by Michael Shaw
“A purpose,” I said, using his own word.
He nodded.
“I did have something.” I looked down at the table, and my eyes got lost following the knots in the wood. “Call it what you will. But I’d been holding on to the watch for one reason. I just needed it for one thing.”
Steven put two hands on his coffee mug.
“My goal was to go back in time and save them. You knew my father; you know what happened to my parents. I wanted to go back and stop it.” I rubbed my forehead. “But now, the watch is destroyed.”
Steven’s eyes got to me once more, looking on with care.
“Maybe I had a purpose. But whatever I had, I don’t anymore. There’s no way for me to go back in time, now.”
Steven and I held a long stare at each other. Finally, he chuckled a little and stood up, taking his cup with him.
I watched him, puzzled.
“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Jonathan.” He walked over to the counter and set his mug down.
I blinked. This man invented the pocket watch with my father. “You can make another?”
“I continued working on the invention, even after your father’s passing. It would take some time but… yes, I can help you make a new time machine. But I also have good news and bad news.” He opened the cupboard and took out two plates. “The bad news is that you’ll need to put it together yourself. I have the designs, the blueprints, the material, everything.” He pointed at me. “But I think it will be best if you do the motions yourself. It will help you better understand what you’re holding in your hand when you use it.” He wiggled his fingers around. “Plus, my fine motor skills are not as… refined as they were when I was younger.”
I nodded, almost in disbelief. This man had saved me in more ways than one. After the mission to Luna, everything was hopeless, but now, I had a way to reach the past once more. “It’s a deal,” I said.
“Great.”
“So what’s the good news?” I asked.
“Oh.” He picked up the two plates and turned to face me. “I’m making dinner!”
Chapter 33
After we ate, Steven Edward showed me around some of the house. “We’re in Yuba City,” he said, leading me up to the second floor. “This area’s one of the most rural. I like the open space.”
He opened one of the hall doors; his hand trembled as he did. That was happening quite a bit. His hands seemed to have a shake that persisted almost constantly. He pointed a skinny finger into the room. “Haven’t had much need for a guest room until now. You can sleep in here. And as for clothing,” he looked at me, “we’re about the same size.”
I didn’t mind sharing clothes at all. “I don’t really want people seeing me in public, anyway.”
He closed the door and nodded toward the room on the other side of the hall. “That one’s my room.”
“And the white one?” I asked. “The room that’s like a hospital?”
“You’re not the only one who’s used a time machine, Jon.” He looked down at his right wrist for a moment. “I’ve had to treat myself before.”
Finally, he opened the door at the end of the hallway, revealing a small office space. “I’ve used this area to work sometimes, but I do all my tinkering in the basement. That’s where all our materials for making the new device are. He led me inside. “There’s something in here, though, that you might be interested in.”
An aura of familiarity hit me again. Had I seen this place before? I shook my head, trying to shake the feeling.
A desk was in the middle of the room, and two closets faced each other from both side walls. They were the kind with double doors that slide and bend open. The office looked like it had originally been built as a bedroom for two people. Three windows went across the back wall, giving us a view of the countryside.
Steven focused his shaking hands and opened the right-side set of closet doors. “Both of these closets contain a collection of sorts.” He gestured to me, and I peered in. Against the wall was a shelf containing about three glass containers. Inside each was a watch. Time machines.
He leaned against the door frame. “Six failed experiments. Improvements I tried to make to the original design. The first three are in the other closet. The final three I put in here.”
I examined the first one. A dark, sleek pocket watch that looked fairly similar to the original.
“Most of them don’t even work. It was hard to fix some of the problems that the original had without interfering with the ability to manipulate time in the first place.”
The next one was a wrist watch. Leather straps. A minimalistic, white face with black hands.
“However, my newest design - the one I have on paper - is guaranteed to work. I’ve worked out everything this time. After all, I learned by doing.”
I advanced to the third one. “You said most didn’t even work?”
“The one you’re looking at is actually one of the few that do. It just had some problems.”
This time machine had the most modern design of the three in this closet. A black wrist watch. Rubber straps and a square face. All digital displays.
“While the most powerful, Model Six here was the most inaccurate,” he sighed. “Pause time, and it might send you back a few minutes. In theory, if you were trying to go back a year, it might travel as far as five years.”
“Model Six…” I stared closely at it.
“When I was testing it, sometimes it would travel twice in response to one button press. For instance, I tried to travel a minute back. Instead, it traveled five. When I began to take it off, it suddenly sent me another five minutes into the past.”
“So, if you had gone even further…” I peered up at him.
“It would have been catastrophic.”
“It’s random.”
“Yes. It sends you further than you intend, and it jumps around sometimes twice or three times in a row.” He backed up. “That watch is dangerous.”
I took one last look at Model Six, and we left the office. After that, Steven showed me the outside, taking me out through the patio and into his back yard.
“Back here, you’ll find a shed with some more junk in it.” He let me peer inside. “We may need a few things from out here, but not much.”
