by Anthology
“No worse than anything I could come up with.”
“Thanks.”
“And it might be that something similar is confusing your Facepage thingamajig. In which case it should pass when the storm and the . . . neutrinos . . . abate.”
“Facebook, not Facepage. But hey, that makes sense. The storm is already dying down, in fact, so maybe things are already starting to come back. Lemme reboot.” There was another whirring in the background, then a musical chime followed by a pleasant voice announcing, “You’ve got mail.”
“Sorry, gotta figure out how to shut that off. That was already old when that movie came out, you know, the one with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.”
“I’m afraid I never heard of it.” He had no idea what a movie was, either.
“Oh. It was a good one. It was about these two business rivals who hated each other in real life but fell in love on the net.” There was a strange crackling sound. “Damn. I think the storm’s winding down.” More crackling. “. . . definitely losing the connection. Hey, my name is Hamilton. Hamilton Tyler. The reverse of the bicycle racer who got in doping trouble a few years back, but the similarity was enough to bring me a lot of grief, especially from weirdos who found me on Facebook and the like. Though they say that any publicity is good publicity.”
“My name is Alexander. But my friends call me Alec.” He paused. “Bicycle racer?”
“You’re from a bit farther back than last year, aren’t you?”
“I think that is highly likely.”
“More than a bit, in fact?”
“Most likely.”
“No wonder you never heard of the Internet. Imagine trying to explain that to Thomas—Holy cr—Oh, Sorry. I bet you guys didn’t say such things.”
“Not when we could avoid it.”
“Holy . . . ohmygod. You’re—” There were more clicking noises, rapid enough to carry an air of near panic. “And you probably didn’t say ohmygod, either.”
“Not if we could avoid it.”
The crackling was getting worse. The contact was clearly disintegrating.
Alec wasn’t sure what to say, although it was sounded like his invention would be even more successful than he had ever dreamed. Assuming that knowing so wouldn’t change it. But surely not. As long as he did the work, how could he lose simply by also knowing he would succeed? Time moved on, with him, or without him. And the future was going to be a very strange place.
“Odds bodkins,” he said.
“Huh? You guys still said that?”
“No. It was a private joke. It means . . .” What did it mean? “Nothing important.”
“Okay,” Hamilton’s voice was now barely distinct among the background crackles. “Look, I’ve been online again, and it all makes sense now. And you gave me the right advice on Facebook. My ex—is back to being a nonfriend, and last year’s concert schedule is back to being last year’s, which probably means we’ve only got a few moments left to talk. So let me give you one bit of advice. I was checking your bio, and you’re going to do all kinds of great things. But you need get some exercise and watch what you eat, okay? You might try running. Twenty or thirty minutes every other day would do a lot. And keep away from the sweets, okay? Because otherwise the diabetes is going to get you, and Mabel will be heartbroken.”
Then the connection crackled again and Hamilton was gone.
Alec stared at the telephone wondering if it would buzz again. When it didn’t, he found a sheet of paper and began jotting words and phrases. A few minutes later, the downstairs door banged open.
“Good morning!” Watson called.
“A good morning indeed,” Alec said. “Could you come up here? No, wait, I’ll come down.” It really had been a long time since he’d taken much of a constitutional. Would exercise really stave off diabetes? Who knew? But Hamilton had known Mabel’s name. That wasn’t something Alec had told him. They weren’t even married yet, though they’d been planning it for years.
In the foyer, he handed his notes to Watson. “That’s a list of things we need to start looking into,” he said. “I think the telephone is only the beginning.”
“Telephone?”
“Yes, that’s what we’re going to call it.” Watson thought for a moment, then nodded. “That works.” He looked at the rest of the list. “I’ve heard of bicycles. I think they’re a form of velocipede, although they’re not particularly practical. There’s a reason people call them boneshakers.”
“Yes. In our spare time we’re going to figure out ways to fix that.”
Watson was again looking at the list. “Neutrinos? Sounds Italian. What are they?”
“I have no idea. But we want to pay attention to them when they come around. Same with that fellow Einstein.” Not to mention all the other terms on the list. Facebook. Internet. “But the most important one is wireless communications. We need to be thinking about that. That’s the future. And maybe something called radio.”
Watson was looking at him oddly. “What about ‘whacked’ ?”
“Oh, that’s something it would be nice to avoid.” If there was a way to keep that word out of the vocabulary, his grandchildren would thank him. “I tell you, there are times when I think I should have just stayed in elocution. It’d a dying art.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Alec opened the door. “You will. Meanwhile, I’m taking a walk. A man doesn’t stay young forever.”
But once on the street, he thought about running. Was running even better than walking? Hamilton seemed to think so, and he knew many years of things Alec didn’t. How many years, he wondered, then shrugged. There was no way to know.
For a few blocks, oblivious of stares, Alec broke into a run. But soon he was panting, and soon thereafter forced to stop. Not to mention that his feet hurt. If Hamilton was right, and running was part of what was needed to do to avoid leaving Mabel bereft, he also needed better footwear.
