Future Tense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FUTURE TENSE

 

 

Dutch Mark

 

 

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Copyright 2023 by Dutch Mark

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means ֠electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying), recording, or otherwise, ֠without prior permission in writing from the author.

 

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events, or locales is purely coincidental, and for which the author and the publisher shall not be held responsible. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other books by Dutch Mark

 

(erotica)

 

A Hard Business Lesson

 

Weatherby’s Boarding School for Young Women

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

We were hurrying, knowing our pursuers would soon catch up. Solomon wasn’t panicky, so I wasn't too worried at that point. We walked briskly down the corridor in the direction of the storage room where we had left the TDM, hoping no one had discovered it.

The end of the corridor was a blank wall, with corridors continuing left and right. Without a moment's hesitation, Solomon turned left. I was glad he was so sure because I hadn't a clue as to where we were going.

“Halt!” a voice cried behind us.

Needless to say, we ignored him and kept going. We had just started along the new corridor when a searing beam of light exploded against the blank wall behind us, causing a major hole to appear and a blast of heat that almost knocked us over. Solomon turned as white as the corridor walls.

"Great ghosts of Einstein and Planck!" he exclaimed. "Weapons!"

"Either that or one hell of a light bulb just blew. What now?"

"Run!" he screamed, matching his action to his words.

Personally, I thought it was a damn good idea, and followed as well as I could. Solomon may have been middle-aged and out of shape, but it was amazing what you could do with an adrenaline rush from the fear of death. I wasn't exactly a track star myself, but I have to say we both did a great imitation of Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson down that narrow track. Okay, a much slower and weaker imitation, but you get the idea.

Solomon made a sudden right turn, and I skidded trying to keep up with him. Not far down that corridor he palmed open a door, and we tumbled into the storage room.

"Smash the recognition plate!" Solomon ordered as he leaped onto the platform of the TDM and started flipping switches. “That might slow them down for a few minutes.”

Our pursuers must have been quite a way behind us. No sounds or further blasts of energy showed they were any closer. But I knew they must be following, and it wouldn't be long before they made a rude and perhaps deadly entrance.

I looked around the storage room for something to use as a club. I spied something that might work and picked it up. It was bulky and clumsy, but a decent substitute for a small sledge hammer. I stepped back out into the hallway and swung it several times as hard as I could against the recognition plate. On the third try, the plate smashed in. I was so pleased with my handiwork I almost failed to notice the door was silently sliding closed in front of me. I just managed to squeeze through before it shut tightly.

I stood there for long moments, breathing heavily and wondering how long we had. Solomon worked feverishly, never even looking up to see if I had been successful. The seconds seemed to tick away like hours. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore.

“How long before we can jump?”

“Don’t rush me!” Solomon complained as his fingers flew over the switches. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

“I know. Sorry. It’s just that I have this extreme aversion to dying.”

“It’s not something I’m looking forward to, either,” he said, his eyes never wavering from the controls.

I needed to shut up while he tried to get us out alive. Okay, time to get my mind on something else besides how slowly he was reprogramming his beloved Temporal Displacement Mechanism, or what I always shortened to TDM. Like how stupid I was to get involved in all of this. How in the world could I have ever groused about the fact that my early life was boring? So what if I ate sardine sandwiches and shared my bed with cockroaches instead of beautiful women? At least I wasn’t being chased by professional killers and scrambling my brain and other body parts by hopping madly though Time and Space ….

Okay, time for more productive thoughts.

“Anything else I can do to help?”

“Actually, yes. You could try to block the door with something, just in case.”

Now, why hadn’t I thought of that! That’s why he was a genius, right?

I scrambled around trying to find something heavy and bulky. Economists are known for their brains, not their brawn, and I guess I'm an excellent example. There were only a couple of large objects, and I struggled to get them into place. After that, it was anything I could find. As I had broken the recognition plate I knew the door couldn’t be opened easily. But after the lighting show in the hallway, I also knew the Security Force might not bother to knock. The pounding on the door contradicted that thought, but unfortunately not my fear of how quickly they would arrive. I started wildly heaving anything toward the door that I could grab, hoping it might delay them for those precious seconds Solomon still needed. Suddenly, it opened.

“Okay, Sol, I think it’s time to go!”

“I’m not quite ready yet .…”

A ray of intense light burned through the debris in front of the door, hit something reflective, and bounced harmlessly in another direction. When several rays burned holes through my flimsy barrier I frantically searched for something else to throw onto the barricade. I had run out of things I could lift.

“Ready or not, we’ve got to go!” I cried.

“Just one more moment….”

A beam of light exploded the floor at my feet. “Solomon!”

“Okay, jump on!”

He didn’t have to invite twice. I threw myself onto the platform just as the entire barricade evaporated. As I hit the platform, I saw two officers take aim. Then Solomon hit the switch, and we jumped.

As I felt the familiar jolt of energy that meant we had teleported to a different Time/Space Continuum, I wondered once again why I had gotten into all of this. Looking at either my early poor days or later rich days, was my life really that boring before?

#

“Hey, those guys were serious back there!”

“It would seem so.”

“I thought you said nobody had weapons, not even the feds.”

“Barney, it’s a shock to me too, okay? It violates the whole premise of our society. On the other hand, I’ve found out many terrible things about the way the Zaibatsu conduct themselves, and the way the entire World Council runs things. Those shocked me a lot more than the Security Force having weapons and being happy to use them. You want to keep nagging me about things I can’t control?”

“Sorry, Solomon,” I said, and I meant it. I had not really intended to bitch at him. The shock and fear had just caused some sort of response to go off.

We were back in the main hideout of the Revos, although I had a hunch the place wouldn’t be useful for much longer. Call it a gut feeling. Or maybe chalk it up to the fact that Solomon was already fiddling with the dials of the TDM, preparing for our next jump.

“Um, do you have the strong impression the Security Force is about to track us down here, Solomon?”

“No, not really. I just want to be prepared.”

“Oh. Okay. So, what do you think those guys were firing at us?”

“Photon rays.”

“Is that like laser beams?”

“Basically, yes. Sort of like the first atomic bomb was to the nuclear bomb, I guess.”

“Really? That powerful. Uh, could you amplify on that a little, Solomon?”

“Sure. A laser converts light of mixed frequencies into an intense narrow monochromatic beam of coherent light. The conductor tube can use illumination by a flash lamp to excite its atoms, and thereby intensify the beam, but basically it’s just a fairly intense beam of light. In fact, it can also be converted into electro-magnetic radiation, such as infrared or microwave beams. In a highly concentrated and focused form, it could do a fair bit of damage as a weapon.

“On the other hand,” he continued absently while punching a series of numbers into the TDM’s on-board computer, “a photon is a quantum of electromagnetic radiation, with an energy output equal to the frequency of the radiation and the Planck constant. As I say, kind of like roughly splitting the atom, or getting down to the finest particle of the atom. It’s a matter of intensity.”

“So, you’re saying that was some pretty heavy shit they were shooting at us back there?”

“It was a very powerful weapon, yes. But dead is dead, no matter how you get there.”

“Yo. I hear that one.”

I smiled at him, but he was really concentrating on what he was doing. Like there was no tomorrow, I thought. Uh, oh. Better cut out those morbid thoughts.

“So how do you intend to defend us from that kind of firepower?”

“By being able to run farther and faster,” he said tersely as he punched the setting buttons more violently than before. “Any more questions?”

“No, no. Sounds great to me. I’ll just sit here and watch you work, okay.”

I tried twiddling my thumbs for a few minutes. I soon discovered I wasn’t as coordinated as I remembered. Then a useful idea hit me, along with a sudden pang in my stomach.

“Hey, you got any food around here? I’m kind of hungry. How about you?”

