by Jason Ford
FIVE
June 2034
Keith couldn’t believe he was sixty, but the calendar never lies. The last decade had had a lot of ups and downs. One of the biggest was when his mother passed away at the age of eighty-six. She was visiting her brother, John, in Florida (himself eighty-one years old) when she lay down after her flight and never woke up.
Even though he and his mother had had a strained relationship over the years, the news still hit Keith like a ton of bricks. He dropped the phone as if it was a hot iron and sat down heavily in his chair. An overwhelming sadness overcame him, and he barely noticed the time until he looked outside and saw it was dark. He hadn’t seen his Uncle John, his Aunt Peggy, or his cousins in years. Other than the yearly Christmas and birthday card, they really didn’t talk much. By the time he landed in Orlando, he had three missed calls from his uncle and one from the funeral home asking what he wanted to do. He decided to have her cremated and have half of her ashes buried in Florida and the rest scattered off the coast of Catalina Island. Not having any brothers or sisters, it was up to Keith to clean out his mother’s house and sell it.
If anyone ever needed to be on Hoarders, it was Martha Beckett. Keith hired a professional cleaning crew to handle the house. There were very few things he wanted to keep. Anything still usable that he didn’t want, he donated to charity. Even with the hot Southern California housing market, it took a few months to sell the place. José Jimenez finally got his act together and went to college. Keith was just as proud, if not more so, than his parents when he graduated with a degree in business. He still laughed at the memory of José up there on the podium, doing his Bill Dana impression.
Now there were two Casa Jimenez restaurants in Barstow, and a new one that had just opened up in Daggett. Hector and Carmen had decided to retire. They spent their time traveling and visiting Seattle to see Consuela and their grandchildren.
Keith had traded in his old pickup truck for one of the new diesel-hybrid self-driving trucks five years ago. He woke up the morning before he turned fifty-four with vision so blurry he could barely see. His birthday was spent in the hospital, getting the implanted contacts taken out. One of the great joys of his life was flying, and he had to give it up after fourteen years. He donated his plane to a flight school in Bolivia.
For a while after, he spent his time learning Arabic, Korean, Spanish, French, German, and Mandarin. Then, he started thinking about how he was going to store and transfer memories. The problem was that there were different kinds of memories, and they were spread out all over the brain. He would have to invent some kind of a neuro-scanning device to collect the memories from all over the brain. Something that could fit on the head and be plugged into a computer for the transfer.
His initial trials with the Neuroband were a success. The band was able to pick up the different memories from the hippocampus, amygdala, neocortex, basal ganglia, and cerebellum.
He thought of a simple memory: Sitting on a bench on a warm summer day with his grandpa, each eating an ice cream cone. He could taste the strawberry.
Keith opened his eyes and looked at the computer. The display showed that the memory lasted for thirty seconds and took up one gigabyte of memory. He searched his mind and couldn’t remember it. He clicked on the arrow pointing to the brain icon and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the memory was gone from the screen and fresh in his mind.
He thought about the implications of his work. He knew what would happen if it got into the wrong hands. Billions of mindless zombie slaves, and the few supermen at the top, fighting with each other for world domination. This was the horrifying though that kept him up most nights and turned him into a hermit.
SIX
June 2049
Keith looked at himself in the mirror. Staring back at him was the old man in the dream. He was in a hotel room in Seattle, waiting for Consuela to pick him up. After Hector died two years ago, Carmen had moved up here to be with Consuela and the grandchildren. No, Carmen has great-grandchildren now.
More time went by before he was sure the prototype would work. He also created a personal energy shield. The testing process was long and tiring. He had to put a mannequin out at the shooting range with the energy shield controller button taped to it. During the testing phase, the shield only activated for one minute. Keith pushed the button with a long stick. The shield glowed a pale yellow and sheared the stick clean in two. He picked up a rock and threw it at the mannequin. The rock bounced off the shield and returned on its original trajectory. He waited for the shield to collapse, and when it did, he was able to poke the mannequin with the stick.
He activated the shield again, then got behind two thick, bulletproof glass panels, tied a string to an AK-47’s trigger and aimed the gun at the mannequin. He pulled the string until he’d emptied the clip. The bulletproof glass was riddled with fractures, but luckily none of the rounds had penetrated. He ran up to the mannequin—not one bit of damage. Keith un-taped the button and pushed it. He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking that this was the last thing he was going to feel. But when he opened his eyes, a shimmering, blue field surrounded him. He still held the short end of the stick and he used it to probe the limits of the shield. He could breathe easily, so he knew he would need a gas mask if he were in a dire situation. The field expanded to contain his arm and the stick.
One more test, the one Keith was most nervous about. He put on a Kevlar vest, slid the controller in his pocket and activated the shield. He drew his 9mm, pointed it downrange, and pulled the trigger. The round passed through the shield, and he heard the ping as it hit the steel target. .
He built a self-extracting, 200-foot dome that would easily cover the truck and trailer when it was unfolded.