He closed the door to the shed, and we walked back to the house. As I left the shed, I noticed a tarp next to it, covering some sort of vehicle.
“An old clunker of mine,” Steven said, noticing my look. “Haven’t been able to get it working. If you know anything about cars…”
“Not a thing,” I replied, following him back inside.
He walked me down to the basement. “Last but not least. The workshop.”
It was a pretty messy room. A metal counter wrapped around it, hugging the walls, and two connecting tables sat in the middle. Gears, hunks of metal, tools, and large sheets of paper were everywhere. Fluorescent lights hung above the workspace.
We descended down, and I took it all in.
“Not very organized, but we have everything we need.” Steven lifted a sheet from the table, dusting it off. He tried to contain his shaking fingers. “Here it is. It’ll be able to go back a full century.” He turned it toward me. The design was in black pen. A modern, attractive wrist watch. Silicone straps. Circular face. Displays for the date, time, and internal time. A single button. And two rolling wheels that hugged the sides. One for the date, one for time. He eyed it up and down, smiling. “This will be able to get you back to your parents.”
∞
That night, I sat in the guest room, almost unable to sleep. Steven Edward had left me two things on the nightstand. My father’s gun and Jacob’s phone. I stared at the items quietly.
Suddenly, the phone started vibrating. I grabbed it and looked at the screen. It was Hunter’s number calling. I watched it; my hand shook with the phone. Should I pick up? My eyes stayed fixed on that number. Does he know I’m alive? I closed my eyes. No… No, he can
’t know. He can’t know that I’m alive. I let it ring; there was no reason for me to reveal to him that I was still around.
The ringing stopped. I closed my eyes and set the phone on the nightstand. Looking next to it, I once again saw the pistol. I held it in front of me. My mind unpacked everything that occurred since I had found the watch. How did it all happen so quickly? I lowered my eyelids shut. Why would George Ashe leave me the pocket watch like that? I opened my eyes and turned my hand over, looking at the side of the pistol. What did my father want me to do?
As I stared longer and longer at the gun, a vision popped into my head. The back of Jacob Richards’ head, bursting open, a bullet piercing through. I shuddered and put the gun down on the nightstand. All I could think of that night was why all these things had occurred in this manner.
“Purpose,” I mumbled.
I heard Steven’s door open. He walked down the stairs, which creaked as usual. I wondered what he was doing, but it was his house, so I didn’t pursue it. I just lay down and closed my eyes, trying to ignore the jarring images of the past few days that kept coming back to me.
∞
The next day, Saturday, May 22, 2042, we began our work. Steven showed me a more in-depth look at how the new watch would need to be constructed. Its intricacies, the parts that were needed, and more.
“One of the biggest problems of older designs was an attachment to the user,” he said, looking at the papers. He flipped from sheet to sheet with some difficulty, trying to keep his hands’ trepidation down. “You know that by experience.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That red stuff…”
“The Crimson.”
“What?”
“Well, that’s what I call it,” he replied. “The Crimson.”
“The Crimson,” I repeated.
“When you use the watch, it sends out pollutants, almost like a car. But instead of spreading exhaust into the air, it spreads the Crimson into the user.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why would it do that?”
“Did you ever charge the watch while you used it?”
“Yes.”
“And it charged quickly, didn’t it?”
I nodded.
“The quick charges make it still require a host. Something to provide part of the energy. That’s why it needs skin contact.”
I examined his arm. “How did you cure it, then?”
“After I was already up in years, I began studying medicine. Mainly because I feared what would happen if I let the Crimson keep spreading.”
I’ve seen that by experience too…
“I developed a vaccine. Granted, it was dangerous, since I was going off of what I’d learned. I hadn’t been certified or anything.” He held up his arm. “Thankfully, though, it worked.” He put his hand back down on the table. “But as for you, the Crimson had gone too far up your arm. That’s why you were in that room. I needed to give you the vaccine, and do a blood transfusion. Luckily we’re both AB blood type.”
“You developed a vaccine for it?” I asked, impressed.
“Yes, but the shot won’t prevent it from happening again, unfortunately. The watch could still spread the pollutant.” He pointed down at the new watch design. “Model Seven should get rid of that problem. It takes all its energy from battery power, instead of sharing energy consumption with the user.” He looked at me. “Of course, that also means it will have much longer charge times.”
I bit my lip. “How long?”
His eyes scanned over the papers. “My exact calculation would be… pretty darn long.”
∞
During that first day, we began on the innermost parts of the watch. So many tiny screws, gears, and wires. And in the nucleus, a tiny contraption Steven referred to as “the Core.”
Also that day, Steven prepared our meals for us. We ate, got back to work, had dinner, and worked some more. Fortunately, Steven Edward was a good cook. I noticed that his hands did not shake when he prepared food, nor when he worked with medicine. He had to take a blood sample from me, just to make sure the Crimson had gone for good, and I noticed perfect stillness in his hands.
