The Time Travel Chronicles (44 page)

I shake the amber bottle and hear no liquid inside. Empty. I’ll have to make a Drops run today.

I rub my eyes as they burn, rub them harder when they keep itching. I tell myself it’s not from tears, but from the drugs. But I know I may be wrong.

I roll out of bed and scavenge through a clean load of unfolded clothes in my hamper. I pick out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and make sure to put my bottle and phone in the pockets. I walk over to the bathroom and splash water on my face. I look up in the mirror and lean in closer as I see redness covering my eyes where there should be white. I pull on the skin around them, see how far the redness goes, and then splash more water. I squirt some eye drops into them, the clean kind, then head out for the day.

3

“You all right, man?” Terry lets me through the door. We walk into a square room with metal shelves holding large boxes lining the walls and a single desk sitting in the middle.

I switch the lights on and walk towards my desk. “Yeah. Why?”

“Just wondering.” He waves his finger over his eyes. “You just look a little rough.”

“Nah, I’m fine, man.” I set my bottle down and slide a heavy box from the wall over towards the desk.

“You finished your Drops already?” he asks, looking at the bottle.

“Yeah,” I say, pushing the box up against the back of the desk. “Gonna go refill when I warp later. Want me to fill you up too?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m good. You should probably slow down though, man. You’ve been burning through those like crazy lately.”

I sit down in my chair. “Yeah, I know, just haven’t been sleeping much of late. I’ll take it easy.”

He comes over and pats me on the back. “Don’t go losing an eye like some junkie.” He walks back to the door. “I’m gonna send in the client in a few.”

“All right.” I boot up my laptop.

“And hey,” he says, standing at the door. “Don’t take any from the stash!” He shuts the door behind him.

I shake my head and grin. “Dick.”

I open the box beside my chair and line up the different sized bottles with an array of glass droppers. Rows of amber capsules filled with Drops sit neatly in their places.

The door swings open. “Coming in,” Terry shouts.

I clear my throat and sit up straight. A tall, pudgy man in a black business suit walks through. Terry closes the door behind him.

“Come take a seat, man.” I wave him over.

He walks to the seat in front of my desk and continues to stand.

“You can sit if you’d like,” I say.

“It’s quite all right,” he says in a higher pitched voice than I expect from a large man like him. He clasps his hands behind his back and looks around the room, a permanent angry frown stamped on his face.

“New client?” I ask, pulling up the spreadsheet on my laptop.

“Yes. Vincent Galler.”

I type his name into the database, creating a new file.

He looks at me and gives me a confused gaze. “Um, a-are you Miller?” he stammers.

I look up at him, returning skeptical eyes. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Shouldn’t you be a little…older? And a bit better dressed?”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Uh, why should I be older?”

He lets out a disappointed sigh. “My apologies. I just expected this to be a bit more…professional. Let’s just get on with this.”

Wow,
I almost mouth. I hold back the slick remarks flowing through my head, and I bite down hard on my lower lip, imagining some steam flowing out of my ears. Trying to return to business, I slide my chair out of the desk and bend over to the box. “All right, Vince, I’ve got−”

“Vincent,” he says.

I pause to give him a good, long glare. “Sorry. Vincent.” I look back down at the box and pull out a few bottles. “I’ve got a few samples here if you’d like to try them out first. I have hallucinogens for both the future and the past. Are you buying by the bottle or by the box?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not here for your drugs.”

I stop pulling out bottles from their sample boxes. “Oh.” I put them aside. “What can I help you with then?”

“I’d like to purchase an insight.”

An insight. A pretty damn expensive question that grants you an answer from the future. A peek into what’s ahead. Haven’t had someone ask for this in a while.

“No problem,” I say. “You’ve got three options: general, specific, or personal.”

“Personal,” he says, pulling out a thick envelope with what looks like a brick inside.

“All right.” I start to type up the transaction on the laptop. “I’m going to need a copy of your license and a fingerprint.”

He slides the envelope across the desk. “Everything’s inside.”

I pick up the envelope, place the money in the cash counter, make sure the necessaries are inside, and then place it all in a drawer. “Cool, looks like you’re set. Come back tomorrow night and have your question ready.”

Before I can finish my statement, he dips his chin and walks out. A quick customer. A quick day. Looks like I get to leave early.

Terry walks in and leaves the door open behind him. He sits down in the chair in front of my desk and says nothing, just grins.

“What?” I ask.

“What’d you think of Mr. High and Mighty?”

I shake my head. “Guy seemed like a real prick.”

Terry chuckles. “I’ve been dealing with him for the past two weeks getting him ready for this appointment. Talk about high maintenance.”

“Seriously.”

Terry gets up from the chair. “You got anything planned for the rest of the day?”

“Nah,” I place the bottles back in the box and close it up. “Just gonna warp to the future and get this insight report ready. You can leave if you want, man. I’ll lock up.”

Terry enthusiastically nods his head. “Don’t need to tell me twice. I’ll catch you later.”

“See ya, Terry.”

He walks out, and just before he closes the door, a woman pats him on the back and walks inside. Terry looks past her, gives me a wink, and closes the door behind her.

“Hey, Miller,” she says, walking up to my desk.

“Hey, Jackie.” I try to hold back a smile, pretend I’m angry. “You’ve really gotta stop coming in here unannounced.”

She takes off her dark jacket and hangs it over the chair before sitting down on it. She waves me off and says, “You’ll get over it.”

I shake my head and let the smile out this time. “What’s up, what are you doing here?”

