Instructions For Time Travel

1

With three months before his apartment building was set for demolition, Morgan came across a journal of his father’s old lecture notes while cleaning the bottom drawer of his desk and hesitated before throwing it away. He wiped the dust off the crimson leather cover and gently opened to the first page.

A lot of his dad’s stuff from the old house was passed down to Morgan by default and had been collecting dust ever since Mom’s funeral two years ago when Dad checked himself into a retirement home. Lucy, his younger sister, got the house with her husband and four kids. Morgan kept on living in the apartment he’d been renting for the past twenty years since college graduation.

Then the demolition notice went up in the mailroom.

Good news: he was finally getting rid of all the crap he’d gathered over the years, shedding this apartment and the junk he kept in it. Like this journal—he had every intention of throwing it away, at first. Morgan looked over the pages with mild curiosity, knowing that he’d never fully understand or appreciate physics the way his father did, no matter how many times he’d been given a Stephen Hawking book for Christmas. The sketches looked like scribbles and scratches. The notes were garbled nonsense, just like anything his father ever talked about. The man spoke like a textbook.

A quick thumbing through the old professor’s detailed outlines dropped a handful of spare pages to the floor. Curious, he picked them up and scanned over them quickly. More gibberish notes and sketches. Morgan shrugged, lost to the language. This was the stuff his father spent hours working on instead of eating dinner with his family or going to his son’s basketball game. He ruffled the spare notes and feigned interest in the historic-looking script for a minute or two before noticing something of real interest—the title Dad had given the first page:

AT THE VERY LEAST, MAX REGAL OWES ME TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR THIS.

It seemed to be an uncharacteristic attempt at humor, and Morgan was intrigued.  

He gave little attention to the spare notes over the next two weeks as he tried to reorganize his life, though the notes were always nearby. During that time he slowly interpreted his father’s handwriting—particularly bad in this case, even for a chronic scribbler like his father, as though the man had written this all down very quickly. Then, finally, Morgan figured out what conclusion all these notes were leading him to. According to the notes—if Morgan had deciphered this mumbo-jumbo correctly—his father had invented time travel. No joke. That was what these notes were: instructions for time travel.

Morgan laughed out loud. Initially it seemed like nothing but another one of Dad’s theories. Morgan was too busy finding a new place to live to spend serious time thinking about the idea. At least now he knew why his father kept the time travel notes separate from his lecture notes. If anyone found out he’d been wasting time with this sci-fi stuff, they’d think he was a nutcase. His father had been a prestigious professor at MIT, celebrated as a genius by his people, and he wouldn’t have risked bad publicity. This looked like a crazy notion—and Dad had many—that was taken too far.

With a place arranged to stay after the end of the month with his sister and her husband, Morgan had packed up almost everything into cardboard boxes and stacked them in the living room. All he had to entertain himself with was a small television, but without cable he was stuck watching the local news. It was election time, so even the news was boring. One afternoon he grew tired of watching the mayor-candidates’ campaign speeches on TV and let out a sigh, turning to grab his dad’s journal from the cushion beside him. He’d been absently scanning the pages during commercial breaks—looking for some hint of what made this all so special. The spare pages with the time-machine notes were more intriguing than local politics and Morgan curled up to read them again.

It soon occurred to him that these were literally blue-prints for the construction of a time travelling device, not just notes about a theory. This wasn’t a joke. Eight pages in total, these were step-by-step directions, complete with diagrams and side-notes and little thought-blurbs—“Use caution with electrified copper,” said one and “Do not skip this step,” said another. That was when Morgan began to believe in the idea. His father had been passionate about this. Though it was hard to take it completely seriously, Morgan noticed how clearly explained, although not always legible, these instructions were. It wouldn’t be hard to build alone. If this wasn’t a joke—and Morgan couldn’t think of an example of his father ever playing a joke like this—then these notes were important.

On the last page of the notes, however, his father had written a bothersome final sentence.

DO NOT BUILD THIS, it warned in red ink.

Morgan heard his father’s booming voice shouting the words at him from the page. Childhood was a lot of Dad yelling at Morgan. They seemed to always be frustrated with each other, and Morgan believed that was because Dad loved physics more than fatherhood. He’d been born in the late roaring twenties, raised in a time of prohibition, stormed Normandy with the British, married young, became successful soon after, and was hardened by the decades of cigarette smoke and bourbon that followed. He was just blooming as a professor at MIT when Morgan and his sister were born. Morgan was loved immensely as a baby but as soon as he started talking and showed an interest in a subject other than physics. He once wrote a psychology paper about loveless relationships with fathers and received the highest grade in the class. Dad was inevitably too busy to compliment Morgan’s well-written essay, mostly because it had nothing to do with science, and that was the closest they’d come to talking about their relationship. Life carried on in a similar disappointing fashion: the wrong college, the wrong major, the wrong girlfriends, and especially the wrong career.

In a letter he wrote about ten years ago but never sent to his father, Morgan said: Sorry I’m better with insurance fraud investigation than calculating the mass of a supernova—we can’t all have our eyes on the stars, dad. The two of them never seemed to understand each other.

With most of anything he cared about stuffed into a box and nothing better to do, Morgan did exactly what his father’s notes told him not to. It wasn’t meant as disobedience. Morgan saw how carefully his father had detailed the plans for this machine. A lot of the stuff Dad talked about, Morgan hardly understood a word of it. But this made sense to him. He could build this—and he wanted to. The red-ink message might’ve instructed him otherwise, but Morgan wanted to do it. Why the hell not? He had nothing much exciting to do until moving day. Work at the insurance office wasn’t exactly strenuous. And maybe it would be good to see what Dad was always spending his energy on—this physics stuff, this science—what made these inventions and breakthroughs so important to him?

This could be how Morgan finally connected with his father.

