Unhappenings (6 page)

It was a weekday, a few weeks after my lessons with Penelope began. I was in one of the campus eateries, sipping a coffee, nibbling a croissant, and scouring the Net on my tablet for any plausible reference to time travel. Very little of the information on the Slinky Probe accident was declassified at that time, so I found myself spending an absurd amount of my downtime getting to know the crackpots and fringe conspiracy theorists. As of that point, I had yet to come across a credible report from anyone who had actually traveled through time, but as I knew it to be my destiny, I assumed it would only be a matter of patience before I made a connection.

I was not so absorbed that I missed another student joining me at my table. He put down a tray with a chicken salad sandwich and a soft drink, and sat directly across from me.

“Excuse me,” he said politely.

I scrutinized him. On his narrow face sat thin glasses with wide frames, and his black hair stood in a flattop crew cut. Over a long-sleeved, peach-colored shirt, he wore a burgundy plaid vest, buttoned up. I had no idea whether to consider that pretentious, but I made a mental note of it. The next few moments would be critical. I did not recognize him, but from years of experience I knew how meaningless that was. Penelope had taught me a slew of visual and verbal cues to watch for to determine if any given person was supposed to be known to me. This new arrival was making steady eye contact. That meant a probable first introduction; a more familiar person would more likely be splitting his focus between me and his food. No clue was a guarantee, however. I offered a greeting in practiced neutrality. “Hello.”

“You’re in my combinatorics class, aren’t you?” he asked. Bingo.

“With Dr. Carter?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I thought I recognized you. My name’s Pete. Some of this stuff is starting to go over my head, and I’m looking to start a study group. You want in?”

I stared at him for a second, then formed opposing L’s with my thumbs and forefingers and framed his face with them. “Pete,” I said. “Pete. Your name is Pete. ‘Are you in my combinatorics class?’ Pete. Pete wears a burgundy vest. ‘I’m looking to start a study group. Do you want in?’ Your name is Pete.” I dropped my hands and made a show of relaxing my face. “Sorry about that. I’m Nigel.”

Pete’s face took on a look of surprise, but where I expected to find discomfort, I saw fascination. “That’s a mnemonic trick. My cousin does it all the time. You’re bonding a semantic memory to an episodic memory, right?”

I had rehearsed this explanation so many times that it threw me off balance hearing it from someone else the very first time I tried to use it. I rolled with it, and laughed. “Yeah, something like that,” I said. “Your cousin does that too?”

He nodded. “She has an attention disorder. She does it every time she hears a new name. Is that what you have? Does it work?”

I shrugged, secretly grateful that he had fed me a cue to one of my rehearsed lines. “Most of the time,” I said. “Not always.”

“Then you’re better off than she is,” he said. “I love her, but she’s kind of a disaster.” He bit his lip. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

I waved away his concern. “Don’t. I’ve had years to get used to it,” I lied.

“Well, you must be doing okay with it. Heck, you made it into MIT. My cousin barely made it out of high school.”

I shrugged. “I’m told I am highly functional. It doesn’t always feel that way. I’ll tell you right now, though, don’t be surprised if I can’t remember your name the next time I see you. Or I might remember it for five years and then suddenly lose it. It doesn’t always stick.” Another lie. There was no way I was ever going to forget that this person was named Pete. However, there was always a chance that I could encounter someone else in his presence whose name I was supposed to know, and whom subjectively I had never met. I had now planted a suggestion in Pete’s head that could protect me later. Penelope had been drilling me on this for weeks, but feeling it play out in real time was a very new experience. I could already tell it was working, and I was already connecting with another student.

For the first time since preadolescence, I began to reclaim a social life.

y first trip through time was in no way like what I expected.

It was an early November evening. I was walking back from Pete’s dorm, where I had spent the past few hours with him, two of his friends, and at least four beers. It was dark and just beginning to rain, and neither of those things dimmed my joy in the slightest. What had started as a study session on the topic of exponential generating functions gradually rolled into a discussion of music, a debate on the comparative merits of Hamlet and Macbeth, and no small amount of observations about our female acquaintances. I was intoxicated, as much by the experience as the alcohol. I had enjoyed myself in the company of peers, none of whom thought I was crazy. And, even if it all unhappened right then and there, I believed I had the tools to recover.

My reaction time thus diminished, by the time I felt the hand on my shoulder, it was already spinning me around. I caught sight of the old man’s face, just before the slippery sidewalk and my own tipsiness sent me backwards, landing hard in a puddle.

“Nigel!” he shouted. It was a hoarse, weathered voice I did not recognize. “It is Nigel, yes?”

I had neither the wherewithal nor the inclination to play out my mnemonic charade. “What do you want?” I said, scrambling backward in an unsuccessful bid to stand. He grabbed my hand, and pulled me up, his strength belying his aged countenance. I stood, wet, trying to make out his features in the half-light of the campus streetlamps. All I could see was gray stubble, wrinkles and pain. He squinted at me.

“No,” he grumbled. “No, this was a mistake. You’re a boy. Christ, look at you! You’ll never pull this off.”

My heart began to race, as genuine fear began to take hold. For anyone else, this would be a difficult situation on its own terms. For me, the chronic uncertainty of what might be true about my own past at any given moment, combined with a creeping feeling of recognition, made me silently beg my metabolism to burn off those beers quickly. I was in no condition to plan my way out of this encounter. The rain chose that moment to open up full throttle. Perhaps in reaction to that, or perhaps for some other reason, my assailant shoved me, and I returned to my puddle. As I twisted and flopped to regain my footing, or find some way to crawl away at top speed, there was a flash of lightning. Dangers were accruing more quickly than I could compensate for them. As I got to my feet and prepared to bolt, hoping I wouldn’t slip again, I wobbled in a complete circle.

He was gone.

It was dark enough, and I was disoriented enough, that he could have easily made his way out of my field of vision without any particular ninja skills. As I stood there, slowly scanning my surroundings for any pending ambush, I reflected on that face. The more I did so, the more I wanted to reject the nagging apprehension that the face threatening me was nothing more than a stubbled, wrinkled, haggard mirror.

I waited for the thunder. It never came.

y other first trip through time happened the next day.

I had overslept. Although not exactly hung over, I was certainly not feeling my best. It had been a fitful night’s sleep, punctuated with a series of dreams about meeting myself. In some of them, I was the tipsy bewildered student, in some, the broken old man. I woke frequently, each time marked with the dreadful transition from telling myself it was only a dream to remembering it really wasn’t. When my alarm sounded at 8:00, I worked it seamlessly into my current nightmare, and slept straight through it. The only thing finally able to rouse me was the banging on my dorm room door.

I woke with a start and a headache. “Time,” I growled.

“10:47,” replied the clock with a hint of judgment. That nuance was an optional setting. It seemed much more amusing when I selected it than it did in practice.

There was more door banging. I clutched my head. The time meant I had already slept through most of my first class, and that I probably wouldn’t have enough time to make myself presentable and eat before the next one. Depending on who was at the door, that might be moot anyway.

I stumbled out of bed and opened the door. Standing there was a woman about ten years older than I, with a long blonde ponytail, wearing a denim jacket. Apart from being obviously and significantly older, this was the spitting image of the girl who had been giving me lessons on how to pass for someone whose life was not constantly, retroactively changing. I considered the possibility that this was another variation of the dream I had been sweating through all night, but I knew full well I was awake.