No Other Story

by Dr. Cuthbert Soup

  As luck would have it, we did not get a tailwind, but we did get wind and plenty of it to go along with the thunder and lightning that menaced the skies that night. What followed was one of the bumpiest flights I’ve ever had the displeasure of being a party to. How my passengers in back were handling the turbulent ride I couldn’t be sure, but I did notice that my copilot was, for most of the flight, pale as a vampire’s ghost. Still, he kept his wits about him and his eyes on the chronometer.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Our house is a good thirty-minute drive from the airport.”

  “Airport?” I said. “We haven’t filed a flight plan, so technically we’re not cleared to land at the airport, I’m afraid. But my GPS is telling me that the local university has a very nice soccer field. Artificial turf, I believe.”

  “You’re going to land on a soccer field?”

  “Actually, I’m going to try to land on a soccer field. We’ll see how it goes. The good news is it’s just a ten-minute walk from your house. Or a six-minute jog. Or a four-minute sprint.”

  One way in which soccer fields are not at all like landing strips is that they are not nearly as long. Due to this one little factor, our landing would require a very steep descent and a fair amount of luck. Still, I looked forward to the challenge and to saying that I may be the only person to have ever completed a touchdown on a soccer field.

  Before an actual attempt at landing, I would first have to perform a flyover, a low pass over the makeshift airstrip. It was important to know whether there were hazards near the field, such as power lines, tall trees, or policemen. Luckily, the skies had cleared and our view of the field was sharp and unobstructed as we dropped in for a closer look.

  “No problem,” I said, with more confidence in my voice than in my gut.

  I took it back up and made a sharp bank left, circling over houses where, undoubtedly, the sleepy residents were curious as to why a jet airplane was buzzing overhead at such a ridiculously early hour. I thought it best to inform my passengers of the latest developments to prepare them for the sudden drop that awaited them, and I once more switched on the intercom.

  “Good morning from the cockpit, ladies and gentlemen. We’re currently at one thousand feet, dropping to zero feet in the next thirty seconds or so. Please make sure that your seat belts are securely fastened and that your pockets are free of all sharp objects or anything that might explode on impact.”

  For the record, this was not the first time I had attempted an unconventional landing such as this. Once, when flying from Montreal to Albuquerque, one of the Concorde Grape’s engines caught fire, forcing me to make an unscheduled stop in a Kansas cornfield. No one was hurt, but the heat from the fire did result in about six hundred pounds of popcorn, which is why I always make sure the Concorde Grape is well stocked with plenty of salted butter.

  Compared to that little episode, this landing would be a six-hundred-pound piece of cake. I lowered the nose, taking a sharp trajectory toward the ground. We dropped from a thousand feet to a hundred feet in just seconds.

  “Pull up!” yelled Ethan as the earth raced up to meet us. “Pull up!”

  He was right. I pulled back hard on the stick and the plane leveled out just as the wheels hit the artificial turf, giving us all a wicked jolt. Quickly, I activated the reverse thrusters and hit the brakes as hard as I could without losing control of the aircraft. The sudden force caused Ethan to lurch forward in his seat, while I myself had to fight to remain in position to guide the speeding plane along the ground.

  The end of the field was coming up fast, and though the plane had slowed considerably, we were still a long way from coming to a complete and final stop. Beyond the field was a road, and across that road was a track-and-field practice facility.

  We reached the end of the soccer field and the plane skipped over the road, narrowly missing a parked car and a No Parking sign, then bounded onto the infield of the track, where, finally, we crawled to a stop. Ethan and I sat, unable to speak. I wondered how the children had come through the harrowing experience. I imagined they were nothing less than traumatized. Suddenly, there was a thumping on the cabin door. My face and hands mottled with beads of cold sweat, I peeled myself off the captain’s chair and opened the cockpit to find Catherine and the other children standing at the entrance.

  “What time is it?” she demanded. Traumatized indeed. I forgot that these children were the spawn of Ethan and Olivia Cheeseman.