He arranged the note pages in order and stapled them into a manual, flipped to the first step, and began work on the time-machine. The diagrams and instructions reminded him of building model airplanes—the last hobby that he and Dad ever shared. Regarding equipment or materials he needed to purchase, Morgan made a list for later and spent most of the first day figuring out where to build it. The first five steps involved the construction of the machine’s frame—roughly the size of a phone-booth, preferably made of wood. In a flash of genius Morgan figured out that his bedroom closet matched the dimensions of the machine’s box and he happily skipped to the sixth step.

That was when he was forced to find a local hardware store.

The next day he worked overtime at the office, thinking about his evening plans, and hurried home to begin construction. A Tuesday, he normally would have stopped by Autumn Oaks to visit his father, but figured Dad would forgive him and be happy to hear that Morgan had been busy doing something scientific for once. In fact, although more excited to build the machine, he was eager to bring up the topic for a chance to finally bond with his father and have a decent conversation over a cup of stale retirement-home coffee.

Two cinderblocks served as a chair in the middle of the empty closet. The bare walls were lined with copper wire that spiraled down from the aluminum bowl hanging where the lightbulb used to glow. On the floor around the seat were five round magnets on wooden spools, each with wires snaking across a rubber mat to the car battery in the corner. The battery fed into a power amplifier which boosted the volts to a lethal level. A kitchen timer served as the activation switch—winding it to sixty-seconds got the magnets spinning, which then initiated the “rapid dance of atoms known officially as the evaporation of matter into a transferrable energy that transcends time and space,” according to Dad’s notes. The user of the machine was meant to wear the aluminum cap on their head. As though an afterthought, Morgan’s father had written extra rules in the margin: The subject must sit very still and close their eyes; the subject must exhale completely; the machine will cause serious harm if the battery is not charged by way of the timer or the magnets do not spin.

Fully completed, the contraption was embarrassingly cheesy and unlike he’d anticipated, he felt no need to share this invention with his friends. It was a salad bowl hanging in a room that smelled like pennies and might be a terrible fire hazard. From what Morgan gathered, the machine only worked if he turned the kitchen-timer and spun the magnets—otherwise the contraption was nothing but an electric chair. He left the battery on, as instructed, and the machine hummed quietly all day and night. The aluminum bowl buzzed with latent electric juice. Next, Morgan thought about what he wanted to use as a sacrifice to test the machine.

The day was picked for the test: Thursday. The sacrifice: a sock.

2

When Thursday arrived, Morgan still had three weeks before the building was closed. He worked a normal shift, hurried down the freeway, parked crookedly, sprinted up the stairs, shouldered his way into his apartment, rushed to the bedroom, and threw his jacket to the floor in one blur of motion. Then everything came to a sudden halt.

The closet door was open. It was never open—Morgan was too embarrassed to leave it open, even though the last time he brought a guest over was when he was still trying to date women in the 90’s. But someone could have seen it. Morgan immediately went to close the door, then stopped.

This wasn’t good. The closet was uncommonly warm and smelled strongly of smoke. There was no sign of any fire or smoke damage, however, and Morgan reluctantly came to believe that someone had been in his home and tried to use the machine. What else could explain this? Maybe the intruder had been curious about the machine and turned the kitchen timer, figured it was useless, then left the magnets to whirl and the wires to sizzle. A quick scan of the cardboard boxes in the livingroom showed no sign of thievery. So if there had been a burglar, he either left with nothing or—

Morgan laughed. Or the burglar accidentally sent himself through time.

Morgan admittedly knew very little about the device he’d built, wondering if maybe this was just something the machine did sometimes, maybe it recharged itself. How the door blew itself open, though, he wasn’t sure. A search of his apartment didn’t reveal anyone hiding. It was too worrisome to consider the idea that someone or something had come through the machine. The event seemed like one of those rare moments that might simply go unexplained, what Dad would call an anomaly. To ease his mind, Morgan went to the livingroom and sat on the sofa and watched television. He didn’t want to think about the time-machine for a while. Maybe he’d test it out tomorrow.

Every channel was playing the same emergency broadcast: MAYOR-HOPEFUL MAX REGAL SURVIVES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT! SHOTS FIRED AT CANDIDATE FROM TRAIN DURING ELECTION SPEECH! SACRAMENTO TRANSIT SYSTEM SHUT DOWN FOR HOURS! LOCAL AUTHORITIES PERFORM COUNTY-WIDE SEARCH FOR SUSPECT!

Intrigued only because Morgan lived twenty-five minutes from the heart of Sacramento—where this assassination attempt had occurred a mere hour ago—he leaned forward and listened. It took him a few more times hearing the name before he recognized Max Regal as the man who owed his father two-hundred dollars for the invention of time travel. Was it the same Max Regal? The broadcast transitioned from images of him to footage of the bullet striking the podium and shattering the microphone during a speech and the audience fleeing. Morgan made a note to ask his father about that old friendship during tomorrow’s visit. His father had worked with many prominent figures over the decades—including a handshake meeting with Kennedy and Reagan—and it wouldn’t be surprising to know that someone Dad met was attempting to be the mayor of Sacramento. 

A zoomed-in image taken from a security camera showed a blurry face with vague details. A male wearing sunglasses and a dark-green jacket with jeans. The reporter explained how this blurry figure had hopped onto the light-rail train and known precisely when and where they would pass by the candidate’s stage during Thursday’s speech. The reporter mentioned the reward for phoning in information about the assailant was fifty-thousand dollars. Morgan would need a better photo before he’d be able to pick out the guy from a crowd, though the financial incentive was nice—like being paid to play Where’s Waldo?

The story eventually moved on to commercial break. Morgan was hungry for a frozen dinner and spent the rest of the night not thinking about news stories or open closets or time-machines. He was actually looking forward to visiting his dad tomorrow.

3

Waking up, taking a shower, eating breakfast—Morgan daydreamed about the time-machine. The closet was no longer emitting warmth and had returned to simply being tacky-looking. He kept the door closed. Commuting to work, answering phone calls, filling in forms—Morgan was thinking about seeing his father. The man was pushing eighty-three and hadn’t looked healthy since the night Mom died in her sleep. Mom and Dad had been in love, a bond that Morgan could never understand, and his father claimed himself “dangerously depressed” when he checked into Autumn Oaks after she died.

