Timestamp, a novella by Michael Gullo (2009)
Jake made the call from in front of the building, looking at the door. He hoped to sound casual when she answered. As the phone rang, he watched two tramps amble out of the darkness side-by-side along the filthy curb close to the passenger window. The nearest looked into the car, as if he was taking inventory. When his eyes caught sight of the stack of notebooks at Jake’s side, he looked up and fixed him with blazing blue crazy eyes that seemed to say, “if you need another something to give you nightmares, I’m the man for it.” His long filthy pea-coat brushed the mirror, leaving an eerie smudge as he passed.
She answered, “Jake?”
“Hey babe, what’s shakin’?”
“Jake! Where have you been? I called you like ten times last week, and all I got was your voicemail.”
“Kerrie, wait. Don’t get all mad. I…”
“I’m not getting all anything. I have a right…”
“Stop,” Jake interrupted. “I miss you too, but I didn’t call to get yelled at. I called for your help.”
“My help?” Kerrie softened. “What’s wrong?”
“You mean besides Uncle Jake dying?” he answered. “Besides that, it’s all good. He left me this,” he paused, “thing. Listen, put Cody on the phone.”
“Cody? I thought you needed MY help. Jake, if you’re…”
“Kerrie,” he snapped, “I’ll explain in a minute. Right now, I need Cody.”
“Fine!”
Jake listened as Kerrie called her brother Cody. He squinted through the rain-blurred windshield, trying to focus the heavy-looking grey steel door into one bead of rainwater, but just as Cody came to the phone, the bubble popped and he followed the drop down to the wiper blade. When he looked up, he was surprised to see that it hadn’t taken the door with it. It could have been ten minutes, or ten seconds - he couldn’t tell anymore because he hadn’t slept in six days – ever since Uncle Jake’s best and only friend, Redd, took him aside at the grave after everyone else had wandered away to return to their regularly scheduled lives. He’d heard Aunt Syl talking to her husband about stopping off to get the dry cleaning, and the priest got a call and he put a dime on the Colts giving up nine to the Steelers. Uncle Jake - his namesake – was dead, and all anyone could think of was…
“JAKE! You spacin’ out dude? Hey!”
“I’m sorry, man. I was – I haven’t slept much.”
“Yeah, sure. You must be gettin’ the good ganj up there. Same old Jake – I’m proud of you, man.”
“I’m not high, Cody!” Jake protested.
“Well I sure am,” Cody laughed. “I hope you don’t mind I dipped your sack while you’re gone. Figured you didn’t care. Figured you’d bring more home with you since you were there and could get more. You can get more, can’t you? It’s dry here.”
The last thing Jake remembered before he passed out was staring at the beams stretching from the streetlamps, and how they clung to the car, and he swayed as he watched the drops of rain crash against the windshield and explode into thousands of shimmering yellow and black ever-spreading constellations of H’s and O’s.
He awoke to a horn sounding in the distance and someone shaking him. He’d been dreaming about the bums, and his heart pounded as if it was trying to escape his chest to run away from them.
“Jake, man. Get up. JAKE!”
“What are you doing out here,” Kerrie asked as his eyes opened. Concern sketched her eyebrows into a ragged valley, and her eyes darted back and forth from Jake to the noisy inner city scene around them.
Jake was bleary-eyed and confused. “What’re you two doing here?”
“Us?” Kerrie asked. “What are you doing out here, in this neighborhood? This is dangerous, Jake.”
Cody continued Kerrie’s thought, “You told us to come here, dude. What for? Man, we drove all night long. We thought you were in real trouble.”
Jake caught clear sight, through the now dry windshield, of the steel door that he’d hoped wouldn’t actually be there when he followed his uncle’s written directions the day before. “I AM in real trouble.”
“What are you doing down here? Is this your hook up?”
“My what? Dude! Get over it!”
“Kerrie wouldn’t let me bring any, bro…”
Kerrie stomped her foot. “Oh, will you grow up, Cody. We didn’t come here for effing weed…”
“Hold it, you two. Don’t get started.” He looked at the door. “We have to get in there.” He pointed through the windshield.
Cody looked at it too. “Why do we have to get in there?”
“It’s where Uncle Jake wants me to go. He left me these instructions.” He handed a thick bundle to Kerrie. Just then, movement on the left caught his eye. He focused, across the street, but all he saw was the plate-glass window of the apparently abandoned office building on the corner. Then, he saw them – a reflection of the homeless guys from the night before. They were on the side-road up ahead, out of view except for the image in the glass. They leaned on the fender of a dark sedan at the curb, and sipped casually from what appeared to be coffee cups. If not for the neighborhood around them and their clothing, they could have been mistaken for two businessmen on a break before rushing back to the office. The one with the eyes had been scary enough last night, but now that he got a better look at them, he thought he recognized something about the other one.
“What’s in here?”
“Huh?”
“What’s in here?” Kerrie asked, holding the bundle of assorted notebooks with dog-eared papers sticking out at odd angles. The whole mess gave the sensation of having been gathered in great haste.
“It’s his instructions.” Jake cast a wary glance at the door. “Ok, listen. This is going to take some time to explain. We need a safe place to talk, and I need food.” He scanned two knots of kids loitering catty-corner from one another only yards away. They were young, but their watchful eyes spoke of cold and calculating experience. “Let’s get out’a here and go to Uncle Jake’s.”
“Wait, what’s in there, Jake?” Kerrie pointed at the door.
“It’s – I’m not sure. I think - - I mean, he says it’s - - ” Jake looked at the door. He’d seen the schematics and the pictures. He’d read the notes. He’d even read Uncle Jake’s manifesto -- if it could be called a manifesto - but he still didn’t believe it, himself. “He says it’s a time machine.”
Kerrie took a halting breath, and her eyes rolled in disbelief. “What the heck are you talking about, Jake? Do you mean to tell us that you called in the middle of the night, after not taking my calls for nearly two weeks, to get us to drive a three hundred and twenty miles so you could tell us some crack-brained story about…”
“Wait a minute,” Cody interrupted. “Dude, you sounded – I mean, you were desperate, man. We thought you were in real trouble. And then, when you just hung up. We thought you were dead, bro.”
