by Various
The older one led with, “How we doin’ Ace?”
“I am doing quite well, thank you. But I do seem to be missing some clothes.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” the younger one said.
The older one raised a hand at the younger one. “Allens, cool it. Where are your clothes?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long you been out here?”
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you know?” the younger one asked.
“Not to approach a woman for help in the park when you happen to be inexplicably naked.”
The older one smiled. “What’s your name, Ace?”
“I’m guessing I’m not famous and it’s Ace is it?”
“Not likely. Do you have anyone we can call?”
“Not that I know of. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s all right. Allens, go call it in. Send an ambulance out and have dispatch check to see if any elderly men were reported missing.”
Allens walked a little bit away and talked into a rather large walkie-talkie, “I got a freakin’ naked, elderly space cadet here.”
The older one rolled his eyes. “Allens! We talked about this.”
Allens flushed and walked off before Charlie could hear the garbled response.
“Sorry about him. Young officers. They all seem to think they have to swear constantly to be a cop. I’m Sergeant Beckett.”
“Nice to meet you, Sergeant. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t shake your hand.”
Sergeant Beckett laughed. “It’s quite all right.”
“Could you please do me a favor Sergeant and tell me what year is it?” Charlie had a suspicion he knew what had happened.
“1988.”
Time travel. He wasn’t in another universe, he was in the same one twenty-five years earlier. The members of Project Itho had to be warned. The transform was all wrong. He needed to go back, warn them. If they weren’t careful they could do something stupid—something catastrophic.
• • •
Four months after Charlie first appeared in Chicago’s Jackson Park, Dr. Donald Heyward popped his head into the Dean of Physics office at MIT, in Boston. “George, he’s back.”
“Thanks, Donald.” Dr. George Merton stood and slid out from behind his desk layered in papers, holding his stomach in with his hands to avoid knocking anything over. He grabbed some yellow pages with notes scrawled on them off his desk and hurried out of his office after Donald. “You studied over the copy of notes he left?”
“Yes.”
“And it really reconciles the S-duality?” George asked.
“It appears so.” Donald giggled with nervous excitement.
They rushed down the hallway, papers tacked onto bulletin boards flapping after they passed. “Did you look into his background?”
“It’s true,” George replied. “Retrograde amnesia, can’t remember a thing about himself. Goes by Ace Smith now. Just found him in a park in Chicago six weeks ago, wandering around naked. Which, considering this—” he tapped the notes he had grabbed off his desk “—probably shouldn’t be too surprising, the brilliant ones are always nutters.”
They came to the end of the hallway and passed through double doors down into a large lecture hall. George had always loved the smell of chalk as a kid and this was one of his favorite rooms in the building because of it. The front of the room had three large chalkboards in a row, and each was on a pulley with another one above them for a total of six.
The bottom three were covered in quantum mechanics equations from the previous class. Ace Smith, a sixty-ish-year-old man, stood at the farthest one on the right with an eraser in his right hand and a piece of chalk in his left, going through and correcting equations. Instead of interrupting him, George and Donald took seats in the first row and watched.
For twenty minutes they both sat on the edge of their seat. The hard wooden edge digging into the back of their thighs. George nearly sighed with contentment, remembering back to when everything was new and exciting in college. When learning was his full-time job.
Eventually, the man became aware of his audience and when he finished the end of the middle board, he stopped and approached them.
George and Donald stood to meet him.
“Incredible,” George said. “Just incredible.”
“Absolutely extraordinary,” Donald added.
“Thank you, gentlemen.”
“What do you call this?” George held up the now well-worn yellow notes.
“M-theory. And it is only the beginning of what I can do, given access to the proper resources.”
George was struck speechless. Only the beginning? He shared an incredulous look with Donald.
Ace waited half a beat before saying, “Gentlemen, let me be blunt. I am looking for employment.”
George collected himself. Negotiations, personnel, this was a strength of his. “Name your price.”
“A competitive wage, nothing outlandish, and… some help with a certain delicate situation.”
“The first we can certainly do. For the second I would need more information. Donald, would you excuse us?”
When Donald had left, Ace said, “There is a girl, a toddler, that recently entered into foster care here in Boston. Her mother was a very good friend of mine. She would have wanted me to look after her, but sadly, there is no paper work…”
“That is a very… unusual request.” He’s not a pedophile is he? George blushed furiously at the thought.
Ace seemed to read his mind. “I can of course provide sufficient detail that I know this toddler and her mother to assuage any fears. And I would of course cooperate with the authorities in every way possible to make this happen.”
George debated. He desperately wanted to hire Ace. The math he was doing was incredible, decades ahead of what everyone else was doing. “Ace, we’d love to have you. But I don’t know what it is we can exactly do for you in that area.”
“I see.” Ace rubbed his chin and looked truly regretful. “Perhaps I’ll have better luck at Harvard.” He reached out to take the notes back.
George shifted to holding the notes behind his back. “Let me see what I can do.”
