The Wages of the Moment
A Jukebox Story
Dean Wesley Smith
The Wages of the Moment
Copyright © 2013 by Dean Wesley Smith
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover Design copyright © 2013 WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Rolffimages/Dreamstime
Smashwords Edition
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
One
You know your time machine is screwed up when a person just starts appearing and disappearing at random times. And that person is you.
Jenny and I were back in town from San Francisco for the Christmas holidays, actually the first Christmas back since we had gotten married.
And I was back in the Garden. I still hadn’t gotten used to not owning the place and being on the other side of the bar, but since I had sold the Garden Lounge to Richard Cone ten months before, I had made myself stay on the customer side unless Richard asked me to do otherwise.
The Garden Lounge is a very special bar that I had owned for over a decade. An old-fashioned neighborhood place with vinyl booths, a few tables, some artificial plants and a long, polished wooden bar with nine bar stools. Richard, to his credit, had changed nothing, even keeping the lights low all the time as I had done.
To the right side of the bar was an old Wurlitzer jukebox that was never turned on or plugged in except for very special occasions, usually Christmas Eve. That jukebox was a time travel machine of sorts. It could actually take a person back to the memory of a song for the length of the song.
And that person could change their future while in their past and maybe not end up back at the Garden Lounge, which was why the jukebox was so dangerous. And why it was almost never plugged in. It created new timelines if anything was changed.
But every Christmas Eve we plugged it in and let friends take rides back into their own pasts with instructions to change nothing. It had become a special evening for all of us and the reason why Jenny and I were back in town for the holiday.
But at one point there was a dark side to the Christmas Eve ceremony. I had lost a number of friends, friends that I could remember when the timeline changed because I had been touching the jukebox when they didn’t return.
It was two in the afternoon, two days before Christmas. Richard had just opened and was sipping on an orange juice as he leaned against the back bar, just as I had used to do when I owned the place.
I was sipping on my normal Christmas eggnog without alcohol, sitting on the bar stool closest to the jukebox that Richard used to sit on. We had just switched places. It felt weird, but somehow right.
Jenny was off shopping and wouldn’t be here for a good hour. She liked to give me time with my old friends without her hanging around, even though all the regulars thought of her as just another member of the gang.
Dave, my best friend, a retired airline pilot, sat beside me at the bar and Big Carl, a contractor who had been a regular since I opened the place sat next to Dave. If I remember right, we were talking about a football game I had attended a month before in San Francisco when suddenly Richard’s eyes got huge and he said softly, “Stout?”
I said, “Yeah.”
And from the direction of the jukebox someone else said, “Hi, Richard.”
I spun toward the voice.
That someone else was me, looking very dirty and a decade or more older.
If my mug of eggnog hadn’t been sitting on the bar, I would have dropped it.
My older self looked at me, nodded and then said, “Good, got this one right. Glad you are here. I remember this now.”
And with that he vanished.
Two
The silence in the bar seemed like a big thick weight.
I glanced at Richard whose eyes were huge, then back at where the old me had appeared beside the unplugged jukebox.
Dave cleared his throat. “Looks like you’re going to have a rough time at some point in the future.”
I did look that way, I had to admit. I had gotten dirty helping Jenny in her garden down in San Francisco last year, but even at my worst I hadn’t looked as bad as I had looked a moment before.
Suddenly the air near the jukebox shimmered and the older me appeared again, just as dirty and dust-covered.
The older me smiled at me, then said, “Good, got this one right. Glad you are here. I remember this now.”
The exact same thing he had said the first time.
Then he also vanished.
‘Oh, oh,” Richard said right before more versions of older me, or copies three-through nine appeared in quick order, all saying exactly the same thing before vanishing.
We all just sat stunned. I mean, when nine copies of yourself suddenly appear, it takes a moment to get used to the idea. Actually, I doubt I would ever get used to the idea, but by the time number nine disappeared, I knew I had to do something to stop this and stop it quick before the numbers of me got really, really big.
When version number ten appeared and started to speak, I held up my hand. “You’ve said that and a bunch of you have already been here.”
The older, dirtier me stopped, thought for a second, then said, “Damn, I remember that now.”
And then he vanished.
The silence again filled the Garden Lounge as we all sat staring at the jukebox, waiting for another version of me to appear.
Nothing.
Finally, from down the bar Carl said, “You think he kept leaving because we didn’t offer him a drink?”
Richard just shook his head and Dave chuckled.
“Got any idea what might be going on?” Dave asked as I sat staring at the jukebox.
“Not a clue,” I said. “I’ve never opened up the real interior of that thing. Richard?”
