“That’s not it,” Tony said. Best to stop this now. “On the last day of the cruise, I found out... she’s married.”
Well, she was, in a sense. To the Saturn Society.
A hush fell over the group. Tony’s dad grunted, but no one spoke. Across the table, Taylor had taken a sudden interest in the tablecloth. Did she know? “I’m sorry, dear,” his mom said. Mark and Danny mumbled agreements, and then his mom started passing the food bowls around. Gradually, conversations started about school, Mark’s football team, Charlie’s thoughts on the stock market that week. Safe subjects.
Taylor paid no more attention to Tony than any other guest of his nephews’ would have. Still, he kept an eye on her throughout the meal, torn between wanting to get her alone so he could chew her ass for locking him in that room, yet afraid to, should his fears prove true.
As he waited to serve himself, he scanned each of their faces, everyone in their accustomed places. The same places the Solomon family and their significant others had occupied for twenty years’ of Sunday dinners. His dad sat at the head of the table, and at the other end, Tony’s mom. Tony sat in the middle of the three chairs with their backs to the window, Bethany on his left and Lisa’s older son Mark on his right, and across from them, Charlie, Taylor and Danny—
Taylor. That’s what was... off. Not that she was present, but that she sat in his sister’s chair. “Where’s Lisa?” he asked.
Everyone froze. Bethany dropped a spoon on the floor. All their eyes, huge, round. Horrified.
Tony flung his hands out, palms up. “What?”
His dad coughed. Charlie excused himself, shoved back his chair and left the room.
“Uh,” Mark said.
No one else spoke, so Tony asked again. “Where’s Lisa? Is it some secret I’m not in—”
“Daddy!” Bethany whispered, her nose wrinkled.
“What?”
“Daddy... Lisa’s dead.”
“What?” His voice squeaked. A high-pitched, pulsating roar in his ears drowned out her response. His breath was gone. This was not happening. He wasn’t hearing this. Good thing he was sitting down, or his knees would have given out.
The rest of the meal passed in somber quiet. There was an uncharacteristic amount of leftovers, and everyone made excuses to leave soon after dinner.
“You sure you’re okay?” Bethany asked as they got into the car.
“Yeah.” As okay as he could be. During the ten-minute ride home, Tony cleaned his glasses three times. Lisa, dead. It couldn’t be. He tried to dredge up memories, ones he didn’t know he had. Had he somehow traded her life for Bethany’s? It didn’t make sense, yet...
Bethany’s face twisted in concern. “I think we should go back to Grandma’s and call the doctor—”
“No!” His head snapped around. “I’m fine. Just... this is kind of upsetting, even now.”
“You’ve been acting weird ever since your heart attack. Then you disappear for three weeks. And now... Mom thought that cruise would be good for you, but I don’t know...”
He didn’t want to dredge up his own painful memories of that horrible day in July, five years ago. He wanted to hear it from her. It would make it more real, something he had no choice but to accept. “I’m... a little confused,” he admitted. “How- how did she...”
She lowered her head, turned her eyes up at him. “SpaStar?”
“What is it? I mean, I know it’s a solar power plant satellite, but—”
Her eyes widened, brows raised. She jerked her head at him as she spoke. “It fell and killed thousands of people?”
THE SKY WAS BURNING. THAT WAS the main thing Tony remembered from that day, seeing chunks of the satellite array falling, the smaller ones burning up in the atmosphere. Everyone at the office had run outside or braved the stairs and gone out on the roof. Tony had stood in the streets, watching the flaming pieces fall to the earth, unaware until the following day that one of them had killed his sister. She was the reason he’d never visited the Solar Energy Museum that was built a couple of years later.
But Tony could avoid it no longer. He got out of the car before he pulled into the museum’s parking lot, and gazed at the pewter-plated, memorial plaque at the street entrance. “Dedicated to those who died after the fall of SpaStar - July 3, 1998,” he read. Eight granite arches bore over a thousand names inscribed on their polished sides.
