Chapter 11 #2
He grinned and I almost broke into tears again.
But I held it in as he stood and motioned for me to come to the monitors.
“It’s a field-effect array.” He sat and swiveled in my beat-up old chair, the movement practiced, unconscious.
“And an electromagnetic sensor. I can take readings down to two-microsecond precision.” He tapped on a keyboard and whirled around the screen with the mouse.
A half dozen windows popped up, flitting across the various screens.
I barely recognized the user interface—it looked like it was Linux, and one of the distros I was familiar with, but slick and dark and polished looking.
“Watch this.” He hit a couple more buttons, and I heard a soft hum, barely audible, behind me.
The screen blinked, and thousands of lines of white numbers scrolled in a blur down the screen.
“What’s that?” I asked, although I thought I knew.
“That’s the incoming data, raw and unprocessed, from the Device. Even with these old pieces of junk I can pull in three million distinct measurements a second. Right now, not much is going on. But tomorrow morning…”
“When I jump forward again.”
He nodded, the reflections from his glasses shifting and sliding. Diagonal slices of light. “I’ll be ready.”
Lyle brought a sleeping bag and pillow down to the basement for me before Amy got home.
I grabbed a quick shower. It was extraordinarily bizarre, hurrying through the motions of soaping myself down and washing my hair as I stood naked in a strange bathroom surrounded by the same sets of soaps and lotions that Amy had always used.
Smelling the same cleaners, the same brand of detergent.
The same lingering perfume. It could have been the master bathroom in our duplex, transposed to this other floor plan.
I hoped the men’s bodywash I found was Lyle’s as I slathered it over my chest and arms. He was thirteen. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
I hoped it was Lyle’s.
I used a men’s razor, again hoping it was Lyle’s.
He was old enough. It was hard to pick which bothered me more: the idea that Lyle was old enough now to shave, or that Amy was close enough to another man to have him leave his bodywash and razor at her place—at her and Lyle’s home.
I did my best not to think about it. Either way was agony.
In the basement, after my shower, we sat and talked, Lyle catching me up on his life as I ate leftovers of Amy’s familiar meat loaf he had heated up for me.
I felt pangs, deep and hollow and hard, when he told me he had few friends, went to school just because he had to, and spent most of his time in the basement, learning about computers and doing research on the latest in theoretical physics.
All for me.
He had questions for me, as well, but I had no real answers.
No, I’d never felt anything except a slipping sensation.
Oh, and the headache. He didn’t know what to make of the headache, although he thought it was somehow significant.
The transition through time was instantaneous.
There was no pain. I still hadn’t gone backward.
That last one made me smile, remembering.
I asked about the reporters and the news stories.
He shrugged it off. The Internet collectively decided I was a fake, out for attention—or an insanely dedicated prankster who would show up in a few years to extend the prank and otherwise spent the time hiding off the grid.
The videos were still available online, with the old notes “proving” where the footage had been altered. An archived curiosity.
We were still talking when we heard the front door slam. Steps moved across the floorboards over our heads.
“Mom’s home,” Lyle whispered. He glanced at me. The mask was back. “I’ll go up in a few minutes. Stick to my routine.”
We hadn’t discussed it, but it was implied in Lyle’s every action: I was not to go upstairs.
I was not to see Amy. See Lyle’s mother.
My wife. My ex-wife. I nodded and tried to communicate with my eyes I understood.
Pain speared through me to do it, hunching my shoulders around the ache in my core despite my best efforts not to show what I was feeling.
I wanted to follow him upstairs. See her again, drink her in like it was me who hadn’t seen her in three years and not the other way around.
But I knew seeing me would only cause her pain.
Lyle was trying to spare all of us. We listened as she walked about.
After a couple minutes, he stood. “I hope you can sleep okay,” he whispered.
“It’s great, bud. More than I could’ve hoped for.”
“Not really. But it’s all I can do, for now.”
“It’s great.”
He hesitated, then stepped forward and hugged me tight.
“I’m so happy to see you,” I said into his hair.
“I didn’t … really know … if you’d…”
“I know. But I did.”
He pushed away. He wiped his eyes. “Gotta go. I’ll sneak back down if I can. Otherwise…”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
“It’s Monday tomorrow. Mom leaves super early on Mondays so she can go to one of her grad school classes before work. I’ll come down as soon as I can. It’ll be before—you know.”
“Sounds good.”
Lyle stopped near the door and looked back. “I’m glad you made it here, Dad.”
“Me too.” I wanted to say more, but I couldn’t make the words come out. After a moment he nodded and left.
I slept on the floor, wrapped in the sleeping bag Lyle had left for me, sliding in and out of dreams. I was exhausted, but I kept waking at the slightest sound.
The dreams, when I had them, were angry collages of faces and dark movement, of Lyle as I had known him before and Lyle as he was now, of Amy, stuck now as I’d last seen her. Angry and bitter as she divorced me.
Every time I woke, I froze, listening hard, hoping Lyle would come down.
I imagined us, down to the smallest detail, whispering together in the pale basement light, sharing more food he’d smuggled downstairs and laughing as we got to know one another again.
He’d tell me about a girl from school he had a crush on, about the latest books he’d read—was he still working his way through my old collection?
No, he’d have finished those long ago—about his dreams for the future, and his fears.
I wanted it to happen so badly it was physically painful. It brought tears to my eyes.
I woke with a start when the door opened. It was still dark outside. Pale light from streetlamps came in through the dirty, narrow windows mounted above the washer and dryer. Lyle slipped inside and closed the door. “Mom left. I—Dad … I’m sorry I couldn’t come down last night.”
“It’s okay.” I struggled out of the folded and crumpled mess of the sleeping bag.