“Keep it down!” Jake scanned the kids nervously. Their eyes seemed to split time between Jake and the bums around the corner.
“For Christ’s sake, Jake!” Kerrie exclaimed, “I have finals this week! I’m supposed to graduate in ten days. What are you thinking?”
“Stop yelling at me, Kerrie!” Jake protested. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” He looked at the collection in her hands. “Ok, let’s just go in and see. Uncle Jake was bananas, but he wasn’t crazy. Those notes say he made a time machine, and – well, you’ll see when you read it.”
“Jake, your uncle didn’t make a time machine. There’s no such thing as time travel. I don’t have time for this, Jake. My dad’s expecting me to start work as soon as I graduate. This is a big opportunity for me! How many kids do you know who go directly from college into a job with a national news firm?”
“Yeah, Jake,” Cody agreed. “This is nuts!” He looked at the stuff in Kerrie’s hand. “Is that all there is?”
“He wrote me a letter too. And there’s this key.” He dug in his jeans pocket and pulled out a brass key with no ring.
“Does it fit the door?”
“I don’t know. I was scared to check until you guys got here.” He paused and looked at the notebooks. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I ain’t slept much.”
“Well, let’s see,” Cody grabbed the key.
“Wait!” Jake yelled. “I have to explain…”
“What do you have to explain? You say that your uncle made a time machine…”
“Shhhh. Keep it down, man!” Jake interrupted and noticed one bum press his ear. He appeared to be – listening.
“Yeah, right – and that those notes told you all about it. Well, I say this is nuts. Let’s open up that door there and see who’s right.”
Jake got out of the car, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop Cody. Before he knew it, the door was open and Cody had disappeared inside. He looked at Kerrie, and she nervously turned her back to him and followed her brother.
Cody’s voice rang out from the opening, “There’s nothing in here, man! Hey, Jake!”
Jake approached cautiously. He had seen the pictures. He knew that through the doorway was going to be a one-room office with gray indoor-outdoor carpet, tan paint, a card table with an old Packard Bell computer, and a single closet door on the back wall.
“Jake!” Kerrie called.
“I’m coming.” He crossed the threshold and closed the door, leaving thoughts of the bums and drug dealers behind him. He lifted his head to see Cody stepping into the closet and reaching for a string to turn on the light.
“There’s nothing here, Jake.” Kerrie said.
To Jake, she sounded relieved. “It’s here,” he replied.
“Dude! There’s nothing here. Unless – Maybe if I pull this chain a thousand times,” he turned the light on and off, “maybe I’ll go whizzing into the future and cure cancer.”
“Not cancer, Cody. Society.”
“What the hell, dude! What are you on, man? Seriously. All we have here is a windowless room that smells like shit…”
“It’s mold,” Kerrie inserted.
“What?”
“The smell. It’s mold.”
“Fine. All we have here is a moldy windowless room in which your uncle may, or may not have gone completely bonkers. There’s no time machine, and there’s no cure for society. And there…”
“Yes there is. You’re standing in it.” Jake took the papers from Kerrie and headed for the card table. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
Jake spent the next four hours giving them a tour through the high points of the mysterious stack. By the time they were finished, it was early afternoon and none of them had eaten.
“So, your uncle not only thought he built a time machine, he believed it,” Cody said during a pause in Jake’s lesson.
“I believe it too, I think,” Kerrie said.
“It’s true,” Jake asserted.
“True? How do you know, Jake?”
“Because I read every word of this, and it would be impossible to fake the detail.”
“Ok, let’s assume for just one minute that this,” Cody passed his hand over the mass of papers and notes spread on the card table, “is the real thing. Then that would mean that this,” he pointed at the computer, “is the control console.”
“Right,” Jake insisted.
“Then, that would mean that your uncle had a plan for some kind of utopian society where…”
Kerrie cut him off. “It’s not utopia, it’s more like a correction or a rebalancing – What did he call it, Jake?”
“The name’s not important. What’s important is the message. Things are out of control. Society’s present driving force – money – has pervaded, like a cancer, nearly each and every aspect of humanity…”
“Right, that’s it!” Cody inserted. “Money’s the message. But what does he suggest we do about it? Should we do away with money? That’s a good idea. Let’s start Monday.”
“That’s the point, Cody. We can’t start Monday. We can’t start ever unless we hope to wipe out all mankind in the bargain.”
“That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?”
“A little. But let’s think about this for a second. There was a time in history before money existed, when people provided for their concrete needs with concrete means. They hunted and gathered and planted small gardens, and shared the fruits of their labor with the other members of their small communities. Times were tough, realities were harsh, and lives were short. Sometime in that ancient history, nobody knows when, the concept of currency came about. Maybe it was when the first group of upright humans fragmented and a second group was created. Somewhere along the way, these few fragments became many and the many became strangers. It was no longer an easy choice for a person to freely give supplies to a stranger from their own provisions – especially when times were not good. Still, it’s easy to imagine humans being humane. Maybe instead of giving, it occurred to them to exchange the stuff for something the stranger had plenty of. Thus, the barter system was born…”
“Wait,” Cody interrupted. “You say that like it’s a fact.”
“It is a fact, Cody.”
“You’re talking about a time before history; how do you know it’s a fact?”
“That’s tough to explain.”
“Try me.”
“Ok, but first you have to understand about time travel.”
“Time travel as your uncle imagined it?”
“No, time travel as my uncle did it.”
“Are you saying that your uncle actually used this thing?”
“Of course he did. Wouldn’t you?”
The question caught him off guard. “Me? I – I’m not sure. No, I don’t think I would.”
Jake’s eyebrow went up, and he looked at his longtime friend. “Are you sure? What if you could use it to fulfill your every desire? What if you could go forward in time and have everything you ever dreamed?”
“Why not back in time?” Cody asked. “Wouldn’t I want to go back in time to make changes that would affect me here in the present?”
“Well, that depends. One theory, that of Coherent History, suggests that history is fated. One cannot go back in time at all to change anything. Another theory, Bi-modal History, suggests that the two histories created through time travel create one another – Like Terminator and Terminator Two. Under these circumstances, no, you couldn’t go back in time and change or achieve anything. But there is a third theory, Free History; if it is a true theory, you are free to change whatever you like, however you like it, but eventually, so would anybody else, and their change might contradict yours.”