“I could use something to eat,” he said abstractedly, concentrating on the information he was plugging into the computer. “If you go through that door on your right, you’ll find a console. You know how to punch in the commands for a meal by now, don’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, happy for the chance to do something useful. As I started for the door, an alarm suddenly started a low-pitched warbling sound. I turned to face Solomon as he looked up from his work.

“Shall I guess?”

“It’s the black hole energy gauge. They’ve somehow tracked us here.”

“Oh, great. Does that mean we don’t have time for a quick snack?”

“No, the gauge should be reading the field at its lowest intensity, meaning they’re just doing the preliminary acquisition. I’d estimate almost an hour before they arrive. Assuming, of course, they’ve plotted our location correctly.”

“Good. That should give me plenty of time to program in a nice, hot meal, and eat at a fairly leisurely pace before they get here, right?”

“Sure,” he said, bending back to his work.

I walked towards the door and, just as I was about to trigger the palm opener, the sound of the alarm increased both in pitch and volume. I jumped back as though my hand on the opener had caused the problem.

“So what does that mean?”

Solomon looked up in alarm.

“It means they’re coming one hell of a lot faster than I thought possible. Heaven only knows what they’re sacrificing in the way of personal replication to do that.”

“Well, they don’t need to be perfect to kill us, right?”

“Exactly right, dear relative.”

“So now how long do you estimate before they arrive?”

“Less than ten minutes. As little as five.”

“Oh, great,” I sighed. “I guess that means no food, then.”

After a few very tense minutes, the alarm turned to a high-pitched, constant scream.

“Time to go!” Solomon shouted, and I leaped to join him on the platform.

“Say, can you tell me where we're going?”

A whoosh of air, like a subway train coming into a station, started blowing around us. That meant another TDM had just arrived. I still had my back to them, but I could feel hostile eyes burning holes right through me. Better eyes than photon beams!

“Dallas, Texas!” Solomon shouted, as he flipped the transmit switch without having checked the acquisition monitor.

Texas? Did I really want to go to Texas? When I had left my world, I had a perfectly wonderful condo in San Francisco, a lot more money than most people, and a nice, peaceful, boring existence. Why had I traded all of that to be chased through time by corporate goons who wouldn’t even give me time to eat a decent meal? I tried to think back to why I had ever considered chucking it all for a little adventure and the chance to help the human race. I must have been crazy.

As I once again felt that jolt of energy, I thought back over the fantastic adventures I had experienced in the past few months. Was it really worth the risk? Hadn't I been happy before? Wasn't it enough to lead the life of a fabulously wealthy businessman who never had to worry about being shot at or being distorted by a faulty jump? My thoughts drifted back, remembering what it was like before Solomon had walked into my life.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

The Muni train was the usual fifteen minutes late. Then I nearly got run down by a taxi driver on the way to the office. A group of cyclists were blocking traffic right in front of my building and cost me another five minutes. One of the elevators was out of order – again – causing a huge line to get up to the top floors. All of this added up to make me ten minutes late to my desk. All together, I didn’t think that was too bad.

Naturally, Mr. Toddlemeyer didn’t see it the same way. He immediately called me into his office to give me his absolute final warning he was going to have to let me go if I didn’t shape up and get to work on time. It was at least the second ‘final warning’ this month. Once again, he conveniently ignored the fact that I rarely left the office until an hour after most of the others. And where else could he find someone with a Ph.D. in Economics who would work for the crummy wages this monolith of a bank paid its employees? As he droned on, I sat there bored out of my mind. I was thinking of how I’d already been there two years, straight out of getting my doctorate. I was certain I was doomed to spend my entire existence in that crummy cubicle just outside of The Old Toddler’s office. I would never get promoted in spite of all the promises, and never get fired in spite all the threats. I would never know any freedom outside of two weeks each year, which so far I had dutifully used to visit my widowed mother and two sisters in upstate Wisconsin.

In other words, just another typical day in the life of a corporate slave in sunny San Francisco. And it was a beautiful autumn day. The taxis were tooting, the pigeons were pooping, the tourists were strolling and pointing, and the natives were rushing grimly around in pursuit of unattainable goals. Honest to God, it was so normal I had not one premonition, not the faintest hint of a sign from Above that today was the day I would meet my great, great, great, great, great, great grandson, and that he would give me a time machine which would (not surprisingly) change my life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The rest of the day was more of the same. There was frustration and boredom at the office, chaos in the streets, and a dull and quiet apartment to return to. I didn't even have a goldfish to keep me company. Pets weren’t allowed, and the building super had snidely explained to me that fish were animals, and were therefore pets. I pointed out that cockroaches should also qualify, so why he didn’t get rid of them? He just sneered and ignored me. He knew I couldn't do anything about it. After all, where was I going to move to on my wages?

As usual, there was nothing on TV. No date, and no money to go out anyhow. So, I figured, it was just going to be another exciting evening trying to sort out the weirdoes from the real females on the net chatlines.

Before I went online, however, it was time for the first Big Decision of the day. Should I have a frozen dinner or takeout? The latter would then lead to what kind of takeout, which would lead to whether or not my budget could afford it. I was weighing these options like Jack Benny deciding on whether he should give up his money or his life when the doorbell rang. Now, that was unusual! I had no idea. Figuring it could only be the super, I was in no hurry to answer it, but I finally did.

“Hi, there! Uh, I mean, hello,” the fellow at the door said. He seemed a little stiff, definitely nervous, although friendly enough. “You are Barnaby Frederic Smith.”

“Was that an accusation? Okay, I confess, I’m Barney Smith.”

“Oh, no! I’m extremely sorry, Barnaby F. Smith! I assure you that wasn’t meant to be an identity challenge.” He seemed inordinately embarrassed by such a minor thing. “I meant no disrespect.”

“Hey, I was only kidding,” I said. “Lighten up.”

“Lighten…up? Ah, yes. I’m enlightened as to your intent. Thank you for the explanation.”

Man, was the old geezer putting me on, or what? Okay, I figured he wasn’t really that old, but he sure acted it. I was twenty-eight, and I figured he had fifteen or twenty years on me. It wasn’t like he had a really old face. It was more the stodgy way he talked, the way the clothes he wore looked like they came out of a museum (and were still on the mannequin), and the deadly serious look on his face. Then there was this case he had in his hand. It looked like it held a trumpet or some other kind of small instrument, which only added to the look of some old time musician ready to play a one-night stand.

“So who are you, and what can I do for you?”

“My name is Solomon B. Smith. As to the purpose of my visit, that’s a rather lengthy explanation, which you will find difficult to assimilate. May I enter and be seated while we speak?”

“Well, you don’t look like a mugger. Sure, come on in, Sol. Care for something to drink?”

“Oh, yes. Uh, some sort of stimulant would be desired. Thank you, Barnaby Frederick Smith.”

“Just call me Barney,” I said magnanimously. “How about coffee?”

“Coffee, of course!” he exclaimed, like this was some miraculous coincidence. “That would be excellent, thank you, Barnaby Sm…er, Barney.”

As I fixed a couple of instant Joe’s, I watched him sit on the edge of the chair. He stared around the apartment like a school kid waiting to see the Principal after being caught peeping through a hole in the girl’s locker room. He was either trying to sell whatever kind of gizmo he had in that case, or the same last name meant he was some ‘distant relative’ about to hit me up for money. Hah! Fat chance he had on either of those scams. I was putting my bets on the former because of the way he held that case like it contained a couple of gallons of nitroglycerin. He gripped it with both hands, forcing it firmly into his lap. As weird as I thought he had been so far, it was nothing compared with what was to come.

“You asked who I am,” he blurted out as I handed him a cup.

“Boy, you’ve got a really great memory. But so have I. You’re Solomon B. Smith, and you’re a very distant relative, right?” What the hell, I figured I could have a little fun with this game, too.

