. Maybe you can help her understand.”

  “Okay,” Francesca says. “I will.”

  “And you never know. This is time travel, right? I might still get back someday.”

  Dr. Quickly takes the envelope from Francesca’s hand, and setting it on the desk, scribbles an address on the front and hands it back to Robbie. “That’s going to need gravitizing and I don’t have anything with me. Mail it to that address and I’ll make sure Francesca picks it up on the way.”

  Robbie reads the address and nods. “Okay. I can do that.”

  Dr. Quickly turns to Carson. “And how about you?”

  Carson looks at Robbie, then turns back to Dr. Quickly. “If you can promise that you’ll help this one out if he ever needs it, then I guess I’ll go back with you. Lord knows he’s gonna need some serious help though.”

  “Hey,” Robbie says. “Watch it.” But he smiles.

  Carson grins back. “I’m gonna miss you, man.” He moves toward Robbie and gives him a hug.

  Francesca’s eyes are wet. She steps forward and hugs both of them. A moment later, Blake and I join in and we have a five person group hug. From in the middle, Robbie laughs. “All right, you bunch of hippies. Let me out.”

  We break apart but Robbie is still smiling. Mym and Mr. Cameron come downstairs and join us.

  “I guess this is it,” I say. “Again.”

  “We get to say goodbye to you twice in one day,” Mr. Cameron says.