Time Will Tell
(2014)
Helen grimaced when the front door chime sounded. “I can’t.” she moaned, pressing her fists against her eyes. “Tell them to go away.” She hadn’t been sick in decades and wasn’t handling it well.
“The doctor told you what would happen if you got those two immunizations together,” Ginger reminded her. Standing up, she walked over to the bedroom door. “You rest. I’ll show them around the apartment.” She hesitated, her hand hovering over the access panel. “You’re sure you want to sell your place?”
“I’m travelling back in time. Permanently. I’ll be dead long before it’s even built…” Helen managed a faint smile as Ginger rolled her eyes and waved off the end of the sentence.
“Yeah, yeah. I still can’t believe you’re going back to that timeframe. It was so primitive!” The front door chimed insistently and Ginger moved to answer it, shutting the bedroom door behind her.
Helen groaned. The best part was that she was doing this all voluntarily. Her eyes wandered to the small holographic projection of her parents. She was going to miss them.
“Helen.” Irma, her interactive robot, pulled a damp washrag out of her dispenser and began folding it into a perfect rectangle. “Are you sure I can’t go with you?”
Helen did her best to smile. “I’m sorry, Irma, but they didn’t have anything like you in the timeframe I’m going to.” She tried to laugh. “That’s why I’m having you teach me to cook the old-fashioned way.” When Irma didn’t respond immediately, Helen looked over at her – just in time to get the cold, wet washrag on her forehead. “Thanks, Irma.”
The washrag helped ease the overall sensation that her bed was on a berserk hydraulic lift, but she was still worried. “Don’t you like Ginger, Irma?”
Irma began tucking used tissues into her left hip “pocket” to be reintegrated into her energy supply. “I like Ginger,” she said at last.
“I’ll miss you, too, Irma,” Helen responded to the unspoken lament around the lump in her throat. Irma had been fresh out of the factory when Helen’s parents bought her as a combination maid, cook, and confidant for Helen after her retirement from the military. Helen had even taken Irma apartment hunting with her when she’d been reassigned to Commenticius thirty years ago. “I know it will be different with Ginger. You’ve written most of your adaptive code to my personality. But tomorrow when I feel better, we have that appointment with Mister Grimes, remember? He’s going to upgrade your memory circuits and fix your anti-gravity unit. I know how annoyed you’ve been at having to stand on a chair.”
“It is just an upgrade, isn’t it?” Irma asked suddenly. “Not a memory sponge?”
Helen was stunned. “A sponge! No, of course not! Irma, is that what’s been worrying you?” When Irma nodded slowly, Helen rushed to reassure her. “Irma, I don’t want you to forget me – and Ginger doesn’t want you to forget me. In fact, she specifically requested that your adaptive circuits be expanded instead of erased.” Seeing Irma’s hopeful expression forming, Helen added more gently, “I think she’s looking forward to having someone around that she can talk to after I’m gone. This assignment’s top secret, after all, so you two will only have each other.”
They both looked up as the bedroom door opened.
“What?” Ginger asked, coming to a complete stop in the doorway. “You’re both staring at me and it’s kinda creepy.”
“Don’t be alarmed, Ginger.” Irma smiled. “We were just talking about you before you walked in.”
Ginger grinned, amused at Irma’s frankness. “Anything I should know about?”
“Helen was just explaining to me why you and I will be good friends,” Irma answered seriously. “Now, if you will both excuse me, I should start making dinner.”
“Wow,” Ginger raised her eyebrows as she closed the door behind Irma. “I didn’t realize it’d be this hard for an interactive robot to transition!” Then, seeing the way Helen’s eyes strayed again to the holograph of her parents, Ginger pulled up a chair and sat down. “Have you told them yet?”
“Not yet.” Helen accepted the glass of water that Ginger reached down for her. Sipping it slowly, she shook her head. “No, not yet,” she repeated. “I keep trying to figure out how to tell them. And I keep coming up empty.” She swallowed hard. “I always imagined them meeting my husband before I married him, y’know? Having them at my wedding…holding my babies…” She broke off in a sob.
“Easy.” Ginger scooted her chair closer. “Easy.” Helping Helen sit up, Ginger wrapped her arms around her and held her tightly. She had been waiting for the tears since Helen had broken the news a week ago. It didn’t take a doctorate in mental health to see that her best friend was giving up everything that was important to her on the hopes of gaining something equally wonderful. And when the realities collided, a flood of emotions was inevitable.
