Peripheral Visions: The Time Traveler's Hookup

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

The Time Traveler's Hookup

"I still don't understand why you can't come back," Sherman said.

The two of them walked slowly across the park. Frank took in shallow breaths; his lungs, unlike Sherman's, weren't used to polluted air.

"I mean," Sherman continued, "you talk all the time about the rules of time travelers. I understand in that sense. But what I don't get is... say you decided to come back a thirteenth, a fourteenth, or a twenty-fourth time. What would they do about it?"

Frank smiled at him gently. "They could take my permits and licenses away."

"You have to have a license to travel through time?"

"Yes, and a permit to operate a temporal transit station," Frank said.

"You mean to send others back in time, too? I thought it was your own hobby."

"It is," Frank said. "But my family owns the facility. As the manager, I maintain the permits to operate it. And I need the license as a time traveler in my own right if I want to travel to earlier eras the way my clients do."

"So who monitors your trips and keeps count?" Sherman asked. "The government?"

"They do, but it's a matter of self-reporting," Frank said. "I mean, if I wanted to, I could make unauthorized time trips. That could get me in trouble, though. And anyway... I play by the rulings."

"Rules," Sherman corrected.

"Rules," Frank said. "Everyone in the future plays by the rules. That's why the future works for us: We all respect the rules, and the rules serve all of us equally."

They came to a broad, charcoal-grey river that seemed to flow with a slow majesty. The surface shimmered with vague colors that caught the hazy, yellowish light of the afternoon. Half-submerged debris crowded the water. The river stank, and Frank felt nauseous. He wished for the pure air he was used to breathing in his own time.

Sherman didn't seem to notice the river's rank chemical smell. He wouldn't; Frank reflected on how Sherman was steeped in the toxic environs of his world, how he had soaked it in to the point that his skin tasted a little bitter and wrong even when he was freshly showered – an expensive luxury for someone of his time, given the scarcity of water, the shortages of basic things like soap, and the cost of using power to heat water... all hallmarks of the mid-twenty-first century, both here in MAGA-era America and elsewhere on the planet.

"That's the thing I don't get," Sherman said, refocusing Frank on the moment. "It doesn't sound much like human nature for everyone to play by the rules. I mean... that's not how you succeed in life."

"You really believe that?"

Sherman shrugged. "That's what they taught us in school. And in church, too."

Frank smiled. Sherman had no sense that what he called 'school' and what he referred to as 'church' were two extensions of the same system of inculcation. Earlier eras would fail to recognize either institution. Frank had seen the world of a fifty, a hundred, even several years before this moment, and he knew how much the world had changed over the centuries, veering from top-down systems of exploitation to a brief window of widespread prosperity and freedom, then swinging back, hard, to history's default of repression and cruelty.

Frank made to resume their walk and move away from the river. Sherman lingered a moment more, then fell into step beside him.

A woman walking across the dead, yellow grass passed a few hundred meters from them. She stared at them with suspicious eyes. Frank read it in her expression, her demeanor: Two men walking along together? Were they faggots?

Frank ignored her. Sherman didn't even seem to see her.

"I know we've been over this," Sherman said, "but explain it to me again."

"You know each trip a temporal tourist makes to an earlier time compounds the risks that one of us will somehow change the future," Frank said.

"I thought you said that a change in the course of events would either self-correct, or else create a new parallel universe? And not change your own time?" Sherman said. "So, what does it matter what you do? Why can't you come here and... and stay here, if that's what you want?"

Frank's smile didn't waver. "I would never want to live here," he said. "And that's nothing against you, Sherman. You know how I enjoy our time together..."

"Yeah, but not so much that you'd be willing to brave a little smog and a little authoritarianism to stay with me," Sherman said plaintively.

Frank sighed. "You and I... I don't regret it," he said. "But I'm not supposed to stay here. This isn't my time. I have to go back to my own year, and my own life."

"So, your visits here, they've been... what, some kind of sex tourism?" Sherman said snidely.

