Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine Read online

  Jason put forward the opinion that this seemed a quite pointless exercise. Howard, a little insulted, responded that it was the first step towards full time travel, and a massive achievement. He also pointed out that the boomerang effect could be, effectively, switched off and travelers could remain in the past reliving their lives any way they wanted to. This, he said, is where their salvation lay.

  At this point Eric appeared, groggy but well, and the group spent a while getting him up to speed on what had happened.

  “Tomorrow,” Eric said, “our world dies, for how long we don’t know. It may become hospitable again, it may not. We failed to make it onto the ark ships, so what do we do?”

  “Travel back to Tuesday and board the ships!” suggested Jenna.

  “A good idea in principle, but impossible. Remember what I said about pre-existing displacement? You’d all get sent back to where you were on evac day – still far, far out of the city. It wouldn’t help you.” Howard straightened his tie and looked at the floor. “Also, there was a problem with the transporter last month that still hasn’t been repaired. It is set at a travel distance of one week, and when I checked the machine upon my return from a certain excursion a few weeks ago I discovered that the – in layman’s terms – the timer had blown.”

  Eric, his head clearing and with some strength coming back into his body, caught Howard’s attention with a raised hand, as if he was back in school.

  “So we can only go back one week, as it stands? Is it something you can fix quickly?”

  Howard shook his head slowly. “I don’t have the very, very specific parts needed to fix the, er, the timer. If I had time to scour certain government and military properties around the city I could possibly find what I needed.”

  “But you don’t have time. None of us do!” cried Molly, frustration showing in her face.

  “I can give us time, though, if you four agree to it.” Howard smiled, looking each of them in the eye one by one. “I have a plan – and honestly, it’s about the only plan we have.”

  With that, Howard led everyone back into the main living quarters and went off to the kitchen to cook a meal that, he promised, would not be their final one.

  Over a wonderful hot dinner of beef stew, dumplings and corn bread, Howard laid out his vision to the group. The next morning he would use the Boomerang device to send them back in time the pre-determined and unchangeable distance of one week. They would be back in their rented cabin, the morning of the emergency broadcast, fully aware of what lay ahead and the journey they would need to undertake to reach Howard again. The Boomerang effect itself could still be turned off, so they wouldn’t have to worry about suddenly bouncing back to where they were now at some point. Howard would also send himself back that one week, and he promised he would not board the ark ships, as he could, but stay and try to help his new friends. In that week he would attempt to locate the parts he needed to fix the machine’s timing device. If he could fix the timer, he could keep working on the overall function of the traveling itself. They had been very close to being able to jump without relying on the pre-existing principle, which would mean not only further back in time, but also different locations not dependent on the traveler’s existing status at that point. With the machine operating properly and with these new tweaks to the science, all four of them could then jump back to the day the ships left and board them safely. He estimated six weeks of work at most.

  Howard left the friends alone to discuss the idea and returned to the kitchen to wash dishes. After some heated discussion, the group finally, and somewhat inevitably, decided that it was their only viable chance at survival and another few weeks of trudging their way to Centralia wasn’t such a high price to pay for the chance at a full life.

  “We’ll know what to expect from now on!” said Jason. “Eric won’t get bitten, we know which short-cuts work and which don’t, we know not to look into the crashed cars, and we have an absolute destination and plan now!”

  “Also,” added Eric, “we’ll take some good supplies back with us. Rain gear, decent packed food, maybe a tent or sleeping bags if Howard has any around here somewhere. It’ll feel more like a camping trip…”

  Molly nodded. “I don’t see we have a choice. Stay here tomorrow, and die, or try Howard’s plan and spend a few more weeks roughing it. Not even close really, is it?”

  When Howard returned they told him their decision and he was delighted. He said that yes, they could take supplies, and he would furnish them with whatever rain-gear and camping equipment he could put his hands on before the next day. He also packed them a huge amount of food, split up into four separate containers. Eric and Jason helped him pull camp-beds from the vast supply room in the building and set them up against a wall in the living quarters with pillows and blankets. As everyone settled in for an attempt at a good night’s sleep, Eric took Howard to one side and quietly thanked him for his help, and for going through this with them instead of just leaving on the ships. Howard said it was the least he could do, as a decent human being, and told Eric to rest; he would wake them in the morning, early, with coffee and croissants, before sending them back.

  As the four friends fell into a heavy sleep, Howard returned to the Boomerang Project room. Locking the door behind him, he sat at the console and brought the timer up on his display. It currently read Minus 24 hours; he manually changed it to Minus 7 days and locked in the setting.

  “I could never leave you,” he whispered, looking into the stark, white room, “my whole life is here, in you. And now I have some good, new friends who will visit me every weekend for as long as I want them to.”

  Rocking my Dreamboat

  by Victorya

  Jameson was pushing his mother in her rocking chair. He sang her favorite song, his tired voice caressing each word in a mixture of boredom and frustration.

