The Girl & the Machine (2 page)

Heather glanced at him and laughed. “Trust me, it’s better on the inside.”

And she wasn’t lying. After scanning her thumbprint on a biometric lock, tapping in a nine digit code on a numerical pad, and fitting a key into a slot by the door, Heather let Franklin inside. “Welcome home!” Heather said.

It seemed clear that Heather practically lived here in the lab. Near the front, there was a slightly open door through which Franklin could see a made-up bed—not a cot but an actual bed—and the clutter of a lived-in apartment. The lab itself was immaculate. Despite the fact that the outside of it had looked rather worn down, made of cement blocks with no windows and overgrown grass around the edges, the inside of the laboratory was gleaming steel and the harsh scent of antiseptic.

“This is it,” Heather said taking Franklin by the hand and dragging him across the laboratory toward a large metal object that took up most of the room. A line of computers stood against the wall, flashing code and incomprehensible numbers Franklin didn’t understand. Not that he understood the machine in the middle of the room, either. There was a platform to the left with what looked like a glass cylinder that could wrap around it, much like the little tubes that drive-through banks used to get money to the tellers. Attached to it was another tube, but this one was made entirely of metal with a small glass pane near the top. Franklin stood in front of it looking into the glass pane. The metal tube was about the same size as he was, and the glass plate was even with his face. Behind the contraption was a jumble of metal boxes, exposed circuit boards, and bundles of wires and coiled tubing illuminated by blinking LED lights.

“Forgive the mess,” Heather said.

“What is this?” Franklin asked, staring at up at the gleaming metal.

“The time machine,” Heather said.

Franklin stared at her as if waiting for her to laugh again and tell him this was all a joke. As a time traveler, he probably shouldn’t think that such a machine was impossible but… But it was.

“This is what I’ve been working on, pretty much my entire time here,” Heather said. Her voice was very serious. “In fact, this is really what I’ve been working on since I met you. I’ve always been fascinated with this kind of technology, I’ve always felt like it was possible, but I never dared to actually work on it. Why would anyone waste their time working on a time machine? I knew the theory and the science, but it was impossible right? And then you. You, from the future. And somehow just knowing that it was actually possible was enough for me to make it actually happen.”

“So…does it work?” Franklin asked, unable to take his eyes away from the gigantic machine that hummed with life.

Heather walked around the machine, lovingly touching the metal, stroking it as she would stroke a lover’s skin. “Theoretically, yes. We’ve done all the tests and studies that we could possibly do. But we cannot make it actually work.” She looked up at him. “Not without you.”

“Me?”

Heather nodded. “We need you—or more precisely, we need your genetics.”

Franklin looked down at his hands, then back up to Heather.

“There’s something in your blood, in your DNA, that gives you the ability to travel. A mutation.”

“Like the X-Men?”

Heather laughed, but again Franklin noticed there was no humor in the sound. “Sort of,” she said. “Anyway, without this mutation, the time machine won’t work. We need you to make it work.”

“How?”

“It’s very simple,” Heather said. “What happens is, you step into the machine, we program it for whatever time and place you want, the machine reads your genetic code, and then it uses your own genetic mutation to send you exactly where you want to go—past or future.”

Franklin stared at the machine, trying to think of all the things that he could do with it. Time travel could be rather mundane when one is limited to your own timeline. With a machine like this, he could see the dinosaurs. He could see whatever happened to humanity a hundred years—a thousand years—several millennia from now.

“Yes, hello?” Heather said. Franklin looked up and realized she was using her cell phone. “One large.” She glanced up at Franklin. “You like pepperoni?” Franklin nodded. “Large pepperoni,” Heather said into the phone. She hung up. “We have to eat,” she said to Franklin. “It’s going to be a long night.”

T
hey sat
at the base of the machine on either side of the greasy pizza box, using napkins as plates. The pizza came from some local place rather than a chain, but the only difference between it and any other pizza he could get was that the crust was far too big and lumpy.

Franklin sat with the machine behind him. It felt as if it loomed over him, watching his every move. He ate the pizza nervously.

