If Edison had the least suspicion that Ariyl had torn down his movie studio all by herself, he gave no hint of it. He gave us a deluxe tour of his laboratory, letting us listen to his original phonograph and his very first tinfoil cylinder recording of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”—he explained that it could only be played a few more times before the cylinder would wear out and be incomprehensible. He showed us how the recording medium had moved on, to wax cylinders and now to flat shellac discs, but the refinements to his inventions seemed to bore him—he clearly preferred the initial discovery.
He also showed us one of his very first light bulbs, still working a quarter century later.
Then, out of the blue, Ariyl asked him if he thought a time machine would ever be invented. I gave her a look that said how-could-you?
Edison barked a laugh.
“That would be an insane invention. Why build such a dangerous thing? You sound like that crackpot Nikola Tesla. He keeps assuring me he can broadcast electrical power through the air—as radiation! I’ve seen what X-rays can do to a human being. I would never risk that just to be rid of electric wires.”
I had to plead a soon-to-depart train to get Ariyl out of there.
We stopped in August 1920 and verified that the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified on schedule. Women got the vote, with some inspiration from the happily married Katie Sandwina. Our patch on history had held. But even though we were each using our own Time Crystals, and holding hands, Ariyl still arrived several minutes out of sync with me. We agreed that rather than push our luck, we’d go straight back to Sven’s apartment on March nineteenth, 2018—one day after we’d left Brannigan’s Steak House in such a rush—and figure out our next move regarding this whole asteroid thing.
Once again, I arrived alone outside my old building in Brentwood, where Sven Bergstrom still lived in what used to be my ground floor apartment. Ariyl felt sure we would again arrive within a few minutes of each other, so as agreed, I went in to meet Sven.
I paused at the door intercom. Now that Sven knew my secret, he always seemed to know me when I came back. But there was always the chance we’d made some alteration to the time stream that erased me, or at least his memory of me.
As I worked up my courage to find out, I saw Andy Graise, my ex-roomie from college, a P.E. teacher who, in the first draft of history, was a record-breaking ballplayer who died in a plane crash. He came from the parking lot carrying a six-pack and a plastic sack crammed with snacks. Eyes downcast, he didn’t even take notice of me as he unlocked the building door. Melissa, the stray cat who had adopted Sven, but sometimes slipped out into the hallway, meowed at us both.
“Ah, thanks,” I said, catching the door Andy had opened.
He turned a baleful eye on me.
“Where’ve you been, Preston? Out protesting Congress?”
Well, at least he knew me.
“Why would I do that?”
“Ehh, go watch TV with old man Bergstrom. Your darling president’s on.”
“Not your president?” I wondered.
Andy snorted so loud it spooked the cat. He went in and slammed his door.
Extremely odd. Had the Mueller probe finally turned Andy against his hero?
I picked up Sven’s Los Angeles Times and knocked. It read April first, 2019. Damn! A day for us had turned into thirteen months gone from my home era.
The headline made me do a double-take.
Clinton To Give Much-Delayed State of Union.
What the hell?
Then I reread the date. April first, 2019.
Must be just a wraparound, fake first and last pages, like when they do a big movie promotion.
So the Times was now doing an April Fool edition? Really? That’s how you hold onto the dwindling print audience?
Sven opened the door. Melissa slipped between our feet as Sven ushered me in.
“I’ve been expecting you, David,” said Sven. He looked pale. He locked the door, then bolted it.
“You all right?” I asked.
“I’ve been better.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting all these months. You must have given me up for dead.”
“The whole year, I kept hoping you were just delayed. But this morning, I knew you’d show up today.”
“Why?”
“Because I woke up this morning thinking that I knew who had won the presidential election in 2016. As it turns out, I did not know.”
Sven fumbled with his smart phone for a moment, then showed me his news feed:
HRC To Give Delayed SOTU.
“Saw it. Funny. The Times is becoming The Onion.”
