“Well, sort of. Randal and I are supposed to be on site in Florida for the mission in case something happens with the software, but otherwise, we’re finished.”
“Good, I’ll send off the invoice, but I don’t remember having you or Randal there for the mission as part of the original deal. Is that going to be some sort of cost over-run?”
Michael frowned. “We could probably get away with charging extra, but no. They want access to my program, and I’m not willing to allow that to happen. The technicians they have down there could easily figure what else the software can do, but as long as I retain the copyright, they must come to us. This is my life’s work, Billy, and I’m not letting anyone else see that time travel is possible.”
“That’s fine, I just wanted to know.” His gaze dropped to his hands for a second. “Does this mean you’re going to try your personal journey soon?” he asked, his face taut when he looked up.
“I’ve got a couple of days before they launch the probe. Randal could be there for that and then come back, but I don’t need to be anywhere for the next few months. That should give me plenty of time to work out the last kinks and then go.”
Billy turned pale.
“I’ve made some arrangements to take care of everyone here, and you’ll be running the company.” Billy’s face transformed to shock.
“I told you I don’t have any computer sense and my management skills are nil. The best I can say about me is that I’m a good salesman, but that means I’m decent with words and nothing more. You need to reconsider letting me run this place or else it’ll be destroyed in no time.” His hands gestured wildly as he spoke and his face reddened more with each word.
“Calm down and relax,” Michael murmured. “You are the best person to run the business simply because you are a good salesman. Everything I do here is about selling me, what we do, and keeping people focused on their tasks. I’m always selling, Billy, and you can too, but there’s nothing to worry about because I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
“You better not,” Billy stood suddenly. “I need to go see if I can help the ladies with the arrangements for your dad.” He left and closed the door.
Hours passed as Michael sketched and scratched on a pad, trying to figure out how to adapt the cell phone to communicate between the past and present. The problem pushed the limits of his brain, but he wasn’t prepared to give up. Growing darkness and his rumbling stomach made him aware of the time. He checked his watch to verify and put the sheets of paper in his briefcase to take home so he could continue into the night.
Heather was coming out of the elevator as he opened his office door. Christen had gone for the day and for a second, he wondered why she hadn’t said goodbye—normally she did. Tossing the thought aside, he smiled at the beautiful redhead swaying her hips toward him.
“Hello,” he said warmly.
“Hi,” she smiled back. “I tried to call you a couple of times, but they went straight to voicemail. Christen must have given you some privacy before she left.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and stretched up to kiss his lips.
He smelled her perfume and felt her warmth against his chest. The excitement in his stomach immediately went lower. I want to be with her, but I don’t really have time for distractions. “Sweetheart,” he began with a sigh as they broke apart. “You don’t know how much I want to spend time with you, but my days are numbered if I’m going to get my project off the ground. We can go out for dinner, but I really do need to work after that...I’m sorry.” They were standing in front of the elevators, waiting for the car to arrive.
She didn’t smile, and he could see the disappointment in her eyes. Her delicate hand reached out and took his as she stretched up once more to kiss his cheek.
“I’ll give you tonight and maybe tomorrow night, but if we can’t be together by the weekend, buster, you’re going to be in big trouble.” Her lips pouted, but there was a sparkle of mischief in her eyes.
“Deal,” he said as the doors opened on the elevator. They entered and rode the car down to the lobby, staring into each other’s eyes.
They stepped out together on the main floor. She let go of his hand, turning toward the exit to the multi-level parking garage. He watched her as she went two steps, stopped and turned back.
“Your dad’s burial is all organized by the way. I’ll tell you all the details tomorrow, but the funeral home really needs to know when he’ll be attending.” Her face was stone and her eyes angry before she turned toward the exit once more.
Shit, he mentally slapped his forehead. I forgot all about the services. What kind of son am I? Burying myself in work and completely forgetting about my dad. I’ll have to do something nice for Heather and Christen to thank them somehow. “Sorry Dad,” he whispered as he climbed into the limo.
The car started to move as Michael pulled the pad out of the briefcase. He knew he was passionate about time travel, but that’s how he’d been since Joe disappeared. Finally, being able to realize his dream was too close to forget now; he had to be obsessed more than ever.
He scribbled out questions on the pad as they occurred to him:
What will I look like when I get to the past—visible or invisible?
How do I test the above question before I go?
Will the communicator work and what kind of tests can I run?
Does my just being in the past,—visible or invisible,—alter history?
The reality is that I might see something I shouldn’t. If I’m trapped in the past, does that change this present?
His pen stopped above the paper as he stared out the window. Being stuck in the past would certainly modify this present. I probably wouldn’t be around to make the time machine, and if I don’t make the time machine, I won’t go back in time. What a vicious circle. The rest of these things I think I can figure out except the one about something I don’t want to know.
