Future Wasn’t
by Ryan M. Williams
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2010 by Ryan M. Williams
Cover Photo: © Kirsty Pargeter | Dreamstime.com
All Rights Reserved.
Publisher's Note
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Future Wasn’t
by Ryan M. Williams
Rodney's keys clacked like the rapid fire of a machine gun while the words glowed green on the oak-framed screen. Yes! Yes! Right there.
"God damn! Yes!" Rodney slapped the carriage return with a satisfying swat. The bell rang out. He'd done it. He'd finally cracked the final bit of code. He spun his chair around and jumped up. He ran for the stairs his long legs carrying his lanky frame rapidly across the cluttered basement. His stained lab coat billowed out behind him as he took two of the stairs at a time. He reached the top and banged the door open.
"Ouch!" The door bounced back at him. Rodney caught it and peeked around the edge.
Jessica glared at him and rubbed her arm. The door knob must have hit her elbow. A full eight inches shorter than him and curvy, she still had the long black curls that he loved about her the first time he'd seen her in college. Unlike him she didn't have a stitch of gray in her hair. He didn't think she dyed it.
"That hurt," she complained.
"Sorry." Rodney slipped out into the kitchen. Small with a tiny island at the center. Rodney slipped onto one of the two worn bar stools sitting at the island. He leaned on the battered wood. "Are you okay?"
She rolled her dark eyes. "Yeah. I'll be fine."
Rodney let a small smile escape. "I finished, Jess! I really finished it."
"What? Your time machine? You can't be serious."
"I did! Except I've told you before it isn't a time machine. It isn't possible to travel through time."
"I know, but —"
Rodney clapped his hands together. "I just can't decide what to fix first."
"You can't seriously mean it works?" Jessica walked over to the sink. She turned on the faucet and water squirted up into the air. She cursed and shut it off. "How about fixing the sink?"
Rodney snapped his fingers. "Great idea! Wouldn't you have thought that someone could make a sink that doesn't leak?"
"Rodney—"
"Just give me a minute!" Rodney jumped off the stool and in two strides crossed over to the basement door and yanked it open. He looked back and held out his hand. "Come on."
Jessica shook her head. "I've got too much to do."
"You've got to come downstairs. The exclusion bubble doesn't extend far beyond the temporal singularity. If you aren't within the exclusion bubble then you'll be changed along with everything else. You won't remember how things were."
"Rodney, come on. I've got to work tomorrow. One of us has to make some money." Jessica rubbed the side of her head. "You don't even look for a job anymore. You're always down there working on these crazy —"
"Please? Come down into the basement with me and I'll fix the sink. I'll fix everything. I'll make it all the way it should be."
"Is this going to take long?"
Rodney grinned. "Depends on how you look at it, I suppose."
"Rodney."
He held up his hands. "No, not long at all. We'll run the test and you'll see that it works. Then we can figure out what needs to be changed."
Jessica grabbed a red and white dish towel and started drying her hands as she walked around the island. She dropped the towel on the surface.
"I'll come down, but only for a couple minutes. I have dinner to fix. Unless you want to do it yourself."
"When I'm done you'll have a robot that can cook our dinner for us," Rodney promised.
His workstation took up one whole corner of the basement. He'd built the work surfaces from two-by-fours and plywood covered with a golden laminate. He built all of his own equipment with custom oak and cherry cases, internally-lit water cooled systems, refurbished vintage typewriter keyboards and hand-crafted monitor frames. Far better than all that plastic crap put out by the computer industry. Didn't people understand how wrong things had gone?
But the pride of the workshop stood alone beside his work area. Bronze and oak frame with polished copper edging, it looked like a large ornate safe complete with a large numbered dial on the front and a handle. Rodney patted the top.
"What do you think?"
Jessica crossed her arms. "Very pretty. Maybe you can sell it on eBay for enough to cover the cost of building the thing."
He laughed. He dropped into his chair. "Just wait until you see what it can do."
"I'm waiting."
