Faces in Time (3 page)

He glances down at the passenger seat. A familiar sight sits atop the cushion: his dark purple shirt. Having never been one comfortable with fashion, this shirt was one of the few in which he felt easeful. He never liked himself in red, too flashy; he was never comfortable with eyes being drawn to him. Something about the hue of the purple made him feel stylish and at home at the same time.

A psychologist might wonder if it was the color of his baby blanket or of a shirt his mother used to wear, but it is simply a shirt that he did not feel silly wearing. And, that made it a rare find.

The only odd thing about it now is that it was thrown away years ago, by then faded and worn, after staining it while laboring over the device—the one that eventually shot him back in time. Until it finally worked earlier today, all that machine brought him was to the brink of insanity, which is something that he questions even now as he looks over the fabric beside him.

He’d much rather be wearing the purple garment than the plain, white button-up shirt that he is wearing now and has been since he left the sad room of his former present to return to this field of his youth.

He can’t quite explain the purple shirt’s reappearance. Logically the shirt could be in his closest in his modest student’s apartment that he had at this time, but he can’t reconcile it being in the car, or even the car being here for that matter. Besides knowing something is horribly askew, he has no theory at the moment that could make sense of the unexplained objects.

But, there are other matters that are far more pressing than the car and clothing curiosity. Like his age. Scanning over his body, he is still indeed an adult, but his right hand is different. The pinky finger that he had broken on his first attempt to return to his past is still crooked, but its scar has faded much more since traveling through time. He marvels at the scar that has half disappeared.

He hasn’t been so stunned since he received the positive response to his first spec script in his early twenties. It was a shot in the dark sending an unsolicited script to a successful television producer as a lark, an assumed failure, but he was offered a staff job on his favorite show as a result.

Fear courses through him. Just like the shirt, this physical change in his finger is beyond his reasoning and possibly beyond logic altogether, but some would argue that love, guilt, and even the placebo effect make no practical scientific sense either. To be within the realm of those three things, which lie outside of rationalization, leaves him in a state of panic.

All he has been prepared to do is to use his science to protect himself on this journey and to use his heart and soul to choose his actions. The shirt that shouldn’t be here, the car that shouldn’t be here, and his inexplicably healed finger—these irregularities knock out the plan that he was counting on as his support.

He had expected calculated results without any anachronisms questioning his theories. Falling randomly through time is not what he had planned, and his right hand with the faded scar starts to shake.

Through the side window, his eyes’ focus begins to slip on the field, making it lose its definition and look like a spotted watercolor version of his childhood yard.

As his hands slide over the wheel that is faintly slick from its last protectant treatment, he glances over his finger’s faded scar again. His mind flies ahead, and he leans to look at himself in the rearview mirror. His face appears to be so much younger that it is startling despite its familiarity, looking like he’s in his early twenties. There is nothing to account for the wrinkles and drooping facial muscles that have flown off his countenance. There is no reason for him to have become younger.

A traveler ages at the same rate relative to himself regardless of the speed at which he travels—a time traveler ages during his own travels according to every second he has experienced, not according to what people outside of his craft have experienced. So, he should still be minutes older than when he left. None of this adds up to him looking younger, and he wonders where he has thrust himself if science can’t explain what is happening to him.

The engine fires and so does his resolve. He brushes the thoughts aside as he races off to rip a hole in the future.

His eyes scour over the top of the newsprint like a ghost searching for its reflection to prove it’s real.

He find the date.

He has gone back to the exact day that he had envisioned. This offers a shallow flooding of relief, but it still doesn’t explain the car, his clothes, his half vanished scar, or his body that looks about twenty years younger.

The other pressing matter is that he still needs to find out if he can change anything or if he is merely an observer. He has to find something upon which he’ll be able to test this theory. For that, he’ll need a situation that he clearly knows a specific historical outcome but one in which he is capable of changing single-handedly.

He pats his pockets frenetically, still clutching the paper in his right hand. The device is still there, and he knows he needs to get to a place where he can use it.

His mind lingers on the horror of not being able to alter anything—the thought of reliving New Year’s Eve after New Year’s Eve with no one to kiss, no one to hold, with no one to dream of what could happen over the next four seasons. And on the occasions when he did have a date, he was almost sadder because he knew she wasn’t the one for him, and he knew there were no future dreams to be made with her.