During our evening meal, I stood up to pour myself a glass of water, still uneasy about the whole situation. This man had been following me. I believed his story, of course. I had been trying to find him, and he knew much more about the watch and time travel than I did. But the whole situation was unsettling. It was convenient. How was he always in the right place at the right time? How did he know?
I filled the glass up, watching him. He coughed and scratched the back of his neck. I noticed a small bump.
My eyes trailed over to his bookshelf, which had caught my attention in my peripherals. A bookshelf in the kitchen. I walked up to it.
“Feel free to peruse,” Steven said cheerfully.
“Thanks.” I looked over his picture frames. None of them were from his younger life. Just a few of him and a woman, his hair a little less gray. “Who’s this?”
“My wife,” he replied.
I looked back at him. “You’re married?”
He nodded, smiling softly.
“Then where…” I hesitated. “I mean, if you don’t mind me asking-”
“She’s okay. It’s not like we’re divorced or anything.” He sighed. “We’re just… apart, right now.”
I bit my tongue and looked back at the items on the shelf. Following next to the frames were several books. A few leather bound; they looked like journals. I was about to examine the rest of the books, but my mind was on Steven Edward and my father. I didn’t know about this colleague of my dad’s when I was a child. But I was quite young, after all.
On top of all of these thoughts, Hunter’s accusations against my father floated around my head. “Steven,” I said.
“Yeah?” He replied, finishing up his food.
“Tell me what you know about Eclipse.”
No response. I turned around.
He held a puzzled frown on his face. “Like a solar eclipse?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I mean Eclipse Technologies.”
He shrugged, still confused. “‘Eclipse Technologies.’ Is it a computer company?”
“No,” I replied. “It’s…” I paused, watching Steven Edward’s reaction.
He waited for me to explain, genuine ignorance in his eyes.
“My father never said anything about Eclipse?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He never talked about embezzlement, stealing, anything like that?”
“No… Where are you getting all that from?”
I exhaled, closing my eyes. “Hunter.”
“Right. The not-friend.”
“Yeah.” I sat back down across from him.
He scratched his chin.
“I’m just trying to make sense of everything, Steven.” I rubbed my forehead.
He held the sides of his plate and watched me with consideration. “I understand.”
I picked up my fork and started eating once more.
“I can’t say I knew everything about your father. But I do know this,” he leaned forward, “he loved you, Jon. And he wanted to see you succeed.”
∞
We made good progress. Steven told me what to do, using all of his diagrams as aids, and I built the watch, simultaneously learning more and more about what really went into a time machine. I enjoyed it, and it gave me a feeling of peace that I had not recently experienced.
The work turned into two separate constructions: the outer shell and straps for the watch, and the inner mechanisms. After a few days of tweaking, I was able to begin charging the Core, which as Steven had said, was going to be a long process. In fact, it was estimated to turn into almost a month.
One afternoon, while taking a break, I saw him walk out onto the patio and sit down. He lit a cigar and puffed on it, staring out at the sunset. After a few minutes, I came out and joined him.
He peered over to me and offered a cigar from hi
s jacket.
“No thanks. I don’t smoke.”
He chuckled. “I said that once.”
“I’m probably being rude, but… you know those things can kill you.”
He smirked and inhaled a long drag. “Better to know what’s killing me than to wait for a mystery to take me down.”
It didn’t entice me to smoke at all, but his words made me think. He was right. Nobody knows when or how he will die. To know, in some sense, provides a peace. “Did you hear that from somewhere?” I asked him.
“Hear what?”
“What you just said about death. Where’d you hear that?”
“Well, probably somewhere in this crazy head of mine.” He blew out a puff of smoke. “But if you want to know where I get most of my ideas,” he glanced at me and smirked, “then you should take another look at the bookshelf.”
Our days continued on like this for some time. I would work, Steven would cook, and in the afternoon, he’d smoke while we sat and talked. It was a few days later when I realized that I hadn’t looked at the bookshelf again like he had suggested. I went to bed, telling myself to remember.
After everyday of work, in the middle of the night, I would hear Steven get up and go downstairs. And every night, I would just turn over in bed, telling myself that my suspicion was just paranoia.
Chapter 34
“The Circle by Ted Dekker?”
I was finally examining the rest of his kitchen bookshelf. Next to his frames and journals was this “Circle” book. I didn’t recognize it.
“That’s a good one,” Steven said, sitting at the table. “I’ve got all four books in that hardbound.”
I continued to the next one. “God’s Will and Mine.” I peered back at Steven. He was sipping out of a Christmas mug once again.
Next book. Dark leather. The pages were silver on the edges. I took it off the shelf. Holy Bible. I flipped through it. There were a lot of underlines. “Are you a religious man, Steven?”
“Ah, you found the book I was telling you about.”
“You mean when you mentioned where you get your ideas from?” I flipped to a page that had a lot of wear on it. “‘A time for war and a time for peace.’” I lifted my head. “You’ve quoted this.”
