Chapter 29: Solomon’s Tale
Passion-love does not exist nowadays. Especially not
in marriage. But how else can I describe my feelings
for Laura? To say that I worship her is to sound too
Victorian, suggesting nothing of the erotic
playfulness that exists between us. To say that I am
obsessed with her is to sound too 21st century with
its penchant for the pathological, suggesting only the
dimly-lit pathways of passion and none of love’s
bright sunlit uplands.
We don’t have a healthy marriage. I am much too
love-sick for that. And so, I believe, is Laura.
How did we meet? I had just started working at the
Wells Institute as a researcher, the junior member of
the three person team historical division. Thumbing
through holocopies of 15th century notarial records,
sipping absent-mindedly my third cup of kirr, I wasn’t
aware of Laura standing in the entrance of my cubicle.
Later she told me that she had stood there for at
least five minutes trying to think of something
Wildean or Weldonian to say, which turned out to be:
“Hey, Buster, let’s see your legs.”
I spun around, almost knocking over my kirr. I saw a
six-foot-two brunette with emerald eyes towering over
me. Seated, I felt like a pygmy in the presence of an
Amazon princess. Visions of H. Rider Haggard stories
danced in my head.
Laura grinned engagingly. “That’s, OK, pal. Take it
easy. I just wanted to see what a Renaissance man
looks like. She gave me an appraising glance from my
curly blonde top-knot to my lavender-painted toenails.
“Not bad. You’re short. But then men were short in the
Renaissance weren’t they?”
She laughed, winked, turned around, wiggled her
beauteous buff behind and vanished.
After I had regained my powers of respiration and
ratiocination, I staggered down the hall to Hudson’s
cubicle. Hudson is a Medievalist but otherwise not a
bad gal.
“A vision of purity, goodness, and unbridled sexuality
just materialized in my cube,” I began rhapsodically.
“Tall broad? Green eyes?”
I nodded.
“Laura Starcross. Physicist. Her equations led to the
Tempora, you know.” (As you have guessed, Hudson is
known for being laconic.)
I blink uncomprehendingly (indeed whenever I blink, so
as not to mess up my eyeshadow, it tends to be
uncomprehending). “What’s the Tempora?”
Hudson squinted her ferret-like little eyes and
grunted (albeit laconically) in disgust. “Where have
you been for the last two light clicks, Solomon J.
Mohammed? The Tempora is the most recent update on
the old Chronos system. You know, as in time machine?
What do you think the Wells Institute is all about?
Who do you think it’s named after?”
Truthfully I didn’t know. It was a job, which in the
22nd century with its accursed present-mindedness, its
focus on the transitory, the impermanent, the
evanescent, was all that any fledgling historian could
conceivably care about. Thus I had never inquired into
the purpose of the Wells Institute and no one had
bothered to inform me. I suppose they foolishly
thought I knew.
But the fact Laura was a physicist dismayed me.
Physicists are at the top of the United Neverland’s
scale of social rankings (the same scale that lumps
historians along with street sweepers and sociologists
into the second from the bottom category of “other
diversions for the simple minded.”
Hudson leaned back in her chair and leered. “That’s
right, buddy. A physicist. Not for you.”
But (uncharacteristically) Hudson was wrong. Laura
most definitely was for me. That same day she asked me
out, took me to her apartment, ripped off my camisole
and practically (it is hard to do impractically) raped
me. Sometime around midnight she proposed.
“Look, Buster, you turn me on. We’ll get married
tomorrow.”
I opened my mouth to protest.
“Shut up,” Laura whispered sweetly. “I make more than
enough to support the both of us. But if you want to
keep on working, that’s OK by me. One thing, though,
I’m an ante-lib traditionalist and I don’t go for the
new style of men dressing like 21st century women.
Here’s six hundred credits. Go buy yourself some pants
and a gallon of nail polish remover.”
Laura and I lived in a one-room apartment and a
transport of ecstasy (indeed the latest model) for two
years, three months and nine days. I did the washing
and most of the cooking and Laura rewarded me with
affection and acrobatics. Despite the fact that her
work was highly classified and beyond my
comprehension, she never condescended to me. On
occasion she let slip a few hints about the Wells
Institute’s progress on Tempora. Evidently a
breakthrough was nearing on future time; the past time
components were evidently working like appropriately
antiquated clockwork.