  “Tell me something about my father?” he asked.

  “He was a bastard,” she replied, not even looking up from the television. In her hand was the remote, and on the screen were commercials. She always muted the commercials and had Jameson sing.

  “But you named me after him,” he said.

  “Before I realized he was a bastard,” she said. Then, “Hush now honey, COPS is back on.”

  Jameson was twenty-six and lonely. He moved back in with his mother after her fall, which wasn’t really a fall, just a stumble while she was out grocery shopping. She leaned into a parked car when she felt her balance leaving and the alarm went off, causing her to jump and stumble into another car. From then on she lived with her son, claiming that since she took care of him for eighteen years, seventeen of those alone, the least he could do was take care of what was left of her life.

  He was even lonelier now that Kathleen dumped him. She had just stood up during dinner and walked out. Three months of dating over with no explanation. He bought her roses daily, always commented on her Facebook wall, and called her twice a day. He even waited until she was ‘ready’ and respected her wishes to not spend the night at his house while his mother was in the next room, not that he could stay overnight at her place and leave his mother alone. He did everything right and here he was alone again.

  Jameson went to work the next day and tried to forget about it. He pretended to look busy, which is easy with a computer and alcoholic boss, and then went home. Too upset to sleep, he crept into the attic and pulled a loose piece of wood out of the floor. There lay a Legoland Time Machine kit that he always imagined belonged to his father. There was no image on the box, just Think of the Time and Place, and Go! written in precise lettering across the side. Jameson finally had the courage to open it, and cursed the entire time he tried to put the pieces together. He was upset that, when he felt it was done, it was a handheld device and not some helicopter looking thing like he’d figured. He looked at the sole red logo and decided it was the on button. He thought about where he’d like to be, and pushed.

  Kathleen’s mother was hobbling down the b
ig cement steps of her apartment complex, just like Kathleen had described on that first night. A teen mother alone, living in a seedy tenement on the wrong side of town, going into labor while she tried to make her way down the stone stairs and into a car that took three tries to start. She stopped on the third step and looked at Jameson. She smiled when he came over, one hand holding the railing the other her stomach, the dress she wore stuck to her from sweat and the breaking of her water. Perhaps she thought he would help her when he reached out his hand, not pull her down the remaining stairs and then proceed to kick her in the stomach. Her screams were answered by windows slamming shut. Blood soaked her dress and puddled around her thighs. She lay on her side clutching her stomach, but her lithe hands were no match for Jameson’s ire.

  Mari didn’t appreciate the flowers. She didn’t like the candy, or his calls. She didn’t like his romantic gesture of showing up outside her window and throwing stones at it in the wee hours of the night. They had only gone out for two weeks, but had been friends for longer. They had hung out in groups, sometimes after work with other colleagues, sometimes with Jameson’s friend Steve and Steve’s girlfriend Karen. But now she was saying words like ‘restraining order,’ like ‘scary’ and ‘frightening’ and ‘therapy’ and ‘suffocating.’ Jameson went straight home from work. His mother had made meatloaf and scalloped potatoes.

  “What’s wrong sweetie?” she asked while the serving spoon squished into the casserole dish and slurped out a giant scoop of potatoes. They plopped on his dish, the oils pooling along the rim. “You look so sad.”

  “Mari dumped me,” he said.

  His mother sliced off a piece of meatloaf, the top shining from the baked-on ketchup. She placed it on his plate aside the potatoes.

  “You know no girl is good enough for you,” she said. “Not my little boy. No, you’re mommy’s little boy and a very special one at that.”

  Jameson winced at hearing her say this. She was old and crimping his style, but she was the only woman that had every truly loved him. No. No girl compared to her, and no girl would hurt him.

  Jameson held the time device and pushed the red Lego. He had to be careful. Mari’s mother was married to a cop, and he had rushed her to the hospital the night of Mari’s birth. However, she shopped alone every Thursday after work. Jameson helped her carry the bags from the grocery store to the car. She thanked him and slipped him a dollar. Jameson leaned in and sniffed her. She smelled just like Mari. He smiled and nodded and later scoped out her house. She didn’t live in an apartment like Kathleen’s mother, but a real house with a chain link fence and a gate.

  Jameson brought money back with him, making sure all bills and coins were dated from that time or before. He stayed in a hotel a few blocks away and followed her. Sometimes he sat in a nearby park to relax. Finally, he saw his moment and it was so much simpler than he had anticipated. He didn’t have to hit her with a car like he thought he might, merely let loose a puppy into the street, just quietly drop it from his rented car into the middle of an intersection. She swerved, other cars swerved, and while she didn’t die there was twisted metal and blood.

  “How did my father woo you?” Jameson asked. He was rocking his mother and singing Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat during the commercials of COPS.

  “This again?” she sighed.

  “I’m sorry mother,” he said.

  “He read to me,” she replied. “Your father was always such a bastard later, but in the beginning, he read to me. He tried to love me, but didn’t know how. Not like you. You love your mommy, don’t you?”

