176 Days Until Today by Nathaniel Tower3/22/2009 1:38:00 AM176 Days Until Today
By Nathaniel Tower
As he walked down the street he had walked many times before, his eye was caught by something it had not before seen, hanging on a post that had been there every time he had walked down the street before. He had seen the post before, standing sturdily in its cemented inanimateness, but he had never really noticed it before. Of course there had never been a reason to notice it. After all, it was, is, and always will be nothing more than a post, unappreciated during the day when its only purpose was to hang flyers, and under appreciated at night when it provided a much needed but always taken-for-granted service to all that happened down the street. It was just a simple light pole, and on it hung a simple sign that had been carefully attached with an otherwise insignificant strip of a white adhesive that hid from the eye between the thick paper and the much thicker pole, wanting to forever join the two man-made objects in a harmony that only man could feel.
When the glance of the eye noticed the previously undetected announcement, it took only a moment before the man stopped in his tracks to ponder what it silently said to him. A quick yet highly complex process occurred as the man’s eye sent a message to the man’s brain, which quickly processed the message and then sent a message to the body beckoning it to stop. And just like that, the man, clad in pleated trousers and poorly buttoned oxford shirt that was unclasped at the top, came to a motionless halt, closing his stride so that his brown loafers nearly touched, the right heel protruding forward slightly more than the left, the pleats now accentuated crooked down the long legs they covered.
It took only a moment of stoppage before the man’s brain realized precisely what the flyer offered to him. That offer, printed clearly in black block letters that had boldly fixated themselves upon the paper that had fixated itself to the post that had fixated itself to the sidewalk, all of which had directly or indirectly fixated the man’s eye and subsequently his second eye as well as his brain, promised this man, and he supposed the others that passed, the hope of salvation. That was the word that had grasped his attention. Three simple syllables. They rolled off the tongue so easily, yet they promised something of such enormity. A word like this should have been thirty syllables the man thought.
The now statuesque man took no notice of the heavy pedestrian traffic that he diverted as he contemplated the significance of the word that stood so boldly inches in front of him. He gave no wonder to how he had never before seen this sign that hung promisingly on the path from office to bus that he traversed five times per week in this particular direction. As the throngs of workers walked hastily away from their work, he assumed the sign to be new, and he became giddy at the prospect of what it potentially promised.
After the bold word had fully soaked into the man’s brain and unsaved soul, he decided to follow the only logical next step, and so his brain sent a message to his eyes to look at what rested patiently below the umbrella of SALVATION, which for the first time he noticed was followed emphatically by a single straight line hanging above a blackened circle, an indicator that increased his giddiness tenfold.
By perusing the words below the emphatic declaration, the man learned the details of how his salvation could be achieved. While reading, it occurred to him that the sign had no affect on the other passersby, and he began to wonder if this were truly a sign from a power above reserved solely for him. Perhaps this sign were visible only to his eyes, its message registering only in his brain. This idea excited him even more, causing him to almost lose sight of the words that would lead him to his salvation.
After regaining his focus, the man could not be rattled, not even when one of those ignorant and impatient passersby bumped violently into him, a collision that caused his brown satchel to slip from his already loosened grip and crash to the concrete in another violent collision. As the satchel lay carelessly on the ground, his eyes laid carefully on the sign, and the words started to become clear.
He could achieve his salvation by attending a Christian rally, denomination unspecified, held at a local high school gymnasium. There were speakers of the motivational sort to be in attendance, none of which he was familiar with, but he certainly had heard of Christ before. While his knowledge of Christ was not extensive, he at least knew that the man would not be in attendance, so it struck him as odd when the sign suggested he could get to know him better at this rally. Despite his skepticism in this regard, he remained hopeful of what this rally could offer him, for he knew that at age thirty-five, salvation was a rather valuable commodity.
