Friday Fiction for May 13, 2011

Speak to the Mountain, and find our gracious hostess for Friday Fiction this week, Catrina. What better way to cap a busy week, than with some great fiction?

Did you ever stop to think about what you couldn’t use in the past, if you could go there?

Step Through

Part 3

By Rick Higginson

Ian looked from the check, to Jeff, and then to the floor. “What if I don’t want to step through?”

“Do you think my call was random? Dude, I already know you will, and I know why, even if you don’t know yet. Go – you’ll figure it out once you’re there. Just leave your modern tech here. It won’t do you any good back then, anyways, and if you accidentally pull it out, it could draw more of that unwanted attention.”

He handed his phone to Jeff, and walked through the oval before he thought better of it. I should feel something, he thought. The sensation was no different than if he’d walked from one side of the room to the other, and Jeff smiled at him through the aperture. “I just walk back through when I’m ready to return?” he asked.

“Depends on how long you want to stay. If you’re going to be just a few hours, I’ll keep the Step Through active. If you want to hang around for a few days, though, I’ll shut it off for now, and re-open it after the amount of time you tell me.”

“You’re not pulling my leg? I’m really twenty-one years in the past?”

“Walk around the Step Through; you’ll find I’m not there. Then, go downstairs and find any newspaper machine. Oh, you’ll need this - ” He tossed a keychain through the opening. “Front door key. You’ll find it easier getting in and out the normal way, rather than trying to break in again.”

“Okay. I’ll be back in a few hours, then.”

The stairs were dark, and when he reached for the switch for the LED lights, there was only bare wall. He descended by feel, and emerged into the dimly-lit front room. Light penetrated the dirty windows, except for the much newer one that admitted a bright beam towards a far corner. The dusty floor was liberally marked with scuffs and shoeprints, leading from the repaired window towards the staircase and the door to the back rooms.

He paused at the door, looking through the glass pane. No one milled about the old area, so he slipped the key into the lock and released the bolt. With a squeal that begged for some penetrating oil, the door swung inward, admitting moderately warm, and only slightly damp, air. After locking the door from the outside, he turned and looked skyward. Only a few scattered clouds drifted overhead, and none that even hinted at a threat of snow.

A Navy jet passed overhead, on approach to the nearby air station, and with a sense of wonder, Ian realized he hadn’t seen one of that model flying in over fifteen years. He really did it – I am in the past. Walking faster, he hurried away from the deserted old building, towards the business district and a bank.

The sidewalks soon filled with people, and he fought to keep from laughing at the way they were dressed. I can’t believe we used to think that looked good, he thought, glancing at the way one young man wore his hair.

He found the bank that matched the check Jeff had given him, and waited his turn in line for a teller. When he reached the window, he handed her the check. “I’d like to open an account with this,” he said.

She pointed to a far desk. “New accounts are over there,” she said.

“Oh.” The large sign above the desk stating ‘NEW ACCOUNTS’ made him feel a bit foolish. There appeared to be several people already waiting to create their accounts. “Well, can I just cash the check for now, and open the account later?”

“Certainly,” she said. “May I see some identification?”

Without thinking, he pulled his wallet and opened it to his driver’s license.

Her eyebrows raised for a moment. “I haven’t seen that style before; must be a new type they’re trying out.” She wrote the number on the check, and typed the information from the check into her computer.

With his heart thumping, he quickly put the wallet back in his pocket. Oh, man, if she had paid attention to the dates on my license? I wasn’t quite old enough to drive on this date.

“Are large bills okay?” she asked.

“They’re fine, through I do need some small stuff, too, and maybe some change. There is a payphone close by, right?” When was the last time I needed to ask that question?

She counted out the money, and had him sign the receipt. “Just outside the door, then turn left to the corner. There’s a stand of phones close to the bus stop. Will there be anything else, sir?”

He shook his head. “No, that’s all I need for now, thank you.”

“Have a nice day,” she said, and then looked towards the line. “Next, please.”

There was a wait for a payphone, and he chuckled at that reminder of an obsolete concept. There are cellphones, but not nearly as common or as affordable as in the future. Man, what would they think of my smartphone? A computer that doesn’t do a fraction of what it does, is freakin’ huge.

His turn came for the phone, and he dropped the coin in the slot. He dialed the number from memory, wondering if the time would come that he would ever forget it, and listened to the sound of the ring signal.

His heart jumped when the voice answered with a slightly annoyed, “Hello.”

Ian swallowed hard, and barely managed to choke out, “Dad?”