  “It’s 5:05,” I said with a quick check of the cockpit chronometer.

  “Five after five?” exclaimed Jason.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “I strongly advise you to run like the wind.” As quickly as I could, I opened and lowered the door, the inside of which served as a stairwell to the ground. My passengers leaped from the aircraft one by one, except for Simon and Gravy-Face Roy, who leaped two by two. The others, Jason, Catherine, Big, Pinky, and Digs, hit the frozen ground and took off in a desperate sprint against time.

  “Thanks, Bertie,” said Ethan over his shoulder as he raced off after the others and never looked back.

  “Good luck!” I called. “Let me know how it turns out!” I watched Ethan disappear into the darkness just as suddenly as he had shown up on my doorstep only four hours before. Then I looked at that giant purple jet plane parked on the grass in the middle of a university sports center a thousand miles from my home and thought, “Now what?”

  Chapter 15

  They say that the early bird catches the worm, whereas birds that are later to rise must be content with eating birdseed, bread crumbs, and fat, lazy worms who also enjoy sleeping in. Olivia Cheeseman was an early bird by nature. She rarely slept past five o’clock, and this morning she had been awake for hours after being jostled from unconciousness by a crank phone call.

  She lay next to her snoring husband, thinking. But it wasn’t the thought of bread crumbs or birdseed that filled her mind; she had remained quite disturbed by the strange phone call and the questionable people who had visited her house in recent days. She feared for the safety of her family.

  Two government agents dressed all in gray had shown up at the front door and strongly suggested that she and her husband hand over the yet-to-be-finished LVR. They should do so, the men explained, for their own protection from those who might be willing to do anything to get their hands on it.

  While she and Ethan had been out celebrating their wedding anniversary, another strange man came to the house claiming to be selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, which sounded entirely plausible, except for the fact that the man spoke in a strange accent and was accompanied by a monkey.

  But the most unnerving of all the occurrences was when she and Ethan returned home from dropping the children off at school to find a long white limousine parked out front. Upon entering the house, they were startled and frightened to find, sitting in their living room, a large man with rings on each of his meaty fingers and a small woman with fingers as thin and bony as the man’s were thick and meaty.

  The woman announced that they worked for Plexiwave and that they were there with the purpose of offering high-paying jobs to Ethan and Olivia in exchange for the LVR and the secret codes necessary to operate it. To further entice the two scientists, the woman instructed the ring-fingered man to open and display the contents of a briefcase he was holding. It was full of cash; two million dollars, to be exact.

  Some people might have salivated at the sight of so much money. The fact that it came from a company responsible for manufacturing deadly weapons, which had killed millions of people around the world, made Olivia nauseous, and she angrily ordered the intruders out of her house.

  What made these multiple encounters all the more strange was that Ethan and Olivia had told no one, not even their own children, that they were working on a device that could very well enable time travel. Still, somehow, these strange visitors seemed to know all about the LVR.

  She watched the digital readout on the nightstand clock snap from
4:59 to 5:00. She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She grabbed her robe from a hook on the back of the door and quietly slipped out of the room.

  She walked to the front door, as she did every morning, with the intention of bringing in the daily newspaper. For the first time ever, she changed her routine, deciding to leave the paper for later, when the sun would take away the darkness and all of the unknown that goes with it.

  She flipped on the kitchen light and, with squinting eyes, fetched her coffee from the pantry. From the drawer below the coffeemaker, she retrieved a filter that, unfortunately, would do nothing to filter out the poison with which the coffee had been laced.

  Olivia liked her coffee strong, and she loaded up the filter with several heaping spoonfuls of the ground, tainted beans. She added the water and hit the start button. The clock on the coffeemaker told her it was 5:05.

  Jason felt as if his heart might pop right out of his chest, the blood pounding in his ears, his feet pounding the frozen earth as he sprinted toward the house he had called home for the first twelve years of his life. Closely on his heels were Catherine and Ethan, with Big, Digs, and Pinky lagging behind to stay with Simon, who had no hope of keeping pace with the group.