He parked in the visitors’ lot outside of the tennis courts. Two old women chatted near a water fountain and smiled at Morgan as he walked by. The handful of buildings that made up the compound were a soft peachy color, complimented by dark green grass and round trees and landscaped yards. The retirement village was bordered by a tall brick wall isolating it from the commercial district of Sacramento—a little oasis in the cement forest. As pleasant as they made it feel, Morgan couldn’t help but dread the fact that he would probably end up in a place like this. Inside, the place looked like a hospital designed by children. Excessively colorful. Morgan still saw nothing but doom wherever he looked, hidden beneath the friendly attitude of the staff and the top-forty radio station playing over the loudspeakers. Everyone waiting to die—too sad or unloved to do it alone.

Dad’s room was on the second floor. Morgan knocked.

His near-bald father answered the door dressed in a thin white t-shirt and candy-cane striped boxers, a slouching man who had spent too much time bent over a desk with a pen. He grumbled something about letting the cool air out and motioned Morgan inside. “Sorry, pops. Jesus—it feels like an ice cube in here. You been using the A/C much?”

Dad grunted. “You feel how hot it is outside? Weatherman says it’s triple-digits. All week!”

“I heard,” Morgan said, looking around. This was basically a hotel room with linoleum flooring—making it easier to wheel around the mattress and furniture and heart monitor—resembling the paint-by-numbers design you’d come across at any roadside motel. Dad had his own bathroom, a television, a mini-fridge. There was a big cafeteria on the first floor that cooked regularly scheduled meals. Autumn Oaks treated him well enough. “Did you hear about what happened yesterday?” Morgan asked, leaning against the mini-fridge with his arms crossed.

Dad went back to his bed and looked about to crawl under the blankets. He sat upright and turned down the volume of the Frasier episode he’d been watching. His father then asked, “Why doesn’t your sister ever come with you?”

Morgan had no intention of having this conversation again—how Lucy felt about their father was her own business and she would come see him if she wanted to. “She’s busy, Dad. She and Tom are making room for me to move in.”

“You didn’t find a place of your own?” his father asked with a little huff.

(no dad—it’s called an economic crisis for a reason)

“No.”

Dad shrugged. A typical fatherly response.

Morgan tried again, “You hear about what happened to the guy running for mayor?”

“I did,” said his father in a grave tone. “I taught with Max at MIT.”

“Max?”

“Max Regal—the one who was shot at,” Dad explained, grumpily, “Yes I heard about what happened. Of course I heard about what happened. He was a teaching assistant of mine for five years in the nineties.” He yawned and stretched, then continued, “Max got bored with physics but he definitely had the brains for it. He went off to law school instead.” After a pause, his father admitted, “Most of the grants I won were because of knowing Max, so yes—I heard, and it worries me.”

“Are you still friends?” Morgan asked—he recalled the name from the title of the time-machine notes. He suddenly really wanted to mention that to his father but held his tongue. It felt like a subject that needed to be eased into. “What kind of work did you guys do together?”

That last question from Morgan obviously caught his father off-guard. Neither of them could remember the last time Morgan asked about his father’s work.  Hesitantly, his father said, “I was teaching a series of lectures on quantum mechanics—the chaos theory, you’ve heard of it? Max was well-researched, almost as eager about the course as I was. Too young, though. He had other plans.”

Morgan said, “Politics.”

“Apparently someone’s not so happy about his decision,” said his father, alluding to the near-assassination of the day before. “But Max hasn’t always made the most friends—I think that was his problem. He was better off as a lawyer—he argued. He liked to argue. Max is the kind of man who steps on others to get ahead.” This led to a brief moment of silence as his father’s eyes dazed off into the past. “That’s why we had problems working with each other,” he added.

The detachment Morgan generally felt regarding politics—especially local politics—began to shrink when the abstract figure of mayor-candidate Max Regal became a real person who used to teach with Morgan’s father. Max Regal who almost got his head blown off by an assassin. He was intrigued that his family had a direct connection with a public figure. Morgan immediately imagined himself drinking champagne and mingling with the city’s finest.

But that wasn’t why he was here. “So—” Morgan started and stalled, moving away from the mini-fridge. He went to the window and pushed aside the blinds to look out at the Autumn Oaks recreational yard. He watched sunlight dance on the splashing surface of a swimming pool. 

“So?” his father asked impatiently.

“I found something of yours when I was packing. It’s an old journal from one of your classes—I think. It’s got a whole bunch of your physics notes in it.” His father looked mildly intrigued or in the process of passing gas—either was possible—and Morgan pushed further. “There were these other notes, too, that you left in the pages. They fell out.”

Dad looked him in the eyes and went very still.

“They were instructions on how to build a time-machine, Dad.”

The old man’s lips began to quiver and his eyes widened—he looked deathly afraid all of a sudden—and he said, “You built it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. It took me forever to figure out your handwriting, but yeah.” Morgan smiled and shrugged. He was hoping for an overwhelming rush of excitement and joy. He’d been hoping the time-machine would bring him closer to Dad. Instead he watched his father drop his head and groan and—a moment later—his father began to cry. “Dad? Dad? Whoa—buddy—Dad—what’s up?” Morgan reacted, stepping forward to put a hand on his shoulder.

His father swatted the hand away and glared up into Morgan’s eyes. “I wrote in there that you weren’t supposed to build it. I wrote that,” growled the old man, who turned and grabbed Morgan by the arms and shook him. “Does it work, Morgan? Did you get it to work?”

Morgan was surprised by this response. He felt like he’d just confessed to backing over the family dog or something. “I—I don’t know. The magnets spin but I haven’t tried to—”

“Oh I promised I wouldn’t build it. I promised I wouldn’t.”

“You didn’t,” Morgan argued. “I did. I built it.”

His father kept shaking his head.

“Christ,” Morgan whined. “I can’t do anything right for you, can I?”

