by Dan Alatorre
Roger lowered his voice. “Barry, you had no right.”
“I did what I did.” Barry rubbed his cheek. “I was right. We never would have gotten anywhere without Findlay. You know that.” He glanced around. “But… I should have told you.”
I leaned forward to catch his eye. “No, you should have asked us.”
He nodded. “Okay. I should have asked. I got excited. It won’t happen again.” His eyes went to Melissa. “And I’m sorry about… my comment. It was rude. And stupid.”
Melissa heaved a heavy sigh, righting herself. “Okay. We’re decided. From now on, it’s a group decision on everything. We vote before we do anything.” She came into the living room and held out her hand to Barry. “Agreed?”
He took it and she helped him up. “Agreed.”
“Agreed,” I said. Time to reset the course and focus on the priorities.
“Fine.” Roger paced around the living room. “But you’re all forgetting something. We’re allowed to take rocks from the mine. Bones. Little crap like that. A machine like this is definitely out of bounds. The university will lay claim to it.”
“Plus, anything over a certain size or value, the state gets first claim on.” I sighed. “Not the school.”
“Or the university grabs all the good stuff first and it mysteriously disappears.” Roger resumed his pacing. “The rumor was that Dr. Anderson used to back door any significant finds to the bigger state universities. Now he's the Dean of the whole department." He glanced at Barry. "Remember freshman year? Lance Montague found that big mastodon skull down in New River and it practically never saw the light of day. Fucking Anderson swooped in and made some kind of a big thing out of it, and the next thing you know, it's off to a major corporation.” He looked around at us. “The paleontology department damn sure didn’t get any credit.”
“Which is why we have to keep it secret.” Barry sat back down on the edge of his desk. “We study it, check it all out, and then go public once we know everything there is to know. Then they can’t take it away from us. And there’ll be too much publicity to cut us out.”
Roger folded his arms. “Boy, you have it all figured out, don’t you Barry?”
“I don’t have anything figured out. I’m figuring it out right now, with you guys.”
“Except for calling Findlay in.” Roger leaned back on the window sill.
“Oh, will you let it drop!” Melissa shouted. “Findlay was a good call. He’s an asshole, but he’s a smart asshole. In fact, I can’t believe he went to class instead of staying here with you and working on it now. What gives?”
Barry smirked. “He would have stayed, but he’s administering an exam to a bunch of undergrads. Couldn’t get out of it no matter how hard he tried, the poor schmuck.”
“You played him.” Roger shook his head. “You brought him in when he’d have just enough time to help you, but without enough time to figure things all the way out. You baited the hook and played him, just like you’re playing all of us now.”
“Who’s playing you?” Barry got up. “Come on!”
Roger narrowed his eyes. “You kept the machine here, away from us. You studied it all night, and then you got Findlay involved. So are you guys partners now?”
Melissa stepped in. “You didn’t, did you Barry? You’re smarter than that, right?”
He looked away.
“Oh my God.” Roger jumped up. “You did partner with him! What did you promise him?”
The room fell silent as we waited for an answer. Barry dropped his gaze to the floor. Wincing like it hurt to get the word out, he gave his reply. “Half.”
“Half!” A vein on Roger’s forehead made itself visible. “Half of what?”
“Half of the technology rights.” Barry rubbed his neck. “Whether we can make it work or not.”
“Half! And the rest of us share the other half?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, you asshole!” Roger was steaming. He pounded his chest with his finger. “You had no right to give my share of anything.”
“Yes, I did,” Barry said. His voice was now more even, less emotional. “It was my find. My dig site. Hell, I’m the only reason any of us were even there!”
Melissa’s cell phone rang in her pocket. She checked it. “Shit, it’s Dean Anderson.”
“So what? He calls me sometimes for updates and stuff.” Barry shrugged. “Answer it.”
“Wait.” Roger eyed her. “He doesn’t call for no reason. What could he want?”
It rang again.
I was worried. “From what Roger said, if he finds out about the machine, it’s game over.” I glanced at Melissa. “We’ll never see it again. We’re finished before we even begin.”
Melissa held the phone with both hands as it rung a third time. “What do I do?”
“See what he wants,” Barry said, going to her. “But don’t tell him anything.”
Roger joined the huddle. “Try to sound relaxed.”
Melissa took a deep breath and pressed a button on her phone. “Good morning, Dr. Anderson.” She held the phone away from her ear and pressed the speaker button.
“Melissa, I’m glad I caught you. Just heard the good news about your dad. It’s all over the radio. We’re all pulling for him, the whole university staff.”
“Yes, sir. He knows it, and he appreciates it, too—your support.”
Noise permeated his words, like he called from a car. “Good, good. Well, anyway, I just got off the phone with an administrator from Shands hospital in Gainesville. Seems they got a radio distress call from your crew yesterday. Something about an accident?”
Barry nodded and gave a thumbs up, mouthing the words “Say ‘yes.’”
“Uh, that’s right, sir,” Melissa said. “We did radio Shands from the mine site yesterday.”
Roger put a hand to his forehead. Like calling 911, after he radioed Shands hospital about a possible drowning accident and then never showed up, Shands followed up to see what happened.
