Fortune

by Craig W. Turner

  “Why did you say you trust his judgment?”

  “That’s the interesting part,” Jeff said, pulling off of the Turnpike and driving through the EZ Pass lane onto the Garden State Parkway. “He called for one reason specifically, which was to tell us not to do anything rash like try to go back and fix things. Now, does that sound like something we would do?”

  “It does, yes. You, not me.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, he says that there’s way too much to think about and that we should not just up and try to change anything. That he’s fine. We’ll talk. We’ll see where everything stands tomorrow.”

  “I suppose that’s a courageous spirit. But, honestly, he wouldn’t know if we did anyway.”

  “Yeah. That’s true.”

  “Well, at least you can feel a little better.”

  “Don’t you?”

  She laughed. “I didn’t feel bad in the first place. You guys had it coming to you.”

  “Yeah, well, he also said we should destroy the device.”

  “I’ll bet he did. But you know that’s never going to happen. And that’s pointless – you’d be able to make another.” She knew it wasn’t about the device. It was all about Jeff’s intentions.

  He drove several miles without speaking again. Erica glanced over a few times, watching his face, trying to get a gauge on what he was thinking. There was definitely contemplating going on, so it was likely he’d moved on from Dexter and his new situation.

  Finally, he summed it up for her. “The future, then?”

  “The future,” she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Jeff walked into his house, closed the door behind him, and toppled onto the couch. He tossed his keys onto the coffee table and lay back, putting his right foot up. He was officially exhausted.

  It wasn’t missing sleep while he was in the hospital that had done him in, either. In his mind, he likened it to traveling by plane. A three hour flight wasn’t that big a deal, but for some reason the mind made it seem like a big deal. Something about knowing you traveled across several states made it a tiring experience. In reality, no more time had really passed than normal during their time travel – in fact, they’d actually skipped some hours to make sure they came back under the cover of night. And yet, now that it was done, the magnitude of the trip had caught up with him. Strangely, he didn’t feel like it was the stressful content of the trip that was affecting him, but the actual miles – or years, he supposed.

  After dropping Erica off at her hotel, just a few miles down the road, he’d felt himself start to doze as he drove. Her conversation had kept him alert during the drive from Philadelphia, but now that he was home he was starting to lose focus. The soft cushions of his sofa hugged his back and he spread his arms out to take up as much room as possible, accentuating his freedom. He hadn’t even taken the time to get his bag from the trunk, and while it occurred to him that the time travel device was currently unattended, even that didn’t give him motivation enough to stand again. It could wait until the next time he moved – whenever that might be.

  Before allowing his eyes to close, though, he instinctively took a glance around his living room to see if things were the same as he’d left them. What he hadn’t expected to see was a photo sitting on the end table of himself with Dexter, both in tuxedos, Jeff with one arm around his friend playfully punching him in the chest. He picked up the frame, unhitched the back, and pulled out the picture, thinking he might’ve written the date on it. No luck, so he laid the picture face down on the table and returned his head to the throw pillow where it had been. Another look around the room showed nothing else out of order. He knew there really wasn’t any reason why there would be. He couldn’t trace anything that would have changed his life like Dexter’s.

  Dexter. He doubted that, with Dexter living in Philadelphia and tied down with a wife, they’d have the same relationship they’d had before. Still, his wife knew him, and that they hadn’t disrupted their experiments by changing Dexter’s life suggested that there was some degree of fate involved. Somewhere along the line, he’d still sought out Dexter for his work and, even though he wasn’t local, he’d still answered the call. In addition, Dexter being away from home without explanation seemed to be okay with his wife, as long as he was with Jeff. While many things had changed, Dexter’s involvement in the Wilton job was still a part of their history.

  Which amazed him, truth be told. That despite a completely different set of circumstances, he and Dexter would still come together. He promised himself that once he had some energy he would look at his notes to see how and when in this new reality he’d reached out to him. Assuming any records he’d kept would reflect the new reality, too.

  He looked at the television remote on the coffee table, teasing him, and thought about reaching for it. He closed his eyes. It would only be a distraction from peaceful sleep.

  There was a knock on the front door. He kept his eyes closed. Ignore it. It’ll go away.

  Then he heard the door open. He jumped up, ready to defend his home with his good hand.

  “Jeff?” he heard Erica call, coming into the foyer. “Are you here?”

  Groggy, he took a few steps away from the couch to where he could see her. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

  “I took a cab,” she said. “I couldn’t wait.”

  “Wait? Wait for what?”

  “I think we should do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Go to the future.” Her face was lit up. He hadn’t seen that from her before.

  “Alright, we will. I thought we’d decided that.” He was reeling from the thirty-second nap he’d taken. He couldn’t tell if it was because he was overtired or because she just wasn’t making sense. But she just wasn’t making sense.

  “I mean now. Right away.”

  “Oh, man, you’re ambitious,” he said, sitting back down. “I’m exhausted, Erica. I’m not doing anything right now but lying right here on this couch.”

