Counting Up, Counting Down

by Harry Turtledove

  His older self reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a little blue plastic coin purse, the kind only a grownup would use. Squeezing it open, he took out a quarter. “Here—this is for you.” He gave it to Justin.

  It lay in Justin’s hand, eagle side up. Justin turned it over. It still looked like any other quarter . . . till he saw the date. He thought his eyes would bug out of his head. “It’s from 2012,” he whispered. “Jesus. You weren’t kidding.” Four little numbers stamped onto a coin, and the reality of what he’d just walked into hit him over the head like a club.

  “I told you I wasn’t.” His older self sounded like an adult talking down to a kid. That helped convince him, too. Himself-at-forty continued, “Come on. What’s the name of that Korean barbecue place over on Reseda?”

  “The Pine Tree?” Justin said. He liked the restaurant. He’d taken Megan there once, and she’d liked it, too.

  “Yeah.” Himself-at-forty sounded as if he’d needed reminding. Did that mean he didn’t go there in 2018? Before the question could do anything more than cross Justin’s mind, his older self went on, “Let’s go over there. I’ll buy you dinner, like I said in the e-mail, and we can talk about things.”

  Justin was hungry—he usually ate dinner earlier—but that wasn’t tops on his list. He came out with what was: “Like what you’re doing here.”

  His older self nodded. “Yeah. Like what I’m doing here.”

  As often as not, Justin and whomever he was with turned out to be the only Caucasians in the Pine Tree. He and Megan had been. He and his older self were, too. The waitresses were all Korean; none of them spoke a whole lot of English. Himself-at-forty ordered marinated beef and pork they could cook themselves at the gas grill set into the tabletop. He ordered a couple of tall OB beers, too. Justin nodded at that. God knew he could use a beer right now.

  As their waitress wrote down the order, she kept looking from his older self to Justin and back again. “Twins,” she said at last.

  “Yeah,” himself-at-forty said. Justin wondered if he was lying or telling the truth. Damned if I know, he thought as the waitress headed back to the kitchen. He wanted to giggle. This whole business was too bizarre for words.

  Instead of giggling, he pointed at his older self. “Tell me one thing,” he said in deep and portentous tones.

  “What?” Himself-at-forty looked alarmed. Heaven only knew what he thought would come out of Justin’s mouth.

  Justin leered at him. “That the Rolling Stones aren’t still touring by the time you’re—I’m—forty.”

  “Well, no.” Now his older self looked irked, as if he couldn’t believe Justin would come out with anything as off-the-wall as that. Don’t have much fun at forty, do you? Justin thought.

  Here came the waitress with the beer. She hadn’t asked either of the Justins for his driver’s license. A good thing, too. Justin wondered what kind of license his older self had, or if himself-at-forty had one at all. But he had more important things to worry about. After the waitress went off to deal with a party of Koreans at another table, Justin said, “Okay, I believe you. I didn’t think I would, but I do. You know too much—and you couldn’t have pulled that quarter out of your ear from nowhere.” He took a big sip of his OB.

  “That’s right,” himself-at-forty said. Again, he sounded as if he knew everything there was to know. That rubbed Justin the wrong way. But, goddamn it, his older self did know more than Justin. How much more? Justin didn’t know. Too much more. He was sure of that.

  He drank his glass empty, and filled it from the big bottle the waitress had set in front of him. Pretty soon, that second glass was empty, too. Justin killed the bottle pouring it for a third time. He waved to the waitress for another beer. Why not? His older self was buying. Himself-at-forty hadn’t even refilled his glass once yet. Terrific, Justin thought. I turn into a wet blanket.

  Not only did the waitress bring his new beer, but also dinner: plates of strange vegetables (many of them potently flavored with garlic and chilies) for Justin and his older self to share and the marinated beef and pork. She started the gas fire under the grill and used a pair of tongs to put some meat on to cook for them. As the thinly sliced strips started sizzling, Justin pointed at them and said, “Oh my God! They killed Kenny!”

