My first clue time travel could be possible was in the barber's chair the day before my girlfriend's funeral.
Andy lifted his pen and shaking hand from the paper. The clock on the stove read 10:06. Why did I wait so long to write this?
Because in less than two hours, he might cease to exist, if his plan even worked. How do you pack up for that? He'd call his dad on the way to work, but he had to be subtle. Probably won't even answer.
Andy crossed out 'my' and wrote 'our' between the lines before 'girlfriend,' but it was too sloppy. He tore the page out and gripped the pen harder. Holding his wrist to steady his strokes, he started his first line over. My first clue… our girlfriend's funeral.
She died coming to visit me at work. If I cease to be, and you get her, it will be for the best. I can't go on knowing I caused such a beautiful life to end. I have great joy offering myself for her life. I would do it a million times over.
Andy considered starting over again. He wasn't trying to make the future him or past him (however this ended) feel bad for him. If he failed, there would be enough time for that. No, just keep going.
Back to the first clue, Andy wrote. Two days ago, my barber noticed a scar that couldn't have been there. A healed scar. Mandi didn't say anything because it isn't that big and is right under the hair line on my neck, but Jerry noticed. I looked at the camera footage at work—the one over my back making sure I only watch cameras at my desk—and I caught the scar appear at 11:58 PM, June 6th.
Man, did my insides curl at that sight. I mean, I had been pretty freaked out by Jerry's comment, "Did you cut yourself since last time?"
There was no explanation. A minor surface scratch wouldn't leave the fat scar I had. Even if I had fallen and lost consciousness, there would have been a scab I would have noticed at least by the next time I washed my hair—let alone the blood that surely would have stained my clothes. I don't drink and don't have a history of seizures or losing consciousness (as you know, I hope), but also moot points considering I never noticed the wound. I didn't know what to expect watching the video—it's still hard to believe—but I had to do something.
Okay, so here's how I think timeline B went through time.
The facts are: He sat in one position watching the surveillance camera footage from 10:58 until 11:58. I watched from a side view angle camera to check if his eyes were open. They were. And didn't seem to move, though that was hard to tell.
That's it. The scar just appeared.
There's a high likelihood nothing will happen when I try. Or that I'll succeed. Staring at one place for an hour straight is the hardest thing I've ever tried, and I have a lot of doubts writing this because I am nowhere near reaching an hour.
He checked the clock. 10:21. Crap. He hadn't even changed yet.
I have a theory about tonight, he wrote. About why timeline B did it before midnight. About why he appeared on the sixth. I think her birthday is the window. Like a second birthday. I don't know. Maybe it makes no sense. But I'd rather think of this being the miracle way than the alternatives I might end up in if this is a way to time travel.
Welcome to our nightmare.
If I fail, please save her.
Andy folded the note. What if I travel to a timeline where he doesn't know her and I put in his mind to go find her and somehow that kills her?
He shook his head and put the note in his pocket. Thoughts like those were not helpful. He didn't want them in his last few hours alive.
He sat in the driver's seat of his Buick Skyhawk, a bag of last night's McDonald's smelling his car up with ketchup and old grease. He took his phone out and found his dad's number. 10:35. He was going to be late. He started the car and hesitated to press 'call.' What in the world would he say? What if they fought about his lack of money? Budget chat with Dad was the last thing he wanted in his last ninety minutes. Andy thought of the good times, when his dad had been home to play catch. Though mostly he wasn't. How his dad… warm memories failed to come to mind, only awkward, tough times where his dad was too preoccupied with getting them back on track financially, with not getting kicked out of their house, with the latest car repair need.
10:37. Oh man. Andy pressed the call button. He switched it to speaker phone and backed into an oil stained parking spot behind his apartment building. The line rang as he pulled around the tan brick home he may never see again—no big problem there—and turned onto College Ave.
"Hi, Andrew." His dad sounded surprisingly pleased, as though none of the bad memories that had come to mind ever happened. It was the 4th of July weekend, and he was excited for his son to come home and grill some hot dogs. They'd wear matching Cubs hats and talk about how Lester was pitching this year.
Andy needed that to be real, even for a few minutes. "I love you, Dad."
His dad coughed or something on the other line. "What's wrong? Are you in danger?"
Tears burned through his eyelids. He wanted so badly to tell him the truth, to have him save him and somehow fix everything without needing to sacrifice himself.
"Andrew." His voice grew multiples more urgent.
