Her expression of disbelief slowly morphed into a dawning realization that he might actually be telling the truth. He didn’t know why, but that made him feel indescribably better.
“I don’t know,” she began.
“Wait.” He held up his hand. “Just, give me a moment.”
He closed his eyes and leaped back two years. He spent a week living in a flophouse while growing a beard, then closed his eyes, imagining her office, mentally adding a minute to the time on her desk clock.
She gasped even louder this time. He walked around her desk and took her hand in his. She offered no resistance. He guided her hand up to his face and turned her fingers to where they could stroke his beard.
“Do you believe me now?” He rubbed her fingers gently on his beard. She finally nodded.
“Yes, I believe you,” she whispered. She sat in her chair, grabbing the armrest for support. “I repeat: why haven’t you manipulated time to make yourself President, or a billionaire?”
“It’s too awesome a power for a man like myself to wield,” replied Kelly. “I have used that power to change history only once. You wouldn’t remember, of course, just as you don’t remember me.”
She frowned. “We’ve met before?”
“Once,” he said. “In a very different present. One I changed.”
“Tell me about it, Kelly.”
“It’s pretty grim,” he said. “I don’t think you want to know.”
“You finally meet someone who pays attention to you, and now you don’t want to talk?” she said with a rueful smile.
“All right.” he said. “You and I and everyone else you know grew up in the German Republic of America.”
“The German Republic?” she repeated, frowning.
He nodded. ‘Except that it wasn’t a republic. It was a cross between a prison camp and a colony. You see, we lost World War II.”
“How?”
“From the outset. We waited too long, we didn’t divert enough money to the military or its weapons. Basically, we thought Hitler meant it when he said he had no interest in America.”
“But he declared war on us in 1942!” she said. “Or was in 1943.”
“It was 1947,” answered Kelly. “After he’d conquered Europe and even Stalin had surrendered. You and I were prisoners together in 2012—well, until they decided I wasn’t worth the effort and released me.”
“What was our offense?” asked Mildred.
“When did the Nazis ever need a reason? We became friends between my daily beatings and your twice-daily rapes.”
He could see the horror written on her face.
“I stayed with you as long as I could. Finally, one day the agony was so great that I just wished myself back before the war, even before Hitler had established his Reich. And it was then that I made the one change to history that I have ever wrought, and I have no regrets.”
“What did you do?” asked Mildred, still recoiling in distaste from the non-memory on her multitude of rapes.
“I changed the sights on Giuseppe Zangara’s pistol.”
She frowned in puzzlement. “Who was that?”
“The assassin who shot and killed President Roosevelt in 1933.”
“No one killed him,” she said. “He was our only four-term President.”
Kelly shook his head. “Zangara shot him dead. And his successors didn’t understand the threat presented by the Axis powers until it was too late. Japan controlled the United States west of the Mississippi, and Germany ruled everything east of it.” He took a deep breath, released it slowly, and continued. “I knew I couldn’t physically stop him. He was much bigger and stronger than I am. Most people are. And if I made enough noise and commotion, he’d just fade into the crowd and kill Roosevelt a day or a week later.” The muscles in his face twitched as he recalled the event. “So I went to his room before he woke up, fouled up his sights, and he missed Roosevelt and killed Chicago’s Mayor Anton Cermak.” He stared across the desk at her. “And in this future I’ve never been beaten, and you were never raped.”
“I believe you,” she said. “You’ve shown me that you can travel through time and manipulate it.”
“Those were parlor tricks,” said Kelly, “just to prove to you that I could. The only major change I ever made was that one. I’m not bright enough or important enough to play games with history.”
“You’re bright and important enough for me,” said Mildred. “I can almost remember my life in that other timestream…” She shuddered.
“I couldn’t let that happen to you,” said Kelly. “And I confess: I did manipulate time on one other occasion. It was when I changed it so that I would be sent to your office rather than some other doctor’s.” He paused nervously. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“How could I mind after what you’ve done for me?” she replied..
“I’m glad,” he said, getting to his feet and walking around the desk to her. “I just…” He laid a hand tenderly on her shoulder. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of…”
She pulled away. “Please.”
He looked at her questioningly.
“Please don’t touch me, Kelly,” she said. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, more than you can possibly know…but I don’t think I ever want to be touched by a man again, even by the man who saved me.”
“I just want a friend,” he said earnestly. “I was only trying to comfort you. I would never think of…well, you know.”
“I’d like to be your friend, Kelly.” She smiled a sad little smile. “While you were telling me your story, I realized that I was remembering things I didn’t quite know before, if that makes any sense to you. It’s, I don’t know, like there’s a veil between this reality and the one you experienced, and part of me lived it, too.” She leaned forward. “I’ll let you in on a little secret: I don’t have any more friends than you do.”
“Really?” he said, surprised.
“Really,” she said. “I want to be your friend, and for you to be mine. But I think I’ll always hate to be touched, I’ll always think of what happened in that other existence.”
“I know,” he said sympathetically.
