#21
"The Sorry-Making Machines" Issue
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A Fork in the River
by Lisa Timpf
"There'll be a slight delay. Technical difficulties."
I turn to look at the mauve-haired technician.
Normally, I suppose, she'd use the intercom but after all the customer criticism posted on social media about the impersonality exhibited by the TimeRafters franchise, she's making the gesture of sticking her head into the room to speak with us in person. Judging from her manner, it's not something she's had much practice with, but I appreciate the intention anyway.
Technical difficulties. My mouth twists into a grimace as I ponder the two words that you least want to hear at certain times. When you're undergoing robo-surgery, for example. When you're on a booster-jet headed for the moon. Or when, as in my case, you're waiting to make the time-jump into the current of an alternate history.
The technician glances back over her shoulder, then turns to us again. "It'll take about fifteen minutes," she says. "You can cancel, if you like. Take a rain check." Her expression, for a moment, reminds me of a Golden Retriever waiting hopefully for a treat. Getting us out of the queue will speed up her day.
I swivel my head and glance at Henry, taking in his wan face, the gauntness that's doubly disconcerting on his six-foot-two frame.
I can guess his answer. His body's been assaulted by a fast-growing cancer that's thus far outwitted 22nd-centry medical techniques. He won't want to delay.
"We'll make the leap," he says, his deep baritone resonating in the small room. The calm in his voice soothes me.
The door closes, and there's silence once more. Henry closes his eyes, marshaling his strength. I don't want to disturb him, so I keep my thoughts to myself.
Maybe this delay is a ploy to make sure we've thought it through. Then I think of the ocean of people waiting outside the room for their own opportunity for a second chance at life, and I realize the patent absurdity of that idea. The more so since there's been talk, lately, that jumping may be putting undue strain on the warp and weft of time's fragile fabric. Even now, lobby groups are pushing the United Nations and its member countries for legislation banning the practice. No, TimeRafters is focussed on pushing people through, not giving them reasons to back out. We daren't give up our spot, no matter how unpleasant it may be to sit in this featureless room enduring the mental strain of waiting.
Henry's eyes are closed now, and his breathing is rhythmic. I envy him his composure, but then again, it's one of the things I love about him. Henry, the one who got away. The guy I dated all through university, then lost track of after we split up.
Nothing was ever the same, with anybody, after that. I'd had some long-term relationships, but none with the fire, none with the fit we'd found together.
We reconnected just six months ago. This time-jump is our second chance, and I'm determined not to blow it. Even though this delay gives me time to think.
To think, for example, about the prevailing wisdom that says the time-jump feels like a roller-coaster. I both fear and despise roller-coasters, the out-of-control rush that makes you feel like you're about to fall out of your seat as gravity's claws swipe at you like a monster's eager talons trying to pry you out of the fragile shell of the coaster car. I realize my knees are pushing outward, as though I'm back at the roller-park bracing myself against the sides of the 'coaster as it inches up and up and up, knowing that soon it will be plummeting down down down down down.
I begin to struggle against the seatbelt, longing to call out for the technician. I can't do this, I think, panicked. Not for one, not for a hundred Henrys.
And then the room's far wall drops open in front of us, and the chairs move forward on the conveyor, and we are plunged through the suddenly-open gap. Took less than fifteen minutes to make the repairs, it seems.
The first thing I realize, as I fall through and into my twenty-year-old body, is that I've done this before. Many times.
While I'm still struggling to assimilate that, I take in my surroundings. We're on the bullet train from Toronto to Waterloo. Must be the time we went to visit Henry's parents, I think. That was just before we split up. So there's still a chance.
I look out the window, seeing the familiar scenery flash past. I lift my hands and stare at them, noticing that the carpal tunnel surgery scars are gone. This time, I tell myself grimly, I'll value being young.
But the further we get from the moment in time that we dropped through, the more distant the memories become, until, just as they'd told us, they've faded completely, becoming mere whispers, intuitions, echoes of the familiar.
