by Michael Dodd
“Michael,” she said, smiling warmly, “Would you come with us. I’ll probably need help getting in the door. I’ll make us some lunch.”
Michael smiled and replied, “I doubt you’ll be able to make lunch while you’re in that cast.”
“Well then,” she said, “We’ll order a pizza.”
“Very well,” Michael said as he got in beside her, “Though, I’ve never eaten a pizza.”
Cindy just looked at him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
2130
Catherine Ann Akers —Juno, in another life—now thirty-years old and a research scientist for the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago, sat alone in the coffee shop, drinking a latte and wondering what the hell just happened to her life.
Her fiancé had recently decided to drop out of society to go find himself in Australia. After a three-year engagement, the man suddenly discovered that his life was unmeaningful and that a Walkabout might straighten out his confused soul. What a Schmuck!
She’d had her whole life planned out. Once she and Crocodile Dundee were married, they’d live alone together for about two years, really getting to know each other as man and wife. After that, she would get pregnant, take a sabbatical from work for a year or two and punch out a couple of kids. She would then return to work and continue her research into quantum theory applications. She and Mr. Walkabout would then live happily ever after. Now, she had to completely rewrite her future.
She took another sip of her latte and realized it had grown cold. “Yuck,” she said, setting it down and pushing it away from her. Then reaching for her half-eaten blueberry muffin, she realized she was no longer hungry either. She shoved the plate away, dropped her head slowly forward and began to weep softly.
“What did he do to you?” The voice came from right in front of her. Startled, Cathy looked up to see a man pulling out the chair in front of her and sitting down.
“Excuse me,” she said, surprised at the man’s audacity and insulted by his assumption that he could just sit down. “Who are you? What gave you the idea I wanted company?”
“Well,” the man said, “it’s more a matter of needing company rather than wanting it. I just noticed you crying and assumed it was because of a man. It always is.”
Cathy wiped her eyes with her napkin and responded with acrimony. “It’s none of your business. Who the hell are you, anyway? I don’t remember seeing you around here before.”
The man surveyed her diminu tive 5’ 6”, 105 pound frame. Her hair was long, brunette and surrounding a porcelain facial structure that was very pleasant to look at, even though her bright, green eyes looked at him with a less than inviting gaze. “My name’s Mick Jagger,” he said with a smile, “I didn’t mean to bother you. You just looked like you could use a shoulder to cry on. Forgive me.” He began to rise to his feet in humble retreat.
“No,” Cathy said, now smiling, “It’s okay. I just found out that my fiancé would rather go find himself then marry me. I’m just a little confused by it all. My name’s Cathy Akers.” She extended her hand and shook Mick’s.
Mick reseated himself. “Then I’d say, the man’s a fool,” he said. “If I was engaged to a woman as beautiful and intelligent as you, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”
Cathy sniffled a few times and smiled at the
compliment. “Oh well,” she said, “it’s probably for the best. We could have been married with three children when he decided to lose his mind.” She now began to notice the man seated before her. He was probably close to her age. He was probably about her size. Not a large man, by any means, and delicately featured. He was handsome, but looked like he’d spent very little time outdoors. His brown eyes were piercing, but kind. She could not tell if he was just being kind or trying to hit on her. She’d certainly experience more of the latter than the former. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. He certainly didn’t look dangerous. She guessed that she could probably take him in a fight. She reached for her purse and began to push her chair from the table. “Well, I guess I’d better get back to the salt mines. Thank you for your kindness.”
“May I ask you a question?” Mick said as he simultaneously rose from the table.
Here we go! She thought. “Sure, go ahead,” she said. “Do you study time travel in your research facility?”
Wow! This guy just jumped the shark! “Time travel?” she replied with a patronizing tone. “Not really. We’re more into dark matter, quarks, and the physics of celestial bodies…that kind of thing. It was nice meeting you, Mick Jagger. Tell Keith Richards I said hi.” she said as she began to walk away.
