Altering the Apocalypse: and Other Short Stories About Humans and Time Travel Read online

  ALTERING

  THE

  APOCALYPSE

  AND OTHER SHORT STORIES ABOUT

  HUMANS AND TIME TRAVEL

  FRED PHILLIPS

  Table of Contents

  Altering The Apocalypse

  Little Girl Lost At Sea

  The Redemptive Power Of Re-Life

  The Conception Of Phillip Donner

  A Not So Welcome Home

  Second Chance For A Marriage

  The Weirdest Sex I Ever Had

  It’s A Dog Life

  Time Travel Rides

  The Phone Call

  Would You Choose Life?

  The Coin Collector

  The Closet

  Mowing The Lawn

  The Last Of The Lighthouse Keepers

  Used Time Machine For Sale

  There’s No Flowers In The Future

  ALTERING THE APOCALYPSE

  The most useful form of time travel would be to go back a year or two and rectify the mistakes we made.

  Matt Lucas

  I had only a few seconds to decide. The jet bore down on us - like a screaming pterodactyl, probably a mile out when I first caught sight of it, metal reflecting the intensity of the morning sun.

  I fingered the button on my watch, which was not a watch at all, every brain synapse firing, heart racing, praying to a God that scientists like me didn’t believe in.

  One, two, three. With only a second to spare before speeding projectile met immovable object, I pressed the button.

  I'm not sure what caused me to look out the window when I did. Serendipity, luck, a feeling, whatever it was, I glanced out the large tinted plates of glass and noticed the plane headed straight for our building, growing larger in the few seconds I watched it. I quickly calculated that it would smash into the side of our tower a few stories below our office on the 101st floor. When I pressed the button I had no idea what would happen. I still have no idea what happened, scientifically speaking. What forces caused me to instantaneously disappear and avoid a horrific death? I have no idea.

  I reappeared in the same office, only it was a little over two weeks earlier. Like magic – poof – one minute I was there and now I was here. I immediately knew where “here” was, but I didn't immediately know when it was. People stared at me as if I were a ghost, or an uninvited visitor. Which I was. This wasn’t yet the office of Total Integration Technologies, a secretive sub-department of NASA. No one knew who we were, what we did, why we existed, or who funded us. We had no board of directors, no charter, no official phone number. Even the president was in the dark about TIT.

  The first question most of us asked on our first day working with TIT was: Who named it Total Integration Technologies, and wasn't someone in the government acronym department able to determine that these letters would cause spontaneous teenage-like giggles and dirty asides? It’s common knowledge that government officials love their acronyms, but the government wasn't that stupid, was it?

  Though Total Integration Technologies operated under the auspices of NASA, it was funded - rumor had it - by a few anonymous billionaires who wanted the best technology for God, country, and their bank accounts. TIT had two locations. One was in the snow-capped mountains of Colorado, a secretive, cavernous space containing 20 square acres - some above ground, some several hundred feet below it - of the latest scientific technology and gadgets, and one in the World Trade Center, open to any member of the public who wandered up to the 101st floor of the North Tower. “Officially” we made precise timing equipment for military planes and missiles. Unofficially we experimented with time travel devices. The New York office did paperwork, ordered high-tech materials from suppliers around the world, shuffled documents from desk to desk, and guarded TIT secrets by creating memos and mission statements that we occasionally released to the public mentioning breakthroughs in military-grade timing devices and regulators. The New York office had just moved, on Tuesday, September 4th, into its new space on the 101st floor, quickly packing boxes and hauling computers to a vacancy that had opened the previous Thursday, just before the Labor Day weekend. It was amazing how fast government could move when an opportunity arose to pay less money for a better view.

  My name is Franklin Clinton, no relation to either president, one with whom I share a name by family birth, and one with whom I share a name because my grandfather and father were loyal union men who saw FDR as a savior for the working class. Acting as a liaison between the Colorado facility and the New York office; I’m one of the few people who know both sides of the business – the official side and the clandestine one. I’ve traveled the route between Denver and New York City so often that I not only know most of the pilots and flight attendants, but I can calculate the angles of the trajectory every minute as we reach or descend from our cruising altitude on either end of the flight.

