Bump Time Origin

by Doug J. Cooper

She pointed to a sticker in the corner of his windshield that matched the sign. “That says you’re pretty much the only one who can.”

  As they walked up the stone steps, they met Justus hustling down.

  “There’s a cryo delivery out at the warehouse,” he said to Lilah. “I’m going over to let them in.” He smiled at Diesel. “Forgive me for asking, but do you prefer that I call you David, Diesel, or Twenty-Five?”

  “Diesel works. I hear the prestige card snafu was a problem on their end.”

  Justus shrugged. “I thought I had until dinner. Sorry about that. But speaking of money, we have a three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar payment due at the end of the month and nothing in the bank.” Resuming his descent, he called over his shoulder, “I should be back in a couple of hours.”

  Once inside, Diesel paused for an awkward moment as he decided what to do next. Going with his instinct, he said, “I need to hear the rest of your story on the status of your project, what that project is, what parts you’re working on, and why I’m here.” He motioned to the stairs. “My apartment is up there. I have a great living room.”

  “Let’s use the conference room,” she said, walking down the hall to where he’d had his interview just a few hours earlier.

  His cheeks burned from her casual chastening. “Of course,” he said, following her into the room.

  11. Twenty-Five and a few more hours

  Diesel looked at Lilah across the small conference room table and, after hearing more of her story, shook his head. “That was your AI software? I feel like a dick. My kid sister brought it home from camp one summer, and we played with it together.” He gave a careless shrug. “I guess I kept a copy and played with it myself after that.”

  His sister, Cara, excited when she’d returned from camp, had gushed about this amazing AI developer who had given it to her. In truth, it was his sister’s hero worship that had caused him to give Lilah author credits in his program at all.

  He’d looked her up on the web to make sure he had her name right, and found that Lilah Spencer was an up-and-coming star in the AI technology field. After reading her many accolades and a profile of her in a popular tech blog, he remembered feeling honored borrowing her software for his job search efforts.

  But other than those few minutes of research, and the time spent programming her name into the credits display, he never saw her name or picture again. In truth, he’d forgotten about her. Until now.

  “Oh, wow. You’re Lilah Spencer, the AI rock star.” Then everything made sense. He even nodded. “Now it all fits together. I used your program without consent. I feel bad about it, Lilah. I shouldn’t have done it and I’m sorry. But you didn’t need to go through this huge effort to teach me a lesson. This must have cost a fortune.”

  He snuck a peek to see how she was reacting. She was slouched back in her chair and grinning from ear to ear. “Continue telling me your sins.”

  “I apologize. If I knew of a way, I’d make it up to you. All I can say is that I’m sorry.”

  “How much is your transgression worth? You stole my work.”

  “I gave you credit in the display.”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “What!? First, only one person ever downloaded my software the whole time I had it up, and apparently that was you. So I’m not seeing a whole lot of damages here. Second, I have a negative financial self-worth because of college debt. I couldn’t pay you two hundred dollars.”

  “But suppose you could?”

  “Could what? Are you asking if I had that kind of money, would I pay you restitution?”

  “Yes. If you make more than two million dollars in gross income in the next six months, you agree to pay me two hundred thousand dollars in restitution for inappropriate and unauthorized use of my work. That’s on top of the salary you already agreed to.”

  “Lilah, are you still messing with me? If I concede to some Alice in Wonderland agreement, do you tie me up in court to punish me when I can’t pay? Tell me what I can say or do to show my contrition and let’s end this.”

  “Agree to this and I will stop messing with you.”

  “Promise?” He caught her eye. “Okay, I agree.”

  “Shake.” She reached her hand across the table. “Say it while we shake.”

  Diesel met her halfway and repeated the phrase.

  “I feel good about that deal.” She stood up. “I’m going home now. I have stuff I need to get done.”

  Diesel stood as well. “I’ll get my bag and be on my way.”