Maybe Joe hadn’t just disappeared—that wasn’t the right word anyway. Nobody was there to see anything, so he might have run away or been kidnapped. The police took two days before they searched in the storm drain. Maybe he’d drowned and the rats got him. The problem was maybe he ran away because Billy and I had left him to go in the drain alone. He likely thought his friends didn’t care about him anymore.
If that’s why he disappeared, and I stop him from running away, everyone’s history will change. How am I going to be the same person if I don’t have a reason to build this time machine? Will I even become interested in the technology?
He set the pen down on his lap and rubbed his eyes. This was tougher than he ever thought. Simply showing up in the past might be all that was needed to alter the timeline. He realized that having someone see him would definitely change history. The best thing would be to go back invisible. He didn’t have any control over whether or how that happened yet, but at least nobody would see him. He hoped they wouldn’t be able to touch him, either.
The limo pulled to a stop in front of his house. He tossed the pad into the briefcase and opened the door. “I won’t need the car tomorrow, Tony. Thanks, and I’ll call you in a couple of days.” He closed the door and went inside.
Darkness outside seemed grayer than black, but in the house, the gloom seemed alive. He thought for a second he heard breathing. A shudder ran down his spine as he remembered his childhood fear of the shadows. Moving along the hall in the dark, he entered his computer room. The brightness hurt his eyes when he turned on the overhead light and sat at the desk. He set up a magnifying glass on a swivel arm to start working on the cell phone he’d torn apart in his office.
Changing the circuits was easy, but reprogramming the phone to communicate with the computer was harder. He was awake until two in the morning before both machines could say hello. The principle was the same as the probe communicating with Earth in real time. All he had to do was convince both pieces of machinery they were in the same second.
A radio signal travels at the speed of li
ght, which is roughly one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. His phone needed to send a signal from thirty years in the past and make the computer believe he was calling from this time and bring him home. Easy, but if he miscalculated by one second or even one foot, he’d be stuck there.
His eyes burned as he flipped off the light and crossed the hall to his bedroom. The morning was too close, and he had many calculations to do. He closed his eyes and remembered being a kid again with Joe and Billy.
Chapter 11
After making coffee, Michael shuffled toward the hall with a full cup in one hand and a stale bagel in the other. He was wearing his robe untied, his slippers, and briefs. The house felt warm for September. Bright sunshine streamed in from the front windows, eliminating many of the shadows in the hall.
Shadows are evil, his mind said. Ghost stories aren’t real, he thought back. He turned to look at the living room. There was a dark shadow on the floor cast by the sofa closest to him. This one seemed darker than the shadow from the other couch. The blackness seemed to move like there was something alive within the gloom. He blinked and whatever he thought he saw was gone. He wondered if he were going crazy.
Turning toward the computer room, he opened the door. The colored lights from the computer greeted him, but a shadow suddenly moved across them. His hand reached around the doorframe and flipped on the light. Everything seemed normal, but a dark foreboding slunk into his mind.
The fears from his childhood had found him. He knew nothing was living in shadows waiting to eat the unsuspecting, but some beliefs never go away. Cold fingers ran across his chest making him tremble, and he set the coffee and bagel on the desk so he could tie up the robe.
Sitting on the chair, he thought about time—not the travel, just the idea of time. A smile formed as he chewed the last of his breakfast. Here he was, a man close to forty years old, and he still believed in ghosts and evil spirits. Time doesn’t change anything; we just get older, but we’re still kids inside. The thought occurred to him that his program was going to alter the future.
“What if somebody years from now figures out how to do what I’m going to do and uses that knowledge to go back in time? Those might not be evil spirits, maybe they’re people from the future going back to the past. He reached out toward the coffee cup. His hand was shaky, forcing him to use both to steady the mug toward his lips.
“Anybody in the past who sees me might think I’m a ghost or a spirit. They’d be afraid of me. I wouldn’t be able to change anything even if I wanted. Do I want other people going back in time?” He had a vision of a future world ever shifting and evolving as humans flew through time and changed history. People disappeared, fortunes evaporated, buildings and vehicles were altered as the past and the people who made the discoveries were eliminated. He frowned. If everyone had access to the past, they could go back and make anyone they had a beef with vanish. They could change whatever they wanted at will. Chaos would be the new normal.
“Once I’m done, all my equipment and notes are going to be gone for good. If I must, I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure no one else develops the technology to time travel.”
He took one more sip of coffee and bent to the task of figuring out to the last second what time he wanted. His watch, when he looked, said twelve-thirty. He’d been absorbed in the calculations for over three hours. He stretched and looked at the computer. I could have made you do the work. Well, let’s see if I’m right. His fingers flew over the keyboard, punching information into the machine. The answer appeared on the screen in less than two minutes. One glance at the response compared to what he’d slaved over for three hours told him he was correct.
“I’ll never doubt you again,” he said with respect to the machine. “Now I need to figure out a way to make sure you know what to expect when you get the phone call from the past.” He activated the phone and typed a few lines of code into the computer. The words appeared on the screen, signal detected. “How do I tell you to look thirty years into the past to find that same signal?”
