'Nother Old Story

 

Charlie Sparks stepped out of a little country store, a small paper bag of groceries dangling from his hand.

“Money jest don’ go as fear as it useta” he said under his breath. It was a long walk back to Jackson Holler, and it wasn’t getting any shorter by standing on the porch of Walker’s ‘M’pour-ium. It spelled that way because it was also the local bar, and Mike Walker had a sense of humor. Or, at least he thought he did.

A half hour later, and a mile closer to home on the dusty gravel road, a 10 year old Ford rolled up; the first car Charlie had seen since leaving Walker’s Bottom. It seemed newer than it should have. Most cars of that vintage in these parts had mismatched paint on the parts- like a white fender on a blue car- and wore out tires. This one looked showroom new. Odd for an older car up here, where roads were rough, and the people occasionally rougher.

The driver was a stranger. Another oddity in this part of the country. There was nothing around here to draw an outsider. No mining, logging or manufacturing. Unless you counted the illegal production of ‘shine. No beauty either. Ugly, stunted trees and deep, muddy creek cuts, showing multiple levels of deep red and chocolate mud. Nobody came here to see the sights. He was dressed in a suit and tie; another strange thing, in a community where most people’s Sunday best was their newer bib overalls.

“Mr. Sparks? Charlie Sparks?” he asked, rolling to a stop a few feet ahead of where Charlie was walking. Grinning slightly, he opened his door and extended his hand. Charlie looked up from following his feet in the dust, counting each step of the long walk home.

“Yassuh; I’m him. Who y’all be?” Charlie said as he switched his small sack from his right to his left hand, and extended his right hand toward the stranger.

The stranger’s grin turned to a broad smile as he shook Charlie’s hand. “They call me Johnny Mroz”, his smile getting even bigger as he released Charlie’s hand. “I was hoping I could talk to you for a bit. Would you like a ride home?”

Charlie hadn’t sat in an automobile in more than a year. He walked everywhere, lacking even a mule, since Old Mose died 18 months ago. And he was getting tired of it. The rough roads had worn holes in the soles of his shoes, almost to the point that going barefoot would be an improvement. He could use a ride. But what did this stranger want?

“Yassuh, I could do wit’ a ride. But the road is rough; y’all sure y’all wanna ruin y’all’s fine car for this broke down ole hillbilly?”

Johnny’s smile didn’t falter. “No risk at all Mr. Sparks; this old girl was made to take roads like yours in stride. Hop in and get comfortable” he said as he opened the passenger door for Charlie.

Charlie settled into the mohair seat, and knocked as much dust as he could from his shoes before he swung them onto the clean rubber mats. He placed his small sack on the floor and braced it with his feet as Johnny started the car and eased it into gear.

As they started rolling, Johnny spoke. “Charlie…. May I call you Charlie?” Charlie nodded; a motion Mr. Mroz caught out of the corner of his eye. “Charlie”, he continued, “you probably have a few questions. Let me tell you my story; it should answer those questions for you.”

“You may not believe this, but I have been trying to find you for awhile. But you are a hard man to find. I have been in and out of dang near every holler for fifty miles in any direction; asking questions at every store, feed mill and watering hole I could find. Nobody seems to know you, or had even heard of you, until I talked to Mike Walker this morning. Knowing that I was only a few minutes behind you – FINALLY- has put a spring in my step this morning I can tell you!”

Charlie was hearing lots of words, but little explanation. He still had no idea what was going on, who this man was or why he had been looking for him. But it was better than walking. He listened, as Johnny continued his monologue.

“Why would a man take this time and trouble to find a somebody he didn’t know? Well Charlie, you may not believe this but your name is pretty well-known where I come from.”

Charlie raised his head from where he had been once again starring at his feet and turned to look at the driver. He decided it was time to take better stock of who this man was. Tall, but not lanky. Well muscled, but not grotesquely. Fit was probably a better term. His hair was light, but too close cropped to determine a color. It could have been anything from blond to medium brown. Hazel eyes, clean shaven and moderately dressed, although contrary to current custom, he was bareheaded. Charlie did take notice that he could have eaten for a year on the money Johnny’s shoes had cost. He did not know where this man was from, and could not think of a single reason he was famous anywhere. Shoot; he wasn’t even well known in Walker Bottoms.

Charlie ended his assessment of Johnny with thoughts of what Mr. Mroz was seeing in his passenger seat. Almost as tall as Johnny was, but maybe a bit past his prime. What once was well worked muscle, was now wasted, poorly hidden in loosely hung skin. Black hair, recently flecked with gray, and a four day gray stubble covered his chin. From his stubble to his well worn boots he was the spitting image of a dirt poor farmer. Worn and well patched bib overalls; a well worn and patched shirt underneath, open at the collar, and missing at least one button. He wore an old fedora, one that had been crushed and reformed more times than could be counted, sweat stained around the base and, like everything else he wore, covered with a fine layer of red-brown dust that stuck like glue.

Johnny continued, “Where I come from- just where isn’t important now- you have become rather well-known, and I’m not the only one who has been searching for you; I know of at least a dozen men and an equal number of women that have been trying to find you.”

Charlie shook his head. Hard to believe what this man was saying. Why would all these strangers be looking for him? “Mr. Mroz, I hain’t got no idear wha’ y’all can be talkin’ ‘bout. Famous? Hellfire; there hain’t a dozen folks knows me up in this holler, and most uh ‘em hain’t got a care if’in I lives or dies. Y’all sure you’n is got the right man?”

The more Charlie spoke the more Johnny was sure he had the right man. By this time they started up Charlie’s driveway; Johnny had been following Charlie’s motioned directions as they talked. Charlie was surprised how smoothly the car rode going up the old creek bed to his cabin; every other car he had taken this trip in had left bruises from the constant jostling. In this one, he hadn’t even spilled his small sack of necessities.

Johnny was still speaking as he turned the car around. “Charlie, I have a couple of things for you. One is a box of things I picked up for you at Walker’s. The other is a bit of walking around money; here.” He extended a small envelope, printed with the logo of the nearest bank, which was still a long way off, down in Johnson City. It wasn’t thick, and probably only contained a bill or two. It was sealed, so Charlie took it and dropped it into the center pocket of his overalls unopened. Johnny had shut the car off and had moved around to the trunk, Charlie followed him, carefully shutting the car door, and even more carefully carrying the small sack he had gotten that morning at Walker’s.