  “Don’t you have to buy a lottery ticket between eight and eight thirty tomorrow at Hennessey’s Market? Then Twenty-Six arrives at eleven.” She led him out of the conference room, and they stopped in the hallway. “Sleep in your apartment tonight. I’ll meet you right here tomorrow at seven thirty sharp and buy you an amazing breakfast at the diner next door to Hennessey’s.”

  “You promised to stop messing with me.”

  “I’m not messing with you.”

  “Are you sticking with the time-travel story?”

  “Tell you what. You can sit with me tomorrow at eleven, and we’ll welcome Twenty-Six together. That should settle the question.”

  “If you’ll have breakfast with me, I’ll stay here tonight. Definitely.” He looked at her with a devilish smile. “Breakfast in the morning is usually my line.”

  “Well, you keep it. It’s a good one.” Lilah turned, rounded the banister, and descended the stairs into the basement.

  “Where are you going?” Diesel hadn’t been downstairs yet and felt somewhat tentative as he followed her, stopping after a few steps.

  “Home.”

  “You live in the basement?”

  “Jeez, Diesel. Now I understand why Twenty-Six thinks you’re a doofus.”

  “Wait. He said that?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “‘Doofus’ is one word.”

  “I live next door. There’s a door connecting the two units here in the basement.”

  Diesel followed her down, and his eyes lit up as he viewed the professional office space. The left wall held two upscale work cubicles separated by a wooden divider. Each had its own desk, a worktable full of computer gear, a second open worktable with chairs around it, and a big video monitor mounted on the back wall.

  The far cubicle looked lived in, with something scattered on every surface. The near one looked unused.

  The right wall near the steps had the door Lilah mentioned. Past the door, parallel to the right wall, was a length of rope with blankets hanging over them. The wall of blankets ran along the basement wall for several yards and then turned into the room, running about a third of the way across before it stopped.

  “Is that laundry?”

  “Sorry. I’ll take it down.”

  “So is it T as in ‘time box’? Or is it ‘travel box’?” Diesel asked, walking into the room.

  “I think it’s because the box is painted teal.”

  “Really? How disappointing.” He moved past the row of blankets and looked for himself.

  The T-box wasn’t teal. In fact, it looked like the walk-in refrigerator at the beer store near his apartment. It had the same heavy aluminum door with the sturdy latch handle. The exterior walls were bare aluminum as well, etched with a diamond pattern that reflected the light as he moved. Heavy power cables ran down the side, making connections at the top, middle, and bottom.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. And this is me.” She opened the door leading to the basement of the adjoining row house.

  “What’s in there?”

  “My apartment. I’m closing this door now. Remember, seven thirty upstairs. You’re driving.”

  “Hold on.” He walked to the door. “Shake my hand and say, ‘I’m not messing with you.’”

  She did, and he said, “That didn’t help the way I hoped it would.”

  “I just want you to know that your moral ambiguity is
a turn-off.”

  She closed the door and Diesel stared at it, trying to decipher what had just happened.

  12. Twenty-Five and the next morning

  Diesel tromped down from his apartment at seven thirty on the button. He grinned when, halfway down, he saw Lilah waiting for him on the main level.

  “Good morning,” he said, stepping onto the floor. “Another on-time person. Be still my beating heart.”

  “Remember, you’re driving.”

  “No problemo.” He held up his keys. “And you’re buying me breakfast.”

  Traffic was light and Diesel enjoyed driving his new car. The tight handling and quick acceleration thrilled him, and upbeat tunes on the surround-sound audio system added to the fun.

  It took twenty minutes to reach Hennessey’s Market. When they pulled into the parking lot, a line of people snaked out the market door and continued along the side of the building.

  “What do you think this is for?” asked Lilah.

  “No idea,” said Diesel, parking in the shade.

  The store was deeper than he’d imagined from the outside, and the line continued inside, across the floor, and to the lottery ticket counter on the far side.