It took Keith more time to get the memory problem solved. He designed and built a memory pad with a ten-exabyte storage capacity. He wrote a program to automatically start and stop the transfer. While the transfer was taking place, both subjects would be unconscious for twenty-four hours. He spent another year programming the GPS so it would work in the past.
During this time, the political situation changed drastically. Bernice Foster Wallenstein, the daughter of President Charles Foster, won the 2044 and 2048 presidential elections. Her platform ran on a ticket of "Universal means all people." She was the last American president. Keith wasn’t sure how she pulled this all off, but everyone now had universal healthcare and a universal basic income of $4,000 a month. It was a socialist dream come true, but an educator’s worst nightmare. With no need to work anymore, there was no need for job training. There was none of that sci-fi bullshit about one working to improve oneself if money was not a concern. With the invention of duplicators, a person could have anything they wanted. People turned into lazy, fat slobs.
At midnight on December 31, 2052, the United Nations ceased to exist. The United Earth Federation came into being as a world governing body. Instead of electing presidents and prime ministers, the highest office anyone could ever hope for was an elected ambassador. All former currencies were wiped out and replaced by the globobuck. Keith had wisely purchased currency that would be worth $10,000,000 in 1990 before that.
SEVEN
Keith watched the live coverage of the six spacecraft orbiting Halley’s Comet. He never thought he would live to see it twice. He thought back over the last eighty-seven years. Consuela, her three children, six grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren had visited him on his last birthday. Carmen had passed away five years ago, at eighty. Keith hated that all his old friends were dying off. He made Consuela and her brothers the benefactors of his will. Everything was ready—he just had to start moving stuff into the past. He designated January 1, 1992 at 9:00 p.m. as moving day.
He put the portable time machine and six time-shields into the truck, which was fully fueled. The shell-covered bed was crammed full of everything he could think of needing. The trailer was hooked up and the collapsible dome was strapped to the top. He switched o
n the time machine and waited for it to warm up before opening the portal. As he was getting into his truck, Keith turned the radio on.
The news anchor stated shakily that a rogue North Korean faction had launched an ICBM, and it was going so fast that none of the missile interceptors could catch it. The projected impact was the LA area in nine minutes, but it was still too early to calculate the exact impact point. She urged everyone to take cover.
Keith could see darkness on the other side of the portal. He drove through the portal, and the radio went dead silent. A wave of nausea and dizziness overcame him, and his ears popped like he was at high elevation. His vision blurred for a moment, and he had to close his eyes briefly. He rolled down the window and vomited. He wiped his mouth after spitting out the vile taste and looked up at the sky. The moon looked a lot different than the last time he had seen it. No lunar colonies—nothing but old Apollo hardware now.
He activated the night-vision display on the windshield, and the scrub brush and desert were rendered in a bright green light. He was easily able to drive the truck behind the big hill. He got the dome off, dragged it about fifteen steps back, laid it on the ground, and then pushed the button. The dome unfolded. He unzipped the flap, backed the trailer and truck in, and then crawled into the back of the cab. He stretched out and was asleep within minutes.
The birds woke Keith the next morning. He looked at his watch: 0900 Thursday, January 2, 1992. He knew he needed to make contact with his younger self in the month between his eighteenth birthday and his meeting with the recruiter if he was going to change history.
The dome had its own solar-powered HVAC, as well as bathroom facilities, a small shower, and a stove. Keith unhooked the trailer from the truck and drove down to Barstow.
The clerk at the San Bernardino County Deeds office was met with the sight of a shuffling old man with a cane and a backpack slung over one shoulder. Even weirder was the request to buy ten acres and pay the taxes upfront for five years. The man unzipped the backpack and pulled out a thick wad of cash for the transaction. When he was questioned about where he got that kind of cash, the old man simply replied, “Inheritance.”
Sitting in the living room of his new house a few months later, Keith went over the documents carefully. His driver’s license and passport all looked legitimate. It wasn’t hard to come up with the right figure to bribe the official for the diplomatic passport he now held.
Startled by a knock at the back door, he pulled his pistol out and checked the security camera. He opened the door slowly.
“Uncle Keith?”
Keith sat down, barely hearing what the young man was saying. How the fuck did he get here? He wasn’t supposed to be born for another forty-five years!
José Jimenez, Jr. had just been checking to see if the old man was all right, since no one had heard from him in over two months. He had stumbled upon the time machine in the lab. A smart crate he had been standing next to remotely activated the time machine to send it to March 1992, and José had been caught in the time stream.
José had seen a blinding flash of light, what sounded like a clap of thunder, and the next thing he knew, he was standing in the backyard near the house.
“You can’t be here, son,” Keith said. “I’ve gotta send you back. Right now, it’s 1992. I’ve come back to change some things in the past, but you got caught by accident.”
“I can help you!”
“You want to help? Be my eyes and ears in the future. I’ll figure out a way to communicate with you. You see this red button? Push it when I tell you to.”
He handed José a time-shield and backed up a few feet. “Okay, push the button, and good luck.”
Keith watched as José disappeared.
