by S. E. Babin
“You must do well on this test. Do you understand me?”
My brows furrowed. I leaned in to her, my voice pitched in a whisper so the men would not hear me. “But you told me never to get all the questions right.”
She smiled, an emotion I couldn’t place fluttering over her face. “I know. But now I’m telling you that you can. Just this once.” She pulled my thin frame into a quick hug. “Just this once,” she said again. My mother pushed me away from her and led me to our kitchen table. A thick sheaf of bound papers lay on top, along with several sharpened pencils and a small timer.
Anticipation quickened my breath as I sat in the seat she pulled out for me.
Finally, I thought as I picked up the pencil. I can free myself just this once. A wide grin split my face as my mother slid the sheath of papers over to me and I opened it to the first page.
Chapter 2
Heaven was full of clocks and weird machinery. The synchronized ticking forced my eyes open. I lay sprawled on the floor, not dead, although my splitting headache made me wish I were. My father stood over me, those bug-eyed glasses on his face, giving him a perpetually surprised look.
“Ah, nice to see you awake so soon. Time travel can be difficult for the uninitiated.”
He offered me a lean hand, and I accepted it. Once I was up and got over the urge to hurl, I stared at him. “Time travel?” I sighed. Something definitely weird had happened, but my rational brain was blaming chloroform and familial mental illness. I blinked and tried to orient myself, but the sound of the clocks ticking was enough to make me want to spoon my brains out to get it to stop. I looked around the room. Clocks, clocks everywhere. All shapes and sizes – small watches, cuckoo clocks, stop watches, pocket watches, all hanging and sitting on every available surface. It was disconcerting – like I’d just stepped into Wonderland and I was the only one surprised. I looked at my father, noticing his distinct lack of surprise. He knew where we were and judging from the last hour or so this weird ass room belonged to him. The clocks ticked on the same motion, the noise deafening, and slightly…hypnotic. My father, or so he claimed to be, was a strange, curious man.
My mother was notably absent. I raised one of my eyebrows. He waved an uncaring hand at me. “She’s still sitting at the kitchen table probably cursing my family line.”
I snorted. “Where am I?” Although the room was filled with clocks, it also had a sort of charm to it. Burnished wood peeked out from places fortunate enough to have escaped a clock. The ceiling was the color of rubbed mahogany and matched the floor beneath us. I looked behind me, curiosity winning out for now and caught my breath. A large machine, out of place with the clocks, stood in the center of the room. It was close to six foot high, about twelve feet wide and was the color of sleek silver. One panel with flashing blue eyes winked on the otherwise smooth surface. It looked like a UFO, but my father didn’t bat an eye when I turned my curious gaze to him. He simply shrugged.
“It’s a work in progress.” He motioned for me to follow him, and I did so but not without shaking my head in disbelief. Where was I? I trailed behind him, looking everywhere and nowhere all at once. The room was the same, filled with clocks, watches and time telling devices, some I could place, others I’d never seen before. The ticking of the clocks seemed to keep in time with the rhythm of my heart, and now that I’d been here for a few minutes I noticed that it no longer bothered me. In fact, it was strangely soothing.
I watched my father’s trench coat swish against his legs as he moved swiftly throughout the room. He stopped in front of a door I failed to see. I ran into his back with an oof and an apology, but my father just shook his head and pressed his hand against a small space next to the door. A panel exposed itself, flashing with red and green lights. He placed his hand against it and breathed into a tube that popped up when he leaned toward it.
It was all very Mission Impossible, yet I was still waiting for someone to jump out behind one of the clocks and scream that I was on Candid Camera. The doors swished open and my father stepped inside a warm, well-worn library. The bookworm inside me sighed with delight. From floor to ceiling, glorious, glorious books. I breathed in the musty smell only a good book could produce and relaxed a little. Insane killers did not own libraries. If they did, I hoped that if I had to die today, I’d die in here surrounded by my word brethren.
