In Times Like These Boxed Set

by Nathan Van Coops

  Trace:

  A system of tracking designed by Ambrose Cybergenics to monitor and record time travel activity. The technology automatically logs a time traveler’s jumps, and when used in conjunction with Grid technology, safeguards against involuntary fusing with other travelers.

  United Machine:

  A corporate chronothon sponsor. United Machine manufactures advanced hardware and software components including artificial or “synthetic” intelligence units. United machine is responsible for the genesis of synthetic individuals and also the intelligent systems integrated into space suits, vehicles, and many other components in the twenty-second century and beyond.

  The Day After Never

  1

  “Time is a dangerous ocean, and we are all adrift. Each of us will reach a moment when we find ourselves on the wrong side of time from those we love. Whether by a day or a decade, the current shows no mercy. But I believe time is an ocean with borders like any other. One day we will all come ashore together.”-Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1992

  The Neverwhere

  I once wished for a painless death.

  I regret that wish. A stab of suffering would have marked the transition—a final fierce debate with the darkness, my body still screaming live! live! live! right to the very end. A torment’s end would have at least brought closure, some sense of passing. Instead, I’m left wondering if this haze around the edges of my mind is really what’s next or if I am merely witnessing my final failing synapses in a particularly leisurely fashion.

  If I’m not dead, I damn well should be.

  I’m a time traveler who broke the rules.

  In order to continue one’s existence, the laws of the universe dictate basic prerequisites like having mass and occupying space. They demand in no uncertain terms that you obey physical laws such as gravity, momentum, and thermodynamics. The real stickler, of course, is that one stay confined in time. Causes must precede effects, and under no circumstances should one shirk the bonds of time entirely.

  That’s the rule that got me into trouble.

  I don’t know where I am exactly. I should say, rather, that I don’t know when I am. Where is familiar enough. This is the room where I died.

  The St. Petersburg Temporal Studies Society has a very academic feel to it. Old bricks meet louvered windowpanes along one side of the room. There is a chalkboard. The tables and sinks around the room are speckled with the residue of unwatched experiments bubbled over and hastily wiped up. Aprons dangle in a row near the cupboards and plastic face shields hang on hooks near the eyewash station. It’s missing a few elements from when I was here last—primarily the bloodstains and the party guests.

  I died in a particularly public and festive environment, full of champagne glasses, cocktail dresses, and passed hors d'oeuvres. I was suspended in midair at the time. I’m not now. My sneakers are resting comfortably on the laminate floor.

  I find the fact that I have sneakers on simultaneously comforting and disconcerting. Familiarity suggests comfort, but the presumption that I ought to be dead makes me nervous. I hadn’t thought they would let me into Heaven in worn Adidas and a T-shirt from The Gremlins. Perhaps the guardians of the Pearly Gates have lower standards than I suspected. That or I have found myself somewhere else. The thought of the common alternative makes me less than enthusiastic. Could Hell come with multi-colored chalk and safety glasses?

  I check my wrist.

  No chronometer.

  There will be no blinking out of this place again. Not that I imagined that would be possible.

  I pull out my pockets. All empty.

  It’s not how I recall them being when I died. Exactly the opposite in fact. This place has not received everything I took with me, it seems.

  Wherever I am, no one is here to welcome me. It’s eerily quiet. Dead silence would be an appropriate term. Silent as a tomb? Also accurate and equally depressing.

  I take a step.

  I don’t feel especially dead. I’m not having trouble breathing or hearing from what I can tell. My mind is definitely foggy, though. Actually, everything is foggy, especially through the windows. Hazy. Dreamlike even. Can’t see much of anything out there. Seems odd for Florida. It’s rare to get dense fog here. I wander into the hallway. I’ve been here before, too, on a tour.

