"You okay?"
For a long time I couldn't say anything.
"Yes," I said eventually. "I'm okay. I just wanted to say hi and see how you're doing."
"I'm doing fine. But I need to get different coal. This one burns too dirty. Can you smell it?"
"Yeah," I said, suddenly happy over the sulfury smell in the shop.
"Is everything all right? You seem upset."
"I'm okay. Just missed you, that's all."
"Okay. Then let me get this formed before it cools down too much."
"Okay," I said. "Sounds good."
He picked up the hammer again and pushed the metal piece he was working on back into the embers.
"See you later," I said.
"Yep. See you later."
I left the barn with the sound of the hammer ringing in my ears. As I walked around back, I felt lighter, as if a burden had been lifted from me. When I looked through the dirt-smudged window, I saw my father stop hammering for a moment. As if he’d just thought of something. Then he shook his head and continued.
I stood behind the storage shed for a few minutes and let the sun warm my face. Then I entered, picked up my gloves, jacket, and wool cap and climbed into the machine. I closed the cabin top and began to push the right pedal down. The days on the display passed by. When it moved into December, I slowed down. I don't know what had changed, but I wasn't sad anymore. Maybe it was knowing that I could visit him whenever I wanted. Or maybe it was good enough to see him doing something he had loved so much.
My eyes were fixed on the display. I felt the pedal beneath my right foot, the pressure of the forward motion against my leg. When December 22nd approached, something in me clicked. The Traveler must exercise the greatest caution to not set off a chain of events she cannot foresee. I realized that he must have known, that he must have thought this encounter to be too strange to have been a normal occurrence. Did my visit, as brief as it was, change his outlook in any way?
And while I pondered the ever paradoxical nature of travelling through time, I knew, suddenly and unmistakably, what he had said back in the hospital room. He didn't say, "Draw." Nor did he say, "Drawer." It sounded like it because those were the only words I could think of at that moment. No. It wasn't druh, it was trah. It was the way he pronounced the ‘a’ differently. More like an uh. He must have known that I had built the machine and came back to him.
It wasn't drawer. It was traveler.
A Word from Stefan Bolz
In Germany, the concept of the apprenticeship is deeply engrained in the country's cultural past. I myself went through a three-and-a-half-year program as a teenager where I learned everything from welding and iron work to woodworking, milling, inching and building electrical circuits. The relationship between the apprentice and the master has always been regarded as a privilege for both -- the master seeing in the apprentice his own skills transferred to the next generation, and for the apprentice to be able to learn from someone's knowledge, accumulated over a lifetime. If the master of the apprentice is her father, the bond is even stronger.
As a kid, The Time Machine was my favorite movie. I must have watched it a dozen times at least. I loved every minute of it and always wanted to build one for myself. Now, being a writer, I can do that.
Lately I've become aware of the common thread that weaves through all of my books and stories. This is very similar to standing in the basket of a hot air balloon and lifting off, gently floating upward and now, for the first time, seeing the surrounding area, where the paths connect and where they lead, the open vistas and the horizon. This one thread is the notion that there is an exponential amount of power that sleeps in all of us. It is the power to do things we can, as of right now, only imagine. Sometimes, for 'ordinary' people to discover that power, extraordinary things have to occur; things that call us to reach deep down and search for that strength in which nearly anything is possible.
I'm deeply grateful to Samuel Peralta for giving me the opportunity to contribute to his Future Chronicles series. Einstein once said that imagination is more powerful than knowledge. I agree whole heartedly. The stories in the Future Chronicles series are a feast for the imagination, an invitation to boldly go where no one has gone before (I had to throw this in here, for geek cred :-) ). It is my hope that “The Traveler” reaches the heart of my readers, transporting them to a place where nothing is impossible, even crossing the boundaries of time.
You can find my books at www.stefanbolz.thirdscribe.com.