The memorial and museum graced a flat plain north of Dayton, where the U.S. Solar Energy and Power Commission headquarters had once stood. The glass dome in the center of the museum’s roof sparkled in the afternoon sun, barely noticeable amidst acres of solar collection panels.
Tony scanned the lines of names in alphabetical order. He found Lisa’s on the second pillar on the east side of the drive. As if to convince himself of the horrible truth, he crouched and ran his fingers over the recessed letters. Elisabeth Solomon Vogel.
His research had revealed that Charlotte Henderson’s innovations had helped the Dayton area become a center for solar energy research. Like in the other timestream, Dayton was also a center for aerospace development, which in this reality included solar energy-collecting satellites and power plants that hovered in geosynchronous orbits thousands of miles above the earth. SpaStar had been positioned above the SEPC headquarters. Other parts of the Array orbited over several other U.S. cities.
Lisa had been at work at the SEPC headquarters the morning the array broke apart and fell to earth. HQ and the nearby suburb of Sunborough were the hardest hit, struck by a flaming power transmission satellite the size of a football stadium. Rescuers had combed the debris for a week. They found only three people alive.
Years later, the cause of SpaStar’s sudden decay of orbit and subsequent fall remained a mystery. The Solar Energy and Power Commission and museum was Tony’s account at the agency, but he’d never toured it. Now he knew why.
In the timeline of LCT and Keith Lynch, of coal-fired power plants and steering wheels, there had been no Solar Energy and Power Commission, and Lisa had worked at the Air Force base. Tony wished he could wake up and find it was just a nightmare.
Another horrible thought occurred to him. What if his warp back to save Bethany had brought about all these changes? He gulped for air, his chest unable to expand. His legs went rubbery, then logic returned to him with a whoosh of breath.
Bethany’s death had occurred nearly two years after the fall of SpaStar. He couldn’t have changed time at that point. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that everything came back to him, was all his fault for messing with the flow of time. Maybe Everly was right, maybe Tony was playing God.
He would never warp again. Not even if Bethany died another preventable death. If something happened to her, it would be a lesson to him. A reminder that no matter how unfair, some things were meant to be.
Bethany hadn’t deserved to die. But neither had Lisa. Or sixteen thousand others.
He climbed back into the car. “Continue.”
Time crawled to a stop as he stood in front of the museum entrance, the wind whistling in the field of solar collectors as he read the name over the door. The Dorothy Charlotte Henderson Museum of Solar Energy. “No. Fucking. Way.”
Even though he’d known Charlotte had been a key contributor to early solar energy development, the sight of her name up there sent a shock through him.
He forced himself to open the door. Woodenly, he walked in.
He wandered down the main corridor, his mind in a fog, the entire experience dreamlike. He felt disconnected, as if his body walked through the museum without his brain directing it. Like he was watching TV, and another man who looked like him gazed at the first solar cells she’d developed. It wasn’t Tony, but someone else who peered at watches, heating appliances, and home heating systems from the fifties. It wasn’t Tony, but a mindless robot who skimmed the placards over early solar-powered computers.
He viewed the satellite power plant exhibit with detached interest. A pictori
al display outlined the development of solar energy electricity generation in the 1940s. The display continued with pictures of the first solar power generation satellites, a miniature model of the first satellites to contain power plants that beamed electricity to the earth using radio signals, then a model of SpaStar and its fall on Ohio, Florida, southern California and myriad other, smaller U.S. sites.
The hall emerged into a round room capped with a glass rotunda. A tour group clustered around a pedestal display in the center while a guide spoke. School-age kids, probably from a summer camp. Tony peered at the photos around the room’s perimeter. He immediately recognized Charlotte as a little girl in the second one. His heart clenched. The little girl he’d pulled from the floodwaters, saved from drowning. He wrenched his gaze away and strolled around the room, aghast at the wall of homage to the “Mother of Modern Solar Energy.” The woman who’d betrayed him. The woman whose work had indirectly caused the death of his sister and thousands of others.
Take it away, she’d said in the interview. SpaStar had to be the reason. But what did she want him to take from her, and when?
