by Zack Mason
Its band was expanding, loosening actually, from Ty’s wrist. Rialto reached down and slipped it off. He examined it carefully, looking for some key to its use. It didn’t take but a few moments to figure out the significance of the numbers on the digital displays.
He slipped the watch onto his own wrist. It whirred again, tightening its band until it fit snugly. It felt good.
He used the smaller buttons to play with the numbers of one of the displays. His breathing accelerated, chest heaving in anticipation. There was only one way to be sure.
He pushed the red button.
January 28th, 2013, Boston, MA
“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” Savannah warned Hardy.
Savannah had taken the brunt of Mark’s tirade so far this morning. She didn’t know what had brought it on, but she guessed it had something to do with that woman Laura. He’d been a mess ever since she’d broken up with him a few weeks before.
“He’s in a foul mood today, and I mean foul,” Savannah said.
“What happened?” Hardy asked. This morning, he was dressed in beige khakis, medium-toned leather loafers, a white polo shirt, and a matching navy blue sailing jacket and cap.
“Not sure yet. I’ve been trying to keep a low profile,” she said, eyeing his odd dress. “You know it’s January, right? It’s only 38 degrees out.”
“I’m going boating in the harbor. I’m gonna shift forward to June first though, so it’ll be a little warmer.”
The sound of something crashing to the floor echoed from Mark’s office. The door slammed open, hard enough to cause the surrounding walls to shake. Mark filled the opening, eyes blazing.
“Where are you off to, Hardy? Going sailing? With who?”
“What are you talking about, Mark?”
“You know exactly what, you jerk! With Laura, right! You’re going with Laura?”
Hardy’s mouth snapped closed. His face turned beet red.
“You are, aren’t you?” Mark pushed.
Slowly, Hardy nodded once.
“Oh boy,” Savannah whispered. She ducked a bit and pushed herself back from her desk to avoid the melee she knew was coming.
“I knew it! I saw you two together last night!” Mark unconsciously swept up the lamp from Savannah’s desk as he strode to Hardy. He jammed his left forearm into Hardy’s throat and shoved him violently against the wall, lifting Hardy’s feet a full six inches off the ground. Mark’s face burned red with rage and his muscles strained and rippled under the force of it. Neither Hardy nor Savannah had ever seen him this angry. Pulsing veins bulged in his temples and neck.
Hardy choked for breath from the hold Mark had on his throat. He’d been taken by complete surprise, dumbfounded by his friend’s attack, but seeing Mark raise the lamp to smash in his skull shook Hardy from the surrealism of the moment. Savannah screamed.
He chopped Mark sharply on the side of the neck with a blow that was designed to stun. Hardy never would have gotten that shot in if Mark hadn’t been so blinded by fury.
Mark collapsed to the floor, uttering guttural gurgles.
“What in the world is going on here?” Ty boomed from the front door.
Hardy didn’t answer. He was busy staring at Mark’s prostrate form on the floor. Mark struggled to his feet, hand holding his neck, his face still twisted in anger.
“How long have you been seeing her, you scum? How long were you seeing her behind my back, friend?” Mark’s head swayed back and forth, tears streaming down his face. Whether they were tears of fury, or simply a broken heart, even he didn’t know.
“I didn’t steal her from you, Mark!” Hardy rubbed his throat.
“What is this about?” Ty repeated, eyeing Savannah for help.
“I think it’s about Laura,” she interjected.
“You’re dang right it’s about Laura!” Mark yelled. “This lying Judas has been sneaking around with her on me, probably from the start. I gave you everything, you lowlife! Everything!”
Mark charged again, but Ty intercepted him, holding his friends apart with a hand on each of their chests.
“This is stupid! Neither one of you should be going after that tramp! She’s a manipulative wench. Look what’s she’s doing to us!”
Mark laid a hard punch into Ty’s jaw. In return, Ty sucker punched Mark in the stomach, who collapsed to the floor again, gasping for air.
“Watch it, Ty,” Hardy warned softly. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“What’s the matter with both of you? Can’t you see what she is? Get out of here, Hardy. Don’t you see Mark ain’t in the right mind to deal with you?” He ushered Hardy to the door. “Let’s go.”
“Fine, but watch what you say, Ty. I love her,” Hardy whispered on the way out.
Ty shook his head in wonderment. He mouthed to Savannah ‘Take care of him’, pointing to Mark. She nodded that she understood, and both the other men left.
Mark was curled up in a fetal position on the floor. His chest jerked in and out as he wept. He wasn’t even trying to disguise his grief anymore, he was so lost in it. Savannah had never seen him like this.
She knelt beside him and tried to bring comfort. Cradling his head in her hands, she wiped the tears as they fell.
“No. No! Just leave me alone!” Mark leapt up and stormed into the recesses of his office, slamming the door behind him.
