by Tom Upton
I punched in the next set of commands, and gradually-- I could barely notice it at first-- the stars on the viewing screen shifted, indicating the ship was in motion, moving toward earth ever so slowly. Then a burst of white filled the screen for a second, after which earth appeared large and blue with white wispy clouds wrapped around it like so much cotton candy. We must have traveled over a light year in a split second, and yet I hadn’t felt the slightest sensation of motion. I wasn’t about to ask the artifact what laws of physics, unknown to humankind, could possibly allow a ship to traverse so mind bogglingly long a distance in so short a period of time. It would only shoot across the monitor yet another formula that my three percent of gray matter hadn’t the slightest chance of comprehending.
The artifact requested that I choose a point in time to which I might be returned. It said it would be better if it were a time when I was completely alone-- otherwise, if it was a time when I was with someone, it might appear to that person as if I had vanished and then suddenly reappeared. I wracked my brain, trying to think of a good time; alone was not the problem-- there had been many times I’d been alone, which I found quite depressing-- it was a matter of picking which particular time. Finally, I decided on the moment I discovered myself lying on the sofa in the living room, just after the artifact had fixed my injury from Eliza’s driving us off the cliff. It would be familiar with the exact moment, I reasoned, and so would know precisely where to insert me back into the timeline.
I typed the information on the keyboard, and the artifacts set the spatial and temporal coordinates. Then I entered the order for it to secure itself on the dark side of the moon.
All I had to do now was press the execute button. It was that simple now-- a single touch of one button would set everything straight. The entire world, and everything in it, would return to where it ought to have been had Eliza never discovered the artifact and had Doc never begun tinkering with it.
I stood at the control console, my finger poised over the red button. Something it my mind told me that it couldn’t possibly be that easy. Something must surely go wrong. Although everything seemed logical, I still had doubts. Of course, this was not my only reason for hesitating; there was Eliza, too, and the distinct feeling that if I pressed the button I would be killing her in a way. Her life would have changed in such enormous ways that if I ever did see her again, which I highly doubted, she probably wouldn’t even be the same person. She might actually be somebody else, with vastly different life experiences that would have transformed her into a person who was a total stranger to me. The Eliza of whom I had grown so fond-- despite her many quirks-- would no longer exist. Still there was nothing else to do now. It had all come down to this-- the final option. I really wished I believed in fate. If I did, I could hit the button without a second thought, knowing for sure that no matter what everything would be all right. I wouldn’t have to hit the button, filled with dread and uncertain and a sick sinking feeling in my stomach.
I winced, and pushed down on the red octagon.
***********
Everything changed at once. It didn’t happen the way it had during our aborted effort to set the world right. Everything around me didn’t shimmer and slowly fade away until I was standing not in the artifact but in old Mr. Wilkins shabby living room. This time it was an instantaneously transfer. Of a sudden, I found myself standing on a ratty old carpet, breathing in air that smell vaguely of mildew and old people. I stood there for a long time, then, looking around at the sorry old house. I understood what Eliza had meant about it feeling as though somebody was dying. That was exactly the way it felt, that deep-seated mournful feeling in the pit of my stomach, that feeling that was grief but somehow oddly tinged with hope, hope of an afterlife.
I hadn’t lost a single memory of Eliza or Doc or them living next door to me or anything. At the moment that seemed like a curse with which I would have to live for a long time.
When I walked out the front door, it was in a small way like walking into another world. I saw that there was a FOR SALE sign from a real estate office planted on the front lawn. A smaller narrow sign, attached diagonally to the large swinging sign, announced that there was a CONTRACT PENDING on the house. That was it then, I knew. Everything would be-- already was-- different. Soon other people would move in next door. They would probably be nice and normal, with no secrets or bizarre experiences in their pasts. They would have jobs, and kids who would go to school every day, and maybe even a dog-- some huge furry beast or a small yappy thing.
When I entered my house through the back door, I found my mother sitting at the kitchen table. She was just sitting there, finishing off a cigarette and staring into space-- her favorite activities after having eaten.
“Well, where have you been?” she asked. “I can’t keep dinner warm forever,” she complained.
I told her I wasn’t hungry anyway, and then, out of curiosity, asked her, “Where was I anyway?”
Her mouth curled up at the corner. “Don’t you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just wanted to see if you knew.”
“Well, you said you were going…” Her words trailed off, and she started to frown, confused. “You told me you… you know, I must be going senile. I can’t remember. You told me you were going somewhere to do something, but I’ll be darned if I can remember. That’s not like me-- that’s not like me, at all.” She paused, then, and seemed to be concentrating hard on recalling the information. Finally she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t have a clue, and isn’t that strange,” she said, and slipped another cigarette out of the pack lying on the table. She lighted the cigarette, and sipped some coffee. It was still bothering her she couldn’t remember, because she shook her head a final time, before changing the subject. “You father called today.”
