Christian Towne lurched up the stairs to Niles Castle’s third-floor apartment. He could have taken the elevator, but he didn’t feel like waiting for it. Ever since he’d turned 19 and left his 20s behind, he’d felt his slimming body bursting with energy. There was something to be said for living in a dimension that went backward, which he’d been stuck in for nearly a quarter century. Every day he got younger, yet he was spared the question marks of youth because he’d already lived through them.
Also, his follically-challenged scalp had bloomed a full head of curly black hair in the past four years. These advantages were trumped by several inescapable facts: this wasn’t his dimension, time wasn’t supposed to go backward, and if he waited too long, he would be unable to operate his time and dimension-spanning Sideways Machine, which was his only means of escape. Niles’s door was ajar. Towne burst in. Niles looked up from his bowl of cereal and cup of No-caf, a coffee substitute.
“Niles, I’m going to leave this dimension.”
“Not that again.” Niles scratched his goatee, the mustache of which had recently thinned. Towne noticed he’d also grown a zit on the left side of his face.
“This time I mean it. I put in my notice at school.”
“How could you? Your students need you.” Though a temporal expert and inventor in his own dimension, Towne taught high school art in this one.
“No, they don’t. If there’s one thing I’ve learned working two decades in education, it’s that everyone — teachers, administrators, students — is replaceable. Plus, my resignation has probably added three years to the superintendent’s life. That’s my only regret.”
“OK, but why now?”
Towne sat. “Because every time I sit down to do something, I waste twenty minutes playing an insipid video game. Because I’ve started thinking cat videos are funny. Because at some point, I’ll become so juvenile I’ll lose the ability to operate my Sideways Machine.”
“Which is a good thing,” said Niles. “From what you’ve told me, the Sideways Machine is like hard drugs. It takes you somewhere else, but you can’t be sure of where or whether you can get back. Why can’t you just relax?”
Towne winced. “And smell the No-Caf?”
“No. You’d need the nose of a beagle to do that. But, you’ve got your entire childhood ahead of you. You’re going to get cuter than ever. You’ll be free to make really obnoxious comments. You’ve earned the right to enjoy yourself.”
Towne shook his head. “I’m not meant to be here. Time is not supposed to go backward.”
“So you’ve always said. It’s forward to me.”
“So you’ve always said. Look, I know I’m unlikely to get back to my dimension strand, but for my own sanity, I’ve got to find one that goes forward, in my definition of the word.” He hesitated. “And I just want to say goodbye and thank you for your friendship.”
Niles was touched, as Towne was not the type of person to wear his heart on his sleeve. “I still think you should share your knowledge of time and trans-dimension travel with the world. Millions of heads are better than one.”
“Maybe someday, but I don’t think any dimension is ready for it yet.”
“Is there nothing I can say that will change your mind?”
“Well, if you suddenly recited The Epic of Gilgamesh in the original Akkadian, it would give me pause, but no, I have to go. Farewell, my friend.” With that, he embraced Niles and left.
There was another reason Towne had to leave this dimension. His hormones were driving him nuts. He’d get an erection just thinking about the Empire State Building. He’d never married, but hardly any marriage in this dimension could survive couples entering their adolescence. That wasn’t surprising when most people first married in the equivalent of their 70s. At that age you had different needs from a middle-aged person or a youngster.
Somehow, Niles’s marriage had survived until he was the equivalent of 27. He’d subsequently had affairs, but none lasted. When you got younger, you played the field, because no one person could satisfy another. The play-acting, the quest for self-definition, the inability to resist bawdy jokes — Towne just couldn’t go through that again.
He entered his garage, where for years he’d parked the Sideways Machine, a tarp hiding its odd appearance, which looked more like a giant spider than a vehicle. All he’d packed were some clothes. His computer files were safely downloaded on his phone. Tossing the tarp, he got inside the SM and drove to a deserted field on the outskirts of the city, where for each of his eight trips, he’d always taken off and landed. The last six times, however, he’d ended up somewhere else. With each jump into the no-man’s land between dimensions, he encountered fierce dimensional storms. Despite securing himself to his seat and donning a helmet, he’d been knocked unconscious on several occasions. Just the thought of it caused a headache.
“Here goes … I don’t know what,” he said, as he started the SM and began driving across the field. Once he’d reached the speed of 140 kilometers per hour, his craft left the ground. After flying three kilometers, he floored the speed pedal. Within sixty seconds the sky exploded, and he found himself swept into the dark zone between dimensions. Winds buffeted and shook the SM, as if to insist that no one was supposed to be here.