Frankly I didn’t much care. My life with Laura was the
only thing that mattered. Once in a double click I
experienced a slight thrill of anticipation at the
prospect of actually visiting the past instead of
merely poring through holocopies of its decaying
detritus and I gave no thought whatsoever to the
future. I must admit that my intellectual interests
had been submerged, nay, disannulled by my
passion-love for Laura.
When the long anticipated breakthrough to future time
occurred I expected Laura to be ecstatic. Instead, she
was underjoyed, worried, almost haggard looking. Our
passionate couplings dropped to below ten a day. I
finally mustered the courage to ask her what was
wrong.
“Not much, Sol. Just the future.” I knew immediately
that something was terribly amiss. Laura almost never
called me Sol.
I did not have sufficient courage to pursue the matter
but a few days later she sat me down on the fruiton
and gently took my hands in hers. “ I couldn’t tell
you before but tomorrow the whole world will know and
in three weeks there’s going to be a United Neverlands
resolution.”
“On what”
“The future of humanity. She stood up, went over to
the bar and poured herself a stiff single-malt
slurpee. “Buster, I don’t want to worry your pretty
little head with technicalities so let me give it to
you straight and simple. As you know, the Wells
Institute has been working on the Tempora for
seventeen years. Many people have contributed.
Scientists of all persuasions, technocrats,
bureaucrats, sociocrats and just plain crats.”
Laura gulped down half of her slurpee and immediately
sashayed back to the bar for a refill. I gazed at her
in utter adoration, trying to focus on the dire words
issuing from her lovely lips. “Sure,” she said, “the
past is fun. It’s nice to see how the Earth actually
looked during the Pleistocene or how Raphael combed
his hair or to eavesdrop on the intimate conversations
of Alexander or Marie Antoinette. But the past really
isn’t very complex or very important compared to the
future. You know why, Buster?”
“Because it’s already happened?”
Laura smiled approvingly and for a moment seemed like
her old self. “You said a mouthful, sweetie. Exactly.
The past has already happened. It’s fixed,
unchangeable. Sure I suppose with access to the
Tempora, historian guys like you could spend a few
thousand lifetimes clearing up all the things we don’t
know or understand about history like who really shot
Kennedy or knifed Spumoni but when you get right down
to it, we’ve only got one past. Now the future, that’s
another bundle of barracudas.”
“You mean there is more than one future?”
“Seven to be exact and in six of them humanity is
extinguished. I mean totally expunged, extirpated,
obliterated. You got me?”
Laura chuckled and grimaced simultaneously. “You
wouldn’t believe the seventh, Buster. Pure Utopia.
Peace on Earth. Universal plenty. The whole magilla.”
I smiled and settled back on the fruiton. “It’s
simple, then. We choose Future Seven.”
Laura gave me a pitying look. “What’s that leaking
from your lid, Buster? Axle grease? If it were that
simple do you think I’d be sitting here drinking
hundred and fifty proof slurpees like it was mater’s
milk? The odds against getting from our present to
Future Seven have been reliably calculated at twelve
trillion to one.”
“Why not seven to one? No, wait, six to one?”
Laura stared up at our sky-ceiling with obviously
forced patience. “Jesus Jumping Jehosophat, don’t they
teach historians probability theory?” She slowly
lowered her head and spoke in carefully measured
tones. “Each future has its own degree of probable
occurrence. Number One is eighty per cent probable. In
One a megalomaniac from Ventura announces that he is
the anti-Christ. Another megalomaniac from Sausalito
with strong ties to kooky Oregon sects claims she’s
Christ. Followers of the two battle it out with the
finest nukes available. Result: total devastation.
Humankind is kaput.”
I mentally chewed over this unpalatable prognosis for
a moment, then said, “Isn’t there some way we could
prevent either or both of these wackos from being
born?”
“They’re already born.”
“But couldn’t we lock them up or, if it came to it,
just knock them off?”
“Sure but if we’re successful, we get Future Two in
which seven million Frenchmen spontaneously go
apeshit, take over the United Neverlands Space Cartel
and create a machine that knocks the Earth out of
orbit. Result: Fresh frozen Frogs and everybody else
well chilled.”
