Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel

by Michael Bunker

  “You gotta have the right kind of mind to go back,” Rick said. “The reading kind of mind. Able to get into the story.”

  Which is why he set his mind to going back to 1910 or so, when Santa Anna was first being founded as a full-fledged town. He wanted to go back so he could climb that mesa, find those cave drawings, and figure out where to go hunt for that Santa Anna Gold.

  * * *

  The first thing he did was gather up the right clothing and other paraphernalia he thought he’d need. He studied the time like he was lookin’ at something in a microscope. He went to museums and talked to experts. We cashed in a bunch of our savings (I wasn’t a believer in time travel then, but I wanted to encourage my boy to take risks and be interested in something other than his own self all the time), then we bought clothes for both of us: shoes, the right woolen pants, everything with period buttons and thread. Nothing could be amiss. They couldn’t be replicas—they had to be the real thing. We even bought money for our pockets, and wind-up watches and combs for our hair, all what belonged to the era.

  Next, we found a cabin down on Home Creek that was there in 1910 and hasn’t changed since then. It was kept up for most of the last thirty years by the local high school history department working with the historical society, but when the economy collapsed in ’08 the thing got shuttered and mostly abandoned. Weren’t enough money to keep it up right.

  We cased the place for weeks, makin’ sure it wasn’t just boarded up temporary-like, and once we were convinced it was abandoned, we moved in. We opened the place up, then set ourselves to making it all perfect. We removed any locks, hinges, knobs, and what-not that weren’t from the right period. Fixed the place up right—basically refurbished it using all original materials. We switched out the beds that were in the place (they were replicas, put there by students in order to impress tourists who never showed up) with right proper beds from the first decade of the twentieth century. We even filled the cottage with food that was preserved and stored up just right. We took the period food out of its packages and stored it in old tin and copper cans we bought at auction from the right time period. We had old, cured bacon, and jars of oil and flour for biscuits too. We had access to a water pump or water from the creek, but we found out they had powdered milk back in that day, so we bought up some o’ that and put it in glass jars up in the cabinets.

  There was one problem with this plan, and I guess I should mention it now. If the plan worked (and I had no reason to believe that it would), then we might wake up in the cabin back in 1910, and there would likely be people livin’ there. Rick and I discussed this, but he said, “I don’t know what to do about that except worry about it when it happens.” And since I figured it would never work anyways, I just said, “Okay, then.”

  Once we knew the place was perfect, that’s when the experiment started. For weeks we tried our best to sever all our ties to our old world. During the day we’d immerse ourselves in period books and magazines. We’d play games from the time, and read old newspapers and magazines we’d bought online. We made sure it was all just right. No modern staples or stickers or any repairs made from the twenty-first century. We tried to govern our talk so that we didn’t even use modern colloquialisms at all. But… I got to tell you that, all told, none of it seemed to work. We’d wake up and go outside in the early morning dew, and we’d see an airplane contrail in the sky, or hear the truck traffic way up on the highway, and we’d know we failed.

  Truth be told, I think it was all startin’ to affect me a little in the head. Not that I’m crazy like they say, because that’s all a scam by the government (I propose). But it was gettin’ to me. I was having very realistic dreams of being in the past. In one of those dreams, I was up at the old Sealy Hospital (which I’d never seen with my own eyes), and it was as real as real can be. I walked in the place after midnight and just looked around. I had to hide from a few of the night nurses doin’ rounds, but except for a locked-up part way in the back they used for crazy folk, I could see everything. The moonlight and the windows were all just right, and I could open up cabinets and look at the medicine bottles, and I ain’t never had any other dreams so perfect as those in all my life.

  I know it might be getting things out of order and the cart before the horse and all that, but I have to say here that I think the government is behind all this. I think either they took the gold back in 1946, or they’ve been lookin’ for it ever since. I think with all their NSA email spying and their scanning our search terms and following our every move, they figured out that Rick and I were gettin’ close to figuring out what happened to that gold. Maybe they thought the Spanish government or the Indians would be wantin’ that gold back. I don’t know the reasons, but it’s important that you have in the back of your mind that I think the government was watchin’ us and plannin’ things all along. Of course, the doctors here will tell you, “That’s exactly what a crazy person would say.” But I didn’t know they’d be watchin’ us during that whole time when Rick and I were doing our best to make everything in our lives lined up perfect with the year 1910.

  And this is how it went for weeks. Rick never did get tired of it all, but sometimes I did. The night dreams of being in the past were gettin’ more intense, and during the day sometimes my mind would go the other way and flash forward to things like hamburgers and hot showers, but I was usually able to subdue those thoughts and get back into character.

  Then one day it happened. Not for me, though. It happened for Rick. I woke up and he was gone. And that was the day everything changed.

  * * *

  I knew Rick wasn’t kidnapped and that he hadn’t run back to the modern times. Not unless the government got him. But if they did, there’d be no sense in making me think he never existed. No, I don’t believe they got him, or that he quit neither. He was too in love with this idea, and he was really convinced it was going to work. That’s what convinced me it did work, because he believed in it so much, it had to have worked for him.

