The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF

by Mike Ashley

  My heart pounds. I’m a slender woman, although I’m told I’m formidable. Coaches need to be formidable. And while I still coach the basketball teams, I no longer teach gym classes because the folks in charge decided I’d be a better counselor than gym teacher. They made that decision on my first Red Letter Day at BOHS, more than twenty years ago.

  I’m the only adult in this school who truly understands how horrible Red Letter Day can be. I think it’s cruel that Red Letter Day happens at all, but I think the cruelty gets compounded by the fact that it’s held in school.

  Red Letter Day should be a holiday, so that kids are at home with their parents when the letters arrive.

  Or don’t arrive, as the case may be.

  And the problem is that we can’t even properly prepare for Red Letter Day. We can’t read the letters ahead of time: privacy laws prevent it.

  So do the strict time-travel rules. One contact – only one – through an emissary, who arrives shortly before rehearsal, stashes the envelopes in the practice binders, and then disappears again. The emissary carries actual letters from the future. The letters themselves are the old-fashioned paper kind, the kind people wrote 150 years ago, but write rarely now. Only the real letters, handwritten, on special paper get through. Real letters, so that the signatures can be verified, the paper guaranteed, the envelopes certified.

  Apparently, even in the future, no one wants to make a mistake.

  The binders have names written across them so the letter doesn’t go to the wrong person. And the letters are supposed to be deliberately vague.

  I don’t deal with the kids who get letters. Others are here for that, some professional bullshitters – at least in my opinion. For a small fee, they’ll examine the writing, the signature, and try to clear up the letter’s deliberate vagueness, make a guess at the socio-economic status of the writer, the writer’s health, or mood.

  I think that part of Red Letter Day makes it all a scam. But the schools go along with it, because the counselors (read: me) are busy with the kids who get no letter at all.

  And we can’t predict whose letter won’t arrive. We don’t know until the kid stops mid-stride, opens the binder, and looks up with complete and utter shock.

  Either there’s a red envelope inside or there’s nothing.

  And we don’t even have time to check which binder is which.

  I had my Red Letter Day thirty-two years ago, in the chapel of Sister Mary of Mercy High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Sister Mary of Mercy was a small co-ed Catholic High School, closed now, but very influential in its day. The best private school in Ohio, according to some polls – controversial only because of its conservative politics and its willingness to indoctrinate its students.

  I never noticed the indoctrination. I played basketball so well that I already had three full-ride scholarship offers from UCLA, UNLV, and Ohio State (home of the Buckeyes!). A pro scout promised I’d be a fifth round draft choice if only I went pro straight out of high school, but I wanted an education.

  “You can get an education later,” he told me. “Any good school will let you in after you’ve made your money and had your fame.”

  But I was brainy. I had studied athletes who went to the Bigs straight out of high school. Often they got injured, lost their contracts and their money, and never played again. Usually they had to take some crap job to pay for their college education – if, indeed, they went to college at all, which most of them never did.

  Those who survived lost most of their earnings to managers, agents, and other hangers on. I knew what I didn’t know. I knew I was an ignorant kid with some great ball-handling ability. I knew that I was trusting and naïve and undereducated. And I knew that life extended well beyond thirty-five, when even the most gifted female athletes lost some of their edge.

  I thought a lot about my future. I wondered about life past thirty-five. My future self, I knew, would write me a letter fifteen years after thirty-five. My future self, I believed, would tell me which path to follow, what decision to make.

  I thought it all boiled down to college or the pros.

  I had no idea there would be – there could be – anything else.

  You see, anyone who wants to – anyone who feels so inclined – can write one single letter to their former self. The letter gets delivered just before high school graduation, when most teenagers are (theoretically) adults, but still under the protection of a school.

  The recommendations on writing are that the letter should be inspiring. Or it should warn that former self away from a single person, a single event, or a one single choice.

  Just one.

  The statistics say that most folks don’t warn. They like their lives as lived. The folks motivated to write the letters wouldn’t change much, if anything.

  It’s only those who’ve made a tragic mistake – one drunken night that led to a catastrophic accident, one bad decision that cost a best friend a life, one horrible sexual encounter that led to a lifetime of heartache – who write the explicit letter.

  And the explicit letter leads to alternate universes. Lives veer off in all kinds of different paths. The adult who sends the letter hopes their former self will take their advice. If the former self does take the advice, then the kid receives the letter from an adult they will never be. The kid, if smart, will become a different adult, the adult who somehow avoided that drunken night. That new adult will write a different letter to their former self, warning about another possibility or committing bland, vague prose about a glorious future.

  There’re all kinds of scientific studies about this, all manner of debate about the consequences. All types of mandates, all sorts of rules.

  And all of them lead back to that moment, that heartstopping moment that I experienced in the chapel of Sister Mary of Mercy High School, all those years ago.

  We weren’t practicing graduation like the kids at Barack Obama High School. I don’t recall when we practiced graduation, although I’m sure we had a practice later in the week.