  But now there I was, clearly in a time before TIT occupied this space. I assumed I was one of the first to travel back in time. It was conceivable there had been a few others, guinea pigs at the Colorado facility who tested their innovations with a tremendous amount of anticipation and trepidation. A few suckers who felt as if they were exploring time travel for God and country. Whether they succeeded in going back in time and returning to the present, I had no idea. Perhaps a few were still stuck in an alien time, desperately attempting to return to the present. If there had been tests, or tragic mistakes, I didn’t know about them. Even someone like me would not be included in most discussions concerning the actual details - if they even had discussions about such closely guarded secrets. However, I was one of the few allowed to take the watch outside the Colorado facility to test its ability to withstand everyday wear and tear. I was one of the few who knew the potential hiding beneath the shiny, silver outer coating and its spring-loaded button.

  I had been transported back in time to the lobby of our office… only it wasn’t yet our office. We had replaced a stock brokerage that had hastily closed its doors on August 29, 2001; it had shredded its documents and burned its files when clients discovered that most of their 401(k) plans had been plundered by the firm’s greedy top executives.

  A man, dressed in black slacks, a white shirt, and a matching black tie, dropped his stack of papers when I suddenly appeared next to him. I bent down in an awkward, embarrassed manner to help him gather the wayward paperwork.

  “Um, ah,um...” What could he say? What could I say? I merely handed him the papers I had picked up and looked around at the other startled employees of StockHouse International. I nodded my head at them, then quickly walked through the double glass doors, and headed straight for the elevator. When I looked back and saw the StockHouse logo (an outline of a house, and an image of what appeared to be a chart with a line inching its way toward the top right corner, ostensibly to illustrate the stock market rising in value), I knew I had traveled back in time.

  Though I was completely aware of my journey through time, nothing appeared different when I exited the North Tower and walked along West Street. I had no idea where to go, why I would eventually go there, how I would live, and whether another me was here in that unknown time. I suppose you may be wondering why I was so calm, but the truth was I was dangerously close to an anxiety attack. After all, no one – not even someone working with technology designed to explore time travel - ever expects to truly travel back in time.

  I was lucky I followed my grandfather's advice and carried a wad of cash in my wallet. I wondered if my credit cards or my debit card would work in this time; names, numbers,
and expiration dates remained the same, but time had suddenly shifted and perhaps taken away the cards’ validity. I would get my bearings and figure things out, after all; I was an intelligent guy, private science high school, scholarship to Stanford, brilliant in science and math, though very pedestrian in other subjects.

  I thought of several vexing questions while I stared at the highest levels of the silver-colored aluminum alloy towers. Where to stay? Could I get back? Why the hell had a jet been heading straight for the North Tower of the World Trade Center? I assumed hundreds had died and that terrorism was a possibility, but my primary thought was now about altering history and saving all those people who must have perished a second after I disappeared from our office on the 101st floor.

  I pulled a few coins out of my pocket, slipped them into the coin slot in a corner newspaper vending machine, pulled up the glass case, and grabbed a Daily News -Tuesday, August 28th, one day before StockHouse fled the scene of its crimes and two weeks before I fled the scene of my potential death. I had fourteen days to figure out what had happened and attempt to alter the course of history. Or, should I even try? What if by saving the lives of everyone on that plane and all those who must have perished in the building, I unexpectedly put countless others in peril? I couldn’t play God, could I? Just because TIT had discovered a secret to time travel didn’t mean that I could sit in the pantheon of the gods and move people and historical events around like they were pieces on a chessboard, did it? Consider the implications if I did.

  I stopped at a local deli and sat down at a table. The waitress - a buxom dark-haired, dark-eyed, Italian girl with a heavy New York accent - took my order.

  “Pastrami on rye with mustard.”

  “Ya want something to drink wit’ that?”