He momentarily eased up on the pedal. The faster his speed, the more forceful the winds became, but speed was necessary for the SM would jump into another dimension. He remembered some classmates in school who loved to speed in cars and how he’d always thought drag racing was one of the dumbest sports in the history of humankind.
He accelerated.
The SM shook so badly, everything lost its shape, and yet, at 400, 500, 600 kilometers per hour, he was still stuck between dimensions. He reached 700, 800, 900. Without warning, another flying vehicle appeared, heading straight for him! Never before had he encountered traffic between dimensions, and he had no way to communicate with the on-coming vehicle. At the last moment, he swerved right, but the other vehicle did the same, grazing Towne’s SM, which spun out of control. Fearing he might lose consciousness, he programmed the SM to switch to autopilot once it reached another dimension. There was another explosion, then nothing.
• • •
Towne woke up in the familiar field off Route 131. Had he returned to the backward dimension, or somewhere else? At least he was in one piece. He turned on the SM. The engine sounded like a damaged hairdryer. He pushed it into the woods then walked four kilometers to the nearest bus stop.
As he rode to his downtown apartment, the houses, stores, and vegetation all looked as he remembered them. If only he had reached a dimension he could live comfortably in.
Entering the lobby of his apartment building, he glared at the ugly purple carpet, the light smell of mold, and the lack of a name for apartment 3A. For 5B the name “TOWNE” had been handwritten on a piece of tape, slightly peeling off. For the first time, was he about to meet a copy of himself? There was only one way to find out.
He pressed the button.
“Yes,” said a voice, a bit high pitched. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female.
“I’m here to see Christian Towne,” Towne said.
“Who are you?” the voice asked gruffly.
“My name is Christian Towne.”
After a short silence, the voice sputtered. “What did you come back for?”
“Come back? I’ve never been here.”
The voice swore, then the buzzer rang, unlocking the door. Towne entered the elevator and pressed button 5. When the doors opened to the fifth floor, a middle-aged balding man with an untamed beard stood waiting for him. He looked identical to the man Towne had been the first time he left his dimension.
“You’ve never met me?” asked the older Towne.
“I would have remembered.”
The older Towne pulled on his beard. “If anyone ever criticizes me for implausibility, I’ll kick them in the ass. Follow me.” He led the younger Towne to his apartment. The walls were plastered with posters, like a college student’s dorm room. It was an idiosyncratic collection, however, of relative unknowns from the worlds of sports, politics, Hollywood, and literature. In pride of place was one Ken Poulsen, a utility infielder who postponed his wedding to compile a major league career of one hit in five at bats with the 1967 Red Sox.
Towne had always wondered if his marriage had survived. Another poster showed the grade Z character actor Mel Welles selling a flower in the original Little Shop of Horrors. On top of a bookcase stuffed with double rows of books sat a bust of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, which Towne hadn’t seen since he’d accidently knocked it over and smashed it while dusting. From that he’d coined the phrase, “from dusting to dust.”
The older Towne noticed his interest. “Do these things mean anything to you?”
“Yes! I didn’t think I’d ever see them again. They say material objects aren’t important, but I’ve come to love how they are the only things that don’t change.”
“Someone who looked exactly like you said the same thing to me two days ago. I helped him repair his SM. This morning he supposedly returned to the dimension from which he came, which he said went backward.”
The younger Towne’s face got red. “Why did he do that?”
“He didn’t want to live in a dimension where there was two of us. I told him just by our different ages, we were not the same, and that he was better off not messing around with inter-dimensional travel. He wouldn’t listen.”
“That sounds like me.”
“And me. So, are you coming from a dimension where time goes backwards?”
“Yes! Does it go forward here, younger to older?”
“It does.”
“Thank God!”
“You might want to wait on that,” said the older Towne. “There is one difference between you and the guy who left this morning. Your voice is lower.”
“Now that you mention it, yours is a bit high, and you talk fast.”
“Did anything odd happen on your way to this dimension?”
The younger Towne’s eyes widened. “I grazed another vehicle just before I left the backward dimension.”
“Could you see the driver?”
“I was more concerned with his vehicle.”
“He had to be the other you, leaving this dimension. I wonder if the accident put you out of sync, somehow. Nothing surprises me now.”
“But why would there be another me? Before I went there, there was none in the backward dimension, and the Towne of this dimension is you. So this other Towne is from yet another dimension.”
“How many dimensions are there?” asked the older Towne.