Frank raised his hands. "I don't want our last couple of days together to be marked by... by this," he said. "This anger, this accusation. You were asking about parallel universes? The mathematics are inconclusive. Temporal tourism is only available to the very wealthy, and hardly anyone who can afford it actually want to travel to other times. But those of us who have ventured to the past... we have never noticed any change in the world as we know it when we return home."

"Because you're so careful not to change anything," Sherman said.

"Yes, but that's not enough. Just being here is a disruption," Frank said.

"So why do it?" Sherman asked.

"The rich people of our time, as in all times, do what they want, no matter what the cost to anybody else."

"Yeah," Sherman said. "I'm getting that impression."

Frank didn't dispute Sherman's implication. He was as guilty, in his own way, as anyone else.

The silence stretched on. Frank decided to resume the conversation. "The fact that nothing seems to change in the future despite our visits to the past... well, that is why the dominant theory on time travel is that changing the past means creating a new parallel reality, not changing the future we came from," he said. "But that's a theory... it's not proven, it's not disproven. It seems a likely story, that's all. Given that uncertainty, it's only prudent to have some safeguards in place."

"Like limiting how long you remain in the past," Sherman said.

"No more than seventy-two hours per trip," Frank nodded.

"And limiting the number of times you visit a... uh, well, a time," Sherman said.

"No more than twelve excursions to a given period, yes. And with our trips spaced out with a minimum of one month between visits." Frank shook his head and shrugged, still smiling. "Maybe these rules prevent major shifts. Maybe they don't make any difference, because the cosmos won't let us time travelers mess things up. Maybe everything we do in the past, in the future, or in other parallel realities is predetermined, and we're simply following some sort of grand, eternal script. Who knows? But human beings need rules, and these are the rules we follow."

Sherman stared at the ground, quiet, his face a mask of displeasure. They had come to a place where the dead, yellow grass disappeared and parched, cracking earth crunched under their feet.

They walked on slowly, in tense silence.

"I'm so sorry," Frank said.

"For what?" Sherman asked. "Ditching me?"

"For everything. For how sad this makes you. For... I don't know. Should I be sorry we had our time together in the first place?"

Sherman shook his head, eyes on the ground, and didn't answer.

"I didn't expect you to see me walk into the portcullis after that first visit," Frank told him. "I didn't expect you to see me disappear... into thin air, from your perspective. I didn't expect you to pick up on the anachronisms of my speech, my clothing... the things I get wrong about your time."

"Yeah, like why we remember January 6," Sherman said. "Why it's a national holiday."

"I got 1/6 mixed up with 6/1," Frank admitted.

"So you've said, but you won't tell me what happens on June 1... or in what year it happens, whatever it is."

"You know I can't," Frank said. "I can't tell you about specific events that have yet to happen."

"Bullshit, you can't," Sherman protested. "Okay, you don't tell me details, you don't give me history lessons... but you do give me civics lessons. You tell me all about your system of government... the new constitution your grandparents drew up after three centuries of civil wars and dictators and overall decline."

"Maybe I shouldn't have," Frank admitted. "But we're so proud of it, so proud of having built such a solid legal framework and such sturdy public institutions. No president, no church, no industry nor political party can destroy the bedrock principles of our nation, the way that private think tanks and dark money and populists destroyed your democracy."

"Yeah, great," Sherman said. "Great for you."

Frank had shifted into a mood of soaring, even messianic, rapture as he spoke; now he seemed to come back to the present moment. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not trying to rub your face in the failures of your era. Just the opposite, in fact: We only built the world we live in thanks to the mistakes people made throughout history. We learned from you what not to do: Not to let money pretend to be speech; not to let the vagaries of privilege enjoyed by a few supplant the essential and universal importance of human rights for all; not to turn our schools into factories to cement opinions, but allow them to be places of education where the value of asking questions is celebrated. We honor facts, we respect science, we cherish the liberties of our fellow countrymen as much as we cherish our own liberties... and we stay in our own lanes when it comes to faith and family."

"I'm not sure you said that right," Sherman said.