“Most people can’t travel through time at all,” Heather said. “Obviously. But since you can go to the past, there’s really no reason why you can’t also go into the future.”

“I just assumed it’d make a paradox or something,” Franklin said weakly.

“A paradox?”

“Like, if I went forward in time, I’d break the universe.” He felt rather stupid in front of this girl genius. He should have learned more about his own condition, about the science behind it. He felt like a cancer victim who had never bothered to learn about germs.

Heather dropped her half-eaten slice back in the box and scooted closer to Franklin. “It doesn’t work like that. You’ve tried to go forward in time, right? And it never worked?”

Franklin nodded in agreement.

“It’s like this.” Heather pulled Franklin up and led him to a gurney at the back of the lab. She pushed him onto the wheeled table and started to roll it forward. “For everyone else on Earth, we can only move through time in one direction.” She pushed the gurney forward. “We have no control over how fast we’re going, or that we can only move forward. But you do.” She tapped his knee, and Franklin dropped his foot to the slick, tiled floor, then used the traction of his sneaker to push back against Heather, making the wheels of the gurney go backwards. “But you’re still limited. You have a block of some sort, something that’s preventing you from moving more than backwards and forwards within your own previously-lived timeline. With the machine, we unblock the restrictions you currently have, and you’re free to go anywhere in time that you like.” She pushed him off the gurney, and Franklin was free to move as he wanted to.

He still didn’t fully understand what the machine would do to him or how it would work, but Heather plopped back down in front of the pizza, satisfied she had fully explained herself.

“What makes a person like you want to spend her life working on a machine like this?” Franklin asked, sitting back down. He didn’t eat any more. His stomach was upset; his nerves were on edge.

“You made a lasting impression.” She stared at him with clear, sincere eyes. Then she shrugged. “I’ve always been sort of nerdy, anyway,” Heather said dismissively.

To be honest, it surprised Franklin. Heather wasn’t super-model gorgeous, but she was hot enough. Her dark skin was smooth, and her hair had been relaxed and twirled up into a cute bun. Heather had a little bit of a hot-librarian-thing going for her. She wasn’t exactly slender, but she had an everyday-girl charm about her that Franklin found attractive.

She didn’t look like a nerd. Like a genius.

Gooey cheese slid down her pizza, landing with a greasy plop on the napkin. Heather looked down at it as if surprised she was still eating.

“I wasn’t always the way I am now,” she said softly. “High school was hell. I was a ‘late bloomer,’ so to say. I didn’t get boobs until I was a junior. I wasn’t into the same things other girls my age were. Didn’t care about make-up or hair products. Never interested in boys.” She glanced up. “I’m not interested in girls, either,” she said somewhat defensively. “I have always only been interested in science. But try defining asexuality to a bunch of horny teenagers in high school. Try explaining to them that you really, sincerely would rather study and learn about physics and genetics than put on cheap glitter and go to a party. It doesn’t really work out well, let me tell you.”

“I’m sorry,” Franklin said.

Something like steel edged the look in Heather’s eyes. “I’ve changed some since then,” Heather said. “I had to.”

She tossed her head toward the light gleaming from the machine. She wore a little makeup—just a thin outline of turquoise around her eyes and a burgundy shade of lipstick—and she’d obviously done her hair for both looks and practicality. For the first time, however, Franklin realized that Heather had carefully manufactured her appearance not so much to look good, but the same way a warrior might wear armor. Her neat, slightly preppy clothes, the way she did her face—it was all a front, a disguise so people would leave her alone and let her do what she wanted. It was easier for her to cave to the norms of society in her appearance than to argue that she didn’t care about it at all.

“My senior year, I really figured things out,” Heather said, still not looking at Franklin. “I got the right clothes, the right look. I started blending in with the popular kids. I got invited to parties, but it wasn’t until my prom that I actually went to any.”

The corner of Franklin’s mouth tilted up in a smile. “And then future-me crashed that party, right?” he asked, remembering the way Heather had described their meeting.

She nodded.

“And that changed everything.” She paused for a long time. “Anyway, what about you? What was it like, growing up with this ability to go through time?”