“I wish things were otherwise,” she continued. “Oh, how I wish they were. But…”
“Do you mean that?” asked Kelly.
“I think you are the one person I will never lie to, Kelly,” said Mildred. “Yes, I mean it.”
“Then, since you like me and we’re going to be friends forever, I have a favor to ask.”
“What is it?”
“May I see your driver’s license?”
She frowned. “My driver’s license?”
He nodded. “For just a second.”
She frowned in bewilderment, pulled it out of her purse, and handed it to him. He glanced at it briefly and handed it back to her.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
“About one last trip through time,” he answered, closing his eyes.
He focused on a date in late November of 1978, and instantly arrived. He spent four weeks there, working as a handyman and watching a young couple, newly married, holding hands at a movie theater, decorating their new home together, shopping for groceries. They seemed very much in love. When the circumstances were right, he acquired a clipboard and went up their front walk and rang the doorbell. It was a dark night and the porch light wasn’t on.
He heard footsteps approach the door, then the peephole darkened. The porch light snapped on and Kelly blinked in the sudden brightness.
A door lock clicked and the door opened. A young man in his early twenties glared at him. “Yes? What can I do for you?”
“Is the missus of the house available?” Kelly asked, his eyes as wide and innocent as he could make them. “I’m conducting a survey for the new supermarket.”
The young man shook his head, irritated. “No, she’s already gone up to bed. Can we do this another time?”
Kelly kept the young man talk
ing for another minute or two before being shooed away. His intent wasn’t to actually get his questions answered, but to delay what he knew was about to take place as soon as the young couple was alone and upstairs.
It took four trips to get the timing just right (although in truth it was more luck than timing), but he finally accomplished his goal. Nine months later the woman he would never see gave birth to a boy.
***
And here we are back in Dr. Clark’s office again, just as you probably guessed. I won’t bother describing it again, because you saw it just a few minutes ago.
The fish tank was exactly the same, and the dead fish was still floating at the surface. .
“Miss,” he said to the receptionist. “Excuse me? There seems to be a dead fish in your tank.”
She popped her gum and squinted in the tank’s direction. “Damned fish are more work than they’re worth,” she complained. “I’ll take care of it in a bit.” Suddenly she stared at him. “Are you here for Dr. Clark?”
He nodded. “I filled out my name on that clipboard,” he said,
She frowned. “Half an hour?” indicating the clipboard on her desk. “I gave it to you half an hour ago?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know where my mind was,” she said. “The doctor should be right with you.”
She lifted her telephone and tapped out three numbers. Kelly could hear a phone ring behind the closed door.
“It’s”—she had to look at the clipboard—“a Kelly Nicholas to see you,” said the receptionist. “Oh, a couple of minutes, maybe, Not long.” She nodded and put the phone down. “Go right in.”
He walked through the door. “Dr. Clark?”
The man behind the desk smiled, stood up. “Yes, that’s me. Milton Clark. How may I help you?”
Kelly felt a rush of satisfaction. It was the fourth trip that had done it. Mildred had been born as a male.
“Kelly Nicholas. Do you have any more appointments this afternoon? I’ve got a hell of a story to tell you.”
Milt Clark shook his head, wondering why he felt such a sudden affinity toward this nondescript little man. “No, you’re my last appointment for the day. What’s this about?”
“Not here,” said Kelly. “This place is too, I don’t know, formal, and I don’t think either of us really enjoys standing on formality.”
Milt stared at Kelly. Something was very familiar, very comfortable, about this man. He decided to trust his instincts. “I’m open to suggestions, Mr. Nicholas.”
“Call me Kelly.”
“All right—Kelly.”
Kelly lowered his head and thought for a moment. Finally he looked up.
“Wanna go bowling?” he asked.
Milt considered it for a moment, glanced at his watch, and broke into a smile. “Why the hell not?”
“Good!” enthused Kelly. “And when we’re done, I know a great little bar where we can have a beer and talk.”
Milt snapped his fingers. “You know, Kelly, I get the sense that we’ve known each other a long, long time, but I can’t say that I remember ever having met you.” He shook his head in confusion. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You’re on. Let me get my coat.” Suddenly a fleeting thought flashed through his mind: What was that line from their favorite movie? Ah, yes: Louie—or in this case, Kelly—this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
They walked out together, past the receptionist who was on her tiptoes retrieving a dead fish from the tank.
Introduction to “Fix”
Award-winning game designer, computer game designer, editor, graphic novelist, screenwriter, podcaster, and novelist Michael A. Stackpole claims he enjoys dancing in his spare time. I’m not stunned at the word “dancing.” I’m stunned at the phrase “spare time.” He’s written over forty-five novels, and somehow managed to finish a short story for us despite a time-crunch. No pun intended, of course.
As he approached “Fix,” he started thinking about the likely realities of time travel, and if there was a way to approach it that wasn’t hard science. “Once I’d hit on something that I thought would work,” he writes, “I looked at how that applied to some of the standard tropes for time travel stories, and voila!”