For a moment, a blaring car horn distracted him from the sign. His head turned to the street, pulling his eyes away from the few words he had yet to read, and he noticed the horn had nothing to do with him. Upon glancing away though, it occurred to him that his bus currently had come to a rest at his bus stop. A decision had to be made. He could read the last line of the flyer to determine the when of his salvation, or he could sprint awkwardly through the crowd to attempt to board this bus before it drove away. The former would force him to wait thirty more minutes, take a cab, or walk the twenty-seven blocks to his home. With no time for contemplation, he did indeed choose the former, which left him unfortunately in a state of hopelessness that quickly replaced an extreme sense of hope, all brought on in a matter of minutes by a simple sign. The rally had been scheduled for the second day of February, and on this balmy April day, a meeting in February offered no promise, and the man and his pleats trudged home with eyes focused on sidewalk, cracks and litter for twenty-seven blocks as the man tried to figure out a way to achieve a salvation that had been given away two months prior.
When Hubie, which is what his friends and wife liked to call him mainly because that’s what he liked them to call him, returned home nearly ninety minutes late, he realized several things. His first realization was that he was tired, especially after ascending the sixteen flights of stairs to reach his humble seventeenth floor apartment. His second realization was that he should have taken the elevator. His third realization was that he had left his brown satchel on the sidewalk next to that post, its sign and its false promises. His fourth and final realization was not so much a realization as it was a foolish hope: he had to find a way to go to that rally.
Hubie did not realize that he was nearly ninety minutes late, nor did he realize that his wife looked at him angrily as he opened the door, dressed in heels and dress, fresh makeup applied, ready to go out somewhere nice. Judging by her evil eye, his lateness would make them late for an important event of which he was not aware, but he had no awareness of any of this. He merely stood in the small foyer, looking ahead at the well-dressed life partner that blocked his path, sweating through his Oxford shirt, not noticing anything within the room other than his own misfortune.
The wife began speaking to the sweat-soaked man. “You’re late,” she shrilled at him futilely, for although he heard her voice, the quick yet complex process of sensory recognition that had gone through his body earlier that day was not triggered by what she said. “We have dinner reservations and I don’t think I need to remind you why.” The wife stormed away after raining down these words, her heels loudly pounding on the wooden floor indicating to the apartment dwellers directly below that there was trouble above. While she waited impatiently for him to apologize and get ready to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their marriage, Hubie sat flustered on the couch wondering desperately how he could attend that rally. Then maybe he could fix whatever was bugging the wife of his that had just slammed their bedroom door.
On the couch that night Hubie found himself tossing and turning, feet hanging over the edge. He cared not that his wife had not let him into the bedroom. He had not even taken the time to eat or undress before positioning himself horizontally on the soft cushions that offered him no comfort beneath his weary body. During the course of that sleepless night, it never occurred to him why his wife had not allowed him entrance. Perhaps it was because she was disappointed by his failure to gain salvation.
After several hours of restless movement, Hubie’s body finally subsided. Perhaps at this moment he fell asleep, or perhaps he merely had at last established his body in a position of comfort. Regardless, nothing interesting to observe occurred during the next several hours until finally, nearly at dawn, the man’s torso raised suddenly to become perpendicular with his lower half. He had it. There was only one logical solution. It may have come to him in a dream, but that did not matter. The man sprang from the couch, receiving an extra boost from the spring underneath the now unarranged cushions. His feet, still enclosed in brown loafers, hit the floor with a gentle thud that did not seem harmless to the dwellers below that were wakened by the sound. Without hesitation, Hubie sprinted around obstacles to his wife’s closed door. He pounded excitedly, not remembering her anger, not aware that she slept peacefully with her head resting on a pillowcase of Egyptian cotton that had dried of the salty tears that had been cried before sleep had come.
Hubie accompanied the pounding with a hoarse voice that shouted crackly, “Honey, I figured it out. I’m going to build a time machine.”