The box Johnny got out of the trunk was closed and unmarked, odd from a country grocery. It was about 24 inches square and 16 inches tall; 10 times the size of the small sack Charlie had purchased. That it was unmarked drew Charlie's attention, since Walker’s used the boxes that they received goods in for packing purchases. A box this size should have said ‘Corn Flakes’ on it. But this one was blank, except for a phone number scrawled across the top.

Johnny was still grinning as he spoke. “Charlie, I hope you enjoy what I got you. Take a couple of days, then give me a call at the number on the box. Here’s a nickel for the call. Charlie started to shake his head, and protest that he wouldn’t be making any such call, but Mr Mroz cut him off. “Don’t answer now. Take a day or two to think it over” Johnny said as he set the box down on the rickety wooden steps leading into Charlie’s cabin. “The number is my room phone at the hotel down in Johnson City. Give me a call as soon as you feel like it, which I hope will be soon.”

Johnny opened the door of his car, still shiny even after the ride up Charlie’s rough driveway, and climbed inside. He started the car, leaned out the window and waved at Charlie, still grinning ear to ear. Charlie climbed the rickety steps and opened the unlocked door to his one room cabin. He set down his sack and went back outside for the box, curious about its contents. He knew what was in the sack; a pound of flour, a pound of dry beans and an ounce of salt. After today’s purchases he had $2.46 cents in the money sack hidden behind the Currier and Ives lithograph over the fireplace.

Charlie opened the box and was slightly startled. At first he didn’t recognize any of the contents. Strangely colored and decorated boxes advertising their varied contents, they gradually became familiar, some awakening old and long buried memories. After a long diet of dried beans and biscuits, with the occasional rabbit or squirrel he could catch in his traps, seeing a canned ham was startling. A dozen eggs, a pound of sausage, a pound of bacon and two cans of ravioli, along with a few packages of candy of different kinds.

All familiar, yet all strange. He recognized none of the packages. He had wistfully been looking at such items at Walker’s for months, and, contrary to Mr. Mroz’s statement, none of these brands were sold at Walker’s. Why would Johnny have lied about such a small thing? One more question to add to the dozens he already had about today’s strange meeting.

Since he had no way of keeping things cold, he decided to have some eggs and the pound of sausage now. The bacon would keep until tomorrow, and nothing else needed cold storage. Leaving everything else in the box on a corner of his small table, he kicked up the fire in his wood stove, threw on a few more small chunks of wood and grabbed a frying pan. It wasn’t long before the long remembered smell of frying sausage permeated the cabin, accompanied by the symphony of frying eggs cackling in the same pan.

It had been a year or more since Charlie had had a breakfast like this. A tear welled up in his eye, wondering how he had come to be like this; where the kindness of a stranger was the difference between subsistence and actually eating. Savoring each bite, Charlie finally had to admit he was full, and the plate empty, and he somehow managed to avoid licking the plate clean. But only barely.

He finally remembered the other gift Johnny had left, and pulled the envelope from his overall pocket. He carefully peeled back the flap and looked inside. It was money, or was it? It felt like a five dollar bill, and was green like one, But it looked….different. Instead of a small, oval framed image of Abraham Lincoln, the picture was larger and off center, with no frame. The colors, while still greenish, were more black, and one of the corner fives was purple? Had they changed the currency since he had last held a bill this large? He looked for a date, expecting to see 1940. He saw 2050 instead.

Charlies mind started working fast. It was fake. It had to be. A trick. But why would a total stranger come all the way to Jackson Holler to play a trick on a man he had never laid eyes on before? Charlie started thinking. Maybe he did know the man? He started searching his memory, and was shocked to find he could only go back about a decade. His family was a lost memory. Had he been married? He didn’t know. Kids? Another blank. School mates, cousins, co-workers; all a blank. It had been years since he had tried to find these memories; and now they weren’t there.

Charlie’s eyes searched the cabin, like he had never seen it before, looking for anything that would give a clue as to a connection to someone. There was nothing. Two of the walls were featureless, nothing but stacked logs and mud chinking. One wall contained the simple wooden slat door and window and the last the rough stone fireplace and simple beam mantle, where sat the well-worn Currier and Ives lithograph, as old as the rough hewn log cabin itself. The lithograph was both his starting and finishing place, and it drew his eye again and again. It depicted a man on a bicycle, an antique version of one, racing past a horse and buggy. Done in 1869, the bicycle was a new form of transportation at the time. Why was this the only decoration in this drab, one room cabin?

The other furniture was minimal. A small bed with a rough and lumpy bag of feathers for a mattress, and a small shelf beside it. On the shelf were Charlie’s toiletries; a bar of lye soap for washing and a mug, brush and straight razor for shaving. Hanging on pegs below the shelf were a rough weave towel and Charlies better shirt and overalls, for when he made the long walk to church once a month. A wood stove and dry sink- all Charlie’s water came from the well and pump outside- a small table and one chair, close to the stove for eating, and likewise close to the bed, completed the inventory of all his worldly possessions. The cabin was only about 16 feet square.

Charlie again thought back, trying to remember everything he knew about himself. His name, of course. His parents? Lost in the mists of time. Siblings? Birthday? He could recall no brothers or sisters, and no birthday celebrations ever. It was almost as if he had sprung into existence a decade ago, right here in this cabin. How could that be?

But then, he had been alone for the last… ten years? Could it have been ten years? He had made no friends, had no family, and had not had a living thing to talk to after Ole Mose had died, except for his weekly or so trips to Walker’s. He had celebrated no holidays, although he was aware of when the Fourth of July and Christmas Day had come and gone.

Charlie now became concerned. Was he hiding from something? Had he committed some crime and was on the run? Had he left some ‘grass widow’ somewhere? Why would a sane man choose to live as he had? Alone, friendless, destitute and in the middle of nowhere? He must be guilty of something, to be in total isolation like he was.

But he didn’t feel guilty. Was that because he didn’t have anything to feel guilty about, or because he didn’t feel what he did was wrong? Charlie sat up in his chair, rocking it because of a short leg on the back left. He hadn’t had thoughts like this in a long, long time. Why was he having them now? Another thought he had was about breakfast. He hadn’t recognized the packaging, he thought, but he was reconsidering. The sausage wrapper was still on the table, next to the box Johnny had brought. The package was white, with bright red and green letters and a farm image in the background. The material was unusual too; soft and slick, he couldn’t put a name on it. But he believed it to be familiar. Why?

