Faces in Time (7 page)

The image is the same as the night before, different than the printed paper he dropped atop the sink countertop.

He had theorized that the picture in the device would be the same; he believed it would be, but he had never tested it. No one has ever had any way of testing it before now.

Theorists had nearly universally claimed that if one managed to go back in time that care would be needed to prevent erasing one’s own existence. For example, they claimed that going back in time and killing one’s father would eliminate one’s own birth years later, leading to the disappearance of one in the past time since one would then never exist in the future to journey there in the first place.

It seems to be a logical assumption, but Chester’s always known it to be wrong.

A could buy a stick of dynamite in his youth, keep it for twenty years, and go back in time nineteen years bringing the stick of dynamite along with him. At this point, there would be two sticks of dynamite, the one that exists one year after buying it, and one that he brought back with him from twenty years in the future. Both of the sticks could be placed right next to each other.

If he lights the dynamite stick from the future, it can blow up itself and the stick from the past sitting just beside it. There is nothing to stop both sticks of dynamite from exploding, no mystical force to maintain continuity. According to the theorists, the future stick could not exist without the past stick still existing. For the paradox to hold up, the stick from the future should not be able to blow up the stick from the past because the future stick couldn’t exist without the past stick lasting nineteen more years and then surviving a trip to the past to meet itself.

Chester
knew that either the universe would have to magically break rules of physics in preventing the dynamite from exploding both itself and its past counterpart, or the paradox is a lie.

A time traveler could go back in time, kill her parents before her own birth, and still exist. She would not spontaneously fade away. If she went back as a witness only, she could watch her past self be born, and then two versions of herself would exist at the same time. If she wanted, she could watch her past self’s life unfold year after year. This would add the existence of the time traveler to the mass of the universe at that point in time. There would be two of her when there used to be one.

Just like the dynamite from the future, the time traveler exists independently of her past self. The time traveler’s origin lies in a future that has been erased, not a past that is now altered by the time traveler being there. Her existence makes perfect sense relative to herself or anyone else traveling with her. Since she travels alone, her existence makes no logical sense to the rest of the universe unless someone else is genius enough to deduce from when she has come.

Chester
loves Doc Brown, but Doc was wrong on this one. A photograph brought back to the past would never change regardless of what happens from that point on. And, neither would the time traveler fade away from changes made from that point on. In the instant that one arrives in a new state of time, one becomes part of that existence and not dependent on the time one came from. Theoretically, as soon as that person enters in the past, by being there, the person has already changed the future that he came from, erasing the future that he knew.

There is no ever coming home again.

Any point in time—the past, the present, or the future—is  never any more than the sum total of all events leading up to it. What one is today, what one owns, how one feels, where one lives, and what one has accomplished is all a result of the sum total e actions surrounding one’s life—all of the things that one has ever done and the things that people have done that have affected one. One’s sum total at forty years old would obviously be different if one was killed by a neighbor in early childhood, not even being allowed to reach age forty, or conversely if one won the lottery at age twenty.

But, even smaller events change the sum total that makes up our reality at any point in time. Eating, breathing, interacting, walking, talking to people: all of these things change the current environment, which alters the future—they are all new events to be added to the sum total that we consider the present or the future. From the instant the time traveler exists in the past, her existence must be added to the sum total of events making up a new and changed past. The sum total for the future will never be exactly the same because the time traveler’s existence has been added to its sum total; the precise future that the time traveler has left will never exist again.

Because of this, one can’t exist in the past for even a moment without erasing the exact future from which one came.

If a time traveler goes back in time one year, she could show up at her home and visit herself. If she stays with herself for an entire year, spending every day with her, she’ll be back at the same date and time that she left—her original present, her time traveling point of origin, the future that she left. At this point in time, she’ll still be there as will her past self that she has been spending time with every day. No magic force is going to make either body disappear when the year has passed. There will still be two of them.

Time travel inherently breaks the law of conservation of mass/matter. Whatever goes back in time has an origin that has been erased from existence. Therefore, there is no paradox to worry about. Independent mass has been added to the universe.