Mick had no idea who Keith Richards was, but as she passed him, he turned and asked, “Does the name, Juno mean anything to you?”
Cathy stopped, nonpulsed. “Juno? No, I don’t know that person,” she said, trying to extricate herself from the conversation.
“Cathy, I know this is going to sound crazy; but, in another timeline, your name was Juno. I knew you and your boyfriend, Xylon quite well.” As Cathy stared at him in disbelief, he added, “As a matter of fact, it was I who sent him back to the past in order to change history. You were in on it, as well.”
Now Cathy was becoming frightened. She looked around the coffee shop in order to find either escape routes or friendly faces that might come to her aid, if need be. “Look,” she said with a plastic smile, “I really don’t know anything about things like time travel. I’m afraid I have to get back to work now, though.”
“Cathy,” Mick called out as she raced by him and out the door, “An old friend of yours would really like to see you again!” He got no response from Cathy. He wasn’t surprised. He’d try again at another time.
‡
2080
Michael Xylon and Cindy Miller soon became lovers. Soon after that, they became husband and wife. Not long after, they became parents of a healthy, baby boy that Cindy decided to name, Gates, after Bill Gates, the computer software pioneer.
You see, Cindy was a rather accomplished woman. She was a proficient software programmer and was on a fast track to upper management with the Intel-Apple Corporation. Once she and Michael were married, he convinced her to join him in opening a computer business of their own.
Now, ten years later, MJ Technologies was a multimillion dollar enterprise and second only to Intel-Apple in industry reverence. With Michael’s seemingly borderline- divine ability to spot new trends, project future technologies and suggest new paths of growth, MJ Technologies soon became the fasted growing corporation on earth. Added to this, Cindy was a near-savant in her ability to put into reality those ideas that Michael so astonishingly thought up. The future looked to be indescribably bright.
Through it all though, the two had a close relationship and were doting parents to the now 10 year old, Gates. Michael had never broached the subject of his travel through time or his real name and past life. While he wanted to tell his wife the whole truth, he could never summon enough gumption to make the attempt. Cindy, of course, wondered often about his past and how he’d gotten so rich, but Michael placated her with a combination of the “cover story” the government had provided him with, and a multitude of “personal” stories about his childhood, all of which were products of his ever-increasingly-guilty imagination.
There was only one thing that Cindy found a bit odd about Michael, if not troubling. It concerned a small, golden amulet that he kept with him always. He claimed that it belonged to his father and meant a great deal to him. That would have been understandable to some extent, but Michael didn’t just keep it with him, he treasured it in a way that was almost frightening. No one; and I mean No One could so much as touch the odd-looking gold coin. They could not move it to the side in order to dust; they could not pick it up in order to gaze at it; they could not take images of it, or even acknowledge its existence. Cindy could never figure out why Michael was so drawn to, protective of, or fussy about what amounted to a family heirloom. Neve
rtheless, she respected his wishes and left the amulet alone, actually forgetting about its existence after a few years. Until one day.
Gates Xylon was a very inquisitive little boy. He was also a snooper, always searching about the house in order to find something interesting, which he did one Sunday morning in August of 2080.
Having long ago moved the company’s headquarters to Michael’s old stomping ground of Chicago and built a lush home in the upscale suburb of Kenilworth; Sunday mornings had become a valued time to spend with family. Michael made a breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes and oatmeal. The three usually spent the morning in the solarium, eating breakfast and catching up on the week’s events.
“Where’s Gates?” Cindy asked, nonchalantly, “His breakfast is getting cold.”
Michael looked up from his Chicago Tribune and replied, “I dunno.” Then, noticing his son’s absence for the first time, added, “I’ve never seen him late for Sunday breakfast. He’s usually sitting at the table for ten minutes complaining, asking why breakfast isn’t ready.”