“Great ghosts of Einstein and Planck! That’s correct!” he cried, like an announcer telling me I had just won Final Jeopardy. “You can see the family resemblance?” He asked that a little more doubtfully than I would have thought, given the nature of the scam.

“Oh, yeah. It’s just like in “Twins.” We practically look exactly alike.”

“No, we’re not twins,” he explained seriously. “In fact, we are – uh, extremely distant relatives.”

“Oh, come on, Sol,” I said incredulously. “So I’m a few inches taller, a little more muscular, quite a bit younger, and, no offense, definitely better looking. Other than that, it’s like looking in a mirror!”

Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to take any offense at my clever remarks. Maybe he had never seen “Twins.” He just swallowed a big gulp of coffee. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t seem to pay any attention to how hot it was. It took him quite a while to recover before he could speak again.

“I think this is going to be rather strange to you, and quite difficult to believe,” he said finally, and definitely painfully.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said smugly, taking a sip myself. I was really starting to enjoy putting this old fake on the spot. “You’ve got something quite marvelous to tell me or to give me that’s going to make me filthy rich. In return, you expect me to make a small donation to you, right?”

“Yes, that’s right!” he bounced from his seat in glee, nearly spilling his coffee over my already crummy carpet. “I mean, yes, and no. That is, something like that. How did you arrive at this conclusion?”

“Oh, I don’t mean to imply it’s obvious. Not like dry rot around the base of a tree indicating it’s about to fall on your house. It’s just that this situation reminds me of a show I saw on TV two or three hundred times.”

“’TV,’” he muttered, seeming puzzled for an instant. “Ah, yes,” he suddenly brightened. “A primitive form of TotalVid. Yes, I can understand that this situation may be similar to a plot on your domestic entertainment system. However, I can assure you this is not a stereotypical situation.”

“Not for me. With my income, the place I live, and no chance of a big inheritance? I have to admit it’s not often I get hit up by some con artist.”

“I’m not an artist of any type, Barnaby. I’m a scientist. I sense a strong skepticism on your part, which is only natural. However, I urge you to keep an open mind about that which I’m going to tell you.”

My coffee had cooled down to the point where I could drink it without burning my tongue. So I drank, looked at the geezer, and waited for the touch. In a way, this entertained me more than the usual evening TV fare, but not much. The dialogue was getting down to the silly sitcom level, which I hate. It was time for him to get to the point, but I wasn’t about to help him out.

I watched about two minutes worth of facial expressions, starting with expectant sincerity and ending with plain irritation. “Don’t you wish to know that which I’ve come to tell you?” he finally asked.

He clearly wanted me to participate a little more strongly in his game. Instead I leaned back, took another sip of Joe, and faked a yawn.

“Actually, it’s getting near my dinner time, and I’m a lot more interested in that.”

“Of course!” he exclaimed, as if this explained why I wasn’t just dying with curiosity as to what ridiculous story he was about to tell me that would make me fall all over myself to hand him what little savings I had in the bank. “This is your dinner hour, and I’m delaying your normal procedures. I sincerely apologize, but my Time here is very brief. I’m extremely anxious to tell you my story before the window closes.”

That was how he said it, with a capitol “T”, as if it were the most important word in the language. That piqued my curiosity. A little.

“I don’t know about any windows, but my front door is about to close behind your rear end if you don’t spill it pretty soon.”

“Yes, thank you for your urgings. I have less than two hours before the window will close, and so I must make this conversation very brief. Therefore, the most logical place to begin would be to clarify the question of my relationship to yourself. Then I shall tell you why I have come to visit you at this particular point in your life. Yes. Well. Ahem.”

I couldn’t believe how fidgety the old fellow was. As he worked himself up to speaking, I tried to be as calm and sophisticated as possible. I lounged back in my chair and sipped at my instant coffee as though savoring a fine brandy while sitting in an expensive leather armchair in an exclusive men’s club. While talking politics with a bunch of heavy hitters in the economic hub of The City. So imagine how irritated I was at myself for spewing coffee all over myself and dumping the hot liquid remaining in my cup all over my trousers when he finally blurted out:

“Barnaby Frederick Smith, I am your great, great, great, great, great, great grandson!”

Damn! what a mess. It’s a good thing I had navy trousers on, and that my chair couldn’t get much more stained than it already was. Otherwise it would have meant rushing instantly to the nearest laundromat six blocks away and spraying my clothes with that non-stain stuff. Then I would have to mop up the chair and carpet with wet towels. Okay, so not the carpet, because what did I care about how much more filthy it got? Anyhow, then I would have had to try to find something else to wear for the evening without dipping into the rest of the week’s wardrobe. Such as it was. Is it any wonder I was really mad at the guy?

“Damn it!” I shouted. “What kind of stupid joke is that? I mean, I’m not even married! In fact, I’ve never even – I mean, I know damn good and well I haven’t had any kids, and you’re old enough to be my father anyhow! What the hell do you mean you’re my great, great, great, great grandson?”

“Your great, great, great, great, great, great grandson,” he corrected me quietly.

I had already jumped up from my chair heading for the bedroom, figuring I should at least put my clothes in the sink to soak and put on what passed for my bathrobe. Then he comes out with this zinger! That was the final straw. Now I was really pissed off.

“It’s not bad enough you invite yourself into my apartment," I shouted as I wheeled back towards him. "Not to mention you help yourself to my best coffee. You’ve made me ruin my best clothes, and definitely cost me some of my cleaning deposit. (Okay, so I was entitled to a little license, wasn’t I?) Plus this makes me go to a lot of trouble to change and clean up. On top of all that, you’ve got to correct my memory of exactly what ridiculous story it was you were trying to feed me? Are you trying to add insult to injury?”

“I’m sorry, Barnaby Frederick Sm…I mean, Barney. As a research and developmental scientist, I’m afraid pedagogism is part of my nature. I scored very highly in that character trait during Selection.”

“Look, I don’t want to know about your personal problems. You don’t need to give me any more phony stories about what you do for a living. I certainly don’t want to hear this fairy tale you were about to tell me about our deep family relationship or why I should give you money to further some great money-making scheme or support some ridiculous cause. All I want from you right now is for you to leave. Quietly, if possible. I'm going to get out of these wet clothes, have a quiet if totally boring dinner, and then crawl into bed and try to forget I ever regretted the lack of supposed adventure in my life. So you think you could just leave before I have to toss you out on your ear?”

“Barney, I’m very sorry about—“

“Don’t call me Barney. It’s Mr. Smith, to you.”

“Mr. Smith, please believe I didn’t mean to startle you to the point of causing such great discomfort and distress. I only stated a fact. Perhaps I did not deliver the information in a manner that could be more passively assimilated by your thought processes."

"Hey, watch it, buster!"

"Sorry. Anyhow, I deeply regret the results.”

“That I’m your great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, that’s a fact? How am I supposed to ‘assimilate’ such an absurd claim?”

“There can be only one logical explanation. I come from your far future, and have come to visit you via the usage of a temporal displacement mechanism.”

“Of course, how could I not have guessed? You’ve got a time machine in that case in your lap, and you’ve come to sell it to me! My God, this is the Big Opportunity I’ve been waiting for all my life, and here you are to fulfill my wildest dreams!”

“Exactly!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet like a school boy. “That is, more or less. I was certain that an ancestor of mine would have an analytical mind that could make such logical connections.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m a goddamned genius! That’s why I have the incredible job I’ve got and live in such a plush mansion. And all you want out of me in return for that wonderful gizmo is a million dollars, right?”