He looked though the box again. The candy caught his eye. It was packaged in the same unfamiliar material as the sausage. More bright lettering, with unfamiliar names. Charlie was shaking his head again. He couldn’t figure it out. Although, deep down, he sensed he knew what it meant. But the memories weren’t available; like a file he couldn’t find. What? Where did that comparison come from? Eventually Charlie noticed that the room was starting to darken. It was getting late. He had spent the whole day lost in thought, and snacking on candy; something he hadn’t realized until he saw the pile of empty wrappers.

He was tired anyway. Charlie stripped off his overalls and shirt and climbed into bed in his long johns, letting the last of the daylight die as he drifted off to sleep. Any dreams he may have had were lost in the darkness, just as the objects in the room were.

Charlie awoke to the daylight shining through the cabin’s one window; there were no curtains to block its arrival. He had not shifted at all during the night. Consequently every muscle and joint ached when he went to move. His first thought that morning was an unusual one; how old was he? He hadn’t thought about age in years. He just….was. He was examining the idea of beans for breakfast, when he recalled the box Mr. Mroz had brought. Bacon and eggs!

Yesterday’s thoughts came back as he was dressing, and again for some reason his eyes drifted to the lithograph over the fireplace. A thought passed briefly through his mind, coming and going like a flash from a strobe light; too fast to capture. What did that mean?

Even though Charlie knew he shouldn’t waste the bounty that had been delivered yesterday, he couldn’t stop himself from cooking up the whole pound of bacon and four more eggs. While the bacon sizzled and spat, he looked at the package again. More of that unfamiliar material, and more of that bright red and green lettering, with the same stylized farm image. The taste was familiar, yet not so. How long had it been since he had had bacon? No; that wasn’t it. This was not usual bacon flavor. Bacon normally had a salty taste. This was sweet; like… maple syrup?

Charlie looked at the package again. I did say it was maple flavored. When did they start that? He had never heard of maple flavored bacon, had he? Then why did it taste so familiar? Again his eyes were drawn to the fireplace, and the lithograph. He couldn’t remember looking at that picture as much in the last ten years as he had in the last day and a half.

Charlie had neglected his chores yesterday. So he got busy today. Wood to chop and haul, water to pump and haul, ash to clear from the stove and haul, water to heat, dishes to wash, himself to wash, floor to sweep. The normal tasks of life kept him busy in body and mind until well past lunchtime. Beans. He had to get back to normal meals. He would never see Johnny again, and would not eat this good again. But… Why not make his beans with some of that canned ham?

Another meal with a familiar yet unusual taste. For lack of something else to do while he ate, Charlie read the back of the canned ham tin. It was full of strange words and concepts. What was a ‘microwave’, and how did you use it to cook? What did that mean? He again caught himself looking at the lithograph. But this time he noticed a pattern in the wood of the frame he hadn’t noticed before. He got up, crossed the room, and took the picture down from it spot off the simple wooden mantle, and took it back to the table. The bicycle pointed to the lower left corner, and Charlie noticed that the frame was thicker at that point than anywhere else.

He fiddled around with the wood, and it popped open, revealing a small compartment, just big enough for two small pills, although only one was inside; blue in color. What the Hell? Charlie had the urge to take the pill, no matter what it was, but fought off the urge. He had no desire to die just yet. He still had half a canned ham to finish. But he took the pill and put it in a small empty mint tin he had on the sink. He then closed the door in the frame and hung it back on the wall. And for some reason, he did not think the last 10 minutes had been strange.

He then remembered the number Johnny had left, and had an urge to call it. But it was too late to make the long walk to the Bottoms. First thing tomorrow.

Charlie normally spent his evenings staring off into space between dinner and dark, unable to conjure up a single thought, just killing time until darkness fell, and sleep became inevitable. Dinner tonight was both cans of Johnny’s ravioli, a food he couldn’t recall ever having had before, but again tasting familiar. Tonight was also unfamiliar; he had so many questions running through his mind he found it hard to lay down when the sun disappeared. But, anticipating tomorrow, he at last climbed into bed and fell asleep.

Charlie awoke with the sun, and fixed breakfast; the last four eggs and the last of the canned ham, sliced and fried with eggs and a small dolop of bacon fat from yesterday’s feast. He tore the flap with the number from the box, grabbed his money bag, dropped the tin with the strange pill in it inside, although he couldn’t have told you why, and headed to Walker’s Bottom. The six miles didn’t seem to take as long as normal, and soon he was shaking the red-brown dust from his feet and entering the M-pour-ium. He had never used the phone here before, and wasn’t even sure they had one.

Charlie walked up to the counter and asked the proprietor to use the phone. Mike pointed to the corner near the back door that led to the his and hers backhouses. Charlie stared for a minute, trying to recall how to use the device. And failed.

“Mr. Walker, can y’all spare a minute? This here device has me fuzzled.”

“Never used a phone before, Sparks? Y’all got a number you’re callin’? Give ‘er ‘ere and I’ll get ya connected. And where’s yer nickel?”

Mike took the phone, whistled up the operator and gave her the number. When the ringing started Mike handed the phone to Charlie and went back to his spot behind the counter. He had no more interest in Charlie’s phone call than he did what was happening in Europe; he already had his nickel.

The ringing of a phone was completely unknown to Charlie. Unlike the food tastes, which had seemed vaguely familiar, the noise in his ear was just that; noise. Two rings and a voice said ‘Hello’.

“Mr. Mroz? This is Charlie Sparks, I’m hopin’ y’all ‘member givin’ me this number day afore last?” Charlie was still not sure why he had called, and was not sure this was not still some joke being played at his expense.

“Of course I remember Charlie! Are you at the store? Yes? Good.”

“I have a couple of questions; did you eat all of the food I gave you? Great; good! And did you find anything you didn’t expect somewhere yesterday?”

Charlie didn’t know what to say. How could this fellow have known? Should he tell him? Charlie didn’t have time to make a decision; he seemed to answer involuntarily. “Yassuh I did. I foun’ a hole in an old piksure frame wid a pill init.”

“Excellent” Johnny replied; “excellent. What did you do with the pill? Do you have it with you?”

Charlie again answered involuntarily; “Yassur, I does.”

Johnny was again bubbling with good feelings, and they spilled into his tone as he spoke. “Charlie, I need to you take that pill and go make your self comfortable on the front steps. I’ll be by in a few minutes.”