Cindy got up and walked back toward Gates ’ room. “Gates?” she called out. “Gates? Where are you? Breakfast is getting cold!” She walked around searching long enough to begin to feel a bit of anxiety. Thinking she may have passed him, she scurried back to the solarium, finding only Michael and the family dog, Mickey, curled up beneath Michael’s chair. “Michael, I can’t find him anywhere!” she called out, now in a full panic.
Michael knew Cindy well enough to know when she was frightened. She was frightened. And if she was frightened, there was a good reason. He tossed the paper down on the table and jumped to his feet. “Where could he have gone?” he asked rhetorically, rushing by her and into the inner rooms of the spacious home.
For the next ten minutes, the two searched every nook and cranny of the house for Gates. It was not until Michael was standing beside his nightstand, preparing to call the police that something caught his eye.
“Cindy!” he called out to his wife in a loud, concerned voice, “Cindy! Get in here!”
Soon, she came rushing into their bedroom, highly concerned by the tone of Michael’s voice. “What is it?” she said, entering the room in a huff, “Did you find him?”
Michael pointed to the silver-plated dish on his nightstand and asked, “Where’s my amulet?” in a tone that caused Cindy to wonder about her husband’s priorities.
Cindy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Their son was missing and he was concerned about a stupid piece of family jewelry? “What do you mean?” she screamed, “Who cares about your stupid amulet? Did you call the police?”
Michael didn’t waver for a moment. “I asked you a question!” Michael said in no uncertain terms. “Where is my amulet? Did you move it? Did you put it somewhere?”
Now, Cindy began to feel like she was in an old episode of the Twilight Zone. Michael’s tone of voice was clear and unambiguous. He was more concerned about that damned amulet than with the whereabouts of his own son. What in God’s name was going on? “Have you lost your mind?” she screamed out, “Your son’s missing! We’ll find your damned heirloom later! Now, call the police!”
Michael had always assumed he would one day tell Cindy about the amulet and his travel through time; but, he did not expect it to be under these circumstances. If his fears were correct, and he prayed they were not, and his son had managed to get a hold of his amulet and pressed the wrong side for too long, he was now standing in this exact same spot in the year 2020.
Michael gathered himself and calmly asked Cindy to take a seat on the bed. He had to tell her the whole story. It would not be easy, and he was unsure she would even believe him, but if what he feared had actually occurred, she needed to know the truth. More frightening, however, was that Michael knew there was nothing he could do about it.
Over the next 30 minutes, interrupted often by a confused and increasingly infuriated wife, Michael told Cindy the entire story, from his days in the other timeline of Omni and his life with Juno, to his meeting with Mick Jagger, to his time travel to this timeline, to his present life with her. Cindy’s feeling that she’d stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone was now replaced with the feeling that someone had slipped her a large dose of LSD. The whole thing was simply preposterous.
“So, you came back in time and helped President Wooten fix all the problems in the world, huh?” she asked, facetiously, “You stopped World-War Three and made the world safe for democracy, huh? What do you take me for?” She rushed passed him and picked up his phone to call the police. “Well,” she said, punching in the number, “You just go back to La La Land and I’ll find our son.”
At about that moment, a voice called out from the solarium. “Mom? Dad?” The voice was not familiar to them, but who else could it be. Cindy dropped the phone and the two rushed out of the bedroom and into the solarium. When they got there, they were startled to find an elderly man sitting at the table, petting Mickey, who was skittering about, wagging his tail and slobbering all over the old man. When the man noticed them enter, he looked up from the dog’s fawning and smiled. “Hi Mom,” he said, “Hi Dad,”
Cindy fainted immediately.
CHAPTER EIGHT
2140
Xylon had been dead for ten years now. It was difficult to believe it had been so long since he’d passed on, having only months before bestowed Mick with all his worldly goods. That’s a laugh! Worldly goods! Controlling interest in a 50 billion dollar corporation called, MJ Technologies; Five mansions in various parts of the world; anything and everything in the world at his fingertips, and the responsibility that went along with it.