Softly, his father said, “It has to be destroyed.”

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll tear the stupid thing down. I only built it for you.”

This got his dad to drop his eyes. After the tears and the trembling, the man looked completely worn out. He took in a few deep wheezing breaths and held his hands together in his lap. Morgan let this moment last as long as it had to. He had patience with his father, just not the undying admiration and love he probably deserved. “It’s too dangerous,” said Dad. “I was told that I wasn’t supposed to build it. I was just supposed to write down the instructions.”

“Told? Someone told you how to make it?”

His father nodded. “Yes.”

“Who?” With no answer given, Morgan guessed, “Max Regal?”

“No, no. Max and I talked about it a lot—we spent a lot of time theorizing time travel. I bet him two-hundred bucks I’d figure it out eventually,” said his father with a smirk. “He always thought it was impossible. I always believed it could work.”

 “So why do we have to destroy it?” Morgan asked. “It might work—I just haven’t tried it on anything. But all the parts move—it even turned itself on yesterday when I was at work and made my closet heat up like an oven. I’m pretty sure—”

“It turned on?” his father asked.

“—that—what? Yeah. Well, I guess.” Morgan shrugged. “Why? What does that mean?”

“That means someone used it.”

“No—”

That conversation ended abruptly when the television went to the rainbow bars of a public emergency alert. Morgan and his father turned their attention to the screen, where the words NOT A TEST / LOCAL EMERGENCY scrolled along the bottom for about thirty seconds until the buzz ceased. The station cut to a news anchor hastily fastening a microphone to her blouse and then she said, “We interrupt your scheduled programming for an urgent announcement: the mayor-candidate Max Regal has been shot and killed. He has been the victim of a second assassination attempt on his life.” Some guy with a headset stretched onscreen to hand her a sheet of paper, which she quickly scanned. “The candidate was leaving City Hall with security guards and was shot in the side of the head. No word on the type of gun used or—what?—or any word on a suspect. Wait—one moment,” the news anchor held a finger to her ear, looking very frazzled on screen in impromptu makeup.

“Max—” his father whispered with a heavy frown.

“No way,” Morgan remarked.

“We have a photograph,” the news anchor said excitedly. “We have word that this suspect is believed to be the same one from the first assassination attempt yesterday afternoon. Here—do we have that picture up, yet? Here’s the photo.” The screen cut away to a crisper image than the one shown the night before. This one looked snapped from an ATM camera. The guy wore the same sunglasses and green jacket and blue jeans. It was definitely the same guy from the train that made headlines on Thursday. “This is the man who shot Max Regal,” the woman said on the television, saying this with the ferocity that might inspire hunting mobs to form. Under other circumstances Morgan might’ve felt compelled to grab a pitchfork and join the hunt, but that urge fell flat when he recognized that the photograph on the television was clearly a photograph of himself.

No way to deny it. Morgan was looking up at the screen at a near-exact reflection—only with sunglasses—and hearing himself referred to as the “killer” and “suspect-at-large” and “wanted” was nauseating and hurtful.  Morgan had no idea how to react to this gut-wrenching sight and he turned to his father for an explanation.

“That’s him,” said his father.

“What? Who?”

“That’s who told me not to build the time-machine.”

Morgan looked at his father quizzically. “But that looks just like me, Dad.”

Dad nodded. “Yeah,” he sighed.

“Yeah? What do you mean yeah? Yeah like—it is you?”

With another sigh, his father closed his eyes for a moment. His eyelids flickered. He exhaled through his nose and said, “This is exactly what you said was going to happen.”

“What?”

“The machine—Max—moving here—” his father rambled, listing off recent events like they’d been items on a grocery list. The old man shook his head and said, “It’s too late now. Max is dead.”

“Too late for what?”

“It is you, Morgan. It is you. The time-machine works.”

“Me?”

“You pushed the first domino,” he said.

“What?” Morgan was annoyed and anxious. He started toward the door to listen for approaching footsteps but heard none.

“You’re the one who said it first—when you came to me in ‘95. You said that the invention of the first time-machine would change history as we know it. It would be instantaneous. If we bring it to life, it becomes a threat to all of mankind through all time.” His father shook his head. “I thought I had lost my mind, Morgan. I told Max about what I’d written down and showed him the notes but he laughed in my face and told me I’d wasted my time—he never thought it would work.”

“1995?” Morgan held no special association with that year, simply calculated that date as being fourteen years ago. His father had known about this for fourteen years and said nothing? He asked, “I came to you from the future? From how far in the future?”

His father shrugged.

“And I told you—”

“How to build the machine.”

“But we weren’t supposed to build—”

His father held a hand against his chest and cut in with, “I wasn’t. But you said that you would build it eventually. You told me that my wife would die in her sleep and I’d move into this place and you’d find my journal. You told me that when Max Regal was killed the machine had to be destroyed, no matter what.” His sullen tone and emphasized blame made it obvious that Morgan’s father wasn’t happy with the way it had worked out. Morgan could see why he’d written DO NOT BUILD THIS on the time-machine notes—an attempt to save Mom, perhaps. Or Max.

Morgan nodded. The big picture was starting to come into focus, so he ignored his father’s pouting face because this was not the time to dwell on the past. What happened had happened for a reason. Just to clarify, he pointed to the screen and asked, “So that’s me—then? On TV? That’s me from the future and I just killed Max Regal?”

Dad nodded slowly, frowning, trembling slightly.  

The image on the screen cut to footage of the blockaded lawn outside of City Hall and the low-flying helicopters searching for the suspect. Morgan could hear the chopping blades of those aircraft passing over Autumn Oaks. Morgan hated that they kept flashing images on the screen of a man who looked uncannily like himself, if only with a bit more facial hair. But where had this person come from? What did it mean to look like a terrorist? Morgan felt his breath catch in his throat and he nearly choked. He’d never been more afraid in all his life.

Dad said, “I don’t know why you would ever want to kill Max Regal, though,” and looked into Morgan’s eyes with disgrace. “I didn’t know you knew Max.”