“Well, which is the true theory?”
“That’s complicated.”
“What do you mean, complicated?”
“I mean that when I got to that part in his notes, things got complicated.”
“Wait. Did he use this machine or not?”
“Yes, he used it.”
“Did he go forward in time or back into history?”
“Both.”
“What did he do?”
“All kinds of things.”
“Dammit, Jake! I’m hungrier than a two-headed rat! Spit it out.”
“It’s complicated, Cody. He has complete notes explaining every detail of his travels, but you would have to read them to grasp the answer to your question. For instance,” Jake dug through the notebooks and flipped to a page, “on his first trip, he travelled to Ellis Island on April 7, 1906. He wanted to see his Great Grandfather Antonio arrive in America on the S.S. Louisiana from Naples, Italy. Look here,” Jake pointed to his place on the page, “See? There was no S.S. Louisiana that day, and there was no Great Grandfather Antonio.” Jake moved his finger down the page a few lines, “There was no Statue of Liberty either. The earthly physical world was more or less identical, but the things and the people were completely different.”
“I don’t get it,” Kerrie said.
“I didn’t either,” Jake flipped the page, “but then I read this. This time he went back in time to his birthday on April 11, 1970. He found his way to where the hospital he was supposed to have been born in was supposed to be, but all he found was a non-descript windowless building that was more or less the size and shape of the hospital he remembered from the neighborhood of his youth.”
“Ok, but how does all of this make your description of ancient man’s economic system a fact?”
“Wait, I’m not done. I’ll skip ahead a little.” He thumbed through an inch of pages and stopped. “Ok, here. Look at this. On June 30 of last year, he set the machine to take him 45,000 years into the past when it is theorized that humans in our modern form first moved into Europe. He spent fifty years in that era the first time. He never found any humans…”
“Wait, fifty years?” Kerrie interrupted. “What do you mean he spent fifty years there?”
“I told you it’s complicated. Apparently, he can stay as long as he wants.”
“But,” Cody interrupted, “Wasn’t he only thirty-eight when he died?”
“Yup.”
“Then, how could he spend fifty years anywhere?”
“Well, according to this, we are on one time line. That timeline is unchangeable. It is fated – as in the Coherent History theory – but we can travel to other timelines and continue on in those until we leave them, but when we return to this timeline, we can neither step into its past nor its future.”
“I don’t get it,” Cody said.
“Yeah, it’s complicated like I said. Hang on a minute. Let me make the point, then you can ask some questions.” He flipped a couple of pages in the notebook, “Here, look. On July 1 of last year, he travelled back 45,000 years again. He spent only one year there that time. He found humans, but they were living in cities – not cities like we know today, but cities with buildings made entirely of plastic. No one worked. Everyone simply woke up and went to a town square – also made of plastic – and stared at a glass ball from sunup to sundown. No one spoke, and it was unclear to Uncle Jake whether or not they were capable of language at all. Like the other entry, it goes on to talk about what he and the others did for food, and how they were organized socially, but that’s not important right now.”
“Not important? How can you say that?”
“Well, I don’t mean that it’s unimportant. What I mean is that there are more important things to discuss.”
“Like what?” Kerrie asked.
“Well, the point, for one thing. As I said, as far as I can tell from all of this stuff, we are on one timeline. That timeline cannot be altered in any way. Still, Uncle Jake found his way to the future and to the past, and he spent many hundreds of years in both. He lived dozens of lives – realities – in both the past and the future, but not the past and the future like you might have imagined it before we walked into this room. His pasts and futures were on alternate timelines that he says” Jake picked up a different notebook and flipped to a page in the middle, “are all around us.”
“But, what about the fact?” Kerrie asked.
“That was one of these alternate realities.” He picked up a third notebook and flipped to a page near the end, “look here. On December 18 of last year, he travelled back 45,000 years again.” Jake slid his finger halfway down the page. “He says that this time period – reality – was the one that most closely resembled what scientists in our own reality theorize human life to have been like 45,000 years ago.”
“Wait, how many times did he go to 43,000 B.C.?” Cody asked.
“I think it was twenty-one.”
“And it was different every time?”
“According to this, yes.”
“You said he stayed fifty years one time and a year another time. How come he didn’t age?”
“He did age, but he aged in that new reality. When he came back, it was exactly the same time that it was when he left. He was no older. Interestingly, he was no more tired or hungry or anything else either. He was exactly the same as when he left.”
“Wait, then how did he know that he’d travelled in time?”
Cody sputtered, “Because he had those notebooks, Kerrie!”
“Um, no,” Jake interrupted. “He didn’t know. He had no idea that anything happened at all, at first. This is getting into the complicated part.”
“Wait,” Kerrie said. “I guess he couldn’t bring anything back with him, because that would be changing the reality, right?”
“Right.”
“Then, does that mean he can’t bring memories back with him either?”
“Yes – not conscious ones, anyhow.”
“Conscious ones?”
“Right. He found out he was travelling in time through his unconscious – his dreams.”
“Wait one minute!” Cody exclaimed. “I ain’t the smartest guy in the group, but are you telling me that you have me in this room for the last five hours to tell me about your uncle Jake’s crazy dreams?”
“Well, in a way, but not exactly.”
“Not exactly! That’s exactly what it sounds like to me! You’re telling me that your uncle left you some notebooks and a rabble of papers in which he claims to have travelled in time, but that he has no real tangible proof except the details he is able to piece together from his dreams?”
“Right.”
“What the hell, Jake! I can’t believe this. I guess I don’t need a joint anymore. I must be higher than a kite to listen to even one more second of this shit!”
“It gets better.”
“Better?”
“Yeah, the shit, it gets better. Listen for a minute. Remember, I told you that Uncle Jake’s best friend gave me these papers at the funeral. Well, I’ve been reading every word ever since. When I got to about where you are now – I mean when I knew about as much as you know right now – I was ready to pack it up and head back to school. I thought it was ridiculous. Of course, it took me a little longer because I had to read all of this stuff; you had the advantage of my experience.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Anyway, I was angry. If it wasn’t for the fact that Uncle Jake wanted me to have this, I never would have gone on – I’m glad that I did.”