“Well, actually, it will take several billion credits to—“

“Several BILLION!” I thundered. “That’s it, that’s it! I’ve totally had it. Do you honestly think I have any serious money in the world? If I did, you think I'd give you one dime of it in return for some crackpot supposed time machine that you didn’t even have the brains to show me and try to pretend it was for real? This stupid game has gone totally into outer space, and you’d better blast off before I knock you into orbit!”

Instead of quivering before my righteous wrath, he stood there gaping at me with the most profound look of shock and disbelief I have ever witnessed. If I hadn’t been so angry, that look would have sent me into convulsions of laughter. As it was, it did kind of serve to help calm me down a little bit before I actually got physical with the old bugger.

“You weren’t serious in your statements,” he said in amazement. “You did not form any logical conclusions, and you have no belief in anything I’ve said or in this situation.”

“No shit, Sherlock!”

“Solomon,” he corrected me a little testily. “If you must be incredulous, at least please do not gratuitously insult me by calling me by another identity. ‘Sol’ was bad enough. And I don’t ask for immediate funds from you, merely the willingness to listen to how I will assist you in making a very large fortune, which I then request you leave to me in your distant future.”

I don’t know what it was. It could have been the sincerity, the quiet dignity, the look of calm determination on that professorial face, or just the hurt tone he used. Probably it was more the claim he wanted to help me make a bundle of dough now without anything out of pocket and give him some of it in the future. That sounded appealing. IF it could possibly be true. Anyhow, suddenly, all of my anger was gone. I stared at him for nearly a minute, and he just looked right back at me. He wasn’t backing down in the least, yet he was not challenging me in any way. I sat back down in my chair, wet spots and all, without bothering to change. I gestured for him to do the same. Suddenly we both seemed very calm.

He sat there as if this moment had been what he was waiting for all along. I could feel…I don’t know what. Certainly wisdom, intelligence and patience emanated from him. But there was an air of expectancy as well. He knew what would happen. I inhaled the certainty of his confidence like the air that I breathed.

I had to know what this was all about. The first thing I had to do to get there was to change the whole atmosphere. Which, of course, had to begin with me.

“Would you like some more coffee?” I asked politely.

“No, thank you, Mr. Smith. I think we just need to talk.”

I just looked at him. He was calm, almost serene. It was as though all of this was predestined. Or, maybe – just maybe – for him this was all just past history.

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

I smiled to show my new, friendly attitude. His face remained serious, but pleasant.

“Okay, I apologize,” I said. "Let’s start all over, shall we? Why don’t you just tell me your story, and I’ll listen with an open mind.”

“That’s much more the attitude I had expected from such a revered ancestor, Mr. Smith.”

“Barney. And cut the ‘revered ancestor’ crap, okay?”

“Barney. Thank you. And also let me apologize for the rather chaotic and strange manner in which this meeting has transpired up to this point. I should have been much more prepared for this conversation, much more in control of my emotions and the message I must convey to you. However, this is also the first time such a situation has ever occurred for myself as well. I must confess the enormous importance of this meeting, in addition to the somewhat traumatic events that preceded my – trip, shall we say – have left me much more, perhaps ‘flustered’ is the word I seek.”

“Okay, Solomon, so now we’re both cool and calm, right?"

"Please, call me 'Sol.' It somehow seems fitting that you should do so. Like a revered…I mean, like a good friend would address me."

"Okay. Thanks. So, what’s your story?”

“I’m a research scientist. By your terminology, you might call me a physicist. My specialty is quantum mechanics. It’s a science that is in its infancy in your Time, although the theory was actually formulated near the end of the Nineteenth Century. Approximately fifteen years ago in my life, I inherited a huge sum of money. It was more than three billion credits, which I cannot accurately convert into your monetary system. This money was left to me in a trust by my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather. You, Barnaby Frederic Smith. This fortune allowed me to perform the research and development of a temporal displacement mechanism, which you more succinctly refer to as a ‘Time machine.’ I normally shorten it to TDM. By use of that machine, I was able to travel back into this Time/Space Continuum in order to complete the evident circuit that will make all of this transpire in my reality.”

I stared at him, waiting for the punch line. When it didn’t come, I felt a few questions might be in order.

“Okay, so let’s get a few things straight here. You're going to give me a machine, and I'm going to give you money, right?”

“I apologize for the misunderstanding. I have come to give you a small version of the TDM, that’s correct. But you will give me no funds at this time. You will leave me this large inheritance in the form of a trust, as I mentioned.”

“I see. So you give me this gizmo right now, at no charge. Then I use it to somehow build up a huge fortune, which I leave to you in my distant future, is that it?”

“That’s exactly it, Barney. In addition to some general information which I will pass on to you regarding vastly successful businesses that will come into being, you will use the rather limited effectiveness of this mechanism to acquire wealth.”

“‘Limited effectiveness.’ What’s that, like half of me goes back in time a month while the rest of me only makes it a week?”

“No. I again apologize that I don’t have adequate time to explain the technical reasons this small version of the prototype TDM has limited functionality. It’s primarily due to the tremendous quantities of energy required to both activate particles at rest in order to bring their external velocities to match those of their internal velocities so that both are equal to the velocity of light in free space, as well as to influence the settings of all impacted particles so they can approximate the Time/Space Continuum which is the desired locus of the quantum system which is attempting to be teleported from the origin to—“

“Sol. SOL!” I finally shouted. “What does that mean in English?”

“I have been speaking English, Barney. You see, most of the world of my time utilizes English as the base language. Naturally, certain natural linguistic evolutions have occurred from your period to mine. I have obviously not mastered the subtleties, notwithstanding my diligent efforts to study your current vernacular through the use of archived cultural records. Primarily, I seem to have a difficult time with all of the verbal abbreviations you use.”

“’Verbal abbreviations?'”

“Yes. Such as 'I’m,' or 'you’re,' and so on.”

“Oh. Those’re what we call contractions, where you kind of scrunch a couple of words together to simplify the language a bit. Maybe save a little time talking.”

“Oh, of course! I understand the theory. However, they are a bit difficult to use correctly, much like idioms, which are not only specific to the language but are often peculiar to specific geographic regions or cultural backgrounds that – ”

“Sol, I’d really love to hear the rest of this lecture, you know? Maybe even the first part again, if I could get a translator to put it into my ancient vernacular. However, I gotta tell you it’s a little thick for me. Do you always speak so formally?”

“Actually, I don’t speak formally at all. You must remember that, as with almost everything, language is continuously changing. Although my birthplace was the city of New York, it is no longer in the country you call the United States, and the language we speak is quite different from the English of your day. As I said, I studied archived materials from your period, both written and those with auditory and visual components. Especially movies. I really love the movies of your time. After my inheritance, I became very interested in the world of my benefactor. I tried to learn all I could of the way you might speak, dress and act, knowing that someday I would come to visit you. But I have obviously not managed to capture your speech patterns correctly,” he concluded mournfully.

“Well, it's not bad, I guess,” I tried to let him down gently. “And you really seem to be getting better the more we talk. It’s more – well…”

“Please tell me.”

“It’s the clothes, Sol. I mean, they kind of make you look like someone out of an old movie. They make you look – uh, older than I’m sure you really are.”

“I did not do well?” he lamented, clearly disappointed in not having copied the speech and clothing exactly in spite of all his efforts. These eggheads. Such damned perfectionists!

“No, you did great, Sol,” I said unconvincingly. “After all, you sound like anyone speaking a foreign language would, I suppose. I’ll bet my Spanish and German sound just as off to a native speaker. Probably worse.”

“I suppose I should have utilized a translation machine,” he sighed regretfully. “It would have allowed for more perfect idiomatic communication. I simply assumed that my many years of close study of your culture would have better prepared me for this meeting. It was of some arrogance on my part, I must confess.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean to bring you down. You’re doing great, really. I’ll bet I’d have a hell of a time trying to get by in your society.”