The woman stirred angrily, yet she had hope that perhaps the man had remembered and was now apologizing. She was unable to hear what the muffled voice yelled to her, but she clung to a hope eternally in her breast that this man was and always would be a perfect mate. Her brain told her heart to discard this romantic hope, but nevertheless she clung as she strained to comprehend the words he shouted.
Unable to understand the mumbling fool, she arose from her comfort and walked daintily across the rug, the shag hugging her bare toes with each step. Her hand grasped the knob, the extension of her arm causing the thin strap of her nightgown to fall off her shoulder and rest around her undefined bicep, almost resulting in the exposure of her bountiful breast. Slowly, the tired woman turned the knob clockwise, releasing the door from the frame, granting the man the entrance he had sought the previous night.
When the door had swung fully open and Hubie’s eyes gazed upon his wife standing vulnerably with one bare shoulder, he immediately ceased both his shouting and pounding, and embraced the beautiful woman before him.
The hug overjoyed her, but she had misinterpreted the man’s actions. This was no apology, nor was it a sexually driven act. Her joy vanished, her heart lost its eternal hope when his voice returned to announce, “Honey, I’m going to stay home from work today to begin the work on the time machine. We can still be saved.”
The woman pushed her husband with as much violence as she was capable of, sending him back into the hallway, and slammed the door harshly in his still smiling face.
***
“I’m leaving you,” she announced three weeks later when she returned from work to find the man had skipped his own work for the fifteenth consecutive day, the living room floor cluttered with parts and supplies, none of which she could recognize or name.
The man uttered an incoherent response, not lifting his eyes to the foreigner that had spoken to him for the first time in three days. He kept his eyes upon the hoarded material before him and around him. For the last few weeks he had done nothing but buy whatever he could find that might somehow aid in time traveling. The man had no background in science, so he had merely purchased or acquired through other means anything that seemed remotely scientific.
While the woman packed her things and stomped furiously around the apartment, Hubie continued to go about his business. He did not understand what her problem was, and he knew that his time machine would likely solve that problem as well, so he paid no notice to her. He simply allowed her to go about her feminine nonsense as he worked still on the machine. The woman purposefully placed her belongings in suitcases as he feigned purposefulness in his assembly of various parts. He may have well just closed his eyes and grabbed, for he was no more effective at time travel than a blind man is at reading an eye chart. If he did manage to make something that would function, sheer dumb luck would have driven it.
Upon finishing her hasty packing, the wife rushed to the door, proclaiming that she would never return if he didn’t throw away all those damned supplies and stop her, that someone else would get the rest of the things from the apartment that she wanted later, that he shouldn’t even bother trying to salvage their marriage unless he instantly gave up the bullshit he was currently doing. Her words did not immediately register with him, for he remained focused on his junk yard collection.
She hesitated at the door, secretly giving him one more chance to redeem himself, and when he said nothing, she turned in tears and slammed the door. The sound of the wood colliding together brought him a slight realization of what had happened, and he stubbornly shouted at the woman he didn’t know had left, “Well, when I do travel back in time, you won’t remember this, so I’ll win.” The silence that followed was to him a peaceful recognition of victory. He had finally been left alone to his work.
After two days of solitude, it occurred to Hubie that the woman no longer occupied the dwelling. For those two full days, he saw no sunlight, keeping the curtains drawn tightly, a gentle fear beginning to enter his mind that perhaps spies were about trying to steal his secrets and his salvation.
After the sixteenth day of his newfound bachelorhood, the man realized he had made no progress. The supplies he had simply were inferior. He would have to go back to work. A good job was essential for buying the supplies he would need, although he didn’t know at this point what those supplies were. Hopefully he could return to his job as an accountant. Until recently, he had never missed a day of work, never wanting to take even a day of vacation to take his wife to the countryside, so perhaps his nearly thirty days of absence would be overlooked.