To be continued...

Friday Fiction for May 6, 2011

Karlene is our hostess this week, and you’ll find the Linky Tool for Friday Fiction on her blog, Dancin’ In The Rain. Check it out for some refreshing reading, and don’t forget to call Mom this weekend (if she’s still around) and wish her a Happy Mother’s Day.

As promised, here’s Part 2 of Step Through…

Step Through

Part 2

By Rick Higginson

“He is precisely where he appears to be. What has changed is when he is there. I call this a ‘Step-Through.’ It’s a step through time.”

“A time machine? You figured out a way to travel through time?”

“Kind of, but not how the time machine is typically portrayed. Chonos, front!”

The dog jumped back through the oval, and sat at Jeff’s feet, holding the ball up for him to take.

Jeff took the ball, and tossed it to another corner of the room, releasing the dog to chase it. “For longer than we know, we’ve referred to the ‘time line,’ when what we should have been referring to is the time-helix. Time isn’t a straight line, it’s a coil, or a spring, and each wind touches the previous. What this does, is connect between the two winds where they touch. Step through, and you change from this part of the coil, to the previous turn.”

“You’re serious? You can go back in time? You can, like, go back and see the day you were born?”

“Uh, no. You see, the problem with the step through is that it only connects to the point in time that corresponds to the previous turn of the helix.”

“So, how far back is that?”

“Six hundred, sixty-six million, six hundred, sixty-six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six seconds. About twenty one years and fifty one days. That’s the duration of each turn of the helix, and the step-through interval never changes. That’s another difference from classic sci-fi time-travel. In sci-fi, you could return to the moment you left, and to those waiting, it was like you were never gone. With the Step-Through, however much time you spend in the past, is how much time has elapsed here when you return.”

He ventured a hand towards the opening, reaching through even as he leaned around to look at the other side. “This is just too freaky. I can still feel my hand just fine, but it’s not there.”

Jeff laughed. “Sure it is. It’s there, twenty-one years ago. The Step-Through isn’t like a transporter beam that scrambles your molecules and reassembles them on the other side. It’s just a doorway between the two coils, just like stepping from one room to another. If you stick your hand through a door into another room, your hand doesn’t cease to exist if you can’t see it. Think about it – if there was a problem having one part of the body on one side, and the other part on the other, how could Chronos jump through? For at least a moment, he’s on both sides.”

“And this is your business now?”

“Yep. I’ve made a pretty good living with this since building it. I even managed to finance building it by using it.”

“How? I can understand how you could make money with something like this, but how did you finance building it?”

“I anonymously invested in my own work, through a fund I set up just for the purpose. When you know what stocks are going to do well, and especially which IPO’s are going to eventually take off, it’s not hard to make plenty of money. The trick is, don’t put too much in one stock. Good gains from a diversified portfolio keeps the risk of unwanted attention at a minimum.”

Ian stared through the opening, considering the implications. “We could change things. We could stop terrible things from happening with this.” He swallowed. “I could save my Dad. I could tell him to get to the hospital before the heart attack. He could have lived if he’d gotten medical attention right away.”

Jeff rested a hand on his shoulder. “You could try, but I can tell you already, you’ll fail. If you’d succeeded in saving him, we’d already know it. You see, everything we might do in the past, has already happened. We saw that window fixed – it didn’t change from the history we remembered, because I became a part of that history. The same would be true for your Dad. If you went back and contacted him, and told him to go to the hospital the day of his heart attack, he would either ignore your advice, thinking you were some kind of crackpot, or when the time actually came, he’d forget. All the fears of paradox? They’re pointless.”

“But what about things like the mass shootings at schools or offices? Surely, we could save lives on something like that.”

“Any lives you might save with a warning, you’ve already saved. Those that we could, right now, read about having been killed, would still be killed. Even with the Step-Through, we can’t change the past, because it’s already happened. That’s the biggest point you have to understand – whatever times you decide to go through, you’ve already gone through. You won’t be doing something that never happened before.”

“Then what’s the point? Why bother if we can’t change the past?”

“We don’t change the past, but we can change our future, and what we do in the past becomes our knowledge in the now. You’re probably already a wealthy man, but you won’t know what your bank accounts or investments are, until you go back and make them. The money is already sitting somewhere, just waiting until you come back through, knowing where to find it.”

“I guess I should have brought some money along.”

“No worry. Remember that ten bucks I borrowed from you years ago, and never paid back?”

“I’d forgotten all about that.”