“You have no idea,” he said, with a grim tone that surprised me.

I figured it was time to get back to the main topic.

“Hey, I thought you were about out of time and had to get back to the future.”

“Of course! Thank you for reminding me, Barney. There’s quite a lot of information I must pass on to you before my energy source no longer has sufficient power to reverse this current transference. First,” he said, digging into a pocket, “here is a list of companies that will earn tremendous profits throughout their existence. As to short-term investments, I didn’t have a sufficient period to study actual business or sporting activities of your era. However, the limited capabilities of this TDM will prove quite sufficient for that purpose.”

“Which reminds me,” I reminded him, “you haven’t explained what you meant by the ‘limited’ effectiveness of this gizmo.”

“Very true. In brief, due to the limited storage capacity of the energy capacitors, this mechanism can only duplicate physical settings up to a duration of approximately thirty days into the past. It has ‘visual’ settings – that is, previewing your destination before you go there – of approximately double that. Because of the geometric increase in the uncertainty of probabilities as the TDM attempts to emulate settings of the Time/Space Continuum of the future, the accuracy of the machine is much less. You might achieve two days in actual physical teleportation, and perhaps three or four for ‘visual’ capacity. Both TDMs are only very primitive prototypes of what I hope to eventually develop. As I haven’t had sufficient opportunity to experiment with this smaller version, I am understandably not totally in command of the exact capabilities of the mechanism.”

There was a slight pause. That was me trying to think of something intelligent to say.

I felt my eyes rolling. I’m no dummy, okay. For example, I earned my doctorate in economics in the usual number of years, meaning I understood my subject pretty well. But this was worse than Greek to me – it was gobbledygook. Not so much the words (although some of them sounded pretty damn pretentious) as much as the premises. He was obviously referring to scientific concepts and technologies that had taken him quite a few years to develop, and had never been part of my interests or studies. Still, I had to wonder – damn! Can’t these eggheads ever speak English, even if it’s the English of seven or eight generations in their past?

But the old geezer (or was he an incredibly young geezer?) was theoretically offering to make me filthy rich. Assuming, of course, this wasn’t all the ravings of a seriously deranged mind. Or else the most elaborate sting ever devised. Which, considering both the bizarre details of the story and my financial condition, might have been the same thing. But, I figured old Sol wasn’t asking for any money up front (or at least said he wasn’t), so what did I have to lose? Except for either my sanity or my life savings. But, since right now neither of those were worth an autumn leaf at the top of the pile, what the hey? I figured the best thing was to try to get him to explain all of this to me once again.

“Could you please explain all of that to me once again?” I asked politely.

“Which part?”

“From where you said, “In brief.” Forget the part where you talked about energies and velocities and all of that – stuff.”

“Very well, I shall attempt to do so in simplistic terms. Are you familiar with quantum mechanics?”

“Those are the guys who take all those years of specialized training and get lots of certificates so the car dealership can brag about having them on their staff, right?”

“No, Barney. As I previously mentioned, quantum mechanics is a science, a branch of physics that --”

“Sol, I was just kidding again. Humor. You’ve heard of it, right?”

“Humor. Of course I’m aware of humor. It is often used in our various forms of entertainment.”

“Yeah, well… Okay, never mind.”

“So how much do you know about quantum mechanics?”

“I think a ‘quantum’ is a measurement of energy on some sort of microscopic level. That’s about it.”

“Close enough, I suppose. It’s more like the smallest quantity of some physical property, which can also be energy itself, that a system can possess. Hmm. Alright, do you know what Newtonian mechanics are?”

“Actually, I think I do know something about that from my physics classes. At least, the ones I managed to remain awake in. That has to do with an object remaining at rest or in some steady motion until influenced by some outside force, something about the rate of change of momentum being proportional to the force that causes the change, and this outside force causes an equal and opposite reaction to the object. Is that right?”

“Very good. Simply put, those are the three basic laws. Early in your own century, quantum mechanics was developed in an attempt to explain the behavior of elementary particles and atoms that do not obey Newtonian mechanics.”

“So that was the origin of obedience training?”

“I beg your pardon?”

I sighed. “Never mind. I give up on the attempts at humor, okay? It’s just that old habits die hard. Look, maybe you can give me some kind of analogy of how this thing works that even a simpleton like me can understand.”

“An analogy. Hmm,” he mused. He put his left elbow on the arm of his chair and turned his head so he could put his forehead on the fingers of his left hand. Then he started rubbing his brow in a great imitation of an absent-minded professor trying to remember where he had left the Clift Notes to his last classroom dissertation. Very effective, I thought. So what? I was still very skeptical.

“There is in this century a mechanism known as a facsimile machine. Are you familiar with this device?”

“A fax? Of course! What kind of idiot do you think I am?”

“Let’s put that aside for the moment.”

Knowing he didn’t have a sense of humor, I was about to give him a sharp retort to that remark. Like a typical professor, however, he didn’t give me a chance. He pushed right ahead with his lecture. Since I had asked for it, I shut up and listened.

“In essence, that machine assimilates information from the document which it is scanning, whether that is text or graphics. We will assume that information corresponds to any given quantum or macro system. The first phase of this process consists of a rough absorption of all information of the target document and converting this information into an electronic set of data, essentially ready to be replicated in a format which can be easily manipulated and then very faithfully reproduced. This relates to my temporal displacement mechanism assimilating the general parameters of both the object and surrounding Time/Space Continuum that is to be replicated and the macro spectrum of the Time/Space Continuum to which the subject object is to be teleported. In this analogy, one then denotes the exact portion of the document that one desires to scan, which would equate to the object that one wishes to teleport, which may be animal, a human being, or so on.

“Simultaneously, the mechanism utilizes the exact geographic coordinates and point in time it has been fed to ‘visualize’ the conditions of that locus, or the relatively exact ‘position’ in the Time/Space Continuum one wishes to emulate. The settings for both the desired object of transport and the desired arrival point are then approximated to the highest degree possible, and the simulation occurs. If a high enough degree of faithfulness to the original was produced in the facsimile machine, the object could be electronically transmitted to another locus. It would then be received with sufficient accuracy that the original could essentially be ‘reproduced’ in that distant locus. In the case of my TDM, the initial ‘visual’ portion of the scan corresponds to the destination, which allows the user to ‘see’ what may or may not occur at a certain point in the past or future. However, approximating enough detail to physically teleport to that point in the Time/Space Continuum requires a much higher degree of exact acquisition of reproducible data and expenditure of energy, and consequently allows for a much lower actualization of results. Additionally, the size and energy capacity of the TDM also determines how much ‘cargo’ the TDM can transport, which is another reason yours is limited.”

This time I'm positive my chin was resting on my lap and my eyes had rolled to the back of my head. I had lockjaw of the brain, and was sure it was frozen for life.

"Barney?"

"Uh."

"Barnaby! Are you there?"

"Uh."

I blinked my eyes a few times until they straightened out. Then I picked my chin up and put it back into place. Finally, I shook my head until I heard a clunking and whirring again, and managed to refocus on his face.

"Barney, did you understand what I was talking about?"

"Uh."

"Oh, good. Do you have any questions?"

Only the obvious, like: “What the hell are you talking about?” But I didn’t want to seem totally stupid, so I again tried to think of something more intelligent to ask. Without sounding like an idiot, of course. Which is what I felt like, but who wants to admit to that?

“Oh. Uh. Well, you mean the finer you want to pinpoint the final result, the greater your accuracy has to be and the more energy you have to use, right?”

Sol looked like the proud parent of a formerly stupid child who had just been placed in pre-algebra while still in the sixth grade. “Exactly.”

“So first you kind of roughly ‘scan’ whatever is going to be transported. That gives you a kind of ‘ghost’ image of the target electronic document, which is the equivalent of the place in the future or past you want to transfer it to. Yes?”