  My first visit to the St. Petersburg Temporal Studies Society is burned rather vividly into my brain, my friends and I hoping to meet the father of time travel, Doctor Harold Quickly. We were desperate then, trying to find a way home. We didn’t meet him that day, however. Doesn’t look like I’ll be finding him today either. Every room I poke my head into is vacant. There is a fish tank in the lobby producing bubbles but no sign of fish. If this is the last-minute flashback of my life just prior to my death, I got the low budget version. I’ll have to have a few choice words with the director. I push my way out the front door.

  The glistening fog outside is even denser than I saw from the lab. A few cars line the sidewalk beyond the wooden sign for the building, but beyond that is just nothing. The fog is more colorful than I’m used to. If it’s refracting light from somewhere, I have no idea how. There is a hint of blue above me, but even that seems vague. No sun.

  A few yards into the fog on the street I’m forced to stop. I can’t see a darned thing. Looking back at the lab I can still make out the building’s details. I have to admit that’s strange. Directional fog. I take a few steps back toward the building. Curiosity and nervousness are losing ground in my mind to regret and unease. I don’t know what’s out there in the fog, but I can tell it’s not going to be what I want to find. The only thing still keeping the fear of the unknown at bay is the memory of why I’m here.

  I came here for a reason.

  I came here for her.

  <><><>

  St. Petersburg, Florida- 2009

  They say you can’t love a machine.

  I respectfully disagree.

  I think we all get one. One seemingly inanimate creation of steel and glass and shiny chrome that transcends its physical limitations to connect with our soul. One machine that understands us.

  Or maybe I just really like this motorcycle.

  The object of my affection is beautiful but flawed. Even in its current state it makes more sense than most of my life. I fiddle with the ignition wires and run my fingertips under the fuel tank. With the seat up, the tank pops loose easy enough. I tilt it forward and peek underneath. Somewhere in all this bundled electrical wiring, I’ve got a short.

  The motorcycle is older than I am, though she doesn’t look it. In her heyday in the early ’70s, the 450cc Honda was the coolest bike on the road. This particular bike didn’t get to experience much of that time. Someone bundled her away into a garage with less than 2,000 miles on the odometer and she sat collecting dust for the next few decades. Lying abandoned among other forgotten treasures, she waited while her contemporaries cruised America’s blue highways. By the time someone’s son—who didn’t have a motorcycle license, but did have a Craigslist account—found the bike, the glory days of the ’70s Honda were gone.

  She’s still gorgeous. Needed spark plugs, battery, and a new dose of fluids, but once I got her home and wiped the dust off, her chrome was still shiny. She’s a fresh-faced beauty half a century from her own era. That’s where I can relate. She’s out of touch with time, and just a little bit broken. I run my hand gently across her rear fender.

  “Should I be jealous?”

  I look up to find Mym leaning on the doorframe of the open garage door. She’s smiling and lovely. Her blonde hair is curled away from her face and she’s regarding me with crinkles at the corners of her radiant blue eyes.

  “Just tinkering. It’s good riding weather.”

  Mym surveys my oily hands and dirtied cargo shorts. “You almost ready to go?”

  “Is it five already?” I snatch up a rag and begin to wipe my hands.

  “You need a few more minutes?”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, just a few. Gimme fifteen and I’ll be good.”

  Mym smiles and pulls the chronometer pendant from the neckline of her dress. “Okay. I’ll be back.” She moves a step away and presses her hand to the garden fence. Then she vanishes.

  I stare at the empty space she’s vacated. Even after all my prior adventures, the sight of someone time traveling still leaves me in reverent awe. Maybe it’s because it reminds me that it wasn’t all some illogical but convincing dream.

  I drop my tools back into their respective drawers in my toolbox and close the garage door. I trot up the stairs to my apartment above, and cruise through to the bathroom, shedding clothes as I go. The summer breeze is humid and blowing through the open windows. I don’t bother to let the water warm up—I just let the cool stream douse me. When I emerge a few minutes later, wrapped in a towel, I find Mym leaning on the edge of my bed and browsing through novels on my bookshelf.

  “That was fifteen minutes?”

  Mym raises an eyebrow and double-checks the clock on the wall. “Twenty. I was being generous. Someone’s not as efficient as he thinks he is.”

