Unhappenings

by Edward Aubry

  Helen managed to hold her tongue for the ten seconds it took us to rise three floors. Once we were in the corridor, she whispered, “Doctor?”

  “Shhh,” I told her. This seemed sufficient explanation for the time being.

  When we got to my lab, I scanned my ID to get us past two sets of doors. My work space was located behind a shielded airlock, which, from the look on Helen’s face, added to her overall sense of astonishment and trepidation.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “Aren’t you going to get in trouble over this?”

  “Not a chance,” I said without elaborating. In truth, I was taking a terrible risk. If anyone chose to make a case about this, it would expose quite a lot of things about my situation better left unexplored. My hope was that any security concerns would be flagged directly to the project director, and that he—I—would let it slide.

  As we entered my work area, I felt a sudden pang of self-consciousness about the state of the place. Every surface was cluttered with various equipment and assorted unprofessional objects. Helen didn’t appear to notice any of this, and she looked around with a wonder comparable to what she showed me at the aquarium.

  “Is all of this yours?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t belong to me, if that’s what you’re asking, but it is my equipment. I work alone in here.”

  She looked at me with suspicion. “Why?”

  “Because my assignment is of a more sensitive nature than most of the research being done here.” As I said those words, I realized the wrist modules had been left out. She had probably already seen them. Even if she identified them as important, she would not have been able to activate them, but the fact that she could see them made me nervous. She would be seeing them again, soon enough, in a very different context, if I could get them to work.

  “I really shouldn’t be here, should I?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said.

  She grinned. “This is fantastic! Can you show me something? Is there anything here I would understand?”

  I held out my hand. “Give me your tablet.”

  Without hesitation, she pulled it out of an inside pocket on her jacket, and handed it to me. The case was solid polished teak. It was certainly quite a bit more expensive than the cherry one I carried. I placed it inside a small glass box. “Travel field, sixty seconds, on my mark,” I said.

  “No way,” she whispered.

  I smiled. “Mark.”

  The tablet blinked out of existence, with a small flash of red light. Helen let out an unbridled giggle. “Oh my God! Did you just do what I think you just did?”

  I laughed. Her ebullience was infectious. “If you think I just sent your tablet one minute into the future, then yes.”

  “Where will it land?”

  “Right back in the case,” I said. “This one only does forward travel, and it stays sealed until the jump time has elapsed. If I were sending it backward, it would be a different protocol, a different machine, and a very different outcome. Even at sixty seconds, you would probably never see it again.”

  “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod,” she said. “This is incredible!” She stared at the case with a wild glee in her eyes that made this worth any risk. Shortly, with a small blue flash, the tablet reappeared. “Ha!” she exclaimed. Exaggerated cackling followed. The chamber opened with a small hiss. Where a more cautious person might have asked if it was safe to touch it, she immediately reached in and grabbed it.

  “Let me see yours!” she said. I held my tablet out to her, and we compared times. They were exactly one minute apart. This effect only lasted for a few seconds, which was as long as it took the satellite connection to correct it. Still, it made my point.

  “Is this what you do all day?” she asked with giddy enthusiasm. I laughed.

  “Not hardly. This is just the barest beginnings of what we are trying to accomplish here.”

  “Have you ever traveled through time?” The question came at me so quickly, and so unexpectedly, that I faltered looking for a safe answer that wasn’t a lie. She saw right through that. “You have! Oh my God! Tell me! Tell me everything!”

  “I…” What could I say? She wanted me to tell her everything. At that moment, I could think of nothing in the world I wanted to do more than just that. But it was too much to lay on her all at once. “I can’t,” I said.

  She pouted. “Poo.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “But I will. Someday. I promise.”

  She stared at her tablet, turned it over and over in her hands, then looked me in the eyes. “This is the most wonderful thing I have ever seen.”

  I took that in with a nod and a warm smile, unable to speak. At that moment, I was already looking at the most wonderful thing I had ever seen.

  rom there we went out for Italian. What was supposed to be half an hour of coffee after work turned into two hours of pasta and red wine. She asked me many questions. I refused to lie to her about any of it, so much of the time I simply told her I couldn’t say. But she did learn some things that evening. I told her about the tracer pucks, and the seven year margin of error for backward travel. I told her about the mice, and the dog. I told her I had been working from Ainsley’s notes, and three glasses of wine in, I let it slip that he had been a professor of mine. I managed to cover, and she made fun of me for being tipsy.

  We went for a walk after that, and talked about a lot of things. I got to hear some of Helen’s childhood anecdotes, and she got to hear some very heavily edited versions of some of mine. We talked about the day we met. She asked me if I thought at the time that she was crazy, and I told her honestly I thought she was hilarious.

  There were multiple opportunities to take our friendship to a different place that night, and I managed to skirt them all. She would send a signal, I would pretend not to notice it, and then laugh at something brilliant she said. We did this dance maybe half a dozen times over the course of several hours. Between my restraint and her patience, we made it to almost midnight before we finally decided to call it a night and go our separate ways.