Rodney's fingers pounded the keys. "Just let me key in the parameters and the quantum temporal machine will scan the probabilities to find the key."
"Meaning?"
A burst of rapid keystrokes and Rodney slapped the shiny carriage return. It snapped across the keys and the bell rang out. "Hang on!"
Jessica didn't move.
On the monitor a stream of green on black numbers cascaded down the screen in a rapid stream. Then they swirled and spiraled around until they became a blur. A fractal pattern burst out of the center all blues and reds, replicated across the screen and then left the screen black except for a small text prompt in the upper left-hand corner.
"That's it!" Rodney bounded up from his chair. He patted the quantum temporal machine. "It worked!"
"What worked? Nothing happened except for your screen saver coming on."
Rodney waved a finger. "Oh, you doubt me. Well, come on. Let's go take a look."
Jessica turned and walked back up the stairs. Rodney followed on her heels. When they got up in the kitchen he slipped past her and ran around the island. He stopped beside the sink and gestured with his hands at the faucets. "Behold!"
She stopped and her eyes widened. Then she came over and looked more closely. Rodney enjoyed seeing her expression. Their old faucets had been cheap plastic knobs, for hot and cold and a thin curved faucet. Now it'd all changed. A wider chrome faucet rose up from the back of the deep shining sink look more like art than plumbing. No knobs at all. Jessica reached out towards the faucet and green numbers floated up — seemingly out of the metal surface of the faucet.
100°F
Jessica pulled her hand back and the numbers sank away. She pressed her hands to her mouth and looked at him. Rodney couldn't help but laugh. He hugged his arms around his middle.
"Well?"
Jessica turned back to the faucet. She reached out and the numbers floated up again. She stuck her hands beneath the faucet and water streamed smoothly out of the wide faucet. She reached up towards the numbers and they changed.
101°F, 102°F
She lowered her hand and the numbers decreased. She pulled back and the water shut off and the numbers shrank away. Rodney reached over and plucked the dish towel off the island. He handed it to her.
"Well?" He repeated. "What do you think?"
"How?" Jessica looked back at the sink, then at him. "How could you possibly have done this? You didn't do anything!"
Rodney shook his head. "I did. I changed history."
"You changed history?"
"Yes. You can't travel to other times, but you can alter the past. Shift one tiny thing and the future changes."
"But how?"
"I inspired someone."
"You inspired someone?"
"Yep." Rodney took her hands. "The quantum time machine scans through all the probable universes and finds the right moment susceptible to be nudged. And it nudges. Knocks an electron into another state. Causes a proton to take another path. Tiny changes that cascade until something bigger happens. In this case a bit of inspiration in the right brain and history came together to make this the standard technology in kitchens."
Jessica looked around the kitchen. She walked over to the stove. "It changed too!"
Sure enough. No visible burners or controls but when she reached out displays rose up around the stove. Floating screens and controls. Jessica pulled her hand back. "You didn't just change the sink!"
Rodney shrugged. "Of course the technology used is going to have other applications too. But isn't this better?"
"I guess so." She turned back to him. "How could you do this?"
"I've been working on it for months. I told you about it."
She laughed. She shook her head. "I'm sorry. I didn't believe you."
Rodney went to her. He pulled her into an embrace. "That's okay. There's so much we can do now."
Jessica looked up. He bent down to kiss her. He rested his forehead against hers. "What should we do next?"
Jessica stepped back. "We can't keep changing things!"
"Why not? You're not going to cite the temporal prime directive, are you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." She waved her hand towards the stove. "We don't know what all of the changes are with just this one thing. Don't you think we should find out before you do anything else?"
Rodney pursed his lips. "You've got a point. I'm getting carried away. How about we fix dinner and then I'll do some research afterwards? Find out just how much things have changed."
Jessica nodded. "That sounds good."
"Okay, what's for dinner?" Rodney asked. "I'm starved!"
#
Research didn't take long. Interactive holographic interfaces showed up everywhere these days. Browsing quickly showed that the technology had penetrated all levels of society. Rodney quickly placed orders for components to upgrade his own system since every site complained about his antiquated two dimensional interface.
