Spacecraft

by Benjamin Broke

out for skipping. Do you think you could come by my place tomorrow night? My brother wants to talk to you.”

  “Jason? Why?”

  “He wants you to help him out with a scam down at the flea market this Sunday.” He said.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “He wants you to help him sell a guitar.” He said. “He can explain it better than me.”

  “Why don’t you do it?”

  “We look like brothers.”

  14

  When I opened the window above my bed I heard the siren again. I was starting to get used to hearing it. It wasn’t loud, but it was noticeable and I wondered what it could possibly mean. With some difficulty, I pulled the screen out of the window and tossed it on my bed. I got my lighter and cigarettes from my pants pocket and stood on the bed, leaning out of the window to smoke. Kate had just left for work but I thought she might be able to detect a lingering cigarette smell when she got home. I savored every drag and watched the smoke twist and curl and dissipate as it floated up to the trees. The sound of birds chirping competed hopelessly with the siren.

  When the ritual was finished, I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out my notebook. I flipped through the pages of sketchy, misshapen drawings, and had to laugh at my own lack of skill. I tried to vary the subject matter because without a conscious effort to draw different things, I’d have a notebook full of faces. I did my best drawings from a method I’d stumbled on by accident. It was like a game- I’d draw a shape at random and then look at it to see what it could become. At first I tried to make the shape an outline of whatever I decided it would be, then I began drawing more elaborate shapes and I would sometimes have to draw two things touching to make it into a coherent image. Eventually I even started using the shape as negative space in the drawing. This method gave me drawings of all sorts of things that I never would have thought to draw otherwise. Birds, a table, a car, a tree being blown by the wind, a naked woman, a man with a large hat, a tank, an elephant, a desert landscape, a helicopter, a fat man eating a strawberry, etc. etc. They were far from good, but at least they weren’t repetitive.

  Feeling too impatient to draw, I decided to get dressed and skate a little. After I put my shoes on, I sat for awhile without moving. I was thinking about Mya’s theory that two thirds of the population were filler-people with no souls. It was an idea that made me nervous because I thought I might be one of them. Everyone I knew had a distinct personality and defining characteristics that made them who they were, but not me. I was a blank person. I could be anyone in the world, or no one. The only thing that was uniquely me was my particular history and memories, but these were hardly reliable. If I was honest with myself I knew that my memories were distorted and inaccurate. I could vividly remember things that never happened, like dreams, or Michael being killed, so the thing that defined me was highly suspect.

  I was about to leave when I decided to call Michael just to be sure he was still alive. His brother answered the phone. “Is Michael there?” I asked.

  “No Michael’s at school now. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Nick.” I said. “This is Jason right? I think we only met a couple of times. Michael said you wanted to see me…”

  “Yeah, I do. You’re supposed to be a natural liar, right?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I said. “Why?”

  “It could be helpful. You want me to tell Michael you called?”

  “Nah, that’s okay. I’ll be by tonight anyway.”

  “Alright then, I’ll see you tonight.” He said. I hung up and left the house. I skated all the way to East Pasadena for no reason. There are hardly any trees over there, and the wide busy streets are bordered by strip malls and discount furniture stores. I stopped at a Del Taco for lunch. I sat on my skate in the parking lot to eat and I almost choked when I noticed a ‘barbwire’ tag on the building across from where I was sitting. It was written in toxic gold spray paint. I decided to go see Mr. Bennett.

  The mall was practically empty but the muzak played anyway. I carried my skate through the air conditioned corridor to the Science Store. It was two fifty-two according to the outer-space clock in the store. I didn’t see Mr. Bennett anywhere. The pear shaped woman was behind the counter pretending to be busy. She looked at me suspiciously as I walked up. “Hi.” I said. “Is Mr. Bennett here?”

  “No. I sent him home early today.” She said. “I’ve seen you here before haven’t I? Why is it that you keep coming around here?”

  “He’s a friend of mine. He used to be my teacher and now I just like to talk to him about science.” I said.