“I didn’t. I went back and invested it.” He handed him a check. “Here’s the dividend on the investment, that I went and withdrew last week.”

Ian looked at the total, and then at the dates on the check. “This check is twenty-one years old, and it says, ‘Not Valid After 180 Days.’”

“Okay, let me point out one other thing to be careful about with the step-through. Dollar bills? They have serial numbers. If I grab a circulated dollar that was printed over twenty-one years ago, and take it back to spend, then there will be two bills with that serial number in that time. While the odds are extremely slim, if someone figures out there are multiple bills with the same number, it raises counterfeiting concerns, and attention we don’t want. I started with change – it’s untraceable, and twenty bucks in quarters is still twenty bucks. Twenty bucks on a long-shot horse that history recorded winning, makes for a nice gain. Once I started gaining money in the past, I simply reinvested it.” He pointed through the oval. “Take the check, and either just deposit it in a simple account, or buy some stock that you know will take off. It’s your money now – well, actually, it’s your money back then. That check is worthless now, but on the other side of the Step Through? It’ll be worth whatever you decide to make of it.”

To be continued…

Friday Fiction for April 29, 2011

Debra is our hostess for this last Friday Fiction in April, over on her blog, Writing With Debra. Go sit a spell, and enjoy some fiction reading after the work week.

I have a new short story to share this week. I’m not sure yet how long it will be, but I’ve been having fun thinking of the concept. Without further ado, here’s part 1.

Step Through

By Rick Higginson

Ian glanced at the address on the building, and then checked the text message on his phone to be sure he’d read it correctly. The old building had been vacant for as long as he could remember, and had collected its own local lore of strange happenings inside. He and his friends had once broken open a window on Halloween, daring to spend the night in the haunt. Nothing had happened, but when they returned later the next day, the window had not only been repaired, but reinforced.

Okay, Jeff, this place is certainly a trip down memory lane, but why would you want me to meet you here? He slipped the phone back in his pocket, and put the glove back on his hand. Occasional flurries of snow drifted on the breeze, confirming the weatherman’s prediction of a cold storm hitting the area that day. He paced a few minutes, and then decided to take refuge from the wind chill in the building’s entrance alcove.

He had no sooner leaned in the lee of the wall, when the door swung open.

“You made it,” Jeff said, from inside the door. “Come on in.”

“How did you get in there?” Ian asked.

“With the key.”

“Okay, where did you get the key?”

“From the realtor, when I bought this building.”

He paused on the threshold. “You bought this building? When did that happen, and whatever for?”

“Come on in, and I’ll explain inside. It’s warmer in here, and I have something I need to show you.”

The front part of the building remained unlit, and looked very much like it had on that long-past Halloween. “So, are you going to fix it up and open a business, or something?”

“It’s as fixed up as I need it right now, and I’ve already established a ‘business’ here.” Jeff locked the door, and adjusted the shade on the door to once again block any outside view. He turned on a flashlight, and aimed it towards the stairway at the back of the building. “This way,” he said.

Something cold and wet pushed at Ian’s hand, startling him momentarily. He glanced down, and a pair of ghostly blue eyes stared back at him, just before the dog gave his hand an experimental lick. “Your dog just gave me a heart attack. When did you get a dog?”

“Chronos? Oh, man, a couple of years ago, I think. He’s been helping me in my work. If you scratch his ears, you’ll have a friend. If you happen to have anything to eat in your pockets, you’ll have a friend forever. He’s a shameless mooch.” He reached the stairway, and flipped a switch on the wall. White LED lights illuminated the stairwell, and he ascended the stairs. “Up this way,” he said.

“Since you bought this place, did you think to ask the realtor who had fixed that window when we broke in? Man, what was that? Twenty-two years ago? Twenty-three?”

“Almost twenty-two, and, um, actually, it was me that fixed the window.”

Ian stopped a few steps from the top of the stairs. “You? How? The whole group of us was together the entire time. And why would you care about fixing the window, anyway?”

“I cared, because I owned the building.”

“Jeff, have you been doing something with chemicals up here? I think you’ve slipped a cog or two. If you had owned the building back then, why would we have needed to break in?”

“Because, back then, I didn’t know I owned the building.”

“All right – now I know you’re looney-tunes. You said a few minutes ago that you got the key from the realtor when you bought it, so how could you not know you owned it?”

He turned off the lights over the stairwell. “Come on up here, and I’ll show you.”