Andy realized what his only recourse could be to keep his dad from ruining his plans. "What?" he asked, pulling out the aggression he'd grown used to while speaking to his father.
"What's going on? Are you in trouble?"
"No. I'm fine." He kept up the attitude. For once in his life, the tone was accompanied by eternal love. "I just wanted to tell you that. See if it made me happy, like a movie I just saw."
"Sure. I love you, too, Son." He sniffed. "Are you sure there's nothing wrong?" His voice choked out. He sounded like a pansy.
Andy swallowed so he didn't sound the same. He struggled to control his breathing. His grip on the steering wheel staggered, but he kept the car between the lines. A truck with a wooden bed holding lawn mowers sped past on the other side.
"I'm sure, Dad. I do love you. Tell Sarah I said I love her, too. I'm heading onto the freeway. I need to let you go."
"Where are you going?"
"Work. I gotta go, Dad."
"Okay. I love you, too, Son."
"Bye," Andy whispered and hung up the phone. He wiped his eyes. His father's words coated him in an aloe of hope while his skin burned with confusion and fear. The freeway had only one car in the far lane when he sped to pace with traffic. Holding his phone, he thought of whom else he could call. Even if he knew how to reach his birth mother, he wouldn't call her. She had abandoned him long ago.
He thought of Mandi's funeral. Her mother hadn't lifted her head or stopped crying; her weak and staggered steps guided by her sobbing husband to the outburst at the pastor's scripture quote of, "then face to face." Andy's soul shriveled in that moment of open rebuke, indirect, but in his heart it pointed squarely at him. He'd taken her from them. A mother who deserved to see her daughter grow old.
He made it to the light at the top of the off ramp at 10:52, nervous he'd miss the 10:58 mark. Really, he was about to throw her life away a second time because he still wasn’t mature enough to get anywhere early. He drove through the red light, sped over the bridge and up the hill to the entrance of the Quest building.
Andy sprinted through the grass toward the front door. Carl watched through the window pane, hefting his book bag onto his shoulder. Andy swiped his ID card at the first set of doors and entered that week's five-digit pin. A red light and angry chime responded. Crap. 6-2-3-7-6 he thought as he forced his fingers to hit the right keys, ignoring the need to glance at his watch. Green. Click.
"What's the rush, Andy?" Carl always spoke to him like he was ten pay grades above. You're just a security guard like me.
"Don't worry about it." Andy squeezed past and sat in the chair, hiking it up to where he normally sat. Everything had to be the same. The time was 10:57. Andy exhaled, blinked. Then stared straight into the middle camera. The west atrium view of a garbage can set beside the double glass door exit.
"See you later, weirdo."
Andy kept his stare on the garbage can through an awkward silence that Carl let drag.
Carl finally turned and walked out the front. "Freakin' psycho." The words hurt in a time desperate for confidence, but he forced them back. He wasn't going to let Mandi go because of that loser.
The west atrium showed an elevator on the right and the concrete outside lit by the exterior flood lights, a view as familiar as his face in the mirror. A small creature, probably a chipmunk, scurried into the picture. Andy fought the curious urge to look as it cut into the grass past the walkway.
His eyes strained against the bored need to look around. Ever since he'd come up with this theory about the power of focus, a kind of open-eyed meditation that could harness the body's energy, he had practiced staring at things and timing how long before a blink or moment of weakness sent his focus off target. Thirty-four minutes and twenty-seven seconds was the longest he'd gone. For nearly two weeks he had read articles on meditation and watched YouTube videos of Chi experiments. One had a guy who created fire just by focusing and sending his shaking body's attention through his hand.
The problem with that was Andy B didn't shake. He was cool as a cucumber. The video had shown Carl, without sound, always seeming to try and pester Andy B, but Andy B calmly sat, posture perfect and stared at his monitor. For the ten days prior to the 6th, when Andy B became Andy A, he was almost always in that position.
How long had he been practicing? Was he trying to save Mandi, too? If so, he failed.
I can't fail.
Andy A's eyes had grown stronger with practice, but there was no avoiding the pull to observe something, anything else. Tiny puppeteers tugged on the tendons behind the eyeballs. Long, slow steps backward increased the strain.
He'd asked one of the other guards, Martin, an Afghan vet, how he had survived eight hour shifts sitting at his turret, watching and waiting for a threat to surface. Martin had said the trick was learning not to check the time.
