Unhappenings

by Edward Aubry

  “Or I’ll end up in a ditch somewhere?” He did not laugh. I could feel myself perspiring.

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard, Mr. Walden, but I’m really not like that at all.”

  Eight hundred and twenty million people might soon disagree. I had to keep reminding myself that this man was not yet that monster. He had been turned aside once before, by the love of an amazing woman. That woman was soon to marry me, but there might be some other means to keep him in check. I could force myself to believe that.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “You don’t look well.”

  In truth, there was a very real possibility that I was about to throw up. Between the stress of having this man in my home, and the visions of his future atrocities dancing before my eyes, my stomach had gone rogue.

  “I just need to powder my nose,” I said, to additional absence of laughter. I excused myself, and spent five minutes in the bathroom alternating between splashing water on my face (which looked quite green to me in the mirror) and hyperventilating. Once I had more or less pulled myself together, I emerged to find him on my screened-in porch, admiring the view.

  “I’m afraid it may have been a mistake coming here,” he said. “I’m really not even sure what I was trying to accomplish. Things between Helen and me ended very badly, and I thought perhaps we could find a way to part on a better note. But I’m afraid I have only embarrassed myself, and made things worse. I do apologize for that.” He shook my hand, and walked with me to the door. “Please give Helen my warm regards.” With that, he left.

  But by then, the damage was done.

  he social call had been a ruse, of course. The second Carlton found out about me, he began an investigation into who I was. Given the resources at his disposal, it took him a matter of days to determine I did not exist, and a matter of weeks to deduce my true identity. His claim that Helen had used the name Nigel was bait. In fact, she had not given him my name at all.

  As I said, Carlton West commanded resources I would barely have understood, even if I had been aware they existed. This is what I tell myself to deflect responsibility for what happened. I allowed him entry to my home, based in part on a reaction to a threat he made that was pure bluff. I allowed him to agitate me to the point of physical illness from the stress.

  The five minutes I spent in the bathroom gave Carlton West about four minutes of unfettered access to my lab, my materials, and all my data. For a man with the right equipment and training, that would have been about two minutes more time than he would need.

  Virtually every aspect of the debacle to come was proving to be my fault. Thanks to me, Carlton now had everything he needed to construct his own time machine.

  t was some time before we figured out what Carlton had been doing in my home. Helen’s response to the fact of his visit was severe discomfort, and gratitude that he had not tried to connect with her at the library. While we were still recovering from that, Athena arrived.

  “He wants a meeting,” was all she said. It took me a moment to process.

  “Carlton?”

  Helen flinched. Athena nodded.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “He was just here.”

  “He was here eighteen years ago,” said Athena. “A lot of water under the bridge for him. He wants a truce, at least long enough for you to hear him out.”

  I looked to Helen for guidance. Her expression was unreadable, and she would not make eye contact.

  “He came to you with this?” I asked Athena.

  “Yup,” she said.

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Nope.”

  I took Helen’s hand. It was cold, and limp.

  “Helen,” I said softly, “this might be our chance to reason with him. If he wants to hurt me, he will do it whether I meet with him or not. If he wants to talk, we should talk.” I let that sit for a bit, waiting for her to find a response.

  Just as I was about to say I would do whatever she wanted me to do, she asked, “Where?”

  “He didn’t say,” said Athena. “I assume he’ll leave that up to you.” She directed that last part at me, but Helen answered.

  “Here, then,” she said. “Right here. This room. Right now.”

  Athena hesitated. “He wants to meet with Nigel,” she said.

  “Nigel can be here if he wants,” said Helen.

  “Mom…”

  Helen stood, and looked at my daughter and me with eyes of cold stone.

  “No. This isn’t about Nigel. It’s about me. It’s always been about me, and if the two of you are going to traipse through time fighting over me, you can damn well fight over me in this room, with me at the table.”

  “You’re sure you want this?” I asked.

  “Nigel, you were in prison!” said Helen. “You were in prison and I didn’t even know! We are way past the point of worrying about what I want.” She looked away, and then stared at the floor. When she did finally look up, her eyes were stark and welling with moisture.

  “You don’t know him,” she said quietly. “You don’t understand what he’s like when he’s obsessed. We have to stop this before it goes any further, and I’m the one who knows which buttons to push.” A single tear collected enough mass to break free and roll down her cheek. To me, it looked like a tear of defiance.

  “Go get him,” I said.

  Athena looked at Helen, waited for the nod, and flashed out.

  t was two hours before Athena returned. Helen and I spent those two hours in near silence. I made her a cup of tea, which she gratefully accepted. I offered her bold but vague reassurances of protection, which were less well received. Finally, Athena returned, tandem jumping in with our guest.

  Having just seen this man earlier in the day, the change to his face from the weather of his last eighteen years caught me off guard, even expecting it. His hair had gone completely gray, and his skin was marked with leathery creases. At first, he stared at me, wordlessly. Then he looked around himself at my dining room.