"I love the way people in the twenty-first century talk," Frank said, "but I'm afraid I'm not very good at it. What I mean is that I would never tell anyone else who they have to marry, when or whether to have children, how or if to worship a God they might or might not believe in... there are core essential values that societies must agree on, but dogmas are not values."

"And this conversation shouldn't be a sermon," Sherman told him. "I'm happy for your perfect, golden future, but I want to know why..." He stopped, seeming to wrestle with himself over whether or not to say what was on his mind.

"What?" Frank asked. "Why you can't come with me? Because it's impossible to go farther into the future than your own time. Even when I go back, I can only go forward in time to the moment I left – not further than that. This is your time; you can't travel with me into the future at all. If I took you with me to a point further in the past, then yes, you could travel into the future again, but only back to right now. So, no, the future is closed to you... I'm sorry."

"You've only explained that six times," Sherman said angrily. "That wasn't even what I was going to say."

"Then what?" Frank asked.

"Well, I don't know," Sherman said. "A lot of things. Like, why come back to a time you clearly look down on? I mean, it's easy to see that you hold us twenty-first century people in contempt."

"No, that's not true," Frank told him. "I mean, I'm shocked by how gullible people here seem to be. They believe the same perpetrators over and over again, and they get... is 'screwed' the word? Or 'skewered'?"

"Screwed," Sherman said, his voice brittle and quiet.

"Right. They get screwed – every time. But that doesn't stop them from believing the very next lie they are told. That said, people in my day would be gullible, too, if they weren't taught critical thinking skills in school. If their right to be given access to factually correct information wasn't written into our constitution, along with a guarantee that any rights enjoyed by one section of society are rights that will be enjoyed by all, and to outlaw the rights of any specific demographic will automatically restrict those same rights across the board. No one in my time would try to take away my marriage, because that would mean taking away their own marriage rights, as well."

"And that's something else," Sherman said. "You're married? How does your husband feel about you coming back here and having sex with me?"

Frank shrugged, still smiling but with a perplexed frown creasing his brow. "He's fine with it. Why wouldn't he be?"

"And you let him screw around too?"

"I let him have sexual friendships with whomever he pleases. I'd never try to possess him and curtail his relationships," Franks said.

"Oh yeah? Do you people have multiple marriages in the future?"

"I don't," Frank said. "But some of the Mormons do." Sherman looked at him as if to ask if he were joking. Frank added: "We don't use the law to block people's private and personal exercise of religion."

"But you don't let people use religion as a reason to withhold housing, or medical treatment, or police response from, like, gays," Sherman said. "The way we do in this time."

"Correct," Frank told him.

"I don't agree with letting people use religion as an excuse for bigotry, but I also don't see how you can have things both ways," Sherman said. "I don't understand how you can allow people to do the things you permit for the sake of religion, but them turn around and block them from doing other things based on that same religion."

"It's a matter of the public versus private spheres," Franks said. "Individual liberties end where they infringe on other individuals. Private lives end where they enter the public square. The government can't tell me not to wear a tefillin or a head scarf..."

"A head scarf? Dude, you're a man," Sherman said.

"Yes, well, if I were a woman, the government couldn't tell me not to wear a head scarf," Frank said with perfect equanimity, unruffled by the interruption. "But, by the same token, I can't pretend to have the legal backing of our system if I try to restrict the personal lives of other people according to my own private belief system."

"If it works for you, great," Sherman muttered. "But I don't get it."

"You didn't grow up learning how to respect others as well as yourself," Frank said. "That's as simply as I can put it... and as near as I can figure for the paradoxes of your society and the times you live in."

"Okay, okay." Sherman waved him off. After a moment he said: "But here's the thing: Who would actually care if you stayed here with me? I mean..." Sherman looked up at the hazy yellow sky. "I get that we've done horrible things to the planet, we've fucked up the air and made the water undrinkable. But all of that aside, if you really cared for me... really cared... couldn't you stay here with me?"

"No," Frank said.

