“How does Uncle Frankie make money?” I asked my dad sometime during my early teenage years.
“He repairs things for people, TVs, radios, electric jobs, odd jobs, here and there. Mostly he just freeloads off the family.” My dad replied. Freeloading Frankie was my dad's name for his brother-in-law. Though my mother loved her older brother with all her heart, she often referred to him the same way, though her tone was a bit more whimsical and less sarcastic than my father's.
My uncle came in and out of our lives, going away to parts unknown and then returning to spend a few weeks or months in the spare bedrooms of a relative's home while doing handyman work around the neighborhood. When I was little he used to accept money from the relatives, but as I got older, I saw him turn down handouts many times. Freeloading Frankie appeared to have left his freeloading days behind.
I loved my uncle, and, perhaps because I liked to tinker with things and because I was male, I was his favorite one of the next generation. He would often bring me gifts while leaving the other children empty-handed. He presented me with models to build, kits to construct radios, walkie-talkies, and other simple devices, and various disassembled electronics. He seemed proud, like I was his son hitting a home run in Little League, when I completed a kit or reassembled a broken electronic device before he skipped town.
The years moved on, I went away to college, settled in a suburban home on Long Island, twenty miles from my parents, and started life as a young husband and then father of one rather rambunctious baby boy.
Until the day I received a phone call.
“Is this Roland Jones?”
“Um, yes. Who is this?”
“My name's Jessup. Doctor William Jessup. I'm a physician working in a hospice up near Albany. I have a relative of yours here. He's only been here for a week or so, but he doesn't have long.”
“Excuse me doctor, I have no idea what or who you’re talking about.”
“Frank Easterly. He asked for you, gave me your number, are you his son?”
“Uncle Frankie? W-what's wrong with him?”
“So, you are his nephew, I assume?
“Yes. I'm his nephew. What’s wrong?”
“He is not long for this world, I'm afraid. Cancer. Spread throughout his body. A week, maybe. He wants to see you. Says it's urgent. And, I would say that it’s definitely urgent if you want to see him.”
Uncle Frankie had moved in and out of our lives for years. For the past twenty years his visits were still infrequent, but far more lavish than they used to be. In the old days, other than a first-class plane ticket to some exotic destination, he exhibited no evidence of financial fortune. As he got older, he played the part of a rich guy. He brought expensive gifts for everyone, drove fancy sports cars, and stayed in hotels rather than spare bedrooms. My mom always felt uncomfortable accepting his gifts, but my dad gladly received them – he felt the scales of repayment were still out of balance.
Uncle Frankie regaled us with tales of the riches he procured while gambling on the ponies, but none of us had ever seen him win a dime at the racetrack. I had gone with him three times and he lost a few hundred each time. My father had witnessed him losing over ten grand once, and other family members all reported the harrowing details of a bad-luck gambler. But, Uncle Frankie insisted he made far more than he won, and he seemed to have the luxuries and the cash to back up that claim. No one cared to challenge him; mostly we were all happy he had finally earned a decent amount of money and was no longer freeloading off the family. My dad enjoyed the riding mower and the fancy fishing pole Uncle Frankie gave him – who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially one who had freeloaded for years?
I hadn’t heard from my uncle in nearly five years until Dr. Jessop’s phone call. I rushed up the New York State Thruway, hoping to make it before he passed.
I arrived at the colonial structure used as a hospice on the outskirts of the state capital, Albany, and asked for Frank Easterly at the front desk. The receptionist, not much above the age of consent, with willowy blonde hair, and strawberry-highlighted cheeks, smiled when she heard his name.
“We love Frankie here. Though he’s been very sick, he is a ray of sunshine.”
“That's not what my family called him, but I suppose he does have his charm.”
“I imagine he was quite a playboy in his day. He still charms the nurses here.”