  Though it had been two years, Jason had no problem remembering the quickest route to the house. Like an Olympian, he hurdled a short picket fence that encircled the front yard of the Baldersons’ house on Musgrave Street. He ignored the Beware of Dog sign on the back gate, emboldened by the knowledge that the dog of which he was to beware was a fourteen-year-old schnauzer named Muffin with bad teeth and irritable bowel syndrome.

  Jason raced through the backyard and scaled the much taller fence, paying no attention to the fact that he had, in the process, scraped his left forearm raw on the rough, unfinished wood. He felt no pain, only the sting of frustration from not being able to will his legs to go any faster.

  As he sped along the gravel surface, he thought nothing of the dark blue sports car parked at the end of the alley. He thought of one thing only: the time. Finally, he arrived at his former house, and from a full run he jumped and took hold of the top of the fence. He pulled himself up and was aghast to see, projected by the kitchen light onto the curtains, a very familiar silhouette of a very familiar person. And in that silhouette’s hand was what appeared to be a silhouette cup of coffee.

  As the silhouette cup of coffee moved closer to the silhouette person’s mouth, Jason stood on top of the fence, trying to maintain his balance while retrieving from his pocket the baseball Sullivan had given him. From his wobbly position atop the fence, he gripped the baseball, reared back, and … slipped.

  His chin caught the fence on the way to the ground, snapping his neck back and knocking him nearly senseless. He tasted blood, and realized a large gash had been opened across his bottom lip by his very own teeth. He opened his eyes to see the baseball rolling slowly down the alley toward his sister as she rumbled his way, pumping her arms and legs like a locomotive at full steam.

  “The ball,” Jason managed to garble with his swollen lower lip. “Throw it!”

  Catherine spotted the autographed baseball lying at her feet. She picked it up and, with all her might, heaved it over the fence toward the house as Jason watched with blurred vision and listened with ringing ears. Long and painful seconds passed before finally the wonderful sound of breaking glass filled the air. Catherine had smashed the kitchen window, but had she done it in time? Jason pushed his belly from the ground and rose to his hands and knees. “Go,” he said.

  Without hesitation, Catherine took a running start, planted her foot in the middle of her injured brother’s spine, and launched herself to the top of the fence. She pulled up, swung her legs over, and dropped into her own backyard next to the swing set on which she had experienced her very first under-duck.

  Seconds later, Ethan ran up to find his elder son lying in the alley, his chin covered in blood. “I’m okay,” Jason mumbled. “Go on.” As Ethan pulled himself over the fence, he saw Catherine racing toward the back patio.

  By now lights had started to come on inside the house. Still half-asleep, Ethan’s younger double ran from the bedroom to find his wife with the kitchen phone to her ear. Right on his heels was Pinky, a full two years (or fourteen dog years) younger, and sporting a full coat of fur.

  “What happened?” asked Ethan breathlessly. “What’s going on?”

  He looked down to see that the floor at Olivia’s feet was littered with broken glass, a baseball, a shattered mug, and approximately six ounces of coffee, or, roughly, one full cup. Because Pinky had not yet developed psychic powers, the incident had come completely without warning.

  “Someone threw something through the window,” Olivia said in an unsteady voice. “I’m calling the police.”

  Before she could dial those three familiar numbers, there came a pounding on the kitchen door, accompanied by a voice that was awfully, but not quite entirely, familiar.

  “Mom,” said the voice. “It’s me. Open the door!”

  Olivia looked at Ethan. Was it a trick? After all, wasn’t Catherine fast asleep in her room down the hall? “Careful,” said Ethan as Olivia moved to the kitchen door and pulled back the curtain, only to be greeted by a most unusual sight. It was Catherine. Or was it? Though the resemblance was remarkable, this Catherine was taller, more mature-looking, and had much shorter hair. The young girl’s eyes were filled with tears.