  “Well, given his history, I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to be coming around all the time. It’s not good for him, for you, or for the store.” She said.

  “What are you talking about? What history?” I asked, mimicking the emphasis she’d put on the word.

  She looked embarrassed. “It’s none of your business, but trust me, it doesn’t look good for him to be spending a lot of time with a young boy.” She said.

  “What? Listen lady, first off, I’m eighteen, secondly, we’re just friends, and besides, Mr. Bennett’s married. I’ve seen his wife.”

  “Well, like I said, it’s none of your business,” she said, “but he’s no longer married and there were accusations. Why do you think he stopped teaching?”

  I thought about this for a minute. I decided it had to be false. Maybe he was gay but he certainly wasn’t a child-fucker. Part of me wanted to explain this to the woman, but I knew there was no convincing her. “Well he’s my friend,” I said, “and all I know about you is that you talk shit. No. I don’t believe you.” I turned before she had a chance to respond and walked out of the store.

  I left the mall and skated directly to his house. What she’d said made me want to see him right away. I thought seeing him and talking to him would be the easiest way to forget what his coworker had said. I rang the bell and waited a minute before I heard someone walk to the door. “Who is it?” Mr. Bennett asked.

  “It’s Nick.” I said. “I tried to catch you at the mall. I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Oh. Hold on, I’ll be right out.” He said.

  There were white wicker seats on the porch with thin plastic-covered cushions on them. I sat and put my skate down sideways between the chairs. I flicked one of the wheels to watch it spin. There was a wicker table that went with the chairs, and I put my feet up on it. I put them down right away because I thought it might look disrespectful. Despite what the woman at the mall had told me, I still wanted to show Mr. Bennett respect. I decided to pretend I’d never heard the ugly woman’s words.

  Mr. Bennett came out in shorts and a white T-shirt. He was barefoot. “Nick, what a surprise. You know I don’t get many visitors here. I’d invite you in but I’m afraid the house is a mess at the moment, do you mind if we sit out here?”

  “No, not at all. I’m sorry to just drop in like this, if you’re busy I could come back another time.” I said.

  “It’s fine really, I’m glad to see you. You make me feel like a teacher again -in a good way. So, what’s on your mind this time?”

  “Well, I’m wondering about time travel. You said you thought it was possible to send information back in time right? Well, why not try? It could be an experiment, like, you know, we could send back information that would prevent Hitler from killing all those Jewish people.” I said.

  Mr. Bennett laughed. “Sorry Nick, I don’t mean to laugh. It’s great really. You’re thinking very big, and I like that, but your mental picture of the way time works is different than mine. My theory only allows for a person’s consciousness or a piece of information to travel backwards through their own life, so I’m afraid there’s little we can do to prevent the holocaust. And I don’t want you to forget an important fact. As soon as you successfully alter the past, you negate the present.”

  “Negate?”

  “Sorry. Um, here it means destroy. You de
stroy the present. Say you sent a piece of information back and it altered the outcome of some event. The instant you succeeded you would cease to exist. Everything you’d learned or experienced since that moment would be gone and you’d live from that moment in your past forward. The current you would be gone. It would almost be like committing suicide really. If you actually could alter the past, the present-you would be gone, so it had better be worth it.” He said. “Unless of course the many-worlds theory is correct…”

  “Isn’t there a way to send information back in time without altering anything? You know, send back some useless information just to see if it could be done?” I asked.

  “How would you know you’d done it? Let’s say you saw a photograph that you liked, and you decided to send a mental picture of it back to a younger-you. You could pick a moment from your life that might’ve had many outcomes, a heavy spot in time. You could focus on the image and on all the individual markers your brain left in time during that heavy moment, and you might actually do it. Right after that moment in your past, the image would flash through your head. It would change nothing in your life, and you would go along the same path that you would’ve anyway, and then one day you’d come across the photograph. You would probably think wow, that picture looks familiar. But you wouldn’t assume you’d just traveled through time would