Plenty of Time
a short story
by
Eric Nixon
Copyright 2011 Eric Nixon. All rights reserved.
Cover by Eric Nixon
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Foreword
Hello and welcome.
First off, I would like to sincerely thank you for your purchase. I greatly appreciate it.
Think of how many people it takes to support a fighter jet pilot. Between the people who built the aircraft, to those who maintain, refuel, reload, inspect, supervise, guide, etc, etc, etc. There are probably at least a few hundred people who work hard and make it possible for that one person to have all the glory of piloting it.
This story is a lot like that. Imagine being a maintenance person not on jet, but on a super-secret time machine. Every day your job is to make sure it runs properly, but at the same time, much like the support staff for a fighter jet, you know you’ll never be the one who actually gets to use it. That’s the fate of Tim, the time machine technician who stars in this story…except that Tim is looking to change fate, unaware of what lies in wait for him.
Once again, thank you, and enjoy!
Eric
What a nice sunny day. I stood on a street corner in Boston, enjoying the warmth from the sun as it shined down through the forest of skyscrapers reaching me on the sidewalk. Everything had a dream-like quality, like I was seeing the world through some kind of lens that softened my view. I smiled. Apparently, I didn’t have anywhere particular to be. I looked around and was surprised to see a woman waiving to me from the opposite corner of the wide street. Oh, hey! I waived. It was my girlfriend, June. I waived again and pressed the button to tell the traffic light that I wanted to cross.
I smiled at June, but saw that she had just stepped into the busy street. I looked to my right and saw a bus bearing down on her. I screamed and tried to waive her off, but she couldn’t hear me. Why can’t she hear me? Why is the bus speeding up? She continued crossing, smiling, and waving when the bus plowed into her, causing her body to burst into a thousand points of bright green light which swirled about in the bus’ wake before dissipating.
No!
The bus slowed as it approached where I was standing and James K. Polk leaned out of the driver’s window. “Sorry about that. I don’t know how to control this horse-less transport, and I can’t stop, as I’m much too busy.” I stared in confusion as I recognized the faces of many older men who resembled presidential portraits. Jimmy Carter was trying to talk John Adams into releasing John Quincy Adams from a headlock in the back of the bus.
A man beside me yelled, “James K. Polk, I pardon thee!” The voice belonged to Woodrow Wilson, standing on a Segway, and wearing a bright red cape with a large “WW” printed on the back.
Polk gave a thumbs-up out the window, “Thanks Woody!” The bus swerved down the street, hitting into a car parked before running a red light and turning out of view. Woodrow looked at me and shrugged, “Eh, what can I do? One-term presidents don’t have enough time to stop and fix things. It’s up to the two term presidents like me to clean up. Sorry about your girlfriend, but you’ll make everything right.” A loud alarm began to sound. “Oops, I have to go.” He spun around and rolled off with his cape flapping in the wind.
My alarm beeped loudly until I hit the snooze button. Sleepy-eyed, I stared at the ceiling. Man, I have got to stop watching the History Channel before going to bed. That was a wicked messed up dream.
I smacked my hands together twice and the Clapper was kind enough to turn on the lights and TV. The news welcomed me to another sleety, dreary Thursday and blathered on about a semi truck roll-over on I-93 and consequential traffic delays which was fine with me since I didn’t drive that way to work.
It’s been over three months now since the horrible accident that took my girlfriend, June, away from me. It was around four o’clock on a warm, sunny Tuesday afternoon in mid-September when I got the call from her parents. They were so distraught they could barely speak, but I just knew what happened. You always assume the worst in the first few moments when you get a call like that. I met them at the hospital. The doctors told us she had died instantly, so there was no suffering. At 2:42pm, she stepped into a crosswalk, but the bus...well, I’m guessing it didn’t see her because it didn’t stop. In that crosswalk on a busy street in Boston, her life ended, and my heart stopped.
While I was devastated by her loss, I’ve had to work hard to contain my feelings of joy. I didn’t hate her and I’m not crazy or murderous or anything. Goodness no. I love her and plan on proposing when the time is right. I’m happy because I know things will be better. I can fix this. Correction, I will fix this. Well, that’s the plan, and I’m confident that it’s going to work. Actually, that’s where it’s going to work, at work. I’m a scientist, well, actually more of a glorified maintenance man, so I fix things, and I work at a secret government facility where I maintain one piece of equipment. Just one, but believe me, it’s the only one I could ever hope and pray for.
A time machine.
I’ve been planning this for the past three months, waiting for the perfect opportunity to zip back in time, make things right, and return to the instant I left. Done and done. That momentous day is tomorrow.