Richard just shook his head. “I haven’t touched it at all since you left, Stout. Wouldn’t even begin to know what I was looking at.”
“You looked older,” Carl said. “Got any sense of how far into the future they are coming from?”
I shook my head. “Never tried to guess what I was going to look like. At this point I’m just happy getting out of bed every morning. But now I’m going to have nightmares for years.”
I turned back to face Richard behind the bar and took a sip of my eggnog. I could see the jukebox out of the corner of my eye and if there was movement I would know it. I had a hunch this was far, far from over, whatever was going on.
“Might not be that far in the future,” Richard said. “The gray hair and extra wrinkles on his face just might be dirt and dust.”
‘Possible,” Carl said. “I got caught in some cement dust and looked like that once.”
“But why now, why at this moment?” Richard asked.
I knew the answer instantly on that. “Listen.”
“Silence,” Carl said after a moment of all of us pausing.
“Exactly,” Dave said, nodding, understanding what I was thinking.
Richard had not turned on the background music, so there was no music on to trigger the jukebox or to plant memories of this moment in any of our minds.
“I wonder why your statement stopped the appearances,” Carl said.
I glanced past David at the big contractor. He clearly looked rattled and his drink was empty. I had a hunch Richard knew that and was pacing the big guy’s consumption.
�
�You locked him into this timeline,” David said.
All of us stared at him as if he had lost a bolt.
He just shrugged. “We all know that if we go back and change something in the past, we create a new timeline. When Stout here let me go back and save my wife, I created a timeline different from the one I left. One where she lived and I never had come into the Garden. Right?”
We all nodded.
“But there are many timelines, more than likely millions, where I didn’t go back, where Stout didn’t open this bar, and so on and so on. Those versions of Stout were just from different timelines, all close, but yet different, where you are trying the same thing, whatever that may be, at some point in the future.”
I could see where he was going. “So by talking and telling him what he was doing, I locked him and me together in this timeline, blocking out the others.”
“At least the first nine,” David said. “But this could be going on in millions of timelines in different ways right now. You just stopped the timelines from crossing into the same event.”
“Richard, you don’t have enough eggnog for that many Stouts,” Carl said.
“This makes my head hurt,” Richard said. “Have I ever said how much that machine worries me?”
“Me too,” I said. “But if I know all of this in the future, what am I trying to do? And how am I getting back here without a song?”
“Seems to me you figured out how the jukebox works,” Richard said and Dave nodded.
“But why would I do that?”
“Because the jukebox was full,” my voice said from beside the jukebox. “It needed to be fixed.”
Three
We all turned to see the dust-covered me standing beside the dark jukebox. I watched as my future self patted the jukebox and said, “In fact, it’s full now. I’ll fix it so you all can have Christmas Eve like normal.”
“Sounds like we didn’t have a normal one in your original timeline,” I said to my older self.
“You got that right. The jukebox didn’t work. It took me three years to track this actual jukebox to where it was made originally as a regular jukebox. Then I followed through old sales records what happened to it to make it into this special jukebox.”
I nodded. I had thought of doing just that a few times, but had never really had a reason.
“Where are you coming from?” Dave asked.
“An old abandoned gold mine called the Trade Dollar above the old ghost town of Silver City, Idaho,” the older me said. “That’s why the dust. It’s hard to get a crystal off a wall without doing damage to it.”
I watched as the older me spread out his arms and sent dust flying in the air. With that he turned and with a key opened the jukebox, lifting the lid and showing the metal box inside that I had never had the courage to open.
As we watched, the older me clicked open the metal box with another key, showing a vast array of long crystals with wires running from the crystals out of the back of the box.
They looked like a mass of growing quartz crystals, only they had a slight rose color about them. And an odd light seemed to come from them, like they were almost alive.
Numbers of the larger crystals were a good half-foot long and thousands of small ones seemed to grow around the big ones, most the size of the tip of a pen.
I just stared, unable to speak.
“Wow,” Richard said.
The older me pointed at the mass of crystals. “Each one is a different timeline created by the jukebox travelers. The machine was never meant to last this long and let this many timelines grow in it.”
“How do you know that?” I asked my older self.
“I have talked to the guy and his wife who built all this. He’s a twenty-something who lives a few miles from here, actually. His name is Duster Kindal and his wife’s name is Bonnie. Wonderful people. His family owns the mine. He built the jukebox on one of his trips into the past, thought it might be kind of fun to attach songs to time travel. You ought to hear some of their stories. They have both actually lived hundreds and hundreds of years. Not kidding.”
“Does he know the jukebox is here?” Dave asked over my shoulder.