  “Huh?” His older self clearly didn’t remember South Park. Wet blanket, Justin thought again. Then a light came on in his older self’s eyes. “Oh.” Himself-at-forty laughed—a little.

  Justin said, “If you’d have said that to me, I’d have laughed a lot harder.” He decided to cut his older self some slack: “But the show’s not big for you any more, is it? No, it wouldn’t be. 2018. Jesus.” He made a good start on the new OB.

  His older self grabbed the tongs and took some meat. So did Justin. They both ate with chopsticks. Justin wasn’t real smooth with them, but he looked down his nose at people who came to Asian restaurants and reached for the knife and fork. They could do that at home. Himself-at-forty handled the chopsticks almost as well as the Koreans a couple of tables over. More practice, Justin thought.

  After they’d made a fair dent in dinner, Justin said, “Well, will you tell me what this is all about?”

  His older self answered the question with another question: “What’s the most important thing in your life right now?”

  Justin grinned. “You mean, besides trying to figure out why I’d travel back in time to see me?” Himself-at-forty nodded, his face blank like a poker player’s. Justin went on, “What else could it be but Megan?”

  “Okay, we’re on the same page,” himself-at-forty said. “That’s why I’m here, to set things right with Megan.”

  “Things with Megan don’t need setting right.” Justin could feel the beer he’d drunk. It made him sound even surer than he would have otherwise. “Things with Megan are great. I mean, I’m taking my time and all, but they’re great. And they’ll stay great, too. How many kids do we have now?” That was the beer talking, too. Without it, he’d never have spoken so freely.

  “None.” Himself-at-forty touched the corner of his jaw, where a muscle was twitching.

  “None?” That didn’t sound good. The way his older self said the word didn’t sound good, either. Justin noticed something he should have seen sooner: “You’re not wearing a wedding ring.” His older self nodded. He asked, “Does that mean we don’t get married?”

  “We get married, all right,” his older self answered grimly. “And then we get divorced.”

  Ice ran through Justin. “That can’t happen,” he blurted.

  He knew too goddamn much about divorce, more than he’d ever wanted to. He knew about the shouts and the screams and the slammed doors. He knew about the silences that were even deadlier. He knew about the lies his parents had told each other. He knew about the lies they’d told him about each other, and the lies they’d told him about themselves. He had a pretty fair notion of the lies they’d told themselves about themselves.

  One of the biggest lies each of them had told him was, Of course I’ll still care for you just as much afterwards as I did before. Megan wasn’t the only one who envied him his apartment—a lot of people his age did. What the apartment meant to him was that his folks would sooner give him money to look out for himself than bother looking out for him. He envied Megan her parents who cared.

  And now his older self was saying he and Megan would go through that? He sure was. His voice hard as stone, he squashed Justin’s protest: “It can. It did. It will.” That muscle at the corner of his jaw started jumping again.

  “But—how?” Justin asked, sounding even in his own ears like a little boy asking how his puppy could have died. He tried to rally. “We aren’t like Mom and Dad—we don’t fight all the time, and we don’t look for something on the side wherever we can find it.” He took a long pull at his beer, trying to wash the taste of his parents out of his mouth. And he hadn’t smiled back at that girl in the mall. He really hadn’t.

 
With weary patience, his older self answered, “You can fight about sex, you can fight about money, you can fight about in-laws. We ended up doing all three, and so . . .” Himself-at-forty leaned his chopsticks on the edge of his plate and spread his hands. “We broke up—will break up—if we don’t change things. That’s why I figured out how to come back: to change things, I mean.”

  Justin poured the last of the second OB into his glass and gulped it down. After a bit, he said, “You must have wanted to do that a lot.”

  “You might say so.” His older self drank some more beer, too. He still sounded scratchy as he went on, “Yeah, you just might say so. Since we fell apart, I’ve never come close to finding anybody who makes me feel the way Megan did. If it’s not her, it’s nobody. That’s how it looks from here, anyhow. I want to make things right for the two of us.”