Most of the photos showed Charlotte working on various projects. In one, she held up an early solar cell she’d developed. Ice formed over Tony’s ribcage.
In the photo, she wore the violet-print dress he’d bought for her. Like the few other photos in which she looked at the camera, sadness pervaded her thin, close-mouthed smile, reminiscent of Mona Lisa’s.
Tony skimmed over the other pictures, trying not to see Charlotte’s sparkling eyes, or her face aglow with desire and happiness as she clung to him in the river, as she lay beside him in the little box bed at the Fishin’ Shack, as she trembled beneath him in the living room of her home. He tried to forget her whispered professions of love—lies, all lies—and the press of her lush body against his...
The last photo was the only one in color. In it, Charlotte again wore the violet-print dress, by then faded. Gray streaked her hair and lines etched her forehead, a vertical one above her nose the most pronounced. The caption placed it in the year he was born. Even as a seventy-year-old woman, she was beautiful.
Beneath the photo, glass covered a yellowed, handwritten letter. Tony leaned closer. The note was dated August 9, 1968, right after the U.S. had taken Viet Nam with solar-powered explosive devices. Tony’s head swam. Weapons? He forced himself to read the rest of the note, in which Dorothy Charlotte Henderson announced her retirement. Appalled by the use of her work to kill, she stated her intention to live the rest of her life in solitude.
Tony wandered away in shock. Before he’d gone back in time, he’d never heard of Dorothy Charlotte Henderson. What had happened? Mute horror flowed over his body, as if someone had poured a bucket of thick liquid over his head, slowing his motions, clouding his vision, dulling his senses.
Had his visit to Charlotte brought about this solar-powered new world?
He’d never know. He didn’t want to know. He wouldn’t warp again. He’d live with the questions, and the memory of Charlotte’s warm body close to his, and her lies—
Someone bumped into him. A girl in the tour group mumbled “sorry” and ambled away.
He rubbed his eye, and his hand came away wet. Crying. He’d been standing there, staring at her picture with tears running down his face and he didn’t even realize it. He surreptitiously rubbed his cheeks, snatched off his glasses—an old pair he’d fortunately kept—and wiped them, then hung at the fringe of the school group.
“...this is what Henderson claimed started it all,” the tour guide said. “We’re very lucky to still have it. As you might know, much of the museum’s collection was lost when SpaStar fell. But this piece, along with a few others, was on loan to the Smithsonian at the time. If you’ll follow me...” Her words faded as the group moved away.
Tony approached the glass-topped, cylindrical pedestal. He clutched the glass, mouth agape, when he saw the object inside.
His calculator.
The one he’d dropped while shopping with Charlotte. The one he’d forgotten all about. He’d left it in his wallet, in the pocket of the pants he’d left on her kitchen floor.
His hands squeaked as they slid down the glass, and he slumped to the floor, crumpled into a ball. It was his fault. All his fault...
Tony didn’t remember driving—or rather, riding—home, or even leaving the museum. He didn’t remember anything until he found himself traipsing down the path through the woods behind the apartment complex. His footsteps crunched in the dry leaves, and the black walnut trees loomed menacingly, as if their leafy canopy concealed something sinister. Come on, Solomon, Tony chided himself. You walk through this woods all the time, there’s nothing there. The trail was the quickest way to Mulroney’s, Bernie, and a cold beer. Tony could sure as hell use a drink, even though he wouldn’t be warping back to re-do his week with Charlotte for almost another year. He had to get away from his apartment, away from the news that the Dayton Sniper was targeting dark-haired, white businessmen in their mid-thirties.
The crackling leaves on the trail gave out to pine needles, and when his footsteps became muffled thuds, the reason for his sense of foreboding became apparent. No birds chirped in the treetops above. No chatter of squirrels, or rustle of leaves as they leapt from tree to tree. Tony stopped.
Shards of blue sky showed through the treetops. Leaves fluttered in a light breeze, enough he could see but not hear. Then another presence settled into his mind, alien yet not... Get off the path!
Huh? “Who—” He cut off his own words. No one had spoken, that other... person in his head had. Get off the path!