"I mean, I know you have to get back to your husband in the future, but let's say that, in theory – "

"No," Frank said again. "And, like I said before, it's not because of you, Sherman. It's because... well, let's say I did cause a new parallel reality to spall off of the existing universe. Me staying here instead of going back to my own time would continue to be a disturbance. It would eventually cause the new parallel universe to dissolve."

"What? How? You being here would be a root cause, it would be the most normal thing of all for some new parallel universe the split off because you were here."

"I know that's the intuitive understanding, but temporal physics works differently."

"Right," Sherman said. "My intuition about cause and effect is primitive. I'm like the Neanderthal who assumes that the Earth must be flat because that's how it looks to me."

Frank shrugged. "That's a harsh analogy, but... yes. It's more or less correct. I've had the education and the training in higher-dimensional mathematics to understand things that are deeper than the face value of physical reality."

"Whatever," Sherman said. "I don't need to hear it. You're saying you have to leave, and you can't come back."

Frank's smile faded. For the first time, he looked sad. "That's right," he said. "But I wonder if you'd want me to come back anyway, based on the things you've been saying. Me being married. Me being a – what was it? A sex tourist? That's not why I'm here, Sherman. I'm here for other reasons... curiosity, to have a deeper understanding of the past and its errors."

"Am I another error of the past?" Sherman asked, his anger suddenly quenched by hurt and sorrow.

Frank stopped walking and turned to Sherman. He cupped Sherman's face and leaned close, despite the fact that they were in public – not that there were any people around to see them. Kissing him gently, he told Sherman, "You're not a mistake. You're a wonderful person. Meeting you has been one of the joys of my life."

They stared at each other for a moment. Then Frank pulled back. "But I should go now."

"Go? You only got here a couple of hours ago," Sherman protested.

"I know, and look how we're fighting. This isn't the way I want to spend my last three-day trip to this era."

"So, you're just gonna leave?" Sherman said, his anger flaring to life once more. "And then what? Visit some other century? Some other locale?"

"Maybe," Frank said.

"And pick up some other guy? Have another affair like the sex tourist you say you aren't?"

"Maybe," Franks said again. "I'm a time traveler, not a psychic. How can I predict the future?" He smiled.

Sherman didn't appreciate the joke. " 'Maybe' you'll find another guy in some other time? Hell! For sure!" he exclaimed. "And it's no wonder," he added, glowering. "That perfect place you live in – the future – it must get awfully boring. It's nothing but peace and love and good will toward men. And, I don't know, but I just can't believe any of it is very genuine. People where you live must be repressed as hell, or maybe you've done something to people's minds or to their genetics, because the world you're talking about... it can't have any life, any vibrancy, any... any competition."

"If we hadn't found a way to live together," Frank pointed out, "there would be no future, boring or otherwise."

"So, you live in your paradise and you take a vacation every now and then to the walk on the wild side with the savages from centuries past," Sherman said nastily.

"You mean the way you're acting right now?" Frank asked. He wasn't offended; his question was direct and matter of fact.

That made Sherman even madder. "Yeah," he snarled. "Like I am right now. Isn't this how you like it? Isn't this what you like about me?"

Frank shook his head. "No," he said mildly. "I have to say I don't like it. And I'm so sorry our last minutes together have been so unpleasant for us both." He reached into a pocket of his replica 21st century trousers and retrieved a small device. "I think it's best if I go now."

"Yeah," Sherman shouted at him, loudly enough for a couple of people who had come into view across the park's expanse to look in their direction. Sherman lowered his voice, but even speaking quietly he seethed with rage. "You do that," he told Frank. "You go. You leave me here to this shithole because you... lucky you... you have a bright, nice place to go to, a place with water and sunlight and safety. A place with a constitution that describes your rights and protections, instead of telling you the ways in which your life is constrained. A place you don't have to worry about your neighbors selling you out for money, or people telling the police invented stories just because they don't like you. You go right on ahead, go to your lovely future place where you don't worry about being disappeared, tortured, murdered..."

Sherman ran out of air and looked at Frank with pained eyes, gasping. Frank looked back at him, calmly.