So, a time traveler can never travel back in time and then return to the future that she left and have it remain the same. The most notable difference will be that the time traveler will find her past self there too, grown up and possibly living a very similar life to what the time traveler was living before she went back in time. And if her past self never decides to go back in time, there is also no magic force that will make the time traveler disappear. Once a time traveler goes back in time, it is a new past, one that has nothing to do with the series of events that are responsible for her existence.

Therefore, how much one changes the
new past
events is irrelevant. If one can exist in the past environment, one is already a being independent of the future one came from. It is enough to make one’s head spiral into insanity, like trying to grasp the endless repetition of an image caught between two parallel mirrors. But, Chester has grasped the concept completely, at the expense of a normal life, a battered mind, a few years of institutionalization, and countless lonely hours.

His eyes study the iage on the screen, comparing it to the newspaper photo in his hands. It’s in the exact position as the original with the same zoom and angle. The background is identical; the only difference is the loudmouth woman from the bathroom is looking directly at the camera smiling broadly, while in the old picture the woman with the hat had looked with a modest expression at the award-winning teacher.

He hasn’t changed the actions of the photographer, the existence of the article, or the end result of the teacher receiving the award, but he had changed the hat, which was his goal, and he still exists along with the original picture in the device.

Glancing at the time shown in the bottom right corner, 10:16 a.m., he starts to put the device away, but he feels the need to glance at the screen again before returning it to his pocket, verifying his astounding situation a second time.

He decides to make quick use of his expensive restroom rental before exiting.

The reclining woman is now sitting upright with the stylist patting a towel to her dripping hair. As he scans over a small framed price sheet, he can hear a faint chortle coming from the chair. Slapping a few worn bills on the counter, he scans the room.

“I’m sorry to bother you again, but could you tell me what time it is?”

Not frowning so much since the bills were placed on the counter, the stylist shakes her right hand flinging water off it. Pulling out a small object from her pocket, she glances at it and answers, “10:18.”

Quietly, “So the time is still right.”

A quiet snicker-snort, a sniort, is followed by, “When is it not?”

Shaking his head as he pushes the door open, he thinks to say, “Yeah, uh, thanks,” but nothing comes out of his mouth.

A whisper rises that is hard to hear but is metered to fit someone saying, “What a weirdo!”

He’s heard it before.

He thinks of Rhonda and smiles as he imagines changing the scenery around her sad life, mainly placing himself by her side, but in the least keeping her face intact.

Walking down the sidewalk, a smile takes possession of his face for the first time since he arrived in the schoolyard, and he can’t find any reason to shoo it away.

He pulls the handle on his driver’s door and hops in his car. He realizes he has left the door open all night and while he went into the beauty salon; the keys are still in the ignition. He would never have been that careless with the car until now. As it is not as exigent as the ink that is smearing off the thin paper onto his pressing fingers, he sends the thought out of his head.

He plops the paper on the seat beside him, and fires up the engine. Backing up, his front tire pops off the sidewalk onto the street, and quickly shifting gears he speeds down the narrow lane with cars parked on both sides.

He’s been incarcerated for four hundred and fifty-eight days, and he holds a separate anger for each one of them. Only one and a quarter years through his twenty-four season sentence, but his mind is set on making this early morning the beginning of his last day.

From the start he’s felt that he’s been treated unfairly.

His record included aggravated battery, failing to register as a sex offender resulting from an ill-fated relationship with a fourteen-year-old girl, and his latest armed robbery. All three offenses occurred in the first six months following his eighteenth birthday.

He smirkingly admits to all of the crimes, but he feels his sentence is the result of an unfair state law requiring a three-time felon to be issued the maximum sentence for his convictions.

He has shouted to everyone around him about the unfairness of receiving a harsher sentence due to past crimes, spouting about backwoods double jeopardy and that sentencing should have nothing to do with one’s previous record. Yet, he didn’t mind the light sentence he had received for his initial battery charge since it was his first and only offense at the time.