“No, not exactly. The ‘scan’ portion of the process is one thing. This ‘ghost’ image you refer to would be more equivalent to the visualization of the desired destination locus.”

“Oh. So it ‘visualizes’ some place in the past or future. How does it do that?”

“That’s a rather lengthy explanation, which I’m afraid I don’t really have time for right now. A very brief and simplistic analogy, I suppose, would be this ‘TV’ system you spoke of. The set in your home is a receiving system that ‘reaches out’ into the air, acquires energy particles that it assimilates and translates into sound and video depending on the frequency to which it’s attuned, and converts them into a program you can watch.”

“I guess I just can’t imagine how that works for some point in the distant past or future.”

“No more than a pioneer some two hundred years in your past could have understood how a television works.”

“Point well taken. So this ghost image is what you see when you look into your little crystal ball to see what the past or future should be like if you actually decide to transport the object. Is that right?”

“Precisely.”

“Okay, maybe I’m getting the hang of this." And I think I was. I was on a roll now, and eager to see if I really was as smart as I hoped I was.

"So this principle holds true in both the past as well as the future. But the past is easier to ‘scan,’ or to reproduce with your time machine, because it has a lot of known detail you can feed into the computer. On the other hand, the future has many more variables to try to copy because it doesn’t exist yet. Is that also right?”

“Well, pretty much. But not quite. In a temporal sense, the future has already ‘happened.’ It’s just that we haven’t experienced it yet.”

“So it’s just as definite as the past, then?”

“Actually, neither are ‘definite’ in the sense that there are no variables. The future is certainly much more uncertain in that people still are making decisions, tectonic plates may or may not slip to cause earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, and so forth. However, the past is still variable in the theoretical sense. For example, we keep making discoveries about the past that affect our present, and therefore the future. It’s also variable in the physical sense, now that a working TDM has been achieved, because a person has the ability to travel back into the past and do things that will alter our present ‘reality.’ That’s why I’m trying to be as faithful to my ‘past’ as possible, so that I don’t change the future.”

“Wow! Now, that’s a pretty scary thought.”

“Absolutely frightening.”

“Alright, so let me try again. Maybe ‘acquiring’ an image of the past is easier than one of the future in the way that receiving a TV program is easier than, say, trying to interpret radio signals coming from outer space. We know that both of them had a definite source and meaning. But tuning to exactly the right frequency, interpreting what the source was and the meaning of those sounds or images, is much more difficult because of all the variables. You would know exactly where to look for the TV signal and what it means. A radio signal from outer space is much more problematic. Is that right?”

“Yes, yes, that’s exactly right!” Sol said with more animation than I would have thought possible. My God, I thought I was about to get an ‘A’ in this class.

“Just one thing that bugs me. How come you keep using the word ‘teleport’ instead of ‘transport,’ or some other actual form of physical movement I know about?”

“That’s a good question, Barney. With no intention of condescension, I must ask if you are familiar with the phenomenon of quantum teleportation which was theorized at about your time of existence, and then developed early in the Twenty-first Century?”

“Wow, you mean like in 'Star Trek?' I guess I always figured that kind of thing was just science fiction, not actually possible.”

“Anything is possible. However, you are evidently unaware of the work of Charles Bennett and a group of researchers at IBM, one of your major scientific corporations. The group who proved the possibility of quantum teleportation in 1996?”

“Gotta confess, Sol, I’m in the dark.”

He stared blankly at me for several seconds, like a computer when it’s crunching.

“I must assume that’s a negative response. As I explained, I’m still somewhat weak on many of the idioms of your era. The term ‘transportation’ generally means to take an object and to physically move that actual object to another location in space, regardless of the temporal ramifications of that transfer. Teleportation is a methodology of measuring the general physical properties of a given quantum or macro system, which essentially means any integrated object. One then ‘approximates’ that object in another Time/Space Continuum to an extremely high degree of exactness. In other words, the original object is in essence never left behind. It may even be ‘destroyed,’ as some theorize. In the meanwhile, a highly faithful duplicate is created at another locus which shares almost all of the actual properties of the original.”

I thought about that one quite a bit. “You mean – you – are not exactly the person you were when you left your, uh, Time/Space Continuum and appeared here in this one?”

“That’s essentially correct, Barney. In many infinitesimal ways, I’m not the same person I was before I teleported.”

I let that thought sink in for a while. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how soon I would be trying this time travel thing, and certainly not how often. I mean, at best it sounded a lot like taking multiple small concussions, to the body as well as the mind. How soon before your brain wasn’t the same basic gray matter you thought it was when you started? Even if things went right – which Murphy, using his own scientific postulate had proven never did – how long before you weren’t the same you? I mean, in more than these ‘infinitesimal’ ways.

“Okay, so enough of the technical stuff,” I said, pushing aside that depressing idea to get right to the bottom line. “How does this gizmo allow me to see the future?”

Sol positively beamed as he opened the case and extracted a weird shaped box that looked like it had a couple of hundred dials and meters and more lights than a cheap electronics shop. As he fondled the dials, he started to explain.

“This emits a field based on previous Time/Space Continuum data I programmed in from my knowledge of specific conditions throughout the known history of the past few hundred years – that is, from the year 2162. It also needs general parameters that have been more recently input by the user according to more specific immediate data. Then, of course, there are the desired goals. The user – in this case, you – needs to input as exactly as possible the year, date and time of day desired for either ‘viewing,’ which is previewing one’s arrival, or actual physical arrival.”

“Wow. ‘Exactly.’ That sounds pretty precise.”

“That’s not all.”

“There’s more?”

“Yes. You must also designate the exact geographic coordinates of the desired destination. That includes, as accurately as possible, the altitude above sea level to a plus or minus of no more than two feet. Err on the side of a tiny bit too high, if you must err, as you would not wish to arrive with your feet encased in concrete.”

Now, that was a cheerful thought. I was becoming a lot less inclined to actually try traveling with this frightening thing. Sol might have tremendous confidence in it, but then, he had built the damn thing, right? He had a vested interest in having faith in it. I had a vested interest in keeping my mind and body as intact as possible.

“The TDM then emits a linking beam to the desired destination based on the already known parameters of the various conditions, and alters its pre-programmed physical and temporal settings to correspond more exactly to actual conditions. You ‘view’ the setting in this monitor here, while reading the various degrees of probability of your physical transference matching that exact Time/Space Continuum. There are paradoxes in quantum mechanics regarding both the viewpoint of the viewer and the ability to measure any given particle affecting the actual ability to emulate that particle, or of course by extension the entire quantum and ultimately the macro system. But these have proven to be like most presumed paradoxes. That is, they were more powerful in theory than in practice.”

“If Man can conceive, Man can achieve?”

“There may be some parallel to that remark.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Oh, and as you’re referring to wagering, I suggest that you take some care in gaining earnings from wagering on sporting events, as well as in business ventures. One could very easily elicit unwanted attentions from making large, short-term gains. That could possibly lead to undesirable consequences.”

“Like a couple of goons breaking my legs? Or maybe worse, like the S.E.C. running a formal investigation into my investment information? Don’t worry, I get your point.”

“I wish you only the best of good fortune, Barney Smith.”

I smiled wryly. “’The best of good fortune.’ Was that an intentional pun?”

Solomon looked confused for a moment as he considered the words. Then he looked pleased with himself. “A pun! Of course, that’s a type of witticism, is it not?”

“It certainly is.”

“That’s not normally a component of my personality, but it somehow seems quite enjoyable for such a small thing. Perhaps I shall make a greater effort in the future to produce more humor.”

“Hey, that was another one! You’re a natural, Sol. Better watch out, or you’ll have to change your profession to comedian.”