“Yeah, me too. I’m thrilled,” Cody inserted sarcastically. “I’m hungry, man. Is this story going somewhere?”
“Wait, Cody,” Kerrie insisted. “Let him finish.”
“Ok, I’ll touch the high spots and we can go eat. He started having these dreams whenever he had a failed test. They were always very intense, and they were always about some non-existent version of the world we live in. At first, he didn’t make the connection, but after a couple of months, it occurred to him that maybe the tests weren’t failing, but they were succeeding, and he simply couldn’t bring back any evidence from his trips because that would defy some unknown law of time travel. With this idea in mind, he continued testing, but now without making any adjustments to the machinery. If he set the machines to travel back in time, he would inevitably have dreams that night, or shortly thereafter of some non-existent parallel universe in history. If he set the machine to go forward in time, he would dream of an alternate parallel future universe.”
“This is ridiculous!” Cody interrupted. “Just last night – no, not last night, last night I didn’t sleep, the night before last – I had a dream that there was this super weed. I was kind of in our dorm room, but it wasn’t our dorm room, it was a brothel and in each of the rooms in the suite was a different hottie just waiting to service my every dream and desire. There was this short brunette in…”
“You’re sick,” Kerrie interrupted.
Cody looked at her and continued, “does this mean that I was in a parallel reality, but I could only remember it in my dreams?”
“No, it means you’re a freak,” Jake answered. “Now shut up, I have to tell you how he found out that he was travelling in alternate realities.”
“Oh yeah, this ought’a be good.”
Kerrie looked at him, but didn’t say anything. She simply went on sitting cross-legged on the floor looking at Jake like little kids watch TV.
“He knew his story was unbelievable, and like with any unbelievable story, there was only one person he could turn to, his best friend.” He looked at Cody and continued. “He knew his friend would think he was nuts, but he was also pretty sure he was travelling in time. So, he designed a test. He planned to bring his friend Redd here to see the time machine. He planned to travel into the future with him.”
“Oh, this’ll be great! What did old Redd think of the time machine?”
“I don’t have time to go into every detail. In short, the next day Uncle Jake told Redd what Redd had dreamed about that night. After doing this a few times, and only being wrong once, Redd began believing. They started travelling in time together. Uncle Jake recorded his dream reconciliations in these notebooks.”
“Where are Redd’s notebooks?” Kerrie asked.
“Forget that, where’s Redd?” Cody quizzed.
“I don’t know. He gave me these at the funeral, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“We need to eat, man,” Cody said.
“Yeah, alright. Let’s get out of here for a little while. I can finish this story when we get back.”
Just then, quick knocks struck on the steel door. They sounded muffled and flat, not at all the sound he expected from that door. Jake’s mind immediately flashed to the homeless dudes. There had been something wrong about them in the reflection. Aside from their costumes, they just didn’t look like bums. They had looked like – business people. Then, that one, the one with the eyes, had pressed his ear and listened. Jake crossed the room almost in a daze. More knocks sounded on the door, and he opened it.
“Redd! What are you doing here?”
“Redd?” Kerrie asked. “Is he psychic too?”
Jake and Redd hugged, and Redd looked across the room at Kerrie and Cody.
“Hey there, I’m Redd. I’m sure you had time by now t’ get to know some about me.”
Cody and Kerrie just stared.
“Yeah, Redd. I was just telling these guys… Wait. How’d you know we were here?”
Redd smiled. “I been watchin’. I let you have enough time to get down particulars before I come knockin.’”
“Watching? But, why? I mean, why didn’t you just – tell me?”
Redd smiled again. It reminded Jake of the manager’s smile in The Heart of Darkness, except it wasn’t uneasiness that the smile commanded, it was – safety. It was as if in that simple and gentle smile, Jake knew he could trust this man with anything.
“Well, Jake. Let’s think about this. If I was’t come out tellin’ a buncha’ fluff about some time machine and the conspiracy to take it away while you was standin’ at your favorite uncle’s grave – wouldn’t it likely you’d think me a cracked nut?”
“But…”
“Jake, you a smart fella. I knew if I gave you that pile of papers and books you’d know what’t do with them. I gived you enough time’t read her over, and followed you here last night. I must say I was mighty surprised when these two come rollin’ up this mornin’, but then I just figured you called you in some backup – and then I was sure you was a smart fella’. So, I says to myself -- well, best I let you have time’t get these here,” he gestured to Kerrie and Cody, “up’t date. So, I scooched me down in the seat out there and munched on one of them power bars your uncle was so wild over, ‘n I rested my eyes.”
“Power bars?” Cody asked. “Do you have more?”
“I got just this one left. You’re welcome’t it if you want.”
Cody took the Power Bar and munched wildly before he felt Kerrie’s eyes upon him. He broke where half would have been before he’d taken his first bite and handed it to her. The rest he nibbled more gingerly thereafter.
“So, you wanted me to learn about this on my own? Why? And what conspiracy are you talking about?”
“Well, Jake, it’s like I said. You wouldn’t’a believed me no-how if I hadn’t.” Redd pulled a small electronic device from his pocket. It looked like an organizer, but when he finished fiddling with it, what looked like three different antennas and a Christmas light protruded from the front. He walked around the perimeter of the small room. “Besides, I had to keep an eye on you. There’s a lot of people out there that wants this technology.”
“What’s that?” Kerrie asked.
“It’s like I said, there’s lots of people wants this technology. They been trying just ‘bout everything you can imagine’t get their greedy little mitts on it.”
“But, what’s that?”
“This is a bit complicated. Basically, it scans for all sorts of radio frequencies. We don’t want people listening in, do we?”
“Listening in?” Kerrie asked. “Are we in danger here?”
Jake already knew the answer to that one. “Yes, Kerrie, but it’s ok. Isn’t it, Redd?”
“What do you mean, it’s ok?” She stood.
Jake stopped her. “Kerrie, wait! It’s not that kind of danger. Don’t get all…”
“I’m not getting all anything! I just think that if you’re going to put me in danger, I have a right to know about it…”
“Not this again. You always say that right before you fly off the handle.” Jake mimicked her, “I’m not getting all anything…”
“That’s because you’re condescending…”
Redd smiled. “Hold the bus, you two. No one’s in danger. Well, no one but the whole world if those guys get their hands on this.”