Against his better judgment, Hubie’s boss did concede his job back, especially after hearing about his recent loss. Hubie was to return promptly and professionally the next day, and as he hung up the phone, a smug smile stretched over his face. Although he had always hated the job, it paid well, the hours were short, and he now felt as if he were in full control of his destiny. The work may delay his past, but once he traveled back in time, none of that loss would matter. With this reassuring thought, Hubie slept soundly on the couch, preparing for his return to society.
***
Sixty-five days had passed since Hubie had decided to build a time machine. During this time had had lost his wife, maintained his job, and collected many items that he felt would assist him. He also became a much more enlightened and well-read man. He attempted to read the H.G. Wells novel about a time machine, but he found the instructions for building the machine unclear. The novel focused too much on utter nonsense, and so he passed on the book after a few pages and tried the movie instead. While the movie did a nice job actually depicting the machine, it looked far more complex and expensive than he had hoped, so he abandoned that as well. Then he turned to the information superhighway and discovered many websites that offered him advice. Since none of the websites seemed to indicate that the creator had built a working time machine, rather than simply trusting one website, he trusted parts of them all, and pieced together his own plan by copying and pasting together the ideas that he liked until he arrived at what he believed to be the simplest and cheapest form of time travel. His machine would only allow him to go back in time, not forward, and he would purchase enough supplies to only go to one exact moment. Not only would that be the cheapest way to do it, but it would also prevent anyone from following him and potentially sabotaging his salvation or the marriage that he thought would work itself out.
During the next six days, Hubie acquired all necessary supplies with the exception of one. In his now almost spaceless apartment, he had collected the following: seven pounds of sheet metal in various sizes and shapes, five yards of chicken wire, four car batteries, one two-way radio, six yards of fiberglass insulation, one moped engine, fifty-four screws of various lengths and threadings, one hundred thirteen nails of identical length, three oven knobs, seventy-six nails of another length, one steering wheel, three brake pedals, one muffler, two gas tanks each half empty, fourteen plastic bags, two yards of thin copper wire, two couch cushions not from his own couch, two microwaves in working condition, three manual automobile shifters, one transmission, three high-powered generators, two incubators, five rubber tires to absorb the heat, three heating units, six industrial strength fans, forty-six steel rods of various lengths and girths, seven clocks with hands and faces, one sturdy stool, five milk crates, six gallons of purified water, two pints of pure alcohol, two pints of ammonia, two bottles of lye, fifty-eight nails of a shorter length, forty-nine bolts, sixty-two wing nuts, eight rubber tubes, three heat resistant bowls, six beakers, one digital clock, one Bunsen burner, one heavy duty hotplate, one airplane control panel, four hinges, fourteen test tubes of various lengths, twenty-four rolls of duct tape, thirty-six rolls of electrical tape, and a few other supplies that were not on his list but that he thought might come in handy.
It had been quite a chore to acquire all of these items and bring them into his apartment. He frequently violated the apartment building code that said bulk items could only be moved in during specified hours on specified days, the range of which he did not know. He did all the lifting himself, not allowing a fellow dweller to even hold the door ajar for him.
Everything on the blueprints he had pieced together from the various online experts was accounted for save for the most important item. He needed one cubic centimeter of plutonium for each day he needed to travel. He had held off on buying it until the machine was assembled. There of course were other reasons for his delay. He did not have enough money, did not know precisely where to get the substance, and he didn’t know what the hell a cubic centimeter was or how to measure one. He voiced all of his frustrations freely to the dead fish that floated upside down and bloated in the cloudy aquarium. Hubie neglected to feed the fish for the first sixteen days, and his overcompensation of food on that seventeenth day did the poor gold swimmer in. No matter though. The gold fish’s companionship was the same regardless of its state of consciousness. At times, Hubie was just glad to have someone to talk to, even if that thing never spoke back. He could have just talked to himself, but he had always thought of that as the sign of a crazy man, and he certainly didn’t want the fish or his time machine to think that he was crazy. In fact, Hubie felt more lucid than ever as he worked fervently on assembling his melting-pot of parts.