“Not as glamorous as you may think,” Franklin said. “I could never go anywhere I really wanted to go.”

Heather smiled. “Like to witness the big events of history.”

“Exactly!” Franklin’s face lit up. “That’s why I’m a history major, I guess. I’m fascinated with the past, because it always seems just at the tips of my fingers. Honestly, I’m more excited about using the time machine to go into the past beyond my own timeline than into the future.”

“Where would you go first?” Heather asked.

“Um…” Franklin pondered the question. He’d of course thought about it before. As a kid, he’d wanted nothing more than to see an actual T-Rex. But now, he probably most wanted to see…

“The JFK shooting?” Heather answered for him.

“How’d you know?”

“I told you, I know you!” Heather crowed. “How did you think I found you this morning, studying at the grassy knoll?”

Had it really only been this morning that Heather had plopped down into his life?

“I wasn’t on the grassy knoll,” Franklin said. “But I guess it is kind of a creepy place to hang out.”

“You are a proper Dallas boy after all,” Heather added.

Franklin grinned sheepishly. Maybe it was weird that he most wanted to see another man die, but it was a topic that had always fascinated him. The shooter on the hill, the conspiracy theories, the end of an era. He wanted to witness it all.

“And then just really momentous moments and people in history. D-Day. Alexander the Great. A slave auction. Hell, it’d be cool to go back far enough to meet Jesus, just to confirm that he was really there.”

“You’re not interested in the future at all?”

“One of the first things I’d do is go forward and find out the winning numbers to the biggest lotto in the country, that’s for sure,” Franklin said immediately. “And I’d do enough to make sure that I was never poor. Maybe get into politics. Buy the best houses. There’s this dick in my Reformation History class—I may try to screw with him a little.”

Heather grew silent, watching him. Finally she said, “Have you ever done that before, screwed with people’s pasts?”

“Well, yeah,” Franklin said. “Wouldn’t you? You have the ability to change the past—wouldn’t you do it to get revenge on the assholes in your life?”

“Such as?”

“There was this one kid—Jeremy—in my high school. He was always trying to one-up everyone. Freaking valedictorian, every teacher loved him, he was even star of the football team. Total cliché, total ‘good guy’ who never did anything wrong.”

“What’d you do to him?” Heather asked quietly.

Franklin shrugged. “I just…I went back in time and messed up his college applications. You should have seen his face when everyone else started getting accepted to schools, and he didn’t.” He shrugged again. “It didn’t matter anyway; the counselors at school made sure he got a late entry into one of his back-ups.”

Heather’s eyes searched his. “If someone had messed with my MIT application, we wouldn’t be here now.”

“Look, I know it was a jerk thing to do. But Jeremy totally deserved to be taken down a peg, that guy had it far too easy in life.”

Heather didn’t say anything.

“Okay, fine, I know I’ve been kind of an asshole about this whole ability in the past. It didn’t take me long to realize that I could basically do anything without consequences.”

Heather waited for him to continue.

“So, yeah, maybe I did some dick things. I shouldn’t have messed up Jeremy’s college apps. I…I stole, too. I’m not proud of it, but I did. When the latest games would sell out, I’d just go back in time to when the shipment arrived at the store, steal one, and then pop back into the present. It was easy. It didn’t hurt anyone.”

She just watched him. It was like her silence forced him into a confession.

“You can’t sit there and tell me that you wouldn’t do the same sort of thing,” Franklin said defensively. “You don’t know what it’s like, having this power and knowing you can do whatever you want.”

“Well, as long as you didn’t hurt anyone,” she said in an even monotone.

Franklin paused. That wasn’t really true, was it? He’d tried to ruin Jeremy’s life. And then…

“I wasn’t a good person, okay?” Franklin said, looking down. “I…I wasn’t one of the cool guys, okay? I was always shy and quiet, and I was bullied a lot. Going back in time was a way to cope. I could solve my problems in the past, and then come into the future. If I hadn’t been able to do that, shit, I would have no confidence right now.”

“What do you mean?” Heather asked, her voice still without inflection.