Remember Me (5 page)

I sniffed the interior of the beer can and could still detect a faint odor. It was still shiny on the outside—so it had to be recent. The year I was stuck in had to be either nineteen eighty-four or five. From what I gleaned from being outside yesterday, albeit in a delusionary haze, it felt like it was nearly the same time of year—just as it was in my time. I still didn’t S 30 S

RemembeR me

know the exact date. It would only be a matter of asking someone, or making my way into town to find a newspaper to get the current date. Then I would get an exact fix on the “when”

of my predicament. I tossed the can into the stack, knocking the others over. I smiled as they clanked and clattered to the floor, rolling in multiple directions. It was a small start.

I sat down in the chair, and now that I could see it in full light, it wasn’t in bad of shape at all. It had a God-awful color scheme and pattern to it. No wonder it found itself relegated to spend retirement here. I racked my brain trying to remember back to nineteen eighty-four…where had I been? Tami and I would have been married for five years, the first of June.

Samantha would be shy of two, her second birthday happening in October. We were all living in a small ranch style house in northern Cedar Falls, on Tremont Street. My parents lived on the southwest side of town. It was the same house I’d grown up in with my older sister. It hit me! In my “real” time, today is May twenty-third. It’s my birthday—my fiftieth birthday!

My father was born in nineteen thirty so he’d be…fifty-four and only four years older than I was now. In this time, Mom would be five years younger than dad, so she’s forty-nine. I’m older than my mom—a completely eerie and unpleasant feeling. I couldn’t help myself. I pulled out my phone and looked into the blackened screen. It was the best mirror I had access to. I looked fifty…so much for loosing years and becoming younger on the way back in time.

There was so much clutter running around inside my head.

I comprehended the situation I was in, just not the reality of it. I made my way back to the area where my personal hell began—the place where two times converged. There would be

nothing to see, of that I was entirely sure. I went anyway. The grass was wet with dew and the bottoms of my pants and shoes were soaked instantly. I began to feel the morning chill work S 31 S

Brian L. MacLearn

its way through my inner core. It may have started out because of the dampness, but in seeing the spot of “no return” the chill thoroughly enclosed itself around my psyche.

I was left with no alternatives. I needed help! The only viable short term solution and the only place to turn to were my parents. I retraced my steps. Instead of turning towards the house, I began an uncertain and shaky walk down the grass and weed-covered lane. At the end of the lane I turned to the east and stood facing the rising sun. I took a deep breath and began walking the three miles to the main highway.

As I walked, multiple scenarios of “what” and “why” ran

through my mind. Each what and why left me with more questions than answers. Foremost in every uncertain possibility I postulated was the real notion that I would be stuck in this time forever. I was not a quantum physics professor and until today, time travel was merely a notion of fantasy novels. It might be entirely possible that another electrical storm could create a similar wormhole, but when…and would it even be in the same place. Worse yet; would it even be a route back to my own time? What if it dumped me in some other time in the past or propelled me into the future? In the movies, the hero always makes it back at the last possible moment. He is restored wholly to the future—better for having travelled the past and saving mankind from a major catastrophe. Not only that, he would be returned to the exact moment from which he left. I laughed out loud! They picked the wrong guy—I was not a hero. I had no faith that a wormhole, should it miraculously appear, would whisk me back to my own time. God

only knows where it might take me, and I wondered if I’d have the courage to step into it, if it happened to appear at all.

I was stuck, and the sooner I believed it, the better off I’d be. I would be keeping my eye on the weather, and I would learn everything I could about wormholes. I had no doubt that S 32 S

RemembeR me

what happened to me was an unfortunate and isolated case, God was not sending a messenger into the past to correct a wrong. One notion tugged at my thoughts—would the same

wormhole reappear on May 22, 2010? If I managed to live

long enough to witness the event, would God laugh at me and make the day full of sunshine instead of storms? If I did nothing, would history continue to repeat itself? Had I completely altered the inner framework of the cosmos by just being here?