“And to anticipate your next question, if we
incarcerate all the flaky French in seven million
separate rubber rooms, we get Future Three, a real
dilly. In that one, the director of the Wells
Institute transports Adolf Hitler from his burning
bunker to the present. Hitler becomes the head of all
motion picture production worldwide and reels out
sophisticated Aryan superiority propaganda. In
retaliation, Israel nukes Hollywood, fascist Brazil
nukes Israel, Zionist Idaho nukes Brazil, and so on.
“The long and short of it, Buster Dear, is that
anything we do to prevent one future gets into another
that is just as bad. Except for utopian Future Seven.
And we don’t have the faintest idea of how to get
there from here.”
I mull this over until an idea flashes into my
pathetic pea brain. “Why not just examine Future
Seven’s past? Figure what happened there and make sure
it happens in our present.”
“Buster,” Laura said resignedly, “Don’t you think
we’ve thought of that? For days the best scientific
minds in the United Neverlands have been going over
Seven’s past with a superfine digital toothbrush and
with the complete cooperation of Future Seven
personnel. Trouble is, whatever gets us to Seven are
microevents that we have no way of identifying. Up to
now we’ve been talking macro: nuclear holocausts, mass
hysteria, turning the Earth into a cosmic Frisbee,
etc. but how can you identify microchanges? They could
be anything. A shuttle leaves a few seconds late.
Hudson gets a nose job. How can we tell? The number of
micro differences in Seven’s past compared to our
present and immediate future is literally infinite.
There are too many unknowns to construct soluble
equations.”
Silence descended on our cozy little apartment. I
began to sob. “Tell me, Laura, how long do we have?
Which future gives us the most time to be together?”
She shrugged and stroked my hair. “For some reason we
can’t figure out it makes absolutely no difference. In
all six likely futures humankind has exactly eleven
years, two weeks, three days, four hours and, “she
glances at her fingernail timepiece, “fifty-three
minutes.”
I was desolate. Only a little more than eleven years
and my life with Laura would be at an end. The
extinction of all of humanity seemed negligible
compared to the annihilation of our love.
I refused to accept this absurd fate. A strange
sensation of stiffening traveled up my spine. I stood
and, mounting a foot stool, grabbed Laura by her
delectable broad shoulders. “You said the best
scientific minds have been investigating Future
Seven’s past. . . .”
She nodded.
“Who?”
“Oh physicists, biochemists, telecomp engineers, the
odd sociobiologist.”
“No historians?”
Laura gives me a surprised look then said patiently.
“Buster, historians investigate the past. This is the
future.”
“No it isn’t,” I almost shouted, “it’s the past of the
future! Don’t you see? None of your so-called
scientists are trained to see the right things, the
subtle chains of seemingly unrelated events that
constitute history. But I am trained to do just that.
Give me a crack at Future Seven, Laura.”
She shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t think so, The
Tempora crew won’t like it. You know scientists feel
about historians. Also, how will your colleagues in
the History Section, Hudson and Fink, feel about this?
Won’t they want to participate?”
I snorted scornfully. “A Medievalist and an
Americanist. What do they know? Look, I’ve never
talked to you much about my specialty. You being a
physicist, it was hardly seemly but the Renaissance
was a very complicated and interesting period.
Renaissance humanists developed intricate occult
theories about how the universe works. They believed
that everything that happens, no matter how trivial or
insignificant, is somehow related to everything else:
‘As above, so below, as without, so within.’”
“Buster, you’re babbling.”
“Sorry, but you’ve got to believe me. I have an eye
for the insignificant, a talent for the trivial. Send
me to Future Seven and I guarantee results.”
Laura looked at me thoughtfully. “You’ve never lied to
me, Buster, and with all that’s at stake I can’t
believe that you would lie to me now. I will convince
the Tempora High Command to give you a chance if it is
the last thing I do.”
It almost was. I found it a melancholy marvelment the
way petty professional jealousies persisted even in an
at atmosphere of absolute crisis. The remotest
rumination, the merest mentation, the slightest
suggestion that a historian might succeed at a task
despaired of by scientific genius caused eight members
of the Tempora High Command to vomit and then resign.
