16 August 2090: Temporal Research Dome
Miles stared into the burning heart of the exhaust plume. Dark-tinted plasglass protected his eyes from the glare and shielded his body from the incandescent heat. He pressed closer to the protective barrier, assessing the white-hot bloom.
It looked the same as it did every night — except for that one anomaly 20 years ago. That night’s fluctuation had been an aberration, a mystery. One he’d never been able to forget.
Or forgive.
It wasn’t the unexplained fluctuation he blamed himself for. No, his mistake was larger, more grievous. He turned away from the cleansing heat of the plume.
He had a time machine to hijack.
16 August 2070: Arizona Seaboard
The house was dark, power out. Screaming rain lashed the windows. He’d forgotten how severe the storm had been that night. This night. But of course, that’s why the taxi had crashed. The slick pavement. The blind intersection.
Regret burned, hot and familiar. He should have been the one driving Marilyn to the hospital, not some careless stranger in a dirty cab.
“Marilyn?” he called.
“Miles? Is that you?”
Her voice. He’d barely dared to hope, during those bleak years, that he’d ever hear her speak his name again. The almost-forgotten melody of her voice, her very existence, knocked him off-balance, left him weak, stumbling.
Marilyn shuffled into the room, one hand on her bulging stomach, the other holding a flashlight. “Oh, thank God you’re here.” Her shoulders relaxed. “I was afraid you didn’t get my call.”
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His eyes stung at the relief on her face. He’d imagined, so many times, how frightened she must have been, going into labour alone. How she must have felt when she realized he was, once again, absent when she needed him.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
“I’m just glad you made it,” she said. “I was about to call a cab. The contractions are coming — Ah!” She winced, dropping the flashlight.
Miles hurried to support her, sliding his arm around her waist. The spasm lasted for a few heartbeats, then eased.
“We can’t go out,” he murmured as he helped her to the couch.
“What?” She pulled away, jabbing him with her finger. “I am not having this baby without an epidural. Get your car keys.”
He shook his head. “It’s too dangerous to drive in the storm.”
“Says the man who isn’t squeezing an eight-pound baby out of his —” She paused, studying his face. “Miles? You’ve … aged.”
He sighed. “That’s not important now.”
“It’s that damned time machine, isn’t it? You’ve solved it, and you’ve come back here?”
“Well, yes.”
“Why now?” She paled. “Is something wrong with the baby?”
“No, it’s not that.” Miles ran a hand through his hair. “It’s the storm, Marilyn. The cab. It would have crashed. It was … bad.”
She inched farther away from him. “You weren’t with me?”
“Younger Miles wasn’t with you. He was — is — focused on work, on paradox computations. He let your calls go to voicemail.”
She slumped into the cushions, hugging her stomach.
“But I’m here now,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. An oblong device glinted on his forearm. “The first test was tonight. Well, 20 years from tonight. Supposed to be a 10-minute jump. I reprogrammed the coordinates, so I could help deliver the baby.”
She crossed her arms and glared at him. “You didn’t even make it to one childbirth class.”
“Younger Miles never made it to class, but I’m ready.” He pulled a small notebook from his pocket. The pages were filled with equations and diagrams.
She snorted. “It’s not that complicated.”
“Um. This is the code chart for the machine. I didn’t have anything else handy when I looked up birth procedures.”
“You wrote baby instructions on a quantum cheat sheet?”
His forehead wrinkled. “Yes?”
“Figures.” She huffed, then grimaced, squirming as a fresh wave of pain roiled through her.
“I brought pain meds,” he blurted. His hands shook as he placed a sticky patch on her back, where an epidural needle would have gone.
“You travelled through time to bring me a freaking Band-Aid?” she hissed.
“It should work quickly.”
Marilyn squinched her eyes, panting, but then her breathing evened out. She nodded. “Get your stupid cheat sheet. The baby’s coming now.”
*****
Miles caressed his wife’s face. With their perfect daughter tucked safely in her bassinet, he decided he couldn’t leave them, wouldn’t go back to his rightful place in the timeline. He’d stay, dedicate himself to his role as husband and father. Give Marilyn the happy life she should have had the first time around. And his daughter would surely thrive with his knowledge of the future to guide her.
But what about Younger Miles, who still hadn’t bothered to check the phone messages from his frightened wife?
That’s when he figured it out. After 20 years, he finally recognized the source of that anomalous fluctuation. A human body — a selfish, unworthy young man — would cause exactly that sort of disturbance when it disintegrated in the exhaust plume.
Maybe that’s why he’d always been drawn to the plume, every night, for all those years. He was entangled, forever linked to those incandescent particles. At least, Younger Miles was.
The younger man’s own relentless research had proved the fate of a time-travelling entity was not dependent on the survival of its predecessor. Miles grinned. For once, he was grateful to his younger self.
“Be right back,” he whispered to his sleeping family. “I have to take care of a loose end.”
