by Julie Drew
“Oh,” said Tesla as she tried not to smile. “Cool.”
“Put this on.” He handed her the helmet.
“What about you?” she asked, the helmet awkwardly held in her right hand. It was heavier than it looked.
“I only have one, and you’re going to wear it.”
“Oh,” Tesla said. She sounded like a monosyllabic idiot as she looked with some doubt at the helmet in her hand.
“Here,” Sam said. He took the helmet from her and put it on her head. “Chin up,” he ordered, as he fastened the buckle and made sure it was secure. Then he threw one leg over the bike and sat down on the leather seat, turned on the engine and revved it once.
“Get on,” he commanded, and she climbed up behind him. He showed her the tiny bars for her feet, and told her to hang on.
“I only have the one arm, you know,” she warned, and he laughed. The predawn air was cool on her face and as they drove onto one of the main streets through campus, everything still dark and not a soul awake, Tesla realized that she felt great. Really great. Strong and whole and hopeful. She had work to do, she knew, and she had to be careful. She had to go back to her own time and help fix this whole mess. But right here, right now, her dad hadn’t been kidnapped by some lunatic, and her mom was alive, somewhere in this town, peacefully asleep in her own bed, and none of the terrible events that seemed to Tesla to define her life had ever happened.
By the time they’d driven through campus, across town and underneath the old freeway overpass (which she did not tell Sam would be torn down in just a few years), Tesla felt comfortable on the back of the bike, her right arm around Sam’s waist, her left arm comfortably in front of her, supported by her sling and both their bodies. The breeze was chilly as they drove, and she shivered a little as they turned from an old business district, with easily half of the stores boarded up and graffiti tags sprayed across the empty display windows, and onto a short, dead-end street with half a dozen tiny, identical cinderblock houses.
Sam pulled into the dirt driveway of the second house on the left and turned the engine off. “This is it,” he said, and Tesla could tell he was embarrassed.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” she said. “You didn’t have to, I know. It’s what a good friend would do, and you just met me.” She didn’t want to be fake, tell him how lovely his house was; that would just embarrass them both. He was poor, the house looked it. But none of that was the point. He had gone above and beyond, and she wanted him to know that that’s what she saw.
He shrugged. “No problem.” Tesla got off the bike first, carefully, and then Sam followed suit. She handed him the helmet, and they walked inside.
The house was dark, and he flipped a switch on the wall that illuminated the room from a plain, round ceiling fixture that cast a harsh light over them. He put his keys on a table by the door and walked into what Tesla could see was a cramped kitchen.
“I’ll make us some food,” he called.
The worn sofa was clean and had once been a cheerful brown and yellow striped pattern, though it was faded beyond hope of cheerfulness now. A faux-leather recliner, a coffee table, and a TV on a low dresser completed the room’s decor. Tesla noted the framed photographs on the wall over the sofa, and went closer to examine them.
She assumed the two adults in the largest picture were Sam’s parents. The man had a kind face and gentle eyes above his enormous black moustache. He had begun to bald. The woman who sat beside him had an oval face and black, soulful eyes just like Sam’s. She wore a headscarf over her hair and pulled snug up under her chin, and a cream-colored, crew-necked sweater that matched the ones her husband and children wore. There were two children in the photo who sat in front of and just below their parents. The boy—obviously Sam—was younger in the photograph than he was now, and Tesla suddenly longed to see Max as she looked at this little boy’s face in the family portrait, the big eyes, the tousled hair. The girl, a teenager, also wore what Tesla assumed was a Muslim headscarf. She stared defiantly at Tesla from her place on the wall, her eyes stormy.
“Is this your sister?” Tesla called without turning around.
“Yes,” Sam answered quietly, right behind her.
Tesla jumped and turned quickly to face him. He stood very close to her, their eyes level. He’s not as tall as Finn, she thought, the comparison automatic. She felt inexplicably nervous.
“Her name is Haleh. She goes by Hallie. She’s in college. In Boston.”