I had no answers, just an immense feeling of unsettledness. I wondered if any conversation or interaction I had here in this time would completely alter the future. I stopped dead in my tracks. My way was no longer clear at all. Just like the story the “Butterfly Effect,” what damage had I already inflicted by just walking down this road?

If I sought out my parents for help, what would the long-term ramifications be? I still had a mile to go before I reached the highway. I had to think this through. A hundred yards ahead of me in the south-side ditch was a large, flat-topped boulder.

I walked to it and sat down. What was I willing to risk for the unknown? The reality was pretty simple; I was fifty years old and living sometime in the nineteen eighties. It was mind bog-gling, but true. A wormhole or something else from May 22, 2010 inflicted me into this time! I could try to live the next twenty-plus years in total seclusion, avoiding complications.

Then I could stop my present self, in this time, from entering the wormhole, thereby erasing what—Me! By then I’d be in my seventies and what if nothing happened after I stopped my other self? I would have just spent the last two decades in absolute misery…more than just misery, total isolation. That idea didn’t hold water—no it shouldn’t hold water. My present self would be allowed to live out his life in perfect ignorance. I would just go on…a lost soul in a lost time. Would that be enough of a purpose for me to survive the rest of my life on? It S 33 S

Brian L. MacLearn

was also plausible that the instant the me from this time didn’t enter the wormhole, the current me would cease to exist…a no win proposition anyway I looked at it.

I kept coming back to one thought, over and over again:

what irreversible impact on this time had I already put in motion by just by being here? I could spend the rest of my life trying to be careful and the outcome wouldn’t matter because it was already changed. I had my knowledge of the past, or more precisely…this present to guide me, and maybe I could help direct the course of destiny to better ends. Would it be so bad to help my present self have a better life? Would the world end because I helped the people I cared about? I could be a champion of hope for Andrew and Tami, Amy, my parents, sister—geez, why not the entire world? It really came down to my own personal belief. I didn’t believe I was ever going back to my own time, or to my own life. This was now my time and then it dawned on me. What all of this strategizing and personal analysis really meant. My life with the Amy I loved was over for me. I would never be with her again.

I looked down at my wedding ring. It was a simple gold

band; but it represented a love greater than any riches I could ever attain. The hardness of the rock I found myself sitting on was nothing to the sudden burdened understanding of the

loneliness that would be my destiny. I sucked in my breath and fought back the sinking feeling of total desperation. I prayed for Amy to come and wrap her comforting arms around me.

To sooth me, surround me with her gentle essence. I turned my face to the sun. I could almost feel her touch on my face. It was more than I could take! The bitterness of my predicament washed through me. Waves of anger, sorrow, and longing all converged to rack my body with chills and shudders. It was the most hopeless feeling of despair that anyone could ever imagine. My Amy was lost to me and nothing I could do would S 34 S

RemembeR me

change that. I willed her to be with me, drawing on every sense of her that I had stored away in my very core. I remembered the last time we made love, still so fresh in my mind and on my skin. It was so full of promise and hope of our future together.

I could feel her everywhere on my body, everything we had been. It embraced my heart and sent my emotions reeling. I cried warm tears of pain and fear. I cried tears for a lost love, and all the hurt Amy would endure—living a future without me, and facing the life of unanswered questions of where I went. I cried tears for my utter helplessness.

I was lost in my pain and had no realization of time. My mind seemed to be in a frozen state—fighting to come to terms with the here verses the now, the where and when. Amy was here, but she was not my Amy, nor would she be my Amy…

ever again. I saw no salvation, no happy colored rainbows in my future. I couldn’t stop the idea of suicide permeating my thoughts. I snorted loudly and with total, inner disgust. I violently chased it away from my mind by shouting out loud,

“Never!” I would not, could not travel down that road. I wiped my blurry eyes and stood up. My rear was numb from sitting so long on the hard rock. My decision was now made, at least for today. With nowhere else to turn, I would have to include my parents, regardless of the potential outcome. In all of the fantasy stories I’d ever read, when someone gets a second chance they always find true happiness in the end. I laughed! True happiness would be something I would never receive again; it was gone for good, as was my hope. Reality’s cold kiss set in and I began my soulless walk towards the highway.

