by Keith Hughes
“Some,” Ness admitted, sitting on one of the hard guest chairs. The furniture looked like it could have been World War II surplus. Each item had been made of metal, save the scuffed wooden surface of the desktop itself. The array of filing cabinets lining one wall sported so many dings and dents, he could imagine they had been dragged to the Philippines and back again.
“I must say, this is an interesting window into one of my best students’ future.” Bertrand couldn’t stop staring at his face, and Ness suddenly became aware of the lines and wrinkles formed in recent years. “Did you run into your younger self outside?”
Ness gave a small laugh at the doctor’s choice of words. “Almost. I looked even more upset than I remembered.”
“Yes, a shameful happenstance.” The professor shook his head sadly.
Ness’s first course with Dr. Bertrand had been intermediate physics. Instead of a midterm exam, the doctor had assigned a fifteen-page paper on a vetted physics concept. After weeks of research and laboriously crafting the paper, he had finished it three days early. The completed paper had been left on the main dining room table in his apartment while he was having a drink at the bar to celebrate. The remains of newspapers and a plethora of junk mail were also strewn across the table, and his roommate, Greg, had thrown out the precious paper while cleaning the common areas of their apartment.
Ness had come home late and gone straight to bed. The next morning, he’d found only his typewriter sitting on the table. He had searched his room and the rest of the apartment to no avail. Dr. Bertrand had denied Ness’s impassioned plea for an extension, so he tried in vain to rewrite the entire paper in the two days left to him. He still had his research notes, but the task of rewriting the paper remained as arduous as it had been the first time. It had been the only episode in his life when he wished he drank coffee. Instead, he’d sent Greg to the store for a case of Jolt Cola, which kept him from sleeping more than a few minutes at a time as he pounded frantically at his typewriter keys.
His frantic work produced a ragged paper only thirteen pages long. At the end of his tether and against the deadline, he had no choice but to turn in what he had. The result, a B minus, wasn’t a bad grade, but it had dashed any hope for an A in the class.
“What a horrible week,” Ness admitted.
“Indeed,” Dr. Bertrand agreed. “You looked like you hadn’t slept for days.”
“I hadn’t, for any appreciable amount.”
“I did the best I could on the grade,” the professor admitted.
“I know. Later, I looked over the rubric for the paper again, and with the missing pages, along with the number of typing errors, I should have gotten a C minus at best.”
Bertrand gave him a wink and a smile. “I fudged things a bit in light of extenuating circumstances. Professor’s prerogative.” After a brief silence, Dr. Bertrand leaned forward in his protesting chair to look intently at Ness. “So, what brings you all the way back here?”
“You did. I’m hoping your future self left something for me here.”
“Ah!” The doctor sounded as if a great mystery had finally been solved. “Yes, many months ago, near the start of the school year, I had another visitor from the future. I was mesmerized by how much I had aged, but my other self flatly refused to tell me anything. But he did give me something for safekeeping.”
“Did he mention me?”
“He said only that I would know when and to whom I should give it. Since you are my only other visitor from the future, I assume you are the recipient my other self intended.”
The professor rose and perused the battered metal filing cabinets, hand on chin. “Now, let me see… Where did I file it?”
The professor opened drawers and rummaged through the contents. Several times, he shook his head, slammed the drawer closed, and moved on to another likely candidate. Given the apparently random selection of cabinets and drawers, Ness could not hazard a guess as to the doctor’s filing system.
“Yes!” Dr. Bertrand exclaimed. “Here it is.” He held aloft a white envelope, which looked empty. The doctor handed it to Ness with the gravity of offering Excalibur to King Arthur.
“What’s in it?”
Dr. Bertrand gave a short, sardonic laugh. “I have no idea. Yet another detail my curmudgeonly older self refused to reveal.”
Taking the envelope, he found something hard in one corner.
“It also comes with a message he wanted me to deliver.” The doctor’s exasperated tone drew Ness’s attention to his chagrined expression. “Not here.”
It took every measure of his control to prevent Ness from laughing aloud, not so much at the message but at the sour expression Bertrand wore. He had always exhibited a high degree of curiosity, and Ness knew being shut out of all the mysteries of the future must have been intensely aggravating.
“Yes, tight-lipped to the last is my older doppelganger,” the professor complained.
“Would it help if I remind you that you will eventually know what’s going on?”
If anything, the doctor’s expression grew even more sour. “Which is exactly what he said.”
This time, Ness did laugh. Bertrand could not hold on to his sour expression and grinned despite his frustration.
“What I am looking forward to most is the relationship you and I will eventually share.”
“It is something special,” Ness agreed. “I had better be going. Tempus fugit and all that.”
“Not so much for you, I imagine.”
“You’d be surprised.” Ness got to his feet. He battled a strong desire to hug the man who had come to mean so much, but the younger copy of Dr. Bertrand had not yet experienced the special closeness which would define their future relationship. Instead, he settled for a handshake. “Thanks for everything, doctor.”
“My pleasure, Nestor.”