Charlie did as he was told, almost against his will. In a few minutes, much less time than it should have taken to get to Walker Bottom from Johnson City, Johnny Mroz rolled up in his spotless old Ford. But in those few minutes Charlie had felt some changes happening to himself. The major change was the disappearance of the mental fog he seemed to been living with for the last decade. Questions that he had been asking himself for the last two days now had answers. He also knew he still had to maintain this charade for a few more minutes.

Johnny stepped out of the car as Charlie greeted him. “Mornin’ MISTER Mroz. How y’all be this mo’nin’?” Johnny’s eyes narrowed a bit at the exaggerated ‘Mister’, but said nothing.

“I’m doing well MISTER Sparks” he replied, using the same exaggerated tone for mister as Charlie had. “Ready to take another ride?”

Charlie was already headed for the passenger door; a quick ‘Yassuh’ was his only reply. As soon as Charlie’s door was shut Johnny popped the clutch and headed up the road to the cabin. After a short silence, while Johnny brought the old car up to speed, Johnny spoke.

“How much do you remember Colonel?”

“Not as much as I would like to Captain. I’ll start at the beginning, and I’ll let you fill in the holes, sound good?”

“Yes sir! I will assume you have these holes, and fill them in now. You disappeared after a mission on January 15, 1929. Today is September 23, 1939. The date you left for your mission was March 16, 2050. And it is Major Mroz now sir”

“Thank you Major, and congratulations! As you are aware, my mission was to ensure the safe birth of a man later to become Dr. Martin Luther King, in Atlanta. The disguise app on my time pod malfunctioned, and instead of a Model T Ford sitting on the street, my stainless steel time pod was showing in all its glory, and was starting to draw a crowd. My mission was complete, so I hit the auto return from my remote, watched the time pod dissolve and felt the remote go with it. I then disappeared into the crowd and headed toward the safe house, as I’m sure the capsule told you. I expected to be retrieved in a few days. That was a little over a decade ago.” Charlie said without implication of accusation.

“Colonel, let me fill in another hole. Your disguise app wasn’t the only one to malfunction. The setting for which safe house you intended to use also malfunctioned, and reported your death to us instead. We checked historic reports of unclaimed bodies in Atlanta for ones matching your description for the subsequent two weeks in 1929, personally visiting each instance; that took well over six months. At that point we took another look at your capsule, and discovered it had been tampered with, to cause these failures. The culprit turned out to be a young corporal, who had been told the changes he made to the capsules sub-routines were a beta upgrade. He had been given this information by a young woman posing as a member of Headquarters Tech Support who we could not locate by the time the fault was traced to her. She has still not been traced and we suspect she was a foreign agent, but have no proof. Your pod was the only one infected with the malware, and we still don’t know why, or if it was you or the mission that was the target, or if the resets in the subroutines functioned as they were designed. Back to your story sir?”

Colonel Sparks picked up from where he had left off. “I had taken the emergency packet with me, per regulation, and made my way to Jackson Holler as I thought you were aware. I arrived here on January 18^th, and promptly verified the existence of hidden compartment in the frame and the existence of the two pills. As you know, the red pill causes the memory loss required to live in an era not our own, to prevent contaminating information from being accidentally released during times of distress, such as illness or altered mental state. Taking the pill defaults the Time Marine to a personality in touch with the era in which he is trapped. The blue pill, which I took this morning, cancels that personality, and returns us to normal.

“Per protocol, I waited four days in the cabin before I realized I would not be rescued immediately, changed into my alternate personality’s costume and took the red pill one week after the mission, as per directives. I have been living as Charlie Sparks, hillbilly farmer, until this morning. The recovery process worked as designed as well. The alerting chemicals in our original personality’s favorite foods did awaken my memory of the recovery pill. As you know, the pills are a set, to prevent memory awakening inadvertently. The initial recovery chemicals are just to restart the process, not complete it. The dated money did as expected as well.” Charlie turned to look at Major Mroz. They were rolling up the creek to the cabin as he finished speaking.

Johnny started his response as they got out of the car. Both knew they had to sanitize the cabin and reset the pills before leaving. As they completed their tasks Johnny continued the story.

“We have been searching for you ever since we determined you had survived the mission. But part of the induced malfunction also compromised the time set. Those memories could not give us your abandonment time or location accurately. While we knew your time and location destination, as you are aware protocols require time and location jumping on the return, if we feel an unusual situation may have developed on the mission. Based on what we had in your pod, we have been searching every era and location for the last decade looking for you. It has been the most extensive search in Time Marine history.”

The cabin was now reset for use as another safe house. “You now have a choice to make Colonel. You can either go back with me now to 2060, or I can leave you here and then comeback and meet you as scheduled in 1929 with a return to 2050.”

It was not a simple choice. While it should be easy to do as the Major had described, many things could happen. With his current age, being a decade older than when he left, he could not return to 2050; he would need to jump ahead to 2060, and lose a decade of his life. Waiting to be picked up in the past would resolve that, but would require delivering a message to the past, so the 2050 Major Mroz could be notified of where and when Colonel Sparks was. That message system was sometimes unreliable, and seldom used. This was why the safe house was reset prior to the time capsule leaving; in case you were marooned again.

Charlie knew that an organization that had the ability to time travel might seem to be able to make a trip to the past to deliver a message. But he also knew that time travel is strictly regulated, and only to be used for specific purposes. One of the reasons it took a decade to locate him was because no specific trip could be made to find him. Each search had to be accomplished only while a Time Marine was in that specific time line, or could reasonably make a detour as a part of turn time jump. Making a jump to relay a message was not considered a reasonable use of time travel resources.

Colonel Sparks also knew that his rescue was not considered a priority by the protocols; the red pill had neutralized his danger to the time line, so there was not a reason to retrieve him. The safe house location was not an accident. A marooned Time Marine was required to live out his or her life in almost complete anonymity, no family, no friends, no unnecessary human interaction. No casual contacts that could lead to an accidental contamination. Their final reward? To be laid to rest in a Potter’s Field years, or centuries, before they were born.

Not contaminating the time line was THE First Order.

The initial search for his body was authorized, as it was supposed he had died prior to taking the red pill; his presence could have contaminated the timeline. This is why time travel is so regulated; time line contamination can cause a cascade of changes that may endanger the future.