Fix
Michael A. Stackpole
The people best equipped to understand the reality of time travel are always those who most vociferously maintain it’s impossible. Granted, back in the days when sunset and seasons ruled mankind, the clues had been difficult to detect. With the rise of rationalism, however, and accuracy of timepieces, the reality of time travel could not have been more obvious. Still, the wise explained away anomalies with much complex math and overuse of the hobgoblin “subjectivity.”
Were subjectivity a carpet, all the evidence swept beneath it would tower over Everest.
It’s entertaining to watch learned men and women applying analogies to explain something they clearly don’t understand. Most believe time is a river. This theory allows them to postulate fast currents and slow, and eddies where time might actually travel backwards. There could even be stagnant pools, where time just stops altogether. They do the math, they write their books, and award each other prizes—all the while hoping no one noticed that they hadn’t a shred of proof for any of it.
My father, who yet is a legend among Fixers, explained time once to me simply: needing to objectively measure their mortality, men have made up rules for a game they call Time. A long life is scored as a blessing. A shorter life is not, unless the shorter life is lived hard and painfully, in which a premature death is scored a blessing. A child’s early death is tragic, unless they fought against some hideous disease, in which case it was heroic. You can also win through the simple expedient of living long enough for everyone else you knew to die.
Not the silliest amusement man has ever invented, and still the only one which everyone plays.
By the rules of the game, the five young women only earned a tragedy. Four were fixed, firmly and solidly. They truly belonged here, at the Chi Omega sorority at Florida State University. They were born in this when and lived here uninterrupted until their deaths. They weren’t the final victims to perish at Ted Bundy’s hands, but they would be his undoing. He’d be convicted of their murders and die for them—imbuing them with an aura of heroism.
I squatted next to the fifth girl’s body. She didn’t belong here. Unlike the others, she had defensive wounds on her forearms. Flesh under her fingernails could have provided a DNA match, but in 1978, Florida police weren’t even aware that was a possibility. No bite marks, which was an error, since her killer had all the time he needed to create dentures which would link her to Bundy. He didn’t take that much care because that clue would have only mattered to the Clockers.
He’d dropped this body for me.
I almost turned to one of the State cops to ask if they had identified the woman, but I knew the answer. Her killer hadn’t left any clues. He didn’t want her fixed in time; and my asking might do that. She’d been dumped. She’d just be some unfortunate, anonymous girl who happened to come to the sorority to study with a friend. Wrong place, wrong time. She’d be mentioned in a couple books about Bundy, but ignored in most. The writers simply wouldn’t have enough material to make her into a full-blown tragedy.
The Statie noticed me anyway. “Who are you?”
I pulled a worn badge and ID from inside my coat. “FBI, Special Crimes Division. I was visiting family when I got a call.”
“Hell of a thing.”
“Yeah.” I stood, putting my ID away. “I’m going to go out and get a cigarette.”
“Hope we get this bastard before you Feds do.”
“Me, too.” I gave him an encouraging nod. “Lot of things can get lost in the Glades.”
***
I never much cared for the 1970s. Ties too wide, colors too bright, people believing things much too hard. Things would have been better in Europe during that when, but going there, even escorted,
would be breaking the rules. Bad things happened when rules got broken. Case in point being the 1960s and no one being able to remember much of anything which happened then.
Because I’m a Fixer—one who’s good and very well trained—I can pretty much go time-out wherever and whenever I want. In keeping with the game idea, I just step out of bounds and play stops. For me, anyway. There can be some residual effect lingering where Fixers go out. I try to minimize that kind of collateral damage. Freetimers tend to freak out if they get tagged. The periodic spates of witch burnings and belief in spiritualism is really just some Fixer’s sloppy time-out transit work.
There are places where time-out aftereffects are easily explained, so I headed for the nearest. In this case it was the local airport. Airports are perfect for time traveling. Everyone’s sense of time is screwed up, so the little ripples from me going time-out pass unnoticed. Plus, with so many people rushing around, it’s no big surprise if someone sees a person they think they know, perhaps just looking a little older or younger. They might even see themselves.
Happened a lot in the 60s, which is why we had to amp use of psychotropic drugs just to unfix a lot of confusing stuff.
The same professors who maintain that time travel can’t happen are also the ones who are absolutely certain that if you were to meet yourself, the resulting paradox would create a disaster. A hole in time, the end of the universe, or the spontaneous birth of a new one. It would definitely create lots more math.
And more prizes.
Fact is, the whole paradox thing isn’t true. Time’s fairly elastic and fluid. It has momentum, and it also leaks. Little problems tend to resolve themselves, especially if there isn’t a Fixer around to establish them in time.
Time travel is the reason people are notoriously bad eyewitnesses. It’s not that their brains don’t have the capacity to remember things, it’s that new things get laid down all the time. The same effort a guy might put into remembering the date of his wife’s birthday—to fix it in his mind forever—ought to be enough to do the job. It probably would be, too, if a Fixer like me didn’t have a reason to bury that point in time beneath other events.
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