That helped motivate Andy against the temptation to see the clock. He pretended he was a soldier, and failure would cost lives. Technically, it did. At least one. But so will success…
He passed the time wondering how much of him would continue on, if it would be like dying at all. He considered his past and what made him worthy of such a blessing, to be given the gift of life and love when it was his fault they’d been taken away.
He'd thought about his sports past, how he was one day late asking the baseball coach if tryouts were still open. He'd proven his talent in city ball, if he'd not been a day late, he might have built up his skill playing for his school, earned a baseball scholarship…There was no second chance there. His life could have been different if he'd taken other roads moments before the two car accidents he'd had afterwards, which totaled his cars and cost him not only thousands of dollars, but jobs, summers without baseball, and a back that he'd grown used to having chronic pain. Like the emotional losses he couldn't get back, his back pain reminded him daily how certain curses can be eternal.
The L5 area in his spine ached as his weight pressed on his tailbone, even in the posture-correct position he'd also seen Andy B use. He hadn’t practiced that part, or anticipated how the stress might make it worse. How did he do this?
He didn't need a clock to know he was miles from 11:58. His back was already aflame.
Meditation techniques often spoke of being in the present, of not worrying about the past, but that was even more boring than his normal job. And the present pain was quite unbearable, thank you very much.
Plus, if these are my last thoughts, I don't want to waste them on nothing…
The more Andy thought about his past and how small, seemingly insignificant decisions or actions could have improved his life, the more angry he became at God or chance about who and where he was.
And why am I the one who discovers time travel? Or whatever this is…God really screwed up on that call.
Maybe he wasn't the only one. The randomly changing entrance code seemed a bit like overkill. Mr. Sibowitz was an anal boss, and maybe that was why. What if he was the reason Andy B failed? Did he give him the scar? Was he watching Andy right now?
A bird soared into the grey light outside the west atrium. No. He kept his eyes on the garbage can. Trash. Trash. Trash…he thought until he'd fallen into a zone again. What was he thinking about?
Oh yeah. What if others discovered time travel this way? The bored ones more motivated to cross into the strange corner the populous tried to keep hidden with their distractions and relationships. Who needs relationships when you can stare at a garbage can for an hour without blinking? This is paradise!
The mention of blinking awakened the itch digging into his eyes. The irritation had been the source of half his failures. The worst part about the itch was it started within half an hour. It was like running a marathon (he imagined) only to find at the end it was only the halfway mark, the rest would be run barefoot over hills of exposed shards and hot coals.
This is the night. There is no retreating from this chance. Love and life are on the other side. Believe that.
Dry flame cracked his eyeballs. Think of something else, you're not there yet.
He imagined Mr. Sibowitz’s tracking sensors in his chair. Waiting for him to get to the edge, and then snatch the power for himself while leaving Andy to a life of failure and misery.
No. That’s not truth. That’s imagination. It has to be.
He thought back to Mandi. Then like an accidental channel switch, his mind flicked to girls unlike Mandi, ones he wished to forget, but would be forced to remember. Like the blind date who'd turned from their awkward driveway meeting to a phone inside to call for rescue. The girl he made out with at the baseball field and then felt beetle ridden with guilt because he didn’t like her as much as she liked him. He’d just wanted someone there, even after he knew she wasn’t enough. Soon after, he’d gone to parties. He'd walk through the crowded, strange homes with stairs that led up to off-limits rooms, basements with pool tables or old couches full to capacity by people who stared without smiles. Faces eager for him to turn around so they could forget his awkwardness. Looks that said coming there was uncool and he should have known better. He had become like the girl who falls in love with the wrong guy.
And now he stared at a garbage can. Mandi would appreciate him if she were here. Appreciate the sores opening up under the volcanic cracks carving through his eyeballs.
The dirty metal rim and untucked black bag glared at him. Look at your desperate need for approval, it said. At your desperate ploy to change the world. Change yourself if you want to make a change. Accept where you are and move forward. You're not a ship casting its way through the waves. You're not even the garbage that floats with the current. You're the rock some kid throws that doesn't skip. You move by the power of someone else. You pass by, and when you impact with the force we survive on, you sink.
So why don't you just sink, man?
Because I'm not a rock.
What makes you think you can lie to me? I'm in your head. I know who you are. You're a rock. As ugly and uninteresting as I've ever seen. Sinking to the ocean bottom where the current will erode you into nothing. Can a rock do anything to stop the ocean? Can a rock swim? Develop gills to breathe? No. There is no life, nor power, nor impact in your future. You were made to fade.