His prison stay has been mostly quiet, having been thought to be involved in several group beatings although no evidence could be brought against him. Guards considered him a ringleader,a boss among a faction of the inmates, but always one degree away from being incriminated.

An unexpected fight last week hospitalized his cellmate, who is aptly named Owl after his robust eyebrows, so he now shaves alone in front of a mirror with a smuggled razor, not the inferior safety razors that are standard issue. His shedding metamorphosis requires a sharper blade.

His face stings with the air tingling over freshly exposed skin. His unkempt beard was part of his persona, hiding his human features behind its fur-like mask. It was as attached to him as his bed is to the floor and the polished stainless steel mirror is to the wall in front of him with its eight tamper-proof screws holding it snugly secure. As his mane is removed from his skull in rows, he feels free of the life he’s made in jail and unbound from the narrow rectangular brick cell.

A somber exhale escapes from him as the razor pulls the last strands from his scalp.

He splashes hot water atop his head. Despite the failings of prison life, the water has always arrived hot and fast at the turn of the sink’s left handle. Using his polyester bedspread, he wipes away the slain hair remnants from his head.

Taking one more pass with the razor, he cleans up the missed spots. The mirror begins to get hazy making it harder to see the new him, and he turns the hot water down. Throughout his life, excessive heat has often made it hard for him to get a good view of himself.

Tossing the polyester cover atop the bed, his attention returns as it always does to the bars at the open end of his pen. Across the spaces between the bars, walks the man with clothes in his hands.

“Hello, Edmund, glad to see you up this early in the morning and being so industrious at that,” whispers the man standing at the locked door in a short-sleeved collared shirt and neatly-pressed, gray, pleated pants.

“I’ve told you not to call me Edmund; my name is Eddie.”

“Well, I don’t think you’re in much of a position to bargain, Edmund. I could just take your money, make it disappear, and you’d still be here—locked away.”

“You wouldn’t last a week out there if you crossed me.”

“Out there maybe. But, in here,” wrapping his fingers around the metal rods, “there are these strong bars keeping all the bad people on the other side.”

“Not all of them.”

Smiling and looking down at his shined shoes, “Just realize I’m the one who got you this private cell and put that razor blade in your hand.”

Shaking his head and struggling to keep his voice at a whisper, “So, you put that crazy idea in Owl’s head?”

Nods.

“Poor bastard, nobody’s been dumb enough to fight with me since the first week I was in.”

“I hear he’s healing nicely.”

“What’d you promise him?”

“A visit from his wife—a real private one.”

Edmund takes his turn in nodding, “That’d do it.”

After a moment of digesting the news, Edmund continues, “Was a long two days in solitary. Really appreciate that.”

“I’m sure it was a real blast, Edmund, but isn’t it worth the reward? The gold at the end of the journey? Besides, the less that it appears you got any special treatment from me, the better it is for the both of us.”

“Really, the both of us? Or just you?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that if they catch me involved in this that they’re going to want to nail you even more? To bring the one that got away back and show everyone that everything is back in order again—that no one gets out of here. That the jails are secure—not even corruption can get you out. If people don’t think prison is a perfect lockup for all the bad guys, the people start getting restless, lose faith in the system, start thinking of new ways to do things. Nobody in charge will let that happen; none of them want people looking and questioning how things are done. They’ll all make sure you get nailed any way they can get at you. Catch you, and it’s all back to normal.”

Trouble waves over Edmund’s face for the first time in any of their conversations.

“Well, you look so different; I’d even have a hard time recognizing you myself if you weren’t in your cell.”

Edmund stares intently, “Ain that convenient.”

“The new guard is coming on in,” looking at his watch, “seven minutes; you better get to getting changed, before he decides to make his rounds.”

“Name’s Nathan Chapetta—he takes care of his brother’s retarded daughter; she just moved in with him. You know that?”

“Of course, I know that—just hired him a few weeks ago, but it’s best for
you
not to think about that. You need to think about sticking to the plan, and not about the lives of an unfortunate piece of the plan.”

“Uh huh.”