  “This is a lovely house,” he said casually. “I had forgotten how nice it was.” If he expected a polite thank you in return for this small talk, he showed no sign of disappointment for not getting one. He took a deep breath, and sighed dramatically before looking at us again. “Hello, Helen,” he said.

  “Hello, Carlton,” she said. At first I heard icy coldness in her tone, but quickly realized that was only my expectation superimposing itself on my perception. In truth, her greeting was nothing but cordial, spoken in so pure a familiarity that the true nature of this meeting finally caught up with me.

  “I’m going to take a walk,” said Athena.

  Surprised by this, and expecting her to remain as my ally, I said, “You should stay.”

  “No,” said Helen, her eyes still on Carlton. “She should go.” She looked at Athena, and in that moment, in the tension in their eyes, it seemed entirely likely that either or both of them might break down. The moment passed. “You should step outside, honey,” said Helen, gently. Athena nodded, with a trembling lip. Helen spread her arms and Athena curled into them in a tight hug. Helen kissed her on the forehead, and released her. Athena walked right past me without looking up, straight out the front door.

  “Shall we sit?” asked Carlton. As I tried to prepare an appropriately antagonistic reply, Helen pulled out a chair and sat at the table without comment. I followed her lead.

  “So,” I said.

  “Shall I begin?” asked Carlton. “Or is there something you need to say first?”

  The frankness caught me off guard, but not Helen.

  “I need you to stop torturing my boyfriend,” she said.

  “Such a spitfire,” said Carlton, rubbing his chin. “I have missed you.” In that instant, despite everything, despite my presence, Helen smiled. It was just the faintest hint of a curl, but it may as well have been a cackle of delight. At last, seeing them together, I was confronted with a truth I had fought so hard to set aside in my need to c
onfront this man, my enemy. For all his villainy, Carlton was Helen’s lover. I was the latecomer to this party. I would say Carlton was using this disadvantage against me, or that Helen was defending me against it, but in truth, by that point they had already forgotten I was there.

  “I mean it,” she said. “You need to stop treating this like one of your games. People are getting hurt.”

  “No, they aren’t,” he countered. “Or rather, they are, but then your delightful daughter unhurts them, does she not?”

  “What about Carrie Wolfe?” I demanded. The interjection surprised them both. Carlton frowned.

  “All right,” he conceded. “She unhurts most of them. There have been some casualties along the way, regrettably.”

  “Regrettably?” I shouted, pushing back my chair. Before I could stand, Helen pushed my chest to hold me in place. Carlton raised his hands in supplication.

  “Please,” he said. “This isn’t what I came here to do. Helen, you want me to stop torturing Nigel. Very well.” He placed his palms down on the table. “Done.”

  I stared at him in shock. Helen seemed less taken aback.

  “It can’t be that easy,” I said.

  “It’s not,” said Helen, eyes locked on Carlton.

  “Of course it isn’t,” he said. “When I say ‘done,’ I mean just that. I stopped meddling with your past nearly five years ago, Dr. Walden.”

  His use of the title I had not yet earned—and might not ever earn now—went uncorrected. It was a jab, not an error.

  “And yet, the torture goes on,” I said.

  Carlton raised his brows.

  “This is time travel,” he said, in a patronizing tone clearly cultivated through years of use. “I spent more than ten years wreaking havoc on your history, and much of that havoc took effect on points of your life well after this one. The quest is over, and the damage done, but the effects have yet to be felt by you. And make no mistake, those effects are going to be severe.”

  “Carlton, for God’s sake,” said Helen. “This is so… petty. Can’t you see that? You have so much to offer the world. How could you make this your life’s work? How could let yourself become a monster over something as pathetic as the jealousy of a jilted boyfriend?”

  Carlton looked away at these words, and took a moment to compose his reply. When he did, just for those few seconds, I saw something in his eyes, and heard something in his tone, that was the last thing I expected: contrition.

  “You’re asking me to justify emotions from almost two decades ago, and I can’t. That Carlton West, the one even now plotting to ruin your lives in new and creative ways, is not me. That West is dealing with humiliation the only way he knows how. And that humiliation is intense. You were the first thing anyone ever took away from me, Helen. It hurt. And it taught me there were some things in this world I would never have power over. As foolish as that sounds now, it was a brand new idea at the time, and it scared me.”

  “I’m not a ‘thing,’ and no one took me away from you,” said Helen, her eyes thin slits of anger. “I left you because our fairy tale fantasy fell apart. You loved my earthiness, and I loved your Prince-Charmingness, and it made for a wonderful, wonderful romance.” She jabbed a finger at him in accusation.

  “And then the reality of where I stood in your sick family power structure kicked in, and I waited and waited for you to be the hero and let our love triumph. And you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t make us matter more than politics, and wealth, and pointless expectations. You spent all your time negotiating for permission to marry me when all I wanted was for you to say you didn’t care if we had permission. But I waited it out. And eventually I figured out that power mattered to you more than I did. And yes,” she said, taking my hand. “Nigel got to me, when all you could do was drag your feet. But he didn’t steal me away from you. He spent a year pining after me without saying anything, because he thought I would get hurt if he told me how he felt. He put my safety above his pain. And he did that because he loved me.” She shook her head. “Did you ever love me?”