“In theory, an infinite amount, but that makes it all the more unlikely that someone would stumble into the ones I’ve been in.” He thought for a moment. “Unless … there’s always been a lot of turbulence in the buffer zone. I wonder if by crossing dimensions, I’ve somehow fused the strands of both of them, so that when someone later goes into the buffer zone, he or she is more likely to end up going where I went.”
“Is that possible?”
“There’s no guarantee that any of the rules of science apply between dimensions. The thing is, this is the first time I’ve used the Sideways Machine in twenty-five years. It seems unlikely that a version of me in another dimension would be out in the Sideways Machine at the same time.”
“Not if there’s an infinite amount of chances. The strands might get more fused each time someone travels on them. What if that means more Townes doing the same thing, creating a loop?”
“That’s a ghastly thought,” said Towne.
• • •
The older Towne, who said to call him OT, set up a bed in a spare room while Towne took a shower. Nothing stimulated the sweat glands like inter-dimensional travel. Speaking of stimulation, he noticed a pair of panties hanging over the shower nozzle. After his shower he asked if OT was into wearing clean women’s underwear.
“No, but my wife is. She’s a gender studies professor at Boston University. It’s a three-hour commute, so she sleeps on a friend’s pullout three days a week. She’ll be back tomorrow.”
“I’ve never been able to marry. You’ll have to tell me your secret.”
OT’s shrugged. “Limited energy.”
Towne nodded. “Speaking of which, if you’ll please excuse me, I need to replenish mine. Even nineteen-year-olds don’t have an unlimited supply.” He collapsed onto the spare bed. Was he the first Towne or merely a copy? Would more be coming? What were the implications of OT’s voice being higher? As he lay there woolgathering, his last thought of the night was he couldn’t have counted sheep if his life depended on it.
Towne woke up the next morning unsure of the day, time, or dimension. His watch said 4:17 a.m., which was odd, as behind a pulled shade, the sun appeared to be shining. Lifting the shade confirmed that it was mid-morning. Towne checked his other watches — he always wore three due to a joke on The Three Stooges, where Curly revealed it was how he told the time. Towne later tried to break the habit but felt naked without them. His other two watches confirmed the 4:17 time.
Outside the window, lines of cars zoomed down the main street. Somehow this dimension had solved traffic congestion. Outside the room he heard OT talking to a woman, though he couldn’t make out the words. He got dressed, ran his hand through his long, bushy hair, and opened the door. He saw OT sitting at a table next to a middle-aged woman with reddish, shoulder-length hair and brown eyes that flashed with irony.
“You’ve risen from the dead,” OT said, but something was indeed wrong with his voice, which raced as if he were on amphetamines. “Christian Towne, this is my wife, Vanessa,” he spewed.
“It really is happening again,” said Vanessa, quickly extending her hand as if she were trying to catch a sinking line drive. Towne took it warily.
“Pleased to meet you.” It was the most common of pleasantries, but it made both OT and Vanessa recoil.
“I was afraid of that,” said OT. “You’re moving and speaking slower than yesterday. You’re out of sync with this dimension, and it’s getting worse. There’s no time to waste. We must repair the Sideways Machine while you can still help. And since I’m an IT director and not an inventor, I’m going to need your help.”
They drove to the field then towed the SM to the side of the road by OT’s apartment building.
The damage turned out to be superficial. The left wing had a meter-long crack and a belt had snapped. Otherwise, the mechanics appeared undamaged, but there was another problem: because the Sideways Machine was from another dimension, it, like Towne, was out of sync, and slowing down. As constructed, it was unable to attain the necessary speed to do an inter-dimensional jump. Towne and OT worked through the night, increasing power, but to a dangerous level.
“How will I be able to drive this thing?” said Towne, his words drooling out of his mouth. “I’ll have the reflexes of a bog person.”
“I will drive to the field,” said OT, speaking deliberately slow, though to Towne the words streamed together in a torrent. “For the rest, we’ll have to depend on the autopilot.”
By the time they returned to OT’s apartment, verbal communication between Towne and the couple was nearly impossible. OT’s and Vanessa’s words flowed together like a laser beam. OT and Vanessa found it difficult to concentrate when Towne’s words oozed out like molasses. In the kitchen they communicated by notes.
“Have you decided where you’re going to go?” said the note OT handed to Towne.
Towne wrote his answer. “I will return to the backward dimension, if I can. That’s probably where the fused strands want me to go anyway. There’s a chance the version of me that returned two days ago will be there. Alone, I’ve been unable to return home. Perhaps if multiple inventors of the SM — no offense — put their heads together, it could finally happen.”