“I don’t—and I didn’t kill anyone.” Future-self or not, Morgan felt guilty for being associated with the candidate’s death. He wondered if anyone in Autumn Oaks was watching television and recalling having seen a guy that looked like the suspect’s photo. How long before the staff showed up with the police knocking on the door? Morgan felt vulnerable in this compound with its tall perimeter wall and gated entrance, he felt trapped.

His father sighed and turned away.

Morgan grunted. “What, Dad? Quit making me feel like this is my fault.”

Dad slouched and faced the floor, keeping his feelings inside like he always did.

Morgan’s heart was racing. At any moment the cops would come barging into this room—he was sure of it. What was he supposed to do? His face was being broadcast on every channel—Morgan shut off the television. He looked out the window for cop cars storming the gates and thought, You’re scaring yourself buddy—calm down, think this through. His father coughed and suggested, “Maybe you better get out of here, Morgan. Destroy that machine. Take back the harm you’ve caused.”

Morgan felt like that was an unnecessary accusation. “Hey,” he started, facing his father, “I only made it to see what you did with your whole life—to do something you’d appreciate—I thought maybe I’d get closer to you for once, you miserable old fuck.”

His father held Morgan’s stare and didn’t look away. He only frowned and nodded. Softly, he said, “I wasn’t there for you much when you were a kid, Morgan. We’ve talked about that. It was never easy for me—being a dad.” His father’s eyes watered up. “I didn’t mean to say this was all your fault.”

Morgan wished he hadn’t used the word fuck. All he’d wanted was to do something his father didn’t disapprove of or ridicule. He groaned and wanted to pull out his hair. “I’m just confused, Dad. I mean—why am I coming back from the future and killing people? Why would I do that?” Morgan asked, feeling the blood of Max Regal oozing on his hands.

“I’m sure you had a good reason. You’re a smart guy, Morgan.”

“Huh, thanks,” he said, finding it hard to put smart and murderer together. He couldn’t get himself to apologize for the outburst but tried to convey the idea with sorrowful expression. Morgan wished he didn’t have to leave. If it weren’t for the manhunt out for blood heading his way, he might’ve stayed for coffee to try and make up for his outburst. He slowly started toward the door and his father made no move to hug him or shake his hand—nothing new.

“I won’t tell anyone I saw you.”

“Thanks.”

“Get rid of the machine,” his dad said. “Make it all worth it.”

4

On the drive across town to his apartment, Morgan stayed low. Surely with how detailed of an image they’d shown on the news, the authorities would have found out his name and address—maybe. He still hoped that he’d have enough time to get inside and tear down the machine in his closet. Though he knew nothing concrete about what was happening around him, he knew that he was deeply involved. Building the time-machine had been a mistake. He’d allowed his future-self to enter the present and kill one of his father’s old friends—a rather twisted turn of events—and he was now speeding through yellow lights to make sure no time was wasted in the machine’s demolition.

An odd thought occurred to Morgan when he parked on the street outside the crumbling building he had called home. His father had known about the time-machine plan for fourteen years and yet said nothing. Morgan tried to imagine living casually after being visited by a resident of the future—one’s own son, of all people—and given instructions that would alter the outcome of history. Why fourteen years ago? Why had future-Morgan planned it that way? Present-Morgan assumed maybe 1995 had been a year when Dad was most apt to believe in a time travelling messenger, maybe during a period when Dad was already deeply engrossed in the research of time travelling theories.

 Dad was told to write the notes knowing that Morgan would eventually read them. That meant Morgan had been destined to build the machine all along so that future-Morgan could come back and kill Max Regal. But why? That part was still fuzzy. Scrambling up the steps to his apartment, Morgan’s biggest unanswered question was why he would eventually feel it necessary to assassinate a politician.

He was inside and ten steps toward the bedroom hallway when he realized that his front door hadn’t been locked. Turning around, he noticed that a swift forceful blow had shattered the deadbolt completely—shards of wood were scattered across the floor.

“Oh shit,” he mumbled, wondering if that burglar had—

“Hello Morgan,” said a familiar voice from behind him.

Morgan turned around. 

“Bet this is a trip,” said future-Morgan, wearing the now-infamous green jacket and black sunglasses. He stood leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, a fuller beard than present-Morgan and with a curved scar beneath his eye. He looked different in subtle ways: grayer hair, more wrinkles around the eyes, yellower teeth, bulkier. No matter how much of a trip this was, Morgan viewed it scientifically—as his father would have done. Future-Morgan stepped forward and took off his sunglasses and said, “I’m not here to kill you or anything. This isn’t like The Terminator.”

“Oh.”

“I just want to make sure you destroy the machine.”

Morgan nodded.

“The easy explanation is to tell you that I tried to save the future once and failed.”

Morgan said, “Uh huh.”

“I’m covering all the angles this time,” said future-Morgan. “I made sure Dad wrote down the instructions and kept the invention away from Max—made sure it would only get to you. But that wasn’t enough—nothing had changed. The technology still gets out.”

Morgan’s throat was dry. He had to move to the sofa and sit down, his mind refusing to believe that his reflection was talking to him. But this was no reflection. This was flesh-and-blood. The slightly-older version of Morgan was just as real as anyone Morgan had ever known. That was immensely difficult to believe but, for now, he had no facts to tell him otherwise. Morgan took a deep breath and centered his frantic thoughts. This was almost over—he could feel it.

Future-Morgan stirred anxiously. He said, “Look: Max Regal is the bad guy here. I killed him because he still destroys the future. Somehow—the journal notes, maybe. Maybe reverse engineering. Keeping him away from the invention didn’t work, that’s all I know.” His future-self paused. “I wanted you to build the machine. That way if my first plan didn’t work, I’d come here and try my second plan.” The man from the future took a breath, then finished, “We have to destroy the machine. Destroying this machine will fix everything because it’s this machine that spawns all the others.”