Maybe. Maybe so, before Mandi. But after…After, meeting her I began to evolve. I made her laugh, smile, feel loved—even if I didn't tell her. I would now if given the choice. I've seen my weakness, and I refuse it. I have a chance now to break the curse, and I will embrace it.
That was just your moment in the air. Tricking you to think there is a way to change who you are. You're still a rock. You'll hit the water like everyone else. Then all that's left is to sink, to stop, to turn into dust and then disappear.
Upside down mountains bore into the jelly of his eyes, demanding he shut them to end the pain.
It’s not time. I've been here before and let your reality win.
He sensed footsteps in the cover of silent distance. Mr. Sibowitz coming for his undeserved prize.
Tonight is different. Tonight I climb. The mountain's peaks cut me. I bleed, but do not cease. I may be the rock, but my airborne course will carry on.
The garbage became just garbage, silently shaming him for his conversation with inanimate metal. The polished rock turned into a catcher of waste.
A door clicked open behind him.
No, this is my prize.
A cool breeze swept through his eyes and embraced his soul, letting them shut.
No!
He peeled back his eyelids and flicked his attention at the clock.
11:58.
Why was he so afraid? He looked over his shoulder at a closed door and dark hall beyond. Was someone there?
Mandi should be here any minute. He smiled and stood. Back pain mixed with foggy confusion, as though he’d just woken from a year-long nap. He walked to the door, unable to stop blinking, and unsure why his eyes itched so.
Joy carried him outside like a white bird with ten-foot wings.
From the street, Mandi's burgundy Honda pulled into the incline drive. Her headlights shrouded her as she left the glow of the floodlight near the entrance and ascended the drive. Andy pushed the second door open to the warm summer night. Anticipation shivered through him as though walking toward something too great to be real. Yeah, it was Mandi's birthday, and of course he was glad to see her, but why was he tearing up?
Mandi parked and turned to watch him as she unbuckled her seatbelt, lifting a smile he thought he'd never enjoy again.
Why?
He let go and accepted the embarrassment of tears. She threw her door shut and ran with a bashful grin. His favorite. He deserved to cry with joy at the sight of her.
"Did I make it?" she asked as she entered his airspace, gifting him with the scent of her wildberry spray. She slowed, staring into his eyes. "Are you crying?" Confusion turned to respect.
Andy looked away and wiped his sleeve across his face, trying to hide the action by also taking his phone out of his crowded pocket. A folded paper and his keys blocked its easy path.
"What's wrong?" She lifted his chin to face her.
Face to face. Why did those words speak of memory?
What could be wrong? He smiled in never feeling more right. "Nothing. I guess I'm just happy to see you." He woke his phone. 12:00. "Midnight. July 6th. Happy 21st, Mandi."
"Thanks." She considered him for a moment. He moved in to hug her. She accepted, pulled back, and kissed him. In an ocean of time, that moment could float forever.
But even as it ended, her up-close eyes sparkled with more to come. "Did you get me anything?"
Andy panicked. He didn’t. A perfect opportunity missed because what? He’d forgotten? He knew it was her birthday, and yet it was the farthest thing from his mind. He had invited her to meet at midnight. He must have, even if he didn’t remember. Neither did he remember what he'd planned to do when she arrived.
The strange paper in his pocket. He took it out.
She snatched it before he could unfold it. "What's this?" She spread it open and her glee floundered. She turned the paper to gain the glow from the floodlights on the building behind them. Andy leaned in to see what it said. It appeared to be blank.
She turned, her eyebrows bent low. "Okay? I don't get it."
He didn't either. But he had to say something. This was her birthday, and he really liked her. Newness like a generous second chance filled him with hope. "Before you, my life was full of scratched out words and stories I've longed to forget." Okay … She wasn't sure where he was going. He wasn’t either, but a strong sense urged him that being sure wasn't what mattered. It was that he continued to move forward. "But the joy you give me is like a blank page. I don't care about the past, because I'm too excited for the future."
Her stare tasted his joy and embraced it for more. He had plenty to spare. "I'm excited, too."
"Good." He took her hands.
"Thank you. I'm really glad you're in my life, too."
The answer had come to a question beyond his grasp. The question of lost memories and how he’d arrived in this place of life and time. Whatever it was, he knew the answer was good. It was right before his eyes.