He motioned for me to sit, and I did so, plunking my body into a cushy brown leather arm chair. I sat back into it and watched him settle himself behind a large desk cluttered with papers and clock pieces.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to ask. “What’s the deal with the clocks?”
One of his eyebrows rose. “Is that really what you want to ask me?”
I thought about it. About the hundreds of questions I had for him. “Yep.”
The left side of his mouth quirked up. “Time,” he said shortly. “The most precious thing on Earth. The thing we all need more of but don’t have enough of. We never have enough time, we have too much time. We hate time, we love time, we abuse time, we nurture time. Life is time, Penelope. Do you follow?”
My mouth hung open. “Ummmm,” I said.
“Never mind. Look at it like this.” He picked up a stop watch and dangled it by the chain. The gold caught in the honey colored light streaming from a lamp beside him. It winked as if mocking me. “This is merely a device, yes?”
I waited for the metaphorical other shoe to drop and when he stared at me silently, I nodded. “Yes?” It came out more like a question.
He rolled his eyes. “Yes. Sometimes a question is just a question and not a puzzle, dear Penelope.”
Alrighty then. I nodded. “Got it.”
He continued to dangle the watch. “This mere device becomes something completely different when in the hands of a person in a hurry. It becomes both a curse and a blessing. Must not be late, must not be late.” He spun it so the light flung off the golden surface, making the shiny wood walls reflect the warm color like a disco ball. “Or in the hands of a person in the last hours of their life. Most of them watch the clock, watch it tick, tick, tick the moments of their life away.” He stopped the motion of the watch. It lay in his hands, still and silent, like a snake under the spell of its charmer. “A woman awaits her lover, her gaze flicking impatiently to the clock above her. She’s trapped under its power, her heart beating faster with impatience as she watches and waits for the moment the door opens and she can once again find solace in his arms.”
I watched him, breathless. My father was charismatic and brilliant. I now knew what my mother had seen in him all those years ago. I still wasn’t convinced about his mental health though. He set the watch down and clasped his hands in front of him. “Do you understand now?”
I nodded.
“Time is all, Penelope. Time is infinite.” He gestured behind me. “And I have harnessed its power.”
I sat back in my chair and studied him. “Harnessed how?” I asked after a long moment of silence.
He smiled. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”
“Well, Pops, I’m not quite sure where I am so I’m not sure how to answer that.”
He sighed and rummaged through his cluttered desk until he pulled out a newspaper. He handed it to me with an impatient flick of his hand. I took it, curious, but not understanding what he wanted me to do with it.
“Look at the date.”
I straightened the paper out and almost lost my lunch as I read the headline screaming in red at me.
Berlin Wall Falls
My mouth gaped like a fish out of water, and I tried to get my bearings. One thing I loved was history, but one thing that didn’t happen this year was the destruction of the Berlin Wall. I flicked my gaze up to my father who studied me intently. I folded the paper back, set it in my lap and tried to be cool. “This could just be a well preserved newspaper.”
He made a disgusted sound. “Take out your cell phone.”
My brow furrowed.
He made a hurry up gesture. “Take it out.”
I dug in my pocket and pulled out my cell. I held it up to him for his inspection, and I watched as his mouth quirked. “Try to make a call,” he said.
I hit the power button, impatient with him now. Nothing happened. My lips tightened. I pressed it again. The phone made a screeching noise and burst into flame. I screamed and dropped it, watching in horror as my new iPhone made itself a charred puddle of goo.
My father chuckled, and I lifted my eyes to glare at him. “What does that prove?” I felt mulish and wondered if he was going to pay for my mutilated cell.
“It proves that iPhones don’t exist right now, you stubborn child.”
“I am not a child,” I grumbled.
My father merely turned away from me and switched on the radio sitting on the credenza behind him. Fine Young Cannibals screamed out through the speakers. I said nothing, only quirked my lips to the side. I would not admit out loud how much I loved this song.