“Haleh’s a pretty name,” she said smoothly as she stepped to the side and walked around him, toward the kitchen. “How come she doesn’t like it?”
He shrugged, noncommittal. “I didn’t say she didn’t like it, but everybody mispronounces it. Maybe she wants to fit in.”
Tesla retreated to safer territory. “Did you say something about food?”
“Yeah, scrambled eggs and toast. That okay?”
“That’s great, thanks,” she said airily. She wanted to regain the composure she felt was her right as the older of the two. He was just a kid, after all.
Tesla stood quietly in the kitchen while he scooped eggs from the pan onto two chipped plates, and buttered toast that had already popped up from the toaster. They stood in the kitchen and ate in silence.
“Is Sam your real name, or a nickname like Hallie?” she finally asked, unable to stop herself, apparently, from being an idiot.
Sam looked at her as he chewed and waited a moment before he answered. “My ‘real’ name is Sam, because I say it is.”
Tesla blushed and didn’t answer.
By the time they’d finished, the sun had begun to rise and ease into the day. “Once the library’s open, I’d like to head over there,” Tesla said.
“I’ll take you,” Sam said, “but I’ve got to just drop you.”
“Hot date?” Tesla asked. She was a little horrified to find that she wanted him on the defensive, and she had no idea why.
“No, second job,” he answered evenly.
“Wow, you work two jobs and you’re not even sixteen? What’s up with that?” she asked.
“My parents both work, and I work after school. When I’m not in school for the summer, I work two jobs. They don’t make a lot of money, and it’s not cheap to live, or to send your daughter to college. So I help.”
Tesla felt the blush creep up her neck and suffuse her face. She looked down again, ashamed to reveal how lucky she was, how much she took for granted, how easy her life was in so many ways. She had never really questioned the self-pity she so often indulged in, the sense that she deserved special consideration because her mom had died. She had forgotten that there were other forms of hardship, maybe even worse ones.
After they’d washed the dishes together, dried them and put them back in the cabinets, they left the house and climbed back on the motorcycle. Tesla wore the helmet, her right arm wrapped lightly around Sam’s waist. “So where’s your other job?” she asked.
“Pizza shop,” he said curtly, and she wondered if he was angry because she was such an insensitive clod. “Angelo’s.”
“No. Way,” she said, and somehow this was the biggest surprise of all. “That is by far the best place in town. I go there all the time, chicken-bacon-ranch is my favorite.”
“Chicken-bacon-ranch?” he asked. “That’s a new one.”
“No, they’ve had it forever,” she assured him. “It’s fantastic. With shredded basil under the cheese.”
They retraced their route from a few hours before and made their way back to campus as they passed through the little refurbished downtown with the grassy public square and the gazebo. Tesla noted that not all of the storefronts had been redone yet, but Angelo’s was still there and it looked exactly the same. They passed two dorms and some student apartments, and were soon in the thick of classroom and administrative buildings. Sam pulled up in front of the library, and Tesla climbed off the back of the motorcycle. She unbuckled her helmet, pulled it off, and handed it to him.
“I’ve got a long shift,” he said. “Sorry to leave you alone for so long, but it can’t be helped. I’ll pick you up here a little after four.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Are you gonna tell me what your research is for?” he asked.
She looked at him for a moment. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t want to step on any butterflies.”
“If you don’t tell me that could be the death of the butterfly,” he pointed out. “There’s no way to know.”
“That doesn’t make it easier, you know,” she said.
“Who said I wanted to make it easier?” Without waiting for her to answer he turned and rode away.
When he was gone Tesla looked up at the university library, at the wide, formal steps that led to its entrance. It was time she began her research, began to dig into her parents’ work, and the rivalry they had had with Sebastian Nilsen. It was time to look for clues—anything at all—that would help Lydia’s people identify Nilsen in the future and provide some clue as to where he might take her father eight years from now. And then she turned away from the library, which would be of no use to her, and cut across campus toward the physics building and her father’s office.