  At Sister Mary of Mercy High School, we spent our Red Letter Day in prayer. All the students started their school days with Mass. But on Red Letter Day, the graduating seniors had to stay for a special service, marked by requests for God’s forgiveness and exhortations about the unnaturalness of what the law required Sister Mary of Mercy to do.

  Sister Mary of Mercy High School loathed Red Letter Day. In fact, Sister Mary of Mercy High School, as an offshoot of the Catholic Church, opposed time travel altogether. Back in the dark ages (in other words, decades before I was born), the Catholic Church declared time travel an abomination, antithetical to God’s will.

  You know the arguments: If God had wanted us to travel through time, the devout claim, he would have given us the ability to do so. If God had wanted us to travel through time, the scientists say, he would have given us the ability to understand time travel – and oh! Look! He’s done that.

  Even now, the arguments devolve from there.

  But time travel has become a fact of life for the rich and the powerful and the well-connected. The creation of alternate universes scares them less than the rest of us, I guess. Or maybe the rich really don’t care – they being different from you and I, as renown (but little read) twentieth-century American author F. Scott Fitzgerald so famously said.

  The rest of us – the nondifferent ones – realized nearly a century ago that time travel for all was a dicey proposition but, this being America, we couldn’t deny people the opportunity of time travel.

  Eventually time travel for everyone became a rallying cry. The liberals wanted government to fund it, and the conservatives felt only those who could afford it would be allowed to have it.

  Then something bad happened – something not quite expunged from the history books, but something not taught in schools either (or at least the schools I went to), and the federal government came up with a compromise.

  Everyone would get one free opportunity for time travel – n
ot that they could actually go back and see the crucifixion or the Battle of Gettysburg – but that they could travel back in their own lives.

  The possibility for massive change was so great, however, that the time travel had to be strictly controlled. All the regulations in the world wouldn’t stop someone who stood in Freedom Hall in July of 1776 from telling the Founding Fathers what they had wrought.

  So the compromise got narrower and narrower (with the subtext being that the masses couldn’t be trusted with something as powerful as the ability to travel through time), and it finally became Red Letter Day, with all its rules and regulations. You’d have the ability to touch your own life without ever really leaving it. You’d reach back into your own past and reassure yourself, or put something right.

  Which still seemed unnatural to the Catholics, the Southern Baptists, the Libertarians, and the Stuck in Time League (always my favorite, because they never did seem to understand the irony of their own name). For years after the law passed, places like Sister Mary of Mercy High School tried not to comply with it. They protested. They sued. They got sued.

  Eventually, when the dust settled, they still had to comply.

  But they didn’t have to like it.

  So they tortured all of us, the poor hopeful graduating seniors, awaiting our future, awaiting our letters, awaiting our fate.

  I remember the prayers. I remember kneeling for what seemed like hours. I remember the humidity of that late spring day, and the growing heat, because the chapel (a historical building) wasn’t allowed to have anything as unnatural as air conditioning.

  Martha Sue Groening passed out, followed by Warren Iverson, the star quarterback. I spent much of that morning with my forehead braced against the pew in front of me, my stomach in knots.

  My whole life, I had waited for this moment.

  And then, finally, it came. We went alphabetically, which stuck me in the middle, like usual. I hated being in the middle. I was tall, geeky, uncoordinated, except on the basketball court, and not very developed – important in high school. And I wasn’t formidable yet.

  That came later.

  Nope. Just a tall awkward girl, walking behind boys shorter than I was. Trying to be inconspicuous.

  I got to the aisle, watching as my friends stepped in front of the altar, below the stairs where we knelt when we went up for the sacrament of communion.

  Father Broussard handed out the binders. He was tall but not as tall as me. He was tending to fat, with most of it around his middle. He held the binders by the corner, as if the binders themselves were cursed, and he said a blessing over each and every one of us as we reached out for our futures.

  We weren’t supposed to say anything, but a few of the boys muttered, “Sweet!”, and some of the girls clutched their binders to their chests as if they’d received a love letter.

  I got mine – cool and plastic against my fingers – and held it tightly. I didn’t open it, not near the stairs, because I knew the kids who hadn’t gotten theirs yet would watch me.

  So I walked all the way to the doors, stepped into the hallway, and leaned against the wall.

  Then I opened my binder.

  And saw nothing.

  My breath caught.

  I peered back into the chapel. The rest of the kids were still in line, getting their binders. No red envelopes had landed on the carpet. No binders were tossed aside.

  Nothing. I stopped three of the kids, asking them if they saw me drop anything or if they’d gotten mine.

  Then Sister Mary Catherine caught my arm, and dragged me away from the steps. Her fingers pinched into the nerve above my elbow, sending a shooting pain down to my hand.

  “You’re not to interrupt the others,” she said.

  “But I must have dropped my letter.”

  She peered at me, then let go of my arm. A look of satisfaction crossed her fat face, then she patted my cheek.