  “Alright, then, how about tomorrow? Rest today, and then tomorrow we go.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  She shrugged. “Why not the hurry? Right away is as good a time as any. My flight back to California is tomorrow evening. Once I go back, who knows if we’ll ever see each other again? We don’t need any meticulous planning for this one. No prep time. Just a time and a place.”

  Jeff smiled, realizing her motive. “You think I’m going to let you go back to California and then do this without you.”

  “Well, no, not really, but I suppose you could and I’d never know. You really don’t need a historian in this scenario.”

  “Actually, I was thinking the exact opposite. The plan you suggested is to go forward ten years, then find an instance five years before. We will definitely need someone who knows how to research on the team. Dexter’s out. I need a historian. If I’m doing this, I’m doing it with you.”

  “Jeff, I can’t promise you that once I go back to California I won’t come to my senses and decide against this. There is a window of opportunity here that includes both proximity and motivation. I have to imagine a six-hour flight home will jog my common sense.” She was grinning.

  “Opportunity is hardly a good reason to conduct a scientific experiment,” he said, not believing his own words. Truth was, he didn’t want her to go back right away anyway, and not wholly because of the time travel proposal. “Plus, there’s work to be done. We can’t just do it willy-nilly. Abby hasn’t calculated the coordinates yet. We haven’t even asked Emeka and her if they’re-”

  She shook her head. “No. We don’t need them.”

  “Of course we do. Why would you say that?”

  “Just you and me. Same as in 1770. We can’t control that many people at one time. It’s going to be too difficult.”

  “Erica, this is my team you’re dismantling.” He had that uncomfortable feeling again of losing control.

  “We can do t
his and be back and they’ll never know. It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

  Jeff stopped. Why was she putting him in this position? He shook his head. “No, I need Abby to program the coordinates. We’d need her to be there.”

  “Can’t she show you how to do it?”

  “I know how to do it. I need her software, though.” He paused to think for a moment, but it wasn’t only about her plan. It was about why she was pushing him. “It’s too sudden. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “What about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “Can she teach me how to do it?”

  She was earnest about this, he could plainly see. He had to admit that her wanting him for herself was having an effect – especially with the lengths she was willing to go to make sure it was just the two of them. He was sleepy, though, and probably not at full capacity, so he tacitly endorsed her position by changing the subject.

  “Well, where we end up is a concern in itself. We can’t just pick a park or a parking lot because we’ll have no way of knowing that a building wasn’t built there in the future.”

  “But you said-”

  “Yes, the item traveling displaces the item there, but we can’t get stuck inside a wall or anything. We don’t want to put ourselves into a situation where we get trapped.”

  She was smiling, which both amused and concerned him. “I’ve already thought about this.”

  “Oh yeah, what’d you come up with?” He said it more as a challenge than he meant to.

  “The beach,” she said. “We do it at the beach.”

  “How does that-” He pulled back his question, nodding instead. “Very interesting. We can safely assume that there wouldn’t be new development right smack on a beach. We’d just have to make sure we land at night so we don’t end up on top of some poor sunbather.”

  “It’s the safest bet. The only thing we’d need to worry about is low tide and a short drop if the beach has eroded over ten years. But even the tide we can scientifically plot out ahead of time.”

  Finally, he decided he was too tired. Her enthusiasm was exhausting him all the more. He motioned to her to sit across from him. “Actually, low tide would probably be preferable. I haven’t tested what happens using the time device standing in water.”

  “Probably wouldn’t be good, would it?”

  He shook his head, looking at her sitting there. If he had to, there was no way he’d be able to explain his relationship with her to anyone. He’d literally created her. Then he’d insulted and ostracized her. Then he’d asked her for help. Then they’d gone on an adventure together – a type of adventure that no one in history had ever experienced. And now, he was becoming enamored with her. Her new-found enthusiasm didn’t help. The spark in her eyes made him notice them in a way he hadn’t before.

  “What is it?” she asked, suspicious.

  “Nothing, really. I’m just trying to figure you out. You’ve gone from a fierce opponent of everything I’m doing to a cheerleader, and in what? Two days?”

  “Well,” she said, “there is something to all of this.”

  “Ah, the hook,” he said, trying to figure out what she was going to say now before she said it. There was something she wanted to do for herself. Some moment in history she wanted to experience even though every argument she made was against just that. But since that wasn’t his own argument, he would have no problem taking her wherever she wanted to go.

  “After we do this experiment in the future, I want you to let your government sponsors know what you’ve been up to.”

  He gasped, suddenly feeling more awake than he’d been in hours. “That is not what I expected you to say.”

  “What did you expect me to say?”

  “I don’t know – that you wanted a special mission for yourself? Something along those lines.”

  She shook her head quickly. “No, no. You know how I feel about that.”

  “Well, I do, but I was bracing for a change. Why would you think I should go to the government with this? If anything, I would think your advice would be to keep it out of their hands.”

