Tomorrow's Alternatives

by Roger Elwood

  Rheem and Barrington guided moneyed gentry into tax. shelters and eased corporations into immunity. They were eager and new when I joined the firm, but I suspected that they would grow. I chose Walter Rheem, the thin, pinched-faced nephew of the boss, as the man likely to succeed, and wooed him shamelessly. In fact, I was supporting him in a bitter little altercation with Clovis Jennings when the flu struck.

  Clovis Jennings was immediately hateful to me, from my first day at work. She was a handsome, doe-eyed girl with shaggy brunette hair and a perverse temperament. She was, of course, conscious of being a woman in a man’s business and overcompensated by a propensity for argument. Not that Walter Rheem was a prize. He simpered and snickered, leered and fleered, huffed and bluffed. He wore dark three-piece suits and slicked his thinning hair back with vaseline. He had a rather unappetizing skin condition. But I knew he was destined to inherit the business, and that he would at once fire Clovis if she were not already gone by then. So I hitched my wagon to the reigning star.

  “Clovis,” Rheem said that day—a rainy December day, full of chills and coughs—“I think my uncle knows what's best for this company. And believe me, diversification of the kind you suggest isn't a hot idea."

  Clovis stood before Rheem's desk, pad in her small hands. She reddened—rather prettily. “I think you're small-minded,'' she said. “If I were a man, you'd consider my idea.”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” Rheem said airily, turning his face aside to surreptitiously pick his nose. “We're an investment firm, and we have no desire to diversify.”

  “Not even for profit?” Clovis demanded. “If we acquire the Anderson Company, we'll have a top pharmaceutical outfit, and with our assets and management skills, we'll compete with the top companies for both government and public patronate. We can become powerful, Walter.”

  “No,” Rheem said. “And if you persist, Clovis, I'll have to take it up with my uncle.”

  I had been waiting to see Rheem about another matter and I saw and heard the argument. Clovis turned to me, eyes snapping. “What do you think, Jacob?”

  I was hesitant before answering; Clovis possessed a strong personality, a kind of charisma. But I looked away from her and said, “I must agree with Walter. We should keep our interests pure.”

  Rheem smirked. “Thank you, Jacob.”

  Clovis eyed me with bewilderment and sadness, then flounced out of the office. I congratulated myself and started into Rheem's office. The chills racked me as I stepped over the threshold, and the fever swirled through my head. Rheem blurred behind his desk, spun, and I scrabbled for support. I saw the blurred Rheem stand, and I saw the lush carpeting rushing up at my face.

  “The bug,” Dr. Zane said. “Definitely the bug. Jacob, you have the French flu.”

  Dr. Harry Zane was a new face. Sara had phoned Dr.

  Percy, our regular physician, but Dr. Zane had arrived instead. “Dr. Percy is away,” he'd said. Tm covering his patients."

  This was odd, since Dr. Percy had not mentioned anything about a vacation, but we were happy to get a doctor to come to the apartment. Dr. Zane was jolly, balding, red-cheeked, and stout. He smoked a pipe and chuckled a great deal. He was a youngish man, despite his lack of hirsute adornment, and he had a kind of old-school-tie camaraderie that was pleasant, if unnerving at times.

  He folded his stethoscope and stuffed it into his black leather bag. I lay in bed, my convolutions stilled—as is always the case—by the arrival of the doctor. But I felt weak and moribund. Rheem had sent me home in a cab and I barely staggered up the two flights of stairs and scratched on the door before collapsing. Sara had fortunately come home from her graduate courses at NYU and screamed effectively when she saw me. She dragged me to bed and I'd been violently ill since that point. Now, Dr. Zane produced a packaged syringe and tore it open.

  “I'm going to give you a shot,” he said. “That should help you rest.”

  Sara stood in the doorway, her arms folded nervously. “What is the French flu, doctor?" she asked.

  Zane chuckled. “A puzzler, I'll tell you that. It seems to have come out of Marseilles, but nobody knows where it bred. It's a bug, like the Hong Kong flu, the Asian flu, the London flu. It's violent and strikes swiftly, producing a harsh illness. It's terribly contagious. Other than that, we're at a loss. Doctors are studying the disease, trying to isolate it, find a vaccine." He smiled becomingly. “I'm doing some research in that area myself."