“Playboy might have been one word for his behavior, but my family had other less flattering words for him. I, however, loved Uncle Frankie. He was an inventor and I loved to tinker with things. Don’t do enough of it any more now that I have a family to support and a one-hour commute each way.”
She rose from here chair, her tight skirt and sheer blouse distracting me for a moment. “This way, please.”
She led me to a doctor's office. The doctor, young, Indian, and stern looking, gazed up at me from a pile of charts on his desk. The receptionist said, “This gentleman is here to see Frank Easterly.”
“Ah, yes, you must be the nephew. Your uncle is very sick. He does not have long to live and he desperately wanted to see you. Here, follow me.”
My uncle was supine in a hospital bed surrounded by machines and tubes. No pictures, flowers, balloons, or relatives were by his side. Just another lonely speck of life being vacuumed away by the ravages of time.
As soon as the good doctor left, my uncle smiled at me. “Hey Rollie, you made it. I didn't know if you would come.” He coughed, a phlegm-filled cough from deep within his lungs, an early tolling of the bell, perhaps.
“Of course, Uncle Frankie, I was so sorry to hear about-”
“No, Rollie, nothing to be sorry about. I lived a reasonably long life, and I have had experiences that compare to nothing and no one.”
“I didn’t tell anyone else. I can call them. I’m sure my parents would rush on up here.”
“Nah, don’t bother no one on my account. I bothered everyone for a long time. They were all nice enough to me. They’ll all be rewarded. Hey, tell me, you still like tinkering with things, like ya used to?”
“Well, Uncle Frankie, not so much anymore. You know, I got a good job, got a son now, and I put together his toys, that's about it.”
“Well, I got something for you. Something that might be fun for you. Something you cannot tell anyone about. You may not tinker much now, but you have the skill, I seen you do it.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“No, I saw it. You can fix and build things with your hands. You also got the curiosity. You’re just burying it right now.” He coughed again, taking a few moments to catch his breath. “Life’s getting in the way. But, I got something to poke at your curiosity.”
I looked in his reddened eyes. “What is it?”
“Well, when I die, my lawyer will read my will. All my family’s it. I left a little somethin' to everyone. You'll all get envelopes from the lawyer, but yours, and only yours, will have something special in it.”
“But, I-”
“You'll like it, trust me. It's what allowed me to finally make some money and stop moochin' off my family. But, it's a secret. It’s really a secret. Letting anyone know about it will subject you to all sorts of scrutiny and all sorts of unwanted fame. You must guard it with your life, and not tell anyone. Even your wife.”
“I tell my wife everything.”
“You won’t tell her this. Promise me. Keep it to yourself. Use it if you want. Or, don’t.”
I spent the night chatting with my uncle, stayed at a local motel out by the Interstate, and stopped in to say goodbye in the morning.
“Your uncle passed last night. In his sleep. He died happy and content.” The doctor informed me.
“D-do I need to do anything with his body, or-”
“No, that has been all taken care of. He made very good plans. He was happy to see you before he passed. You must have meant a lot to him. He will be transported back to Long Island and buried in a plot he purchased several
years ago. He didn’t want a ceremony or a funeral. The address of his plot will be revealed at the reading of his will.
Two weeks later in a conference room at the law offices of Barnham, Phelps, and Stout, LLC, the will was read and the money handed out, an event that was uneventful except for the fact that all family members - my mother and father, aunt and uncle, my sisters and me, and my three cousins, my son, and my niece and nephew – all received a check for $100,000. My dad said, “Holy shit!” My aunt exclaimed, “No fucking way!” My mother whispered softly, “I knew you’d make it.” My son, only three, asked, “Can we go yet?”
As we were filing out of the conference room, Gerard Barnham, one of the lawyers, asked me to wait. After I sat down, he pulled out a large manila envelope and handed it to me. “This one is specifically for you.”
“I already received my check.”
“Just following instructions.”
“Well, I guess my uncle was pretty generous. None of us expected him to have this much money. We thought he was busy spending it all when he was alive.”