I really wasn’t that interested. “Really?”
“Well, he had some good news,” she said. “At least I think it’s good news. I guess he finally got fed up with his job, and quit. It’s about time, I say. He found out they had him on the road more than people they were just hiring. So he put in his two-week notice. Of course, you know, that means he’ll be around the house all the time. That’ll be nice-- I guess,” she added, frowning, as though my father had been on the road so long she couldn’t remember exactly what it had been like to have him home every day. “Anyway, I guess, things do change-- we can only hope for the better.”
Suddenly I felt the overwhelming need to be alone, and I went up to my room. I lay down in bed and stared at the ceiling, and all I could think of was Eliza. It was amazing, really, when I thought about it; I had seen her not even an hour ago, and yet, now, it seemed like years already-- and in actuality (the actuality I was now in, anyway) I had never laid eyes on her in my life. The depth of the loss I felt was indescribable. It was not like meeting somebody, getting attached to them, and then having them die. It was like meeting somebody, getting attached to them, and then realizing they never really existed. The memories I had of her were all moments out of a dream, and in the following days I would begin to have to reassure myself that it all really happened, and that now, somewhere in this world, Eliza existed and she was living with her parents as she always had been, and as she was always meant to be.
EPILOGUE
My life was filled with many changes during the following months.
My father was home every single day. He scanned the want ads each day, looking for a job listing that never seemed to be there. He stole cigarettes from my mother’s packs-- he would never buy his own packs, because, he claimed, that would cause him to smoke too much-- and so, occasionally, my parents would have an argument whenever my mother found an empty pack in her purse. He didn’t do too much else-- at least nothing that seemed natural. Sure, he mowed the lawn until the autumn, when he raked the leaves until the winter, when he shoveled the snow. But it was apparent he just wasn’t a very domestic person. Each time he did some chore, it always seemed he didn’t quite know what he
was doing. Even the simple act of taking out the trash became something uncertain. The man simply was made to sell things. He could talk and had charm and a mouthful of mostly fake but perfect teeth. For a while, my mother begged him to get his old job back. He’d been selling wholesale chemicals. I had never been interested enough to know that. I’d known he’d sold something to somebody somewhere. Anyway, he steadfastly refused to go back to his old job, swearing that something else would come along, something better and something that would allow him to stay home with his family. My mother, by this point, just wanted him out of the house-- at least for part of the day. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t used to his continual pretense; lately he had developed the heinous habit of sitting around the living room, watching soap operas while trimming his toe nails with her garden shears-- and the man’s toe nails did seem to grow like weeds.
In the fall, I started high school. My grades were actually very good, leading me to believe either that the artifact had changed me in some way or that I’d always been much smarter than I realized.
I went out for and made the football team. Amazingly I even made first string, which was a rarity for a freshman. I dutifully went to practice every day, after which I went home and finished my homework before doing anything else.
I would think of Eliza every day. Sometimes I couldn’t stop thinking about her, wondering where she was and what she was doing and knowing that if I ran into her she wouldn’t know me from Adam. It was maddening, sometimes, really, but still I stuck to the promise I made her; I never gave a cheerleader a second look. It really wasn’t much of a problem. Not that our cheerleaders were on the homely side or anything, but that they seemed silly and flighty and I would have found it impossible to take any of them seriously, anyway.
In October, my brother published his first novel. My parents, naturally, were thrilled. I myself was happy, despite the fact that for weeks after we received the news I would have to hear over and over from my parents what a great achievement it was. He sent me a copy of the book, and asked to know what I thought about it. It really seemed important to him what I thought, so I read the book-- which was pretty thin, really-- and I wrote him a letter expressing my opinion of the book. It was a fair assessment, I thought, positive for the most part but still pointing out some small deficiencies. To my astonishment, he wrote back and thanked me for my opinion, which, it turned out, mirrored his own. His publisher had tried to convince him the book was perfect, but he had always harbored doubts. That was the problem, he wrote. How can you fix something when people are trying to convince there is nothing wrong?
In November, I suffered a tragic injury while playing football. It was the seventh game that I was starting tailback, and so far I was averaging 180 yards rushing per game. If I kept that average throughout the season, I would have broken the state record. But during the seventh game, which we played at a school in Podunk, Indiana, I hurt my knee, badly. Amazingly, the tiny school in the tiny town had a fabulous football field, which was covered with state-of-the-art artificial turf. How that town was ever able to afford it all was beyond me. All I knew was that I ran a play and got tackled by three opposing players, and the cleats of my shoes stuck fast to the turf. When I went down my leg twisted in a way that God never intended when He designed the human form. The pain that shot through my knee was enough to make me pass out. I didn’t even remember being carried from the field. I woke up in a hospital room and my knee was wrapped up so thickly I thought someone was hiding under my sheet. The doctors had to do surgery to repair the damage, and afterward every single doctor assured me, in no uncertain terms, that sports were a thing of the past for me. I would be lucky even to walk normally again, and as I went through physical therapy it became clear that for the rest of my life I would have at least a slight limp.