Eighty-Three
by Erik Wecks
I FIRST LOST CONTROL OF MY MIND when I was thirteen.
It happened in the cafeteria, just before I sat down with my school lunch. I decided to impress my buddies by not so coyly taking a look down Alexis Johnson’s shirt, who was already sitting. As usual, she had left the top and second buttons undone. To my hormone-addled mind, the visible downward valley was a provocation. It demanded that I try to see more.
Every once in a while she’d catch me. Clutching at her shirt with one hand, she’d turn and hit me weakly with the other, calling me a pervert. Yet she never came to school with less buttons open, and it didn’t stop her from kissing me when we were alone. She even let me cop a feel a few times, though at first she was always quick to push my hand away. Not once did her obvious discomfort influence the way I treated her. I thought it was funny. She was my girl, and I took it for granted that my ownership status gave me certain privileges.
Hell, that’s embarrassing to write! It’s almost stopped me cold again. I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes, stuck in loops of tangled regret. When the vast bulk of your life is behind you, one thought triggers a cascade of others, and you zoom off on a journey that you never intended to take.
I guess that makes sense when the future is measured in an unknowable number of days instead of years. It certainly wasn’t that way when I was thirteen.
Up until that point, my life had been almost completely rudderless. My parents split when I was five. It crushed me. Seven decades of hindsight allows me at least that much clarity. At the time, I just felt confused, but I put on a brave face and smiled big when I went to my dad’s for the weekend. Boys learn early that men aren’t allowed vulnerability.
Weekends at my dad’s were where my real troubles began. He never did well after my mom left. He drank—a lot. I suspect that meant he loved her, but he never was much for expressing his mind. Truth is, he was never a fighter. Oh, he’d yell, but if he ever felt backed into a corner, he’d just leave. He’d go to a friend’s house, drink, and play Cards Against Humanity or something. My mom tried for years to connect with him. In the end, she just gave up. I don’t think he made an effort in any relationship ever again. He certainly didn’t with me. Our weekends together consisted of playing the latest iteration of Assassin’s Creed or RPGing at one of his buddy’s houses. At the time, I thought it all grand. I used to love going to his house where rules didn’t exist, where you could do whatever you wanted.
I guess you’re going to have to forgive an old man his rambling. When you’re young, there are things about the old that you swear you will never imitate. Then you get old, and you do them anyway.
Enough, back to thirteen—a very lucky number. The cracks in my dam were already apparent by the fall of my eighth grade year. It’s the usual story: fighting at school, poor grades, messing around with Lexi, experimentation with pot and alcohol—both supplied willingly by my dad—even a run-in with the police for petty shoplifting. I was a time bomb waiting for zero.
Middle school has to be the most Darwinian experience a typical American ever survives. It rewards nothing but social power and crudely perceived sexual status. By that standard, I was a great success. With a kind of puckish charm, blue eyes, and floppy Bieberesque hair, I made my way to the top. I was popular. My rebel without a cause behavior only improved my status with my peers.
So you see, I thought that I had a lot to lose standing there staring down Lexi’
s shirt while my posse grinned into their cartons of milk. The truth is I had everything to gain.
I’m not sure how to describe the sensation. You know that moment when you’re extremely tired and you feel like your eyes are a half-second behind your mind? It was something similar to that but much more intense. It felt like I was pulled to the back of my head. One moment I’m looking down Lexi’s shirt, the next someone or something else is in control.
I remember the startled jump as the something else took over. Without any say on my part, my head turned, and my eyes looked up at my friends.
I—or rather, the thing in control—dropped my tray, unceremoniously spilling my lunch into Lexi’s valley and down the front of her shirt. At the time, I chalked it up to shock. Now I know better. It happened on purpose. (Damn, tears come easy when you get old.)
At this point, the part of me that was still thirteen panicked. I tried to stop my hands, to stuff them to my sides, to make them do anything, but I had no control. I was a passenger along for the ride in my own car. Something else was in the driver’s seat.