There is something I need to remember, some knowledge I need to cling to. But though I rack my brain desperately, the memories have faded like a tide washing back out to the ocean.
Henry squeezes my hand, and I glance over at him. My trepidation at the prospect of meeting his parents must show on my face. I force a smile, then duck my head guiltily, unable to conceal my sense of foreboding, though I don't know what I'm so worried about. From Henry's accounts, his father sounds like the austere, distant sort and his mother seems overly critical. It'll be uncomfortable, I'm sure, but I'll survive. Then why are you so worked up about it?
Engrossed in my reverie, I haven't noticed until now the squeal of brakes, the chatter of metal on metal. A loud screeeeeech carrying all the appeal of fingernails on a chalkboard assails my ears, I plunge forward uncontrollably, slamming into the seat ahead. Screams and muffled moans arise from other areas of the passenger car, but the area to my left is eerily silent. Slowly, I turn to look at Henry, and my chest contracts in a sudden twinge of pain as though my heart has burst. His forehead is bloody, and his eyes are wide and staring. I reach for his neck to feel his pulse, then draw my hand back, uncertain whether I wish to know the truth.
I look away and check myself for injuries, surprised to see, when I draw my hand from my side, blood. Lots of it. The reason proclaims itself when I look around. The side of the train, at our spot, has been wrenched inward a result of the accident.
It's like a geyser, this crimson flow, and my surroundings are starting to fade.
But just before everything goes black, images flash through my mind. Images of all the times Henry and I met, and lost each other, and tried to find each other, through the years.
Until now, here, finally, we are together at the end.
Our eyes meet, and he, too knows, though I wonder if he grasps the full tragedy of it. Wonder if he remembers that our wish, expressed before the leap, is that we spend the rest of our lives together.
"You can't cheat time," he whispers.
"I know," I say, reaching for his hand. "I've always known. Still, we had to try."
The sound of voices penetrates the haze.
"Test sequence launching in one minute and counting."
Test sequence?
I open my eyes. We're still in the featureless white room, strapped in our chairs.
"Fifty seconds."
The mauve-haired technician peers back through the door. "Why are you here?" she hisses. "Didn't you hear the announcement five minutes ago?" I shake my head, still groggy.
My mouth quirks into an ironic grin as I grasp the truth. I've fallen asleep, that's all. Unpredictably, hyper strung with tension, I've —
Suspicious, I sniff the air, catching the whiff of a chemical taint. My eyes narrow. It appears that TimeRafters has taken no chances with panicked clients. Some kind of sleeping gas was pumped into our little cell, I'm certain of it. Only it may have taken longer than anticipated for Henry and me to snap out of it.
"Forty seconds."
"I'll need help with him," I say, nodding toward Henry. "He's been sick."
"There's no time, now," she says, her eyes wide. "I'll be stuck. We'll all be stuck."
And she disappears.
No time. Ironic, if you think about it.
But there is time for one action, one last gesture. I claw at my tablet, and without consulting Henry, who's still snoring anyway, I position the cursor. I overwrite the wish to spend the rest of our lives together with the following: "To live long and happy lives."
And seconds after I hit the enter key, the front of the room opens, our seat belts release, and we are launched into the time current.
And the jump is not, I realize, like a roller coaster at all. With the sense of immense and gathering speed, the dancing prisms of light all around, and the cool mistiness, it's like traversing a waterfall in a barrel. And then, suddenly, I am standing on the platform at the train station, my mind dispassionately processing all that it sees. The sign hanging on the edge of the platform roof, swaying lightly in the breeze, still reads "Union Station", but the station is Lilliputian compared to the bustling monstrosity I'm familiar with.
This will be the end of the line. No more second chances.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to see how this particular society is going to discover how to navigate the forking river of the time continuum.
The steam powered automobiles that vie for space with horses and buggies in the dirt parking lot, along with the approaching train emitting puffs of steam from its stack as it chugs toward us, are clue enough that we're not, as the saying goes, in Kansas anymore.