  “A G.P. who does research?” I asked hoarsely.

  Dr. Zane's eyes narrowed and he assumed a haunted, fevered look. “I am a G.P. only to put bread in my stomach, Jacob. Research is my love. I intend to become a very powerful man. I am working in areas that terrify other medical men.”

  The mask fell away abruptly and he was his jolly self. "Sleep, Jacob,” he said, rising. "Ill drop by to see you again.”

  I listened to the reassuring murmurs of the doctor speaking with Sara, and I began to relax, the pains shooting less harrowingly through my body. Sara returned alone after the door slammed and she sat next to me, stroking my forehead, my damp hair.

  "I feel so helpless when you’re ill,” she said softly.

  I looked beyond her, transported by an excitement bom of today’s events. “Rheem likes me,” I whispered. "Really likes me. I have a chance, Sara, to go all the way. We’ll get out of this rathole and buy a house. We’ll be wealthy. I swear it.”

  Sara’s eyes clouded. "You’re never away from the office, Jacob. Never with me. Is it always going to be this way? Are you always going to be driven, obsessed?”

  I clenched a fist. "Until I get what I want. Yes.”

  The coolness of her hand was gone. I sensed her despair and I experienced a pang of remorse. But that was gone also. The room was dark and I floated, borne on the serum in my veins. I was frightened and joyful all at once.

  I was walking through a long, alien corridor, the walls glowing softly. I had no memory of where I started from or where I was going. I felt stuffed, uncomfortable, completely off-balance. I looked at myself and was overcome with horror. I was huge; my stomach protruded alarmingly and my hands were puffy and old. I was dressed in a silvery tunic and loose fitting trousers and my feet were encased in silver slippers. The material looked harsh and metallic, yet felt airy against my skin. I found it a labor to breathe. I lurched forward, nearly fell against the wall.

  A figure stepped out in front of me, seemingly from the wall itself. She was a fine, handsome woman with silver gray hair swept back to three peaks in a hairdo I’d never seen. She wore a violet eyeshadow, a gold lipstick, and a whitish cheek color. She also wore silver, in a formfitting suit that emphasized her lush figure. She was not a young woman at all; late middle age at least, yet she was marvelously preserved, alluring.

  "Jacob,” she said petulantly. "I haven’t got all day.”

  "Sorry,” I mumbled, trying to find my bearings.

  I waddled—there is no other word for it—to her and followed her through a shimmering archway into a vast office. The room was done in ruby red, but the carpeting —what I thought was carpeting—was actually the floor itself, a yielding, warm material that was almost sexual in its texture. The furniture floated above the floor, a sweeping desk and molded chairs, and rather than walls, there was curved glass that looked out on a jewelled, incredible city. Spires vied with towering blocks, sunlight made deep blue shadows, shapes changed, glass facades shattered the light into blinding fragments. I was overwhelmed by the sight, and yet, it made sense. Everything made sense, only I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t shocked by these sights, only unbalanced. I knew, instinctively, that I belonged here.

  "Well, sit down,” the woman said. "You’ve been acting strangely for a week now, Jacob. Are you ill?”

  "No,” I said, trying not to say too much.

  She took the chair behind the desk and I realized I could not feel the seat on which I rested. It was as if I floated also. The sensation was comforting, allowing me to
forget the elephantine proportions of my body. The woman looked harshly at me and I stared, in turn, at her. There was something about her face, even beneath the grotesque makeup, that pricked me. I struggled to remember, and the name came to me in a rush, nearly causing me to faint.

  "Clovis,” I whispered.

  She cocked an eyebrow. "Well, success at last. You know my name. I’m delighted, Jacob, simply delighted. Would you like to try your ABC’s?”

  "You’re Clovis,” I said.

  She was suddenly concerned. “Yes, I’m Clovis. Jacob, did you honestly forget?”

  “Where am I?” I pleaded, suddenly full of fear. “Where is this place? Why am I fat? Why do you look like that?”