  “Things were going to be right.” But Justin couldn’t make himself sound as if he believed it. Divorce? He shuddered. From everything he’d seen, anything was better than that. In a small voice, he asked, “What will you do?”

  “I’m going to take over your life for the next couple of months.” His older self sounded absolutely sure, as if he’d thought it all through and this was the only possible answer. Was that how doctors sounded, recommending major surgery? Justin didn’t get a chance to wonder for long; himself-at-forty plowed ahead, relentless as a landslide: “I’m going to be you. I’m going to take Megan out. I’m going to make sure things are solid—and then the superstring I’ve ridden to get me here will break down. You’ll live happily ever after. I’ll brief you to make sure you don’t screw up what I’ve built. And when I get back to 2018, I will have lived happily ever after. How does that sound?”

  “I don’t know.” Now Justin regretted pouring down two tall beers, one right after the other. He needed to think clearly, and he couldn’t quite. “You’ll be taking Megan out?”

  “That’s right.” Himself-at-forty nodded.

  “You’ll be . . . taking Megan back to the apartment?”

  “Yeah,” his older self said. “But she’ll think it’s you, remember, and pretty soon it’ll be you, and it’ll keep right on being you till you turn into me, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean. Still . . .” Justin grimaced. “I don’t know. I don’t like it.” When you imagined your girlfriend being unfaithful to you, you pictured her making love with somebody else. Justin tried to imagine Megan being unfaithful to him by picturing her making love with somebody who looked just like him. It made his mental eyes cross.

  His older self folded his arms across his chest and sat there in the booth. “You have a better idea?” he asked. He must have known damn well that Justin had no ideas at all.

  “It’s not fair,” Justin protested. “You know all this shit, and I’ve gotta guess.”

  With a cold shrug, himself-at-forty said, “If you think I did this to come back and tell you lies, go ahead. That’s fine. You’ll see what happens. And we’ll both be sorry.”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Justin shook his head. He felt trapped, caught in a spider’s web. “Everything sounds like it hangs together, but you could be bullshitting, too, just as easy.”

  “Yeah, right.” Amazing how much scorn his older self could pack into two words.

  Justin got to his feet so fast it made him lightheaded for a couple of seconds—or maybe that was the beer, too. “I won’t say yes and I won’t say no, not now I won’t. I’ve got your e-mail address. I’ll use it.” Out he went, planting his feet with exaggerated care at every stride.

  Night had fallen while he and himself-at-forty were eating. He drove back to his apartment building as carefully as he’d walked. Picking up a 502 for driving under the influence was the last thing he wanted. One thought pounded in his head the whole way back. What do I do? What the hell do I do?

  He’d just come out of the bathroom—the revenge of those two tall OBs—when the telephone rang. He wondered if it was his older self, calling to give him another dose of lecture. If it was, he intended to tell himself-at-forty where he could stick that lecture. “Hello?” he said suspiciously.

  But it wasn’t his older self. “Hiya,” Megan said.

  “Oh!” Justin shifted gears in a hurry. “Hi!”

  “I just called up to say I think you’re the bomb,” she told him, and hung up before he could answer.

  He stared at the telephone handset, then slowly set it back in its cradle. “God damn you,” he whispered, cursing not Megan but his older self. “Oh, God damn you.” He had a girl like this, and himself-at-forty was saying he’d lose her? I can’t do that, he thought. Whatever it takes, I can’t do that.

  Even if it means bowing out of your own life for a while? Even if it means letting him stick his nose in? But his older self sticking his nose in didn’t worry Justin. His older self sticking something else in . . .

  I don’t have to make up my mind right away. I’m not going to make up my mind right away. This is too important. And if my older self can’t figure that out, tough shit, that’s all.

  Justin checked his e-mail even before he brushed his teeth the next morning. Himself-at-forty hadn’t started nagging, anyhow. There was e-mail from Megan, though. Everything else could wait, but he opened that. It said, The bomb. ;-)

  He grinned and shook his head. But the grin slipped a moment later. I can’t let her get away from me. Knowing she might . . . He ground his teeth. He didn’t just know she might. He knew she would. He’d never thought of being blind to the future as a blessing, but knowing some of it sure felt like a curse.