  Diesel walked up to the people in line. “Is this to buy lottery tickets?”

  A few customers looked at him but no one answered. Then a twelve-year-old boy playing a handheld video game pointed at the wall. Diesel followed his finger to find a big hand-lettered sign which read, “Please form lottery line here.” An arrow pointed to where the people were standing.

  “Ah.” Diesel tilted his head to Lilah in a “let’s go this way” fashion and headed back out the door. He marched to the end of the line, and Lilah caught up with him.

  “What time is it?” he asked as he checked his phone. Then he answered himself. “Eight oh eight. We’ll get the ticket by eight thirty, no worries.”

  The line moved at a snail’s pace, and Diesel muttered and grunted enough to draw an annoyed glance from Lilah. At twenty minutes after eight, they finally made it inside the market door.

  “This is more than ten minutes,” said Lilah, looking at the line across the shop floor.

  “I am so screwed,” whined Diesel. “What am I going to do?”

  “Give me your cash.” Lilah held her palm out and wiggled her fingers. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  He was so glad she had an idea that he didn’t ask for details. Pulling the cash from his wallet, he gave her the five hundred he’d taken out of the bank, and the two hundred and thirty-seven he had left from the money he’d brought from California.

  She handed him back the thirty-seven. “Okay, we have seven hundred. Hold this three hundred in your hand. Someone is going to come back and ask for it. Give it to them and come to where I am.”

  She walked to the front of the line and talked to whomever would listen. She pointed back toward him several times, and the people she spoke with looked back as well. Diesel couldn’t hear, but it was easy enough for him to figure it out.

  The third person Lilah tried snatched the wad of cash from her, then turned back toward Diesel. She looked like a retired schoolmarm, frowning as she marched toward him. She snatched the money from his hand and assumed his place in line, looking straight ahead and acting like he didn’t exist.

  Diesel scurried to the front and swapped places with Lilah, who handed a hundred dollars to the man standing behind them. “For the inconvenience,” she said, sealing his cooperation.

  With three minutes to spare, Diesel scored his lottery ticket. He hugged Lilah on the way out—a natural and spontaneous expression of joy—and she hugged him back.

  “Waiting in line has made me hungry,” she said. “Let’s go to a place I know that has an amazing breakfast.”

  Lilah led him next door to the Yellow Hen Diner. Diesel thought the place looked nice enough, but he didn’t see anything on the way in that made him think “amazing.” The waitress sat them at a cozy booth next to a window, though the view outside was of the diner’s parking lot.

  “Pretty soon I’ll be able to use time travel to avoid lines like that,” he said after the waitress left, grinning to show he was joking.

  Lilah shook her head. “That’s not how it works. The way I understand it, you aren’t traveling in your own timeline. That means you can’t do things like go back and kill your grandfather, send a message to your future self, or skip lines to buy lottery tickets.”

  Reaching to the end of the table, she pulled a ceramic bowl holding a neat row of sugar packets over between them. “It’s like each sugar packet is its own independent timeline. You live in one, Twenty-Six lives in the next packet over, Twenty-Seven after that, and so on up the row. Each is its own complete world, with its own Diesel and Lilah.”

  She lifted a sugar packet partway out. “We live in this one, and Twenty-Six lives in the next one over. The T-box lets you move between these parallel timelines—jump between each other’s homes, so to speak. But you never actually become the other Diesels. And since you all age together and lead comparable lives, visiting them is like seeing your future.”

  “Or seeing the past, depending on which way you’re moving,” Diesel offered, trying to show that he was keeping up.

  He reached for his menu, and his eyes fell on the wound on the back of his hand. He recalled Twenty-Six being emphatic that his personal actions didn’t affect the other brothers. That idea made more sense with Lilah’s explanation.

  Opening his menu, he scanned down the first page. When he saw the house special, he understood why he was there. “The Amazing Breakfast.” When he spoke the words, his voice caught.