The time-jump must have insinuated us into a rogue stream, rather than one paralleling ours with any degree of diligence. Though the twenty-page disclaimer all jumpers must sign off on included such a possibility, it hadn't really occurred to me as a viable scenario.
Until now.
Can a steam train still have an accident? I ask myself. As my memory begins to fade, I argue with Henry about whether we should board the train at all.
I don't know why, but I am possessed by a deep conviction that it's dangerous for us to step into the chuffing monster that now stands in front of us.
"Look, Lara," Henry says, glaring down at me from his full six-foot-two height. "My parents are expecting us. And if you won't go, I will, anyway." He pauses, and adds more gently. "I know you haven't ridden the train as often as I have, but I can assure you, it's safe."
When I refuse to listen to his voice of reason, Henry swings up the steps, his stiff shoulders bespeaking his views on the matter. Though I can see his profile in the window, he doesn't wave to me as the train pulls out.
Tears streaming down my face, I watch the train pass, one car at a time, and stand, immobile, until it disappears from sight.
I turn away from the station, sensing that I have done more than miss a train. I have crossed beyond some turning point in my life. I just don't know what it is.
The sun's brightness makes me grateful for the relief provided by my sunglasses as I sit on the park bench.
"Watch me, grandma," Juliette hollers over, waving to me as she clambers up the slide then rockets down, landing gracefully on her feet.
I smile indulgently, envious of the girl's seemingly endless supply of energy, though I know after I bring her home to her mother tonight Juliette will sleep soundly with the all-out exhaustion of youth.
To sleep soundly. It's an experience more and more foreign to me. Of late, I have dreamed strange things about strange places. I do not know the root of these dreams, for they contain things I have never seen before. Perhaps they are the vague imaginings born of watching too many of the science fiction movies that have become so popular in the last decade.
Striding through these dreams of strange places is Henry. Our relationship petered out after that fateful day we parted ways back on the platform of the train station, and I haven't seen him in decades, Why, out of all the people I've had over the years, is it Henry who haunts these obscure and disturbing imaginings?
Compelled to try to make sense of the inexplicable, my mind offers an explanation. It's because you've always loved him.
The thought is not helpful, reminding me as it does of the sense of deep loss that's been dulled by the years but has never healed over.
As I am watching my granddaughter, my mind churning, I see her greet a boy who looks to be her age, give or take. While Juliette has blonde hair, this young fellow's hair is jet black. He grins at her, a shy smile, and his slim frame and oversized feet bear the promise of future growth spurts to come.
And then I sense that I too, am being watched.
"Do you mind if I join you?" A man, slightly stooped though still very tall, smiles down at me. His hair is now steel grey, but I sense, from the odd darker strand visible here and there, that it was once black, and his blue eyes can cast a penetrating gaze.
"I'm keeping an eye on my grandson, Ross," he says. "My name's Henry, by the way." He extends his hand, and when I reach out to and feel his powerful grip, I feel a shock run through me.
His face is familiar, and I now know why. I see, in the gathering of his own features, a dawning recognition.
It's that Henry.
But I am wise enough to know by now that one way or another, the Three Fates will have their pound of flesh, even if they are compelled to wrest it from us with their bare hands, leaving us to heal as we may. And so I don't regret the years that have flowed behind me, bereft of Henry's company. Instead, I look forward to those that lie ahead.
I have had my share of happiness in this life, but my relationship with Henry now, in comparison, is like enjoying finely aged cheese or vintage wine after spending a lifetime subsisting on budget fare.
We don't know how many years we have remaining to us, but those we do, we intend to enjoy in each other's company, as long or as short as that span may be.
And if my dreams are true — I never whisper them to anyone, for fear they will think me mad — perhaps it is a good thing that in this timeline, there is no forking of the river of time, no alternate stream to step into.
For even if I were offered the chance to live it all over, to risk changing what I have, I would decline the opportunity.
There is peace enough, here and now, and an end to searching.
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