by Tom Hanks
* * *
DING! IT IS 2:00 a.m. in my dorm room at Wardell-Pierce College, and I’m pounding out a paper (due in eight hours) for a rhetoric class—and yes, there was such a subject. My title was “Comparative Criticism in Sports Reporting: Baseball/Track,” chosen because I was a sports reporter for the Wardell-Pierce Pioneer and that week I had covered both a ball game and a track meet. My roommate, Don Gammelgaard, was trying to sleep, but I was on a deadline. And because it was raining there was no way I was going to tramp all the way across the quad to the Student Service Building. As I recall, I aced Rhetoric.*
* * *
DING! I’M AT a so-called desk in the so-called office of the Greensheet Give-Away, the free shoppers’ guide that once provided the Tri-Cities with oodles of coupons, advertisements, and, in the back pages, local-interest stories where regular folks could see their names in print. I was crafting a piece on a dog show just held at the old Civic Auditorium—my pay was fifteen bucks!—when the most beautiful woman who ever started a conversation with me walked by and said, “You type fast.” She was right, and since I was the fast type, I wooed her, wed her, and have been her main squeeze for over forty years.
* * *
THAT SAME DISH of American Womanhood brought me back from back in time when she came into the kitchen, telling me to move that typewriter and set the table for dinner. The grandchildren were coming over and it was going to be Make Your Own Taco Night, so a mess was due. The Underwood has powers unexplained, a vehicle for my dreams, so I locked it back into its case and carried it to a shelf in my home office, pronto. At night I think it glows in the dark…
* Note: A check of transcripts shows I got a B minus in Rhetoric at W-P. My mistake…
* * *
* * *
The Past Is Important to Us
Because his plane was getting a new designer interior installed, J.J. Cox was hitching a ride to New York on Bert Allenberry’s WhisperJet ViewLiner.
“I thought you were a smart man, Bert!” J.J. was yelling at his friend.
They’d known each other since they were twenty-year-old college kids, drivers for FedEx, full of moxie and spunk—their two heads bursting with ideas. They pooled their paychecks to rent a windowless garage on the outskirts of Salina, Kansas, which became their live-in workshop. After three and a half years of working 120-hour weeks, they’d come up with a prototype of the Shuffle-Access Digital Valve-Relay. They might as well have invented fire. Thirty years and $756 billion later, J.J. was just now learning that Bert had paid $6 million a pop to some outfit called Chronometric Adventures for—get this—time travel vacations. No, no, no!
Cindee, the fourth and youngest ever Mrs. Allenberry, was clearing the lunch china herself. She was well practiced at the chore, since she had been the flight attendant on the plane just a year ago. She had to work fast as there were but minutes before landing. Two problems with the ViewLiner: speed and vertigo. The flights from Salina to New York City took only sixty-four minutes, barely enough time to lick your fingers clean of BBQ ribs. The transparent floor and ultrawide windows made for a nail-biter of a flight, especially if you were afraid of heights.
“I thought they had dosed us with some narcotic,” Cindee called out from the plane’s galley. “You wake up with a terrible headache and the room looks all different. Then you conk right back out and sleep for hours.”
J.J. could not believe what he was hearing. “Let’s figure out this scam. You go into a room, you fall asleep and wake up when?”
“Nineteen thirty-nine,” Bert chirped.
“Of course you do.” J.J. smirked. “But then you pass out, wake up again in 1939.”
“Right there in the City. In a hotel on Eighth Avenue.” Bert was looking down through the fuselage. Pennsylvania was becoming New Jersey. “Room 1114.”
“And you spend the day sitting in a hotel room?” J.J. wanted to slap his own head, as well as some sense into that of his friend and partner.
“Everything looks real,” Cindee continued as she returned to her seat to buckle up for landing. “You can touch things. You can eat and drink. And smell. The men wear stinky hair oil and the women use too much makeup and everyone smokes. And their teeth! Crooked and stained.”
“Roasted coffee is in the air.” Bert was smiling. “From a factory in New Jersey.”