“But you told my dad how to make it,” Morgan argued, finding his voice.

Future-Morgan laughed. “Funny thing about time,” he said. “It’s all fate, Morgan. It’s all meant to happen in some way—sometimes things just have to happen and sometimes things can change. The time-machine gets invented no matter what. Originally it was Dad’s, then it was yours. But either way it ends up with Max. That’s why I had to kill him.”

“Did my dad really invent it, then?”

“He would have. On his own—with help from Max Regal. That’s how it happened originally. I just had to make sure the knowledge stayed in the family this time—away from Max, knowing what his plans were. Becoming the mayor was just the beginning,” future-Morgan explained, dead-pan and serious, and present-Morgan did his best to follow. Future-Morgan continued, “All that campaign money—he spends it on further research. He finds a way to simplify the machine into a wrist-watch for Christ’s sake. The whole thing gets out of control.”

“What happens to the future?” Morgan asked—knowing but not caring that he was the target of countless government agencies, wanting to understand why this was happening.

“Time travel was outlawed when someone went back two weeks before an election and killed the candidate who’d won President—and this was when it was still monitored pretty well by MIT,” explained future-Morgan. “But it was too late. Science can’t keep a secret. People kept messing around and we all began to notice the small way the world would change from day to day. Some animals would be extinct one day and then thriving the next. Our minds stayed the same but in the blink of an eye the world would change. Time’s unpredictable. Most stuff stays but it’s the little things you never notice—like flowers being a different color or something.” The explanation was halted when his future-self stepped away from the wall and approached Morgan.

“It’s fucked up,” said the man from the future, “but military had to be sent to Nazi Germany to protect Hitler from people trying to kill him before World War II. It’s a new kind of terrorism—changing the past—we call it historical terrorism. All it’ll take is one fanatic with a machinegun to go back and save Jesus from crucifixion—no one knows what huge effect any one change could have.” Future-Morgan pointed at the floor. “But the fact is that this is where it started.”

With that, Morgan needed no further encouragement. “Okay,” he said, “Let’s do it.”

He followed himself down the hall to the bedroom where the time-machine was closed. There were so many questions—there was so much more that Morgan wanted to know—but he also knew there wasn’t a lot of time. He’d been far enough from City Hall to avoid the swarms of secret service agents patrolling the roadways but felt like he was running on borrowed time. The pressure made his brain swell. His thoughts were limited and sluggish. And to think this all was happening because he hesitated before throwing away one of his father’s old journals.

“We destroy this,” said future-Morgan, knocking on the closet door, “and everything gets erased. All the crap that goes wrong will be fixed.”

“What about you?” Morgan asked.

His future-self laughed, then sighed. “I’ll be fine. I’m just you, after all.”

“But you’ll disappear. Won’t you?”

“If we erase the invention of time travelling, then yeah—I won’t have ever existed because you’ll take a different path this time. It’s—” future-Morgan caught his words in his throat and looked sadly at the floor for a moment. “It’s all for the better, though,” he said mostly to himself.

Morgan had yet to imagine that future-Morgan came from an entirely separate existence, and he wondered what life he’d left behind. More questions arose about whether or not Morgan did anything worthwhile with his life, but he had to push his curiosity aside. He asked his future-self, “Will my life will just keep going? What about the police? They think I killed Max Regal.”

Future-Morgan shrugged. “I’m sorry about that. I really didn’t have any other ideas—the future’s a pretty messed up place right now. Someone had to do something. You think I’m not losing out on this situation, too? I’m losing out just as much as you are.”

A tension between them rose in the thick silence and then settled quickly as the echo of sirens filled the quiet. Morgan was tense and had been on-edge since coming home to the opened time-machine last night. Now a mad plummet into a situation he felt completely unqualified for was forcing him to interact with a version of himself from the future. The stress levels were up.

Morgan nodded. It was difficult to be angry with his future-self considering it was him doing this to himself. Still, the fact was there was no way to prove his innocence with blatant proof of his guilt and they’d never believe a future version of himself came back to save the future. They’d have him institutionalized. All it took was one fingerprint, one DNA sample, and they’d have Morgan in solitary confinement for the rest of his life. That felt certain.

“But I can’t go to prison,” Morgan argued, “or you’ll be locked up, too, and then who’s going to save the future when it happens again?”

“All that will change. Life will go on—even if you’re arrested.”

“But I don’t want to be arrested. I didn’t really do anything.”

Future-Morgan looked at present-Morgan and said, “You can run, Morgan. But you will probably get caught. We will get caught. We’re both sacrificing ourselves here,” future-Morgan stated. “The future turned out pretty good for you. For me. You met a girl. Got married.” This brought a big smile to future-Morgan’s face. He laughed. “Jesus…” he sighed. “You think I wanted to leave all that behind? I had to. I always knew it was my fault—that I could stop it. I had to fix it.” Future-Morgan shrugged. “And when we destroy this stupid thing, all of that’s going to change—at least in some way.”

“I get married?”

“Yeah. Georgia Kensington. I should have brought a photo of her.”

“Wow.”

“Oh,” future-Morgan said abruptly, reaching into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a small gold plaque and handed it to present-Morgan. “Give that to Dad—I thought this wouldn’t hurt, always wanted a chance to bond with the guy. It might survive the restoration.” Imprinted was Dad’s name in big capital letters and ivy plants etched around the border. With a shrug he clarified, “They sent it to me after he died—it’s like a lifetime-achievement award. It’s from MIT—they had a big ceremony for him and everything, very touching. I think the old guy just wanted someone to appreciate his passion for science. I know I always had a hard time—well, we always had a hard time talking to the guy.”

Present-Morgan nodded slowly and read the smaller inscription below Dad’s name. 

SCIENTIST, SCHOLAR, HUSBAND, FATHER. 

He thought with a smirk, At least they got them in order of importance.

Future-Morgan said, “We better quit wasting time.”

“What do we do now?”

“I’m just here to make sure the machine gets destroyed,” he said. “Then my job is done.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Just like that?”