He shone like a big-screen TV on a dark night. “Yes, I must definitely attempt to add more humor into my life when I return to the future.” He suddenly looked serious again. “Which, I must remind myself, must be accomplished in less than an hour from now.”

“So you were explaining how this gizmo works, right?”

He reached into the case again and pulled out a thin booklet.

“This is a relatively simplistic instruction manual. It gives very little in the way of theoretical application or technical detail, merely an explanation of what controls you must use to generate the proper settings for each function you wish to achieve. However, let me give you an overview of what your options are and how this physically works so that you will better understand the manual.”

Over the next thirty minutes, Sol laid it out for me in surprisingly simple ways. In fact, he made it sound so easy and logical that I almost started to believe this small gizmo on the table really could do all of the amazing things he told me. The more he talked, the more I almost believed it.

“Due to the rather limited energy source of this self-contained mechanism,” Solomon concluded his instructions, “I strongly advise you to use it as little as possible for temporal travel, which requires a tremendous amount of energy. Content yourself primarily with ‘viewing’ events in the near future that will allow you to invest wisely.”

Thinking about those side effects to teleportation he had mentioned, I gave a tiny shudder. “Don’t worry, Sol, I won’t be hopping around too much.”

“Excellent. I have left this for last,” he said, pulling a couple of sheets of what looked like paper out of the case. “They are the instructions for leaving me your inheritance, as well as for ‘delivering’ this mechanism back to me in the future.”

I looked them over quickly, and what I read made very little sense.

“As a financial person, this all seems very complicated to me. I understand the legal necessity for protecting the trust and transference of funds along the way. However, I don’t understand why I couldn’t simply place most of the money that is to eventually reach you into, say, numbered accounts in a Swiss bank. And why can’t I just leave the time machine in a large safety deposit box? Surely it would be a lot safer, and a lot easier.”

“It would take me quite some time to explain, and the explanation might seem totally preposterous to you.”

I almost laughed out loud at that one. As if anything could get more preposterous than everything he had already told me!

“Go ahead, give it a shot,” I invited.

“Allow it to suffice that all of the systems you are familiar with, both economic and social, have been altered dramatically by my lifetime. Most relevant to this point, there is no banking system such as you know it, and certainly no ‘safety deposit boxes’ or other such mechanisms for storing personal valuables. They are not necessary in my society. Please believe me, this was the way it was done, or the way it will be done, because it is the only vehicle that will ensure I will safely and legally receive what you will leave me. And now, I’m afraid I must go if I am to reach my larger TDM, which is located in the basement of this building, and return to my own Time before the energy ebbs below a safe level for returning me such a relatively long distance into the future.”

“Why, what happens if the energy’s a little low? Does that mean you have to stay here?”

“Not necessarily,” Sol said uncertainly. “But earlier experiments on living organisms where they were teleported with insufficient energy levels were, shall we say, unsuccessful in totally replicating their physical and mental properties.”

“You mean they didn’t get back in one piece?”

This time it was Solomon’s turn to shudder, and his was not tiny. “Exactly.”

I hoped he meant mice or gerbils! God forbid he should have experimented on people. He certainly didn't seem the type.

“Does this mean I’m probably never going to see you again?”

Solomon looked solemn. “I don’t know, Barney. Although there was overwhelming evidence that I made this visit, there is no indication, either in past records or in my brief glimpses into my own future, that I ever visited with you again.”

“Well, in that case, I gotta tell you, Sol, it’s been a real trip. I mean, uh, it’s been a pleasure.”

“Thank you, Barney. It has indeed been a pleasure for myself, as well. And, of course it was a real trip.”

I gave a little chuckle. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant, but never mind. I guess with all of the money you’re expecting in the future you won’t need it, but I wish you good luck and a happy life.”

“You have no idea how much I appreciate the sentiment, honored ancestor, nor how much I need exactly that. However, I wish to return the sentiments to you, in spite of the fact that my knowledge of your future is much more secure in terms of success. I don’t know all about your personal events, however, and so I shall wish you great happiness as well.”

“Thanks, Sol. Have a good trip back home.”

“Thank you, Barney.”

I offered my hand, which seemed to surprise him, but he took it and returned my grip with intensity. He didn’t say another word, merely closing the door quietly behind him as he headed for the elevator.

After he had gone, I stood there in my still wet and stained clothing. The case and its contents were lying on my coffee table with an air of great promise as to what the strange old man had told me they would bring. I thought of how surreal the events of the evening had been. Solomon had seemed very sincere and pleasant, even if he was totally bonkers or some kind of con man. But, if he was a con man, why hadn’t he asked for even one penny, leaving me with this supposed time machine? Would he come back, claiming it was missing some vital cog that I would have to pay for? Could all of this possibly be even remotely true, and allow me to make a great fortune? If so, what was this strange society like that he had mysteriously alluded to, not seeming at all happy about? For better or worse, would I ever see the strange old man again? Would the damn coffee stains ever come out of my shirt and trousers?

But the incredible excitement of the night in my normally dull and uneventful life, as well as not having eaten a thing (although I was somehow not hungry in the least) had made me dreadfully tired. All of these questions would have to wait for the Future to answer. For now, I needed to get some sleep.

I headed for bed, stripping off the sad garments as I went. I just dropped them on the floor, not caring about permanent stains on them or the carpet. I got under my thin covers, dreaming about traveling into the past to meet Great Men or into the future of my supposed great, great, great, great, great, great grandson, genius and billionaire. Bemused, befuddled and bedamned, I fell into a fitful sleep.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

I woke up with a muddled head and a grumbling stomach. I had gone to bed early, but I didn’t feel very rested. The night had been full of chaotic dreams and thoughts zipping through my head of time and space and different parts of people flowing on rivers of electrical currents to different loci and the Space/Time Continuums turning into e-files that reached out and grabbed ticker tapes of future stock prices while dials twirled and lights flashed and finally bells rang, which turned out to be the alarm going off.

The first thing I thought when I gained consciousness was, “Man, am I hungry! How many eggs have I got left in the fridge?”

My second thought was, “Am I really going to waste time on this silly machine? Then I’ll feel like an idiot at the end of two or three hours because I fell for the gag and it doesn’t do a damn thing. Or maybe I’ll try it and it won’t work, and I’ll worry that I must have somehow screwed it up. Then I’ll feel totally incompetent for however long it takes to prove the damn machine does or doesn’t work.”

The third thought was, “Yeah, but if it does work, I could become filthy rich without any real effort at all!” Which was a pretty enticing thought. Sort of like, “What if this is the winning lottery ticket?” And with about as much chance. No, come to think of it: infinitely less.

So my fourth thought was, “Am I going to bother going to work today? Or should I stay here and try to figure out how to work this ridiculous thing, knowing I’ve already burned all of my sick days on the times when I was just so sick of everyone and everything at the office that I couldn’t make it in without making myself ill?” And then, of course, I’d regret the fact that I’d wasted hours I could have been paid for while absolutely proving to myself I was never going to make my fortune by believing in con men or miracle machines.

But the fifth thing I thought was, “Man, I am really starving!” So off I went to the kitchen to count and cook eggs, and maybe some bacon if it wasn’t all green.

While I was sitting there eating my five overdone eggs without bacon, I revisited thought number four. There was the trade off between trying to get an advance on my sick days and the potential frustration of wasting the time and effort by not having any success. Even worse, in proving myself an ass to ever have a semblance of belief in this likable but totally unbelievable supposed descendant and his completely impossible invention. Which was all compounded by the tantalizing fantasy of the freedom I would gain through him and his wacky box if it was all actually true and I could become filthy (or was it beautifully?) rich.

So, I may be stupid, but I’m not dumb, right? I brush my teeth and head off for work, making it to the office barely on time, as usual. I could always try the box later.