  Jameson pulled the blanket up to her neck. She held on to the remote and unmuted the television when the show came on. She giggled every time a policeman slammed someone into a car or sidewalk. This episode had her in hysterics. When the commercials came on again, she muted the channel and Jameson sang once more.

  Jameson found a time he liked, five years before he caused the miscarriage of Mari. 1971. It was far enough back that the prices were lower than his time, but close enough that he could still convert his paycheck to dollars from that era or before with no problem. His money went farther there. He rented an apartment just a few blocks down from a park, the one where his mother and father would get engaged later that year. Theirs was a quick courtship.

  “He was dashing,” his mother would say on occasion, running her arthritic fingers through Jameson’s hair. “And smart, like you. He used big words and I liked that. Made me feel smart.”

  He still worked, still cared for his mother and listened to her stories and sang to her during the commercials.

  Jameson liked the park near his new apartment. There was a fence of twisted black metal entwined in morning glory. Inside, it always seemed to be green or in bloom. The park wasn’t big, encompassing one small block amidst the apartment buildings that allowed only slivers of the sun to come through. However, at noon, when the sun was directly overhead, the flowers within the park practically glowed. Pink and yellow roses reflected the light and attracted bees and butterflies and ivy wound around the four park benches that lined the little walkway through the park.

  He never thought of himself as a park-goer, but there he was, every Saturday afternoon after he brought mother home from physical therapy, every Sunday before he brought her to church, and every other moment he could slip away from work or mother.

  One day she was there. Black hair cascading down her back, the wind blowing soft tendrils across her cheeks pink with the slight bite in the breeze. Winter was coming, its voice heard in the crackle of the leaves as they began to fall from the trees, in the crunch of frozen morning dew and the ice felt on the breeze.

  Jameson didn’t mean to fall in love, but he thought it was the only word encompassing how he felt.

  “I see you here a lot,” the woman said. He was reading the paper— history. “Mind if I sit here?” she asked, gesturing next to him. The morning air covered the blush that sprung to his cheeks. He looked over at her; she was dressed simply, in jeans and a corduroy jacket. In her hand, a book.

  “What are you reading?” he asked.

  “Beowulf,” she said. “Well, trying too. It’s not really a book I can understand, which is why I wanted to give it a try.”

  “I like the quiet,” Jameson said. “It’s so quiet here.”

  “Is the rest of your life loud?” she asked.

  Jameson thought of his days, work where his boss yelled at him in a drunken stupor, home where he had to sing to his mother during commercials lest she get upset.

  “My name is James,” he said. She sat down next to him and he turned to face her. She was sitting with one leg bent under her, the other swinging off the bench.

  “Muriel,” she said, putting the book on her lap and holding out her hand.

  “Mother, what would you think if I got a nurse to come in and look after you some days?” Jameson asked. He was rocking her during a commercial break. She was watching Jerry Springer.

  “Oh sweetie, you do a good enough job. I don’t need anyone else,” she replied, her voice gurgling with phlegm from some unknown virus that had taken hold of her. She reached a hand up, the skin loose and spotted with age, and patted his hand.

  “I was just thinking, it might be better for you. I can’t be home all the time. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”

  A spasm of coughs racked through her body. She stood up, her joints creaking more than the rocking chair.

  “Now you know very well I can take care of myself,” she said, reaching for her cane. Jameson handed it to her. It was simple silver metal with rubber grips. “I don’t need you here. If you want to run off and be a man, sow some wild oats, then go do it. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You being like your father, running off on me?”

  With his mother’s health worsening, she clung to her son while berating him for wanting to be free. The more she yelled, the more he clung to his Legos and fled into the past, to speak with Muriel on the park benc
h. She had already given up on Beowulf and moved to A Tale of Two Cities instead.

  “I really like it,” she said.

  “Why don’t you go to college?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” she said, turning her head down. “That’s not going to happen. I am going to secretarial school though. We just can’t afford college. Not for me, not like this.”

  Jameson found out that her parents had died in a car accident and she lived alone with her sister, Martha. Martha was older, had started school on scholarship but was now a legal secretary. Muriel had wanted to be a schoolteacher, but was now working on getting her secretarial skills in order to find a job.

  “Did you go to college?” she asked, her brown eyes examining him.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m an accountant.”

  Muriel took his hand. “That’s a good job,” she said. “A real good profession. Do you like to read?”

  Jameson nodded and Muriel handed him the book, pointing to a passage. He read it to her and she leaned in against him, her warmth fighting off the encroaching winter.

  Jameson figured out a schedule. He could stay for long stretches in the past and then go back to his own time just moments after he left. The trouble was, he was sick of his mother, he was sick of her ire now fully unleashed on him, how he was ungrateful for all she did for him. He was sick of his boss having him do all the work, while he took all the glory and bonuses. He began spending even more time in the past, taking Muriel out for walks, to shows, reading to her in the park.