“You woke up in 1939,” J.J. said. “And smelled the coffee.”
“Then Cindee took me to the World’s Fair,” Bert said. “For my birthday. We had VIP passes.”
“It was a surprise.” Cindee shot her husband a smile and took his hand in hers. “The Big Six-Oh only comes once.”
J.J. had a question. “Why not go back in time to see the signing of the Declaration of Independence or Jesus on the cross?”
“You can only go to 1939,” Bert explained. “June 8, 1939. Chronometric Adventures has a franchise in Cleveland. You can go to 1927 and see Babe Ruth hit a home run, but I’m not a baseball fan.”
“Babe Ruth. In Cleveland.” J.J. nearly spit. “Jesus on the cross.”
“He’s gone back four times without me,” Cindee said. “I’d had enough of everyone thinking we were father and daughter.”
“I’m going again tomorrow.” Bert smiled at the thought.
J.J. was laughing now. “Thirty-six million dollars! Bert, for half that I’ll arrange for you to meet Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and do the naked limbo. You’ll just have to trust me on how I make it happen.”
“My husband would live in 1939,” Cindee said. “But he can only stay twenty-two hours.”
“Why only twenty-two hours?” J.J. asked.
Bert told him why. “Wavelength in the Time-Space Continuum is finite. You can ride the echo only so long.”
“They provide this money made of paper and old-fashioned coins,” Cindee said. “I bought a tiny, gold-plated space needle and globe.”
“The Trylon and Perisphere,” Bert corrected her.
“Right. Yeah. But when we woke up it had turned into dried-out putty.”
“That’s the Molecular Singularity.” Bert was not buckling his seat belt for landing. He owned the plane. Screw the FAA.
“Why not go back and change history?” J.J. wanted to know. “Why don’t you kill Hitler?”
“Hitler wasn’t at the World’s Fair that day.” The WhisperJet began to slow, the ground rising up to meet them. The articulating engines were tilting minutely, soon to allow a vertical landing on the roof of 909 Fifth Avenue. “Besides, it wouldn’t matter.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Singular Dimensional Tangents,” Bert said, looking down at Central Park, which hadn’t really changed all that much since 1939. “There’s an infinite number of tangents, but we all exist in just one.”
J.J. glanced at Cindee. She shrugged her shoulders—what could she do with the old guy?
“He likes seeing what the future was going to look like. But, we’re living in the future. You’d think that would spoil everything,” she said.
—
Twelve minutes later, J.J. was zipping along the HoverLine in his Floater, headed to his private island in the sound. Bert and Cindee had taken their private elevator from the landing pad on the roof and were settling into their apartment on floors 97 to 102. Cindee immediately changed into a new outfit from one of her closets. They were going to Kick Adler-Johnson’s twenty-fifth birthday party and a private hologram performance of the Rolling Stones. Bert could not stand Kick Adler-Johnson though he respected her husband, Nick, who had made a fortune buying up air and water rights around the world. Besides, the actual Stones had played the company Christmas party in 2019, when he was married to L’Audrey, wife number three. He wanted to stay home, but Cindee wouldn’t allow that.
Bert wished he could go through time right then, forward to the morning, then back to 1939, to the Fair that was filled with so many promises of the world as it could have been.
—
On that first bir
thday visit, Cindee felt ridiculous in the old-style clothes. Bert, though, was in heaven in a double-breasted suit made to measure by the tailors of Chronometric Adventures. He marveled at every little detail, every second of the twenty-two hours they spent in 1939. How small New York City seemed! The buildings were not tall at all, so the sky was much more open, the sidewalks had space for everyone, and the automobiles and taxis were huge and so roomy. The cabdriver wore a tie and complained of the traffic out to Flushing Meadows, but if that were a traffic jam, Bert would take it.