  “Ice-cold beer.”

  I ate my pastrami on rye, drank my beer, and left a twenty on the table. I fingered the bills in my hand and counted out seven twenties, grateful I had made a quick trip to the ATM before heading up to my office that morning. With nowhere in particular to go and nothing to do, I wandered the streets of New York two weeks in the past. To fully comprehend what had happened and what awaited me, I had to go to the apartment the government maintained for my use in New York to see if there was another me there, or to find out if anyone knew who I was.

  My apartment was a walk-up on the fourth floor of a six-story building on the Lower East Side. Though only a studio apartment, it still cost the United States Government over $1,600 a month. I fumbled in my pocket for my keys, but I must have put them down somewhere in our office before I left in a hurry. I knocked on the manager's door. Gene, the building manager, a round-faced, jolly man of Italian descent, greeted me with a pat on the shoulder. He laughed when I told him I had lost my key. He walked up to my floor with me, let me into my apartment, and gave me a hard yet friendly pat on the back; like we were long, lost fraternity brothers.

  “Don't you worry Mr. Clinton. I'll get another set made right away.”

  New Yorkers get a lousy reputation, but I found them to be genuine and helpful - though I could do without the friendly hand gestures that seemed to put my spine out of whack.

  I checked out my place. Everything looked as I remembered it. My laptop sat on the small kitchen table. The few clothes I kept there were hanging in the closet or neatly folded in the drawers. It was as if I had never traveled through time. It was as if I had simply taken a big step backwards... in time.

  “Mr Clinton.” Anna, a blonde-haired, statuesque beauty who worked the reception area, answered when I dialed the semi-secret phone line of the Colorado facility. Apparently, my phone number had appeared on her screen. I supposed I should have been flattered that a woman of her beauty and grace remembered who I was, but I wasn't. More fear than flattery, but fear comes with the territory when you work for a clandestine quasi-government agency.

  “We’ve missed you here. I trust New York is beautiful this time of year?” she asked in the dulcet tones of a highly-trained receptionist. Not that the facility needed a receptionist as no visitors ever showed up, but just in case a government official, or an anonymous billionaire ever stopped in to see how the budget was being spent, Anna would be there to greet him or her with a smile and - in the case of a 'him” - with the bat of an eyelash. Perhaps she was a spy working undercover as a receptionist.

  “Mr. Marx was worried since he hadn't heard from you in two days. I will put you through to his office.” Before I could say thanks, I heard a click, and then a few more clicks, which I assumed were some sort of high-tech cloaking protocols used when transferring phone calls at the facility. Then came the bellowing voice of Mr. Marx.

  “Franklin, you had me worried! I need those figures ASAP! The cost overruns from the nerds in New York. You have them already?”

  “Um, well… no, not exactly.”

  “Well get them. Call me ASAP!” Before I could respond, I heard another click and then dead air. Cost overruns were code words for classified and covert test data that was sent to New York, spun through computers, analyzed by a team of computer geeks, working independently of each other and with no knowledge of the farfetched, science fiction they were scrutinizing, and then coordinated into one file by someone with a higher security clearance. Someone like me.

  I suddenly remembered the details Mr. Marx needed. I had already accomplished this task in my reality two weeks ago. Or in a parallel universe somewhere.

  An hour later, when I entered our old office on the top floor of a 19th-century brownstone low-rise, several blocks from the World Trade Center, I looked around at my co-workers. None of them knew the real mission behind their work, but most were wonderful workers and decent human beings who might be destined to tragically and violently die unless I could think of some valiant act that would save those lives destined for termination.

  I quickly gathered the details for Mr. Marx, coordinated them into one file, and called him to tell him the file was on its way through secret tunnels in cyberspace that only shadowy government officials could find. Mr. Marx was surprised when I called with the results less than three hours after he had hung up on me.

  “Oh, one more thing, Mr Marx. Any problem with me taking a few days off? Work in Colorado is all caught up and I haven't taken any personal time in, well… I've never taken any personal time, and I just thought-”

  “Take a week.”