He climbed the last three steps by the residual light from the top floor, and stepped into a large room that was bare, except for a large oval ring, standing in the center of the room. “Huh. What? Are you an artist now, making abstract sculptures?”

Jeff grinned, and shook his head. “No, my old friend, this is my business. This is how I make my living, and how I bought this building.”

“Really? So where was this thing back when we were kids, and when you supposedly bought this building?”

“It’s always been right here.”

“Bull. We came up the stairs that Halloween night, and it wasn’t here.”

“Well, no, and yes. If you’d been in the building when I fixed the window, it would sort’ve been here.” He stood directly in front of the aperture. “Look through the opening, Ian. What do you see?”

With an impatient huff, he stared through the opening. “I see the other side of the room.”

He pulled a tennis ball from his coat pocket. “Now, watch this.” He tossed the ball through the opening. “Chronos, get the ball!”

The dog jumped through the opening and chased the bouncing ball until he caught up with it.

“Chronos, sit! Wait!” Jeff commanded.

Chronos sat with the ball in his mouth, facing the two men.

“Okay, Ian. Now, walk around the opening, and take the ball from Chronos.”

He skirted the structure, and stopped short. The other side of the room was empty. “He’s not here,” he said.

“He hasn’t moved. Come back here and look.”

He returned to Jeff’s side and looked. Chronos was still sitting in the same position, just on the other side of the oval. Leaning over to look around the edge of the oval, all he saw was the bare floor, but through the oval, the dog sat, waiting for the command to return. “Where is he, and just what is this thing?”

“He is precisely where he appears to be. What has changed is when he is there. I call this a ‘Step-Through.’ It’s a step through time.”

To be continued…

Friday Fiction for April 22, 2011

Vonnie is hosting Friday Fiction this week, so make sure you stop by My Back Door, enjoy reading “Lilyanna,” and find the Linky tool with more reading for your holiday weekend.

Last week’s entry was rather heavy, and I wanted something light and fun this week. While this Challenge Entry from early 2009 didn’t place in the top ten of either my Level or the Editor’s Choice, it was one of my favorites just for the smiles I had while writing it. Please keep in mind that this is purely fiction, and that none of this actually transpired between my wife and me, or with any couples that we know.

Post-European Counseling

Topic: Europe (excluding the United Kingdom)

Challenge Entry; week of February 19, 2009

“So,” the Pastor said as we took our seats in his office. “How was Europe?”

“It was a blast,” I replied, grinning like an idiot.

“That’s why we’re here,” my wife said, pointedly not looking in my direction.

Pastor Street eased back into his chair with a concerned expression. “Oh? Is something wrong? You were so looking forward to the concert tour.”

“I was,” she said. “It was like a dream come true being a musician for such a talented Christian singer. I should have known better than to suggest that he-” She jabbed a thumb in my direction. “-serve as a roadie.”

I shrugged. “I thought they appreciated my work.”

“Your work wasn’t the problem.”

The Pastor looked at her over the top of his glasses. “There was a problem, then?”

“From the moment we met up with the tour in Madrid,” she said. “Before I could even introduce him, he stepped forward and started singing.”

That was my cue. “Just call me Schlepper, Schlepper,” I sang. “Toting and fetching, never kvetching…”

She cut me off with a glare.

“That doesn’t seem so bad,” Pastor Street observed.

“Oh, that was just the beginning. When we got to Paris, we went to visit Notre Dame Cathedral.” She stood up. “He threw me over his shoulder and started running for the door, yelling, ‘Sanctuary! Sanctuary!’ Most of the tour crew was there; I was so embarrassed, I wanted to just disappear.”

Pastor Street was fighting to keep a straight face as he looked at me. “You didn’t!”

“Hey, at least I didn’t carry her all the way to the belfry,” I said.

She started pacing behind the chair. “While we were in Berlin, we drove down to Wittenberg to visit Schlosskirche, and genius here tries to tape his own list of theses to the door.”

“What?” I said. “Isn’t it about time for another Reformation?”

“You called for clergy to wear Groucho glasses!”

“I think Martin Luther would have appreciated the idea. He could have worn a pair while denouncing the indulgences.” I went into my best Groucho imitation. “Indulgences; that’s the most ridiculous thing I eveh hoid.”

“In Belgium, you kept asking for sprouts!”

“I never liked Brussels sprouts here. I thought maybe they were better where they originated.”

“You spent the entire time we were in the Netherlands singing, ‘There were three jolly fishermen’.”

I grinned. “They all went down to Amster-”

“Don’t you DARE start that again!”