  At work, his boss chewed him out for not paying attention to anything going on around him. He couldn’t even blame the guy; he wasn’t paying attention to anything going on around him. Too many important things spun through his mind.

  He gulped lunch at the Burger King four doors down from the CompUSA, then went to the pay phones around the side of the building. He fed in a quarter—not the one from 2012; he was saving that—and a dime and called Megan. “Hello?” she said.

  “Hi. I think you’re the bomb, too.” It wasn’t I love you—it wasn’t even close to I love you—but it was the best he could do.

  Megan giggled, as if she’d been waiting by the telephone for him to call. “I bet you say that whenever you phone a girl who isn’t wearing any clothes,” she answered—and hung up on him again.

  He spluttered, which did him no good. He reached into his pants pocket for more change to call her back and find out why she wasn’t wearing any clothes—or if she really wasn’t wearing any clothes. But that didn’t matter. He had the image of her naked stuck in his head—which had to be just what she’d had in mind.

  As he walked back, he realized he’d made up his mind. I can’t lose her. No matter what, I can’t lose her. If that meant letting his older self fix things up—whatever there was that needed fixing—then it did, and that was all there was to it.

  Despite deciding, he took another day and a half to write the e-mail that admitted he’d decided. All write, dammit, he typed. I still don’t know about this, but I don’t think I have any choice. If me and Megan are going to break up, that can’t happen. You better make sure it doesn’t.

  After he’d sent the e-mail, he looked at it again. It wasn’t exactly gracious. He shrugged. He didn’t feel exactly gracious, either.

  An answer came back almost at once. Himself-at-forty must have been hanging around the computer waiting for him to say something. You won’t be sorry, the e-mail told him.

  Whatever, Justin wrote. His hands balled into fists. He made them unclench. How do you want to make the switch?

  Meet me in front of the B. Dalton’s again, himself-at-forty replied. Park by the Sears. I will, too. Bring whatever you want in your car. You can move it to the one I’m driving. I’ll do the same here. See you in two hours?

  Justin sighed. Whatever, he wrote again. Packing didn’t take anything like two hours. He thought about brin
ging the iMac along, but ended up leaving it behind and taking his PowerBook instead. It was old, but it would do for games and for the Net. He scribbled a note and set it by the iMac’s keyboard: In case you don’t remember, here’s Megan’s phone number and e-mail. Don’t screw it up, that’s all I’ve got to tell you.

  Once he’d stuffed everything he thought he needed into a pair of suitcases, he put them in the trunk of his Toyota and headed for the mall. He’d gone only a couple of blocks when he snapped his fingers and swung down to the Home Depot on Roscoe first.

  Even with the stop, he still took his place in front of the bookstore before his older self got there. This time, seeing himself-at-forty made him grim, not boggled. “Let’s get this over with,” he said.

  “Come on. It’s not a root canal,” his older self said. Justin shrugged. He’d never had one. Himself-at-forty went on, “Let’s go do it. We’ll need to swap keys, you know.”

  “Yeah,” Justin said. “I had spares made. How about you?”

  “Me, too.” His older self grinned a lopsided grin. “We think alike. Amazing, huh?”

  “Amazing. Right.” Justin abruptly turned away and started walking toward Sears and the lot beyond it. “This better work.”

  “It will.” Himself-at-forty sounded disgustingly confident.

  The two Toyotas sat only a couple of rows apart. They were almost as much alike as Justin and his older self. Justin moved his things into the other car, while himself-at-forty put stuff in his. They traded keys. “You know where I live,” Justin said. “What’s my new address?”

  “Oh.” His older self gave it to him. He knew where it was—not as good a neighborhood as the one the Acapulco was in. Himself-at-forty went on, “The car’s insured, and you’ll find plenty of money in the underwear drawer.” His older self patted him on the shoulder, the only time they’d touched other than shaking hands. “It’ll be fine. Honest. You’re on vacation for a couple of months, that’s all.”