Unhappenings (42 page)

woke to the smell of coffee and bacon, still on the living room floor, a feather pillow under my head and a blanket covering the rest of me. I shambled into the kitchen to find Helen at the stove, making an omelet.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Hey,” I said, trying to blink myself awake.

“How hungry are you?”

I thought about that.

“Two eggs hungry,” I said. She slid the omelet onto a plate, then chopped about a third of it off with the spatula and slid that piece onto another plate for herself.

“Two egg omelet,” she said, placing it on my kitchen table next to a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice and a cloth napkin. “Bon appétit.”

It was cheddar, mushroom and chopped bacon, and quite delicious.

“I tried to call you,” I said.

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t call back.”

I shrugged off the apology. “You were upset.”

“Not at you.” She put her plate down at the spot next to mine, and pulled up a chair.

I frowned. “It sure seemed like you were upset with me,” I said.

She took a bite, apparently to buy her a little time to respond.

“Yeah, I was at first,” she finally admitted. “Not now.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because you told me the truth, which was exactly what I asked you to do. It’s not your fault the truth was so abominable.”

I poked at my food. “Should I ask you how your week was?”

“You can if you want. I’m going to tell you about it whether you ask or not, but if it makes you feel more in control, I’ll wait for you to ask.” She paused.

“How was your week?”

“I went to see Carlton. We had a pretty big fight. The details of that probably aren’t important. What is important is that I believe you. Every word.”

“Oh,” I said. “Um…”

“You don’t have to say anything. You already said what you needed to say, and I walked out on you when I should have been thanking you.” She stopped there, and ate a bit of her omelet.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I shouldn’t have dumped all that on you. Athena told me not to, and I did it anyway, and I wish I hadn’t. I completely understand that you would be upset with me for telling you things you couldn’t believe about someone you loved.”

She took my hand and looked me in the eyes. “I wasn’t upset because what you said was unbelievable. I was upset because it rang true.”

“Oh,” I said again.

“When we first met, I was young. He was dashing, and exotic, and it was so very, very easy to fall for him. The fact that there were power dynamics in his family that made a relationship between us impossible just fueled it all the more. When he told me he loved me, it felt so dramatic, and important. Like he was willing to defy the world just to be with me.” She paused there, pushed her omelet around with her fork and took a tiny bite. After a moment, she continued.

“It’s easy to look back on a failed relationship and see all the things about it that made it wrong. At the time, all I could feel was the romance. It was so easy to see myself as the Juliet to his Romeo, and so hard to remember what a stupid story that is, and how horribly it ends for everyone involved.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She shook her head. “Don’t. It’s okay. I loved an idealized version of Carlton, and I loved the story I thought we were playing out. But I’m not the smitten girl I was, and the rose colored glasses have faded to something darker over the last three years. I wanted so badly to hate you for telling me those things about him, but I wanted to hate you because it was easier than hating myself for already thinking them.”

“Oh God,” I said. “You didn’t tell him—”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t tell him any of what Athena told you. Um…” She winced. “He does know about you now, though. I’m sorry about that.”

“Great,” I said. “I don’t suppose that was going to stay secret forever anyway. So, what did you talk about?”

She shied away. “I don’t really want to go into detail. It was a huge blowup, and we both said things we probably didn’t mean. But the way he said those things… I believe he can become the man you described. I think I’ve always believed it on some level. I just foolishly imagined that I could change him.”

This would have been the appropriate time to inform her that she could, in fact, have changed him. That with her help, he could find the restraint not to destroy the world. I want to believe the reason I held my tongue at that moment was I knew how badly it would hurt her to know it, and what she knew about him now might have jeopardized that influence anyway. They had just had a huge fight. It was probably too late for her to make it all better, and even if she did, it would mean sacrificing herself to a lifetime of misery married to man she now truly believed was just one bad day away from becoming a monster. That’s what I want to believe. But she didn’t ask, and that’s why I didn’t say.

“So,” said Helen. “That’s over. The answer to your question from a week ago is yes, I am okay. Yes, we are okay. I’m sorry I said no. I was mistaken.”

“Understood,” I said.

“Good. Now about this other matter, that our relationship can’t unhappen, she’s sure about that, right?”

“As far as I know,” I said. “She did say they don’t know why it’s true, but apparently there have been dozens of times it could have unhappened, and it always holds.”