  I went to bed feeling extremely proud of myself, and quite convinced I had managed to avoid my curse. Essentially on the technicality that we weren’t calling what we had a relationship, the universe would not be able to take her away from me.

  How clever I thought I was.

  The universe was not amused.

  woke to the unexpected and confusing words, “I’m done in the bathroom.” This was shortly followed by, “Graham! Come on! You’re going to make us late!” I rolled over to see Wendy standing over my bed, a displeased look on her face. And nothing else on her.

  I had no prepared response to this situation. Incredibly, my biggest fear was whether it would appear to be more natural to look at her or look away. I was certainly battling contradictory impulses in that regard.

  Reasoning flight was my best option, I muttered, “Sorry,” and hauled myself out of bed and into the bathroom.

  Safe behind the locked door, I attempted to assess my situation. Was this a relationship? A one night stand? I had to know where we stood before going back out there. A quick inventory of the room turned up multiple hygiene products that were clearly not mine, and birth control. Apparently she lived here.

  I showered and dressed as quickly as possible. By the time that was done, Wendy had already made breakfast. I faked my way through small talk with her, and then we drove together to work. She was still at the front desk in my building. Convenient, to be sure. When she took her seat and I started to walk away, she said, “Hey!” Then she batted her lashes at me. I tried to make the kiss feel authentic, with no impression of how successful I was.

  Once in my lab, I began to form a plan. This was far from a terrible turn of events, admittedly, but it was also far from ideal. Yes, I had been attracted to Wendy, but it didn’t go anywhere. By this point, my feelings for Helen were so intense, the thought of not following through on them was too painful to bear. I wondered what my friendship
with her was like in this revised timeline, or if we had ever even met. If not, that would be simple enough to remedy; I was naturally inclined toward the library anyway. If she was still working that same job, contriving a meeting would be child’s play.

  Somewhere in there, I caught myself planning to cheat on Wendy, only hours after discovering that I was in a committed relationship with her. It felt horribly wrong. This was a woman I genuinely cared about. The prospect of hurting her was itself unacceptable.

  I had been feeling so smug just the night before about my very clever dodge of the curse. My assumption had been that my relationship with Helen would never unhappen if we never got as far as making it a relationship. It never occurred to me that the curse would trump me like this with a pre-emptive strike.

  My day was difficult. Wendy and I took our lunch breaks together. The conversation was light, and very enjoyable for what it was worth. She still knew how to make me laugh. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get the wrist module to work, but to what end I no longer knew. With Helen no longer in the picture, making her a traveler seemed pointless.

  Wendy and I went home at the end of the day. I made us dinner. We talked about work. After we cleaned up, I sat down to read, and Wendy spent the evening doing homework for a class she had the next day.

  As it started to get late, she came into the living room and sat down next to me on the couch. She had changed into pajamas. She curled up next to me and put her head on my shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  No, I thought.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You’ve been really quiet all day.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “Is it something at work?” she asked. While I was still trying to compose an answer to that question, she added, “Is it me?”

  I took in her eyes. There was no fear there, just genuine concern for my well-being, and for our relationship. “No,” I said. “It is absolutely not you.”

  “Is it something you can talk about?”

  I thought about that, honestly unsure what the answer was.

  “I don’t think so,” I said finally. “But I’m okay. It’s just a thing I need to work through.”

  “Okay,” she said. “If it gets bad, though, you have to spill it. All right?”

  I laughed quietly. “Deal.”

  She curled up against me again.

  “I worry about you.”

  I put my arm around her and held her. Wendy was a good person. I liked her a lot, and if this was where I was going to be from now on, I thought I could learn to love her. At that thought, my mind was flooded with images of Helen, the Ferris wheel, the graceful stingrays at the aquarium, the reading room, all the time we spent together building to something I kept putting off, and now could never be. And I pushed that all away. Like everything else I had ever truly wanted, I would just have to do without.

  After a few minutes on the couch, Wendy leaned up and whispered into my ear, “Come to bed.” So I did.

  When I woke the next morning, Wendy, and all traces of her stay in my home, were gone.

  was numb for most of that day. Wendy was not waiting for me at the front desk, nor did I have the heart to learn the reason for her absence. This, then, was to be my punishment for wanting to be with Helen. I had lost her, and Wendy, all in one stroke.

  I spent most of that day planning my return to 2092. It had been the better part of two years for me since I left. My original plan of returning to the same day from which I had departed now seemed like the worst kind of folly. No one would ever believe one day could bring so much change to a person. Returning to 2094 posed its own set of problems, and for a while I tried to concoct ways of faking my own kidnapping. Ultimately, this sort of plot did not speak to my strengths.

