A feeling of sadness filled him at the same time as a lightness, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Thanks, Stout,” he said out loud as the last faint chords of the song died and took his future memories with it.
CHAPTER FOUR
December 24th, 2015
Boise, Idaho
AS THE LAST few notes of the Bing Crosby song faded into the carpet and booths of the Garden Lounge, the air shimmered as if a heat wave had passed though the room.
None of the plants moved.
And Stout felt no heat.
But he knew what it meant.
He glanced around the room. Fred was sitting where Carl had sat, and the planter that Carl had built under the east window was gone, replaced with two chairs.
Carl wasn’t coming back, that much was clear.
During the song, Stout had calmed the other three men down, explained that Carl had gone back into a memory. Then, on the excuse of Carl needing a drink when he returned, Stout took Carl’s glass and moved over to the jukebox.
Stout had stood there with one hand on the cool chrome of the jukebox for the last half of the song.
He glanced down at the glass with Carl’s name in his hand. So it had worked. Anything anyone held if they touched the jukebox stayed in this timeline after the switch. Good.
And because Stout was touching the jukebox, he still remembered Carl. Carl had changed something in his past and his new future no longer brought him to the Garden Lounge.
Stout hoped it was a good new future for him.
Stout studied the jukebox to see if anything had changed. Damned if he knew how it worked. He had just taken it from storage in his old bar and fixed it, put a favorite record in, and the next thing he knew he had found himself facing his old girlfriend, Jenny, in his young body.
Scared him so bad all he did was sit there and stare at her. He had wanted to be with her more than anything else, but he had not had the courage or the desire to ask her to stay with him. On their third year of being together, she had gone back to college while he stayed in their hometown to work. That semester she had met someone else, and by Christmas she was married to that other someone.
The song Stout had played on the jukebox had been their song. It had been playing the afternoon he had had a chance to stop her leaving. And that was where the jukebox took him and left him for the entire length of the song.
The next day he played the song again and the same thing happened again. He did nothing but sit and stare at her.
He didn’t play another song on the jukebox until he had all the possibilities figured out, including what would happen if he had changed something, as Carl obviously had done.
“What the hell are you doing over there?” David asked, twisting his custom drinking glass in his good hand.
“Yeah,” Jess said. “You going to tell us what we’re supposed to do with these quarters?” He flipped it, caught it and turned it over on the bar. “Heads.”
“Play a song,” Stout said.
None of them remembered Carl or Stout’s explanation of where he had gone or anything Carl had done, which included playing the last song. Carl had never existed for them because they had not been touching the jukebox.
Stout moved back around the bar, dumped the remainder of Carl’s drink out and set the glass carefully on the back bar.
“Who’s Carl?” David asked.
“Just another friend I wanted to give a glass to.”
“So how come you want us to play a song?” Jess asked.
Stout took a long drink of his eggnog and let the richness coat his dry throat. He was going to miss Carl. Stout just hoped Carl was happy. Maybe sometime over the next few days Stout would look up Carl’s name in the phone book. Maybe Carl had stayed around town. He would never remember the Garden, but it would be nice to see him again and see how things ended up for him.
“You all right?” David asked.
All three men were staring.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking about how songs are like time machines. When you hear one it takes you back to some special moment when the song was playing.”
Stout pointed at the little boxes and the quarters. “Those are for your memory trips. Fred. Why don’t you try it? But you’ve got to follow my rules.”
“More damn rules, huh?” Fred said. “Can I at least get off my bar stool or do I have to toss the quarter at the machine from here?”
Stout tried to laugh but it came out so poorly that David again looked at him with a questioning look.
“Go pick out a Christmas song that reminds you of something in your past. Then after you’ve selected it, stand beside the machine and tell us the memory.”
Fred picked up the quarter from the bar and swung around. “I think I can handle that.”
“I’ll bet that’s not what your ex-wife would say,” Jess said.
Everyone laughed, and that started the nightly joking about Fred’s ex-wife. She was well known to the group because it seemed at times that was all Fred could talk about. Her name was Alice and she and Fred had gotten married young, had one child, and gotten divorced in an ugly fashion about ten years before.
Fred was tall and thin, with about twenty pounds of extra weight around his stomach. He used to have bright red hair that was now sun-bleached because he worked for the city streets department. He said that almost a quarter of his salary every month went to paying child support, even though his ex-wife very seldom let him see his daughter. He claimed he loved his daughter, and one Saturday had brought her in for everyone to meet. Sandy had bright red hair like her father.
“Got one,” Fred said as he dropped the quarter into the slot and quickly punched two buttons.
“So what’s the memory?” Stout asked.
Stout’s stomach felt weak. Was he going to lose Fred, too? Maybe he shouldn’t warn Fred that he only had the time of the song, that if he wanted to change anything, he would have to do it fast.
“The first time I got laid,” Fred said, smiling. “The night Sandy came to be.”