I smiled, got up, and got ready for work. Before I left the apartment, I checked the contents of the small backpack sitting beside the desk again. I don’t know why I do this every day since the bag’s been packed and ready for a month now. Maybe because tomorrow is the day when I put the plan into motion, hop into the past, and save her, so naturally, I’m a little nervous. Actually, I’m not sure if I’m even going to bring the bag or not. If I was going to stay in the past, it would be helpful, but if I’m just zipping back for a minute, I won’t need it. Ugh, I don’t know. I stared at my doctorate from MIT framed and hanging on the wall near a picture of June and I. So much “smarts” and sometimes it’s just really hard to make simple decisions.
I drove to work. It takes about fifteen minutes on an average day. I pulled into the nondescript office park in suburban Boston and followed the winding driveway that weaved past a series of buildings that all look the same: each of the four-floor, new-ish looking brick buildings covered in heavily-tinted windows. Building, driveway, parking lot, building, driveway, parking lot. Over and over again, they passed by on both sides of my car. The only distinguishing feature was the monument sign by each driveway that told which company lived where. A full third of my commute takes place in this office park. Today it took a little longer as the road was coated with a thick, heavy, gray-ish salty slush that continuously splutted out of the way as it got run over.
I pulled into the driveway by the building where I work. The sign out front says it’s a branch of the Food And Drug Administration, one of the more “oh-hum” branches of the government. When people ask what we do here, we happily pass out a pamphlet illustrating our research into the effects of irradiated food. None of this is true.
If things were done in a more conventional manner that equaled the importance of this facility, this building would be surrounded by enough concrete barriers, high-voltage razor wire fences, Special Forces-trained guards, guns, missiles, moats, dogs, electronic counter measures, magnetic rail guns, robots, and sharks with lasers on their heads to make any Supermax prison look like an ant
hill.
While all of those security measures might be needed for a place like this, it also would attract a considerable amount of attention. Human history has been full of intrepid spirits who have seen a seemingly impossible task before them and, despite all normal inclinations for self-preservation, have attempted to conquer them. This is why the news is full of people who’s last act is to win a Darwin Award for things ranging from trying to climb Mount Everest to robbing the local gun shop. As long as the impossible thing is there, people will keep trying to beat it until someday someone succeeds.
This is also why the most important invention in human history is hidden, unprotected, in a nondescript building in the most boring corner of the most average-looking business park in the country. Because, hey, who would think to look for it here?
I walked up to the thick glass door and slid my badge in the card reader. It beeped, flashed the expected green light, and I entered. As with all federal buildings, this one had the obligatory out-of-shape, middle-aged, security guard who operated the X-ray machine and the metal detector gateway. Guys like him are so standard issue, that I bet if I lifted his somewhat official-looking cap I’d be rewarded with a shiny head ringed with the shaggy gray hair circumnavigating his globe from ear to ear (but never gets farther north than the Tropic of Cancer) just like every other security guard I’ve ever seen. Frank’s his name. He’s ok in tiny doses measured in milligrams. He nodded when he saw me enter the building, and I was greeted with a strong townie accent.
“Mahnin’ Tim. ‘T’s a might slushy out this mahnin’.”
I nodded in agreement and mustered a smidgen of feigned interest. “Yeah, it sure is, Frank.” I emptied the contents of my pockets into the scuffed gray plastic bin, sent it down the conveyor belt, and watched with interest as the gaping maw of the X-ray machine gobbled it up.
Frank didn’t even look at the screen, and instead continued to make small talk like a seasoned professional, which, in a way, is probably true.
“Th’ front wahk was slippery comin’ in this mahnin’. Yuh need to make shuah it gets cleaned awf prahpahly.”
I smiled as I walked soundlessly through the metal detector and told him the same thing I would say every few days, “Sorry, Frank, I only do maintenance on the technical equipment inside. You should call the business park maintenance staff for the outdoors stuff.” I stopped on the other side and reloaded my pockets from the gray bin that survived being excreted by the X-ray machine. Every once in a while I think of trying to find an old-time-y musket to put in the bin and see if he would notice. I doubt it. Maybe I should start off small with something a little less threatening, like a boomerang. A non-sharpened boomerang. Does Nerf make a boomerang? I should check into that.
Frank knows he’s about to lose his audience so he let loose with what is usually a sure-fire winner, “How ‘bout them Pats? Think they got a chance this yeah?”
I’ve told him before that I don’t follow sports, but to humor him, I turned, gave a non-committal, “Eh, maybe,” framed with a shrug and resumed walking down the hall after completing my daily entrance dance.
***