Not surprisingly, I wound up sitting there the entire day just staring at my computer screen, studying various offerings on the Nasdaq. I went to my Charles Schwab member site. It cost me thirty bucks per trade, which was barely what I made on most of my investments. I wanted to read up on what the analysts said about those stocks, how they’d done over the past twelve months, what the industry projection was, and all that jazz.

All the while I was thinking to myself: “What am I doing all this research for when I’ve got almost my entire two grand investment money already tied up in stocks that are lower than what I bought at, which means they’re worth almost nothing because I never buy shares that are more than ten bucks apiece? So I’m not going to sell them anyhow until they go up, and if the stupid machine works (which I know it won’t, but just for the sake of speculation) I won’t need to do any research because all I’ll have to do is look at the screen on that box and know exactly what to invest in.”

But I did it because I couldn’t possibly concentrate on my work for more than ten minutes at a time. What’s more, it was a way of keeping the dream alive for at least the rest of the day, until I went home and had the time to sit down and see if the damn thing actually, really, truly worked. I was cursing its impact on me before I had even tried it.

Naturally, at the end of the day The Old Toddler came up to me as I was about to leave on time for a change. I resigned myself to getting reamed out for ten minutes for goofing off most of the day. So, of course, I was totally shocked when he said:

“I’m very pleased that you took my warning yesterday to heart, Smith. This is the first time I can remember when you worked diligently at your desk all day. Not once did you wander around the office, go for at least three cappuccinos or continuously stare off into space. I hope this signifies you’re turning over a new leaf, and that you keep up the good work in future.”

Then I remembered that my desk faced The Old Toddler’s office so he couldn’t see what I had on my screen. I give him a quick smile. “Of course,” I said, and breezed on out the door.

When I got home, I immediately opened the instruction manual and read it from cover to cover, even though I felt pretty comfortable with the instructions Solomon had given me. Maybe a delaying tactic, my conservative nature; I don’t know. Anyhow, I finally got down to it. I turned the box on. All the proper lights lit up, which didn’t prove a thing. I took a deep breath and pushed the “Acquire” button. Nothing happened, but then, nothing was supposed to happen. Not for a while, at least.

I decided to start with something simple, like looking at tomorrow’s closing stock prices. Solomon had supposedly set the coordinates to show me at my computer screen. I adjusted the date and time setting for the next evening at six o’clock, when I knew I would be home and looking at it. As simple as Sol had made it sound, both in person and in the manual, it took me over three hours of fiddling around before I finally had all of the adjustments set. And that was just for one day in advance! Anyhow, after sweating and cursing and calling myself every synonym in the book for ‘fool,’ there finally came the time to switch on the screen and see my ‘ghost’ scan. I only hesitated for maybe thirty seconds, and then I flipped the switch.

I waited. And waited. And then I tried to figure out how I could literally kick myself in the ass. And then it happened.

To my utter amazement, this ghost image actually started to form on the screen! It was appearing very slowly and fuzzily. But, when it focused, it was definitely me with my back to the ‘camera’ and the computer screen gradually becoming clearly visible. I looked over my shoulder to see where the camera was. Then I remembered that the screen was showing me in front of my computer while I was actually sitting here at the kitchen table in front of the box as I watched myself slowly scroll down a list of the ten stocks I was monitoring. As I watched my ‘future’ self do that, I carefully wrote down the closing prices.

To conserve power, as Solomon had suggested, I had only set the ‘prescan’ to last two minutes. The image suddenly blinked out of existence. That startled me, considering how long the image had taken to form. I slumped down in my chair. I trembled with exhaustion from the intense concentration of the past few hours, as well as the exhilaration of the promise that stared me in the face like a bucket of water in front of a man who had crawled across the Gobi for the past three days.

It was too incredible to be true, and yet there could be no doubt of what I had seen. I rushed to my computer. I could barely contain my impatience as I turned it on, got onto the internet, and logged on to the Schwab site. Reviewing my actual portfolio list, plus some I was tracking, I was startled by the relative similarity in the numbers. It seemed that, while my time machine showed numbers close to reality, there were definite differences that could be the results of a day’s trading. I noted that six of the stocks were down, one was unchanged, two were up marginally, and one was up nearly four points. The last was a fairly expensive stock, trading at over fifty dollars a share, so of course it was a stock I had never bought. At that moment, I had just enough money in my bank account to buy eight shares, which my meager ‘margin’ on my Schwab account would cover. That’s sort of like a credit amount against current holdings, so you’re in deep doodoo if you lose a trade on the margin. So, naturally, I decided to blow the whole wad.

With slightly shaky fingers I went through the ‘buy’ sequence, punching the “Confirm Trade” icon with undue violence. It’s not that it was such a huge trade monetarily, although with my limited funds everything was a big deal. It was more the fact I had now committed myself financially and emotionally to this science fiction story. True, that little picture in the screen of the box was very powerful evidence that this might be more than a fantasy, but I had no actual proof as yet. It could still be some elaborate hoax, although there was obviously no sane reason in the world why anyone would go to so much trouble. Unless I was being used as a Guinea pig!

Ah, ha! Maybe that was it. They were just testing this gadget out, whatever it might be. It was probably some kind of tiny TV that could receive their cleverly edited special effects video with me and my computer starring in the “Dumb and Dumber” roles, before they tried it out on the Big Fish. They wanted to make sure it was believable enough before wasting their target mark. They had cracked my passwords into the net and on Schwab, discovered which stocks I played, and then dummied some numbers in to make it look real. So that meant they would have to contact me – or maybe not me, but the real mark – before the next day of trading closed, trying to extort their money in some way before the mark had a chance to see the real closing prices. I was sure I had it figured out.

I spent the rest of the night in agony, trying to decide whether or not I should cancel my trade order before the market opened. I finally decided it didn’t matter whether or not this was a hoax. No one really knew which stocks would go up or down. Even if you had inside information you couldn’t predict exactly how much, so one bet was as good as another. I would let the trade ride, and hope for the best. After all, it was a blue chip stock, and I could have made worse investments. And it was only eight shares. Nevertheless, I tossed and turned all night, worrying about how much of a fool I would feel like the next evening.

The only positive to all of this was that I was up and at work early. I hoped throwing myself into my work would help me forget my big investment, as well as avoid getting onto the net every ten minutes and following the progress of the stock. I managed to limit checking the stock to only six or seven times. Of course, that was before ten o’clock, by which time My Stock had risen nearly a full point.

Just when I was beginning to feel a bit more hopeful, The Old Toddler called me into a meeting of the entire department staff. He claimed we (meaning he) had been asked to provide recommendations on a couple of new products the bank was thinking about offering. He naturally wanted to get our input, meaning he would be able to Share the Blame if our (his) advice turned out to be wrong. He remained true to his beat-the-tiniest-point-down-to-the-dust philosophy, as well as his extreme paranoia in making sure he had all of our comments and suggestions documented before ‘drafting’ his recommendations. All of which meant the meeting went through non-stop until five thirty, well after the market had closed on both coasts.

Totally, I got two positives out of this. He ordered out for lunch, meaning I didn’t have to spring for a nice sandwich and salad. I also got several kudos from my colleagues for my suggestions as to what the bank should do with its new products, no insult intended. The downside was that I couldn’t run off to check the market closing at one o’clock PST. So there I was, running up the stairs because the elevator was out of order again, to try to get the computer and the stock quotes up before six o’clock. I was frantic that if I missed the exact time I was supposed to be looking at the quotes of a market that had closed five hours before I would somehow screw up the Space/Time Continuum. Therefore, the results shown on my magic monitor the night before would somehow not be the same as the ones I was desperately praying would be the same tonight, in the here and now of the real world. Is that totally nuts, or what? I didn’t want to answer that.