Stout choked. God, what was he doing to his friends? What kind of presents were these?
“Stout,” David said. “You all right? You’re as pale as a ghost.”
Stout nodded and looked up at Fred. “You only have the time of the song. Remember that. Just over two minutes.”
Jess laughed. “More than enough time for Fred to get laid, from what I hear.”
Fred had taken a step toward Jess when the Gene Autry song started and Fred vanished from the bar.
CHAPTER FIVE
About five years later…
June 9th, 2020
Central Wilderness Area, Idaho
TALIA FELT STUNNED at her reaction to Dr. Ryan Saddler. She had been excited at the prospect of working with him. She had read some of his papers and admired how he came at mathematics, but she never imagined him to be handsome as well.
She had no idea what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t dark brown eyes, a square jaw, and shoulders that looked like he worked out more than he spent hunched over a computer.
And his handshake had damn near made her knees shake. How was that even possible? She had had her share of boyfriends over the years, but all of them didn’t much like her focus on math and her job at the university. Now suddenly she found herself not only sitting with two of the greatest minds in mathematics, but a handsome man almost as smart as they were.
This was all going to be a dream and she would wake up from it at any moment.
She took a deep breath of the crisp air and let the freshness of it calm her.
“Amazing view, isn’t it?” Duster asked.
Talia made herself focus on the mountains and valleys that stretched for miles under the magnificent lodge deck. The valleys were being filled with blackness as the sun set, but the tops of the peaks, many with snow on them, were being colored shades of reds and pinks.
“Stunning,” she sai
d. “Just stunning.”
“I’ll second that,” Ryan said softly.
She smiled at Duster who had his cowboy hat tipped back and his coat draped behind him. He was just staring out at the view as if he hadn’t seen it before.
He and Bonnie were amazing people. They seemed totally in control and enjoying life and each other. She had really treasured her time with Bonnie so far. Talia had a hunch that she would find she liked Duster as well.
Then Talia glanced at Ryan, who was also looking out over the view, his hand holding a Diet Coke can.
Talia could feel her breath catch. He looked better in profile than he did directly on, if that was possible. Nobody was that good-looking.
Ryan Saddler was. Damn.
Just damn.
Finally Duster pointed down the valley. “We might as well get started explaining some of this.”
Talia noticed that Bonnie nodded and Ryan came back into his eyes and focused on Duster.
“The valley below us is called the Monumental Valley,” Duster said. “About five miles down that valley from here is a small lake. That lake is what is left of a larger lake that covered a mining town called Roosevelt in 1909.”
“What happened?” Ryan asked.
“Mud slide,” Bonnie said. “No one died and there are a few pictures taken of the town as it slowly submerged over three days.”
“There’s a big display back in the main dining room off to the right of the front desk,” Duster said. “You can read more about it in the morning.”
Talia nodded. She planned on doing just that. Wisconsin had its share of old towns and a ton of history, but not like western history and entire towns being submerged.
“Roosevelt was a pretty amazing mining town,” Duster said. “Almost ten thousand people during the boom summers lived in the valley below us.”
“Wow,” Talia said, trying to imagine ten thousand people all crammed into a narrow valley.
“It was a very noisy place,” Bonnie said, smiling. “Alive in all ways.”
“The pianos helped,” Duster said, smiling. “You see, for the longest time, there were no real wagon roads into that valley, so everything in that town had to be brought in over three trails, one of which went right where the road is now on this summit.”
“They took in pianos on horseback?” Ryan asked a half second before Talia could.
She smiled at him and he smiled back.
“Took them apart, hauled them in, put them back together again,” Duster said. “At one point there were supposed to have been fourteen pianos in that valley.”
“Only ten were ever accounted for,” Bonnie said. “But they were all in the saloons and the doors in the summer were always open.”
“Ten pianos in a very narrow valley can make a lot of noise,” Duster said, shaking his head.
Talia stared at him. He was talking as if he had actually heard the pianos.
“The legend is,” Bonnie said, “that if you stand near the lake, you can still hear the pianos playing on a calm summer evening.”
“An awful lot of people have reported hearing them,” Duster said, shaking his head. “And that’s what we want to hire you two for.”
Ryan sat back, shaking his head.
Talia just felt confused. She had been working on the mathematics of music, but what that had to do with an old legend was beyond her.
“We believe,” Bonnie said, looking first at Talia, then Ryan, “that mathematics can answer the question as to why that music is still being heard through time.”
“You believe the legend?” Ryan asked, looking shocked at Bonnie.
She nodded.
Duster nodded.
“We have heard it many, many times, actually,” Duster said. “Damn creepy if you ask me, but I believe in mathematics and I want to know the reason that music has the power to cut through time. What is it about music and the waves of music sound that have that power?”
Talia glanced at Ryan. He was clearly deep in thought.