“He had much more than you think. First of all, he paid our law firm a hefty amount.” A deep belly laugh told me he had been quite satisfied with his client. “You remember the part of the will where he said that the remaining money would be divided amongst five charities.”
“Sure. I thought that was nice.”
“You don’t know how nice. There was over four million left to distribute after your family received their checks. And there’s another check in there for you.”
I tore open the manila envelope in my hand. Inside were several pages, stapled together, a flash drive, two keys, and a check for one million dollars made out to me.
“Is-is this a mistake?”
“No. I have no idea what the papers are or the flash drive or the key, but I do know that an extra million was to go to you.”
“Wow. I-I don’t know why.”
“You’re a lucky guy. Seems your child has a good start on a college fund and you and your wife have a good rainy day fund now. Your uncle was an odd fellow, but he always paid his bills, and had an infectious way about him that made everyone smile.”
“That he did,”
My parents were very interested in what the envelope contained. “Just a bunch of papers on Uncle Frankie’s inventions and things he never completed. I just looked through it briefly, but I’ll check them out later.”
“Maybe you’ll make a million off his stupid ideas.” My Uncle Ted joked.
“Maybe I will.” I said shaking my head. “Maybe I will.” The million-dollar check had already turned that maybe into a yes.
I took a week of my accumulated sick days to stay at home and study my uncle’s papers. On the first day of my staycation, after dropping my son off at school and with my wife at her job, I had the house to myself.
The papers detailed Uncle Frankie’s seventeen patents and the five products which were patent pending – I had no idea he held that many patents. Most of them were minor variations of ubiquitous products. Most were routine and boring. Except for one.
A time machine.
He was never granted a patent, so it is still patent pending, but it doesn’t matter because the design he sent the patent office had nothing to do with the designs that filled the remaining pages. This patent pending one was centered on time dilation and the concentrated use of uranium-powered engines and gamma rays to slow time down. It made little sense to me.
There were pages of designs, drawings, and instructions. I leafed through them until I got to the final page.
You probably shuffled through to the last page without reading the others, I imagine. That’s fine because the last page is the most important. Inside the large space at the address below you will find a machine. It’s not one of my patents, but it’s the only thing that ever made me any money. It will make you money, too. All those designs and drawings are so you could tinker around with things if you want, and I truly hope you do. The inventor’s spirit shouldn’t be suppressed. And you are an inventor. I hope this machine gives you adventure, fortune, and the chance to reinvigorate your inventor’s muse and start creating again as you did when you were a kid. You have the opportunity to use your passion and your intelligence to make something beneficial for the world, something I never did. But, whether you only use this machine for your profit or for the benefit of the world, you must never tell anyone about it. Never. It is powerful, and in the wrong hands, you will not only be destroyed but the world will face grave consequences. Pages 47 – 55 contain instructions and details about this machine. Read them carefully. Good luck!
I read pages 47-55 very carefully. Then I read them again. And one more time. And over and over again until I had the words memorized. Only the buzzing of my phone stopped me from reading again. I answered it. “Mr. Jones, this is Teresa, from pre-school. School’s been over for a half-hour. Your son’s waiting.”
Shit.
The next day I drove to the address in Brooklyn and found a line of low warehouses in an industrial area relatively close to the river. Building number 7 had two padlocks, and I used the two keys to unlock them. I pulled up the metal garage door and walked inside. I pulled the door down and noticed there was a thick metal chain lying on the floor. My uncle had instructed me to attach the chain to the door and the large U-shaped handle bolted to the floor.
Pull the chain as tight as possible. Wrap it around a couple times until it is as taught as possible. You do not want anyone to pull open the door by accident. Oh, I’ve paid the bill for a year – don’t forget to pay the bill for the warehouse when it’s due.