Though it was a bit risky to take the elevator up to the fourth floor and just walk right into the physics department, Tesla thought she’d be safe enough. It was only eight o’clock in the morning, and it was summer; the campus was pretty quiet, with only a fraction of the usual number of students, faculty, and staff around. And as unlikely as it was that she would run into anyone she knew, if she did, the odds that they would somehow recognize her were negligible. If anyone here knew her at all, it would be as a little kid, not as her nearly-grown-up self. When the elevator doors opened, Tesla walked out, turned left, and walked into the department as if she had every right to be there, though she threw the occasional guilty look over her shoulder.
“Can I help you?” asked the middle-aged woman behind the desk, and Tesla visibly relaxed when she realized she did not know the woman.
“No, thanks, I just need to drop off a late paper for my professor.” Tesla smiled, patted the messenger bag at her side, and walked by without pause in an effort to discourage further conversation.
She held her breath for a moment, but let it out again when the woman did not follow or call out to her. When the hallway made a ninety degree turn, the front office was lost from view altogether. She checked the name plates on each door as she went, but stopped unexpectedly at the one right before her father’s office. Dr. Tasya Petrova, she read, as her fingers moved lightly over the raised letters of the name plate. She sighed wistfully, then remembered that she hated overt displays of sentimentality and moved on. Tesla looked back down the hall to make sure no one watched her, then took the key to her father’s office that she’d taken from the house, slid it into the lock and opened the door, thankful that her father had never thought to request a bigger, better office as the years had passed and his career had advanced. She closed the door behind her and relaxed when she heard the click of the automatic lock slide into place.
She was in, she was alone, and no one knew she was here.
Tesla carefully passed the heavy strap of her messenger bag over her broken arm, over her head, and then laid it on the desk. She sat down in her father’s chair and began to search his desk drawers. A small twinge of guilt pricked her conscience, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have cause, she reasoned. Where are you, Dad? she wondered silently. She felt the paralysis of fear creep up on her and shook it off to focus on the task at hand.
The shallow, center drawer held exactly what she’d expected: pens, pencils, a couple of scientific calculators, a ruler, a stapler, and various other mundane office supplies. She shut that drawer and opened the first of the three drawers to the left of her chair. A tape dispenser, an unopened bag of cheap pens, a heavy 3-hole punch and more of the same were all she found, so she started on the next one and was surprised to discover that what appeared to be a middle and lower drawer was, in fact, one deep drawer that served as a filing cabinet.
Tesla began at the front and worked her way to the back of the drawer, reading the labels on the file tabs. Grad School Teaching Evals, Thesis Notes, Qualifying Exams, Dissertation Committee Notes, Research Agenda for Job Apps. It seemed clear that these were old files filled with papers from her father’s graduate work. She took each one out, quickly perused the pages, realized quickly that they were not helpful, and moved to the drawers on the right, only to find that they were locked.
There was no place to insert a key, even if she’d had one, and for a moment Tesla panicked. This must be where he kept sensitive material, exactly the stuff she probably needed, but she couldn’t open it. Calm down, she thought to herself. Think! Obviously her dad could open the drawers, and unless there was some kind of sophisticated remote device that wasn’t on the premises, she would figure it out in this room. She began with a close examination of the drawers themselves, but this only confirmed that there was no keyhole of any kind on the smooth metal surface of the drawers. She pushed back her chair, slid down to the floor, and crawled into the knee-space of the desk. It was much darker here, and she couldn’t see very well, so she ran her uninjured hand lightly across the inside surfaces. She was just about to give up and had already turned her thoughts to where in the office she might look next, when the very tip of her index finger touched a raised, rough area on the interior wall of the right hand desk drawers.
Tesla scrambled out from under the desk and jerked the center drawer open. She pawed through the pens and markers in the hope that her not-always-practical father might just have—and there it was, a small flashlight. She grabbed it, ducked down and crawled back into the space beneath the desk, the flashlight’s thin beam trained on the six-figure combination lock she had felt.