“No, David. It’s no joke. On November eighth, 2016, Hillary Clinton was elected the forty-fifth president of the United States.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. Sven turned on his TV—as usual, it was tuned to MSNBC. He was such a politics wonk.
It was live coverage of Hillary Clinton, making her State of the Union speech. I turned to Sven, my jaw agape.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but...how?”
Sven shrugged. “I’m still tracking down where the change to the timestream occurred. The only difference I’ve been able to find so far is that in 2016, she campaigned once in Wisconsin.”
“Instead of zero.”
“Exactly. Apparently, that was just enough to do the trick. She won that state, Pennsylvania, and Michigan by just under eight thousand votes, total. About a tenth of what she had lost those states by, in the history I knew yesterday. She still won the popular vote by three million.”
My mind was reeling. Accidentally, we’d somehow solved one of the biggest catastrophes ever to hit American politics. I should be happy. But something was off.
“I don’t get it, Sven. How is it you know what the prior timeline was? Shouldn’t I be talking to a different you who always thought that Clinton won?”
He gave a patient sigh.
“That would only be true if reality was a Multiple Timeline universe. We’re in a Single Changeable Timeline. Remember what we learned from your visit to the silent film comic, whatzisname with the clock?”
“Harold Lloyd.”
“You saw his antique Rolls-Royce in 1954. With the brass trim. Then you went back to 1933, and Ariyl tossed Harold through the windshield. And when you came back to 1954, that same car had a different windshield frame. Chrome replacement instead of brass.”
“Right. The car changed.”
“History changed. But you travelers remember the old version. Just like when Ariyl left you on Santorini and tried to change Ludlo’s departure so he never met you and Andy Graise in 2011. You should have had your memory of her erased...instead, you remembered everything as it was...while the timeline changed around you.”
I nodded, getting it. “When I got back to 2013, I found out Andy never won that game or died in that plane crash afterward. That’s why he’s the gym coach who lives next door.”
“Ultimately, there is only one timeline, David. It is changeable. And there are temporary, competing timelines...but those are just rough drafts of history. They must all collapse into the final, most probable version. The one that requires the least action to happen.”
“I know. That’s why I’m the only one who remembers when Andy made the record books by hitting five homers.”
“Except now that you’ve let me in on your little secret, David, you’ve put me in your same boat. My knowledge of time travel makes me a traveler-by-proxy. The independent observer who determines whether Schrödinger’s Cat lived or died. Today, you and I are the only two people in the world who remember Clinton losing that election.”
“Make that three,” said Ariyl, who was suddenly in the room with us.
Sven gave a start, and put a hand to his chest.
“I swear, I am never going to get used to you two popping in and out of thin air like that.”
“I keep telling Dylila the Time Travel Agency should add some cool FX,” nodded Ariyl. “But she says time travelers need to be unobtrusive.”
“Yes. You should work on that,” Sven fumed.
“Sven, I swear, we didn’t do anything...” I said.
“...major,” finished Ariyl, under her breath.
“Well, one of you travelers did something in the last twenty-four hours that changed the world, and it changed around me, too.”
“I think I know what it was,” I admitted. “We can undo it, if need be. But this thing of you being a non-traveling time traveler? I’m still not clear on the logic. I mean, if we had killed one of your ancestors...”
“Then I wouldn’t be here to remember anything. This is a good time for me to remind you—and Ariyl and Dylila—to be extremely careful not to kill anyone back in time. I’m ninety-three. I’ve lived a full life and I’m not afraid to die. But to have it all erased?” He shuddered.
“Wait a sec,” Ariyl said. “There’s one other time traveler who might have done this—Ludlo.”
“Your ex-boyfriend, who started this whole crazy mess?” Sven chewed his lip. “But he hasn’t got a Time Crystal anymore.”
“Still, he’s out there somewhere, traveling into the future one day at a time. He’s furious over Ariyl and me stranding him in the Bronze Age.”