Once in the hallway again, he raised the envelope to the light. He could see a thin rectangle of some dark material nestled in one corner. Recalling the elderly doctor’s last message, he knew he had to find a safe place to examine the envelope.
He had no worries of pursuit by the forces of Intellisys, but he also had no intention of polluting the time line by exposing a local to the existence of time travel. Many times, Dr. Bertrand had compared the risky venture of time travel to traversing a field of land mines. Because of that, Ness was surprised Dr. Bertrand had even interacted with his younger self, but he must have determined the limited nature of the contact would be safe.
At least I only bumped into my younger self, Ness mused on his way to the stairs. What other forms of “pollution” might be safe?
Ness smirked. He knew of one act of contamination he could not forgo. Some ideas could not be denied.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Distractions and Instructions
Friday, March 27, 1987 2:26 p.m.
Try to look like you belong here, Ness coached himself.
Walking through the apartment complex housing a sizable percentage of the WMU student population, he felt extremely out of place. His clothing fit right in with the typical residents of this area, but Ness possessed a keen awareness of his age being almost double that of all the students he passed.
At least I don’t look like an authority figure in this getup.
During his college years, an actual student in their forties would have been an oddity. But his clothing made him look like any other resident, from a distance at least. Still, Ness ascended the steps to his former apartment, relieved he would soon be out of sight of any curious onlookers.
He found the extra key where he remembered it, hanging on a nail behind a plastic shutter inexpertly attached to a window. He unlocked the door, confident the apartment’s occupants were not at home. Before going inside, he returned the key to its hiding place.
Closing the door behind him, Ness took in the many details. Everything he could see looked familiar, items he had forgotten about for years. Papers were strew
n around the central locus of his old typewriter on the large table, just as he remembered.
A poster of Bo Derek held pride of place in the living room. She sat in the surf wearing nothing but a long white shirt thoroughly soaked to partial transparency. Her hands were on the back of her head, as if in the process of squeezing remnants of the ocean from her hair.
The poster told Ness that Greg was between his many girlfriends. Whenever there was a chance of a female visitor, they would flip the frame over to display the movie poster for The Breakfast Club. The younger Ness did not have to worry about which side showed at all, since at this time he would be firmly in the limbo between Nancy’s betrayal and his disastrous encounter with Angie.
His younger self would be at the Bag End with Greg, who was trying to make amends by taking him out. They would both get stinking drunk, then Greg would pay the tab.
Looking in the fridge, Ness saw the last few cans of Jolt on the top shelf, but he grabbed a Coca-Cola that had been shoved to the back. The cold beverage tasted amazing after all the walking he had done. He sat on the sofa, which had a bit more odor than he recalled, and carefully opened the envelope.
He fished out the object—a one-gigabyte SD card about the size of a postage stamp. Ness assumed it had been intended to work with the PDA, so he retrieved the device and looked for somewhere to insert the card. Along one side, he noticed the stylized SD logo, and a little prying with a fingernail removed the cover.
Ness slid the card into place, replaced the cover, and turned the device on. It showed him a window with the contents of the card—a single video. He tapped on the file, and playback started. He recognized the background. The doctor had apparently recorded it in his Bloomfield Hills kitchen.
After a few seconds, the view adjusted, and the wrinkled face of Doctor Bertrand looked back at him. “Nestor, if events have driven you to the point where you have traveled back to get this video, I owe you an apology. I have embroiled you in troubles in which you have no part and should not have had to endure. My only hope is you can not only survive them but also remain unscathed.
“Somehow my superiors at Intellisys knew I had a working prototype of this technology, and they were going to relieve me of it at all costs. Even by force, if necessary. This I prevented by disappearing into the time stream.”
Disappearing? That could mean one thing. Dr. Bertrand would never return.
“I’m sure you have figured out the significance of my actions. John Fletcher sent his security men to get the machine from me, and I was unprepared. I had only one brief chance to make my move, so I used the device you hold to get away. But I can never go back, so eventually, my borrowed time will run out.
“I have seen their plans for my small device, and they are beyond horrifying. Worldwide chaos, the subjugation of governments, the establishment of a new power meant to serve the whims of one man: John Fletcher, the CEO of Intellisys. Unfortunately, I am unable to stop him.
“Thus, I place this great burden upon you, the extreme favor I ask of you. Under no circumstances should Intellisys be allowed to gain access to either of my prototypes. Yes, you heard correctly. There is more than one of these specially modified PDAs. The other one is hidden in my house, safe in a place which should have meaning only to you. It is imperative you retrieve it before Fletcher’s men do.
“But you must be careful to touch only the device in your home time. If, during your travels, you touch a device originating in another time, the difference in the frequencies of your molecules will cause your atomic bonds to weaken. In such an instance, you would sustain a complete molecular inversion. Put more simply, you would implode.”
“Wow, Doc,” Ness muttered to himself. “Lots of nice side effects to your little experimental time machine.”
The doctor moved a little closer to the camera, and his face filled the screen. “I have seen the future, Nestor, the one where John Fletcher uses my work to reshape the world to fit his grim design. It is not one I would wish on anyone, and it must be prevented at all costs. Godspeed and good luck.”