  One day, before we started the experiment, Rick told me that there was no difference between what he wanted to try, and getting really deeply into a good book or story. He said, “The better you can get into it as a reader, the more real it becomes.” I said, “Yes, I’ll have to agree with that.” So he says, “Well then, logically—there has to be a point where you get so into it, that it does become real. That’s a logical conclusion from what you say you agreed to.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. And I really didn’t.

  And now I have to tell you about my dream that night. The night before Rick went back to the past.

  I dreamed (for some reason) that I was up near the Sealy Hospital. That was usually where my dreams took me. It was 1933 and that old man, Joe Paul Scotland, was just days born (in the dream) up in the hospital. I went in just after midnight, like usual, and I went to see where the baby was sleepin’ in his crib in the nursery. There was a sign on the end of the wrought-iron crib that said “newborn male,” and some instructions about feeding him. There was no name, and he was the only baby in the nursery, but somehow I just know it had to be Joe Paul Scotland since he’s the only child I ever read about being born in that hospital. After I saw the baby, I was hoping I’d wake up and be back in my bed in the cabin down by Home Creek, but I didn’t wake for a long time. So I ended up walking all the way back. Real walkin’, not dream walkin’. My feet started hurting, and I was pourin’ out sweat after a while.

  It was the most realistic dream I can ever remember. In the dream, I was really back in 1933. But then it got weird. In my walk home, I wasn’t in 1933, but in 1910. At some point, the dream switched (like dreams do), and when I actually got into the heart of town, it had to be 1910 that I was seein’.

  It was dark out, and I walked through the town and saw some of it like it must have been back then. It looked like it was still horse-and-buggy days, for the most part, and the main street through town was still dirt. I saw the Stockard building
(which we today call the “Opry House”) and from what I could tell it was still the W. R. Kelly building because there was a “Dry Goods” sign pretty prominent on the face of it. A new-looking Ford automobile was parked next to the building, but the ruts and horse manure in the road told me that most folks were getting around by horse and wagon.

  I walked right in front of the S. H. Phillips Drug Store and the S. J. Pieratt’s Quality Store right next to it (they were housed in the same building, and Pieratt was Santa Anna’s first mayor). I remembered these places somewhat from pictures Rick and I studied from 1910 out of Ralph Terry’s book, Looking Backwards, that had a lot of pictures from the time. That’s how I figure the images got in my mind. But what I saw in this dream was so real that it scared me. I could even look in the window of Pieratt’s and see clothing on wooden hangers and pink and yellow ladies’ dresses readied up for Easter.

  It was a strange dream, me switching times from the 30’s and then back to the 1910’s. But I can’t explain it any other way. Of course, I never saw the outside of the hospital. The Sealy Hospital that got built in the 1920’s was the only one I knew about. And the dreams started once I was inside, so I understand now that I can’t be sure of the “when” of all of it..Anyway, I headed south and walked right by the Meador and Erwin Transfer business, which (from what I can tell) must have been like a moving company is today. There were five heavy-duty horse-drawn wagons lined up next to the business office, all with hanging signs that said “for hire” on them.

  Before long I was out of town, and I walked for hours until I came to Home Creek, then made my way down until I came upon the little cottage we’d borrowed. In the dream I went inside and collapsed onto the bed, and was so tired I thought I might sleep for days.

  Anyway, I awoke that next mornin’ before dawn. Early it was—musta been near four or five in the morning. It was quite dark, and I had to pee, so I stumbled outside to do my business. When I was finished, I went back in and tried to find Rick, but that’s when I realized he was gone. His bed was empty, and it was like he’d slept pretty roughly that night—the blankets all thrown about and hanging on the floor. The sun hadn’t come up full yet, so I couldn’t see much, but it wasn’t long before sunrise and I could see the pink-orange glow off to the east, just coming through the trees here and there.

  But here I was, walking around the whole area, lookin’ for my boy… and he was sure enough gone. Gone as can be. And now I was stuck waiting and hoping he’d be able to come back once he figured out where the gold was buried. So I sat on the step and waited and waited, hoping he’d make his way back.

  As I said before, I never believed he would make it, so I went along with his plan even though I didn’t expect it would come to much. And the plan was this. He was going to go see if he could find the gold, and if he could, then where he found it would determine what he did next. If it was in a location where he thought it would remain unmolested until the future (our time), he’d just remember the place and come on back home to get me (our real home, up north of Santa Anna, not our temporary and borrowed cottage on Home Creek). He should be able to do this at any time, and from any location, by merely grasping hold of the modern times in his mind… reattaching those silken threads of the mobile now, until he could open his eyes and be back in the real time. We never even asked ourselves if this plan would work. We just assumed that it would. That just goes to show you that we weren’t thinking things through completely.

  If it turned out that the gold was someplace where it obviously was going to be found (like buried right up there in the caves on the Santa Anna Mountains where the silica company was digging as early as 1917), then he’d find a way to remove the gold and bury it somewhere else.