On the eighty-eighth day, Hubie walked from his office to the bus hurriedly, as he did every other day. On his journey, his eye noticed nothing because his mind was too occupied to allow the recognition process to occur. Had his mind allowed him to, his eye would have been caught by a sign on a similar post that promised him the same salvation he had missed, returning to a nearby gymnasium in just three weeks. Perhaps the letters on the sign were not as bold, or possibly the sign had been hung just above or just below Hubie’s constantly fixed line of sight. Regardless, Hubie saw it not, and continued his hasty pace to the bus in his blind ambition.
One hundred days had passed. The construction of the machine was nearly completed. All of the furniture had been removed from the living room, almost as if he had been ordered by God to cleanse himself of his earthly possessions, leaving room to provide the space for the SUV-sized time transportation device. Hubie had not wasted his time selling any of it. He had taken it all out and left it on the curb by the building’s front door.
The time machine was certainly not aesthetically pleasing. It was a dome-shaped contraption, body assembled of various colors of sheet metal that had been carelessly shaped and bolted together. On the top of the six-foot high dome, a small door was haphazardly hinged into position, allowing for a careful entrance but promising no exit. The sheet metal would obviously conduct heat well, so the rubber tire suit beside the contraption seemed to fit logically. The inside seemed far from a comfortable habitat. A backless stool rested in the center, surrounded by various control panels and disassembled household devices all connected by inexpert wiring. The old airplane control panel was the central device, connected to a digital clock that conveniently had a time and date feature. Heating units were placed symmetrically around the dome. Glass pipes ran throughout, all converging together into one insulated container located underneath the stool. The machine looked like a useless pile of junk all connected together by an insane child. But Hubie did not view it that way. The now bearded man who again had ceased to go to work looked smugly at the machine, his arms crossed tightly to his chest as if to prevent his heart from escaping. Had his beard not overtaken his lips, his content smile would have shone brightly off the reflective metal. Looking at the machine, he saw a vehicle of salvation, complete save for that elusive plutonium. But now he had the money, and with no need for money after he traveled back in time, he had no reservation spending every dime he had to acquire the beautiful silvery solid.
The machine would work like this. Hubie would climb inside, leaving the hatch up for quick exit, and set the digital clock to the exact date of the rally, February 2nd. He would set the time for 11 AM, one hour before the rally began. He would then exit the machine, take the plutonium in a gloved hand, reenter, and place the solid into the insulated container below the stool. Once the solid rested carefully there, he would turn all of the heating units to full power. Again, he would leave the machine and retrieve the gallons of boiling water he had left on the stove. He would not yet reenter, but would instead begin pouring the water into the various tubes until all six gallons had entered the container with the plutonium. Quickly, he would hop into the now heated dome, start the generator, the engine and anything else that could be started, and then exit to retrieve the boiling gasoline and ammonia and alcohol solution. He would pour all of these items in as well, shut the hatch while outside, and allow the heat to conduct for exactly one hundred seventy-five minutes, which is the number of days after the rally he estimated it would be once he acquired the plutonium. Finally, he would put on the rubber tire suit, fling open the hatch, jump inside the machine, and press the final set button on the clock. The melted plutonium would react with the other liquids and the engines would propel him backward through time to February. All of his calculations would have to be perfect, for the dome would be around one-thousand degrees, and he knew that even in his rubber suit he could survive only for seconds at such a temperature. He had recalculated everything several times, using a scientific calculator of course, and he had no worries other than getting that damn plutonium. Salvation would come to him soon enough, or, rather, he would come to salvation.