I watched in mute disbelief as Lexi jumped up, staring at me, eyes wide and eyebrows pulled close. Spaghetti hung in threads from the top of her shirt. She held her hands up, looking down at the red stains. “What the hell, Noah?”
My posse sat frozen in place. Bradley’s mouth opened slightly. Drake set his fork back down on his plate. Then slowly the snickers started, growing until they all laughed. With that final humiliation, Lexi started to cry and sprinted away toward the girls’ bathroom. Carson spewed milk through his nose, adding it to the general mess on the table.
Then to my utmost horror, the whatever it was in my head sat down at the table and began to sob—not some kind of silent shoulder shaking whimper, either. No, this was an oblivious, loud wail of inconsolable grief. Then the thing hijacked my voice. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”
The laughter died in a heartbeat and an uncomfortable silence blanketed the room.
Although the thing had cupped my head in my hands, I could still tell that my behavior was attracting a lot of attention. Shut up! Shut up, you bastard! I screamed in my head, but no one answered me. The usual lunchtime roar died to a dull, whispered rumble.
“Dude, what’s wrong with him?”
“Go to hell, Benny! Nothing, okay?”
I looked up.
Benny and I had grown up together in the same cul-de-sac. There had been a time when we were six or seven that we had been inseparable, but Benny didn’t have the middle school star power that I did, and so he had been discarded as I climbed over him on my way to the top.
Benny looked at Carson, who had scolded him, and shrugged. The smaller boy had no interest in tangling with an alpha dog.
He was about to walk away when the thing inside me gained momentary control of my emotions and started to speak. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Benny. I’m old, and now I know I’d desperately love to do it again. I promised myself for years that it wouldn’t be like this, but now I know that I’d do it all again.”
Benny jerked his head back. “What are you talking about?”
But the thing inside me never answered him. It simply dissolved again into inconsolable sobs.
After ten or twenty seconds, Carson finally spoke in an undertone what must have been on everyone’s mind. “Come on, Noah. Get it together. Stop it, man. Stop crying.”
The thing ignored him.
Mr. Yonkers, my humanities teacher, arrived and put his hand on my shoulder. He leaned down. “Hey, Noah, let’s get you somewhere quiet.” He gently started to guide me out of my seat.
The thing managed to control itself enough to turn and look Yonkers square in the eye. I was mortified. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d looked that directly at a teacher.
Slowly, my head started to nod. The whatever-it-was said, “Yeah, the kid’s going to need your help. Eighty-three, kid. It may not mean anything to you right now, but we’re eighty-three.”
Mr. Yonkers looked at me with lowered brows for a moment, and for a second I could have sworn he was about to respond to my insane ramblings, but he didn’t. Ever so slowly his grip tightened on my arm. “Come on, Noah. Let’s go.” The tone in his voice had lost some of its warmth. He pulled me from the table and frog marched me from the cafeteria. I continued to whimper softly.
As the door to the cafeteria swung shut behind us, the whatever-it-was disappeared, and I snapped back to the front of my head. It was like coming home after your kid threw a party in the house, and you’re left with the repair and cleanup. Instantly, I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth. I had no use for the hot tears on my face. Emotions that a second ago I couldn’t touch were suddenly once again under my control. For my thirteen-year-old self, grief felt like standing on the moon—alien, cold, and unknown. I hadn’t cried like that since before my parents divorced.
I hurriedly wiped my nose on my sleeve and did my best to gain control of my tears.
Yonkers sensed the change and loosened his grip on my arm. “You okay?”
I nodded but didn’t answer. The foreign emotions I now faced down were still so raw I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t cry if I spoke, and this time it would be my fault.
Yonkers steered me into his classroom and told me to sit, pointing at a desk in the front row while he stepped to the phone.
Shell-shocked, I complied.
He dialed the office, told them what happened, and asked if the counselor would come down to his room.