  Carlton closed his eyes.

  “Of course I love you,” he said softly, then winced. “Of course I loved you.” He opened his eyes. “I chose my words poorly, and I am sorry for that, but I didn’t come here to spar. I came here to warn you.” He looked at me. “She’s right. Power did matter to me more than she did. I wish that weren’t so, and if it were now instead of then, I would feel differently. But it was what it was. I reacted badly, and you are going to pay the price. You need to listen to me carefully. What’s coming is so much bigger than what you’ve had to deal with until now. Once I started manipulating time, and once I learned that no matter how much damage I did, you and your daughter would always correct it… It was an addiction, Walden. That’s the only way I know to explain it. It was a sickness, and every time I broke something and you fixed it, I broke something bigger. And I broke many, many things. By the time I understood that some of the damage was permanent, it had escalated too far for me to stop. There are bad times coming, Walden. Worse than you can imagine. And I did it all for one reason: to break you. I knew you would be the hero, over and over again, and I did it to wear you out until there would be nothing left. And make no mistake: it will break you. I promise it will break you in the end.”

  As I tried to assimilate all of this, my mind lurched back to the few hours I spent on death row, so recently. If Carlton was telling the truth, I was never meant to die there. I was meant to be afraid, and then rescued. Wendy’s role as murder victim, downgraded to rape victim, was just an ornament on a scenario designed solely to add one more stone to the weight already on my back. She was just one more casualty to Carlton, and there were more stones to come. Many more.

  Caught between thanking him for the warning and cursing him for being its cause, I hesitated just long enough for him to add, “But it doesn’t have to.”

  Helen folded her arms across her chest, and leaned back in her chair. “Here it comes.”

  “You can stop all this before it begins, Helen.”

  “And all I have to do is go back to you.”

  “This isn’t a ploy,” said Carlton. “I have seen how the next two decades play out for all of us, and no one wins. This is a chance to prevent a lot of suffering, Helen.” At his words, the image of Carlton’s empire raced across my mind’s eye. There would indeed be a lot of suffering, and millions of deaths. Carlton’s addiction to destruction would manifest itself as a megalomania that would bring a continent to its knees. And all Helen had to do to stop it was consign herself to a life of misery. And all I had to do to stop it was tell her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Helen. “The answer is no. The answer will always be no.” She leaned forward. “I can believe that going back to you will make everyone’s lives easier. I can even believe that I might find some measure of happiness with you.” At those words, my heart constricted, until Helen took my hand again and kissed it. “But it’s not going to happen.” She pointed to the front door. “The woman who left this house minutes ago is my daughter.” She held my hand up and squeezed it. “Our daughter. And she is the single most wonderful person I have ever met. Nothing will ever be more important to me than she is. You are asking me to sacrifice her to prevent suffering that you yourself say we can prevent other ways. But none of that matters, because she is my first, last and only concern. And you cannot have her.”

  “She could have been ours,” countered Carlton.

  “But she’s not.”

  Unwillingly, my mind raced to the new notion of Carlton and Helen having their own children, with Athena consigned to oblivion. She herself had told me long ago that she would survive any alteration to the past, but that the prevention of her birth would still have consequences. As I tried to sort out where that would put all of us, and what true relationship she would have to her half-siblings, the numbers finally registered. Eighteen years. 2164.

  “How’s France?” I asked.

 
Helen and Carlton both looked at me in alarm.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Carlton.

  “I asked how’s France. In 2164. Things going well?”

  “Nigel?” asked Helen, obvious confusion and concern in her tone. I tried to ignore her and focus on Carlton’s reaction, which was the irritation I expected. In 2164, he would already be well on the way to his ascension to Emperor. Perhaps he truly had abandoned his crusade against me five years earlier, but not because he had finally controlled his addiction to power. His addiction had simply redirected itself.

  “You think you will be able to bear this,” he said. “But you won’t. You think your love will survive this. It will not. Hard times are coming for you. Very hard times. And they will break you.” He stood and produced a small device I did not recognize from his jacket pocket. Looking at Helen, he said, “And all of it—all of it—will be on your head.” With that, he touched a control on the device. In a few seconds, he was engulfed in what looked like orange lightning, and then he was gone.

  etween Carlton’s real time visit to my home and Carlton’s time travel visit almost immediately afterward, I was near exhaustion from the stress. But Helen needed me to be her rock, so I set it aside. It was impossible for me to tell how much of her distress was fear of what present-day Carlton was about to unleash on us, and how much was grief over her old love transforming into the man we now knew he was becoming. Either way, there was little I could do beyond feeling completely helpless as she curled up into a ball on the couch and resisted all my attempts to offer her solace.

  At some point after I tried to serve Helen a meal she would not touch, Athena returned. I had been expecting her to walk through the front door at some point, so I was quite startled when she flashed into the living room.