After one-hundred fifteen days, still no plutonium existed in Hubie’s apartment. He had officially been fired after missing his twelfth consecutive day of work without giving notice. He had closed his bank account, now opting to hoard all of his money at home. He knew he couldn’t bring it with him in the time machine because the paper would burn, but he didn’t want the bank to have it anymore. He no longer worried about paying bills or about how much he purchased on his credit cards. He firmly believed that he would have his plutonium within the month, so the chance of eviction or blackout was nonexistent for the time being. This also gave him more of a deadline, thus driving him to seek even harder for the plutonium. No store sold it. There currently were no samples whatsoever available on eBay. He had emailed several scientists and labs that he found on the internet, but all of them either failed to reply, sent follow-up emails containing inquisitive suspicions, or flat out denied his request. He had not expected this to be so difficult, but it did not matter. It certainly would be worth the effort. And now he had an ingenious plan. He would steal the plutonium from a nearby government-operated laboratory.
Hubie considered only briefly the notion that his thievery would be an obstacle to his earning salvation. Then it occurred to him that once he went back in time, that Christ fellow would not yet know he had stolen anything, and by the time it was figured out, Hubie would already be saved. Certainly Christ wouldn’t take back something as important as salvation once he had promised it to someone.
He looked proudly at the steel dome that filled his living room, then laid his body down beside it. Tonight, he would sleep. Tomorrow, he would steal. One hundred seventy-six days ago, he would be saved.
The next day it rained constantly, a cold rain, but that could not deter a man of Hubie’s ambition. Without bothering to wear a raincoat or carry an umbrella, for he knew no matter how wet he became that he could always dry himself, he marched out of his apartment at 9 AM just as he had planned, carefully locking the door behind him to protect his past and future. He then descended the sixteen flights of stairs because he did not trust the elevator, and walked two blocks to the bus stop where he waited to board the bus that would take him to the future.
***
After seven hours absent from his home, Hubie ascended the stairs, all sixteen flights each containing twelve symmetrical steps. With each step, the bag at his side swayed gently. When he arrived at the top of the final step, he proceeded to stroll suspiciously down the hallway, expecting that at any moment someone might pilfer what he had just pilfered. Finally at the door, the breathless man carefully unlocked his door, looked around his apartment building’s musty hallway for the last time, and entered the room. He carefully set the bag on the ground next to the dome, then filled himself a glass of water from the faucet. He drank it quickly, not allowing his lips to break contact with the glass until only those final elusive droplets remained. Quenched, he walked back to his bag and examined its contents pleasantly.
After several minutes of admiration, Hubie removed the contents from the bag and placed the handful of silver bars into the insulated bowl inside the dome. He hoped that he had the right amount.
The man did not doubt that his machine would work, nor did he question whether or not he should attempt the journey. Not wanting to delay his goal any longer, he took a quick glance in the mirror to ensure that he looked good for his destination, and then slipped into the hatch.
Carefully, Hubie set the digital clock and calendar to the second day of February at 11 AM. Then he hastily climbed out and slid his body down the side of the dome, entered the kitchen, and took two large stockpots and began boiling the water in one and the gasoline and ammonia solution in the other. While he waited, he reviewed the instructions, making sure he paid attention to every detail. Making sure to not watch the pots, he recited the steps until he heard the first rattle and gurgle from the water-filled pot. His excitement almost caused him to boil over as he rushed to the stove top prepared to rescue the liquid from becoming a gas. Realizing that the full affect of the boil was still a few moments away, he returned to the dome and turned all of the heating units to their highest settings. Hubie made a quick exit and hurried back to the water which now danced around the pot rapidly.
Hubie placed oven mitts on each hand and grasped the metal handles of the pot. Carefully, he poured the water into the tubes at a steady rate, allowing the water to slowly swirl its way to the plutonium that still rested underneath the stool in that insulated bowl. When the last drop dripped into the container, Hubie returned to the kitchen to retrieve the other solution.
Hubie finished pouring the bubbling liquid into the tubes, covering his nostrils and mouth with a rag to avoid inhaling what might be toxic fumes, watching as the liquid funneled itself into the container and mingled with the plutonium and water. He then climbed down to the floor and picked up the bulky rubber suit. With much discomfort, he wrapped himself so that only his face and fingers were exposed. After allowing a brief sigh of relief to exit, he said a mental goodbye to the apartment he would soon see gain, but never again in this exact condition. He had only one thought as he climbed his way to the hatch. Soon he would proudly enjoy his salvation, a salvation he achieved through extraordinary ways. He was sure Christ would be impressed when he learned of the great lengths Hubie had gone to in order to get to know him better. A prime seat in heaven would most certainly be reserved.