He dove for a clump of undergrowth as a gunshot rang out. A puff of dirt rose from where the slug impacted the dry earth.
Good God, right where he’d been standing.
Move! the other presence urged. He scuttled a few feet away, toward a bush. Another shot. Twigs snapped from the bullet’s passage in the underbrush where he’d just been. His throat felt full of gravel. At another urging from that other presence he ran back toward the path. Two more gunshots.
He crouched under a low-lying tree. Okay, chill out here. But only for a minute, the other voice in his head said. Himself, from the future. Like when he’d sold all those technology stocks right before the market bombed. He panted, the sound loud in the still woods. The little voice was silent, and his present thoughts kicked back in. Sniper. After me. Bob Standley wasn’t a random hit. Tony dug into his pocket and whipped out his cell phone. “Police,” he said in a low voice. His future self remained quiet, though Tony still sensed his presence. Leaves rustled in the treetops down the path, where he’d run from. The shooter was coming.
The emergency operator picked up. “Someone’s shooting at me!” Tony tried to catch his breath. “They’ve fired five times—”
“Police are on the way,” the operator said. “Please stay on the line...”
Move!
Tony darted for the underbrush. Another shot rang out. Closer. He squeezed the phone. “Sir? Are you all right?” Tony’s hand muffled the emergency operator’s voice.
“Yeah,” Tony whispered. But for how long?
Sirens wailed in the distance. Guided by his future self, Tony ran in a crouch, then doubled back on the path. The gunman fired another shot. Tony’s erratic route was all that was keeping him alive. “Sir?” the emergency operator said.
He crouched under a bush. “I’m here.”
The sirens grew nearer. There must’ve been a unit already in the area. The little voice remained silent. Tony’s legs were starting to cramp when blue lights flashed through the wood. Something at the entrance to the path crashed through the trees.
“Mr. Solomon!” a man yelled. The cops, thank God. Tony turned toward the voice and started to rise, then stumbled as dizziness swamped him. He was warping? Now? But the vertigo dissipated as suddenly as it had come. He struggled to his feet as two police officers tramped through the trees toward him. “Mr. Solomo
n! Are you all right?”
They questioned him and searched the woods for an hour. The only evidence of the sniper they found was the spent shells.
As Tony had expected. Because the sniper had warped away.
“Mr. Solomon, do you have any reason to believe you might have been targeted? Any motive someone might have?” one of the policemen asked as they emerged from the woods to the apartment parking lot where their cruiser sat.
“None,” Tony said. At least none he could explain to them.
And none he could explain to himself. Unless Theodore Pippin had friends in the future.
The police reminded Tony to contact them if he saw anything suspicious, then departed. He trudged back into his apartment, no longer in the mood for a beer or company.
It was his fault. All of it. Everything that was wrong in this timeline. His fault. Maybe those snipers were executioners from the future, sent back to kill him—no, punish him, take him to the Saturn Society to be turned into a mindless zombie, his penance for leaving the calculator in 1933. He had to go back. Had to retrieve the calculator, now. In the other timeline, there were no snipers gunning for him. No SpaStar. No sixteen thousand people—and his sister—dead. The memorial, the fields full of solar collectors and the deforestation crisis—everything. All my fault. All so totally, completely, wrong. He had to fix it. Had to warp one last time. He couldn’t put it off until next year, couldn’t simply redo his visit to Charlotte, because the calculator would still exist in 1933.
And because if he waited a year, he might not be alive.
Tony tossed and turned all night. The red glow of his alarm clock numbers etched into his brain. 2:13. 2:17. 2:31. Light seeped around his curtains from the apartment’s parking lot, casting shadows in the textured ceiling, patterns he’d memorized. There has to be another way. The lines in the ceiling were rivers on a map, flowing on an inexorable path to nowhere.
Maybe Charlotte did lead the Society to him, but he couldn’t bear the thought of going back and ensuring her death. You have to.
Time's Enemy: A Romantic Time Travel Adventure (Saturn Society Book 1) Page 32