  “I’ll have to talk to Abe about slowing down your chronometer.” I toss the towel at her and walk into the closet. It takes me a while to find anything decent to wear because my wardrobe options seem depleted. I vow to make time for laundry soon, and when I come back out I’m dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt. I finish fastening the top two buttons in front of the mirror. “Where are we going again?”

  Mym sets The Neverending Story back on the shelf and looks me over. “We were going to check out the 1996 US women’s gymnastics team at the Olympics, remember? I wanted you to see Kerri Strug land that vault. The energy of that moment was just amazing in person.”

  “Oh, right. That sounds awesome. I think I’m ready. Do we need tickets or anything?”

  “We’ll pick some up on the way back. You can find a ton after the event is over. We’ll recycle a couple.” Mym winks at me. “Since we can’t get to 1996 on one jump, I thought we might swing by and see Phelps win his gold in Beijing on the way.” She rummages through her bag and extracts an anchor for us to use. “Round out the Olympics-themed date night.” She tosses the anchor to me. I’m surprised to find that it’s an actual bronze medal.

  “This is real?”

  “Amazing what people will sell on eBay.” Mym pulls a degravitizer from her bag and starts degravitizing a different anchor that is much more mundane—a four-pronged steel fork. Using the metallic, Mag-lite shaped degravitizer, she removes the gravitite particles inside the fork so it will be ready for use as an anchor. Since only things with gravitites in them can time travel, the fork will stay behind where we left it, and we’ll arrive at another time in its life in the same relative location.

  When the green light on the device finally illuminates, Mym references a photo of the fork on a table so we can orient ourselves for landing. It looks as though we’ll be arriving in an area where a bunch of tables have been arranged with place settings.

  “We’re getting dinner first?”

  “Yep. Dinner in 2005, entertainment in 2002 and 1996, and home in time for bed. Don’t you love dating me?”

  I lean over and kiss her. “I like the final destination especially.”

  I clasp my fingers through hers and feel something rigid on her finger. Holding it up, I inspect the silver ring on her right hand. “Someone buying you jewelry? Who’s my competition?”

  “I’ve had this one for a while. Gift from my dad when I turned sixteen. Hardly competition.”

  I almost say that she just needs a ring for the other hand, but hold myself back. “I know. Dad’s little girl, right? No competing with that.”

  She smiles and strokes my cheek once before turning back to her task with the anchor. She arranges it on my writing desk at a height where it will match our destination table and we touch our fingertips to the fork. I dial the concentric rings on my wrist-mounted chronometer and Mym uses her own pendant chronometer. She counts off for us as we get ready to press the activation pins. “Three, two, one.”

  Time traveling is instant. Just a blink and we arrive on a shaded outdoor patio next to a table set for two. The table is in a quiet back corner of an otherwise busy restaurant. Diners are being served seafood entrees and chatting loudly over a background of blues music. I spot a security camera on the roof and wonder if that is how Mym got the photo of this anchor location. My attention is brought back to the present by Mym’s snort of laughter. Her hand is over her mouth, trying to contain her mirth.

  “You forget something, Ben?”

  I follow her gaze down to my chest, which has suddenly become bare. “What the—”

  A few other restaurant patrons have turned their attention to our back table now, following Mym’s laughter to the sight of my half-naked form. They stare at me in curiosity, leaning toward one another. A few fingers point in my direction, guiding more eyes to my current embarrassment.

  “Damn it.” I try to recall which shirt I had put on. Whichever it was, it clearly didn’t have any gravitites in it and is still lying on the floor in 2009 where we made our jump. I look back to Mym who is smiling and shaking her head. I frown. “I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t realize I put on the wrong shirt. I really need to get my wardrobe up to time traveler standards.”

  “It’s okay. I kind of like this look on you.” Mym smiles and brushes her fingertips across my chest before stepping past me and leading the way toward the exit. “Come on, we’ll sort it out.” I follow her through a wooden gate at the side of the patio and onto the sidewalk, away from the lingering stares of restaurant patrons.