The World’s Fair featured the tall Trylon and the huge orb called the Perisphere, both one-of-a-kind architectural marvels that were bleach white and brilliant against the open blue sky. The Avenues of Patriots and Pioneers were meant to be taken seriously and—get this—Courts were dedicated to Railroads and Ships, celebrating technologies that required engines the size of his WhisperJet. There was a Giant Underwood Typewriter, an Aquacade Show, and Electro, the Mechanical Man—he walked and counted numbers on his steel fingers! Chronometric Adventures supplied a pair of VIP passes so Bert and Cindee never had to wait in line.
The fairgrounds were kept spotless. A light breeze wiggled the flags and pennants. The hot dogs cost five cents. Fairgoers were dressed to the nines, and some women even wore gloves. Hats were on most men’s heads. Bert wanted to see all of the World of Tomorrow, but Cindee was uncomfortable in her ugly shoes and wouldn’t eat hot dogs. They left around three in the afternoon, bound for drinks and dinner at the Hotel Astor in Times Square. Cindee was tipsy, tired, and sick of all the cigarette smoke by the time the two of them were back in room 1114 for Progression, the trip forward in time.
Two weeks later, Cindee loaded the WhisperJet with her pack of girlfriends and flew to a spa in Morocco, allowing Bert another twenty-two hours of 1939. He ordered morning coffee for just himself from Percy, the room service waiter. He had breakfast alone in the coffee shop in the Hotel Astor, the gorgeous place smack on Times Square. He had the same cabbie with the tie. Alone, he covered areas of the Fair he had missed, like the Town of Tomorrow and the Electrified Farm; he had lunch in the Heinz Dome, surveyed the Temple of Religion, and celebrated the workers’ paradise that was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He listened to the conversations around him, studied the enthusiasms of the fairgoers, noting the lack of foul language and the bright colors of the clothing—not a black-on-black outfit to be seen. Fair employees seemed proud to work in their various uniforms. And it was true; a lot of people smoked.
It was on that second visit, without Cindee, when he spotted a petite, lovely woman in a green dress. She was sitting on a bench by the Lagoon of Nations, overseen by the massive sculptures of the Four Freedoms. She showed a modest amount of leg over brown shoes with straps. She carried a small purse and wore a hat with a white bud of a flower on it, more of a cap, really. She was engaged in an animated conversation with a young girl, dressed more for Sunday school than a day at the Fair.
The two of them were laughing, talking with their hands, whispering secrets to each other like they were the best of pals on the best of days in the best of places—they were the spirit of the Fair in feminine form.
Bert couldn’t take his eyes off them, watching as they left the bench, heading arm in arm toward the Eastman Kodak Building. He thought to follow them, to see more of the Fair through their eyes. But his watch showed nearly 5:00 p.m., meaning there were little more than two of his twenty-two hours remaining. Reluctantly, he turned for the taxi stand that stood outside the North Entrance of the Corona Gate.
Another tie-clad taxi driver drove him back to Manhattan.
“Ain’t the World Fair something?” the cabbie asked.
“It is,” Bert replied.
“You see the Futurama? The trip to 1960?”
“I did not.” Bert, born in 1966, chuckled to himself.
“Oh, you gotta see the Futurama,” the cabbie said. “It’s in the GM Building. It’s a long line, but worth it.”
Bert wondered if the lovely woman in the green dress had seen the Futurama. And if so, what she thought of 1960.
—
Although the human body takes a terrific beating by traveling back and forth in time, the Chronometric Adventures Medical Team gave Bert the go-ahead for a third trip. The World’s Fair was too vast to see on just two visits, he explained to Cindee, which was true. What he didn’t tell her was that, on his return to Flushing Meadows in 1939, he’d spend the day looking for the lady in the green dress.
She was not in any of the buildings dedicated to the great humanitarian works of U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, or General Electric. She was not somewhere in the Plaza of Light, the Avenue of Labor, the Court of Peace, or Continental Avenue. She was nowhere Bert had searched. So, a few minutes before 5:00 p.m., he headed to the Lagoon of Nations, and, sure enough, the woman in the green dress was there, her little friend in tow, on that bench under one of the Four Freedoms.