Charlie quickly worked through the two competing theories on the cascade effect as originally postulated. The first was the ‘I killed my grandfather’ theory. I go back in time and kill my grandfather, either purposefully or by accident, before he can father my parent. So am never born. So I could not go back in time and kill my grandfather. So then I AM born, DO go back in time and THEN kill my grandfather; a continuous loop in which I flash in and out of history.

The competing theory was that time will heal itself. I go back in time, kill my grandfather, and then another man becomes my grandfather. Or, in more of a macro example, I can go back in time and kill Hitler. This does not stop World War II, as another individual becomes the center of the Nazi movement. This would affect the outcome, as the Nazi movement would not be the same. It could be worse. But the course of history remains set.

This also explains how some printed works, contemporaneous with events, later seem to have certain facts wrong, according to current knowledge.

The cascade comes from either scenario being a basis for change. The first creates a loop that effects all future generations. When I kill my grandfather, and start the loop in which I appear and disappear, based on the cycle of whether I am born or not does not only affect me, but all generations of his descendants, flashing in and out of existence. This is why the time heals itself theory has been proven to be the case. The time line is more stable, although changed. My grandfather cannot be ‘unkilled’ but his progeny are still in existence, albeit with a different heritage.

Colonel Sparks made the decision. He would wait, and be picked up in the past. He trusted the system. Even though he knew that it would take another decade before he would be missed, and a new rescue attempted. He was risking another decade as Charlie Sparks, dirt poor farmer, in order to go back to the life he left, his family intact and unchanged from the memories that were constantly coming back online, like reviving a hard drive from a backup file.

“Hurry back Major; that red pill tastes horrible. And this time I won’t have any bourbon to wash it down.”

Major John Mroz saluted, climbed into his car and turned off the disguise app. The Model A coupe slowly disappeared and the shiny time pod appeared. Another few commands the time pod then dissolved into time.

Colonel Sparks returned the Major’s salute, and held it as the as the light from the pod dissolved and faded, then turned toward the cabin, took a single step and likewise disappeared. With his next breath he was home in 2050.

The Time Marines leave no man behind.

 

Some of y'all may find this interestin'

 

I had made me a little plan to get rich, a plan to get rich quick, and to get rich easy. All ‘cause of my job as a janitor down at the Institute and the little ring of keys that I got with the job. I ain’t a crook. No, that ain’t what I want to say. I ain’t a thief. I weren’t gonna steal nuthin’. I was just gonna borrow a time machine. Maybe I’d better tell y’all a little more, so y’all can understand.

I used to work down at The Kentucky Institute of Technology, and one of the professors was kinda eager. He’s a local boy, born right here in town, and he figured if he could prove Albert Einstein was wrong, he could become somebody, and maybe earn a little walkin’ round money while he was at it. He meant to call ole’ Mr. Einstein a liar with math, but when he found out how easy he could do it for real, he built this here machine.

The way he tells it, the measuring of time is really the measuring of the decay of the universe. What this Professor, Hiram Apollo Crumbegger Jr. (could I make that up?), did was to figure out a way to reverse or speed up this decay, at a speed he could figure out, in a little bitty area. Don’t ask me to get any more particular, I can’t, I’m just the janitor. But I do know how to set the decay reverser and hit the start button.

I was startin’ to be clean the old boiler room that the professor was usin’ as a lab one night, somethin’ I hated to do after dark, ‘cause of the coffin the professor was using to build his time machine outta, when I notices the coffin ain’t there. Just as soon as I notice it ain’t there, it was there, and the professor was climbin’ out of it. He was white as a ghost, somethin’ I am just being around that durn thing, much less bein’ in it, and he starts to tellin’ me about his trip.

“Terrible, Mr. Hoshang, terrible I tell you” He stuttered.

“Well”, says “That much I got so far. What’s terrible?”

“The future,” says he, “As bad as it can get.”

He was shakin’ like a drunk in a Revival tent, as colorless as a sheet a’ window glass, and trying to drink a glass water, most a’ which was down the front of his shirt. I had to agree with him you see. My rent was due in the very near future, and I was some dollars short a’ what the landlord wanted. But nice a man as he was, I didn’t figure me bein’ a’ dollar or two short on my rent money was what had him lookin’ like he’d seen his mother-in-law lackin’ her make-up.

“Just what is so durn terrible there Per’fessor? We get overrun by them godless Commies like we been a’ fearin’?” I ask.

He looked over at the box, like he was afraid somethin’ would crawl outta it, and talked in a tone of voice that sounded like the preacher just afore the end of a funeral.

“I have seen something I did not ask to see, want to see, or should have seen. It is a sight I cannot inflict on another, least of all my friends.”

He never said another word about it, to anybody, as far as I know. But I did sneak a look at the log book he kept on his trips, and he wrote down what he saw in the future. The way the Professor described it scared the daylights outta me. Seems what the professor did was went about a year into the future, and when he stepped outta the time machine he saw all of the possible futures at once. Since the future isn’t set down yet, everything that coulda happened at a set time did happen. So like take cleaning the Professor’s Lab. It coulda been me doing it, or I coulda took a sick day and Sam did the cleaning; or both me and Sam wasn’t there, and they had a new guy.

Or the Professor wasn’t there anymore, and it was somebody else’s Lab. And all of this was happening at once. The Professor figured that the further into the future he went, the more permutations (ain’t that a fancy word. I had to look it up. It means possible outcomes, or possibilities.) would increase, as each possible future had several possible futures. So a feller couldn’t even go into the future to see how a ballgame ended, because the ballgame could end any one of a dozen ways, even if you waited until the last inning.

The professor had made about a dozen time trips, the one forward, which scared the living daylights out of him, and the rest backward, one all the way back to 1776, by the time I had made my plan. The bad thing about the machine is that it only controls time, and not space, so when he went to 1776 he wound up in the middle of the Kentucky wilderness, and not in Philadelphia, like he wanted. The other problem was its size. The time machine is actually made out of a solid bronze coffin. I don’t understand the science, but it has something to do with the way other metals rust, and speed that they handle electricity. The point is there ain’t much room.

The room don’t matter much when a feller is just out seeing the sights, but this is bad news when making a time travel for profit. I really only had about enough room for a case of beer. And even then I had to split it into six-packs. I had to find things that were small and cheap in the past, and small and expensive in the here and now. The other catch was I had to be able to find them close. I could trust the time machine alone for a couple of hours, but I sure couldn’t take a trip up to Cincinnati to look around for gee-gaws.