Yonkers always tried hard with me. He was one of the few teachers left in the building that hadn’t thrown me away as a lost cause.
When he finished the call, he walked around his desk and leaned back against it. “What did you take, Noah?”
The question stung. Still trying to process everything that had just happened, I wasn’t ready to answer. My eyes darted to his face only briefly before staring back down at the floor. My tone was particularly acidic because I was being falsely accused of something which at another time might have been quite correct. “Nothing. I didn’t take nothing.”
Yonkers sighed. “Okay, Noah. You sure? Done any pot recently? You know there are some people who have funny reactions to that stuff. They’re allergic to it. They get all paranoid.”
Involuntarily, the thought of the couple of joints my dad and I had smoked last weekend flowed through my head. Could that have done this? I wondered. Before I could stop myself, I looked up.
I saw just the hint of a satisfied smile. “Anything you want to tell me, Noah?”
Instinctively, I shook my head.
Yonkers shifted and folded his arms across his chest. “All right, Noah. Then why don’t you tell me what just happened.”
My palms started to sweat. I shrugged. “I don’t know. I really don’t. It just sort of happened.”
Yonkers scowled. He was about to speak when his phone rang again. “Yonkers…. Yeah, he’s here…. Okay, I’ll send him down.”
He turned around to look at me as he hung up. “Well, Noah, this is out of my hands. You need to report to the vice principal’s office. Alexis says that you dropped a tray of food on her on purpose, and several other students are backing her up.”
He was quiet for a moment, waiting for a response.
I stood and chose not to give him the satisfaction.
He shrugged. “If you won’t talk to me, I can’t help you.”
I merely grabbed my bag and headed for the exit. I’d been in the vice principal’s office enough that it no longer held any fear for me. It just seemed best to go along right now until I could find time to think, to sort through what had happened.
As I got near the door, my curiosity got the better of me, and I turned to look at Yonkers. “So you really think a joint or two could have done that?”
Still leaning on his desk, he nodded his head ever so slightly.
* * *
My second break with reality came when I was seventeen. One May evening, I
stood up to present my senior project to an auditorium filled with parents, teachers, and fellow seniors. It was three days before my eighteenth birthday. My mom was there, hidden somewhere behind the glare of the stage lights. My dad didn’t bother to show.
Mr. Yonkers was there as well. That day in the cafeteria had changed our relationship. He’d kept track of me through high school. For the first time, there was a man in my life who expected things from me. From eighth grade forward, I fluttered around Yonkers like a moth craving light.
After all the embarrassment of taking temporary leave of my sanity, I started making changes. For one, I quit smoking pot. I also stopped breaking the rules to get attention and tried to make something of my life.
My friendships changed too. It’s hard to stay king of the hill when you’ve had a psychotic episode. Carson and the gang never let me forget it until the day I graduated. I chalked it up to some bad weed, but inside I worried that somehow I had done this to myself. Either way, I felt responsible, and that weighed me down like a stone. As the years wore on, I spent more time with Benny and less with my old friends. Alexis never spoke to me again.
When I wasn’t blaming myself, I blamed my dad for it all. I was angry, mostly because he hadn’t stopped me smoking pot before something bad happened. I was angry that he had cost me my status with my peers. I was angry because Lexi never forgave me. In truth, I was angry because he wasn’t much of a dad.
My senior project was a short film. No surprise there. I’d been making short films since the second semester of eighth grade, when I took an elective with Yonkers. Something about the camera’s ability to showcase the truth fascinated me. Yonkers said once, “Great movies frame truth in a rectangle without all the distractions of daily living.” I never forgot it.
During one class, he showed us One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Jack Nicholson. I don’t know if anyone else in that class got anything out of that ancient film, but as someone who had experienced something like what these people had, it hit a nerve. From that day forward, I knew I wanted to speak truth in movies.
The Time Travel Chronicles Page 17