  She half rose. “Jacob, sit right there, I’m going to get the doctor for you. Obviously, you’re not well.”

  She stood up and stepped lithely to the floor. I stood also, though I very nearly fell. I stopped her, a hand on her shoulder. “Clovis, you’ve got to give me some answers.”

  Her eyes were full of compassion. “Jacob. You do remember your name?”

  “Yes,” I said eagerly. “Jacob Clemens. And you’re Clovis Jennings.”

  She shook her head. “No. Just Clovis now. I am the regent for Hemisphere. And you are Vice Regent. We are two of the most powerful people in the Western World, and you were to report to me today on your efforts to annex South America to our empire. You were at work on a savagely complex business deal, involving the extermination of native insurgents, the transference of bank funds, the floating of bonds. Jacob, don’t you remember any of this?”

  I stood helplessly, my hands outspread. “No.”

  She took a deep breath. “All right. You might have fallen, jarred your head. It’s nothing the doctor can’t handle. Perhaps the strain of business, the pressures of power. It can happen.”

  I tightened my hand on her shoulder. “Where’s Sara?”

  She narrowed her eyes, “Sara? You mean the girl you once married?”

  “Yes, Sara, my wife.”

  “Jacob, she hasn’t been your wife for years. Not since 1975. That’s when the divorce became final. You do recall the divorce, don’t you? Naming me as correspondent. Following our rather torrid little affair?”

  She smiled hopefully. I moistened my lips. “No, I don’t remember a divorce. I’m still married to her. And it’s not 1975 yet.”

  She gently disengaged herself from my grip and I detected a ripple of fear in her expression. “Listen carefully, Jacob. The year is 2003. You are 59 years old. I am 57. And Sara is out there somewhere among the masses. We lived together for twenty-six years before our positions became too demanding for emotion to cloud the work. We rule what once was the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and after your current work, most of South America. We are in a fatal struggle with Africa and the Orient for domination of Europe. We must win the battle or we stand to fall to the combined black and yellow empires, utterly wiped out. We cannot allow that to happen. With South America in our pockets, we have bargaining power. Europe needs South America, and so will need us. We can arrange a deadlocked trade agreement that will wipe out the black and yellow threat. Is this coming back to you, darling?”

  I shivered, my head full of alien images. Rebelling peasants crushed by flying saucers, except the saucers were ours. Huge business conferences held at the summits of Mt. Everest and the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Insane, impossible images.

  “Will there be war?” I asked, trying to grope for answers. “Atomic war?”

  She grasped my hands. “No, Jacob. Nuclear weapons were disarmed years ago. The shift in temperature, gravity, air quality. The ecological upheavals. The physical reactions that produced atomic explosions no longer exist. The stockpiles are useless. We have the rays, of course, the handweapons, the tanks and aircraft, but a war fought with those would be endless and useless. We fight with commerce now. We use contracts as bombs. Think, Jacob, and you'll remember. You and I were instrumental in making it happen. We annexed the Anderson Company, and, with the doctor's skills, we produced the miracle drugs, and Compound 15. We secured the government contracts and built our power until we were the biggest multinational conglomerate. We were there when the black fogs wiped out Chicago and Los Angeles, when New

  York was shattered by the Street Wars. We discovered how to use waste materials as fuel, we had the means to save the world. We sold it at outrageous prices, gaining complete control. We bought out the other companies. But the black and yellow empires prospered also, neck and neck with us in biological attainment, strong with mastery of yoga. Ruthless, unafraid to lose millions to win. They learned the ropes, learned commerce from Japan. Jacob, I want you to get well.”

  She hurried from the office, seeming to diffuse into the wall and disappear. I gaped after her, alone in the vast office. I spun slowly, taking it all in, beginning to sense my worth, my power. I owned this. With Clovis, I ruled. I felt invincible, heady. My brain was filled with bubbles. I laughed.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” I told Dr. Zane, struggling for the energy to speak. The afternoon sunlight splashed the bedroom, as I lay in a pool of perspiration. Sara was in the living room, weeping. Dr. Zane leaned close to me, his eyes aglow.