She sat for a moment and stared. Six numbers. What numbers would her father choose? The commonplace approximation for the speed of light? 186000. She spun the numbers. Nope, probably too obvious. The first six digits of pi, maybe. 314159. Fail. Maybe the golden ratio, her dad loved the Greeks. 161803. Wrong again. Wait, what about e, Euler’s number; her mother had been all about order and chaos and randomness! Euler’s number was irrational, significant because it was crucial for probability calculations—what were the numbers again? She turned the tumblers with her right hand and held the flashlight in her mouth to illuminate the lock. 271828. Just as she dialed the last tumbler into position, she heard a soft click, and the drawers on the right side of the desk slid open an inch.
Okay, I. Am. Awesome, she thought.
She grabbed the flashlight out from between her teeth, ducked and stood up from underneath the desk—and promptly smashed her head into the center drawer she’d left open. The pain brought tears to her eyes for a moment, and she gingerly touched the top of her head and felt the stickiness of blood. Maybe not entirely awesome, she thought. What would Finn say now about my talents with spatial relationships?
She squatted to pick up the pens and other crap that had flown out of the drawer when she hit it, scooped them up, quickly returned them to the drawer and then slammed it shut, harder than was strictly necessary. Stupid drawer. Then she sat back down in her father’s chair and scooted in so she could fully open and peer into the two drawers that had unlocked when she’d hit upon the right combination.
The first drawer held a stack of papers, some stapled or paper-clipped together, and a couple of old cassette tapes, unlabeled. She left the tapes and grabbed the stack of documents and put them on her lap to flip through them. The first was a copy of the abstract of her mother’s dissertation—but Tesla frowned. The blah blah blah of adult conversation about scientific research that had swirled around her all her life made her certain that her mother had done her doctoral dissertation on wave-particle duality. The abstract Tesla held in her hand, however—signed and approved by her four committee members—was titled, “The Multiverse: Probability Theo
ry, Randomness, and Wormholes.” Those areas of research were connected, of course, but this title suggested a very different project.
She must have abandoned this project for the one she eventually submitted and, later, published. Why had her father kept it? It certainly didn’t seem important enough to lock away, but Tesla had already moved on to the pages beneath the abstract. A photocopy of an article published in 1994 in one of the most prestigious theoretical physics journals, with a hastily drawn circle in red pen around the title and an angry exclamation mark next to it, looked up at her. The title was “Time Travel and Patterns in Random Sequences.”
The author was Dr. Sebastian Nilsen.
Tesla’s heart beat faster with excitement. Nilsen’s infamous article, the one that had ruined his career and caused the rift with her parents! The title was so close to her mother’s abandoned dissertation title, it wasn’t much of a leap to conclude that when Nilsen stole her data and published it, Tasya Petrova had changed her dissertation topic. She should have brought him up on charges, the scumbag, Tesla thought.
She had just moved to slide the article underneath the pile on her lap so she could examine whatever was next when someone knocked sharply on the office door.
“Dr. Abbott?” said a crisp, insistent woman’s voice.
Tesla froze and held her breath.
“I heard somebody in there just a few minutes ago,” someone else said, a man.
The knock came again. “Dr. Abbott, are you in there?” Tesla and the woman only a few feet away from her listened intently from their respective sides of the door.
“Sorry,” the woman said. “You must have heard a noise from one of the other offices. He’s not usually here this early. You’ll have to come back later to have him sign your drop/add form.” Her voice faded as she walked away.
Tesla waited another few seconds before she allowed herself to exhale, but her hands shook now. She realized that the longer she stayed here, the greater the chance she’d be caught, and she couldn’t even begin to think of what would happen if her father himself came in before she left. She gathered the stack of papers on her lap and shoved them into her messenger bag, which was not easy with one arm in a cast. She had ransacked her father’s office, and he would discover the theft—but surely he had already discovered they were gone, back in two-thousand-and-four, right? Had she always already stolen them—did she even have a choice now?