His fingers played with the empty coffee cup until he decided to get a refill. Leaving the converted bedroom, he walked down the hall toward the kitchen. The shadows in the living room had shifted, but he still felt suspicious of them. Cup filled, he glanced out the windows at the hills.
Houses sparkled in the sunlight. Flashes winked off windshields on cars traveling along streets and highways up and down the valley. Picking out one particular car among the thousands was impossible. He’d have to use binoculars to isolate just one of them to follow.
The binoculars worked like his program, zooming in or warping time to close the distance between two points. His program was certainly a success, but he didn’t have a way to test the communicator. Then he thought if he could enter a code that–.
He ran down the hall. One slipper threatened to come off, but he managed to get to his desk with both feet covered. He typed code into the computer, telling the machine to call the phone one minute before he raced into the room and sat down.
As soon as his finger hit enter, the communicator began ringing. He pressed answer and heard the tone, not unlike a fax machine. The future had contacted him. With a shout of glee, he jumped up and dashed out to the living room. His excitement was overwhelming. Yelling and flapping his arms like a giant bird, he spun and laughed until he couldn’t breathe and fell on the floor.
His elation was as intense as the pain of defeat when he realized that all he’d done was have one machine call another. The computer sent the message to the phone, but that doesn’t prove anything, his mind whispered. You know the only way to prove your system works is to travel back in time. Anything you tell the computer to do is going to happen in the future.
He knew his mind was right. The computer could just be sending the signal in the present. There was no way he could...
An unknown moment in the future, some time and place he couldn’t know anything about. He pushed himself off the floor and returned more slowly to the computer room, his mind racing to put all the details in order. He typed the proper commands, telling the computer to contact the phone in six days from now and pressed enter. Once that was done, he called Sam and told him to ready the plane for a trip on Tuesday.
“Where are we going?” Sam asked.
“Surprise me. I need a break, and anyplace will do.”
“Anyplace,” Sam’s voice seemed fascinated.
“Well, I’m not crazy about Russia if that’s what you were thinking, but anywhere I can stay in a hotel and get decent food will be all right. Just don’t tell me where we’re going until we take off.”
“Okay, I’ll see you at the airport. What time do you want to leave?”
“Five in the morning, I want to be there for supper.”
“Anyone else going with us?”
Michael thought about taking Heather. She’d enjoy a few days away, and he could become more of a human being around women. He sensed in his heart that would be the right thing to do, but his mind didn’t want any interruptions.
“No, just you and me.”
“Done,” Sam said happily and hung up.
The computer has to find me, or I’ve failed. This has to work. He got dressed, called the funeral home to inquire about his father, and drove to the office. Heather met him at the desk in the lobby.
“Your dad’s funeral is Monday morning.” Her words were sharp, filled with controlled anger. “Christen and I tracked down a couple of family members of your mom’s, but there’s nobody left on your father’s side. One friend of his who served in the army with him is coming, but that’s all. Everybody else will be your friends. There’s a service at the funeral home and then a drive to the cemetery. You’ll need to say a few words followed by a reception.” She seemed angrier if that was possible.
“I’m so glad you did this for me; I’ll make it up to you somehow. Parker’s told me this morning that his body will arrive tomorrow.” He would have said more,
but she stormed off without even saying you’re welcome. His life suddenly seemed to be a roller coaster speeding down an endless slope with people he cared about being torn from the car to disappear into the surrounding clouds.
He didn’t go near the office or answer his telephone before the funeral. The morning of the service, Michael took his time dressing, and then spent two hours thinking about what he wanted to say. There were many special memories, but none of them seemed endearing. His father was not a warm person, rarely giving Michael a hug. He was quick-tempered but never abusive. The man was strong, smart, and always sensible.
“He never took a risk, never had a significant loss in his life until Mom died; the man always stayed in the middle. He didn’t cry,” Michael wondered aloud. “A tear or two maybe, but he did change after that. Quieter, if that was possible—hardly ever speaking more than ten words in a sentence at one time.”
Michael put the pen down and looked out the window at the valley. Peaceful, serene. From here, he could forget about the world and all of his troubles. His father had been strict but always a fair man when dealing with Michael. He hadn’t used a harsh word with his son and never hit him, not even when the boy broke his favorite fishing rod. Dad just said, “Be more careful with other people’s things, boy. Now help me fix this.”
“How am I supposed to give a speech about a person who never said anything? A good man but he was very quiet. What the hell kind of eulogy is that?”
At two o’clock, he entered the funeral chapel, taking a seat in the front row. He recognized his mom’s brother from Pittsburgh, but none of the other ten people in attendance except Heather, Billy, Sam, and Christen. A minister stood up at the front of the chapel to say a few words from the Bible about being reborn and the end of days. Michael wasn’t really listening. The man could have been giving the winning lottery numbers or calling a bingo game. He was still trying to find something nice to say about his father. The minister stopped talking and introduced Michael as the next speaker.
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