  The warm streets of Atlanta are busy with pedestrian traffic. Mym starts thumbing through images on her MFD. The multi-function-device is about the size of a phone but contains many of her time traveling apps, including a photo collection of available free-standing anchors in different years and timestreams. She holds one image up for my inspection. “There’s a lamppost over on Peachtree Street that we can use to get to a year where Dad has a stash of other anchors. He might even have a shirt you can borrow. Shouldn’t take long.”

  I nod at a pair of ladies in sun hats who cast sideways glances at me as they pass. One mutters behind her hand and the other woman laughs once they are past. As they breeze by me, my mind suddenly goes fuzzy. My vision dims slightly and I teeter, trying to keep my equilibrium. Oh God, not this again. Out of the corners of my eyes the world around me is getting . . . foggy—a shimmery sort of haze. I concentrate on Mym, still rummaging through her phone in front of me. I reach for her shoulder, a way to ground myself to this reality and keep my balance simultaneously. Mym looks up.

  “You okay?”

  Looking into her eyes, the dizziness passes.

  “Yeah, I’m good.” I let my arm drop back to my side. “Hey. Do you mind if we just head home? I know you wanted to show me the Olympic highlights and I think it’s a super-great date idea, but I could use a night off. Ever since I got back from the chronothon, we’ve been going somewhere fancy every night or seeing amazing events in history and—I’m not saying I don’t love that—but I could use a break, too.”

  Mym lowers her MFD. “It hasn’t all been fancy. The Olympics are pretty casual, actually. Fancy would be Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, or—”

  “You know what I mean though, right? Maybe we can just put in a movie or something. Hang out on the couch?”

  Mym considers this and nods. “Sure. We can do that.” She smiles. “I could bring my database over. I have the Twenty-Second Century Academy Award Collection on Immersion 4D—”

  “Or . . . maybe I could just pop in a DVD?” I grin at her.

  “Or that,” Mym says. “That sounds fun, too.” She lays a hand on my arm. “Ben, I’m sorry. I forget sometimes that this is all new to you. I’m not trying to overwhelm you.”

  “You’re not. These last couple weeks have been great. So great. I really appreciate you showing me a
ll these amazing events. I just . . . kind of need a little bit of my own life mixed in, too, you know?”

  “I totally get that. Come on. I’ll find another anchor we can use and we’ll go back to your place. From here on out we’ll do some things you want to do. I’ll get to see a normal day in the life of Ben Travers. It’ll be fun.”

  “Thanks. I promise it’s not as boring as it sounds.”

  “I do get you shirtless on a couch, right?” Mym smiles and leans toward me. “I can get excited about that.”

  I lean over and kiss her. “Deal. We’ll make the couch a clothing optional space.”

  Mym laughs and leads the way onward. “Race you there.”

  2

  “Time travel may offer a way to skip birthdays or revisit favorite years, but there is no escape from getting older. At the end of every day, no matter what era you are residing in, your life is passing into memory. Memory is our greatest treasure and I’ve found it’s the only one worth hoarding. Luckily it’s worth even more when shared.” -Journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 2013

  The Neverwhere

  There are voices in the fog. I heard a shout. It was muffled, but could have been someone arguing. It’s gone now. I thought the silence was more unnerving, but now I’m not sure. As much as occupying this strange space alone is disorienting, there was a sense of security when I thought I was the only one here. I might be dead, but it’s hard to be scared of yourself. Other dead people? That’s a different story. Especially if I can’t see them.

  I’ve attempted three laps around the Temporal Studies Society building now. I can’t make it all the way around. I can see three sides of the building but the fog on the one end is so thick I can’t even see my own hand in front of me when I try to move forward. I’ve given up trying. Growing up near the water, I’ve been pretty familiar with fog, but this stuff is beyond any level of humidity I’ve ever encountered. The thing is, it’s not even wet. It’s just nothing. Vaguely colorful nothing.