I went looking around the antique shops and flea markets just to see what kinda stuff was possible to make a quick, well sorta quick, buck on. One of the first things I laid eyes on was old Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. I can remember paying about 25 cents apiece for them. I saw folks fork over $50.00 for one in pretty good shape. I knew what to fetch back from around 1970.

That night I went through my normal clean up, down to the lab in the basement of Old Home Hall. The Dean had let the Professor use what used to be an old coal bunker for his experiments, I guess ‘cause he figured there weren’t much to damage down there. The room worked out real well for the professor. He didn’t have no windows to watch out for, and the thick walls kept the noise down so the folks outside couldn’t hear anything. It worked well for me too. Only the professor and me had keys to the room, and he was always in bed by 9:00, and not in the lab until 8:00. So I could launch the machine when I was done cleaning, and get back the minute after, and still have time to haul my fortune home.

My first trip was kinda spur of the moment. I had to work up the courage to see if I could handle just climbing into that Death Box. Like I heard a feller say one time, that plumb scared the bejeebers outta me, and I ain’t a feared a’ nothing. The way the professor had the works set up was like this; I had to set the time I wanted to go back to on a computer on the outside of the box, climb in, and pull the lid down. When the lid hit bottom, the circuit was made, and the box lit out for pasts unknown.

I had figured out that I wanted to go to around the first of February, in 1968. February was when the tobacco money hit town, and lots of folks was dollars rich and sense poor. That’s when Mr. Waldenschmidt down at the drug store made sure he had as many of them little cars as he could, figuring that folks would be spending money like it was found, instead of worked for. I checked to see if I had a couple of bucks in my pocket, punched in the date and time I wanted, climbed into the coffin, took what felt like my last deep breath, and pulled the lid to.

I felt a shiver run through me like I touched a bare wire, the lid popped up, and was in room full of coal. I come up outta that thing like my pants was on fire, and looked around. The time machine was laying in the coal, kinda uneven, and buried up to the handles. I told myself right then and there, next time was not gonna be when they might have coal in here, where it might be ceiling high. The next thing was to go down town and start getting rich.

When I started down the hall, I got to thinking about some body seeing the time machine, and moving it before I got back, I still had my keys with me, and sure enough, the one I had still fit the lock. I locked the door behind me, and walked out like I owned the place.

It seemed like it took longer to get to town than normal, but then I hadn’t walked it in a while. The drug store was open, and I had no trouble finding the rack by the front door where Mr. Waldenschmidt kept his toy cars. After all, I had bought them there myself in ‘68. I grabbed my favorites, the ones I knew I had played with until they were nothing but junk. I figured that at four cars for a dollar, I could get about 20 cars with my $5.00, so that’s how many I grabbed.

I had plumb forgot that my eldest sister ‘Lizabeth worked the cash register for Mr. Waldenschmidt. I remembered when I ran into her at the checkout. She kept looking at me like she thought I was nuts, a growed up man buying toys.

“These are fer my nephews” I told her, “They worked awful hard on my tabacca.”

She nodded, then ask, “You look kinda familiar to me, do I know y’all? “

I almost told her yes, but figured that would cause nothin’ but trouble, so I said “I wouldn’t think so, I live ‘round Pickensville, I was just stoppin’ for lunch, and thought I’d do a little shoppin.’”

“That’ll be $5.25, includin’ tax.”

I handed over my five-spot, fished a quarter from my pocket, and waited for my bag.

“What kinda joke are you trying to pull?” She asks, as she handed back my money, “Come in with the real stuff next time.”

“What’s wrong with my cash, ain’t it green enough fer ya?”

“Them’s the worst fake money I ever saw. Look at ole Abe’s picture. Its way too big, and ain’t even in the center of the bill. ‘Sides, its 1968, not 1998. Take this phony-baloney junk and give me the real stuff, if ya got it or git afore I call the law!”

I got afore she called the law. I had plumb forgot that they had changed the way money looks a couple of years back. It appears there was more to this time travelin’ than I could think about. The next time I needed some old money.

Money was turnin’ out to be a bigger problem than I thought it could be. See, in the 18 and 80’s the common money was a $20 gold piece. To get twenty dollars to spend in 18 and 80, I’d have to spend about $450 today. Change was gonna cause me a problem up to 19 and 64, when they quit makin’ coins outta silver. A 19 and 64-quarter is worth about $.50. Even some of them old dollar bills are worth more than what’s printed on ‘em. So I had to find things that were more valuable now than they were some years back, and find the cheap money to buy them with.

On the next trip I went through all my old change, tryin’ to find coins from before 19 and 64, and went back to then to buy a Beatles lunch box. It only cost me $1.98. Which was a good thing, ‘cause the only coins I could find were nickels and pennies. Silver dimes and quarters would have cost me double what they was worth, so to speak, so I had to go with the pennies and nickels. When I came back to this time, I sold that “like new” lunch box for a little over $1000. A slick bit of money, but not what I was hoping for.

I decided that my next trip would be to the 19 and 50’s. Before I headed back to the fifties to see what I could buy, I had to find out what things could be worth today. I saw on TV somewhere that the first magazine they printed of Sports Illustrated was worth about 350 bucks, and sold on the newsstand for a quarter. I exchanged my thousand bucks for Silver certificates, all of them printed before 1954. I walked into the coin shop with four one hundred dollar bills, and walked out with 3 twenty-dollar certificates. I went back to 1954 and I cleaned out every magazine rack I could find. I had to make two trips in the time machine just to get them all back, but a hundred copies cost me twenty-five bucks, in certificates, and netted me $30,000.

I had other money I had to spend too, while I was at it, it wasn’t all clear profit. One reason I had to start close to this year and work back was clothes. I had to look like I belonged when I went back in time. The county around the Institute is hard on the lookout for anybody who don’t belong. Back in the ‘50’s it was even worse, ‘cause of the moonshinin’ and the law. If I’d a showed up in clothes that didn’t look right, I’d a had a short trip into the woods. So I bought clothes in 1964 that were about ten years old, so they looked right in 1954.