  Regardless of my method though, I had to go. There was too much pain here now. Whatever unspoken scheme my future self had in mind for me would have to go unexecuted. With a smooth return to my home time looking unworkable, I considered the possibility of becoming some sort of time nomad. Whatever powered my module might one day run dry, but until then, all of eternity could be my playground, and my home. The paranoid part of me wondered if this was Future Me’s plan all along. The rest of me wondered if this was simply my destiny. That was my exact thought at the moment when I saw Helen waiting for me by the door at the end of my day.

  “Coffee?”

  I didn’t understand what was happening at first, and considered the possibility that I had traveled back two days without realizing it. I even checked the date, but it was correct.

  “Sure,” I said, extremely unsurely.

  “How’s your day?” she asked as she held the door for me. Small talk. Absolutely no clue as to how the last year had played out between us.

  “About average,” I said, not even certain if that was a lie.

  She shared some ordinary tales about an ordinary day in the life of a print collection curator. I laughed at the jokes, and hmmed at the appropriate times.

  Over a latte, in a naturally occurring lull, I asked her, “How long have we known each other?”

  “Almost a year,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s been that long, can you?”

  “Did we do this yesterday? Coffee?”

  She began to eye me cautiously. “Yes, we did. We do this most days. What’s going on with you?” She narrowed her eyes, leaned in close, and whispered, “Are you an imposter?”

  “Maybe,” I said, no jest in my voice.

  “I don’t get it.” She said, sitting up.

  “What would you say if I told you that sometimes there are things that happen to me, and then those things get erased and replaced with different things? That sometimes things unhappen to me?”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Proceed.”

  “You would say ‘proceed’?”

  “Which I just did, and which you will now do.” Her voice had lost its light edge as well.

  Where to start? Literally hundreds of examples raced to the top of my brain, vying for the position of the thing I could tell her that would make this all right. “You know I have a cat?” I began.

  She nodded. “Mary Sue. Did something happen to her?”

  I stopped. “I named my cat Mary Sue?”

  “I named your cat Mary Sue. Why are we talking about her?”

  “How long have I had her? Do you know?” I asked.

  She frowned at me.

  “We found her together about four months ago.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Well then, I guess she’s a good example, because I have no memory of that. Until about four weeks ago, I also did not have a cat. Then one morning I woke up, and there she was.”

  “So,” said Helen cautiously, “you un-not-had a cat?”

  “Um.” I untied her construction in my head. “That’s right. Is that too many negatives?”

  “No, no, no,” she said. After a beat, she added, “See what I did there? But no, I follow you. What else?”

  This seemed too easy. “You believe me?”

  “Nigel-Graham, after what you showed me two days ago, I would believe anything you told me. I’m just surprised you waited until now. How long has this been happening to you?” She shook her head. “Or, unhappening?”

  My heart started to race. “What did I show you two days ago?”

  Her eyes went wide. “Seriously?” She pulled her tablet out of her jacket and waggled it in front of me. “Zap? Remember? Did that unhappen too?”

  “What did we do after that?”

  “Chicken Alfredo,” She said. “Mmmm. You had some seafoody thing.”

  “Calamari Marinara,” I said, a bit stunned.

  “Say that three times fast. So we remember the same things, right? That’s where we’re going with this?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I thought… I was afraid that day unhappened.”

  “Why?”

  I had no idea what to tell her. This w
as the best possible news. I had never had a day taken away from me like that and then returned in perfect condition. Athena implied it wasn’t even possible.

  “Yesterday was just very odd,” I said weakly. “There were some changes. I was afraid I lost things before that, too.”

  We both sat silently for a bit. Helen was no doubt trying to process. I was trying to figure out what to say next. I really didn’t plan to tell her any of this, but now that it was out, it felt right.

  “Is this a time travel thing?” she asked finally.

  “Yes, although I’m not exactly sure how it works, or why it happens,” I said. “In response to your earlier question, it’s been happening since I was fourteen. Maybe longer.”

  “Fourteen? Surely you weren’t traveling through time at fourteen.” She bit her lip. “Were you?”

  “No,” I said. “I…” Beyond no, I had no idea what to tell her. What I really wanted to do was throw caution to the wind, and tell her how I felt about her. But that entailed more risk than anything she wanted to know about time travel. Besides, she wasn’t asking.

  After a suitable pause, she said, “Listen. I am so touched that you have told me as much as you have, I couldn’t possibly blame you if you stopped now. If you want your secrets, you may certainly keep them.” She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. The little bit of extra closeness that brought felt electric. “But I don’t think you want them.”

  “I don’t,” I admitted. “I’m just afraid they will scare you away.”

  She took my hand and looked me square in the eyes. “I am not going anywhere.”

  And that finally pushed me over the edge of my secrecy.

  “I’m not from 2145.”

  As I let that sink in, I saw some of the determination drain out of her face, and her mouth open unconsciously.

  “Oh,” she said quietly.

  “Are we okay, or should I stop there?”

  She was still holding my hand, and I felt her squeeze it just a little.

  “We’re good,” she said. “I did not see that coming. But we’re good. How far…? When…?”