(Two others resigned and then vomited.)
To make matters worse, I am a man. Without Laura’s
firm backing, the Wells Institute director would
doubtless have collapsed in a giggle-fit, patted me
on the rump and told me to take some time off and read
a good cookbook.
As it turned out I left for Future Seven on the very
day of the United Neverlands Resolution on Humanity’s
Future, which gave the Wells Institute extraordinary
powers to do whatever it took that might provide
humankind a future longer than eleven years and
change.
Laura and I bade a tender farewell.
“Buster,” she said, wrapping me in a muscular embrace,
“no matter what happens. . .”
“”I know,” I gasped, “my dearest, I know.”
Three Tempora technicians strapped me into a machine
that resembled a Buck Rogers skyrocket on steroids and
I closed my eyes. Laura had explained that the
“journey” would take less than five minutes. The
Tempora machine projects a holographic image that
communicates with inhabitants of Future Seven but has
no physical reality there. The Tempora traveler’s body
remains in the present. If her body dies during a
visit to the future, the holographic image ceases. In
short, Tempora cannot be used to free humans from
death. It is regrettably not a passport to
immortality.
I (or rather my holographic projection) opened my/its
eyes.
“’Mornin’, Solomon,” said Hudson.
To say I was startled would be an understatement. It
was Hudson, unattractively ferret-like as ever.
“What happened,” I moaned involuntarily, “the Tempora
didn’t work?”
She grinned. “Of course it worked. You are now fifteen
years in your future. If you had looked closely you
would have noticed that I have aged since we last saw
one another.”
It was true. A few wisps of grey hair in Hudson’s
sideburns, a couple of thousand more wrinkles around
her eyes and disgustingly pendulous ear lobes.
“The Director thought a familiar face might help ease
the transition,” said Hudson.
Anxiety transfixed me. “Then why wouldn’t she have
assigned Laura?”
Hudson shrugged with what seemed, even at the time,
unaccustomed nonchalance. “Too much of a shock. I
suppose it’s for the same reason he didn’t assign
you.”
“You mean I’m here?”
“Sure, you’re downstairs still at the old cube. Put on
a little weight, of course.” Hudson sat at the Tempora
console. “I’m going to release your image so that it
can move around. Just illusion, naturally, but you
will feel as if you are actually in motion. Don’t try
to drink a cup of Java, though. You can’t really do
anything physical.”
As Hudson manipulated the Tempora console controls “I”
stepped out.
“Now for a quick briefing,” she said briskly. “You can
stay here as long as you want. Back in your present
they will keep your body alive with intercranial
feeding if you remain longer than forty-eight hours.
You are to have access to all United Neverlands
records including any classified material. No
restrictions.”
“Except,” I observed with asperity. “I can’t
communicate with Laura or with my current self.”
“The shrinks advise against it.”
“But, Hudson, don’t you see,” I said with mounting
excitement, “if I could interview Laura and ‘me’, I
could solve the whole problem.”
“Come again?”
“Look, fifteen years ago I strapped myself into the
Tempora for this voyage, right? I mean you have
records of that event, don’t you? In fact you yourself
probably remember when I departed.”
“Sure,” said Hudson cheerfully. “So what?”
“So what did I say when I returned? If I found the
answer, all that I would need to do is ask myself what
the answer is. Or ask Laura.”
“I gotcha, chum,” Hudson winked. “This is weird, like
playing a holodrama role in surrealist surroundings.
OK, when you returned fifteen years ago, you dictated
a complete record of your visit here, including our
conversation so far but your visit did not include
your having communicated with either Laura or your
current self. Now suppose I let you violate the
shrinks’ prohibitions. You would return to your
present having done something that the record shows
you did not do, which means that you would screw up
any possibility of your present making it to Future
Seven.”
“The hell with the record,” I shouted.
Hudson shook her shaggy head. “You’re not getting the
point, pal. If you do what you are suggesting it means
that your present would differ from Future Seven’s
past. Ipso facto, your present could not possibly lead
to our Future Seven present but rather to some other
present which necessarily means Futures One through
Six in which humanity bids ’bye ’bye.”