Future-Morgan said, “If you do run, I’d suggest Central America. Global warming’s going to get a lot worse and I never heard anything bad about living near the equator—just gets hot. Besides, Georgia was born and raised in Panama—so maybe you’ll meet her again.”

Morgan smiled. At forty-two it seemed unlikely that he’d fall in love with someone enough to marry them, but maybe old age would change his outlook on relationships. Simply knowing that he had the innate ability to wed a woman and father children was a self-esteem boost. Too bad he’d probably be in prison for the rest of his life. He went to the closet and grabbed the doorknob and said, “Better just do it like a band-aid, huh?”

Future-Morgan nodded. He closed his eyes and sat on the bed.

What he planned on doing was tearing out the battery and ripping down all the copper wires and yanking the aluminum cap from the ceiling. It would take three seconds—maybe four. And Morgan wished he’d never built the stupid thing but reminded himself that it had been destiny—that his future-self had planned it to happen this way. Morgan held his breath. Something extraordinary was about to happen. He now controlled the fate of the future.

Then the time-machine hummed and whirred. It turned itself on.

Morgan stepped back and said, “I didn’t do it.”

The frame of the closet door flashed in a bright white light—the smell of smoke filtered through the cracks. Morgan sniffed. He glanced at his horrified future-self, and then turned back to the door. The magnets on the closet floor were spinning on their spools—Morgan could hear them winding down—and the copper wires sizzled. The silence that filled the bedroom was gradually replaced by the sound of low-flying helicopters and the search-party sirens outside.

Then the time-machine opened.

“No way,” said future-Morgan, standing up.

5

Present-Morgan saw little significance in this moment when a short bulbous man stepped out from the closet with a handgun and a conniving politician’s smile. It took a second to recognize Max Regal from the television—his little face, his squat form—because the cameras had made him seem much more average-sized. The mayor-candidate came strolling out from the machine wearing a sharp suit and shiny black shoes and flashing a toothy grin. Morgan viewed him as a celebrity—a celebrity simultaneously brought back from the dead and from the future—and for a moment he forgot about Max Regal’s eventual contribution to the destruction of history.

“Max—you’re alive,” said future-Morgan.

“Well isn’t this the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” Max replied in a high-pitched nasal voice. The handgun he carried was aimed in between the two Morgans. “Are you guys all caught up, now? Did you tell him about me, Morgan? Did you tell him why you tried to kill me?”

“Tried?” future-Morgan echoed, scrunching up his face in deep confusion.

Morgan was also confused, though mostly frightened by the gun.

“You killed a decoy, my friend.”

Future-Morgan gasped. “You knew?”

“I monitor all time travel, hombre. I knew from the start—I’ve known all along that I’d have to take care of this when it happened. I knew back in 19-fucking-95.”

Morgan had his hands raised up like a hostage. Neither of the other men seemed to be paying attention to him—giving him a chance to side-step toward the machine. But when he took one too many moves, Max whipped around and turned the handgun on Morgan.

“Stop right there, buddy. I can’t let you do that.”

“Okay.”

“And—actually—while I’m here—” Max scanned the bedroom. “Where’s that notebook your dad kept all the notes in? I think I’d feel better if I held onto the original, too.”

Future-Morgan said, “Don’t give him anything.”

“Shut up, terrorist.”

“I’m not a terrorist.”

“You’re a fucking terrorist in my book,” Max Regal snapped. “Say something else and I’ll shoot you in your goddamn stomach, okay?”

“I’ll—” present-Morgan tried to think quickly, “I’ll—uh—I’ll give you the notebook if you let us live.” He tried to smile and couldn’t, he was trembling and confused. Morgan had a feeling that Max didn’t plan on letting either of them live.

“Show me the book and maybe I’ll think about it,” Max said. He aimed the gun at future-Morgan and warned, “Any funny business and I’ll shoot your twin.”

“Don’t give him the boo—OORRRHHH!” future-Morgan’s words blended into a solid terrible scream when Max shot two bullets into the man’s gut. Blood exploded out across the mattress and spotted the wall—gushing down in horrible splashes to the floor. Future-Morgan stumbled backward and tripped over the edge of the bed and fell to the ground, gasping and groaning and groping for support. He gurgled and spit blood and maneuvered himself to the wall to lean backward and bleed, his hands holding the gore above his waist. He began to mutter, “Oh my God,” in a looping whisper.

“He’s tried to kill me before,” Max explained to present-Morgan, “in the future.”

Morgan felt a wrenching pain in his gut. The loud gunshot and rush of movement had overwhelmed his senses. During the excitement he’d absentmindedly stepped closer to the time-machine and was more-or-less standing right in front of the open closet door. Max maneuvered to stand between the two Morgans. Now the gun was aimed at present-day Morgan and fully capable of sending two spiraling bullets through his guts, too, which was a horrible thing to imagine. Morgan couldn’t help it when his eyes went wet with tears, when he felt compelled to cry. This wasn’t fair.

Max jeered, “He’s a historical terrorist. He’s a nuisance. He’s dirt.”

Future-Morgan was bleeding to death on the floor.

“So,” Max said, “your father’s notebook?”

“I don’t really have it,” Morgan lied.

“Oh?”

“I was going to trick you.”

Max laughed. “Trick me?”

Morgan nodded.

“Boy—do you see this?” he asked, showing the wrist-watch, “This is a motherfucking time-machine on my fucking wrist. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. You think you can trick me? You think you can do something that I didn’t know was already going to happen?”

Morgan shrugged.

Then future-Morgan was on his feet—silent despite the visible pain this caused him—and Max Regal was completely unprepared for the tackle that sent him tumbling headfirst into the closet. Present-Morgan moved out of the way, flinching in fear of an accidental discharge, and soon discovered the gun hadn’t fired and that Max and future-Morgan were punching each other in the time-machine. He quickly went to help. Future-Morgan was pinning Max down and shouting unintelligibly into his face, blood getting all over the place, and Max was thrashing savagely on future-Morgan’s back. The gun had been knocked into the corner of the closet and out of reach. Max cursed, “You bastard! This suit cost me nine hundred dollars!”