He walked, as briskly as his dress shoes allowed. He could do a bit better with soft-leather boots. But could he do even better yet? The younger Goodyear had made news by patenting some sort of shoe-stitching machine. What would happen if someone tried to merge that with his father’s rubber company? Was it possible to do something with a vulcanized sole?
Alec picked up his pace again. The future was going to be fun. Just so long as nothing got whacked.
TERMINÓS
Dean Francis Alfar
Mr. Henares thinks about time
From the moment he opened his eyes in the morning to the instant before he fell asleep alone at night, Mr. Henares thought only about time.
He reflected about how time slowed down when he was engaged in an unpleasant activity, such as dyeing his thinning grey hair over the broken antique basin installed by his son-in-law Alvaro in his blue-tiled bathroom; and how time went faster during the rare instances when he felt happy, such as when his brace of grandchildren came for the cold weather holidays, their hypnotic music invariably loud and invigorating.
Mr. Henares recalled days when time did not move at all: waking up one morning convinced that it was the exact same day as the day before, watching the red display of his tableside clock blinking fruitlessly. The experience of the twin miércoles was to be repeated thrice more, adding jueves, viernes and sábado to his list of repeating days. He endured the repeated conversations and graceless routines, read the same stories in the newspapers and watched the same interviews on television.
Once, when he was a much younger man, Mr. Henares went back in time. The incident caught him completely unaware—he realized he was walking backwards and thinking thoughts in reverse. This unfortunate event flustered him so much that when it was suddenly over, he broke down in tears and resolved never to travel back in time if he could help it.
One morning Mr. Henares thought about the future, methodically spooning sweetsop into his mouth and spitting out the seeds into a cup. He sat at the breakfast alcove of his house that adjoined his l
ittle shop and squinted at the sun outside the windows.
“The future is always happening,” he said to the empty kitchen. “If it is always happening, then it is, in fact, the present; and any instances of the future having occurred are, in fact, the past.”
Mr. Henares stood up, wiped sweetsop juice from his chin, washed his hands, crossed the connecting corridor and went about opening his shop for the day.
Mr. Henares makes some sales
His first visitors were a trio of young men, all sporting nose rings and dressed in last year’s affectation of jeans and tulle.
“Vueño arao, Mr. Henares,” the thinnest one said, removing his Pepsi-blue hat as he entered the shop.
“Good morning,” Mr. Henares replied. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“We would like to sell,” the stoutest one replied, wiping beads of perspiration from his forehead with a swipe of a ruffled sleeve. “We’ve been waiting for you to open.”
“Ah,” the old merchant said, “And what do you have for me?”
“We have time to kill,” the tallest one told him, offering his hands, palms up. He looked at Mr. Henares with half-lidded eyes.
Mr. Henares shook his head. “You understand, of course, that rates have really gone down. With the new teatros and entretenimientos, people are finding things to occupy themselves with.”
“Certainly, Mr. Henares,” the stoutest one replied. “We will take what you will offer. You are the fairest merchant in all of Ciudad Manila.”
Mr. Henares brought out his tools, brass and glass and wood, and extracted the precise amount of time each young man wanted to sell. They waited patiently as he labeled each vial, heads tilted to the mellow bossa nova tracks that emanated from a pair of speakers from behind the counter. When he had finished putting everything away, he gave them their payment, wrapped in blue encaje.
The three young men opened the package then and there, much to the discomfort of Mr. Henares. The tallest one took out the Planet Hollywood shot glass and read aloud what was written around the logo, as his two companions unabashedly held hands and closed their eyes.
Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish
By early evening, Mr. Henares had completed four more transactions.
A young mother, fresh from the provinces, who sold all her memories of childhood: Mr. Henares’s payment was etched on a Flores bandalore, the inscription set deep in the yo-yo’s polished wooden rim.
A drop hollows out a stone
A pair of lovers, who entered his store and left it hand-in-hand, traded in five separate occasions of romance: when they first knew they were in love, when they first kissed, when they first made love, when they first reconciled, and when they decided to stay together for as long as they could, despite all inconvenience, difficulty or portent. Mr. Henares gave them, in exchange, words written on yellowed Badtz Maru stationery, sweat and ink staining the image of the little black Japanese penguin.
Night follows day
A bored widow was next, bartering away two years of future solitude. “I’m certain someone will want that,” she said wryly, “I certainly don’t.” Mr. Henares gave her a polished citrine carved into the form of a tiny fluted flower with even smaller engraved words.
We do not care of what we have, but we cry when it is lost
The widow sniffed, “True, true,” and asked if she could purchase some romance. Mr. Henares offered her the vials he obtained from the lovers earlier. She took two and stepped out into the humidity.
The fourth customer was a proud-looking soldier, the buttons on his dress uniform shiny and golden. “My maternal grandaunt told me that I would lose my right arm in war across the sea. If it must be so, then I’d like to sell the time of actual loss and recovery.”
Mr. Henares studied the man’s resigned face and offered him, in exchange for his future pain, words woven in sawali.
An empty barrel makes the greatest sound
Mr. Henares prepares for bed
As he closed the shop, he reflected on how time’s ebb and flow meant different things to different people. He once had a customer, a dark-skinned young man from Cabarroquis, who protested against his good fortune in the game of love.
