Just Plain Weird (41 page)

    
    
I had to push her back gently, to search her face. Again, what she’d said was exactly what I’d been thinking.

    
    
“I should go now,” she said, and stood up. She looked down at me, and said, “Whatever happens now, be careful. Don’t get yourself maimed or anything. You may not believe it now, but it will still matter to me later. Oh, and one other thing,” she added in afterthought, “Do me a favor. When you return to your life-- the way it’s supposed to be, with you going to school and becoming the local sports hero and all-- don’t get all attached to some ditzy cheerleader, all right? Not just yet, understand? Give it at least a year, a full year-- not no nine months or eleven months and six days. Promise me that, all right?”

    
    
I promised.

    
    
Before she went through the door, I called her. She turned around. True to her word, again, she wasn’t shedding a tear. She looked at me, wondering, probably expecting to me say something remarkably pithy.

    
    
“Aren’t you going to put your shoes on before you go out? It’s cold out there, you know.”

    
    
She glanced down at her bare feet. “If I’m right, I’m not going to be out there long.” She smiled, and then she was gone, gone forever.

***********

         
I stood alone in the living room that really wasn’t a living room but part of an alien ship. I didn’t have the heart to laugh at the absurdity of my situation. All I’d wanted was to check out some girl. Well, I’d done just that-- checked her out, got to know her, fell in love with her, and then lost her, forever-- if forever even had any meaning in a universe where time travel is possible.
 
In the end, no one would ever know about it all but me, and I supposed that was enough.

    
    
No sooner had she shut the door behind her, I had the achy urge to run after her. It took just about every iota of self-control I could muster to let her go. I wasn’t sure whether fate was a real thing or just something that someone made up so that everyone could explain all the weird things that occur during life. I hoped it was real, though,
 
because then I, too, could rest assured that one day I would see her again-- even if it did take a series of bizarre and inexplicable events to bring us back together. I wished I could believe, but I had my doubts.

    
    
I knelt on the floor in front of the computer monitor. I told myself it would all hurt less if I did what had to be done quickly. I knew, in the back of my mind, that I was deluding myself; I would always remember, so how could leaving fast lessen the pain-- leaving was still leaving.

    
    
I typed on the keyboard.

Hello?

Are you ready?

Yes.

You have said good-bye, then?

Yes.

Yes?

Yes.

Yes and no would be a more accurate answer.

I don’t understand.

Aloha.

Yes?

Hawaiian is a lovely language, not only in its sound but also in its sentiment. ‘Aloha’ means both hello and good-bye. It is the way my designers viewed life, too. After time travel was developed, they realized there was no longer any such thing as good-bye. Where once they saw life as a straight finite line, then they saw life for what it actually was: a circle, with no beginnings and no endings, encompassing an area that cannot escape its boundaries. With life as such, an infinite number of possibilities exist. Definite thinking, like the idea of ‘good-bye’-- persons parting forever-- no longer stood up under the reasoning of the newly discovered knowledge.

I don’t think I understand.

Not the words, perhaps, but the reality of life will eventually make itself apparent.

Are we leaving, now?

Yes-- and no.

My head ached as I tried to comprehend its meaning. Maybe I really was as dumb as I had always believed myself. I really didn’t care to understand the meaning of existence, anyway. All I wanted at the moment was to finish. I imagined the way I felt was much the way someone feels before they commit suicide. There is comfort and relieve at the thought that soon everything will be over, and with that thought comes a sad sort of joy.

    
    
The artifact shot instructions across the screen, and I rose to my feet and went to the console. I pressed the buttons in the right order, and then, without hesitation, hit the execute button. Everything around me vibrated slightly, and there was the low steady hum remindful of a fly that was making a nuisance of itself. There was the sound like duct tape being ripped from a smooth surface. Then everything was still and silent. I looked around in confusion. Nothing seemed to have changed. I was sure that something, again, had gone wrong, and dread filled me as I moved back to check the computer monitor, which read:

Phase one complete.

         
It was followed by further instructions.