  “How about two?”

  “You drive a hard bargain. Take two. We'll see you back here then.”

  Before I could thank him, I heard a click and then the sound of silence once again. Mr. Marx was a gruff and cantankerous man, but there were far worse bosses in the world.

  I had two weeks to figure out what to do, how to alter the course of history. And I had no idea where to begin.

  The next day I got on the Amtrak Acela Express train from Penn Station in New York to Union Station in Washington, DC – I rented a metallic blue compact car, and drove due west to the town of Falls Church, nestled in the Virginia countryside. On a boulevard lined with shiny steel office buildings set back among the trees, I spotted Hal's office building. I had known Hal for several years, since we had worked in the same government department for a few seasons. We were both science geeks; he knew more about computers than any person I had ever met. As if his parents foresaw his future professional discipline, he had been named for the omniscient computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. He believed, without a shred of evidence to back this up other than that the timing seemed to work, that he was conceived in the backseat of a car after his teenage parents smoked a few joints and watched that movie. True or not, it made for a great story at office parties.

  Though he had been brought into the world by two high-school dropouts, Hal was a certified genius. Working for the government didn’t make him a red, white, and blue conformist: he was also a certified rebel with too many causes. He worked by himself in an office on the third floor of a sterile suburban office building - an unlikely setting for an agnostic
, anti-government government worker.

  As we sat facing each other in metal-frame beach chairs, situated in the middle of his sparsely furnished office with its Salvation Army patio theme, we toasted to old times with a couple of ice-cold bottles of Samuel Adams. I told him what I needed.

  “I have information that a threat is imminent to the United States, to New York in particular, terrorist from somewhere.”

  “Must be fucking Al-Qaeda; I hear there's plenty of chatter on the wire about them. And I bet that douchebag Bush is just itchin' for a war. That's the only way his presidency will be worth a damn.”

  “You know anything?”

  “Nah, nothing that means shit. But, I wouldn't be surprised. You know… anthrax, sarin gas, some biological weapon, or the usual lunatic roster of suicide bombers.”

  “Can you get ahold of any confidential information? Top-Secret stuff, you know, look around and see if there’s talk of anything at all?”

  “Frankie Boy, what you're asking goes against my sense of patriotism, my sense of honor and duty, my-”

  “Cut the crap, Hal. This is kind of important.”

  “But, you can't give me any details or you'd have to kill me, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But, you have Top-Secret clearance. Why do you need my services?”

  “Because your clearance is higher, you're smarter, and you like to spy on the government when you can.”

  “All true, my friend.”

  The next several days went by in a blur. I received encrypted files from Hal on ghost websites that disappeared as soon as I downloaded the file. He sent passwords in encrypted files that required passwords to get the passwords, then needed at least ten layers of passwords to get into each file. The only problem was... there was no relevant information. Details of cell phone conversations in Yemen, movements of people across the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, known terrorists meeting at a Middle Eastern grocery store in Brooklyn, an Egyptian man standing on a street corner in Chicago ranting against the American infidels. Nothing even remotely useful… until I received a copy of a memo from one government official to another about an FBI memo sent from an agent in Arizona to terrorism experts in Washington about several Middle Eastern men who were training at flight schools. That was all. No locations, no names, nothing. I called Hal for more information, but Hal said he had sent me everything he had. The government had information it could use. I knew that the information had to be related to what would happen in a couple of days. However, if I contacted anyone in law enforcement or the government, they would lock me up for being a spy, a traitor, a lunatic, or all three. What would I tell them:? That a plane was going to crash into the World Trade Center on September 11th and there were these Arab guys learning how to fly a plane, and… well… take my word for it? I had some of the puzzle pieces to the events of September 11th, but there was nothing more I could find out, nothing I could do to stop it, and no one I could tell about it because they would never believe how I had learned about it. Yes sir, Mr. Clinton, we believe you traveled back in time to save New York. Now, welcome to your new home in the padded, cornerless room hotel.