  Rick kept reminding me that he wasn’t interested in getting the gold for himself, but I have to admit that I was interested even if he wasn’t.

  I never went back inside the cabin. I would have, but I never made it back in there. I didn’t figure Rick would go back there anyway, since it was very probable that people lived in that place in 1910, but my intentions became immaterial pretty soon after the sun came up. I was gettin’ up from the step and thinkin’ about walking back up to Santa Anna just as the light of day started illuminating my surroundings, and that’s when a couple of men rushed at me and knocked me down. They were screamin’ at me this and that but I couldn’t make out what they were sayin’ on account of their accents were so thick and they were so plumb angry. They beat me godawful bad and then tied me up and dragged me over to a flat-bed. When they threw me into the back of it I hit my head and went unconscious.

  I figure this is when the government took over. It was on the day when Rick went back in time. They’d been watchin’ the place, no doubt, and when they saw me lookin’ for Rick I figure they knew the jig was up. So they grabbed me and locked me up in this place.

  The rest of the story you know. Though I suspect I can fill in some of the gray places if I have enough time.

  They’ll tell you that the building I’m in is the old, wooden hospital in Santa Anna, and that the concrete and steel Sealy Hospital is just in the planning stages. They’ll tell you that the nurses at first thought this old hospital was haunted because they’d seen a man walking pretty-as-you-please around the place after midnight some nights—but then they got worried and reported it to the constable after the man was seen in the nursery, looking down at a newborn baby boy someone dropped off there for adoption.

  They’ll say that I broke into the Walkers’ cabin down by Home Creek while the Walker sons were off one morning fishing, and that I’m a drifter and I talk about crazy things like airplanes and the Internet and fast-food joints and rocket ships going to the moon and computers that you can hold in your hand and talk with anyone else in the world. They’ll say to me that these things haven’t been invented, and that I’m a danger to society.

  They’ve gone to great lengths to shut me up. Using old-timey syringes to give me shots, and lighting oil lanterns when it’s dark or gray outside. Them all wearing period clothes and making me write with a pen that has to be filled with ink from a bottle. Mocking me while I stare out this back window full of bars at the west mesa of the Santa Anna Mountains. They even muted the walls with insulation or some such thing so I never do hear the airplanes fly over or the trucks rumbling up Highway 84 all day and night.

  Nah, they’ll just say I’m crazy. That’s why I have to take my pills, and why they try to convince me I never did have a boy named Richard Henry Smalton who went back in time and musta found the Santa Anna Gold.

  A Word from Michael Bunker

  Time travel has long been one of my favorite genres. I suppose I love the concept of time travel because, as a writer, the conceit of traveling through time is one of the greatest tools ever invented for portraying vivid portraits in the mind of the reader. It allows us to show the reader that ideas have consequences, to emphasize the necessity of thinking generationally, and to reinforce the very real fact that history (and the future) are not only different epochs, but different worlds altogether.

  Ever since I first stumbled upon a Jack Finney story, I’ve loved a well-told time-travel tale. The best stories are those that cause us to travel along with the protagonist, to see the story as if we are in it. When I read Jack Finney’s Time and Again for the first time, I picked up on the subtext of what Finney was doing in the story. He constantly reiterated that “not everyone can do it.” Time travel, that is. You have to be really willing to give yourself over to the process in order to travel. And this is true of Finney’s books, too. Not everyone will “get” them. But if you can give yourself over wholly to the journey, you really can travel in time with an author.

  That is what I want to accomplish when I write a story. I’m not there yet, and maybe I’ll never get there, but I know that the best in literature—no matter the genre—accomplishes this one thing for those readers who give themselves over to it. It takes them on a journey through time and space
and includes them in the story. It changes them, and through words alone grants them the ability to experience other worlds, other times, other lives.

  I am so pleased to be involved in this anthology, and to be included in it with so many writers whom I know and admire. My closest friends know that I keep stacks of books next to my easy chair. In that stack always are all the books in my Jack Finney collection. I read and re-read them because they are all so good. I know that this anthology will be joining my Finney stack, and I’m so pleased to have been involved in the making of it. And I thank you all for reading!

  Corrections

  by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Chapter One

  My patient twitches as he settles into his chair. They’re always anxious, but the final session is especially difficult. Completely understandable, given it may result in his death. Or possibly his extinction, which may or may not be worse. But an overly nervous patient is twice as likely to fail to enter the procedure, and neither of us wants that. So I lead with something that will jar him from his anticipatory fears and focus him on the task at hand.

  “So you’ve only committed the one murder, is that right, Owen?” I ask.

  His twitches coalesce into a single jolt, like my therapy chair is wired for electroconvulsive treatments. But my question focuses those darting eyes on my face, just as I’d intended.

  “I ain’t killed no one, Dr. Webb.”

  Not the response I expected. And a bigger problem than I’d hoped for.

  I give a calculated sigh. “Owen, you know the rules here. If you don’t admit the crime, if there’s no remorse, you’re not eligible for the Shift.”