  The obvious joke was lame—the diner had a menu item called “The Amazing Breakfast.” But the description of it—three eggs any style, pancakes, bacon, sausage, home fries, toast, juice, and coffee—held the real significance.

  His family had moved to Massachusetts when he was fourteen. That first summer was lonely, and his twelve-year-old sister, Cara, had been no better off. Things were so dreary that the high point of their week occurred Saturday mornings when he and Cara would walk into town to hang out.

  Their first stop was always breakfast at Nina’s Diner, and it, too, had an Amazing Breakfast just like this one. He’d never seen it anywhere else.

  Every week they’d order one and split it. He’d give her the pancakes, bacon, and juice. He’d eat everything else. It had been a great bonding experience in his youth, and to this day she remained a close friend and confidante.

  Twenty-Six had sent him here to relive that treasured memory. It worked, and Diesel appreciated the gesture. He made a mental note to send next year’s Twenty-Five to this place. Then he made a mental note to ask Twenty-Six how to keep track of what promised to become a burgeoning number of mental notes.

  When the waitress returned, Diesel ordered a three-egg omelet, sausage, home fries, toast, and coffee. When Lilah ordered pancakes, bacon, and juice, the components needed to complete the Amazing Breakfast, he looked at her with eyes wide.

  Then his brain started working out the odds. He waited until the waitress left. “You promised you’d stop messing with me.”

  She laughed. “I meant big stuff like whether time travel is a thing. I’ll never stop having fun with the small stuff.”

  “Did Twenty-Six tell you about the breakfast?”

  “I’ve learned things about you from Twenty-Six, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Forty, and Forty-Two.

  “They talk about me? I don’t know if I like that. What do they say?”

  “They don’t talk about you, they talk about themselves, but that tells me a lot about you. For example, a few of them tell me they like four-cheese pizza, so I’d say it’s a safe bet that you like it too.”

  “I do like it, though I order mine with extra cheese, so there’s something you didn’t know.”

  The waitress arrived with their meals, and they took a minute to taste their food. After Diesel sampled everything, he
asked, “Is Lilah short for Delilah?”

  “Nope. My dad read a book in his youth and fell in love with the name.”

  “Are you and he close?”

  “We were. He was in the National Guard and got deployed on short notice to the Middle East. I was twelve and worshipped him. He gave me a hug, kissed me on the top of the head, and disappeared from Mom’s and my life.” She looked up, blinking quickly as tears welled.

  Diesel reached across the table and clasped her hands in his.

  13. Twenty-Five and the next midday

  After breakfast, they returned to the row house, and Diesel followed Lilah downstairs into the basement. As promised, she’d removed the blankets and even positioned two chairs right in front of the T-box door.

  She paused at the bottom of the steps and motioned to the empty office cubicle. “This is your space, but you’ll have to get your own computer equipment. I don’t know what’s best for dark work.”

  He furrowed his brow as he unpacked her words.

  She continued across the floor to the T-box, where she pulled on the latch handle and opened the heavy door. Turning, she rested a hand on it, reminding him of a model showing off a prize on a TV game show.

  He joined her at the machine, and as he looked inside the tight booth, he let her know he was on to her games. “When does it turn teal?”

  “You see that it’s empty.”

  Diesel stepped back and viewed the large aluminum frame. “Are you trying to convince me this couldn’t be faked?”

  She pushed the door shut and followed him as he walked around the outside of the device.

  Scanning its construction, he normalized the device into his new world, accepting it as real. He no longer believed this was a massive effort to fool him. And he couldn’t deny that Twenty-Six and Lilah were flesh-and-blood people who presented a convincing front.

  A quiet buzz drew his attention to the display on the T-box. Standing in front of it, he read the words: “Twenty-Six Incoming in 4:54.”

  Lilah explained the countdown sequence, and with minutes to kill, told him what she knew of the components inside the aluminum shell.