"This is going to be an open-air portcullis, not defined by architecture," Frank said after a moment, looking around quickly. The couple who had passed by in the distance had disappeared from view, and no one else was visible. The air was hazy enough that his departure wouldn't be clearly seen even if somebody happened along. "You might want to be careful not to approach the area," he added.

"I thought you said I can't go into the future with you."

"That doesn't mean the temporal aperture's Vorenberg field can't hurt you," Frank said. "Dematerialize a hand or a leg... or maybe give you a powerful shock."

"God, you really have no juice in you, do you?" Sherman said, his anger gone again, his eyes searching Frank's quizzically. "You really won't miss me; you really never loved me."

"That's not true. I do love you. I want the best for you. And I probably should have stopped coming here long before now, instead of prolonging our monthly contacts for a year the way I have. But I wanted so much to be with you," Frank said. He seemed sincere.

"But you don't feel the pain of separation, do you?" Sherman asked.

"Maybe I don't feel it as strongly as you do," Frank said. "But I do feel it. I'm always going to miss you."

Sherman scoffed. "Sure you will. You bloodless cretin. I'll bet you're not even human. I'll bet you're nothing more than one of those synth-silicates, or whatever it is you called them."

"You mean sentient AI designed to look human? Siliconians," Frank said. "And no, you're wrong about that. I'm as flesh and blood as you are. And I'm every bit as human. I have feelings, too."

The portcullis was ready. An area of empty air seemed to ripple as if shimmering with heat. Occasional sparks flew from the invisible aperture and there was a small of ozone.

"Stop making excuses," Sherman told him. "Just go. Go home."

Frank hesitated. "I'm sorry we can't be together," he said. "I'm sorry you can't share the world I live in. You get angry with me for criticizing the world as it is now, in your time..."

"Just go," Sherman said again.

"...but," Frank added, ignoring the order, "maybe a more constructive outlet for your energy would be to work toward that better future you wish you could share. Make it happen. Be the change you want to – "

"Just go!" Sherman cried, tears in his eyes.

Frank nodded at him, then stepped through the portcullis and disappeared.

"Into thin air," Sherman muttered, and the sparks faded and the smell of ozone dissipated. He turned and walked across the park, slowly, alone.

***

"Did you tell him goodbye? Was It hard?" Virgil asked. He was standing behind the control console.

Frank didn't answer. He was busy taking deep breaths of the lab's clean air, trying to flush out his lungs. He snorted, trying to clear the stench of the twenty-first century from his nostrils.

"Wait a minute," Virgil said. "You don't look like you spent any time there at all. What, did you just come right back?"

"More or less," Frank told him, stepping away from the portcullis area. "We had our customary celebration..."

"You mean you had sex," Virgil said.

"Yes, of course," Frank said, drawing close to Virgil. "And then we went for a walk in the park."

"Nice day?" Virgil asked.

"Yes, splendid. Yellow sky, toxic air, dead grass, miserable people."

"And still so much better than the weather we enjoy." Virgil sighed. "Brown air, dark sky, and broiling hot. Typical day in March."

"Just wait until July," Frank smiled, then gave Virgil a kiss of greeting.

"Yeah, control yourself, Casanova. It's only been a few seconds you were gone... from my perspective, at least." Virgil set about securing the controls and power levels. The plant's great generators throbbed with a hum that penetrated the lab's walls. "You want to go home?" Virgil asked, looking up at Frank.

"Yeah. But I guess you better go first. Don't want our nosy neighbors seeing us come in together. They already suspect we're a couple."

"Aw, fuck them," Virgil said. "They damn well know we're a couple."

"Yeah, fuck them until they fuck us by selling us out to Security. Then we're the ones who are fucked, while they get twelve thousand ducals."

"If they actually wanted to sell us out they'd have done it already," Virgil said. "But they won't. Not with both of us being the sons of Owners. Not yet of age to claim our share of the money, still working for a living, but still."

"They could always tell our families on us," Frank said. "Honor killings are very much is style these days."