  But was the girl real? Had the evil geniuses of Plexiwave somehow managed to manufacture a robotic version of her daughter in an effort to trick her into opening the door? “Mom, please,” she cried. At that moment Olivia’s maternal instincts overpowered her fears and suspicions, and she flung the door open. The short-haired girl on the back porch rushed in and immediately wrapped her arms tightly around Olivia’s waist. The force of Catherine’s hug caused Olivia to stumble back into the kitchen before finally regaining her balance. She looked to Ethan, but found no comfort in his equally confused face. She reached up and ran her hand gently across the girl’s soft auburn hair.

  Catherine sobbed at the long-awaited touch of the mother she hadn’t seen since her death two years ago. “You’re alive,” she said, pulling away just far enough to get a look at Olivia’s face. “You’re alive again.” Catherine’s sobs turned to laughter, pure joy escaping from her body. For Olivia, there was no mistaking. That was definitely Catherine’s laugh.

  “Catherine?” she said. “Is it really you?”

  “It’s me, Mom,” she said. “I came here from the future.”

  “From the future?” said Olivia. “What are you saying?”

  “Oh my goodness,” said Ethan, rising to his feet. His jaw went slack. “I think what she’s saying is that the LVR works.”

  “It sure does,” came a familiar voice from the doorway. The voice belonged to Ethan Cheeseman—the other Ethan Cheeseman, older by two years and several tons of stress, which seemed to vanish the minute he laid eyes on his wife. Unshowered and without makeup, her hair a tangled mess, she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  “I’m confused,” said Olivia. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s true,” said Catherine. “The LVR works. That’s how we got here from two years into the future.”

  Something suddenly occurred to Olivia. She looked at the younger Ethan, then at the older. “Wait a minute. That really was you on the phone last night.”

  “It was,” said Ethan. “I’m sorry if I startled you. I don’t blame you for hanging up on me.”

  “This is unbelievable,” said Ethan the younger.

  “Believe it,” replied the senior Ethan. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been waiting for two years to do this.” He walked across the kitchen floor, took Olivia in his arms, and kissed her with a passion she hadn’t experienced in far too long a time. The younger Ethan looked on with bemusement and, if he were to be completely honest, a good deal of jealousy. After all, another man wa
s kissing his wife, even if that other man did happen to be himself.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” said Ethan to his flabbergasted but very much alive wife.

  “I … I don’t know what to say,” Olivia stammered. She looked apologetically at her husband, who breathed a visible sigh of relief when his other self finally broke the embrace with his wife. The older Ethan walked over to the younger and extended his hand.

  “Ethan Cheeseman,” said Ethan.

  “Yes, I know,” said Ethan. “Nice to meet you.” The two men shook hands and chuckled at the absurdity of the situation.

  Gasping for breath, eight-year-old Simon ran up the stairs to the back porch and into the kitchen. The boy practically flew into the room and jumped into his mother’s arms. Between heaving sobs of jubilation he blubbered the same words Catherine had. “You’re alive,” he said. “You’re really alive.”

  “Of course I’m alive,” said Olivia. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

  “Plexiwave,” said Catherine. “They poisoned your coffee.”

  “And you died,” added Simon, wiping his teary eyes and his runny nose on his mother’s robe.

  Olivia looked at the shattered coffee mug scattered about on the wet tile floor, suddenly realizing how close she had come to death. “So then, you came here from the future to save me?”

  “That’s right,” said Ethan.

  “But what about Jason? Where’s Jason?”

  “I’m right here,” came the garbled reply as Jason walked into the kitchen with Big’s help and with Digs and Pinky following right behind.

  “You’re hurt,” said Olivia. She hugged and kissed her son, then helped him shuffle over to the kitchen table.

  “I slipped off the fence,” said Jason, dabbing at his bloody lip with his shirtsleeve. “But I’m okay.” Olivia pulled a chair back, and with Big’s assistance, Jason lowered himself onto it.

  “Could you get some ice, Ethan?” Olivia instructed while examining Jason’s badly split lip.