Tom’s hands squeaked down the glass wall. He looked at David. “We did it… We did it!” Tom yelled, as he picked David up off the ground and administered a crushing hug.
“What did I tell you!” David shouted, “What did I tell you!”
Tom bounced David in the air and danced around like a child on Christmas morning. Sally stood still, staring into the receiving area. “I don’t… I can’t…”
Tom put David back on his feet, strode up to Sally’s face and yelled at the top of his lungs, “HA!”
After Tom had expressed his victory to Sally and moved on to shake the hands of several excited colleagues, David approached Sally with a smile. “Thank you for letting this happen. We owe you everything.”
“I… You’re welcome.” Sally replied.
David extended his hand and Sally took it. Rather then shaking her hand, David let their hands linger together, while he looked kindly into her eyes. And then she did it again: Sally smiled.
THREE
Teetering
2005
Arizona
Tom and David gleefully spent the next eleven hours sorting through piles of documentation, equipment and tools that had been sent back in time from their future selves. The idea that this could work originated from David’s brilliant mind, but was quickly supported by Tom when they first met. David grew skeptical of Tom’s motivation after learning about Megan’s untimely and violent death. But Tom had assured David endlessly that if success came within their lifetimes, he would not try to alter his tragic past. Tom knew that doing so would mean he and David would never meet. Having never met, any success they would experience in the realm of time travel would cease to exist, meaning Tom couldn’t go back in time in the first place. This was only one of the many theoretical paradoxes of time travel, which they now faced in the futuristic items laid out around the room.
David rubbed his weary eyes and continued on, driving his thoughts into a particular schematic that diagramed how one might navigate through the time stream without creating a cosmic wake. David’s mind wrapped itself within the blanket of the schematic’s quantum calculations. His eyes twitched back and forth, as he sucked up the information like a computerized leech. Then, an epiphany, “Look! Look!” he yelled, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of this sooner?”
Tom looked up from fiddling with a silver watch. “How do you know you thought of it at all?” Tom asked and went back to exploring the contours of the watch.
David crinkled his forehead. He began, “Well, I started working on-”
But Tom cut him off with a question of his own “Why did we send back watches?” Ten watches were lined up on the table next to Tom, but before the issue could be further addressed, Tom asked another question, “Whose handwriting?”
David grew confused, “What?”
Tom answered, not looking up from the watch, “Whose handwriting is on the schematic?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t know,” David replied, with a tinge of impatience.
“Well, look,” Tom said.
David begrudgingly held up the schematic and inspected the handwriting. As David continued his detective work, Tom puzzled over the watches, “There are ten of these watches. All the same.”
David placed the schematic on a table and moved it nonchalantly aside. Tom never looked up. Thinking he got away with his sleight of hand, David relaxed and attempted to steer the conversation further in the direction it was already headed. “Here, let me have a look,” David said as he reached for the watch in Tom’s hand.
Tom pulled the watch out of David’s range and asked, “Whose handwriting? Yours or mine?”
“Ugh, just give me the watch,” David pleaded.
“Tell me.”
An agonizing moment passed. Agonizing for David at least. It was sheer pleasure on Tom’s part.
“Yours,” David conceded.
Tom smiled smugly and handed the watch over. David snatched it away quickly, eager to move on to more productive topics.
The watch face was silver, lined with what David thought must be gold. Could these be gifts celebrating their success? Not likely, David surmised as he looked at the lines of small buttons, tracing each side of the watch with his index finger. In all, he found eight buttons. The diamond quartz display showed the time, which was wrong, but left plenty of room for several other sets of information-numbers, codes, percentages-to be viewed. What are these watches for?
David found the chance to recover from the schematic fiasco. “It’s digital,” David said, “So you’ll be able to read it.”
Tom feigned a laugh as David continued, “I don’t know what it’s for, but the time is wrong.”
“I’ll fix it,” Tom said as he snatched the watch from David’s hands.
“Hey!” David blurted, as he attempted to recover the watch from Tom, who made a hasty retreat.
Tom stopped and pushed several buttons. “Okay, here we go,” Tom said with confidence, as he sat in a smooth, metal chair.
As Tom worked the buttons, both men leaned in close to see what was happening to the watch face. The screen displayed several sets of numbers, the meaning of which Tom and David could not fully grasp. Losing patience, Tom pushed the buttons at an ever-increasing rate until one finger landed on a button that had yet to be depressed.
Nanoseconds later, a crackling noise filled the air around them. With no visible source for the audible emanations, both men looked around in confusion. The noise grew louder and then, both men recognized it. Their eyes met.
Between their faces, a small light began to pulsate. It started again…
Whum… Whum… Whum… WhumWhumWhumWhum.
The pair’s eyes widened and they dove apart in separate directions. David ducked behind a trash barrel while Tom overturned a table, sending stacks of diagrams to the floor, and dove behind it.
“What’s happening?” David shouted.
“How should I know?”
“Look!”
“You look!”
David peeked up over the barrel. The intense flashing light sent him back down. His mind scrambled for answers.
“We triggered another time event,” whispered David to himself.
A thought struck David and he yelled over the increasing noise, “The watches… They’re the time devices. We triggered the event with the watch!”
David was sure Tom couldn’t hear him over the noise and didn’t bother repeating himself. His eyebrows raised as a new realization reeled into his mind. Not only had they created a time travel device in the future, they had created several and they were portable!
WhumWhumWhumCrack!
Bright light flashed through the room as time and space exposed itself again.
Boom!
The chair ceased to exist and the light faded. Tom and David gradually peeked out from behind their hiding places. Only a handful of bright blue sparkles now floated to the floor where the single watch had fallen.
Tom was the first to move, crawling out from behind the table. David followed, holding the trash barrel in