“Stubborn woman,” my father muttered. He switched the radio, presumably to A.M. by the static pouring out through the speakers. An announcer’s voice trickled through.
“Today history is made as the Berlin Wall falls, finally uniting East and West Germany…”
I sat in stunned silence as Ronald Reagan’s famous speech filters through the speakers. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The voice droned on, but I could no longer hear it due to the storm inside my head. Time travel wasn’t possible. Was it?
My father said nothing. He pushed his glasses up onto the top of his head and merely studied me waiting for a reaction.
“How?” I whispered.
He shook his head. “The logistics do not matter, Penelope. They can be explained later. You and I have much catching up to do. I’ve been apart from you for 24 years. We shall not waste a day on technicalities.”
My mouth slid into an unwilling smile. “You dump a surprise daddy and time travel in my lap, yet you want to bond?”
His eyes shone with approval and something else I couldn’t put my finger on. “Of course. I’ve brought you here for other reasons, but for now we talk.”
He reached under his desk and pushed a button. I tensed but his grin made me relax. “Prudence will be here in just a moment with sandwiches and drinks. For now, I want to know about you. Tell me about your life, Penelope Wilde.”
Chapter 3
I’m sure lots of girls have wonderful stories about their fathers – piggy back rides, tea parties, beach trips, all those normal things fathers do for their little princesses. I always wished for those same things when I was girl. Jealousy always reared its head when I saw daughters being pushed in the swings by handsome, weary fathers. But how was I to know back then that my life wasn’t a simple case of my father abandoning us? I’d entertained myself for years wondering about his fate, if he were still alive, in prison, had another family, was a super-secret government agent, but when it came down to it I eventually admitted to myself that maybe my mother had never wanted to talk about it because maybe my father hadn’t been a very good guy. But sitting here in 1989 staring into the same eyes as mine, I knew my entire life was a lie. I was angry, but more than that I was hurt and disappointed. For my entire life, I thought my father had either abandoned us or died. But it was none of that. Although life with my mother had been mostly simple, mainly due to the restrictions she’d placed upon me, I thought now maybe complications in life are what truly made it worth living.
My father, this man, appeared to be a tangled mass of contradictions and hilarity. He was charming, persuasive, and possibly truly insane. The stories he told me were too fantastical to believe, but how could I not? Janet Jackson, Aerosmith, and Bon Jovi played on the radio the entire time, and Prudence, my father’s maid, happened to serve us wearing a New Kids on the Block t-shirt, ripped jeans and high top tennis shoes.
He regaled me with tales of my mother in days far passed, stories I would have never believed if someone else had told me before today. I was out of place and uncomfortable in my own skin. I was barely out of college, but a grown woman, and yet I couldn’t see myself living this kind of life.
As I sat staring at him, something disturbing occurred to me. “Mr. Holmes, just how old are you?”
His brows drew together. “Mr. Holmes? That won’t do at all. If you don’t want to call me Father, we’ll have to come up with something better than that.”
I noticed he didn’t answer my question. I put my glass of water down and stared. He shifted, the first gesture of discomfort I’d seen from him. “Why do you ask?” he finally said, but still didn’t give me a number.
“Curiosity.” I shrugged. “I notice we are here in the 80’s, but it appears this might be your home. Based upon all the weird clocks and freaky machines out there.”
“I have many homes. This is one of my workshops, yes, but the most important.”
“How old are you?” I asked him again.
He drew a hand across his face. “Penelope – “
“How. Old. Are. You?” I enunciated each word with clenched teeth, my stomach a roiling mess of nerves. Something was way off here. While he was a time traveler, I had a sinking suspicion he wasn’t coming clean about some things, especially once I noticed his avoidance of a simple question. I’d always been able to sniff out a lie, and once I did, digging became second nature to me. Perhaps my father and I had some things in common.