“You just be ready before he gets here and stick to what we’ve said.”

“No problem, boss man; this is your show. Just give me the clothes.”

A timid hand raises the gray cotton shirt and black baggy pants that were a cash purchase from an out of town discount drug store. As soon as they touch the space between the bars, they are snatched and yanked into the cell with all the savageness of an alpha male tearing off the choicest piece of a fallen prey’s flesh before the rest of the pack dives in to get theirs, his knuckles banging on the cold bars in the process.

Turning the clothes over in his hands, Edmund grumbles, “Glad that you shelled out for the good stuff.”

“Hey, anything besides that bright orange getup that you’re wearing is exquisite stuff, dontchya think?”

“You just get on down that hallway, push the button to release my door, and get out of sight. I’ll get these on fast.”

“Why is it that an impatient man always thinks he has the right to bark out orders to everyone else? You’d think that the desperate would plead.”

Yanking his shoulders out the unbuttoned top of the bright jumpsuit, he says, “Tick tock, Mr.
Deputy
Warden, sir.”

“Let me tell you something, dirtball. When Warden McCullough is not here, I am the ex officio captain of the guards; this is my frickin’ place, every filthy inch of it, including you; your little bed that’s bolted to the wall over there; that filthy, shiny, ice cold toilet; and even the little bits of scraggly hair that you’ve cut off all over the floor.”

“Fine. It’s all yours; I want out of here, remember? You’re the king of prisonland for all I care, but we need to get moving. Now.”

“Well, don’t say anything else that might make me want to discuss its meaning with you; it’s not the time to be keeping you in line. Stick to the plan.”

“I’m a criminal, not a child; I got it.”

“Well, you’re going to need to get this too,” he says holding up a thin laminated card with a dark blue lanyard dangling from it.

Edmund reaches out to grab it, but Rutherford tosses it through bars. Edmund catches it with one hand, driving a corner of its rough plastic into his palm. Glancing at it in his opened hand, the words “Visitor’s Pass” glare out at him. The smaller print has the date and the call letters of a local TV station among other words that he is not going to read.

“That should make walking out of here a lot easier.”

Turning, taking two steps, and looking back, Rutherford says, “Tell Chapetta I’m sorry it had to be this way. Wrong place, bad time.”

Smiling at the prospect, “Sure, I’ll send him your regards.”

The footsteps grow softer with each echoing step.

Edmund thinks the deputy warden an idiot for not stepping quieter. Rutherford is the prison’s steward—it’s not unusual for him to wander down the halls inspecting, and any convict who notices him has weak credibility even if he decides to talk. But, it seems simply stupid to do anything to link oneself to a crime scene. Edmund can’t make sense of his logic except that maybe there is none. Maybe he’s so secure in his job and comfortable in his power that he thinks nothing could condemn him, even being in the vicinity minutes before a jail break.

The reminders to heed the plan were most unnecessary; Edmund’s done little but go over the steps in his head since it was agreed upon nearly two weeks ago. During every meal, he has thought of shaving his head and beard and hiding the hairs between the bed cushion and the cover. During every break, he’s focused on changing his clothes as quickly as possible. During his work, he’s dreamed of the first step into the hallway.

It is a good plan. The electronic doors do malfunction occasionally. In fact, the cells on both sides of Edmund are currently vacant while the prison waits for its budget to grow large enough to repair their faulty doors. Just last year, an inciden made the news involving two inmates yelling for the guard when their doors mysteriously popped open. They had no plan, and in Edmund’s mind no imagination—the type of prisoners that he thought deserved to rot here. But, the public enjoyed the thought of prisoners not wanting to get into trouble and calling for the guard to lock them back up.

Every time Edmund has heard their story, he has gritted his teeth at the wasted opportunity, the very type of a chance that he’s become obsessed with. One year later, their lost getaway makes Edmund’s escape seem less a conspiracy and more like an electronic malfunction. No doubt it helped sway Rutherford to believe a plan like this would work without any suspicion of prison staff involvement, especially if it involves the death of a new, inexperienced prison guard.