“Not much,” she says, placing an empty amber bottle on my desk. “I’m out. Was wondering if you could fill me up.”

“I’m out too, actually. I’m gonna go get some later today.”

She looks around the room with a confused look on her face. “You literally have boxes of it here.”

“Can’t take any from the stash. Those are for customers only.”

She frowns and shrugs her shoulders. “Oh, well, all right. Say, by the way, what’s an insight?”

I arch an eyebrow at her. “Where’d you hear about that?”

She gives me a coy smirk. “I may have overheard it somewhere.”

“You snooping little scoundrel.”

She laughs and slouches further down into her chair. “So, what is it?”

I continue typing away. “An insight lets you ask a question about the future. There’s general, specific, and personal.”

“What’s the difference?”

“General is just a general question about the future. Specific lets you ask about a specific event or specific person. Personal lets you ask a question about your future self.”

Her eyebrows perk up. “Oh. Sounds expensive.”

“It is.”

She fidgets in her seat, looks around the room. It looks like boredom may be taking over her, but I’ve known those little fidgets for too long to know they’re anything other than the fact that she has something to say to me. Then, sure enough, she looks up at me and says, “Hey, are you okay?”

I look up and see one of her perfectly neat eyebrows arch up. And then I realize she’s asking about my eyes. I look back down at the laptop and rub the itch away.

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s not from the drops, just haven’t been able to sleep lately.”

She furrows her brow, knowing it’s a lie. She nods anyway, not wanting to argue.

I flip the laptop screen down and swivel the chair to face her. A silence lingers between us as she stares those beautiful brown eyes towards mine. She pulls her dark hair back over her ear, and I start to remember the day I met her, that day I fell in love with those eyes that shine like mahogany. I notice how they haven’t changed a bit since that day, and I start to wonder if she’s actually dropping. Maybe she’s just using these drugs as an excuse to come see me. Maybe she buys these bottles and throws them out once she’s gone, just for the chance to come talk to me once a week. Guilt runs through me as I think of these things. But then she curves her thin, pink lips into a smile. And the guilt turns to joy. 

“Hey,” she whispers, inching her hand over towards mine. “When are you going to buy me that drink you promised?”

I think about inching my hand over as well. I picture myself wrapping my fingers around hers, pretending like nothing’s wrong, like somehow, in some way, we’re still together. I can even hear my voice telling her,
Let’s go get that drink now.

But I don’t. I remain still. I keep those visions inside, preventing them from becoming reality. Sometimes I have to remind myself of what can be real and what cannot. Even when I’m sober.

“Next week,” I say, smiling back at her, putting it off yet again.

She frowns, knowing what it means. “Okay.”

She gives me a half-hearted smile, masking the lie that she’s not worried about me. But eyes like hers can’t help but tell the truth. And the truth is that she misses me, worries about me, wants me back. She looks at me and I know she’s wondering if I want the same thing. And the truth is that I do. But these tired, drugged eyes of mine can tell much better lies. And so I keep it from her. I let her wonder until she’s had enough.

She gets up from the chair. “All right, well, I’m gonna let you go.”

I get up from the desk. “I’ll walk you out−”

“No, its fine,” she says, putting on her jacket. “I’ll see you next week for that drink, right?”

Guilt stings my chest, and I wonder if it hurts me as much as it hurts her to go along with this lie, this act that we’ve been playing for months. “Yeah,” I say with a smile. “I’ll see you then.”

She leaves and shuts the door behind her. I look down at the box and contemplate taking a sample bottle from the stash, to escape these feelings of guilt and regret. I want to hallucinate memories of us, back when we were together. I scratch my eyes and decide against it. I put the laptop away in a desk drawer, slide the box back to the wall, padlock the door on the way out, and head home. 

4

I flop down on my couch, waiting for the machine to warm up down in my basement. My leg twitches up and down, my hands start to sweat, my eyes itch. I
really
want some drops right now. I look at my amber bottle for the thousandth time, as if somehow it’ll magically fill up if I look at it enough times. I shake away the craving and head downstairs.

A giant and rusted metal box rumbles in the corner of the basement. The time machine is whirring and buzzing, almost ready. I walk over and boot up the touchscreen dashboard on its side, set up the time coordinates, and reuse the same location I always warp to.
Pre-Warp Sequence Complete,
the dashboard notifies me. I grab the envelope holding Vincent Galler’s money and information, pat down my pockets to make sure my bottle is with me, and then I step inside the box.

I sit down in the lone seat of the cramped interior, protective padding and wires running all along the walls. I go to close the heavy metal door on its moaning hinges, but then I open it wider again so I can slam it shut, remembering I still haven’t fixed the locking mechanism’s misalignment. The interior dashboard boots up, offering the only light on the inside.

I press
Initiate Warp
.

Everything goes dark. Silent. For a moment I’m blind and deaf, vaguely aware of my own existence while I travel in this short space between the present and the future, silently speeding through the gateways of time. 

And in the next instant, I arrive in the future with a clap of thunder.

My sight slowly returns, my eyes adjusting to the world from a blur to more and more detail. My ears also unmute the sounds around me, slowly, like I’m turning up the volume one knob at a time.

“Miller,” a voice calls, and a hand reaches out to me. I grab the hand and it lifts me up off the ground. “Miller, good to see ya, buddy.”

“Hey, Jax.” I wipe the blur away from my eyes, massage my ears until they pop. I’m standing in a small office with an array of tablets and desktops all along the wall. Through the window I can see the vast and open warehouse where they produce and package the Drops. Jax sits down at one of the desktops.