I made about 15 trips that way, buying small items back there and selling them here. I made a few bad deals, trying to collect coins and stamps, but even they made me money, just not enough. People will ask why I didn’t go into the future and bring back a list of winners in baseball or football, or even some big time lottery numbers. There were two problems; first, how far forward should I go, and second, if the professor was scared of what he saw, I sure wasn’t taking any chances. Besides, the past I was more sure of. I could look at old pictures and know how to dress. I could read old books and know the slang, and any new happenings. Plus, I knew where I would land, and what would be here.

I didn’t know anything about being in the future. The spot I was in could have been at the bottom of a garbage dump for all I knew. And since the control panel was on the outside of the time machine, being buried would make it real hard to open the lid and get to the control. I also had no idea what the clothes looked like, what the money would be like, or how the folks would talk. I was just more comfortable in the past.

But it was getting to be too easy. And too hard. To call my janitor’s pay poverty level would be like calling a miner’s shack the Governor’s Mansion. So trying not to spend any of my new money was kinda difficult. But if I suddenly spent like I was rich, I couldn’t keep on being a janitor, and then I would lose my keys to the time machine. I needed one big score, so I could retire rich, and no longer need the time machine.

Then, just by chance, I read a small bit in the paper about a guy who filled an old warehouse with cars in 19 and 50, and his son just pulled them all out, and made a king’s ransom. Now I had my plan. All I needed was the warehouse, the cars, and few days in ‘47.

Trying to find a warehouse was like trying to find a parking spot on court day. I had to find a place that could store these cars for 50 years without two much damage. It also had to be there in 1947, still be here today, and have an owner willing to be paid for storage 50 years in advance. Finding a place that fit this bill was harder than sin on a Sunday. Could I go back there and build a place, and have it still standin’ when I went to collect? This is also a tough spot, metaphysically. Ain’t that a big word? The professor taught it to me. It sort of means I have to be careful in the past not to change the future. This is something I have kind of worried ‘bout since I came back with all those Sports Illustrated and found that folks ‘round here didn’t read it. Seems that since the first issue didn’t make it into folks’ hands, nobody was interested in the rest of ‘em. But I made money, so I guess it was no harm done.

But I don’t need to worry about that; I need to worry about this. Could I go back to the past, build the building I needed, and not screw up time too badly? And if I did, would anybody but me notice that time was different? I just couldn’t figure out how to test it out. If I just built the building, came back, and found out things were changed, and didn’t have the cars, then I would have changed time and not made a red cent. But if I did buy the cars, things changed, and my building disappeared, I would be back to square one.

I also had to make sure I would still own them things when I got to the here and now. I decided to find a lawyer who had been practicing for the last 55 years in the same office. That was easy, at least in our part of the world. Then I had to find a piece of ground to build my barn on. It had to be fur ‘nough out to make sure folks didn’t find it, and cheap enough to buy, and there couldn’t be a building there now. No sense messin’ with time anymore than I needed to. That was pretty easy, too.

For this trip I decided to take the long way back, for the sake of my money. It was pretty easily change my bills into pre-1967 money, without losing too much on the trade. I went to 1967, where I changed it again, into 1955 bills, and I didn’t lose very much of the count. Another stop in 1955, and change again for the last jump into 1947. Of my original $140,000, I arrived with $128,000.

My first stop was the lawyer. I had been time traveling for almost a year, once a month or so, but it was still kind of a shock to see the man I knew as old and kinda frail as a hale and hearty young ball player. My business was short and to the point. I had him buy the plot of land I wanted, and I had him draw up my will.

The will was pretty simple. I would leave everything to my little sister’s first born son. I used my own name, and gave my mothers name as my little sister. I myself wouldn’t be born for another 15 years and in 1948 Mom was only 8 herself. The other clause was that the will could not be probated until 2001, even if reports of my death came before then. I also left a sum of money for the repair and upkeep on my building, until the time of probate.

I had to spend a couple of weeks in 19 an’ 47, while the buyin’ of the ground went thru, and the buildin’ of the barn. I spent the time gonna over every newspaper and car lot I could. In ‘47 cars were cheap. In particular the cars I was lookin’ for. Cadillac’s with V-16 engines and custom bodywork, in running condition, were selling for about $150. In 2001, the same car in the same condition was worth about $25,000.My building would have room for about 35 cars. Am I gonna to clean up or what? I bought Packards, Cords, Auburns and Chryslers. I bought a Model A Town Car for $25. I bought a big Stutz Limousine, just to say I did. I even managed to lay my hands on a Dusenberg Sport coupe for $250. The same car in the same shape today is worth almost a million bucks. I was gonna to be rich.

After all the cars were in the barn, I took a week to make sure they all were properly stored. I put oil in all the engines to make sure they wouldn’t rust. I Put mothballs in all the interiors to make sure they weren’t destroyed. I drained all the gas out of the tanks and ran each car until it ran dry the lines and carburetor. I waxed the paint, oiled the leather and polished the chrome. The tires weren’t gonna to last anyway, but I put each car up on blocks and let almost all the air out of the tires to try and get them to last.

I checked the dehumidifiers, the ventilation fans, and the strength of the lock on the door. The barn had no windows, a steel roof, and brick walls. The men who built the barn didn’t know what I put in it. The guys I bought the cars from had no idea where I put them. Everything was as secure as I could make it. All that was left was to climb in to the time machine and go home and be rich.

You may wonder about where I hid the time machine while I was in the past. The simple answer is I didn’t have to. The Kentucky Institute of Technology was around in 1947. It was called the Kentucky School of Agriculture, and was on the same acreage as it is today. The Lab where Professor Crumbegger kept the time machine was in the oldest building on campus, down in the basement. Depending on what year I was in, it was either a storage room, a boiler room, an amateur distillery, probably illegal, or, at one point, a coalbunker. Since the locks hadn’t been changed in about 90 years, I never had a problem.

In 1947 it was a boiler room. The coffin was over in the corner, behind the water tank. Since this was summer, I didn’t worry about the staff finding the time machine. The door was locked, and the time machine was way too heavy for less than 6 people to move. I had been real busy, and hadn’t been by to check on the machine in a week or two, since the sale of the property went thru, but I wasn’t worried. At least until I turned the corner around the water tank and found it was gone.

First thing I did was check the other boiler room. Maybe I had made a mistake about which one I had left it in. It wasn’t in there either. Then I walked around the boilers, walked over the coal bins, and even opened the doors of the fireboxes. Nothin’. No time machine, no sign of a time machine, not even the signs for where one had been, Not even a clean spot in the dust on the floor. Almost like it had never existed.