I reached the end of the gravel road. If seeing is believing—then maybe in this case it was my not seeing that was the true reality. The major four-lane thoroughfare which ran north to the Twin Cities and south to St. Louis was gone. Back was the old run down highway of my yesteryears.

S 35 S

Brian L. MacLearn

I looked north towards Cedar Falls and could make out

the old water tower, bright blue and unencumbered, far away and high on the hill, overlooking the southwest part of town.

In the future, the tower had been revitalized and an exclusive housing addition would dramatically reshape the landscape of the hill around it.

The man, Ed Patton, driving the 1977 Ford Thunderbird

I was riding in noticed my expression. “You look like you’ve seen the Holy Choir son.” I couldn’t deny his assessment; I was totally blown away by the sight out the front window of the car. I’d forgotten how inviting the town had once been, not quite a large bustling hub of malls and auto dealerships, but still full of the promises of a growing and vibrant town. It was a great place to grow-up.

I couldn’t tell Ed what was really on my mind, and I had no reasonable rationale to offer for the look on my face. I merely responded with, “Better the choir than the devil.”

Ed was a large man in his early eighties and a self-proclaimed preacher at that. He burst out laughing at my comment. In between chuckles he managed to get in a, “Yes sir it is at that,” a couple of times.

The moment passed when I thought I might have to explain my look. I was glad—I wouldn’t have known what to

say anyway. I was happy to have a ride. I’d walked nearly a mile north before Ed was gracious enough to acknowledge

my thumb and stopped to give me a lift. I liked him from the moment I opened the passenger side door and he shouted out to me to, “Climb on in son!” There had been several other cars pass me by and I didn’t hold it against them for not stopping.

I’m sure I looked more like a risky bet than a safe one. My Hawkeye sweatshirt was dirty from my night at the old farm house and my jeans were full of oil stains and worn spots. My hair and face… God what an awful sight I must be… I would S 36 S

RemembeR me

have scared me.

Ed was one of those rare individuals who trusted everyone and believed in decency first. God love him, and I’m sure he did. My ride with him was short, but in every way imaginable it had been meaningful. He made my predicament seem, somehow, more peaceful. I had no misgivings of what was

in store for me; the world around me was on the brink of change. This “second-time” around world that I found myself in wasn’t any different than it had been the first time I lived it. Except—there were now two of me here. This time wasn’t what I had grown accustomed to. In the future I’d just left it was fast this, throw away that, hurry up and go there, got to have it right now! Technological advances really began to take off in the eighties and boomed into a world of mega advertising and self-entitlement. The ever-changing advancements in technology kept people on the edge, creating a never-ending demand for newer…better…cheaper. My world was one in

which everyone wanted it now.

Ed reminded me of the true cohesion people used to have

before text messages and internet over-load. He was a pure conversation and my morale was in a better place by the pure happenstance of riding with him. In this time, parents and kids still talked at dinner time, mostly anyway. Cell phones weren’t permanently attached to one’s ear, or fingers. Conversation wasn’t texted in acronyms and codes only the kids understood.

Both adults and children could formulate a complete sentence, and no-one said lol or OMG, let alone writing it on paper. This was still a time when you worked for what you wanted—believed in your own personal responsibility. It wouldn’t be long before we started taking everything for granted or feeling vic-timized by anything and everything around us.

I asked Ed to let me out at the old Drexler gas station on the corner of Oak Street and 8th Street. It was only a six-block S 37 S

Brian L. MacLearn

walk to my Parent’s house from there. In my future, the gas station had turned into an auto repair shop, and then faded away into obscurity. Before it became an empty lot, it had once briefly housed a sub-sandwich shop. The city decided to widen the road to four lanes to accommodate the increased traffic and new construction. The building was eventually torn down to make room. It was nice to walk a part of my history once again.