    
    
I could hardly believe it-- it really seemed that nothing had actually happened. I returned to the console, and punched in the buttons that made the living room vanish to be replaced by the cavernous space that it was in reality. I pressed the buttons that created the viewing screen on the high wall to see what was outside. Where once had appeared a view of the houses across the street, now there was nothing but dark space and stars. It was the same star field I had seen days ago, only this time I was not seeing it remotely; I was actually on the ship that had been hovering motionlessly in space for fifteen thousand years. The projection of the ship and the actual ship had again, at long last, become reintegrated. It ought to have been a pretty heady moment for me-- what with becoming the first human to reach so far into space-- but really, it didn’t seem so special somehow. Maybe if Eliza had been there with me, I could have been enthusiastic. I realized, with horror, that if such a thrilling and monumental experience as this was going to be ho-hum without her, what would it be like when I finally return to my old, truly boring, life? Lifting weights would never again seem exciting or even vaguely interesting-- that was for sure.

    
    
I punched in the next set of commands, and gradually-- I could barely notice it at first-- the stars on the viewing screen shifted, indicating the ship was in motion, moving toward earth ever so slowly. Then a burst of white filled the screen for a second, after which earth appeared large and blue with white wispy clouds wrapped around it like so much cotton candy. We must have traveled over a light year in a split second, and yet I hadn’t felt the slightest sensation of motion. I wasn’t about to ask the artifact what laws of physics, unknown to humankind, could possibly allow a ship to traverse so mind bogglingly long a distance in so short a period of time. It would only shoot across the monitor yet another formula that my three percent of gray matter hadn’t the slightest chance of comprehending.

    
    
The artifact requested that I choose a point in time to which I might be returned. It said it would be better if it were a time when I was completely alone-- otherwise, if it was a time when I was with someone, it might appear to that person as if I had vanished and then suddenly reappeared. I wracked my brain, trying to think of a good time; alone was not the problem-- there had been many times I’d been alone, which I found quite depressing-- it was a matter of picking which particular time. Finally, I decided on the moment I discovered myself lying on the sofa in the living room, just after the artifact had fixed my injury from Eliza’s driving us off the cliff. It would be familiar with the exact moment, I reasoned, and so would know precisely where to insert me back into the timeline.

    
    
I typed the information on the keyboard, and the artifacts set the spatial and temporal coordinates. Then I entered the order for it to secure itself on the dark side of the moon.

    
    
All I had to do now was press the execute button. It was that simple now-- a single touch of one button would set everything straight. The entire world, and everything in it, would return to where it ought to have been had Eliza never discovered the artifact and had Doc never begun tinkering with it.

    
    
I stood at the control console, my finger poised over the red button. Something it my mind told me that it couldn’t possibly be that easy.
 
Something must surely go wrong. Although everything seemed logical, I still had doubts. Of course, this was not my only reason for hesitating; there was Eliza, too, and the distinct feeling that if I pressed the button I would be killing her in a way. Her life would have changed in such enormous ways that if I ever did see her again, which I highly doubted, she probably wouldn’t even be the same person. She might actually be somebody else, with vastly different life experiences that would have transformed her into a person who was a total stranger to me. The Eliza of whom I had grown so fond-- despite her many quirks-- would no longer exist. Still there was nothing else to do now. It had all come down to this-- the final option. I really wished I believed in fate. If I did, I could hit the button without a second thought, knowing for sure that no matter what everything would be all right. I wouldn’t have to hit the button, filled with dread and uncertain and a sick sinking feeling in my stomach.

    
    
I winced, and pushed down on the red octagon.

***********

         
Everything changed at once. It didn’t happen the way it had during our aborted effort to set the world right. Everything around me didn’t shimmer and slowly fade away until I was standing not in the artifact but in old Mr. Wilkins shabby living room. This time it was an instantaneously transfer. Of a sudden, I found myself standing on a ratty old carpet, breathing in air that smell vaguely of mildew and old people. I stood there for a long time, then, looking around at the sorry old house. I understood what Eliza had meant about it feeling as though somebody was dying. That was exactly the way it felt, that deep-seated mournful feeling in the pit of my stomach, that feeling that was grief but somehow oddly tinged with hope, hope of an afterlife.

    
 
   
I hadn’t lost a single memory of Eliza or Doc or them living next door to me or anything. At the moment that seemed like a curse with which I would have to live for a long time.