  “Yes?” he urged.

  “I’ve had dreams,” I said. “I know they can be vivid. I know they can be mistaken for reality. I’ve even had dreams of waking from dreams. I know all about it. But this was no dream. I was in the future. I travelled to the year 2003 and I was the ruler of the world. Is this insanity?”

  “It might be,” Dr. Zane said. “Could you accept that?”

  I turned away, bitter. “I don't know. I don't think so. Not after that vision. I was, in the office, a magnificent office, with Clovis Jennings, and she was the queen of everything. I couldn’t remember my life from now until then, but she remembered it. Somehow I got there, and I want to go back. I want to see it again. If it was a fever dream, I want to live in it. It was the culmination of my ambition.”

  Dr. Zane placed a restraining hand on my arm. “Easy,” he said. “You still have the flu. It won't do you any good to become excited. It’s very possible you had a dream, a particularly vivid one. If so, you have to accept that."

  I eyed him shrewdly. “You're not humoring me, as I would have expected. You haven't committed yourself. You think there's another possibility.”

  He seemed to look into himself, to make a great decision. He pursed his lips, tapped on his black leather bag. “Yes,” he said, finally. “I think there is another possibility. Among other things, I've always believed in the possibility of time travel. I couldn't explain the physics to you, but the universe is too patterned to rule it out. Time is only another dimension, and dimensions can be crossed. It is possible you journeyed in time, Jacob. You realize you can never quote me, not to anybody, because I will deny it.” “Of course,” I said. “But listen. I can appreciate travelling backward in time. The past happened, after all. But the future hasn't happened yet. How can I visit a place that doesn't exist, that won't exist for decades?”

  Dr. Zane clucked. “I don't know, Jacob. I have theories. Time might well be a belt, a loop. Who is to say that time is a straight line, a continuing series of events leading to infinity? Perhaps everything has already happened, and will only happen again. Perhaps earth will reach a stage where it will explode, or wither and freeze under a dead sun, and perhaps eons will pass after that, and the sun will be reborn, the earth molten, then seas, dinosaurs, prehistoric man, the entire sequence of events, over and over again, an endless cassette. In that case, Jacob, your future does indeed exist, and has existed and will exist again. These moments will occur an infinite number of times, and you will live infinite lives. If this is true, Jacob, then you simply travelled along the belt to another notch.” I was desperately excited. I raised myself slightly on the pillow. “All right. But how? I have no time machine.” Dr. Zane chuckled, clamped his pipe between his teeth, squinted as the sun struck his glasses.
“We are so machine-conscious. Computers, assembly lines. Naturally, we would assume that time travel, like auto or air travel, must be accomplished in a mechanical conveyance, replete with buttons and levers. But why? We already know that the human mind is capable of vast experience. We have barely tapped the surface. Drugs, yoga, occult happenings have shown us places and ways beyond the capacities of machines. We thought we were medical messiahs until the orientals showed us acupuncture. Our minds simply need a catalyst to take off, to soar. Perhaps your mind experienced such a catalyst, and was released.”

  “What catalyst?” I asked.

  Zane’s eyes glittered. “I don’t know, Jacob. But the bug —the French flu—is still unexplored. We don’t know what it will do.”

  “Are you suggesting that the flu enabled me to travel through time?”

  “Not suggesting, merely raising the ghost of the possibility.”

  “But this flu is epidemic. Others have had it.”

  “No two systems are the same, Jacob. What affects one will not affect another. I have often been stung by bees. A moment of pain, then nothing. Yet a patient of mine died in grotesque agony four minutes after such a sting. Our bodies are not the same.”

  I seized his wrist. “Then inject me with more of the flu. Let me go back.”

  He shook his head. “It’s no good, Jacob. You live here and now. The you that lives in 2003 is already there. That’s why you could not remember anything, why you felt off balance. Two of you inhabited the same time, the same place. It can’t happen. You must live your life and become the you of 2003. Suffice it that you had a glimpse, a privilege that few men have. You might use the glimpse to revise your life accordingly.”