When Hubie finished thinking his second thought, he slid down to the stool and shut the hatch as tightly as he could. The temperature truly was unbearable. Without looking to see if the plutonium had undergone a change of state, he flipped the last of the switches that needed flipping, pressed that last button to lock in the times, and waited to defy the laws of science, eyes closed, breath held.
For the next few minutes, Hubie felt nothing except for intense heat. The lights he had imagined flashing as he traveled back in time did not flash. There was no out of body experience. With each passing moment, the temperature seemed to double, and the man squirmed in the uncomfortable rubber suit, droplets of sweat dripping from his face and fingers, then sizzling on the ground they hit. He knew he would either die in here or successfully make it back to February. The last one hundred seventy-six days seemed to flash backward through his mind, and for a moment, he felt bitter remorse for his stupid and selfish behavior. As the days rolled by, it occurred to him that he had accomplished nothing other than destroying relationships and building an enormous heat conducting piece of junk that had only one purpose, killing him quickly. This was a suicide machine, not a time machine, and at that point if he had felt that he possessed any self worth, he would have used every ounce of strength he had to stand up and fling the hatch open. But he decided against it, leaving him to the fate he had created himself, a fate that would certainly leave him damned. He only hoped that the torrid fires of hell had nothing on the fires present in this infernal dome. If he did die in here, he deserved it, especially as he saw how much he had hurt his wife, realizing that on that day in May he had come home and forgotten his anniversary, and that was why his wife had been so upset. As the days continued to reverse themselves, he prayed for the opportunity to right all that he had wronged.
His visions of the days past subsided just as everything in the machine seemed to stop and go black as if by power failure. Gradually, the temperature dropped. Although the conditions were still unfavorable, Hubie dared not reach for the hatch above. Rather, he sat motionless on the stool, still sweating, mind blank of thought until at last he had the notion that today actually was one hundred seventy-six days before the previous today had been.
The giddiness he had felt when he first saw the sign paled in comparison to what he felt now. Without going outside of his metal casing, he knew with absolute certainty that he had succeeded. Today was the day. Now he would at long last receive what he had worked at for so hard and for so long, that which he rightfully deserved. Today. February 2nd. The day that had been today before, and now, one hundred seventy-six days later, was again today.
Nervously, he reached his now gloved hand upward and grasped the handle that would free him of this sweat box into a world he hoped was not the world he left. Even through the glove, he could feel the intense heat emitted by the metal handle, causing him to throw it open quickly. The prospect of fresh air sent him scrambling out of the dome like a madman, but the awkward size and weight of the suit left him looking more like an infant struggling its way out of the womb.
When at last he slid out of the heated orb, he fell to the ground breathless and gasped quickly, fighting the urge to sleep that suddenly overtook his weary body. Knowing that he had only an hour to get to his rally, he paid no notice to the apartment he again had entered, so he did not notice whether or not the furniture he had sold had returned, but rather he used every ounce of his energy to lift himself to his feet. The man felt like an intruder in this space, not wanting to be caught by the wife he was sure was again living there, the wife who would certainly be shocked by the enormous heated sphere that had overtaken the room. That he would worry about later, and with that thought, he fled like a common criminal whose attempt at robbery had been thwarted.
Clumsily, Hubie raced out of the building, slamming his tired body against walls as he impatiently descended the stairs. At the bottom, he burst out of the door and was greeted by a blast of chilly air that nearly brought him to tears. Certainly this was the cold air of February providing him relief from the nearly thousand-degree dome he had just been prisoner in, he thought. He had done the impossible, and now all that was left was the simple act of attending a rally. Never had anyone worked so hard for salvation, so Hubie knew that never would anyone be so rewarded. With only this thought, Hubie rushed down a path he had rushed many times before, a path he had already traversed this very day thousands of hours ago, traipsing carelessly through puddles that indicated a recent rainstorm.