Then present-Morgan looked up.

He saw the aluminum bowl hanging above the struggle and knew instantly what he had to do. The battery, the power amplifier—if he didn’t turn the kitchen timer the machine was basically an electric chair. Morgan lunged forward and stepped on Max’s gut to reach up and lower the bowl from the ceiling. Max cried out and began to cough and cry, realizing that he’d been trapped. Future-Morgan had overcome the scratches and punches; the overweight flub known as Max Regal was starting to lose strength. Max wheezed like a dog’s chew-toy. Morgan noticed that future-Morgan was specifically guarding the man’s left arm to keep the bastard from jumping time and so Morgan stepped down on Max’s right wrist—cracking it, accidentally, and causing the fat man to scream louder—to keep himself protected. Morgan felt sick about this all of a sudden. He didn’t want to do this.

But he had to.

So he capped Max’s skull with the bowl and tugged the rubber strap beneath his chin, forcing Max to bite off the tip of his own tongue and Max’s eyes went wider than Oreo’s and bulged, quivered—he was crying and screaming behind his clenched teeth. Morgan clambered over future-Morgan’s back to grab the power amplifier and took it with him as he stumbled backward out of the closet. He said in a panic to future-Morgan, “Get off him, man. Get off him!”

“Do—it. Do it!” future-Morgan cried back weakly. He croaked, “I’m not—”

Max vigorously shook his head and tried to undo the strap with his hand but couldn’t bend his wrist. Morgan heard sirens and helicopters outside—right outside his window—and he saw flashes of red and blue on the windowblinds. Morgan had no intention of flipping the switch when future-Morgan was on top of Max—without using the kitchen timer, the magnets wouldn’t spin and the volts would electrocute them both to a crisp. Unwilling to do that, he cried out, “Morgan! Get the hell out of there already!” and it felt like yelling at himself in the mirror. His reflection was stubborn and motionless, flattened over Max like a heavy rug. Morgan yelled again but his future-self made no response. 

“Oh,” Morgan said, realizing that future-Morgan had been dead for some time.

Max realized this at the same moment and, sensing freedom, suddenly burst forward and screeched, snarling toward Morgan with the most ill-will to ever pour from the teary vengeful eyes of a fearful man. Morgan ended that terrifying moment with the flick of a switch. Those two bulging eyeballs popped in a splash of melted marshmallow and sparks and then Max Regal fell flailing to the floor in an electric seizure. He thrashed and thrashed for a few seconds and then sizzled and died.

Morgan turned the amplifier off and dropped it with a heavy thunk and backed away from what had just happened, bumping into the windowblinds. He risked a glance down at the road below and, as he’d thought, there were police cruisers parked in the dozens and officers scrambling everywhere. No doubt about it: he was screwed. Morgan turned back to look at the disastrous results. He wasn’t quite done, yet, but he wanted to find that gold plaque before moving ahead. He found it on the bed. His dad’s plaque. His father—Morgan laughed—this was all Dad’s fault. Dad. Such an abstract character during his youth—inventor of time travel. There was power to what Dad had devoted his life to. Morgan knew that now—he’d seen it firsthand when he built a goddamn time-machine in his closet and saved the future. No one would believe him.

No one should believe him.

It was too dangerous.

Morgan spent most of the last sixty seconds before being arrested gathering his father’s journal and ripping up the time-machine blueprints. He dropped the pieces in the toilet and flushed. He stood for twelve seconds looking down at Max Regal’s body, then had a brilliant idea and burnt up twenty seconds fishing two-hundred dollars from the politician’s wallet—for Dad—and stuffed the bills into his pocket. Stepping over Max’s beached-whale body into the closet, Morgan yanked the copper wires from the wall and tore all the connections free. And right before his eyes—like a bad film edit—the two bodies and blood-stains disappeared as quickly as a blink. Morgan scanned the bare floor around him with awe—every last splash of red was gone, every trace that anyone had been here was gone. Was it that simple? Had the future been changed? Had he un-invented time travel for good?

He had about ten seconds to smile and feel grateful that everything had kinda worked out for the better. The machine was destroyed, the future was saved, and he’d snagged some souvenirs for Dad. The plaque, the money—oh, wait—Morgan reached into his pocket and the money was gone. Had he dropped it? No—it simply wasn’t there. Gone, like the bloodstains. But yet the plaque remained—why? With the un-invention of time travel, the money would never have been owed—it belonged to a future that no longer existed. Morgan was either high off adrenaline or he was truly beginning to understand the machine. The plaque was an object that was real throughout time and all existence—it was an honor to be given to Dad no matter what future awaited them. Maybe it was allowed to stay because it made no difference for destiny whether the plaque was delivered now or in a future when his children accepted it for him during a public ceremony. If Dad was confused by it, Morgan planned to tell him, “Think of this like knowing ahead of time that people gave a damn about you when you were living.”

 Morgan held the plaque tightly and sat on the sofa and waited. Though the future had been changed, it had left its mark on the present. He could hear the grunting, shouting officers stampeding up the staircase—the floor shook. What they would blame him for were the crimes future-Morgan had committed. Two attempted assassinations and one murdered decoy would put Morgan behind bars for a long, long time. 

This was the sacrifice. This was something greater than himself, the way donors probably feel when they give up an organ to save a life. He took comfort knowing he didn’t really have a choice. Morgan wasn’t sure what had led him to this moment so abruptly when a few days ago he knew nothing more about time travel than the scribbles in his father’s old notebook. His father—that old guy, again. Dad sacrificed his family—his life, essentially—for science. Morgan stepped back and recognized that he was doing the same thing. Wasn’t he? By his choice or the choice of a future version of himself that now no longer existed, Morgan sat on the sofa and accepted the consequences. If present-day Max Regal never thought about time travel again for the rest of his life, then Morgan had succeeded—and for that it was worth it.

The End