In the ensuing 15 years, Mick had seen the company grow to the point of hostile takeover of Intel-Apple, leaving it as the preeminent technology corporation in the world. His net worth could not even be calculated by material standards. It would have been easier to list those assets he did not possess. Now, 41 years old, biologically, Mick Jagger was virtually the most powerful man on earth; however, his sense of duty to Xylon left him a slave to that which he had not yet achieved, not yet willed into reality.
To that end, Mick hired a number of the world’s foremost experts in quantum physics, temporal mechanics, chaos theory, software technology, computational physics and theoretical physics. One such hire, was a thirty-five year old research scientist from Chicago, named Catherine Akers. That had been some five years prior. It was the same woman he had nearly accosted at the University of Chicago five years before that. Of course, she had no idea that he was the man who’d hired her. That had been done through intermediaries.
This group of over thirty world-class scientists and thinkers were brought into Mick Jagger’s world of limitless resources and equally limitless imagination. He paid them more money than most corporate CEO’s made, and saw to it that they were denied nothing. They had but one assignment—invent a way to travel through time.
The group, which was nicknamed, “Timecorp” by Mick Jagger, was housed (for work purposes) in their very own three-story building, separate in every way from any other concerns of MJ Technologies. They had but one purpose and it was unknown to any other employee in the company. Whatever computer systems they wished built, they got them. If they needed to use a particle accelerator, they were quickly given access to one. If a machine needed built, a concept explored or an alloy mined and fashioned into any form they wished, it was done. They were the greatest minds in the world and they had unlimited resources. There was but one caveat: the word “can’t” could not be part of their lexicon, and no one on the staff believed it would not be achieved. It was just a matter of…time!
Now, forty-years old, Catherine Ann Akers had never married. As she took another sip of the ten-year old Dom Pérignon, she allowed herself a few moments to ponder her lot in life. She looked around at her more-than-comfortable surroundings, pausing to appreciate how truly blessed she had been. After all, not many research scientists could say they had milli
ons in the bank, a healthy, attractive body and a job that both challenged them and beguiled them at the same time.
Cathy giggled at the thought, getting a little tipsy with her second glass of wine, that a woman as attractive as she was not married. Why she didn’t even have a boyfriend! She giggled again. Boyfriend…it sounded so high school. But, hey, she was a pretty good lookin’ babe! What’s the problem, huh? Why isn’t she even seeing anyone?
The whole thing was vexing. Well, perhaps not so much. After all, it didn’t take a theoretical physicist—of which she just happened to be one—to figure out that all work and no play made Cathy a dull girl…and perhaps and unattractive one. Oh, she knew she looked good enough, but truth be told, she didn’t spend a lot of time on superficialities. She hadn’t worn eye makeup since Crocodile Dundee went on his Walkabout. I wonder what happened to him. Whatever…more wine. Anyway, was she gonna die an old maid? Not that she obsessed over such things…but, every now and then. Oh well, I’ve got my work. Maybe one of these days I’ll go back in time. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
The next morning, feeling a little worse for wear, Cathy arrived at “The DeLorean”, the nickname some of them used for the building they worked in. Cathy thought it was kind of funny—harkening back to an old movie they’d all watched one afternoon as a diversion. In point of fact, the movie had caused a certain amount of movement toward the idea that speed of movement—like in the DeLorean— could be a factor in time travel. They’d piddled around with that idea for almost a month before it became obvious that the kind of speed they would need as a constant was more than the human physiology could withstand.
Gerald Cestaric, one of the temporal theorists, postulated that all physical objects resonated on a particular frequency. He considered that a simple—well perhaps not simple—change in the resonance frequency of a person or thing could transport them or it into another timeframe. His reasoning was that time—past, present and future—existed simultaneously and that the only way to traverse the gulf of time was to shift positions in the space-time continuum. It was an interesting concept. They would study it further.