Fortune

by Craig W. Turner

  “You could get killed, though.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said, taking a drink of his wine. “But that seemed like the lesser of two evils, and honestly, that didn’t even occur to me early on.”

  “How much was your stimulus grant?”

  “Forty million, give-or-take.”

  “And you burned through that?”

  “Well, no, there’s plenty of money for what I need right now. I just know it goes quickly. The difficult part is that I still have to show the government folks that I’m making progress on the initial experiment, as well. I can do that, and the experiments are tied closely enough together that the lines between them can be blurred, but ultimately I’m going to run out. Those battery packs that power the time device?”

  Their waiter brought Erica’s salad, interrupting him, and immediately making him conscious of talking about time travel in a crowded restaurant, so he lowered his voice. “Each of those packs gets me four trips. They cost about $300,000 each.”

  “Wow. So it’s not just three double-As?”

  He smiled. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Do I even want to ask what’s in them?” She looked down at her plate. “Oh, I forgot to say ‘no anchovies’.” Jeff started to call for the waiter, but she simply started picking them off and putting them on the side plate, gesturing that it wasn’t a big deal.

  “You know anchovies are good for you,” he said, teasing her.

  She shook her head. “That really doesn’t matter.”

  He shook off what seemed to be a weird answer and got back on-topic. “The battery packs use synthetic Neptunium, a radio-active material, obviously.”

  “Are they safe?”

  He held up his hands. “Oh yes. Don’t worry about that. Everything is contained. Neptunium actually shows up in small traces in smoke detectors that rust and decay. That’s not to say we aren’t super careful. I wouldn’t be able to take the device or the batteries onto a commercial plane, for instance, but just as standard operating procedure, they’re completely safe. The casing on the batteries was designed by the same people that make those padlocks that you can’t shoot through. You remember that commercial?”

  “I do,” she said. “Do you ever have to travel with them? I mean the batteries.” She stopped herself. “Am I correct – the batteries serve for both experiments so the government thinks you’re buying them for your legitimate work?”

  He smiled, unsuccessfully trying to hide his guilt. “Well, not exactly. I mean, yes, they do, but once I reconstituted the technology to fit the time travel side of the research, I needed a lot more power. So, yes, the batteries do serve both experiments, and while the current batteries I use are… let’s say, an ‘upgrade’ from the original design, the amount of power they house is overkill for the experiments under the grant.”

  She was shaking her head as he talked. “You have some charade going.”

  “I do,” he said, “and I don’t always feel good about it. But to answer your original question, there generally isn’t much need for haste in what I do. When I absolutely need to, which happens from time to time, I have a relationship with one of the private carriers out of Teterboro.” He tilted his bowl to capture the last of the bisque.

  “Sounds a bit extravagant, don’t you think?”

  “Well, remember I drew up the grant application long before time travel even entered my imagination,” he said. “I built a hefty line for travel into the budget to make sure I had the resources I need, just in case.”

  “Just in case,” she repeated thoughtfully, then moved on. “So your decision to take on a life of crime was out of necessity, to keep your experiments going?”

  “You can say that.”

  She crunched on a piece of romaine. “At least it wasn’t to support a drug habit. But the jobs you’ve done – you couldn’t have made too much headway. On the Wilton job, you’re getting $5 million from the Smithsonian-”

  “Don’t forget we have the rest of the Wilton gold, too.”

  “Ah yes, thank you for reminding me. I’m still so thrilled about that. But anyway, you’re not exactly putting your financial woes to rest with that. Howard Miles was, at the most, a couple hundred thousand. Even if you’d accomplished the Garvey job, how much would you have made?”

  “Dexter had Garvey’s collection valued at about $6.5 million.”

  “Oh, Dexter, right – you have to split that among your team, too. Are you even coming close to what you need?”

  “Well, we’re getting there.”

  She sat back in her chair. “You saying ‘getting there’ is pretty inconsistent with your agreeing to go to the government when we get back.”

  “Not necessarily. It depends on how we do tomorrow morning.”

  “What depends on that? Whether you’ll follow through with your promise?”

  He silently swore. He had a feeling that she had been roundaboutly trying to get to this point. For someone that he’d known for such a short time, she had him figured out pretty darn well. “It’s not like that,” he said quietly, when in all actuality it was exactly “like that.”

  “Have you assessed what you need? What happens if we don’t meet your ideal number tomorrow?” She wasn’t being emotional about it – just direct. Which confirmed for him that she’d been researching. She knew he wasn’t going to do it.

  “I have a ballpark figure.” He was suddenly feeling extremely defensive, and had to remind himself that all of this was actually his experiment. His invention.

  She sighed, then popped a crouton into her mouth. “Well, I can’t control what you do, Jeff. I can just hope you’ll do the right thing.”

  “Where does that leave you?” The question was out of his mouth before he could think about what he was saying.