  The pat was surprisingly tender.

  “Then you are blessed,” she said.

  I didn’t feel blessed. I was about to tell her that, when she motioned Father Broussard over.

  “She received no letter,” Sister Mary Catherine said.

  “God has smiled on you, my child,” he said warmly. He hadn’t noticed me before, but this time, he put his hand on my shoulder. “You must come with me to discuss your future.”

  I let him lead me to his office. The other nuns – the ones without a class that hour – gathered with him. They talked to me about how God wanted me to make my own choices, how He had blessed me by giving me back my future, how He saw me as without sin.

  I was shaking. I had looked forward to this day all my life – at least the life I could remember – and then this. Nothing. No future. No answers.

  Nothing.

  I wanted to cry, but not in front of Father Broussard. He had already segued into a discussion of the meaning of the blessing. I could serve the church. Anyone who failed to get a letter got free admission into a variety of colleges and universities, all Catholic, some well known. If I wanted to become a nun, he was certain the church could accommodate me.

  “I want to play basketball, Father,” I said.

  He nodded. “You can do that at any of these schools.”

  “Professional basketball,” I said.

  And he looked at me as if I were the spawn of Satan.

  “But, my child,” he said with a less reasonable tone than before, “you have received a sign from God. He thinks you Blessed. He wants you in his service.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, my voice thick with unshed tears. “I think you made a mistake.”

  Then I flounced out of his office, and off school grounds.

  My mother made me go back for the last four days of class. She made me graduate. She said I would regret it if I didn’t.

  I remember that much.

  But the rest of the summer was a blur. I mourned my known future, worried I would make the wrong choices, and actually considered the Catholic colleges. My mother rousted me enough to get me to choose before the draft. And I did.

  The University of Nevada in Las Vegas, as far from the Catholic Church as I could get.

  I took my full ride, and destroyed my knee in my very first game. God’s punishment, Father Broussard said when I came home for Thanksgiving.

  And God forgive me, I actually believed him.

  But I didn’t transfer – and I didn’t become Job, either. I didn’t fight with God or curse God. I abandoned Him because, as I saw it, He had abandoned me.

  Thirty-two years later, I watch the faces. Some flush. Some look terrified. Some burst into tears.

  But some just look blank, as if they’ve received a great shock.

  Those students are mine.

  I make them stand beside me, even before I ask them what they got in their binder. I haven’t made a mistake yet, not even last year, when I didn’t pull anyone aside.

  Last year, everyone got a letter. That happens every five years or so. All the students get Red Letters, and I don’t have to deal with anything.

  This year, I have three. Not the most ever. The most ever was thirty, and within five years it became clear why. A stupid little war in a stupid little country no one had ever heard of. Twenty-nine of my students died within the decade. Twenty-nine.

  The thirtieth was like me, someone who has not a clue why her future self failed to write her a letter.

  I think about that, as I always do on Red Letter Day.

  I’m the kind of person who would write a letter. I have always been that person. I believe in communication, even vague communication. I know how important it is to open that binder and see that bright red envelope.

  I would never abandon my past self.

  I’ve already composed drafts of my letter. In two weeks – on my fiftieth birthday – some government employee will show up at my house to set up an appointment to watch me write the letter.

  I won’t be able to touch the paper, the red
envelope or the special pen until I agree to be watched. When I finish, the employee will fold the letter, tuck it in the envelope and earmark it for Sister Mary of Mercy High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, thirty-two years ago.

  I have plans. I know what I’ll say.

  But I still wonder why I didn’t say it to my previous self. What went wrong? What prevented me? Am I in an alternate universe already and I just don’t know it?

  Of course, I’ll never be able to find out.

  But I set that thought aside. The fact that I did not receive a letter means nothing. It doesn’t mean that I’m blessed by God any more than it means I’ll fail to live to fifty.

  It is a trick, a legal sleight of hand, so that people like me can’t travel to the historical bright spots or even visit the highlights of their own past life.

  I continue to watch faces, all the way to the bitter end. But I get no more than three. Two boys and a girl.

  Carla Nelson. A tall, thin, white-haired blonde who ran crosscountry and stayed away from basketball, no matter how much I begged her to join the team. We needed height and we needed athletic ability.

  She has both, but, she told me, she isn’t a team player. She wanted to run and run alone. She hated relying on anyone else.

  Not that I blame her.

  But from the devastation on her angular face, I can see that she relied on her future self. She believed she wouldn’t let herself down.

  Not ever.

  Over the years, I’ve watched other counselors use platitudes. I’m sure it’s nothing. Perhaps your future self felt that you’re on the right track. I’m sure you’ll be fine.

  I was bitter the first time I watched the high school kids go through this ritual. I never said a word, which was probably a smart decision on my part, because I silently twisted my colleagues’ platitudes into something negative, something awful, inside my own head.

  It’s something. We all know it’s something. Your future self hates you or maybe – probably – you’re dead.