He then wrote out a long list of instructions on how to operate the time machine and a request for more information. When, not ten seconds after he put the mail in the mailbox, the familiar boom and flash of a time-delivered package arriving filled him with joy. He began pouring over the contents and plotting his next steps. This was going to be something bigger than he’d ever attempted before, and he didn’t even know if he was going to be able to survive this or not. This was not just about fixing his own life; this could potentially change the history of the world.
•••
The streets of Vienna were bustling this morning, and no one paid attention to the old man walking slowly along with his cane. As the old man sat down at an empty table at a busy cafe on a side street, he reflected on his recent trip to Geneva. The ten million Swiss francs he had deposited yesterday should accumulate a hefty portion of interest. The conversation at the table next to him drew his interest. The two gentlemen sitting at the table were unmistakable. One with the bushy black hair and mustache was talking to one with grayish-brown skin full of pockmarks. They spoke in a language that most people around them would not know, but the old man could understand perfectly.
He wandered over and politely asked if he could sit down with them. They motioned for him to do so and resumed talking. In the blink of an eye, the bushy black-haired one disappeared without a sound. The pockmarked-faced one looked on in horror, and the old man addressed him in Greek.
“Mr. Papadopoulos, isn’t it?”
When the man did not reply, the old man switched to Russian.
“Sneaking into Austria on a false passport is not the smartest thing in the world, especially if you cannot speak the language from the country that’s listed on it.”
The pockmarked, mustached man finally found his voice.
“Did Lenin send you here to mark me for death?”
“Nyet. I ran into Lenin in Geneva. You will see him again soon. The blood of thirty million dead cries out for vengeance. Now the world will never hear of Joséph Stalin!”
Stalin leaped to his feet, knocking his chair over, and the old man pointed a strange looking gun at him. He turned to run and was immediately vaporized. The clattering of the chair was the only thing that remained, and it drew the attention of some bystanders. The old man slowly got up and wandered north along the street.
An hour later, he was walking by some rundown flophouses, hoping to God he didn’t get bit by a rat when he saw a young man selling paintings in front of one of them. The face was younger, with a drooping mustache that was popular at the time, but there was no doubt of the identity. As the old man approached, he could smell that the man hadn’t bathed in a good long while, but he stopped to look at the paintings anyway. When the young man told him he had more in his room, the old man agreed to take the long trek up the stairs. Once he saw the rest of the paintings that this starving Bavarian artist from Linz had to offer, he pulled out a thick wad of francs.
“I appreciate fine art, and would like to purchase all your paintings Mr.…?”
“Hitler. Adolf Hitler. And you are?”
“My name is not important. But what I have to tell you is.”
The strange looking gun was back in his hand.
“Fur die Juden. I hope you get an extra hot corner of Hell, you son-of-a-bitch!”
He pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He pulled it again, nothing but clicking. Hitler tried to wrestle the gun away from him, but the old man managed to use his cane and push him away. Hitler started yelling, punching, and kicking, and the old man unsheathed a katana out of the cane and sliced the younger man’s head off in one smooth motion.
Keith Beckett looked at Adolf Hitler’s headless bloody corpse and looked around the room for a few minutes. Out of all the things a megalomaniac like Hitler could have had his room, the black, rectangular shape of a time-shield was unmistakable. Checking his pockets, Keith felt the one he had already in there. So, what the hell was the time-shield doing with Hitler’s stuff in 1913 Vienna?
He was startled by a pounding at the door. He quickly pocketed the extra time-shield and escaped down the back stairwell. He dashed off a quick note to José, sealed it in an envelope, and dropped it in a nearby mailbox. The portal opened and he s
tepped through. Only the horrified look on José’s face made him look down at himself and see the blood drenching his clothes.
A shot rang out and Keith turned around in time to see a police officer with a smoking gun pointed at them. Keith ducked down and closed the portal, but not before another shot rang out. He could hear José gurgling and realized in horror that the last round had caught him in the throat. He laid him down and tried applying pressure to the wound, but it was too late. Keith felt his heart tearing out as his great-nephew passed away before his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Hector. I let you down.”
EIGHT
June 1992
Keith had just celebrated his eighteenth birthday three days ago by taking his car to the shop to get the transmission worked on. His mother had made it quite clear that she needed her car for work, and that he should take the bus. It’s not that he was opposed to taking the bus but driving for the last year had been really nice. And tonight, the buses weren’t running. By the time he’d gotten off work at 10:00 p.m., the last bus had already passed. He’d actually watched the damn thing go by the glass doors as he stood at the register. So now, it was a five-mile walk home.
The idiot mechanic had said Keith’s car would be ready tomorrow around noon. He wasn’t looking forward to depleting his savings to pay for the transmission. A mile from home, he decided to cut through Madison Park. The park was huge, almost a mile in area. Three or four thugs sat on a bench, watching him walk. They got up and started walking towards him. Keith started to run. As he passed under a streetlight, he saw a black truck in a parking lot a hundred yards away. The window was rolled down and an arm beckoned him closer.