• • •
One year later in September 1989, Ace stood in the library at his home in the Roxbury part of Boston. A portable chalkboard was pushed up against the walnut paneling and covered in white and green chalked equations. But Ace still couldn’t see the connection.
He slumped down into the padded leather chair with a great sigh.
“Uncle,” three-year-old Stephanie asked, “Was’ wrong?” She sat at an imaginary table ringed by a plethora of stuffed animals Ace had collected for her over the last year.
Ace smiled fondly at her. Even with his frustration, she brought him joy. How had I missed this before? “Biochemistry factors in somehow, I just can’t see it. It’s the last piece.”
“Bio-what?”
“Never mind, little one. Is there room for one more at the tea party?”
“Of course!” Stephanie picked up a flattened lion that had its mane braided and threw it backwards to make room.
Ace eased himself down, and held out his cup for tea. “Why, thank you, Ms. Pearson,” he said in his best British accent. “Jolly good of you.”
Stephanie giggled. “You’re welcome, good sir—” It was too much, she dissolved into more giggles and Ace joined in. It was infectious.
For the next hour or so he shut off his analytic brain and enjoyed the lively imaginary tea party in the center of his library that only a three-year-old could manage to throw. There was a dicey period in there where Miss Piggy was being a real Prig, but when she learned Ace wasn’t after Kermit everything became civil again.
He had solved what had initially gone wrong with the device sitting naked on that bench in Chicago. The Sue-Transform they had used to reduce the number of dimensions had been applied wrong. Instead of applying i
t on last four dimensions and reducing the top four most dimensions, it had been applied on the fifth through ninth, collapsing down onto the fourth: the time dimension. Instead of traveling to another Universe, they had accidentally discovered time travel in their own. What he couldn’t figure out is why only living organic matter made it through.
Stephanie yawned and started rubbing her eyes.
“All right, little one. Time for your nap.”
She wanted to object, but a yawn interrupted her.
“Off now.”
She nodded her little head and dragged Kermit behind her as she left. “Will you sing to me again?”
“Of course little one, hurry on up and I’ll meet you there.”
Several minutes later Ace ran into Stephanie in the hall returning from the bathroom. She slipped her hand in his and together they walked to the bedroom. Once she was tucked in, he began singing her a lullaby:
Sleep tight, little one;
May your dre-e-ams be heaven.
Good night, bright sun;
Guardian angels stand eleven.
There are five, of nine;
Who wa-a-tch over you.
But not seven, of eleven;
That lo—o-ve you more than I do.
So sleep tight, little one;
This lullaby is now done.
Sleep tight, little one;
I do-o-o, love you.
• • •
“I don’t know what you’re talking about Dr. Smith,” Dr. Benzer said.
Four years later, in October 1993, Ace sat comfortably in Dr. Benzer’s office in the MIT computer science wing of the electrical engineering building. He studied the plump man, who was obviously lying, sitting across from him. “Dr. Benzer, I know you’re working on a 64-bit microprocessor. Based on your posture and the rosiness of your cheeks, I’d say you already have several prototypes.”
“That’s enough.” Dr. Benzer stood. “Please leave, or I’ll be forced to call security.”
This wasn’t going at all how Ace had hoped. He needed those chips. The primitive computer hardware of 1993 was finally starting to catch up to the necessities of building a new device.
Time was non-linear causal. It was that non-linear part that worried Ace the most. He wasn’t sure of the ramifications of striding up to his old co-workers before they were ready and spilling the beans. As it was, he was only revealing some mathematical truths a few years before they would have been discovered on their own. Even these he fed to others to publish, trying to remain out of the spotlight as much as possible. And he was sandbagging the most… controversial part.
To avoid any unwanted ramifications he had settled on time traveling back to the lab in Chicago in 2013, ten seconds after he had first disappeared. By returning to that point in time and space, the members of Project Itho wouldn’t be incredulous or caught unprepared. But he needed the damn hardware to make it work. Intel had just released the 32-bit Pentium Processor, but it wasn’t enough to do two jumps; one would burn it out.
Time was causal. For every cause there was an effect, building in a never-ending chain. Did this mean there was more than one chain now that he had traveled back? Was he in the same timeline? He didn’t know and this too worried him to a lesser degree. If it wasn’t for Stephanie, he wouldn’t have cared at all.
But now that he knew her, spent every day with her, watching her grow, introducing her to the world, putting her to bed, he couldn’t abide the thought of another reality where she wound up dead and used as a drug addict. No, he had to get both of them back. Two jumps.
Ace licked his lips and stood. It was no use. The plump little man was drowning in his own self-importance. He wouldn’t share or listen to reason. The man’s mean beady black eyes watched Ace with both contempt and concern.
Ace left. Worried that he had overplayed his hand.
• • •
Three nights later, Ace sang Stephanie’s favorite lullaby to her as he put her to bed. Even now that she was seven she still loved to hear it. He sang:
Sleep tight, little one;
May your dre-e-ams be heaven.