“I see.” Dean Anderson’s voice crackled over the cell phone. “Is everything okay? Nobody hurt, I hope.”
She looked at Barry, who shook his head.
“No. Nobody hurt.”
Anderson sounded like he was getting a little agitated. “Would it be asking too much for you to tell me what happened?”
“Not at all, sir. It was really nothing. Riff slipped on a hillside and went into the water, the retention pond. Roger called it in as a precaution.”
“Precaution! Seems a little extreme, doesn’t it? For a slip and fall?”
“Well, yes, in hindsight.” Melissa appeared to be getting her balance. “But with the safety protocols and all, we thought it best to call it in. And you know Roger.”
“Yes, I see…”
It was a good bluff. Since we ultimately checked Riff into University Community Hospital by the campus, it would seem to add up.
“Riff said he felt fine, but after we were halfway home, we could see he’d gotten pretty bruised up, so we took him to University Community. They admitted him.”
“Really?”
“Oh, for observation, they said. The doctor thinks Riff is probably fine. Just a little banged up, that’s all, and they want to be safe.”
“Okay.” Anderson cleared his throat. “Well, as you know there is some paperwork we need to fill out for that sort of thing…”
She nodded. “Oh, yes sir. In fact, I’m on my way over to see you. I wanted to get you up to speed and fill out the report.”
“Don’t rush. I did an overnight fundraising junket in Tallahassee and I’m still on my way back. Just be sure to get the reports filed in a day or so. And make sure to check in on Mr. Fellings.”
“I will.” Melissa hung up and exhaled, rubbing her forehead. “I think he bought it.”
Barry raised his eyebrows. “Well played, madam. Maybe there are two politicians in your family.”
Melissa bowed. “I was raised by a lawyer,
so I know how to lie. Anyway, that solves one problem. Dean Anderson’s out of town for a while.”
“So he can’t swoop in and take the machine,” I said. “For a while, anyway. That’s good.”
Roger leaned forward and peered at me. “He can’t swoop in at all if he doesn’t know about it.”
“Right, right.” I nodded. “Sounds like everything’s all set. Except…”
Scowling, Roger glared at Barry again. “Except for that fucking wild card, Findlay.”
“Well,” Barry checked the clock on the wall. “That fucking wild card should be here any minute.”
Chapter Eight
“What would you do if you could go back in time, to any place, any era? Where would you go? Who would you see?”
Tempers had run hot. I put my question out there, then got up and put a pot on the stove for tea. It would give us some time to cool down while we waited for Findlay. And we needed to cool down.
They had all taken various seats around the machine.
“A time machine.” Melissa gazed up at the ceiling. “It’s so crazy.”
Barry leaned forward. “Why?”
“Well, prior to yesterday, did you even think time travel was possible?”
“Of course it's possible,” said Roger. “How do you think Bill Gates knew to create Microsoft?”
“I think we have to be careful.” Barry rubbed his chin. “If you go back in time and cause an interruption of what we know happened, like if you were to kill someone like Napoleon or Hitler, you set in motion a chain of events that causes unpredictability.” He glanced at Roger. “You know? Like if you went back in time and accidentally killed your own grandfather before the birth of your father, then you would never have been born.”
Roger smiled. “Okay, so we don't kill our grandfathers. I think we can all agree on that.”
“You're missing the point.” Barry stood. “Killing somebody would be a large event. But the ripple effect might be the same for minor events.”
Melissa propped herself up on one elbow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, we can't interact at all.” Barry walked around the couch, appearing lost in thought. “We need to be observers. Just because you don't think you changed the outcome of a situation, you can't say for sure. You won't know what turns out to be a major issue later.” He chuckled. “If the gun misfires on the guy who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, you don't get World War I, and therefore you don't get World War II.”
Roger leaned back into the couch. “Maybe you get something much worse. The Nazis might have had time to invent the nuclear bomb before they started their conquest of Europe.”
“Right.” Barry nodded. “Things end up much worse. A world of slavery under Nazi rule.”
I sighed. “You guys are always so cheery in the morning.”
“So,” Barry turned back to the group, “no interaction. Observation only.”
“I'd still like to kill Hitler,” Roger said.
Barry shifted course. “Okay, but you can't. I'm not having my grandfather not meet my grandmother and me not exist all because you have hero issues. I have a date Friday. You're not messing that up.”
A chuckle went up from the group.
“It's complicated.” Melissa played with her hair, brushing the ends over her lips and chin. “I mean, your big date aside of course, why do we have to assume things would turn out badly?”
I threw in my two cents. “It could be like a faulty loop formula on a computer.”
“Maybe,” Barry nodded. “Only time probably won't just freeze things up until we figure out the correct formula inputs. Instead, we just get a wacky outcome later, something that none of us could have predicted.”
Roger folded his arms. “It could be benign.”
“Or it could be tragic.”
“I gotta tell you, that seems a little dramatic, Barry.” Roger stretched his large frame before going into the kitchen. “Why does everything have to turn to crap just because we make a simple mistake like bumping into our mother?”