Savannah stood there motionless for a moment, staring after him. Then, she went back to her desk and waited in case he changed his mind or needed something. She waited all day. And she would wait even longer than that.
What was I s'posed to do, standing there looking at you
Lonely boy far from home
“Maybe it was Memphis”
~ Pam Tillis
February 4th, 2010, Baltimore, MD
The sterilized lab looked like it could be part of a state-of-the-art medical facility, but it was actually in the middle of a run-down industrial park outside Baltimore, Maryland. A knowledgeable observer would have noticed right away that the equipment lining the walls and covering the stainless steel counters, while being top of the line technology, was not your standard medical equipment. This lab was much more suited for semi-conductors than an EKG monitor or a Bunsen burner.
Stanley Irvine ran this physics lab for Alexander Rialto. Irvine held a Masters from Cal Tech and a PhD from MIT, both in Physics. His doctoral thesis had been on the possibility of hyperspace and time travel using wormholes.
He looked the part of a scientist. A white lab coat reached his knees, revealing dark brown corduroys underneath. He was of slight build and his thin-rimmed glasses topped off the stereotypical image.
Stanley had been your everyday nerd throughout high school, marginalized by the other kids, but he had gained a new found confidence in college as he’d matured and found his calling in the study of physics. He was now a thorough professional, one of the top of his field, consulted by both U.S. and European companies and governments.
This was the reason Rialto had sought him out and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. For Stanley, the financial incentive had been overwhelmingly attractive, but the opportunity to work on a real life, working time machine had been simply irresistible. He would have worked on it for free, but he wasn’t telling Rialto that.
Stanley had made a list of all the equipment he would need to study the device, and amazingly, Rialto had put together a completed laboratory in just two days.
He removed his glasses with his right hand and set them on the counter to his side, a gesture that meant he was interrupting his perennial reading to give someone his full attention.
“So, what have you learned?” Rialto queried.
“Quite a lot, actually.”
Rialto leaned back against the counter, arms loose, eyes fixed on his employee.
“Of course, we confirmed some of your original observations, the 6 shift limit, the translateral compensation....”
“The what?”
“What are the limits of this trans....lateral compensation?”
“Not sure yet. I’m working on it. It’s really quite a sophisticated feature. Not only is it able to analyze and identify the limits of your body and clothing, it’s able to correctly detect objects of all sizes, shapes, and materials in a different time before you arrive there. Somehow, it is able to treat time as nothing more than a 4th dimension. It can see through time just like a camera can see what’s in front of it. Then, to top it all off, it is capable of effectively “teleporting” you out of the way. Not to mention it can do all this with a relatively tiny power source. According to today’s science, we calculate the energy needed to do such things would be astronomical — literally. This “time machine” is way out of the realm of what anybody on Earth is currently capable of engineering. In short, it should not exist.”
“Where did it come from then? Who made it? Aliens?”
“No way to know. I can’t find a way to access the watch’s interior to study its working parts. There’s no access panel on top or underneath. I tried to x-ray it, but the metal casing blocks x-rays just as if it were made of lead.”
Securing a second watch for Irvine to study had been a simple enough matter. After taking Ty Jennings’ watch, Rialto had been able to move through time at ease. He’d stalked Hardy Phillips in 2027, just like he had Jennings, and now he had two watches.
The physicist had been like a kid in a candy shop receiving it and had been examining it for weeks now under an extensive barrage of tests. Rialto had issued him one clear and very strict stipulation. He was at no point to ever put the device on his wrist. Irvine had thus far obeyed.
“It’s completely seamless,” the scientist continued, “You said the band automatically constricted around your wrist when you put it on, and there’s no apparent way to get it off that I can find. I expected there would be some kind of electric motor inside that would reel the band in when it detects the electrical field of your body. However, there are no slits where the band meets the body of the watch. That indicates to me that the band itself contracted. The metallic material is apparently able to contract or expand when stimulated by electricity.
“Which brings me to another oddity. I cannot identify the metal. I’ve tried taking shavings, but it’s too hard a material for any of my blades. I even tried drilling it with a diamond-tipped bit, but no luck. Wherever it came from, this is the most advanced device I could imagine encountering. Aliens....maybe. In my opinion, it’s more likely from the future. The displays operate with the English notations of AM and PM, and aliens would not use such nomenclature. That would also seem to eliminate the military. I think the future is a safe bet. It is a time machine after all.”
“What about the display material?”
“Definitely not glass or plastic, at least not any plastic I’m familiar with. Maybe a materials engineer would recognize it.”
“Did you try drilling that?”
“No, I was afraid of damaging it to the point it wouldn’t be useable anymore.”
“Go ahead and do what you need to. I can get more.”
Stanley arched his eyebrows and cocked his head, a mixture of surprise and incredulity on his face. “You know, if you have such easy access to the future, you might consider using some physicists from then to do this research.”
“Are you tired of working on it already?”