Rodney laughed and spun his chair around. His eyes fell on the floor-to-ceiling book cases that covered the walls beside his workstation. Many classics of science fiction. Examples of the way the future should have turned out, but wasn't. Time to indulge in one of his personal favorites. Rodney spun back to the keyboard. His fingers stabbed down at the round keys. Clack. Crack. Snap! He built up steam, building the query, searching for the answer. Over the decades the answer had proved elusive. All it needed was the right person. Maybe someone that hadn't survived in the past by accident or design. The quantum temporal machine located the highest probability solution. He hit the carriage return. Colors and numbers flashed on the screen. The screen saver cycled through several cycles. Rodney tapped his fingers impatiently on his chair. Then the screen cleared. Success. The prompt waited for more input.
Rodney slapped the arm of the chair and bounded up the stairs. He stopped himself before banging the kitchen door open and eased it open instead. A shiny silver person stood at the sink, metal fingers dancing across holographic controls for the dish washer. The head turned and eyes glowed green.
"Mr. Cross, is there something you need?"
Rodney laughed. "No, thanks."
He walked out into the kitchen. The robot was short. Five six or so with smooth rounded limbs. Bright and shiny. It moved easily, elegantly, almost like a dancer as it returned to the task of loading the dish washer. It shut the door and the machine started up.
"We're going to have to do something about that," Rodney said.
"Excuse me, sir. Do something about what?"
"The dish washer. Doesn't it strike you as a silly device? Why not have a matter-energy converter and replicator? Then we wouldn't have to wash anything. Just dematerialize it and return the energy for other use."
"I'm not aware that such an appliance is available, sir, but I could do some searches and find out."
"Don't worry about it. Where's Mrs. Cross?"
"I believe she is in the living room."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it, sir."
Rodney left the robot to do whatever the robot did around the house and went into the other room. Jessica sat on a couch with a book floating in front of her. Rodney stopped, amazed. She reached up and flicked the page. It flipped over and he heard the whisper of paper against paper. It looked real, but come on, it was floating! And Jessica, she had changed too. Her hair was shorter, more styled. She looked thinner too, wearing a loose white top with thin straps over her tanned shoulders. She had matching pants. Like some sort of yoga outfit.
He'd forgotten to get her into the basement before he altered the timeline. His gut clenched. That was dangerous. What if the changes cost him Jessica? He couldn't make that mistake again.
Jessica looked up at him and smiled. "There you are. What have you been up to?"
Rodney walked over to the couch and dropped heavily beside her. Jessica brought her hands together, closing the book. It shrank down drained into a ring she wore.
"Making the robot."
Jessica's forehead wrinkled. "Danny? Honey, we bought Danny two years ago."
Rodney shook his head. "No. I mean, sure, yes, but only because I changed history."
"What do you mean you changed history?" Her eyes widened. "You did it again without warning me?"
"I know. I'm sorry. I was looking at the books and I just thought it was too bad that we still didn't have robots like in the books. I had the QTM scan probabilities for the right moment that would lead to the creation of intelligent robots in our lifetimes. And here he is."
"But the first positronic brain was built nearly ten years ago! I remember it being on all the news sites."
Rodney reached over and placed his hand on her leg. "That's because I didn't think. I'm sorry. If you'd been down in the exclusion field then you would have been protected from the changes."
"Would we still have Danny?"
"Yes, but we wouldn't remember buying him."
"So the more you do this, the more out of sync you're getting, aren't you? You don't remember what has happened?" She sat up straighter. "You don't remember what has happened with us, do you?"
"I do." Rodney rubbed his eyes. "I mean, as far as my memories go they might be different. Either way I love you. I won't make this mistake again. The next time I change anything we'll both be in the exclusion field."
"Maybe you shouldn't change anything else."
"I have to." Rodney got up off the couch. His hands waved about. "I can change it all. Solve the big problems. I can make the world a better place! You can't expect me not to do anything!"