Good night, bright sun;
Guardian angels stand eleven.
There are five, of nine;
Who wa-a-tch over you.
But not seven, of eleven;
That lo—o-ve you—
Someone knocked on the front door.
Ace looked over his shoulder toward the stairs. “Good night, little one.”
“No, you have to finish,” she tried to add an exclamation point but was too tired to do so.
“I’ll tell you what,” Ace said quietly, “once I go see what that is, I’ll come back and sing it again. In the meantime, I’ll turn off the light so it’s not so bright in here.”
“Okay.” She yawned and rolled over.
Ace turned off the light as he left and headed downstairs. He could see a group of people milling about outside his door through the fogged glass lining the doorframe.
He opened it to an irate Dr. Benzer, surrounded by Dr. Merton, Dr. Stell—the head of the computer science department, and two campus police.
“You stole them!” Dr. Benzer nearly screamed.
“What?”
“You knew about them, and now they’re gone!”
Ace looked at the surrounding posse and thought he knew what happened. It must have been an inside job, and he presented the perfect patsy. They’d never believe otherwise, and by the time his name was cleared the thief would be long gone.
Dr. Merton had his arms crossed out in front of him, distancing himself from the spectacle Dr. Benzer was creating. “Bad business, Ace. Looks very bad.”
“Enough of this. I want them back.” Dr. Benzer tried to bull his way into the house, but Ace didn’t move.
Dr. Stell rested his hand on Dr. Benzer’s shoulder and drew him back half a step.
Dr. Merton said, “Ace, we came here to settle this like gentlemen. May we search your home for the chips?”
“No. You have no jurisdiction here. I have not stolen anything and I will not have you disturbing Stephanie. I suggest, Dr. Stell, that you look to those in your own department with access first.”
“Ridiculous!”
“Keep your voice down, sir, my child is trying to sleep.”
“No! Thief! You are a thief and she should know! Thief! A filthy—”
Ace decked him. At sixty-nine years old, while the others looked on in frozen shock, Ace learned he still had the ability to surprise himself.
The campus police rushed forward.
Ace looked directly at Dr. Merton. “I haven’t stolen anything.” He slammed the door and locked it.
They pounded on the door demanding to be let in, and that the authorities were being called.
Ace ran around the house securing the perimeter, muttering to himself. “Had no choice, he was delirious. Yes, yes, my hand’s been forced. No other way, they’ll find it, cart it all away.”
The pounding ceased, but the dark figures milling about remained. They were going to wait until the cops showed up.
Ace hurried upstairs to Stephanie’s room. He turned on the table lamp. “Little one, wake up. Something rare and—” he almost choked on the lie “—magical is happening and you don’t want to miss it.”
Stephanie had already fallen fast asleep, and rubbed at her eyes from the light.
God bless her, I can’t believe she slept through that. “Come, little one, hurry. Follow me.”
Stephanie followed him down to the first floor and into the kitchen pantry. “Where are we going?” she asked.
Ace grinned and winked at her. “Close the pantry door.” She complied. “Now watch this.” Ace reached under a shelf and fingered a switch. The back of the pantry swung inward on a hinge revealing a staircase.
“Neat! But I didn’t think we had a basement.”
Ace had had some work done when he bought the house so he could have an area to work without the prying ey
es of the university or the accidental eyes of a child. “Well, come on, down we go.”
They descended down. The damp smell of the old wooden staircase was fresh as they entered the space lined with crumbling gray cinder blocks.
“Cool! What’s that?”
In the center of the room was a mass of cords running every which way, and computer racks with a multitude of blinking lights. It was all organized around an empty space in the center. Antennas of varying size and height surrounded an empty space in the middle. They always reminded Ace of the old ray guns from the pulp fiction era.
“Now stay with me and don’t touch anything. I need to set some things up. Then the magic show will start.”
Stephanie nodded her head, her bangs jumping up and down.
Ace set up the Sue-transform, this time purposefully. He hummed the lullaby as he worked. It didn’t take long.
“Okay,” he said to Stephanie. He stopped and faced her. He worked his jaw, but no words seemed to come out.
“What’s wrong, Uncle?”
He knew this was the only way. Someone had to go back before the authorities confiscated this and tore it apart for stolen chips that weren’t there. His colleagues needed to be warned before they did something disastrous. The authorities were coming.
“Nothing, dear. You know I love you, right?”
Her response was a simple hug. He didn’t want to let go.
“I’ll always love you, little one. Even if I’m not around. Promise me something. Don’t ever do drugs, ever. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said in a simple tone that betrayed no understanding of the question.
Ace led her to the center of the room, in the cleared out area where the antennas were pointing. “Now—” He fought the tears. “—stay here.”
Sirens broke over the hum of the computers. He rushed back to the control board. Through blurred vision, he hit enter.
• • •
Anthony stood with the Project Itho team off to the side. Clara, his sectary, sat with the little girl in oversized sweats calming her down. She had arrived, naked and terrified in a room full of old men.