“And me burning his face in 1933,” added Ariyl.
“He’s only aging at one percent the rate you and I are...and he knows the future, Sven. So he could change a lot of things.”
“But you said it yourself, David—Ludlo can’t afford to make any big change, or he might erase N-Tec. Which he needs to be invented on schedule to replace his aging body.”
“That’s true,” I admitted, sheepish. “I knew that. Jeez, I wonder if I’ll ever get all of my memory back.”
“You think you’re confused? I’m starting to remember the Clinton inaugural. Much bigger crowd, by the way. And I’ve now got two sets of competing recollections going back to 2016. At my age, it’s all I can do trying to remember one set of memories!”
I nodded, sympathetic.
“Okay. So Ludlo needs history intact until the twenty-second century. And I’m pretty damn sure he wouldn’t help Hillary Clinton be president.”
I looked back at the TV. Sven helpfully turned up the volume. The POTUS had moved on to the topic of health care.
“I will not yield to attacks on the Affordable Care Act,” she declared. There was loud grumbling from one side of the aisle. “The facts will show that current declines in life expectancy are strongly associated with states that have refused Medicaid expansion. So I will be submitting legislation...”
“Dead on arrival!” shouted a heckler on the GOP side.
“Legislation,” she continued, “that will allow individuals in those states to take advantage of a federally sponsored public option...” Here a loud chorus of boos arose from that side of the aisle, while the Democrats began applauding. The lungs drowned out the palms.
I could barely make out the rest of her sentence even though she was shouting: “...and build on the ACA’s success to bring the promise of affordable health care to millions more people!”
“Wow,” I said, picking up his remote and muting the sound. “That’s what I call divided government. I take it nobody in Congress is even mentioning universal health care.”
Sven gave a mirthless chuckle: “Never gonna happen.”
I fingered my Time Crystal.
“Well, much as I hate to look this gift-pony in the mouth, I think I need to see if a Clinton presidency avoids the ice age.”
“But an aster—” began Ariyl.
Standing behind him, I put a finger to my lips. I didn’t want to freak Sven out with any more bad news.
“What’s an aster?” he wondered.
“An asterisk,” I said. “The 2016 election will always have an asterisk beside it.”
He gave me a dubious look.
“Before you leave, you need to see this,” he said. He picked up the remote and started fumbling with it, clicking on the DVR. “I checked the episodes I already watched...and they’re all different today, filled with all this new history.”
I waited patiently as he tried to get the cursor to land on the correct date of The Rachel Maddow Show, which he apparently had on series-record. I finally put out my hand, and fuming, he handed me the clicker.
“Play yesterday,” he instructed.
Bip-bip-bip went the remote.
Rachel’s show began.
“Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour,” she said with an unhappy smile. “On March fourth, 1879, Republican president and Civil War hero Rutherford B. Hayes faced a Democratic majority in both the Senate and the House.” I froze Maddow. Sven was about to protest. I really think Sven wanted to marry that girl.
“Look,” I said gently, “You know I love history as much as Rachel does, but we need to cut to the chase here.”
Sven gave me the go-ahead gesture.
I fast-forwarded Maddow at 8x speed through a collection of daguerreotypes and Currier & Ives prints, until she got to a modern seating chart showing the 115th Congress, as it had been when I last left Sven in March 2018: there were 51 red seats versus 47 blue and a pair of light blue (Independents caucusing with Democrats) and a 45-seat GOP advantage in the House.
I slowed the DVR down, just in time for the graphic to flip to the current 116th Congress: The red areas of the Senate and the House charts instantly hemorrhaged. The Senate total was 67 Republicans versus 21 Democrats and 2 Independents, and a 61-seat GOP majority in the House.
Ariyl’s eyes glazed over.
“I need something to eat,” she said.
“Veggie casserole in the freezer,” said Sven. “Microwave it for five minutes.”
