This Time Tomorrow(44)

“Nepotism,” Simon coughed into his hand, winking. Both of his adult sons worked at the publishing company that put out his books, and eventually, after Simon died, one of them would keep writing books and publishing them under Simon’s name.

“I just want to understand the various theories, I guess. About how it works. How time travel works,” Alice said. She tucked her chin between her knees.

“Well, you’ve got time loops, time circuits, stubs, multiverses, string theory . . .” Howard said.

“You’ve got wormholes, slow time travel, fast time travel, time machines . . .” Simon said.

“Did you ever read A Wrinkle in Time, Al? Tesseracts?” Howard said. “Basically, a scrunched-up place in the universe where space and time are sort of folded, and you can get through.”

“Or like Back to the Future,” Chip said. “He had a time machine and just needed certain fuel, and to go eighty-eight miles per hour, and then he was in business.”

“I was in Back to the Future,” John said. “I had one line.”

“Oh, yes,” Howard said. “?‘Wow, man!’ Or something, wasn’t it? I’ve always been partial to the Jack Finney model; that’s where this guy gets drafted into this special time travel program, but all he actually needs is to be in a period-precise apartment in the Dakota, and then he sort of feels it change, and then he’s there, a hundred years ago.”

“What are the circuits?” Alice said. “Loops? Stubs?”

“Have you heard of the grandfather paradox?” Chip asked. “Sometimes people call it the Baby Hitler problem. You go back in time, you kill Baby Hitler—does that prevent the Holocaust? Or if you push your grandfather off a bridge, then your parents aren’t born, then you aren’t born; what happens to you, you know?”

“Shit,” Alice said. “Okay.”

“Basically, in some time travel, there’s a loop in which things can change, and what you do affects everyone else: i.e., you kill Baby Hitler and then Hitler doesn’t exist, and that could affect a million other things and change history entirely. Or there’s a loop where nothing changes except the fact that you’ve done it before, like Groundhog Day.” Alice hadn’t considered the possibility that she would wake up the next morning and have to do the whole thing again. What was worse than turning sixteen once? Turning sixteen a hundred times in a row. Turning sixteen forever. She wondered what would happen to the part of her brain that was forty, if it would eventually fade to black, a room with no electricity.

“And then you’re getting into the idea of the multiverse—if you go back in time and change something, are you changing the future, period? Or are you just changing one possible future, and the other future—the future you left—still exists?” Howard said.

“This is giving me a headache,” Alice said.

“You know what time travel movie I always liked?” said John. “The one where Superman had to go back in time to save Lois Lane, and he just had to fly extra fast. Simple, effective.”

“I like the ones where the person has no say and is just yanked back and forth, like Kindred,” said Simon. He took out a cigarette and lit it, and then one by one, so did all the other men in the room. “My readers wouldn’t go for it, but a lot of people would.”

“The Time Brothers had a machine. You had one—maybe two?—with time travel, Simon?” Chip said. “The one with the paleontologist who goes back to the Triassic, what did he have? A magic bone?” He stifled a laugh.

“Yes, it was a magic bone, fuck you very much,” Simon said. “That magic bone bought me a house in East Hampton.”

“How nice for you and your bone,” Chip said.

“What’s it called when someone uses information from the future to influence the past? Like Biff and the almanac?” Alice asked.

“Well, that’s just good thinking,” Simon said, smiling.

“Right, so if I was, like, from the future, and I came back to tell you that at some year in the next ten years, the Red Sox will win the World Series, and then you all made a bazillion dollars by betting on the Red Sox, that’s just good news, because it doesn’t hurt anybody?” Alice asked. Everyone groaned, except Howard, the lone Bostonian. He cheered and pumped both fists in the air.

“Well, define hurt,” Simon said. “I personally bleed Yankee blue, so it would hurt me. But sure, I see what you mean.”

“Is this what you guys do at these things? You sit around and talk about books and movies and just make fun of each other?” Alice asked.

“Sometimes people bring margarita machines,” Chip said. “Or drugs.” Howard elbowed him. “She’s sixteen! Come on! Alice, do you really walk through a crowd of grown-up people in costumes and think to yourself, ‘I bet all these people are dead sober’?”

“No,” Alice said. “I don’t. But so how does a stub work? What’s a stub?”

“Like a parallel timeline, one that doesn’t affect the future that already happened. Sometimes people call it a continuum, or a continuing timeline, which I guess just means it can go on and on and not loop back in.” Howard crossed his arms. “I think I’ve read more books than all of you.”