The screen darkened when the video ended, and Ness sat digesting the information. There were still questions the recording had not answered.
If only I could talk to Dr. Bertrand… Ness finished the last swig of his pop. He grabbed the envelope, ready to stuff it in a pocket for later disposal, but some writing along one edge caught his eye. Dr. Bertrand had written a date in black ink: August 26, 1986.
This must be when his older self dropped off the memory card. Ness grinned. With that information, he could intercept the doctor and have one last conversation with his old friend.
He checked the time machine. Over four and a half hours of his borrowed time remained, and Ness reckoned that should be enough for the task. He entered the date into the PDA, trying to remember his schedule during that part of his junior year. He recalled an afternoon class on the other side of campus. He and Greg would leave early for the long walk, stopping for fast food on the way. Smiling at the memories, he set the time for 12:20 p.m.
He made a quick check of the apartment before embarking on his journey. He threw away his Coke can and stuffed the envelope into his back pocket. He peeked into his old bedroom and saw the crumpled paper on the barely made bed. A poster on the wall with a starry background and large letters proclaiming “Smeg Head” caught his eye. Below the text was a sour-faced man with a shiny “H” affixed to his forehead. Ness smiled fondly at the Red Dwarf poster. The British space comedy had been his favorite.
A large slate blackboard at least ten feet long leaned against the wall. It weighed a ton, which explained why whoever had moved it to the room hadn’t taken it with them. His college self had found it handy for making reminders and to-do lists. Currently, it contained a short list of assignments, including the paper’s deadline, crossed through with a set of emphatic lines. As usual, most of the board’s surface remained empty.
He had left Dr. Bertrand’s office with so many possible messages he might want to tell his younger self, but once he decided to come to the apartment, one stood out in his mind. Taking up the chalk with a grin, he wrote a short phrase before standing back to inspect his work. Not much had changed with his writing over the years, compared to the notes his copy had made. He read the words again, “When she asks, you like coffee.” With a small sense of satisfaction, he returned the chalk. He stood inside the front door and told the time machine to take him on the next leg of this unusual journey.
When he arrived, not much appeared different. Outside, the summer heat held full sway, a marked change from the early-spring temperatures he had left. He hiked back to the physics building, hoodie tied around his waist. The small cafe across the street from Bertrand’s office was the perfect place for his stakeout. It had the benefits of proximity, access to food, and air conditioning.
He took a table near the window and was perusing the menu when a magical sound interrupted him. Her laugh, the unmistakable music of Angie’s amusement, filled his ears with delight. His head swiveled on its own to see a gaggle of young women standing near the register, waiting to pay for their lunch. Angie stood among them, looking much as she had the day they had talked, although her usual ponytail had returned.
“So, are you going to ask him out?” one of the women prodded, and Angie’s answering laugh held a bit of derision.
“I have no clue if he’s even interested. Besides, I don’t even know his name,” Angie said.
One of her friends gave her a sly grin. “Oh, I can tell you. His name is Ness Relevont, and I’ve seen him watch you as we’re playing. I went braless on the court the last time we played, and he didn’t even notice me!”
Angie looked at her friend in shock. “You didn’t!”
“Well, no, I didn’t. But I could have been, and he would never have noticed. Whenever we can be seen, his eyes are locked on you. He’s obviously the shy type, so if you want him, you better make a move.”
“We’ll see.” Angie blushed a bit as she handed the cashier her money.
“It’s your last semester, so this could be your final chance for some college nookie!” Her friend gave her a leering grin.
“Stop it, Susan! You’re incorrigible!”
The girls moved outside, and Ness could only shake his head at an opportunity lost. He glanced at the PDA again and saw he had a little more than four hours left on his borrowed time. He hoped the doctor didn’t keep him waiting, or he might never have an opportunity to see his friend again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Visiting an Old Friend
Tuesday, August 26, 1986 3:21 p.m.
Waiting had never been Ness’s favorite activity, and even though it had become a pleasant day to watch the world go by, his boredom made sitting still a trial. Only his determination to see his old friend again kept him in his seat. The diner’s padded booth would have been considered comfortable by most, but after three hours of waiting, Ness’s posterior declared itself ready to be someplace else. Ness was on his third refill of tea, and even though the waitress didn’t seem to mind, the cook glared at him whenever he looked out of the kitchen.
His musings had settled into a steady pattern of oscillating from images of Angie to more dire ruminations on his current predicament, as if his emotions were driven by a metronome of woe. A persistent beeping rose above the background noise, and after several seconds, he realized the sound originated from his pocket. He fished out the PDA and turned it on. His borrowed time had ticked away to a distressingly low level, but a red T flashing in one corner drew his attention. He tapped it, and a circular radar-style screen appeared. A title at the top identified it as a tracking screen. Inside the circle, a red dot slowly moved from the edge toward the center. A distance next to it of around 4,500 feet decreased as he watched.
So, the devices can track each other.
Based on how fast the numbers were shrinking, Ness guessed Dr. Bertrand was traveling in a vehicle. He watched the dot approach the center and looked up to see a cab stop outside the physics building.