I tried to replace sports with music, but it was apparent early on that it would be a doomed effort. I tried learning to play the piano, but my fingers were too short and thick. When I attempted the guitar, I dropped the pick into the big hole so many times I nearly threw the thing through the window and onto the snow bank below. The only instrument I showed the least bit of talent playing was the trombone, but I discovered I felt too silly playing the darned thing-- every time I tried, I realized I must look like my father as he read the morning paper without his glasses.
So music was definitely out, which left me with nothing else I could envision. That depressed me for a while, until I realized all I had been trying to do was be as good at something as my brother was at writing. After I understood that there was no reason for that, I began to feel better about being just an ordinary guy who went to class and did very little else.
By February my knee was healed as well as it even would be. There was still the stiffness that wouldn’t go away, but I had already got used to the idea of limping through the rest of my life. Two good things happened to me that month. First, I learned that I had done so well in school that they would allow me to skip my sophomore year and begin my junior year in the fall. Second, I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license. It was a milestone event that ought to have been filled with more joy, but every time I climbed behind the wheel of a car, all I could think of was the time when Eliza drove us of the cliff. I found myself growing nostalgic at the remembrance, as crazy as that might sound.
In late spring, just before school let out for the summer, my father made the monumental announcement that he had found a job. My mother and I were relieved, of course; his constant presence in the house over the months had become barely tolerable. He refused to disclose any details of the new job. As with most surprises, he tended to stretch things out to the point when everyone was just plain tired of asking about them and, then, when everyone finally learned all the details, no one cared much anymore. It took him nearly a week before he let slip the minor fact that we would have to move to another state. My mother was furious, naturally, and nearly irate later when she learned he had actually put the house up for sale without consulting her. The two guys were still pounding the real estate sign post into the ground of our front lawn, when my mother flew into her bedroom, where my father still sleep, and attacked him with whatever happened to be in her hand at the moment, which turned out to be an opened package of cream cheese. He fled the bedroom, with white gooey stuff stuck to his forehead and with my mother in full pursuit. As he tried to elude her, he assured her that they would get a decent price for the house and when we arrived at our new home, she would be tickled pink. My mother must have heard it all before, because she refused to hear him out, following him throughout the house until her smoker’s cough got the best of her and she collapsed panting on the living room couch. Later, after everything calmed down, and my mother and I were reconciled to the fact we were moving out of state, I approached my father as he sat at the kitchen table, looking like the loneliest guy on earth.
“Look,” I told him, “it’s probably a great thing you getting a new job and all, but Mom and I would feel a whole lot better if we knew exactly where we’re going.”
He started talking about how it was all part of the surprise before I stopped him.
“Dad, you’ve dragged this thing so far out that unless we’re moving to Hawaii, Mom’s going to be disappointed.”
“Hawaii,” he growled. “Who said anything about Hawaii? What the hell would I do in Hawaii?-- pick coconuts?”
“You finally got a job. Believe me, that’s surprise enough,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “Just… where are we moving?-- please.”
“Illinois,” he finally admitted.
I was appalled. “Illinois? What’s the big deal about that? We’re in Indiana. It’s almost the same state. If you take away Chicago and the line between the two states, it is the same state.”
“Well, you know…” he said, which was his standard explanation for everything.
I left the kitchen, to go searching for my mother to tell her which state, when a thought struck me, forcing me back into th
e kitchen and back to my father.
“Where at in Illinois?” I asked.
“It’s a nice little town--”
“The name, Dad,” I demanded.
He frowned at me, as though not understanding my sudden impatience.
“Batavia.”
At the mention of that single word, goose bumps rose on my arms and chills ran down my spine. It had to be a coincidence, right? As I stumbled from the kitchen in a daze, I could vaguely hear my father call after me, “Well, don’t you at least want to know anything about my job?” But I didn’t want to know anything else, just then, my mind filling with the possibility of seeing Eliza again. She had said Batavia, right? It seemed so long ago, I had troubling remembering. About nine months had passed since I last spoke with her, saw her eerie green eyes, heard her throaty laugh. I still thought about her often, but also had all but given up hope of ever seeing her again. The end of the year I’d promised to wait before doing anything was fast approaching-- it already seemed longer than that, much longer. In the end, I shrugged off the idea that I was experiencing the beginning of some cosmic plan that would bring us back together. It was nonsense, of course-- I had to be. As much as I tried to believe it was fate, I failed; to believe in fate, you also have to believe that fate conspires to lead some people to tragic endings, and if you can’t accept that, you can’t become a true believer. So, naturally, our moving to Batavia was just a fluke, right?