The throaty rumbling of his car calls to him in a perfectly-timed hum. Its vibrations course through him and bring him to attention.

He glances at the clear shards around his shoes and suddenly realizes that he did indeed shatter glass with his fist. And on top of that, it’s glass that belongs to someone else. He can’t afford to spend his first day back in time in jail; after all, he has an audience with destiny in two days. If he’s late, things will go horribly awry, and he has to test out his abilities before then.

He runs to his car, slams the door harder than he ever has, and accelerates quickly down the side street.

The street itself has been of no consequence to him, and he has paid it no attention until now as he looks around in his mirrors to see if anyone has spotted him. The newspaper receptacle is on the side of a small gas station at the end of a strip mall that also contains one storefront with a faded FOR RENT sign and a fried chicken restaurant with half of its lights burned out, leaving the body of the chicken illuminated and its head missing somewhere in the darkness.

The strip mall is just around the corner from the schoolyard. During his childhood, the gas station convenience store was a popular hangout for the students after school getting an ICEE, some candy, or a comic book. The larger street that it faces is Planeline Highway, and the side street that he barrels down now remains nameless to him, but the houses are very familiar.

H
Even through his panic to test his surroundings, he notices how nice the houses look before leaky gutters will leave rust-colored stains on the sides of the homes and before time will tear at the wood trim on the windows and doors. He knows that within ten years time the aging Planeline will turn into a crime-ridden area where only the gas station will remain open in the strip mall, but after 6 p.m. customers will have to make their transactions through a tray at the bottom of a bullet-proof pane of glass.

Had he a moment to spare, he’d enjoy returning to the neighborhood before its ruin.

It occurs to him that he was able to shatter the glass. It didn’t prove to be unbreakable to his hands; he changed something in this reality. He wonders if it will cause any alterations to the old reality that he knew in his past life, the history that he’s experienced.

Will those jagged shards of glass pop someone’s tire, causing an accident and killing someone who was supposed to be alive in the old reality? Maybe some kid would’ve broken the glass pane later that evening anyway, leaving things just about as they originally were. Maybe some drunk in a pickup truck would’ve backed his bumper through the glass pane on his way to fill his ice chest from the ice machine to the left of the newspaper dispenser.

Possibly, that glass would’ve been broken regardless of his actions, and that’s the only reason why he was allowed to smash it. He hopes not, as that would suggest events can’t be changed and reality is constant. The one original reality that he’s known includes his love marrying an abusive egotist that she will meet at a party in two days. That reality includes his previous miserable life of lonely hours and regret. Weighing in heavier than those on his mind is the sad life that costs Rhonda her face. He doesn’t want to think about being helpless to alter any of those events, especially the last one. He has a shot at bringing this old dream back to life, and he wants to cling only to logic that will allow him to do so.

He has to get somewhere where no one will see him, and he’ll find a way to test out the above.

He reminds himself to slow down that he is far enough away from the gas station and that he should not draw notice to himself speeding in a thundering attention-attracting car down a quiet street painted in dusk. Reluctantly, his foot pulls back on the pedal, and the old familiar houses become less blurry. All the while, his heart races, and his finger with the faded scar twitches against the steering wheel.

Normally he is much too cautious and calculated to speed in a residential area, but the drive to test out his limits in this time he’s shot himself into is too strong for his personality to hold back.

The golden twilight that was present at the school field is fading into evening. The last hue of the sun hangs over the tops othe houses, lighting a candle on suburbia.

Despite his later life in Hollywood as a writer, he’s never felt more at home than in these neighborhoods of one car garages, basketball goals in driveways, and modest, self-maintained gardens of periwinkles and inkas. There is an honesty and a sheer lack of pretension that allows you to operate without wondering what someone else’s angle might be or looking over your shoulder to see what’s coming at you. A pile of unchained bikes on a front lawn of a friend’s house is more comforting than a policeman on the corner.

Without consciously deciding where to go, he turns corners in a familiar pattern that he has not followed in years. The sky above is swollen with indecision. Dark clouds loom, threatening an evening downpour, but they have not overtaken the lingering hue of the bowing sun, unsure if they’ll give birth to a crisp breezy evening or a sullen tempest.