“What guys?” Kerrie asked.
“Well, we don’t exactly know. They ain’t all government, and they ain’t all private neither. No matter what they are, they don’t exactly play by the rules. Still, it’s not like they hurt anyone. We’ve called ‘em all kinds of things. When they first approached us, one of them called himself Mr. Black, and he called the other one Dan.”
“Black and Dan?” Cody scoffed. “Sounds like a real badass bunch a guys. But then again, who better to protect the whole world from but the infamous Black and Dan.”
“No, Cody.” Redd smiled again. “Mr. Black was sent here to talk to us about this here machine. They offered to buy it and hire Jake’s uncle as a consultant. Of course, Jake didn’t sell, and they started with the pressure. First, they broke in here and vandalized the place. Fortunately, Condon was a paranoid little fat guy; he brought in this here scanner and found that the vandalism was a cover up for planting listening devices. They figured if they couldn’t buy it, they’d steal it.”
“Who’s Condon?” Cody asked.
“We’ll get to him in a minute. Anyway, because of the way this thing’s made, the place was pretty secure’t begin with. Nobody can listen in from outside, or drill peep holes through or nothing like that. Behind this sheetrock there’s another wall with a special lead alloy for shielding. The equipment can’t work without it.”
“Hold it,” Cody interrupted again. “You mean we’re standing in a lead room? No wonder old Jake went nuts. He might as well eat paint chips.”
“Heh,” Redd chuckled. “It’s an alloy, Cody. It’s perfectly safe, n’ as far as I know, Jake never did eat none of it.”
“Anyhow,” Cody returned, “I just can’t imagine a lead shielded soundproof room in this neighborhood. I mean, that’s pretty expensive stuff. Why not hide it better?”
“Well, that was how Jake wanted it. At first, he wanted to hide in plain sight. In the end, it’s worked to our advantage.”
“Wait.” Kerrie said. “I don’t get this at all. You said that they broke in and vandalized the place. Why didn’t they just steal the equipment?”
“Well, that’s where Jake had ‘em beat. They was always watchin’ – kinda gave ‘em the sense that they wasn’t missin’ nothin’. They just watched, and waited for us to get it working without ever knowing t’was working all along. There’s two guys outside right this minute. Jake, you seen ‘em, aintcha?”
“I don’t think so, Redd.”
“Sure you have, and you know it too. Think about it. Do you remember those two come stumblin’ past where you was parked last night? That’s them.”
“Those bums? I knew it. I saw them again this…”
“I know. That’s why I been watchin’. So far, they don’t know this thing works, and they don’t know how to finish it themselves, but now they know about the notebooks. I wish you wouldn’t have said that this morning.”
“Said what?”
“You told Kerrie here that the whole thing was explained in them notebooks.”
“Anyhow, we safe for now. We know they tried to use it, but they don’t know how. They copied the hard drive on that computer over there, and they got the program, but even if they broke through all the passwords, they couldn’t make it work.”
“Why not?”
“Because the program’s not the whole thing. They need the room.”
“But, they could just break in and use it.”
“Yeah, and they break in all the time, but like I said. They ain’t smart enough. I know TV wants the government slash private villain to be invincible and an evil genius with endless resources, but the truth is that they ain’t. What they really are is egomaniacs who figure if they can’t get it working, then they’ll wait till we do. And that’s where they made their mistake. They broke in, and they tried to use it, but it didn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Because Jake was smarter than them. He hid the executable file.”
“The executable file? What’s that?”
“Well, that’s a story for the programmers, but the short and boring of it is that an executable file is the set of instructions that tells a computer program what to do.”
“Ok, but how did he hide it? You said they got the program.”
“They did. And they probably learned everything they could before they broke in and tried the thing, but it didn’t work because Jake tricked ‘em.”
“How?”
“The executable in the program is real, but it’s not. It’s the original. It works, but not without the Windows time clock. They think the machine is still under construction, and that the program is the problem – because we let ‘em believe that. To a computer programmer, everything looks normal. They haven’t thought t’ look there.”
“Wait,” Cody said. “You travel in time by setting the time and date stamp in Windows? You have to be kidding me!”
“Well, there’s the proof right there. It ain’t logical, and it don’t make no sense, but it works. If you remember, that purloined letter sat right there on that desk in plain sight just like this here time machine. Now, if they had a kid on that staff of theirs, the trick wouldn’t work, but they ain’t.”
“That’s probably true,” Kerrie agreed.
“Still,” Jake began, “how long can it work? Eventually, someone’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe, but they ain’t figured it yet, and we can only deal with what we have, not what we might get.”
“Alright, then. Tell me about this cancer stuff,” Jake asked. “I mean, I get it, but I still don’t understand.”
“All’s I know, Jake, is what’s in them papers your uncle left for you. He was the Biology buff, not me.”
“Cancer?” Kerrie asked, looking at Jake.
“Cancer,” Jake answered. “My uncle died of Brain Cancer, and according to his paperwork, he believes – believed – that he got it from time travel.” Jake looked at Redd, “Redd has it too.”
Redd’s head hung a little lower, but he didn’t look beaten, he looked resolute.
“And the other guy, Redd, what was his name, Condon?”
“Other guy?” Cody asked.
“Yip, name was Condon. I ain’t much of a story teller and I ain’t no Biologist neither - why not you tell it while I get this here box fired up.” Redd bent over the computer and reached behind it to flip the switch.
Jake watched, but he began telling the story, “There was a third guy. It’s a little complicated, but I’ll try and keep it short.” He reached for the only red notebook in the bunch and flipped the pages slowly until he settled on the one he wanted. “Condon was another friend. By this spring, they all knew that they had advanced Brain Cancer. Uncle Jake and Condon were pretty sick already. They met here and, through Uncle Jake’s notes, determined that their best travels had been into the future.”
“Yep,” Redd inserted.
“Well, they set the machine to the future and Condon – Poof – disappeared.” Jake looked at Redd and continued, “So, Uncle Jake and Redd here took some sleeping pills and went to bed. Their dreams told them that they’d gone to the future and Condon died.”