“Everyone I meet wants me,” the dark-eyed man sighed in Mr. Henares’s bed. “Everyone wants to devour me. I never have time for myself. I am certain that even you will soon speak to me of love.”
Mr. Henares had not really been listening to him then, but was instead enraptured by the young man’s skin, marveling at the game of hide-and-seek the candlelight and shadows played upon it. It was only much later when he remembered the words the man spoke.
As he prepared his frugal dinner of salted fish and boiled aubergine, Mr. Henares thought about how some people believed in time as a panacea for all hurt, all pain, all woes.
A pair of sisters, veiled and somber, once asked him if he had thirty years of uninterrupted time for sale. He sadly told them he did not, that no one had ever sold him a block of personal time greater than a handful of years. But inwardly, he cringed at the notion that there were people who believed in a blessed future, guaranteed happiness by imbibing his vials or selling their sorrow, whether past or yet-to-come.
He felt too old to believe in what he sold.
Before going to bed in the house that adjoined his shop, Mr. Henares checked on his trading stock, arranging various items containing words, phrases and maxims. Behind a shelf, almost hidden from his eyesight, he found a faded adarna plume etched with
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible
and a handkerchief embroidered with
What we see depends on what we look for
That night, as he stripped his clothes and slipped into bed, Mr. Henares thought about how time, whether bought or sold or unsold, robbed everyone of everything in the end. He chuckled at himself, surprised by his cynical perspective, scratched at a sore spot on his spotted arms, and went to sleep, thinking about time.
Miguel Lopez Vicente’s drought
Three days later, on the eve of his thirty-second natal day, the storyteller Miguel Lopez Vicente came to terms with the fact that he had nothing more to write. His body of work, unmatched in terms of scope and volume, was testament to his genius, read, devoured and performed in various venues all over Hinirang. In years past, he tilled the soil of his homeland and harvested the loves and hopes of its people, transmuting their mundane lives into great dramas of passion. He listened to the tales of sailors, merchants and ambassadors to foreign lands and improved upon what he heard, spinning marvels from the barest descriptions and epics from whispered rumors. But with each year that passed, his ideas dwindled and diminished, leaving a profound void in the center of his heart. He found himself staring at virgin pages, his quill sapped by the ennui of waiting.
“There is nothing left,” he said to his reflection in the mirror. “I don’t want to grow old.”
He recalled the first time he knew he would be a writer, how the sight of farmers during rice-planting season triggered a sudden rapture in him. But the matter of age and the ravages of time had been weighing heavily on his head for the past few months. When he passed the halfway mark of a healthy man’s lifespan the year prior, he did it in a wine-induced stupor, drinking in an effort to obliterate the fact that he had written only one wondrous play the previous year.
This year, he thought about doing something else, to ward off the thoughts of another year ending, a fruitless year of utter desolation—perhaps by losing himself in the arms of some unknown young man, but decided against it. A young man’s embrace would repeat a story he already knew (no doubt the boy’s arms would be strong; his skin perfect and tight; his eyes round; his life exactly the same as every other young man that Miguel had known), a futile exercise. And so Miguel simply resolved to determine his own story’s ending.
Miguel Lopez Vicente selects an ending
The afternoon of the next day, Miguel walked to the Encant
o lu Caminata to the shop of Mr. Henares. The shop was empty of people when he arrived, but filled to the rafters with all manner of jars, pots and woven baskets; vials, censers and tsino incense stick holders; beads, feathers, and boxes and bowls of various sizes, shapes and colors. A peculiar scent permeated the room, swirling slowly around a large storm lantern on the counter—the mingled smells of an eclipse, stolen kisses, and newly-opened luggage fresh from an airplane’s belly.
Miguel was about to touch the lantern when he decided instead to ring the tiny porcelain bell whose intricate details seemed to never end.
“Vueño arao, what can I do for you?” Mr. Henares said, appearing from an adjoining room.
“Good morning, Mr. Henares,” Miguel Lopez Vicente replied. “I have come to trade away all my days.”
“All your days? Are you certain?” The old merchant looked him straight in the eye and for a moment Miguel felt himself dissolve into sad and heavy motes that just barely kept the shape of a man.
“Yes,” Miguel nodded. “Believe me, this decision was not at all spontaneous.”
“I cannot buy them all,” Mr. Henares said. “This is not that kind of place.”
“Do you know who I am?” Miguel asked him.
“It makes no difference, sir,” Mr. Henares replied. “But, yes. I do.”
“This way, at least, let someone benefit,” Miguel told him with an unflinching gaze.
“I see,” said Mr. Henares. He leaned forward until the space between him and Miguel was no wider than a fist. “But I have nothing in stock to give you for what you want to give me. It is quite early in the month. The value of your—”
“Sir,” Miguel interrupted him, taking a step back. “Just give me the first thing you see and we’ll call it an exchange fair and well-made.”
“Very well,” the old man said, before vanishing into the other room. He returned a moment later with his tools, brass and glass and wood, and took precisely the amount of time Miguel Lopez Vicente wanted to exchange. Afterwards, he handed Miguel a silver thimble, discolored and slightly dented.