“Sorry,” I said. “Boy Scout camp flashbacks.”

“In Copenhagen, you referred to the Mayor as the Great Dane.”

“Well, he is a great guy, and he is a Dane.”

She rolled her eyes and gestured her frustration. “I don’t even want to think about Stockholm.”

“What happened in Stockholm?” the Pastor asked.

She covered her face with her hands.

“Well,” I started to explain. “The whole tour crew was treated to a nice restaurant…”

“That’s just it!” She exclaimed. “It was a NICE restaurant. One of the nicest in the city, and you – you-” She was almost in tears. “One of the foremost chefs in the country brings our food to the table and you-”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Pastor Street said. “What did you do, Jack?”

I was already laughing at the memory. “Erst gefurnee ver de ber,” I said.

“You did the Swedish Chef in a fancy Stockholm restaurant?” he asked, barely containing his own laughter.

“He’s always been one of my favorite Muppets.”

My wife gave the Pastor an incredulous look. “You think this is funny?”

“You have to admit, there is a certain humor to it,” he said.

“I’ll be lucky if I ever get hired to work a tour again, and you two think it’s funny!” She grabbed her purse. “Men,” she huffed as she walked out of the office.

Pastor Street sighed. “You really should go after her and apologize, Jack. Even then, I think you’re going to be in the doghouse for a while.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said. “The doghouse is okay, though. I can be the Swedish Chef’s dog – erf erf, bork bork bork!”

“Go apologize.”

I chased after her, figuring the letter I had in my pocket would help soften her mood. She didn’t know yet, but the same singer had invited us to join them for the Australia tour next year.

I was already getting my Steve Irwin and Crocodile Dundee impersonations ready.

Ponderings for April 19, 2011

Passover Ponderings

Dayeinu

By Rick Higginson

The Jewish Passover Seder is a beautiful ceremony, enhanced by the way each family or group tends to individualize the observance. The personality of the person leading the Seder, along with the dynamics of those gathered for the meal, bring changes even from year to year in the same setting. Certain elements, however, are traditionally kept in the Seder, both in keeping with the commands regarding the observance, and the customs handed down through countless generations.

One of these is the Dayeinu. Spoken or sang, the Dayeinu takes the gathering through a progression of the events associated with the first Passover, with each event marked by reciting the word, dayeinu. It starts with, “If He had brought us out of Egypt, but not executed judgment upon our oppressors, dayeinu.”

Dayeinu means something along the lines of, “It would have been enough,” though there are other nuances involved. There is an implication of, “It would have been more than we deserved,” or, “It would have been more than we had the right to ask for.” The Dayeinu takes fifteen steps of God’s action on behalf of Israel – five relating to the deliverance from slavery, five relating to the miracles of the Exodus, and five relating to the covenant relationship with God that Israel is brought into – and declares that each is itself enough of a blessing from God.

Dayeinu is both an expression of worship and humility. It declares the glory of each blessing, but also declares that if each blessing had been the last, it would have been enough to show God’s love for His people. It states, “It is only by God’s great love that we may approach and ask for anything more.” It’s certainly nothing that we have earned.

It’s a strange pronouncement in our modern, entitlement culture, to declare that if God were to never bless us again, He would still have done enough for us. Even within the Christian Church, we see ample teachings and doctrines encouraging us to all but demand blessings from God, as if these blessings were our due.

How would it be received in our churches, if we taught the concept of Dayeinu?

Singer/Songwriter John Fischer wrote a song back in the 1970s titled, Circle of Blessing. The song dealt with the loss of a child during pregnancy, and the second verse went as follows:

The hard rain, it falls, the same on us all. And how you do all depends on your point of view. One man may curse, while another says, ‘It could be worse,’ as he lifts his cup, whether full or empty, to You.

He lifts his cup, whether full or empty, to God. The cup is not being lifted to ask for a refill, but rather, is being lifted in an expression of praise and thanksgiving. Like Job, the lifter is declaring, “The Lord has given; the Lord has taken. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.” If we praise God with the expectation of being blessed by Him in return, then we are not really praising. We are performing or reciting for pay, and in a very real way, engaging in a form of spiritual harlotry. Our love for God should be given freely, without conditions set for the delivering of our affections.

As this Passover begins, and as Christendom celebrates the death and resurrection of Messiah, we should ask ourselves this question – If God were to never bless us again, would we still see all He has done already as enough?

Full or empty, our challenge (not just yours, but mine as well) is to lift our cups and declare, “Dayeinu.”