“Excellent. That’s excellent. Because…” She leaned into my ear and whispered, “I do believe we have a baby to make.”

Neither of us pointed out that Athena was not due to be born for another four years

ne evening, while Helen and I were home playing Scrabble, a dull flash of light came from our kitchen. By the time my brain had registered the new stimulus, Helen was already out of her chair (having toppled it doing so), and in the next room. I came in to find mother and daughter in a tight embrace. Helen’s face was not visible from that angle, but I could see Athena balancing embarrassment and adoration in a kind of eye-rolling smile.

“Hi, Mom,” she said.

Helen kissed her with a loud “Mwah!”

“I need to borrow Nigel,” said Athena.

Helen took my arm and stood her ground. “Anything you have to tell him you can say to me, too.” It sounded about as rehearsed as my bad jokes.

“It’s something I have to show him.”

“Oh,” said Helen, deflated. “But then you’ll do a time travelly thing and bring him back seconds later, and then we can have tea, right?” She nodded with an open-mouthed smile.

Athena laughed lightly. “Yes, Mother.”

“Splendid! I’ll put the kettle on.”

I took Athena’s hand.

“This is what you do to her,” I said.

“I like it,” she said, and then the world flashed.

We were in the park again. Carlton’s mother was giving him a bottle.

“Are you going to kill baby Carlton?” I asked bluntly.

“Not today,” she said with equal candor. “A narrow minority of our computer models show that executing him as a child results in no net improvement to history.”

I stared at her. “But you would. If those models said it would work.”

She nodded. “If that were the assignment.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked my baby girl.

“Not directly,” she said. “I have done things that caused people to die.”

“Oh,” I said. What else was there to say?

“You can’t go home,” she said suddenly. “2092. Or 2094 which is what it would be now relative to how much you have aged.”

“Wait, what?” This came as more than a surprise. I had stayed out of contact with the older version of me for more than two years, at his command, but all that time I had assumed I would somehow end up becoming him, and I would need to return to the late twenty-first century at some point to do that. I hadn’t planned quite that far ahead, but I had already started considering how I could minimize the effects of bringing Helen with me when I did. Now it sounded like that would be moot, and as much as I should have been in terror of losing my old life, I found my primary reaction was relief I would no longer need to concern myself with how to reconcile that life with Helen. Then the secondary concern of the impossibility of it all kicked in.

“Why?”

“Because there is already a version of you living that life in that time.”

As impossible as it seemed for my future self to exist without my return to my past, this development seemed even more so. “How?”

“Multiple frames of reference,” she said. “Remember? As a traveler, there are plenty of ways that could be accomplished.”

I shook my head, dazed. “I still don’t understand.”

“You saw that effect yourself when you went back five minutes. There were two of you. What do you think would have happened if you had convinced him not to travel back those five minutes himself?”

“Paradox?” I guessed.

She shook her head. “Not for us. Paradoxes are for the fixed. No such thing for a traveler. If you had stopped him, there would be two of you now.”

“Seriously?” She nodded. “Does that mean every time I travel I create another Nigel? How many of me are there?” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice, but this new consequence of time travel was beyond my capacity for bravery. Why hadn’t she ever told me this before?

“Relax, Chief,” she said. “That’s not what it means. Yes, it is possible to create duplicates. We discovered that by experimenting with mice. But it’s not something that happens by accident. It has to be deliberately initiated. If it makes you feel any better, there aren’t any duplicates of me out there anywhere. It’s always been me. You calling me Una was more insightful than you knew.”

The moment of terror passed. “What about the older me? Dr. Walden? Is he another duplicate?”

“Probably not,” she said. “But maybe. We’re still looking into that, but we think he’s the same version of you that replaced you in 2092.”

“But still me, right?”

She nodded. “Very much so. A duplicate isn’t a second generation copy. You are both just as much Nigel Walden as the other.”

I thought on this for a moment. “You said if I had stopped myself that one time I went back five minutes, I would have made another duplicate, right?”

“That’s right.”

“But I didn’t stop him,” I said. “What happened to him?”

She shrugged. “Anyone’s guess. We still don’t know a lot about how it works, just that it does. If it makes you feel better, he probably just became you, with overwritten memories. You basically reabsorbed him. Or he reabsorbed you. Either way, he’s not out there anywhere.”