Now that put a kicker in the plan I hadn’t counted on. As far as I knew, the only way it could have disappeared is if somebody moved it, somebody found it and used it, or the professor had a way of calling it home if he found it gone. I knew nobody could use it, I’ll bet the Dean of the school couldn’t a’ figured out how to make the durn thing work. And the professor couldn’t a missed it, it’s a time machine for Pete’s sake, as long as I got back a minute after I left, how long I spent here wouldn’t a’ mattered.

I had locked the door to the boiler room when I left, and it was locked today. There were no windows, so that ruled everybody but the maintenance staff. In 19 an’ 47 the maintenance staff was ole’ Joe Beech. Well, he was ole’ Joe when I knew him later. In ’47 he was a young, lean and healthy. But not healthy enough to move the time machine by himself. I hadn’t heard of any odd discoveries at the school, but I wasn’t gonna to hear everything. I had to talk to Joe. I left the door unlocked and went find ole’ Joe.

Joe lived in a little house on the edge of the campus. The boilers in those days were coal fired, and Joe had go down to each building every morning in the winter and make sure the stokers worked, so he lived close. He also stayed home a lot, and was easy to find. I brought along some beer as a conversation starter, and hoped for the best.

Joe was an easy guy to talk to. It was a lot more trouble to get him to answer back. I didn’t want to come right out and ask if he had taken the time machine, so I had to go the long way around the barn, so to speak. I ask how he’d been (fine), and if the weather was warm enough (yes), and if he was keeping busy (yes). I ask if he to do any maintenance on the boilers this time of year. He told me no, he hadn’t been near them in a couple of weeks. I ask if the state had sent any inspectors down to check on them, and was told no, they weren’t due until early fall. I was done with the hard way and came right out with it.

“Joe”, I said, “I put somethin’ in boiler room number 1, and now I can’t find it.”

“Just how did you git inta Boiler room 1?”

Man, don’t ya hate it when people answer a question with a question? I already had more of one than the other, and he just dumped another onto the big pile.

“Well, I was goin’ by there t’other day an’ found the door unlocked, so I dumped the package I was carryin’ inside for a day or two, just ta store it like, an’ ta-day I went back ta git it, an’ it weren’t there.”

“An’ when y’all was ‘just passin’ by’ in the basement of Old Home Hall y’all was passin’ ta where? It ain’t like that basement is on the way to anyplace.”

“I was runnin’ an’ errand for the Dean,” I told him, “An’ needed to set down my package so’s I could carry the Dean’s stuff, an’ it took a day or two to git back ta git my own.”

As he grabbed another cold beer he said “Even with that door unlocked there couldn’t a been to many folks in that basement. An’ I can’t fig’re who left that door unlocked. Only me an’ the Dean has got a key ta the rooms in that cellar, so maybe he left it undone. Then again, if he’s got a lot a’ fellers like y’all runnin’ round with his keys, maybe one a’ them left ‘er open.”

Ole’ Joe was startin’ to ask too many questions to suit me, so I ducked as many as I could and walked back to town. I did find out a few things, and none of them were good. Nobody but Joe, an' me, an’ the Dean had keys to the boiler room. He hadn’t been near the boiler room in almost a month. He never saw the time machine, all of which meant I had no idea what could have happened to it.

I had met Dean Crumbegger a couple a’ times, ‘cause it was his place I bought to put my barn on. He was a nice enough fella, good home folks, but since he had a little education, he weren’t goin’ to be pokin’ ‘round the boilers. So I didn’t fig’re he’d hauled off my ticket home. But who else coulda?

I got to thinkin’ that maybe the Professor had found out that I was out joyriding in his toy and figured out a way to get it back. Or it could have been that because this was such a long trip, and the machine had sat for so long, that it had just rusted away. But I had looked good in that room, and if that woulda happened, I’d a’ at least found a pile a’ somethin’.

I only had one thing left that I could do. I’d have to go an’ talk to the Dean an’ see if he had somethin’ to do with my box dissappearin’. I figured I could talk to him, he was a local boy, grew up on the farm I had just bought, it was the old family home place, an’ he was alright, even if he was educated. I mean after all, the Dean was just a good ole boy at heart.

So I went to talk to the Dean. I caught him in his office the next day, right after he got off the phone, an’ he couldn’t a been happier to see me as he was long lost kin. Seems he was trying to make up his mind about an offer he had to teach in Florida, and bein’ able to unload the home place was just the thing he needed to cut his ties here and head south. He had just got off the phone with the head of a school just south of Orlando, and he was their new chancellor. He was leavin’ in two weeks, and had me to thank. For some reason I had a little trouble sharin’ in his joy. But I still congratulated Chancellor Hiram Apollo Crumbegger.

For some reason when I said that name, my heart quit beatin’. Why was it that I should know somethin’ I could just barely think of? I remembered then. The Dean was the professor’s father. There wasn’t a house up on the hill now, because it had burnt down about a year ago. The dean was decidin’ if he wanted to rebuild when my offer to buy the place came in. In real life, or I guess I should say the way I remember it now, the professor had lived up on that hill till about 5 years ago, when the place his pappy built burned when lightning hit it.

That’s why there wasn’t a house there when I left. I’m why there ain’t one there now. And I know why I don’t have a time machine. The Dean didn’t stay in the neighborhood after I bought the old home place. So his boy, if he still had a boy, wasn’t teaching at the Institute, and he had developed his time machine somewhere else. I was really up that famous creek, and no paddle in sight. I was stuck.

The professor wasn’t comin’ to teach at the Institute, an’ would never leave his time machine for me to travel in. I would grow old before I was born. I had to find another place to live, so I didn’t mess with myself as I grew up here. That would be hard enough, I ain’t ever lived anywhere but here. I still had a few bucks left, so money wasn’t a real problem, but I would eventually need a job.

I could still push a broom, but bein’ a janitor in 1947 was a lot harder than it was in 2000. I could become a mechanic, but I would need tools, and a work past, and I didn’t have either one. The more I looked at things, the worse they became. If everythin’ had worked out, I’d a’ been gone a minute, and returned a millionaire. As it worked out, I left forever, and lost my bankroll, all ‘cause I made a mistake about where to park a couple of cars.

I do have one chance left. I’m headin’ to Florida. There just might be a time machine sittin’ down there in a small college just a little southwest of Orlando. After all, who’d build anything else in that part of Florida?