The engine hums as smoothly and powerfully as a white tiger moving through a Siberian terrain. It’s almost enough to comfort him. The feel of the slender rectangle in his pocket as it rests on his left thigh is a reminder of what he needs to do. Things are not quite as planned, and he longs to glance at the device, but he’s not far enough away from the eyes of others to take it out yet.

The cockpit of the car is poorly lit. It’s one of the crucibles of car restoration to add modern lighting or to leave the expensive car, an accomplishment of time, dedication, worn flesh, frustration, and tears, with illumination as poor a smudged flashlight that is low on batteries. The faint light is a mockery of the quality of the rest of the vehicle, a masterpiece in an unfinished splintery frame. Some opt to add underdash or underseat lighting, and some balk at the idea of tampering with a classic, meshing it with technology of a later time and violating its factory condition.

His interior seems dim to him like the failing glow of a dying fire, but it also makes it hard for anyone to see him. And right now, a little inconspicuousness is just what he wants. The car is sure to stand out, but its driver is harder to see.

He had thought about upgrading the outdated, original stereo. He shopped around and even bought one especially made to fit his car without any gaudy installation panels to fill the extra space, but he could never bring himself to remove the original stereo. He felt like he had listened to it for so long that it was a part of him.

The device in his pocket is capable of broadcasting music to the old stereo via FM signal, but he’s still not ready to risk taking it out of his pocket to operate it. It would be odd to hear modern digital music coming out of the ancient, feeble speakers. He hopes that his mad dash through time ends up being more than having his mature mind spout out the same futile lines through his young body. Like his device, he hopes he can spout a new line into the past.

Turning off the paved road, his slowly-turning tires eradicate the loose pieces of dirt, a sound that clearly signifies one has gone off the road most traveled. The road is a faintly worn path through an unkempt field, which becomes a parking lot at crowded school events, an arena for students to fight after school, and a refuge for a despondent loner to regain composure on a terrible day.

His headlights reveal a lone tree off to the right. He has always imagined its branches drooped due to absorbing the sorrow of decades of dejected teens.

He is certainly no stranger to the tree, although his last visit there was the best one. It was his prom night at Riverview High School, and he was there with three girls. None of them had dates, and they all knew each other from running the school newspaper. So, they decided to all go together. They managed to secure their own table, and he danced one slow song with each of the girls. At the end, they all danced one fast song together.

All three had a crush on him; after all, he had been nicer to them than any boy they’d ever known. However, their affection for him was completely a secret to him. His meager confidence was such to dismiss a flip of the hair or a squeeze of his arm as a harmless act of kindness, never bold enough to discern a flirt.

After the prom, they sat under the tree with a few battery-powered lanterns and a stereo. One of the girls brought a bottle of schnapps, but no one wanted to drink any. There was a tension of a date-type situation with the romance snuffed out. Being lonely with others was certainly better than any of his other trips to the tree, but it was still lacking. Still pining for something that he knew was out there. Aching for her.

As he shifts the car into park, he rushes to grasp the device.

The smooth plastic is cool on his fingers as he slides it out of his pocket. He raises it to his chest level and marvels at its illuminated screen. In the darkness of the unknown variables of his trip, one glowing object has performed exactly as planned.

The glowing suddenly reminds him of energy, and he panics.

He pats his left pants pocket, and finds nothing. Frantically he slides his hand into his right pocket and pulls out a tangle of wires with a bulb dangling from it. He smiles. The car charger was in his pocket, just as it was when he left his old life.

Relief rushes through him as if it were the glow of the device warming his chest.

His finger pushes a series of buttons with the facility of one writing one’s signature, making the screen flash and dance at his commands. T an outsider the device might appear to be a part of his hand, and it might as well be with so much of his time, energy, and hopes inside it. Its casing came from a manufacturer, but all of its innards have been replaced or modified by him.

Through all of its advancements, it now displays an archaic picture of black and white, and it is exactly what he wants to see. He compares it to the pilfered newspaper on his vacant passenger seat, and they are an exact match. He has indeed gone back to the specific date in which he intended. Now, he has to determine if it will do him any good.