  “Yes, it would be,” she said, leaning forward. “My first inclination would be to have you destroy the device, destroy your records, and never speak of this again. But I know you’re not going to do that. You’ve invested too much of yourself into it, and you’re like an out-of-control weight lifter that keeps adding pounds to his bench press to see how much he can lift – only to have it become dangerous. Or those people that keep injecting Botox into their face in search of the perfect complexion, who end up looking like they’re made out of plastic. You’re not going to stop. You’re going to keep pushing it and pushing it, and the safest way to get you to self-monitor is to have you give it to the authorities. Turn yourself in, so to speak.”

  Jeff cringed at her analogies, mainly because he didn’t want to hear then. There was too much truth to them. “And you trust them?”

  “No – but I trust them more than anyone else whose hands it might fall into.”

  “And you trust them more than me,” Jeff said before she could finish her thought herself.

  “Jeff, that’s not what I meant,” Erica frowned. “Anyone in your position would probably feel the same way after inventing something like this. Do I trust you more than I trust the government, in general? Yes. Do I trust you to be tempted and make mistakes that could really screw things up? Because you’re human? That’s a yes, too.”

  He flopped back on the couch pillows, which only moments before had felt like such a relief. Now they were just stuffy and annoying. It had been a long time since a woman had had enough influence over him to make him stop and think about what he was doing, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He could easily tell her ‘no, thanks for her help’, and offer to drive her to the airport the next day. Or, he could put some stake in what she was saying and go along with her, which would mean a drastic deviation from his intended path.

  Not having been in any kind of relationship since middle school, he was the first to admit that he was not very good at face-to-face, confrontational conversations with women. While this hadn’t escalated into “confrontational,” he wasn’t coming up with immediate responses for her. He could go toe-to-toe with anyone on how something could be accomplished, but the “why” of the question was never his strong suit. Not in an impromptu fashion, at least. He needed some time to think before he responded to her, and began to strategize how he could get that time. He thought about rushing off to the bathroom, or asking her to leave because he really needed to get some sleep.

  Finally, he broke through her unrelenting stare and said, “Are you hungry? I could use something to eat.”

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Erica could hear Jeff’s footsteps on the hardwood upstairs as he changed his clothes. She smiled to herself – excusing himself to change his clothes was definitely an excuse to flee the conversation. It hadn’t surprised her. She believed that she knew him well enough already to know that the government piece wouldn’t settle well with him. Especially because he knew she was right. What he’d accomplished was too much power for one person to have, and it had already had disastrous effects. That his friend’s plight wasn’t having an impact on him told her a lot about where he was headed. She saw an opportunity to nip the problem in the bud, and hopefully set some things straight. She was going to take it.

  She stood and walked across the room to Jeff’s computer station. She felt like the last time she’d been standing there was years ago. It was impressive, no doubt. As the screen savers danced across the four screens, she wondered how much time he spent sitting there slaving away at his algorithms designed to allow him to travel through time and change people’s lives. She would bet that not one of those algorithms took into account the dramatic impact that changing the past could have. To her mind, it probably wouldn’t be that difficult to figure out from the standp
oint of probability. But as with any experiment, if you’re not looking for something, it’s going to be that much harder to find.

  Jeff’s heavy footsteps now picked up pace and made their way to the stairwell and down. He’d put on darker jeans and wore a loose striped button-down with a black t-shirt underneath. She thought she smelled a little cologne on him, as well. Which was fine for her, because if he thought it was their budding relationship that was driving her actions here, she was willing to take that as far as it would go.

  “I’ve been in the car too long, so let’s walk somewhere,” he said, grabbing his keys from the coffee table. “There’s a little deli a couple streets down that makes these big sandwiches. That sound alright?” He motioned with his hands to show her the ridiculous size of the sandwich.

  “I like sandwiches,” she said, then followed him out the door.

  They walked two blocks before he finally spoke. “If you think that the right thing to do is to go to the government with this, why would you suggest this final mission to the future?”

  Since she knew he’d been thinking about what to say, she’d prepped for the question. “Well, I’m a scientist like you – a social scientist, of course, but we approach things the same way – and I would suggest that your experiments are incomplete. You’ve tackled the past and seen what can happen, but you still need to understand the future. That information will be valuable for when you turn the technology over. You haven’t finished yet.”

  “I still don’t see the sense of turning everything in. Especially coming from you. They’ll do nothing good with it.”

  “Jeff, they’re going to figure it out at some point anyway. It might as well be in a controlled environment. It is your creation. You’ll have some say as to what happens with it.”

  “Yeah, I doubt it.”

  “Well, it’s a safer bet.”

  They came to the corner deli, which was busy. There was a line of about a dozen people standing in front of a glass case filled with meats, customers in front calling out orders to four aproned workers hustling from the fresh bread rack to the prep counter. The line went quickly, though, and they ordered. After getting their sandwiches, which were as big as advertised, Jeff steered her up a flight of stairs to a rooftop seating area.