He sat on a bench close enough to hear them compare notes on the marvels of the Fair, their local accents turning New York into Noo Yawk. They simply could not decide what to do next, before the evening came and the Fountains of Light would put on a show of technical, colorful wonder.
Bert was trying to summon the courage to speak to them when they rose up and hurried off to Eastman Kodak arm in arm, chatting and giggling. He watched them as they walked away, admiring the feminine carriage of the woman in the green dress, her hair bobbing against the back of her neck. He thought about following them, but the time was getting late and he had to return to room 1114.
For weeks, for every other minute, Bert thought of the woman in the green dress—of the way she talked with her hands and of her bobbing hair. He wanted to learn her name, to know her, if only for an extra hour or so of 1939. When Cindee announced she was joining Kick Adler-Johnson on a horseback ride through Cuba, he booked another exam with the Chronometric Adventures Medical Team.
—
He was on the bench by the Lagoon of Nations at 4:45, and yes, right on the tick of the singularity clockwork, the woman in the green dress and her young friend sat down and began their conversation. Bert guessed she was probably in her mid-thirties, though the fashions of the times made everyone look older by today’s judgments. She was heavier than Cindee, than most modern-day women, as the 1939 diet was not very calorie conscious and exercise, then, was the stuff of athletes and laborers. The woman had an actual figure; the curves did her service.
He’d planned on what to say in this first conversation with a woman he had wanted to meet for over eight decades. “Excuse me,” Bert said. “Do you ladies know if the Futurama is running today?”
“It is, but the line is very long,” said the woman in the green dress. “We spent all afternoon in the Amusements Area. What a time we had!”
“Have you rode the Parachute, mister?” The girl could not have been more delightfully enthusiastic.
“I haven’t,” Bert confessed. “Should I?”
“It’s not for the weakhearted,” the woman said.
“You go up and up and up,” the girl said, waving her hands. “You think you are going to come floating down slow and soft. But you don’t. You land ka-joink!”
“It’s true.” The woman and the girl traded laughs.
“Have you seen the Futurama?” Bert asked.
“We didn’t want to wait through that long line,” the woman said.
“Well,” Bert said, reaching into the pocket of his double-breasted suit. “I have a couple of special passes I’m not going to use.”
Bert handed over the same two heavy cards Chronometric Adventures had supplied for his first trip with Cindee, the tickets embossed with the Trylon and Perisphere and the letters VIP. “If you show these to the attendants at the bottom of the ramp—I mean, the Helicline—they take you in via a secret passage.”
“Oh, that’s so nice of you,” the woman said. “But we are definitely not VIPs.”
“Believe me, neither a
m I,” Bert said. “I have to get back to the city. Please use them.”
“Can we, Aunt Carmen?” the girl asked, begged actually.
Carmen. Carmen was the name of the woman in the green dress. Carmen. The name fit her perfectly.
“I feel like a sneaky pete,” Carmen said, pausing. “But let’s! Thank you so much.”
“Yes, thanks!” her niece said. “My name is Virginia and this is my aunt Carmen. Who are you?”
“Bert Allenberry.”
“Well, thank you, Mr. Allenberry,” Virginia said. “We owe our Future to you!” Arm in arm, the women headed down Constitution Mall toward the GM Building, home of the Futurama. Bert watched them go, feeling grand, happy he had returned to 1939.
For months, he daydreamed of the lovely Carmen, the sneaky pete. Though his body was in the office in Salina, the board meeting in Tokyo, on the boat off Mykonos—his mind was in Flushing Meadows, on a bench under the Four Freedoms on a day in early June of 1939. When a shareholders’ meeting demanded his presence in Noo Yawk, he made time for another $6 million visit to room 1114.
—
The events played out as before. He offered Carmen and Virginia the VIP passes, and off they went, owing their future to him. Bert, though, wanted just a bit more time with Carmen—not long, just another half hour or so—so he stationed himself at the exit of Futurama. He waved to them as they came out.
“How was it?” he called to them.
“Mr. Allenberry!” Carmen said. “I thought you had to leave.”
“Oh, I’m the boss, so I decided to change the rules.”