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Invercharing Community
The Future
Relaying the story of how she’d met their dad had exhausted Kelly’s mum. It was her idea of how to pass the time. Kelly’s mum tired more easily and needed longer periods of rest in between the retelling as the weekend passed. Kelly’s dad was away with the oldest twins. They were part of the Militia. Her dad oversaw manoeuvres and there were reports of a bandit group nearby. He wanted the area safe and had taken a small troop of Militia to investigate. Kelly’s chest constricted, and tears pinched at her eyeballs. Her dad, being a Highlander, knew this area of the Highlands well, where they had set up the Invercharing Community. He was brave, and at times fierce, but always gentle and loving to her mum, brothers and sisters.
Kelly sat beside her mum’s bed. The clatter of a dray going past, and the fresh scent of horses wafted through the open window, the breeze lifting the simple net curtains which brushed past the pictures of Van Gogh’s paintings her mum had stuck to the wall beside the window. Her mum loved Van Gogh. Kelly’s chin dug into her hands. She hadn’t brushed her long straight brown hair today. It fell untidily around her face and she blew it away from her mouth.
Kelly’s elbows left a dent on her knees. That sensation in her chest and throat welled up again. Should Kelly believe everything her mum had told her about how she met her dad and their early life together? Some of it was quite fantastical. Were the morphine tablets making her delusional? Aunty Bec, being a doctor, had personally taken on her mum’s pain management. It upset everyone to see her mum, Caitlin, lose her fight with lymphoma. Kelly didn’t understand how her dad, Scott, went away when her mum was obviously going downhill, and fast.
Since the treatment stopped working, her mum had become very thin. Cachexia, Aunty Bec had called it. Her mum now appeared small in her bed, her collarbones stood out, her cheekbones were more prominent, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Caitlin Murray-Campbell never had dark circles under her eyes. She’d always been a very beautiful woman who aged little, only the smile lines near her eyes showed her true age. Kelly wasn’t the only one who believed she didn’t look her almost sixty years. This had always been a good thing with a husband twenty years younger. But no one ever noticed. They were both exceptional people. Kelly being alone with her mum had happened a lot lately. It had been good to hear how they met.
Murray walked hesitantly into the room. Kelly was glad he’d been here too, often sitting by their mother’s bedside as well. Kelly had to admit she’d needed him. It was funny how Murray was their father’s colouring but nothing like him, tall but skinny. Nerdy, not like the rest of her brothers. This time with him and their mother had brought them closer. Murray strode across the plain carpeted floor to the chair on the other side of the bed and sat.
“Where’s Dad, Kelly? Why’s he not here?” Murray whispered over their sleeping mother. Kelly shrugged. “Can’t he see she’ll not be with us much longer?” Murray continued to whisper. “Dad should be here! He’s in denial.”
“What’s denial?”
“You know, the first stage of grief. Kubler-Ross and all that. What do you read, anyway?”
“Not what you read, that’s for sure. Mum’s been telling me how she met Dad.”
“Oh, that’s romantic.”
“No, it’s been a bit weird. I think Mum’s pain meds are making her a bit funny. Funny ‘odd’ that is. Mum said,” Kelly leaned over the bed to be closer to him and dropped her voice another notch, “that Dad travelled back in time for her right before The Stock Market Crash, to keep her safe till they got here.”
“How’d Dad go back?” Murray used measured tones.
“In a time machine they built here!” She almost laughed.
“She shouldn’t have mentioned that!” Murray’s whisper was harsh. “It’s a secret project.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?” Kelly insisted. Murray shook his head, his eyes slightly narrowed and his mouth a thin line—his expression one of Don’t ask! But she had to.
“Murray, Mum’s been speaking of a time machine, and Dad travelling back in time to when she was a young woman in her twenties. She claims he was almost forty. Like he is now!”
Murray gazed at their mother. He let out his breath, his shoulders slumping.
“Okay.” He swallowed. “What I’m about to tell you, you mustn’t tell anyone else. Especially not Angela, okay?”
Kelly nodded as Murray’s Adam’s apple bobbed a few times.
“So, there is such a thing as a time machine here in our Community compound. Uncle Brendan, some scientists, including Mum’s cousin Martin, and myself, have been working on it for a while now. It’s all set for human trials. It’s a project only known by those on the team and the Chief Council. You know Uncle Brendan is an electrical engineer? Well, he devised a gadget for pinpointing places in time. We’ve tested it out on small animals going back and forward in time from a time zero, the present, for short-time distances. Then with larger animals, extrapolating results for humans. We haven’t performed tests with humans, and we’re still debating the ethics involved. We also haven’t devised a way to make a return journey possible. Still more calculations and theory to think over. It’s locked away, ready to go, set to the date of a month before TSMC.”