“Hey, don’t cry so hard or you’ll be sick again,” she admonished in concern. She began stroking Helen’s hair. “Remember that time I thought I was in love?” She laughed a little. “Yeah, you do. Then we broke up and I missed a week of work and cried myself silly.” She shook her head. “I know you’re leaving a lot behind here, but I’ve also read the histories they gave you. You are the perfect woman for the man who helped build this future.”
Helen rolled watery eyes and sniffled. “No pressure,” she mumbled into Ginger’s shoulder.
“There’s always pressure.” Ginger procured a handful of tissues for her. “Sometimes that’s all that holds us together when we should be coming apart at the seams.”
They chuckled together the way that old friends do, laughing at something that was almost terrifyingly true.
“I am scared, Ginger,” Helen confessed, crumpling the now soggy tissues in one hand. “Even if the TTD knew what I did to make a man like Gregory Patterson fall in love with me, they wouldn’t tell me. So now here I go, plunging back over a thousand years in time with my future already written. What if I mess it up?”
Ginger took a couple of deep breaths while she worked out how to answer a question of that magnitude. “You’re always telling me to be myself,” she reminded Helen. “I guess that’s what you’re going to have to do now. At least you’ve already told him that you’re from the future.”
“Thank goodness,” Helen agreed fervently. She had almost been discharged for breaking that rule, until they uncovered historical evidence that she had gone on to become an integral part of that timeframe.
“Just out of curiousity,” Ginger changed the subject before Helen could slip deeper into her fears, “how many more immunizations do you have to get?” Her friend was travelling back to a timeframe when there were more soldiers than doctors and billions had died from the simplest medical conditions.
“Ugh,” Helen groaned and flopped back onto her pillows. “Seven. And the last one is supposed to make me itch like you wouldn’t believe.”
“It’s supposed to make you itch?” Ginger was understandably incredulous.
Helen explained, “In the last few months of the Final War, one of the old geographically determined governments deployed a weaponized gas that…”
“Yeah, I think I know the one you mean.” Ginger interrupted with a shudder. “I guess itching isn’t such a bad thing.”
A week later, her apartment successfully sold and Irma happily settled with Ginger, Helen remembered that conversation as she went to see her parents. It was only a twenty minute ride from Earth, but it was all she could do to keep from scratching the whole shuttle ride.
“We’ll be docking in five minutes,” announced a cheerful voice. “Please remain in your restraints until you see the doors open.”
Helen was the last one to exit but among the first to remove her biomonitor. Her heartbeat was increasing rapidly in anticipation and she didn’t want one of the shuttle staff to hold her over for a medical. She wa
s only a few feet outside the shuttle when she spotted her parents.
“Mom!” She dropped her bag and wrapped both of her arms around her mother.
“Hey kid,” teased her father’s voice as he wrapped his arms around both of them. “Welcome to the fishbowl.”
Helen opened her eyes in surprise and stared. With the exception of the floor they were standing on and a few enclosed rooms, the shuttle station was essentially transparent. Natural light from billions of stars illuminated the area, along with a few artificial fixtures that were powered by massive solar panels.
“It’s incredible,” she murmured inadequately.
“It’s not much,” her father winked, “but we like it.” Still chuckling, he scooped up her bag. “Well, what do you want to do first?” her father asked. “Take the grand tour? Or see the station?”
She laughed with him, knowing a tour of their tiny living quarters would only take minutes. “I came to see you two, not the station,” she told them firmly. Helen listened to every word of inconsequential chatter her parents exchanged as they left the platform. Three more days and she would never see them again.
As soon as the door to their quarters had sealed itself behind them, she took a deep breath. “I’ve got something important to tell you.” Gesturing at the couch and chairs she suggested, “Let’s sit down.”
“Is this about your new assignment?” her mother asked, her voice wavering slightly.
“Yes. It’s classified, but I have permission to tell you a little about it so you won’t worry.” When they were seated Helen continued, “We’ve uncovered evidence at the TTD that I played an integral role in rebuilding after the Final War. So I’m travelling back in time to do just that. And, I won’t be coming back.” She watched them exchange a long look.
“Will you be alone?” her father asked after a long silence.
“No,” she shook her head. “I marry and have several children.”
“Do you know whom you will marry?” her mother asked.
“Yes. But I’m not at liberty to disclose that.”
“When do you leave?” her father asked.
“In a few days. That’s why I came up here. To see you and to say goodbye.” Helen swallowed hard.
“Do you have to go so soon?” her mother asked. “You’re going back in time, not to a meeting. Can’t you delay it a little? They’ll never know the difference.”
“Delay it for how long?” Helen asked gently. “I do have to go, Mom. And this won’t get any easier if I put it off.”
“Then,” her father exhaled slowly, “let’s enjoy our last few days together.”
Now that you’ve read them, please tell me what you think!
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