“That’s right,” Redd said.
“Anyhow, Redd and Uncle Jake never traveled again. Right, Redd?”
“That’s right, too. We didn’t wanna end up like ole’ Condon – dead and gone and no one to see us off.”
Jake thought of his uncle’s funeral. How much better is it to have those who do see you off go on with their lives after your funeral as if they’d only stopped to pay a thirty-five cent toll along the Jersey Turnpike?
“Redd, did you keep notebooks too?” Kerrie asked.
“Nah, I ain’t the type to keep a journal. I did all the writin’ I wanted in college, and even then I only did what I needed to get my degree.”
“Degree?” Cody asked -- obviously astonished.
“Yeah, my degree. What? You don’t think I’m smart enough for a degree?”
“Well, I mean. No, I didn’t say that. What was your major?”
“Philosophy.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.” He looked at Jake, “That’s where I met your uncle. We was roommates at Rutgers.”
“But why cancer?” Kerrie asked. “I would imagine this kind of thing would drive you insane – I mean, if you actually spent as many as fifty years in one reality and then suddenly came back to this one. I could imagine insanity, but I don’t get the cancer thing.”
Jake looked at Redd, but it was clear that Redd wanted him to answer. “Well, Uncle Jake’s notes talk about that. According to him,” He looked at Redd who only nodded as if to say go ahead with the story, “humans are uniquely suited to time travel of this type. It’s funny that you would ask about insanity, because the whole subject fascinated Uncle Jake. Basically, it is his belief that humans travel in alternate realities all of the time. A guy wakes up next to his wife, and his reality is husband. That same guy goes into the kitchen and his kids are playing their handhelds, and his reality is father. He goes to work, and his reality is engineer. He goes to church, and his reality is…”
“But those are just parts of the same reality,” Kerrie asserted.
“Right, but on the most basic level, they are different realities. The guy never behaves the same way with his children as he does when he’s in his private bed with his wife, and he wouldn’t act that way at work either.”
“But…” Kerrie began. Jake cut her off.
“Ok, listen. Maybe that isn’t the best example. Think about the international spy, or the undercover cop. They play roles, and they have to submerse themselves in the reality of those roles in order to be successful at them – to survive. Well, the time travel thing is like that. Once they landed in that new reality, they were set in their roles. Normal humans are adaptable like that. Of course, I would agree that fragile ones might not be. If one is already in an emotional place where they have not come to terms with their personal reality, then yes, they would likely go insane.”
“But, Cancer?” Kerrie asked again.
“Right. He couldn’t really figure that one out except to theorize about memory.” Once again, Jake looked at Redd who gestured that he should continue. “He studied memory extensively, and though he still doesn’t know any more about it than any other professional, he did have a theory about the cancer. Memory clearly has something to do with the hippocampus of the limbic system and synaptic connections between neurons in the brain. We have no idea how they’re formed other than to say that the bulk of grey matter is composed of millions of neurons that communicate with each other using neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters travel along the axon of one neuron through depolarization and are picked up by the dendrites of the receiving neuron across a gap known as the synaptic gap. These neurons form complex synaptic networks, so complex that they make up an actual mass that -- together with a number of individual structures -- we call the brain. Using enhanced MRI and PET scans, we can see real-time evidence of this depolarization activity in the brain in very specific places while individual sensory, learning, and memory tasks are performed, but we cannot see actual memories – they’re called the engram. The search for the engram is an ongoing process. So, as of now, we have absolutely no clue how memories are actually stored and retrieved. Uncle Jake theorized that those synaptic connections caused one physical pattern of neuron networks when he travelled in time, but when he returned, those connections were broken and reassembled into his actual reality. It was his theory that this constant trauma – especially that from the prolonged visits -- is what causes the cancer.”
“And he wants YOU to use this thing?” Kerrie asked protectively. “I mean, he knows that it will give you cancer, but he still wants you to use it?”
Redd spoke in Uncle Jake’s defense. “It ain’t like that, Kerrie. The cancer seems to come from long term trips. It’s like…”
“Yeah, it SEEMS to. So far, all I’ve heard is that no one knows anything about this, and that it’s complicated.” She said the word in a mocking tone. “There IS a risk that it could be dangerous. Jake COULD be wrong. There’s no proof.” She looked at Jake. “Are you willing to take that risk?”
Jake considered the question. “Yes, Kerrie, I think I am.”
“So you’re going to use this thing?”
“Yeah.”
She stomped her foot and exclaimed, “I can’t believe you! How could you even think about it? Why don’t you just go out there and get that Black person and sell this stuff. You have no…”
“Kerrie,” Redd smiled. “That ain’t a good idea. Those ain’t the best people to…”
“Then we find the best people and we sell it. We don’t know anything about this machine.”
“Redd does,” Jake inserted.
“Yeah, and look at him – he’s dying because of it.”
“Kerrie!” Jake exclaimed.
“No, Jake, it’s ok. She’s right about that. I am dying. But, I think that’s because I was greedy. I stayed too long, and I came back. I believe that if I had either taken fewer long trips, or stayed shorter periods I would be fine. On the other hand, I’ve lived dozens of lives and seen things no person alive can even imagine. You know what they say, we all got to die sometime.”
Kerrie was about to argue her point, but Cody spoke up. “Listen. This is all fascinating, and I would love to stand around and watch you debate for a while, but I’m starving. Maybe we could continue this at a diner or something.”
Redd looked at the computer screen and the notebooks and most important, the kids’ faces. He didn’t want to leave, but he knew it was the right thing to do. He also knew that if he left all of the notebooks behind, they would be taken, and the secret would be out. “Ok, but we have to take these with us.”
“Even the computer?” Cody asked. “They’ve been here before, and they haven’t stolen it.”
“No, not the computer, Cody, just the notebooks. They have almost everything in them. Let’s split ‘em up and take ‘em out under our shirts.”
“What about those guys out there?” Jake asked.
“Well, someone’ll follow us, and some’ll come in here and have a look around. That’s how they do. I’ll turn this off, and nothing will be any different from any of the hundreds of other times they came in.”