“I’d hoped to ease you into this,” he murmured.
“Think of it like a Band-Aid,” I said, feeling my mouth twist.
He stood and walked in front of the desk. He leaned one hip against it, crossed his arms, and stared at me. “Four hundred years, give a take a decade or two.”
I almost swallowed my tongue. My gaze flew to his, shock all over my face. “Excuse me? You said forty, right?”
He barked out a laugh. “No, daughter of mine. I did not say forty.”
“Impossible,” I breathed.
“According to everyone else, yes, it is quite impossible.” He leaned down closer to me until our noses almost touched. “But my name is Sherlock Holmes, and the impossible does not exist around me.”
My heart sped up. He was screwing with the laws of nature. “How?”
His face shuttered, devoid of any emotion. “A mistake.” My father pushed off the desk, his shoulders tense and jaw clenched. He strode over to the shelves of books behind his desk and stared sightlessly at them. “Mistakes are part of research, but some mistakes can never, ever be rectified.” He exhaled a miserable breath. In spite of myself, there was a stab of empathy inside me for him. Some things were never to be tampered with.
“What happened?” I stood and followed him over. I perched on the side of his desk and watched as his lean fingers caressed the spines of priceless books.
“Immortality happened.” He spun suddenly and pinned me with his gaze.
My mouth opened, and I squeaked out, “Immortality?”
His mouth thinned, but a maelstrom of emotions spun behind his eyes. “Both a blessing and a curse.”
His gaze softened in pity. “It’s one of the reasons I brought you here today. You will be 25 soon, and I’m sorry to say that you will never have another birthday.”
What the fuck? I pushed myself up from the desk. I allowed myself to get too relaxed too soon, and now I was going to die before I was ever born.
Seeing my face, my father’s eyes widened and he burst into laughter. “My heavens, daughter! Your face!”
My brows pulled together. “I won’t have another birthday?” I screeched. “Who says that?”
His laughter stopped, but mirth still danced in his eyes. “Perhaps I should have phrased that better,” he muttered under his breath.
I let out an exasperated breath and released the letter opener I’d scooped up from the desk. He gave it a cursory glance. “That wouldn’t have stopped me,” he said with no hint of ego in his tone.
“You’re ce
rtifiable.”
“Watson tells me that all the time.” He spread his hands out in a placating gesture. “What I meant by that statement is that once your twenty-fifth birthday arrives, you will no longer age.”
I frowned. “That still makes it sound like you plan to murder me.”
He ran his hands up the back of his neck and through his unruly hair, making it stick out even more so than before. I noted with detachment that we had the exact same hair color. “The experimentation on immortality resulted in a permanent DNA change.” He paused and examined my face for any reaction.
Although I kept my face perfectly blank, my heart began to beat out a steady furious rhythm. I had a horrible feeling I knew where he was going with this. “Does Mother know?” I blurted.
A sad smile lit his face. “It’s why your mother left me.”
I thought back to my mother over the years - the times I would catch her sitting in our window seat, a forgotten paperback hooked in between her fingers and the lost, sad expression on her face. I was too young to know it then, but as I watched her silently, I knew her look for what it was – heartbreak. Against my better judgment, I whispered, “Finish the story.”
He turned away from me as if he couldn’t bear the look of pity in my eyes. “It was never supposed to be immortality. It was supposed to be a life extender. No one should live forever. Unless it’s a vampire.”
I stiffened, praying to God he was kidding about the bloodsuckers, but too much of a chicken-shit to ask.
“A good twenty, thirty years of excellent quality of life would have been good enough. I never planned on it working quite so well.” He put both hands against the book shelf and bowed his head. “It worked too well. So well that it was too late to change its effects once I realized what happened.”
My breathing stilled. The only sounds in the library were that of the Phil Collin’s mournful voice singing about his time in paradise. I envied him that because right now I felt like I was on the bottom steps of Hell.