“She stayed up late watching TV again.” There was something off in his voice, and I looked up. He stared away from me, standing straight and tall with his head up, but I could see his chin quivering.
Still a little boy in there somewhere.
I pulled on my jeans and shirt and went to him. I gripped both his shoulders and looked at him until he met my eyes. “It’s okay, bud.”
“No. It’s not. I haven’t seen you in years. The next time I see you I’ll be eighteen years old.” I sucked in a hard breath, but he continued without noticing. “I should’ve snuck by Mom, distracted her, whatever. But I was—I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Everything. That she’d find you. That my Device won’t work. That I won’t be able to save you, no matter how hard I try.”
I took in the dark bags under his eyes, partially hidden by his glasses. “You were up all night?”
“Yeah.”
I pulled him close and hugged him. He resisted at first, then relented.
“You know no one else matters like you do? You’re my son, Lyle.
That’s all that matters to me. I’ll always love you, no matter what.
” I held him at arm’s length so I could look into his eyes.
“But I want you to listen close to me, now, okay?” I waited, and after a moment, he nodded.
I’d said it before, when he was younger, but I had to say it again.
“I don’t want you spending your life on me, trying to save me.
It’s a wonderful thing, an amazing thing you’ve kept me in your thoughts, and I hope I’ll always be in your heart.
But you have a life to live, no matter what insane thing has taken over mine.
” Looking in his eyes, I could tell he knew I meant it.
But I could also tell something else: he wasn’t taking the advice. Not really.
I stepped back, and let my arms fall. I’d said it.
I’d done what I could. The rest—living his life—would be up to him now.
Every parent faced a moment like this, but most had years to prepare, years to work up to it, to see their child become a young adult.
I was missing that, too, clicking forward through chapters on the movie of Lyle’s life, missing vast chunks of context and story.
I had to press down the flash of anger. That anger, that rage, wasn’t directed at Lyle, and I couldn’t afford to have him feel it—have that be the last emotion he saw from me and associated with me for five and a half years.
We stood awkwardly for a minute, neither looking at the other. Then he remembered something. “Hold on one sec.” He dashed out the door, and was back, holding a plate of waffles. “Eggos. With real maple syrup we picked up at the farmer’s market.”
I grinned at him, took the plate, and started eating. I was famished, even after the leftovers from the evening before, and the flash-frozen pieces of cooked batter tasted phenomenal. As I ate, Lyle woke up his computers.
The headache started to rise behind my eyes.
Lyle noticed me wince. He nodded. “We’re getting close to five fifty-two. Seven fifty-two Central time. I was pretty sure this thing doesn’t care about time zones.”
I grunted around a mouthful.
“The Device is all ready to go,” he said. “I’ll learn from the readings, and I’ll be ready for the next time. I’ll be here. When you come back.”
It was a promise he couldn’t be sure he could keep.
I knew it. Amy could decide to sell the house.
I might emerge into some other family’s basement and come trudging upstairs like an early-morning ghoul, scaring them just as I’d terrified the couple in the motel.
But Lyle’s voice had the utter certainty of youth.
I finished the last bite of waffle and met his eyes.
I thought about saying it again, trying to reinforce that he had his own life to live.
I thought of a dozen ways to try to convince him that living for me defied logic.
But as I looked across the room, I knew he was set to his purpose.
Maybe that would change in a couple years.
I hoped it would, even if it felt bitter and raw to hope for something like that.
I held my thoughts, set the plate down, and stood. “What time is it?”
“Five fifty.” His voice cracked a little, and I could hear the tremble under the words.
“So, I just stand inside?”
“Yeah. And then…”
“Just let it happen.”
He nodded.
I walked to the spindly contraption. I stopped, leaned over, and kissed his forehead. His wavy hair brushed against my upper lip. I touched his shoulder, once, feeling his thin frame and muscle. I turned, tears in my eyes, and stepped inside.
“One minute.” Lyle tapped some commands, and the Device began to hum. It was probably my imagination, but I felt electricity along my arms, raising the hairs on my neck.
“Lyle,” I said. He glanced up. “I love you. No matter what.”
He stared at me, his eyes made small and distant by the thick glasses. “I love you, too, Dad.” He paused, glancing back at the clock before meeting my eyes again. “And I will save you.”
I smiled and the world
slipped
and I was still in the basement.
The light changed. That was the first thing I noticed. And I no longer stood inside a thin structure of aluminum struts. The smell was different, too, a mix of old pizza and flat soda. I blinked, and looked around, trying to get my bearings.
The Batcave had changed, but it was still recognizable.
The bank of four monitors had been replaced by a single huge screen of razor-sharp, colorful images—numbers and graphs and figures, all jumping from the flat panel toward me in three dimensions.
The scattered computer components were still there, but of different style and color and design.
There was a metal rack sitting near the big, flat-panel screen, filled with a dozen humming blade-style servers.
My chair was still there, looking even more badly torn, stained, and beat-up. In it sat a long-limbed teenager with curly, shoulder-length brown hair. He regarded me, his face stony.
He had no glasses on.
“Lyle?”
The thin teenager pushed himself out of the chair. He wore faded blue jeans and a black T-shirt with a circular logo I didn’t recognize. He padded toward me on bare feet. When he got close, he touched my shoulder, his fingers trembling. “I almost didn’t believe it anymore.”
“Lyle. Bud?”
“Dad,” he said, swallowing, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his skinny neck. Then he stepped forward and hugged me with long, strong arms. “Christ, I almost didn’t believe it anymore.”
“Hey, bud.” I hugged him back. He was as tall as I was. Taller. I wore my scuffed shoes, and he was barefoot and could look me straight in the eye. “It’s okay.”
“I forgot what you looked like. I forgot the sound of your voice. But I remember now. I remember now.”
“It’s okay,” I said through my own tears as he started to cry. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.”