“Hundreds?” Cody asked.
“Yep. They come every time we leave.”
“And they’re going to follow us?” Kerrie asked.
“Yep. They don’t mean no harm though. They just don’t like to miss nothing.”
“Are you serious?”
“Real serious. They keep tabs on us, and we keep tabs on them. It’s like the cold war. Everyone waitin’ for the other side to do something dumb, but so long as they think this thing’s not workin’ yet, they won’t do nothing.”
“Still,” Jake said, “that can’t last forever. Eventually, they have to figure it out, right?”
“Well, Jake,” Redd began as he handed a pile of notebooks to Kerrie, “I thought they would knock off when Jake died – like they would figure if he was dead, the thing would never be finished. They didn’t though. Then, I thought they would just come and take over and put up a guard until they figured it out, but they didn’t do that neither. They just keep watching. I suspect you right though – I can’t see them keeping this up forever. They’ll change soon. That’s why we have to go eat and get started. The thing about this here beauty is that we can jump a few times a day with the three of you…”
“The three of us!” Kerrie exclaimed. “I’m not going anywhere. No way!”
“I’ll go.” Cody inserted.
“What?” Kerrie asked. “A few hours ago, you said you wouldn’t.”
“Well, that was before – when he asked if I could have whatever I wanted. No, I wouldn’t go for that, but to make a difference, that would be amazing!” Then he added, “Besides, maybe they have some awesome weed technology in the future. Maybe we could get it legaliz…”
“My god! You are so immature!” Kerrie yelled. Then she flipped her shirt over the pile of notebooks tucked into her waistline and examined her reflection in the monitor screen.
“Hang on.” Jake said. “We can figure all of this out later. For now, let’s get out of here.”
“Ok,” Redd said. “I’ll go out first. I won’t tell you to act natural. There’s no point. Besides, they don’t seem to care if they’re seen. You’ll see. Just don’t let them see the notebooks. They know about them since they saw me hand them to Jake at the funeral, but they can’t be sure what’s in ‘em, and I wanna keep it that way as long as I can. If they heard you this morning, and there ain’t no reason to think they didn’t, they’ll be following the notebooks.”
Just outside, they all piled into the rental, and Jake drove away. He noticed the car following them immediately, and when they got to the diner on Route 3 in Hackensack, another car with Black and his sidekick joined their shadow, but parked on the other side of the lot. Black and Dan walked into the diner and took seats where they had a good view of the group. The first car-full waited in the lot.
“We can’t talk here,” Redd began as the waitress left with their drink order. “They can hear every word. Let’s just eat and head back. Let’s not have any mix-ups now.”
Cody saw the busboy head for the restroom, and he decided to go to the facilities. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he announced.
Jake had been paying attention to him, and knew what he was up to, but he didn’t say anything. Their meal passed without incident, and they all left well fed except Redd whose chemotherapy treatments left him with very little appetite. Both cars followed them back to the building, and disappeared into the neighborhood as they closed the heavy door behind them.
“Wow, that’s such a relief,” Kerrie said. “I can almost breathe better now that we can talk. What was WITH those guys?”
“That’s just how they do, Kerrie,” Redd answered, and scanned the room again with his handheld.
“Well, what do we do now?” Jake asked.
Redd reached around to the back of the computer and flipped the switch. “We turn this thing on and try it out. Are you ready?”
“Um, yeah, but don’t I have to know how to use it first? I mean, isn’t there some kind of training or something?”
“There’s no training for going. It’s the dreams that takes time to learn. They’re just like normal dreams. You’ll wake up, and if you ain’t concentratin’, you’ll forget them pretty fast. All you have to do before you go is set your mind on what you’ll do when you get there. Of course, this moment won’t exist in that reality, but your brain will take over if you’re in the right frame of mind when you get there.”
“Right frame of mind?”
Redd clicked an icon on the computer screen. “You two move back some. You should try standing in the closet and make sure you fit. You remember the checklist, don’t you?” He clicked and moved and highlighted some circles on the screen. “Go ahead and put those notebooks on the table there. You need to be thinkin’ about the checklist and stuff when I send you off.”
“You mean the form Jake filled out every time you guys woke up?” They pulled the notebooks out and moved.
“Yep.” Redd hit the enter key. “You need to keep that in mind when you go. Those are the kinds of things you need to be looking for. You need to - ” Redd pushed the enter key again – “concentrate on what the government’s like if there is one. You need to think about what to look for, so when you get there, you don’t waste time looking at everything else.” Redd hit the enter key again.
“But, I’ve never read those notes,” Cody said. “How am I going to know what to look for?”
“Well, the first three times, I think it’s a good idea if you just follow Jake’s lead.”
“Why the first three times?” Cody asked.
“Because that’s how many times I hit that there enter key.”
“What?”
“You just traveled in time,” Redd said with that smile on his face.
“What? How!” Jake exclaimed. “What do you mean I just traveled in time?”
Cody lifted his hands and looked at them. He turned around in a circle, and looked around the closet. “But, nothing happened!”
“Sure it did. You been to the same day two days in the future three times in the last couple seconds.” He looked at the computer screen. “You stayed a little long the first time – five days – but you seem to have learned the lesson pretty quick. The next two times, you only stayed a couple days.”
“But how?”
“I turned the computer on, set the clock, loaded the program, located you on the screen, and zapped you into the future.”
“You better not have zapped me,” Kerrie said nervously.
“No ma’am. You ain’t really the right kind of person for this sort of thing anyhow.”
“Not the right kind?”
“Kerrie, don’t get all upset,” Cody began.
“I’m not getting all…” She looked at Jake. “I was just making sure he didn’t zap me.”
“What do we do now?” Cody asked.
“Well,” Redd began, “when I did this the first time, Jake was here. He was experimentin’ though, so he didn’t tell me nothin’ until the next day. But, when Condon went the first time, Jake sorta debriefed him after.”
“Debriefed?”
“Yeah. Later he called it priming the dreams.”
“Priming the dreams?”
“Yeah, Cody,” He looked at Jake. “But I think it’s better if Jake tells you about this part. I gotta check the history here and make sure things went right.”