Kelly’s mind spun. Her brother spoke as if it were fact. A time machine! Her mum said so. Murray said so. And Murray was smart, all the scientists in the Community believed it. He’d never lie to her.
“What’s the TSMC?”
“The Stock Market Crash! Don’t you know anything? It’s like, the reason the world is as it is now. Read your history girl.”
Kelly knew her history, just not by the initials Murray used for that event. She wouldn’t argue the point.
“Why you? Why’re you part of the team?”
“Because I’m good at maths and I can use a slide rule for the complicated calculations. Computers can’t do it all, like they say they used to.”
“So, both Mum and Dad know about this?”
“Yes. They check up on it regularly. Well, Dad does, anyway. He’s fascinated by it all. Especially lately, as Mum has become sicker.” Murray paused; his brow deeply furrowed. “You can’t let him know you know, okay?”
Kelly nodded as their mother stirred in her sleep.
“Does Dad know that Mum is telling you all this? Does he know she knows he went back in time for her?” Murray’s questions came rapidly.
“I’ve no idea. Should I ask Dad when he comes back?”
“No, no, no, don’t ask Dad anything. We can’t do anything to change history, past or present. If Dad goes, it must be because Dad goes. We can’t do anything to affect it.”
“What do you mean ‘Can’t do anything to affect history’? What’s the time set to before TSMC all about? Isn’t someone going back to prevent that?” Her voice rose at the contradictions in his statements. What was their idea setting that date?
Kelly’s mum stirred and opened her eyes.
“Oh, sorry Mum. Didn’t mean to wake you.” Murray looked down at her.
“Murray, that’s okay. Haven’t seen you for a while. How are you son?” Their mum usually referred to Murray as her ‘Little Einstein’.
“I’m fine. How are you?”
Their mum’s smile was weary. Murray bit his lower lip for a moment.
“Mum, have you been telling Kelly about the Time Machine?” Murray whispered.
Kelly’s mum turned to her.
“I thought you realised that was confidential between us, Kelly. You weren’t to tell anyone, especially not your father. Do not tell Scott, please! He can’t know. We can’t affect what he does. What he will do.” Her mum shook her head as she corrected herself.
“Sorry, Mum.” Kelly regretted not believing her mother in the first place. “But I wasn’t sure if you weren’t just dreaming it or something. I needed Murray to confirm it’s all real.”
“It is all real. And it must happen. Don’t tell your father I know, please.”
“You mean, you never told him?” Murray’s voice was loud in the small bedroom “You kept it a secret from him all these years?”.
“He was so young and vulnerable when he arrived at this community.” Their mum sighed. “He was only eighteen. He’d been through an act of survival to get here. He’d lost everything and everyone and was emotionally fragile. He’d grown up quickly. He’d had to. The years passed, and I thought I might tell him, as it had been too soon when we were first married. He wouldn’t have coped with it. Then I decided against it. When you know someone as I know your father—as well as I knew him as the mature man I had met previously—I knew he’d want to come back for me because he wanted to and had decided for himself. Not because I’d told him he did. And that still stands. Do not tell him.” Their mum sunk back into her bed, her speech exhausting her.
“We must make sure he goes, though. Without him realising that we are,” Murray broke the silence. “Dad has to go, doesn’t he?”
Kelly’s mum’s brow creased. So did Murray’s.
“What’s wrong, Mum?” Kelly placed her hand on her mother’s bony shoulder. “Are you in pain? Do you need more morphine?”
“No.” Her mum shook her head. “It’s just that if he doesn’t go, then all this won’t happen. Because it has happened, you see? I could only do all this because of what he taught me when I was a young woman and he was the experienced man he is now.”
“So, the space-time continuum will be safe?” Murray’s knotted brow relaxed as their mother nodded.
“Time? Space?” Kelly asked. What was he talking about?
“Read more, sis.”
“When I die,” her mum’s cool fingers reached out and rested on Kelly’s hand, “take my wedding ring off my finger and make sure your father takes it with him. He also needs lots of cash.” She turned her head to Murray. “Collect what you can and make sure he has it somewhere to grab quickly and that he takes it with him, please.”
Kelly nodded and looked at her brother. He’d also understand the importance of their mother’s last requests to them.