With no conscious awareness of the steps he took, Hubie continued his flight to that gymnasium, located just blocks away from his old workplace, which he supposed was once again his workplace. As he walked the twenty-three blocks with the form of an Olympic racewalker, he noticed a man walking towards him that possessed a certain uncanny resemblance to himself. In disbelief, the stranger stared at Hubie, wondering if he had encountered his long lost twin whose only noticeable differences were an overwhelming beard and a frantic look about the eyes. The stranger stopped in his tracks to speak to this eerily similar man, but Hubie marched on, knowing that is was impossible that the man that stopped to stare at him actually was him. so while the stranger stared, Hubie went on, unaware that the man watched him and actually considered following him if only he had not been walking so fast.
Three blocks away now, five minutes until starting time, Hubie, perspiring furiously from both his exposure to heat and his brisk pace, could feel a connection to Christ that he never before had felt. Today, oh the glory of today, both February 2nd and August 28th simultaneously. This was indeed the day the Lord had made, he thought, remembering through divine power a psalm he had learned in his youth.
One block to go. He could see the gym, but he was surprised that no line waited for entrance. He hoped he wasn’t late or that, even worse, the rally was full. Perhaps he should have come back earlier, maybe even inquired about tickets to the event. No matter, though. Certainly they would let him inside once they heard his tale. Or maybe, it occurred to him, that this salvation had indeed been reserved for him alone.
Hubie rushed the last half block to the gymnasium door. As if on automatic, his arm extended fully, grasped the door handle just as it had grasped the hatch an hour ago, and pulled with all his might to open the door to a blissful eternity.
The force of the locked door hanging firmly to the doorframe sent a jarring jolt up Hubie’s arm, a jolt that sent a shock throughout his upper body. At this moment, the time traveler noticed a sign on the door, a sign he expected would tell him to use the adjacent door or perhaps an alternative entrance. He hoped this other entrance was not far and not crowded, for he was anxious to begin his eternity.
The brain did not instantly process what the sign silently told the eyes. The brain told the man to remain still, but it did not immediately reveal to the man the meaning of the words that were printed rather discretely on the quickly printed sheet of white paper, a sign of such insignificance that it couldn’t possibly indicate anything of importance.
But, the brain soon revealed, the sign was indeed of great import, especially for a man who had just spent the last one hundred sixteen days of his life, or the next one hundred seventy-six days, working to get to this spot at this time. CANCELLED sat atop the sign, no mark of exclamation following, a short apology resting underneath the word that fearfully hung on the other side of the protective glass of the door. Hubie scanned the apology, waiting for the punch line to the sick joke, or at least waiting for a rescheduled date. Instead, all he learned was that the event had been cancelled due to lack of interest, but all tickets would be refunded at the point of purchase. The sign didn’t even bother to indicate what the event had been, but Hubie knew.
Once the brain fully revealed the meaning of the words that had fixated themselves to this delicate paper sign that had fixated itself to what was more than likely a delicate glass door, the statuesque man stood with tears welling in his disbelieving eyes, his bearded face now frosted with frozen sweat. There he stood for countless hours, jobless, wifeless, homeless, one hundred seventy-six days older than everyone else, and worst of all, without the salvation he thought he had been promised by a Christ he was now sure did not exist.
Nathaniel Tower Biography:
Nathaniel Tower writes fiction and teaches English. His short stories
have appeared or are forthcoming in Mud Luscious, Ranfurly, Skive,
Cantaraville, Delivered, Inscribed, The Short Story Library and many
others. He is the founder and editor of Bartleby Snopes, an online
magazine of fiction (
www.bartlebysnopes.com).