"Yeah, right," Virgil chuckled. "No one would dare speak out of turn to a family as powerful as yours, or mine. Not even anonymously. And not knowing you assembled such meticulous files on their own peccadilloes. Mrs. Thompson's love of Mary Oliver poetry. Mr. Thornton's pornography collection. That guy Brad who lives one floor down... it's suspicious enough that he's single at his age, but the fact that he sleeps with men and women alike – at the same time, to judge from the noise that comes up through the floor from his apartment. God, I can't wait until we can move into one or another of our family palaces."

Frank chuckled in turn. "Just a few more years until we earn our place in the family hierarchies."

Virgil smiled. "An eternity when you have to live like we do, surrounded by such kind and caring people." He laughed ironically. "But, no, our lovely neighbors won't do anything, not even for twelve thousand ducals. They have a lot more to lose than to gain."

"Still, we shouldn't rub their noses in it," Frank said.

"Do what?"

"Sorry," Frank grinned. "An expression I picked up from Sherman."

Virgil nodded. "You think you activated him?"

Frank shrugged. Standing close to Virgil, watching him enter sequences of commands on the console to secure the system, he said, "I hope so. He was pretty emotional. Pretty hurt. I thought he might pour himself into working for a better future just to spite me."

Virgil snorted lightly. "If he did, it didn't matter. Though I'm sure your long-winded story about our marvelous constitution helped, as always. How do you dream up such stuff?"

Frank shrugged. "Just describing the world I wish I lived in."

"Hoping they'll invent it for you," Virgil said. "And yet... still no change around here." He turned to Frank. "Why don't you go home first? You look like you could use a nap, and I'm fine lingering around here for a while."

"Okay." Frank gave Virgil another kiss, but his mind was still in the past – or occupied with visions of a revised present. "Maybe I need to reach some sort of critical mass," Frank said, walking across the lab. "Inspire enough people in history to change the course of events... refine my search and analysis algorithms to better pinpoint the people in the past who really could make a difference to how history unfolds..."

"Or reach a critical mass to realizing nothing you ever do will make a difference," Virgil said, surveying the console's gauges.

"Thanks for the support," Frank said caustically.

Virgil shrugged. "I'm on this ride right along with you. For better or worse or capital punishment, as the vows go." He looked up and watched Frank, noticing again how tired he seemed. Maybe it was from exposure to the bad air of the past, when people still pretended there was no need for haz suits and breathers. Or maybe it was the emotional toll of the relationships he formed in his mad quest. Frank had seemed to care more for this Sherman fellow than most of the friends he made in times past.

Frank paused by a row of garment hooks set into the wall and took down his haz suit. Then he retrieved his breather, which hung by its strap from another hook. He glanced back at Virgil and smiled wearily. "I can't help it if I was born into the Owner class," he said. "I can't help it if my family runs a temporal investigation service, or if I've been assigned to run this facility. But earned or not, these are opportunities that let me do my small part to work for a better..." Frank laughed. "A better past."

"You really think your scheme will work?" Virgil asked. "I mean, I hope it does. I wish our ancestors had made better, less selfish choices... but they didn't. The things they did were evil, but so are the things people do now. That's human nature. Our sins are imprinted on the flow of time. Can anyone change it?"

"I believe so," Frank said, drawing the haz suit over his 21st-century garments. "If it's the right man in the right era with the right access."

"That's a nice theory," Virgil said. "But I don't see it having any bearing on the real world."

"It will. It does," Frank said. "It's a theory of hope." He paused before strapping his breather over his face. "Hope for us. Hope for them."

"Them who?" Virgil asked, throwing the last few switches and shutting down the console. The growl of generators diminished and disappeared.

"Sherman. Felix. Juan, Eamonn, Buckley... all the guys from all the times past I've tried to inspire and awaken," Frank said. "Them, and more to come."

"Yes, of course," Virgil said, watching Frank fit the breather into place and then pull the haz suit's hood over his head. Working by feel, Frank skillfully fit the hood and breather together into a tight seal against the poisonous air outside. "Or maybe," he smiled, as Fred exited the room, "you're just a slut."

Chuckling to himself, Virgil sat on a bench and stretched, prepared to wait a while before heading back home himself.