“Or accidentally bumping off our own grandfather?” I didn’t want tempers flaring back up.
Barry looked at Roger. “It doesn't. It might be completely benign and safe." He rubbed his chin again. "But, since we can't predict that with any certainty, it makes more sense to proceed with caution and not interact.”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” Roger opened the fridge and pulled out a soda. “The bastard Hitler gets to live.”
“And Barry gets his big date on Friday,” I said. “Everybody’s happy.”
An air of unresolved questions hung in the air. “So, what would you do?” I moved back to the living room and observed my teammates as they stared at the large metal oval.
“What do you mean?” Melissa sat up and tucked a leg under herself.
I shrugged. “Money, right? With a time machine you could go back in time and buy a bunch of stocks and bonds. Ones that you know would do well. You could make millions.”
“I don’t know…” Melissa took a deep breath. “If this thing can do what Barry thinks it can do, it could be really important." She glanced around at the rest of us. "What about doing something significant with it? Something that might be meaningful to the whole world, like witnessing the birth of Christ? The beginning of a religion…”
“That’s not bad.” Roger moved to a chair. “For Christianity, you’d have to go at the end, though, you know? At the crucifixion. To see the religion begin.”
Melissa spoke quietly, apparently taken by what she’d just said. “You could meet Jesus. Ask Him why God let something terrible happen...”
“The main element of Christian religions is the resurrection of Christ a couple of days after the crucifixion.” Barry paced around the room. “The crucifixion is mostly just how they killed him.”
Melissa pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, coming back to the larger conversation. “I don’t think I’d want to see anything so brutal.”
“That’s for sure.” Barry circled the machine. “The Romans, they didn’t mess around. That’s some ugly stuff, the way they treated people. But it might be the only way to know. That, or one of the miracles.”
“Caesar.” Roger took a sip of his soda. He leaned against the counter and eyed the machine. “What about the death of Julius Caesar? That was pretty historically significant.”
“You could go play detective and see who really killed him,” I said.
Roger chuckled. “Although, that was a pretty brutal ending, too.”
“What about the start of time?” Barry squatted in front of the machine and glanced up at us. “Go back to day one, minute one, second one.”
“What would the date of that be?” Roger asked. “Zero, zero, zero?”
“Although, you'd have to be quick." Barry chuckled as he ran his fingers along the bronze frame. "Or kaboom - you'd be a zero zero zero." He grinned, not taking his eyes off the machine. "There’s something to be said for Tomàs’ idea. Figure out the best stocks, buy them, and make some money. But we can’t interact.”
Roger took another gulp of his soda. “Well... you get some money, go back and buy a bunch of cheap stocks that you know become valuable, come back and sell them for a pile of cash, and then go back and do it all over again. It wouldn’t take more than a couple of trips to be rolling in it.”
“Where would you,” Barry peered up at him, “get the money for the original investment?”
Roger shrugged. “Dude, to make millions? I’d sell everything I own.”
“It’s gonna take more than a couple of trips to get rich, then.” Barry chuckled. “If you sell everything you own, you’ll only be going back in time with, like, thirty bucks.”
We all laughed, even Roger. It was a good sign. Tempers had cooled.
“Okay, so maybe I’d have to make a few more trips than you, Barry. That’s fine. I’ll make a trip a day for a month, okay? Even if I only start with thirty bucks, if I double it every trip, within three w
eeks I’d be a millionaire.”
Barry sighed. “I guess you would at that. Seems kind of easy.” He knocked a few remaining pieces of dried mud off the machine. "I wonder how many trips you can take before it runs out of gas?"
“Easy? I don’t think so,” I said. “You have to take some currency that they used back then. You can’t show up in 1929 with dollar bills from now!”
“Yeah, good point.” Barry glanced at Roger. “Damned counterfeiter.”
Roger shrugged. “Guess I’ll be investing in gold, then. Like one of those guys on TV.”
“Gold bullion.” Barry sat back down at his desk. “Can’t use gold coins that are stamped with a modern year, either.”
“Well, whatever they said on them, gold is gold. It could have Mickey Mouse on it or the playmate of the month, anybody who knows it’s real gold would take it, hands down.”
“It’s tricky.” I went back to check the teapot. “There’s a lot to think about.”
“What about you, Peeky?” Melissa asked. “Where would you go?”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“Oh, come on.” She twisted around to face me and put her arm over the back of the couch, resting her chin on it. Her big eyes looked up at me. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. It’s almost all I’ve thought about since Barry told us what it was.”
Sliding my hands into my pockets, I emerged from the kitchen to lean against one of the bar stools. I studied the floor for a moment. “I think it might be nice to go back in time, and...” I was surprised at how hard the words were to say out loud. “If my four-year-old daughter could meet her grandmother, back when she was alive. Back when she was young and healthy and full of life. Before the illnesses started dragging her down...” With each word, my voice became more strained. I glanced around at the others, reading their faces. All eyes were glued on me. “I have a picture of her on the boardwalk at the seaside. Back home, you know? It would be nice to see her like that again, so young and beautiful…” I swallowed hard. “That would be nice. I’d like my daughter to have met her then. To have had the chance to know her.”