“None taken, but wouldn’t he be just as out of sync there as you are here? And if so, wouldn’t he have to leave, just as you do?”
“That’s occurred to me. I will set the Sideways Machine to arrive the day before I left. If the other me does make it back, that would not only ensure I avoid the collision, but it would also give me time to meet him. Then, if necessary, I could bring him back out between dimensions and return with him. If it solves my sync problem, it would solve his.”
“The Sideways Machine time travels, too?” asked OT.
“That was supposed to be its original function. The dimension travel was an accident that kept compounding.”
“Life tends to do that.”
• • •
Laying in bed, doubts assailed Towne. He’d devoted much of his life to temporal and dimensional travel, in part because he felt there had to be a better time or dimension than the one he was living in. But with each trip he took in the Sideways Machine, he ended up somewhere worse. It was like not being satisfied with a facelift, but each one made you look more like a Martian.
Having lived extensively in his own dimension as well as in a backward one, he’d extended his life beyond the 90 or so years allotted to most people. Was his being out of sync now so different from what happened to the elderly of his dimension? Old people needed more time to process and felt as if life was careening out of control, leaving them behind. Only a few days ago he was in the backward dimension, slowly making his way to childhood. It had happened so fast, but didn’t everyone think that?
He woke up to grasping hands carrying him out of his bed. After he finished his morning ablutions and ate breakfast, OT and Vanessa strapped him into the Sideways Machine. It was as if someone had pressed the fast-forward button. He had no chance to react. As OT drove the SM to the departure field, he felt like he was in a barrel going down Niagara Falls. He had become a passive figure, something he’d never been before.
Before Towne realized what was happening, OT stood outside the SM. He might have waved, but it happened too fast for Towne to be sure. The SM began moving forward at an accelerating speed. Towne thought, if for some reason I have to override the automatic pilot, I won’t be able to drive this thing. OT has sent me to my death! He noticed the SM was gaining altitude, flying over houses and trees. Could this work? He noticed a note taped to the dashboard. It was from OT.
“I wish I could have got to know you better, because in doing so, I would have learned more about myself. I’ll have to be content with the takeaway lesson: Never invent a Sideways Machine! Godspeed, whatever that may be!”
The SM made the jump to the buffer area connecting dimensions. The dimension storms were less severe than earlier crossings, and within minutes he achieved the jump point to the backward dimension. Suddenly, he saw another SM approaching. How was that possible, when he was arriving the day before he’d left? Sensing he was no longer out of sync, he switched to manual control. He veered right, but seconds later, the other SM adjusted its direction, right for him. It made no sense, but the more one used the SM, the less anything did.
Towne veered left, and the approaching vehicle adjusted, as if it were a mirror. He watched it get larger and larger in his view screen. The pilot has got to be me, he thought, and there’s a reason he’s targeting me. He couldn’t have known I was returning two days early … unless he saw me arrive then went back in time to meet me. Once more Towne veered to the right, and the on-coming vehicle matched it. Perhaps it was time to start trusting himself. He braced for a direct hit.
• • •
Niles and Towne stood in the field, as the two SMs exploded overhead.
“Do you think it worked?” asked Niles.
“It will take a couple of days to be sure,” said Towne, visibly shaken. “There’s probably a strand where there are still 27 Townes running around, but in this one, there’s a good chance I’m the last one left. That’s enough.”
“Do you feel like a murderer?” Niles asked.
He shook his head. “I feel like someone who, at the last moment, cancelled their ticket on the Titanic.”
• • •
When Towne had returned to the backward dimension and met the 27 other Townes, finishing his sentences, jockeying for position, diminishing his worth, he realized the only solution was to go back in time. Once there, Towne confronted his two-day earlier self before he left the backwards dimension and convinced him to stay. That would eliminate the other Townes, with the exception of he himself, the man OT and his wife packaged into the Sideways Machine, who had caused all this disruption. He insisted he pilot the fatal collision of the two SMs. That eliminated all but one of the Sideways Machines, which was parked a hundred feet from the two men.
“Niles, you always told me to destroy the Sideways Machine, but I never listened until now. Thanks for … existing.”
“What are friends for?” Niles asked.
“That’s something we’re going to continue to find out.”
There was only one more thing to do. Towne overloaded the engine of the SM and backed away. In less than 60 seconds, it exploded like an intense regret.
Towne turned to Niles, whose car was parked on the side of the road. It was back to a life that hadn’t turned out the way he planned, that he would slowly lose control of. But he was finally going to accept it as his.
“Let’s go home,” said Towne. “We’re not getting any older.”