“The party holding the White House usually loses seats in its first midterm,” Maddow explained, “but the so-called ‘Red Wave’ of 2018 was especially brutal to the Clinton Administration.”
I froze Maddow in mid-syllable and turned to Sven. “What the hell happened? When I left in March 2018 we were expecting a Blue Wave!”
“Up till yesterday there was a Blue Wave. Rachel explains it a lot better than I can, but the upshot is, in the new 2018 with Clinton in office, there was no Blue Wave in the House. As for the Senate, just by the math, the Republicans were always going to pick off vulnerable red state Democrats, but the presidential election made their base furious. So they just ran the table in 2018.”
“That’s...that’s...” I sputtered.
“Well, that’s why you should watch the rest of Rachel. You have to realize, it’s not just the new Clinton email investigation...”
“Another one?”
“And another one about Benghazi. There’s also Special Counsel James Comey looking into Clinton campaign and Clinton Foundation ties to China...”
“But Comey was fired from the FBI!”
“That was yesterday’s history. In today’s history, he ‘retired’ during Clinton’s first month. I assume she ordered him to resign, and I can’t blame her, given all the crap he pulled. But that just made him the Republicans’ favorite choice for Special Counsel. And now that they have a supermajority...”
“This is insane!”
“We’re just on floor one of the nuthouse. Anthony Kennedy has declared he won’t retire till 2021, and the Supreme Court still doesn’t have a replacement for Antonin Scalia ’cause Mitch McConnell says he’ll block any nominee until the election lawsuits reach the high court.”
“What lawsuits?”
“Five states are suing to void the 2016 presidential results because of alleged voting by illegal aliens.”
I was about to rip out my own hair.
“Illegal aliens don’t vote! They’re too scared to go to the cops when they get robbed or raped! You think three million of them would risk deportation for an ‘I Voted’ sticker?”
“Shh!” whispered Sven. “These walls are paper-thin and your pal Andy owns guns.”
Slow, deep breaths, I told myself.
“Sorry, Sven.”
“You know I’m on your side, but you haven’t seen the news I’ve been watching all day. Three federal judges have been assassinated since 2016. The government is shut down. There are riots all across America. Mass shootings.”
“More than usual?”
“Believe it or not. White supremacist attacks on federal offices...domestic terrorist malware shutting down power plants...it’s like a new civil war is breaking out!”
“What is driving all this hate?”
Sven picked up the remote, and turned up the sound on the State of the Union address. He clicked from CBS to NBC to ABC—all pretty much in sync—then to Fox News, which instead of the SOTU was broadcasting what I’d call the STFU—a depressingly familiar orange face smirking and winking and sniffling behind a gold-topped lectern. Apparently, the broadcast was coming from an arena, because there were pale, scowling people in red ball caps seated onstage behind him, and a scarlet sea of them surging around the stage.
“And trust me, right now, Crooked Hillary is using your tax dollars and your airwaves...and the office she stole...with her illegal alien fake voters...to lie to you!”
Right on cue, the throng began chanting, “Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!”
“Wait, wait,” grinned their leader. “We gotta do this legal. There’s a reason those wonderful, beautiful Founders wrote our brilliant Constitution, believe me. I know it’s a pain in the butt, but first, we gotta impeach her!”
That got what some might have described as a laugh, though it sounded more like an enraged roar.
Meanwhile, the website address for donations remained supered over the bottom third of the screen.
“Jesus Christ on a cracker,” I exhaled.
“Somebody oughta reason with him,” said Ariyl, with an odd smile.
I snapped off the TV and shook my finger at her.
“No more messing with history!”
“He’s got a two-hour show on Fox every night,” sighed Sven. “Top-rated cable show in America. They’re saying they might just rename the network after him.”
I had to laugh. It was a long, bitter laugh, but it was either that or weep.
“That was what he wanted in the first place,” I finally said.