She felt confused. She had no idea why Bonnie and Duster would bring her all the way from Wisconsin to this mountaintop for such a crazy idea. There had to be more about it.
“I have read most of your works on time, energy, and space,” Ryan said to Bonnie and Duster after a moment.
“And your last paper,” Duster said to Ryan, “on the nature of waves through time was what brought us to thinking about the possibility that this legend of the pianos might be solved with mathematics.”
Ryan nodded.
Talia was stunned. He was clearly taking them seriously.
Very seriously.
Bonnie turned to face Talia directly. “Your knowledge of the mathematics of sound combined with Ryan’s ability to work the mathematics of waves through time might be able to solve this riddle.”
The intense silence of the mountains smashed in on the four of them. Talia could almost feel the pressure of that silence, as if it had a real weight.
Finally Duster said, “Well, it’s been a long day of travel. Let’s meet for breakfast out here at eight and then head down to the lake.”
“We’re going to the site of an old ghost town?” Talia asked, her stomach twisting.
“It’s actually pretty amazing,” Bonnie said, smiling at her as all four of them stood. “Get some sleep and we can talk about all this tomorrow.”
“Sounds good,” Ryan said. “But I have two more questions for you.”
“Go ahead,” Duster said.
“We both signed do-not-disclose papers,” Ryan said. “But you are going to pay all the bills and allow us to publish our own findings. Is that correct?”
“It is,” Duster said.
“So,” Ryan said. “Are you going to show us the nexus?”
Talia had no idea at all what Ryan was talking about, but it froze both Bonnie and Duster like marble statues. Talia had never seen two humans assume such perfect poker faces before.
But by that very reaction, Talia had no doubt that Ryan had hit on something.
Finally Duster laughed. “Eventually, we’ll do one better.”
With that Bonnie and Duster headed off, arm-in-arm toward the stairs, leaving her on a beautiful summer night alone on a deck in the mountains with the most handsome man she had seen in years.
And more confused than a teenage girl on a first date.
“Nexus?” she asked Ryan.
His face was beaming, just beaming, as if he had just won the most amazing prize ever given to anyone.
He indicated she should sit back down and he sat down across from her, his dark eyes filled with joy and excitement.
“You know who those two people are, right?” he asked.
“Two of the greatest mathematicians to ever live,” she said. “I wouldn’t come this far for just anyone.”
“I have studied and read every paper they have ever done on the theories of space and time and matter,” Ryan said. “I have done two recent papers taking a little side sliver of their work and expanding it.”
“Music?” she asked.
“Waves,” he said. “But the key is that Bonnie and Duster have proven mathematically that all matter, all energy, and all time are tied together.”
She knew that, so she just nodded.
“But they also theorize that space and time and matter all have a physical location where it all ties together. They called it the Nexus.”
“You think it actually exists?” Talia asked, sitting back.
“I know it does,” Ryan said. “Mathematically, it has to. But now I know, from their reactions, that they have found it.”
“Oh, shit,” Talia said.
“Oh, shit is very right,” Ryan said.
CHAPTER SIX
December 24th, 1997
Boise, Idaho
THE SNOW BLEW hard against Fred’s face as he dodged across the rush of pedestrians on the busy sidewalk and in the front door of Abraham’s Drug Store. The bell over the door jingled as he entered.
The store smelled clean, with a faint background of medicine. The tile floor looked slick from polish.
Old man Abraham was behind the druggist’s counter in his white smock. Judy, the clerk, was at the cash register waiting on a heavyset man who was buying cough syrup. In the background the song, “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer” played.
That was the same song he had punched up a moment before on the Garden Lounge jukebox. How the hell had Stout done this?
What was going on?
Fred glanced down at himself. He was young, dressed in his high school clothes. How could that be? Only a moment before, he had been in the Garden Lounge, drinking, eighteen years in the future. This was some practical joke. He’d get Jess for this.
And Stout.
He was about to turn and head back into the storm when the younger memories that were mixed with the older ones reminded him of why he was here. He had come to the drugstore to buy a rubber. A condom.
He was on his way to Alice’s house. Her parents were at a Christmas party and would be gone for a long time.
He and Alice would start out on the couch watching television and work their way naked to the floor. It would be their first time and because he had chickened out and not bought the rubber on the way to her house, she had gotten pregnant and they had gotten married right out of high school. Sandy had followed three months later.
He grabbed hold of the doorframe, then touched a bottle of hair oil on a nearby shelf. Everything felt real. Damned if he knew what was going on.
He turned back to face old man Abrahams who was now watching him. It was no wonder he had chickened out the first time. He had bought condoms hundreds of times in the last twenty years, but right now he felt afraid. But what the hell could the old man do to him?
Fred shook his head. He didn’t want to think about that.
He took a deep breath and moved up to the counter.
“Can I help you?” Abrahams said, staring down from his high perch. The guy looked like a cross between God and his dad.
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