  “You mean whether or not I’ll get on the plane back to California?” His plan to go back at night would actually push her past her scheduled flight. It hadn’t been intentional on his part, but he didn’t know if she’d realized it. “I am willing to do whatever I can to help you tomorrow so that you can get back safely. I can even support you needing the resources to finish your research. But just in your little circle, you’ve affected a number of lives in a negative way. Just in your circle – forget about what you might’ve done to the rest of the world. This technology hasn’t even gotten out of your hands and pieces of our history have been upended. Poor Dexter – I feel terrible for him, the more I think about it. He’s been trapped in a British prison and now had his life turned completely around.”

  “If I continue my experiments, I intend to fix that.”

  She shook her head. “And what other damage will you cause?”

  The question was rhetorical, as she didn’t wait for an answer, diving back into her salad. Which was good, because he wasn’t going to provide an answer. Instead, he began to strategize how he could salvage the evening. He forced a laugh. “Guess I should’ve stuck to small talk.” It came out of his mouth even more weakly than it sounded in his head.

  She looked up from her plate and actually smiled, though it felt almost like it was out of pity.

  “What would you do if you were me?” he asked.

  Without hesitation, she looked him in the eye to answer. “I’d do whatever was in my power to make things right.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Erica knew that Jeff was beyond disappointed that his “date” wasn’t going well. But while she’d been having an extremely difficult time holding in her thoughts about his decision not to follow through on his promise, she didn’t want to be divisive with her insistent questioning – which she knew she was capable of. She didn’t like the look on his face, and knew she needed to regroup herself as well, so she excused herself to the restroom before the meal came.

  In the restroom, she finally felt like she was in the future. If there was one industry that must’ve blossomed over the last seven years, it was bathroom facilities. Understandably, to ensure that there would be no possibili
ty of a restroom user leaving the room with a germ on her hands, everything was mechanized and computerized. While in her present time, it was already rare that you had to touch anything in a public restroom, these toilets automatically covered themselves before flushing (she imagined that technology had ruined the old flush-to-cover-up-a-noisy-bathroom-visit trick), these faucets measured the water to the precise temperature to help destroy germs, toilet tissue rolled itself for you to what she imagined were LEED-certified rations, and the hand dryers not only provided hurricane force winds, but were as quiet as a ceiling fan. Finally, she was impressed.

  Before leaving, and being the only one in the room, she took a moment to look at herself in the mirror. She knew full well that no one liked a nag, so she took a deep breath and determined not to be one. But still, in the back of her mind, no matter what happened, and where Jeff’s life would take him, she couldn’t get past the notion that there was a lesson to be learned. Which probably didn’t matter, of course. Jeff was going to do what he was going to do, and likely it would be along the same track he was on.

  One thing that was incredibly important, however, was that the morning’s activity went on without a hitch. Unfortunately, she knew that was much easier said than done. It made her extremely nervous that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into, and probably even more nervous that he didn’t seem to be worried about that. She nodded to herself in the mirror. That’s what they should be talking about. It would relieve her of her innate desire to lecture him, and would really be a much more productive conversation. The rest of it was all moot anyway.

  She exited the restroom through a door that, of course, opened without her laying a hand on it, and returned to the table to find a plate featuring two enormous crab cakes sitting in front of her seat. “Oh man,” she said, sitting. “I hope you like crab cakes. I’ll never eat all of this.”

  He tried to smile again – she couldn’t imagine what he’d been thinking about while she was away. “If you don’t finish it, we could take it home.”

  “Oh yeah, that’d be good. I’m not eating a leftover butter-filled crab cake that’s been sitting around for negative seven years.”

  For that one he laughed, and immediately seemed to be relieved that the tension across the table was gone. “Well, it’s not my favorite,” he said, “but I’ll try some.”

  “The restroom finally had some futuristic stuff in it,” she said, reverting to the previous line of small talk to try to put the other conversation behind them. “You should take a look.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen some things, too. I forgot to tell you about the grocery store... Well, the grocery store three years from now, at least. I just ran my cart under a large scanner and it did everything at once – kind of like those high-speed tolls on the Parkway. Pretty neat.”

  She scooped a mound of crab cake onto his plate, setting it beside his absurdly large steak, and he made a “too much” face, but it didn’t matter. There was a bit of an awkward silent pause that would cause a real couple to probably apologize to each other, but that wasn’t going to happen, she determined. “Let’s forget about all of that other stuff that we were talking about for right now,” she said. “I know you don’t want to, but let’s talk about tomorrow morning. I’m getting more nervous the more I think about it.”

  “Why’s that?” He cut into his steak with a mammoth knife. From her vantage point across the table, it looked very juicy.

  “I just don’t see it as being all that easy to get close to one of these trucks. And I see it as even harder with two people. One of us, sure, maybe you could get close enough, plunk the device onto the side of it and pull the trigger. But two of us having to grab onto the same device? While it’s touching the truck? You’ve already seen once how difficult it is to get multiple people together to make the jump in a dire situation. But you seem so calm about it.”

  He set his fork down. “Alright, I’ll admit to you that I did a little research of my own.”

  “When? While I was shopping?”