Jake took over. “It’s like he said. Uncle Jake liked priming the dreams, and I think it’s a good idea for now. Look here.” He plucked a notebook from the pile. “After a while, he had a kind of form to fill out.” “This was my favorite notebook in the whole bunch.”
“A form? You mean like the DMV?”
“Well, this was different. He lists ten things to concentrate on. You know how dreams work – I mean, you dream. They kind of take you wherever they want. Well, Uncle Jake thought that if he went to sleep thinking of these ten things, he would concentrate on them when he dreamed. He could control his dreams.”
“It worked too,” Redd said. “In time, I controlled ‘em so good I could wake up and fill out the forms almost completely. We took quick notes, and then when we came back here in the morning, we filled in the details.”
“Let’s just go through this from the beginning.” Jake read selectively from the notebook. “Dreams happen, as you know, during REM sleep. What you may not know is that they also happen during about half of non-REM sleep as well, and those dreams are generally less bizarre, and consist of more positive emotions. But, they don’t include the lucid dreams that we’re looking for.”
“Why are we looking for lucid dreams?” Cody asked.
“Well, Uncle Jake found that his lucid dreams were the most reliable sources for finding what is called day residue.”
“Day Residue?”
“Yes. Actually, Freud first proposed it in 1900, but it has been studied extensively. It’s basically a compilation of memory traces left behind by the conscious mind – the awake mind. It’s also thought to be the raw material for our dreams – especially the lucid ones.”
“What are lucid dreams?”
“A lucid dream is one where the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming…”
“Or she,” Kerrie inserted.
“Um, yeah, or she. In lucid dreams, the dreamer is able to manipulate the characters and scenes…”
“Hold it,” Cody jumped in. “How does that help? I mean, if he was manipulating the scenes and characters, wasn’t he making up the dream? How could he say that he was dreaming of the real future that he visited in time travel if he was making up the dream?”
“It ain’t like that, Cody,” Redd said. “What you manipulate is where you go, and what you do when you see what you see when you get there. For instance, if you on a street corner, and you see a crowd on the right, and you wanna go see what’s up, you can choose to turn right.”
“Right,” Jake said. “Anyway, Jake was looking for lucid dreams because that was how he got the most information. He found that by priming his dreams before sleep he could concentrate on the things he wanted to know about while he was in the dream.”
“I’ve controlled my dreams before,” Kerrie said. “I’ve even gotten up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and got directly back into the dream I was having before I woke up so that I could finish the story or whatever.”
“Yeah!” Redd exclaimed. “That’s exactly it. That’s what it’s like.”
“Well,” Jake said, “that’s what Uncle Jake meant by priming the dream.” He looked at Kerrie. “When you woke up to use the bathroom, you wanted to get back into that dream, so you primed it. You concentrated on what was going on before you woke up, and when you got back to bed, you went back to that dream.”
“Still,” Cody interjected, “I have a lot of these lucid dreams…”
“I bet you do.” Kerrie interrupted.
“Anyway, I have a lot of lucid dreams. They’re not the problem. The problem is remembering them when I wake up. I mean, I know when I wake up in the morning that I had vivid dreams, but I can’t really remember them. How does Uncle Jake suggest we deal with that?”
“Great question, Cody.” Jake flipped a couple pages in the notebook. “Look here. He has all kinds of information about dream recall. The first thing he says, though, is that priming the dream is very important in both dreaming about what you want to dream about and recalling the dream after you wake up, but he also does something called mining for the dreams. You see, dreams are most often recalled when you wake up in the middle of them, and to do that he sets an alarm at specific intervals in the night, and he wakes up and immediately records his memories.”
“That would be annoying!” Kerrie said.
“It was,” Redd assured her, “but it worked.”
“The most important thing to know is your own personal sleep rhythm. On average, most people have anywhere from four to six REM cycles per night. The last couple of which are the longest lasting from ninety to one hundred minutes. Remember, the REM cycles are where the lucid dreams are. We want the lucid dreams – for now anyway.”
“What do you mean, for now?”
“We’ll get to that later. Eventually, we want to capture as many dreams as we can because that will give the most complete information.”
“You said that the most information was in the lucid dreams.”
“Right, but I said the most complete information came from mining the most dreams.”
“I can see that.”
“Anyway, at first, until we’ve trained ourselves to remember our dreams and what our personal sleep cycles are, it’s best to set the alarm clock for the point in the night where we are most likely to be in the middle of the last couple of REM cycles – five or six hours.”
“But, maybe we can set it up so that we can get right back to sleep and finish the dream. Like, maybe if we use a tape recorder instead of turning on a light and writing. Hey, and reviewing the dream would probably prime the next dream too, right?”
“Yep, Cody,” Redd said. “It looks like you gettin’ the idea.”
“Ok, so when do we start?”
“Well, we have a few things to go over first, and then we can go back to Uncle Jake’s place and get some sleep and get started.”
“There’s only one problem,” Redd said. “Those guys have pretty sophisticated listening stuff. We won’t be able to do the tape recorder thing at Jake’s. You gonna have to write.”
“Shit! How do we get around that?”
“We wrote out our dreams, but we had thought about sleeping here. We didn’t do it though because they would wonder about the beds, or cots, or whatnot. We was too old for sleepin’ on the floor. After time, we just got good at rememberin’ ‘em.”
Jake continued, “It’s best anyway to get right to bed after the trip so that the day residue is fresh and not cluttered over by other stuff from this reality.”
“Right, Jake,” Redd confirmed, “but this was just practice. This was just to get a feel for the process. Tonight, it’s best to get the dream primers in place, and go to Jake’s and get a good night’s sleep.”
“Ok. I guess we should discuss that, then.” Jake flipped a few pages. “Here it is. Ok there are ten things to look out for. The first is monetary systems…”
“Wait a minute, Jake,” Redd interrupted. “You should just pick out a few tonight until you get good at it.”
“Yeah, ok. Let’s just concentrate on, um, monetary systems, government, and social classes.”
“What are the other options?”
“Um, there’s monetary systems, government, social classes, technology, transportation, housing, infrastructure, entertainment, fashion, and foods.”
“What else is there to do?”
“Nothing, really. I guess we should just head over to Jake’s and get some sleep.”