“He has always known where it was,” my older self said, smiling like a ghost, the white dust covering his face making me look just weird. “He likes how we’ve been treating it and being careful using it, so he’s helping me fix it. He didn’t realize it had broke.”
My old self pulled out a smaller crystal from his pocket and placed it carefully beside the jukebox, then as we watched, my older self unhooked the large mass of crystals and pulled the entire thing from the jukebox, placing it gently on the floor.
I stared at the mass of crystals, knowing that somehow in there was my entire life, and everyone who had known about the jukebox at the Garden, and all the lives we had changed.
My older self carefully installed the small crystal, then closed the interior box and locked it, then closed the jukebox.
Then he patted it and said, “Now you can have a normal Christmas Eve celebration.”
“Wait!” I said as the older me started to pick up the mass of crystals. “We’re not going to remember any of this, are we? Since you are changing this time line.”
“Not a bit of it,” the older me said, smiling. “You know, by me doing this I am creating a different timeline for you, one where the jukebox will work on Christmas Eve.”
“And you’ll still have your memories of the jukebox not working?” Dave asked.
“Exactly,” the older me said. “That’s my timeline. Have a great time, so to speak.”
I had to remember this.
I had to.
I wanted to see that gold mine, I wanted to talk to the man who built the jukebox. I couldn’t let these memories vanish.
I just couldn’t.
My older self picked up the mass of crystals from the floor as I jumped toward the jukebox.
I got my hands on the edge of the jukebox as he stood upright. He smiled at me and shrugged. “Just might work.”
Then he vanished.
Four
A wave of energy, like a heat mirage, seemed to shift over the Garden Lounge. I knew that feeling well. It happened any time someone went back through the jukebox and changed the past and changed the timeline.
I stood there, both hands pressed as hard as I could against the glass of the old jukebox, letting the wave pass.
And when it did I could still remember everything that happened.
I knew where the mine was and everything.
Looks like Jenny and I had a trip to make up to an old Idaho ghost town next summer.
“What are you doing, Stout?” Richard asked from his position behind the bar.
Dave and Carl were also looking at me with puzzled looks.
Then Dave said, “You’re touching the jukebox. Something happened, didn’t it? That we don’t remember.”
“I hate it when that happens,” Carl said.
I carefully took my hands off the unplugged machine, then smiled. “Yeah, we just had a visit from a jukebox mechanic. The old baby had to be tuned up for the Christmas Eve celebration.”
All three men just stared at me like I had lost a bolt.
“So who was this imaginary mechanic,” Richard asked. “And how much do I owe him?”
I sat back down on the stool and smiled up at my friend. “It was me,” I said. “A future me. You owe me another eggnog and we’ll call it even. And I promise I’ll tell you all what just happened as soon as Jenny gets here.”
“Sometimes that machine just scares hell out of me,” Richard said, going for the eggnog.
“You met yourself?” Carl asked, shaking his head. “Now that would creep me out.”
“Actually,” I said, “he was a nice guy.”
All three of my friends just groaned.
Behind us the front door to the Garden Lounge opened and I turned around to see a young couple enter. The man was wearing a long leather
coat that swirled around his cowboy boots. A brown cowboy hat was tucked over his eyes, but he quickly pulled the hat off. The woman had on a long coat that looked like it was from the turn of the 19th century in fashion and high black boots. Both had long brown hair and both were very, very attractive people.
“We have new friends,” I said, smiling at Richard, who looked puzzled.
“Who are they?” Dave asked.
“The inventors of the jukebox,” I said.
Then I stood and headed toward them, sticking out my hand. “Duster and Bonnie Kendal I presume.”
The young guy shook my hand, a huge smile filling his face.
“You look a lot younger not covered in dust,” he said.
Bonnie also smiled as she shook my hand. “You are just amazing, you know that? I hope Jenny’s on the way.”
“Any time now,” I said.
Duster shook his head. “I’ll be damned, you told me it might have worked and you would remember yourself being here and I didn’t believe you. Only reason we know as well was because we were touching our machine on our side. The one that doesn’t require music.”
I laughed. “I would love to see it. But that’s an amazing jukebox you built here.”
Then I turned and indicated that they should join us at the bar. “We’ve got some stories to tell you about your wonderful invention and how it has saved lives.”
“And since you teased us with a few of those stories three years from now,” Bonnie said, “we’re dying to hear them.”
Richard, Dave, and Carl all sat staring and listening.
Finally Richard said simply, “Does this stuff give anyone else a headache?”
Everyone laughed and I knew this first Christmas not owning the Garden Lounge was going to be as wonderful as any in the past.
About the Author
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.
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