Near the back was a large object covered by a tarp. Its outline made it look like some type of truck was underneath. When I pulled off the tarp, there stood the machine in my Uncle Frankie’s drawing – the one on page 55. Not exactly the same, but you could tell he built it from this drawing.
From reading my uncle’s notes, it became clear that he invented a machine that could send someone back in time. He had also invented a way for that same machine to bring someone back to the future. It involved the understanding of high energy, wormholes, curved space, and quantum physics. None of which I understood very well. Truth is, I didn’t understand them at all.
I went to colonial times – yuck, dirty and horrible. I went to New Orleans in the early 1800s, I met up with de Tocqueville in the Crescent City. I was back in the time of Lincoln’s presidency but had no interest in listening to him give the Gettysburg Address. I went to the 1920’s – damn the women were just as loose and free as they are now, perhaps more so. Sometimes I stayed for a while if I felt I could fit in. Other times I just found a few coins and jetted back to the 21st century. I went back for the coins. Well, I went back for the women, too, but the coins were the priority; the women were a bonus. I brought the coins back and sold them for tidy sums. I loved coin collecting when I was a kid, and here was my chance to get my hands on some of those coins I had only dreamed of.
I had never been a coin collector, but then again I had never been a time traveler – I suppose I could learn a new hobby or two.
It was obvious my uncle liked the ladies, as accounts of his sexual conquests punctuated these papers. He met women in Paris in the early 1900’s, in London during the 60’s, in San Francisco in 1968, in Chicago during Prohibition, even a frisky lass in California during the Gold Rush. It was obvious, from reading my uncle’s papers, that men and women were having sex without rings on their fingers long before the sexual revolution.
Meeting ladies in the 20th century is much easier than earlier in history. Closer to our customs. But, women are women and sex is sex. Naked women look good no matter the century and sex drives are as old as humanity itself.
I was a married man, and though ardor had cooled in our marriage, I had no plans to meet any ladies, naked or otherwise, in my travels back in time.
I managed to do the impossible with my machine – travel back in time. But, I could
never do what some scientists think is possible – travel forward in time. I could only bring myself back to the present after I went back in time. I would like you to see if you could invent forward time travel. The possibilities would be endless if you could. Oh, if I could have done that, there would be no limit to the amount of money I could make and the number of ladies I could enjoy.
He thought I could invent forward time travel? He certainly overestimated my tinkering ability. I could piece together a radio, fix a few things on the car, build a dog house in my garage, but as soon as his writings started discussing tachyons and imaginary mass, and the papers became increasingly filled with unintelligible mathematical formulas, I knew a time machine was tinkering far beyond my humble capabilities.
My week off passed, and then a few more, and then several months. I used an occasional lunch hour to visit the machine and study its parts and design. I read and reread my Uncle’s writings every night. My wife asked me about the papers I was reading every night.
“You seem rather interested in your uncle’s writings.”
“Oh, just all about his inventions. I really loved building things when I was a kid, so he thought I would like this.”
“Well, you should build something someday. Who knows – maybe you’ll be a great inventor.” With that she rolled over, her bare shoulder exposed above the blanket. I thought of moving toward her, but the image of her naked body beneath the sheets could not tear me away from something I had read thirty times. I guess that’s what marriage does to you.
Though I had learned more about physics and quantum theory than I would have ever thought possible, I realized I didn’t need to understand the mechanics of time travel. My uncle had already built the machine. I just needed to hop in and pick a destination.
On April 1st, nearly one year after Uncle Frankie had died, I made my first trip back in time. I didn’t have the freedom of my uncle, what with a wife and kid, so I couldn’t be gone for more than a few hours. I really had no expectations or plans – just travel through time: perhaps only the second person to have ever made the trip. In my excitement, I forgot the GPS coordinates, and that’s why I ended up in an empty field on the edge of the fledgling community of Brooklyn – it’s where the warehouse would be built well over a century later.
Altering the Apocalypse: and Other Short Stories About Humans and Time Travel Page 12