“Not at all! This is the greatest opportunity of my career. However, my job is to advise you according to what’s in your best interest, not my own.”
“Fine. I’ll take your suggestion into consideration. What else did you learn?”
“Well, as I said, there seemed to be no apparent way to get the watch off your wrist once you put it on, but I may have figured out a way to do it.”
“How?”
“I’ll show you in a minute. I think you’ll be more excited about my next discovery.”
“Well, man, don’t keep me waiting.”
“I made an educated guess that whenever you shifted through time, there would be some kind of disturbance in the electro-magnetic field surrounding you as you went. That’s why I had you shift in and out so much here in the lab. I set up some instruments that could detect fluctuations in the electro-magnetic field around your person. As it turns out, there are slight differences in the fluctuations which appear to correspond uniquely to the time to which you’re traveling. When I had you shift to different years, or even hours, the fluctuations were distinct, but when you shifted to the same time over and over again, some of the fluctuations were identical.”
“Yeah, well, I can tell you, it was quite unnerving to see so many versions of myself in the same room at the same time. So, what does all that mean?”
“It means that I think I can build you a device using today’s technology which could remotely detect the time to which a person has shifted.”
“So, if I were to shift to 1798, for example, with this other detection device, you could know that I’d gone to the year 1798 without having seen the display on my watch?”
“Not only that, I could know the hour, even the second. It would be like a radar detector, but for these shifter watches — and more exact.”
Rialto was impressed. His mind was already racing with the possibilities. “How big would it be? It would only be useful to me if the device were small and portable, say the size of a cell phone.”
“No problem. Detectors don’t require much power. For me to develop this, though, would require a lot of funds.”
“Done. So what was your solution to getting the watch off my wrist?”
“Hold on.” Irvine rolled his chair back and opened a set of plastic drawers on top of his desk. He pulled out a cylindrically shaped piece of glass.
“I molded this from your other wrist. It’s a glass cuff. I’m guessing the watch band constricts when it detects your body's electrical field. The fact that the watch loosens when a person dies would seem to confirm my hypothesis. From there, it was simple. Glass is a good insulator. I figure if we slip this cuff between your skin and the watch, it should no longer be able to detect your electrical field and will loosen.”
“Let’s try it.”
Irvine clamped the cuff around Rialto’s wrist and wriggled it underneath his watch band, which was not an easy feat due to the tight fit.
“Nothing’s happening.”
“It may be a timing issue. Perhaps it has to fail to detect your electric field for a short time before loosening.”
“No, I’ve seen it happen before. It’s always immediate.”
Stanley involuntarily shuddered at the thought that Rialto might have been in a position to see such a thing happen more than once — and what that meant.
“I’ll keep working on it,” he said.
***
February 16th, 2013, Boston, MA
Savannah heard an odd noise coming from Mark’s office. Eventually, worry overcame her reluctance to intrude. She gently pushed the door open a crack, hesitated, and then pushed it wider.
“Mark?”
He was crying. The back of his chair was all she could see, but she could hear him crying, and she knew what about. Laura.
“Just leave me alone.” He sniffed, trying to hide it.
It had been several weeks since the altercation with
Hardy, and more than a month since Laura had broken it off with him. She knew what Mark had gone through with the loss of his family. He always spoke of his children, but she knew wife’s abandonment had hit him hard, more than even he realized. She’d always suspected his infatuation with Laura had been a subconscious desperation born of that pain. Losing Laura then had felt like he was losing Kelly all over again, made worse by the suspicion that one of his only friends in the world had betrayed him.
“Mark. You can’t keep on like this.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not, Mark. Let me help.”
He swiveled his chair to face her. He was slumped low and his body looked very loose, his eyes puffy from crying. The odor of stale Whiskey filled her nose. He was drunk. He’d been drinking a lot lately.
“What would you do, Savannah? Have you ever had your heart broken before?”
His eyes were pleading. It was the weakest she’d ever seen him. Normally, Mark Carpen was a dominating, strong presence, but now, it seemed more than just his heart had been broken.
“Yes, I have.” She went to him and held his head against her side, caressing his hair slowly in an effort to bring some comfort. “But Mark, you have to snap out of this. I’m afraid for you. You’re spiraling down....”
“I know.” He wiped at his eyes with his sleeves, pulling away from her. “You’ve been good to me, Savannah. You’re a good friend.”
She sat heavily in the chair across from him. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Yes, you have. You’ve been such a blessing....and I’ve just taken you for granted. How can I ever repay you?”
She blushed, but said nothing. He’d embarrassed her.
“Surely, there’s something.”
She whispered so softly he could barely hear it. “I just....it was nothing....you were in need.”
“You stuck around when no one else did, not Ty, not....” He was going to say ‘Hardy’ but anger choked the name in his throat. “Surely, there’s something I can do for you. Let me do something for you. It would help me feel better, I think.”