  “No, actually, when I say that I did a little research, I mean future me did some research.” He pulled his smartphone from his pocket and touched the screen. “I replied to my text message earlier with this...”

  She took the phone from him and read an e-mail from his future self. All it said was “Thx. Will take care of the car. Scaffold. 43rd and 7th. Good luck.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “I’m guessing that it means we get to the truck from above. If these trucks are surrounded by an army of guards, we’re not going to be able to run up to get anywhere near one. In a couple days, all of the paper money in the trucks will be worthless. But right now, as you pointed out, it’s incredibly valuable. Given the amount of cash they’ll be taking in in a short period of time, there is no way they’ll be able to monitor serial numbers or anything like that. They’re just going to be loading up trucks with money and sending them on their way. Which means there’s nothing stopping anyone from stealing money from one site and cashing it in somewhere else.”

  “You believe that’s true, but do you know?”

  “Well, no. But it stands to reason.”

  “So, we somehow get onto this scaffold and jump down onto the truck? Do you know there’s actually a scaffold there? On 43rd and Broadway?”

  He resumed eating. She was still kind of dumbstruck. “I took a walk a little bit earlier and checked it out. It’s there, right up against the side of the building. Looks like they’re doing some maintenance work.”

  “And, what? They’re going to park the truck right underneath it?”

  “There’s not really any reason why they shouldn’t. Is there any reason for them to believe that someone could jump off the scaffold and steal the truck quickly enough to not be shot on sight?”

  He had a point. It didn’t seem like a challenge they’d even consider. “Can we get up on the scaffold?”

  “About halfway down the block, yes.” He chewed a piece of meat that he’d cut too big, making a metaphor out of her concerns. “I don’t want you to think I’m sitting here believing there’s no danger. There’s plenty of danger. But it’s also very doable. We climb the scaffold. We run toward the truck as quickly as possible. We jump onto the truck, grab the device together, lay it on the truck and zap... We’re gone.”

  “That easy?” She still wasn’t sure she was ready to keep eating, but she tried.

  “If it works, it’s that easy.”

  “If it doesn’t?”

  “Then we improvise. Believe me, Erica, my ultimate goal here is getting you and me home safely. I will do whatever it takes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that’s the number one priority. There are other repercussions that could exist.”

  “Such as?” She could tell he didn’t want to say what he was thinking, but it was already too late.

  “Such as – there’s someone in the truck. It’ll be unfortunate if that happens, but if someone’s in the truck at the moment we need to push the button, they’re coming with us.”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “If it’s a choice between that and one of us getting separated or shot, we’re taking that option.”

  “Do you think anyone will get hurt? What about when we arrive back in our present time? Times Square is a busy place, even in the middle of the night.”

  “Well, I’d originally thought we could actually get the truck and drive it, then time travel while we were on a highway. But that whole idea really is ridiculous. We’re not going to be able to get control of the truck. It’s not happening. We’re going to have to move it right there. Doing it at night will help us, but there’s a risk that someone will be standing in that spot in our present time.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “Remember the diamond?”

  “The diamond? Oh, in your lab?”

  “Yes. Basically, that’s what’ll happen. They’ll be
displaced. If that happens – and remember, it’ll be the middle of the night so there’s less of a chance of it – there could be some bumps and bruises, but nothing that’s going to threaten anyone’s life.”

  “And then what? We just drive away with the truck? Will they leave the keys in it?”

  He laughed and sat back. She noticed most of his steak was gone – when had he eaten it?

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You don’t give me much credit at all, do you?”

  “Why?”

  “Keys? I created a device that allows people to travel through time. Do you think that not having keys would stop me from driving that truck?”

  “Alright, alright,” she said. She took a moment chewing her own food, thinking about whether his new plan actually made her feel more or less comfortable. Either way, it wasn’t wholly soothing. But there was something to be said about the idea that his future self, who knew what the outcome would be because he’d lived it, was guiding him and offering advice. Even though she didn’t want to trust that the future Jeff would steer them in the right direction, if she couldn’t trust someone who’d seen it with his own eyes, who could she trust? “How do we know what time?”

  “I wasn’t clear on that,” Jeff said. “I suppose when we see the truck is getting full.”

  She shook her head. “When we started out, all of this was so scientific. What happened to us?”

  “Science is reliable. Business is messy.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  They finished their meals, finally getting to the small talk that Jeff had wanted from the beginning. They mostly focused on how cool it had been to escape the hurricane. After a short while, they were both tired and headed back to the room after leaving a large wad of cash on the table for the waiter. Paper money that would soon be absolutely worthless.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  March 19, 2022

  The throng was impassable.

  Any well-laid plans that Jeff could’ve come up with ahead of time would most certainly have had to been altered. They’d seen on the hotel television that the NYPD was not letting anyone congregate before midnight, though Erica didn’t see how that would be possible given the thousands upon thousands of people that were already there. She had to assume that just meant they weren’t going to let people actually form lines. They laughed – and cringed – at the thought of the race that would ensue once they situated the trucks for collection.