I sat my holographic self on a starcalounger and
metaphorically took a deep breath. “I see what you
mean.”
Hudson stood up. “So no more of that kind of talk,
OK?” She stretched her corpulent arms and legs and
walked across the room to the invisible doorway.
“Lemme know where you want to begin.”
I spent the next three days in the cramped Wells
Institute computer room accompanied by Hudson during
normal working hours and by an uncommunicative United
Neverlands factotum named Simpson the rest of the
time. Fortunately, my holographic projection was
tireless so I managed to pore through an enormous
amount of data in a short time period.
I missed Laura. It was the longest period of time that
we’d ever been separated. But I plodded through United
Neverlands statistical summaries, minibiographies,
holoarticles, and general reference works in the
conviction that I would find the clue enabling Laura
and me to live out our normal lifespans in Future
Seven (to which I had begun referring mentally as
Seventh Heaven.)
The sought for clue, however, did not surface. I
became discouraged. The proverbial needle in the
haystack didn’t begin to compare with the task with
which I was confronted. I could spend eternity looking
for the crucial micro-event and still not find it.
Time was running out and I could tell from Hudson’s
increasingly anxious demeanor that my stay was
scheduled to end soon.
On the evening of the third day it came to me that I
was overlooking the obvious. All historians know that
records contain only an infinitesimal portion of facts
about the past. Most things that have happened have
gone unrecorded and it would make sense that the
hypothetical event for which I was searching was in
itself so insignificant as to have escaped even the
most thorough compu-archivists.
How then to find it? There was only one way that I
could come up with and that involved a second truth
that all historians know, which is that, as subjective
products of the human mind, records often lie. They
lie because people lie (or simply remember or record
inaccurately). So when Hudson had told me that Wells
Institute records showed that I had not interviewed
either Laura or my Seventh Heaven self, I had
foolishly accepted that assurance as truth. But of
course it may very well not be. What if, upon
returning to the present, I had lied about what I had
done and with whom I had spoken. Why would I have done
this? Obviously I would have wanted to keep the record
straight. Since the record, according to Hudson,
stated that I had not talked to Laura or the future me
(while actually having done so) changing the record
would have necessarily changed what Hudson had told me
and thus altered both the past and the future.
So my initial impulse had been right: to interview
Laura or the Seventh Heaven me. Naturally I chose
Laura. I wanted to see if the years had treated her
kindly and, more important, to confirm what I felt
certain to be true, that our love had endured and was
as strong and intense as ever.
The taciturn Simpson slept fitfully. I could not leave
the computer room; stepping outside its doors would
cause my holographic projection to dissolve instantly.
But I saw no reason why I couldn’t dial Laura up using
the room’s visispace. We could communicate quite
comfortably this way, hologram to hologram.
I checked through the Wells Institute directory but
there was no listing for her. Had gender customs
changed once again? In my time, wives always received
a separate listing, husbands rarely. Or perhaps Laura
no longer worked for the Wells Institute. But I knew
that I still worked there because Hudson had told me
that I occupied the same lowly position and, indeed,
the same cramped cubicle as before.
Sure enough my name, office and home number and home
address were on the directory disk. I was pleased to
see that we had moved from our apartment to a house.
Laura knew how much I had always wanted one.
I decided to take a chance. The worst that could
happen is that “I”, rather than Laura, would answer
the visicom or perhaps one of our children would pick
it up (I assumed we had children by now). Either way
it would work out. The holographic me would have done
the very same thing fifteen years ago would, in fact,
be expecting my call. If a child answered, the Seventh
Heaven me could explain to her later what my call was
about. If Laura answered, there would be no problem.
She would instantly figure out what was going on, even
if the me from our doomed present hadn’t already told
her years ago. She’s not one of the Earth’s leading
physicists for nothing.
I checked on Simpson, who was now snoring peacefully,
and punched up my home number.
The visispace filled with an unfamiliar image. The
face of a bald fat man stared back at me. It took me a
moment to realize the face as mine, much aged and
exuding melancholy.
He/I spoke first. “I’ve been waiting for your call.”
“So I guessed. You must also know that I want to speak
to Laura.”
He/I nodded sadly. “I’m afraid that is impossible.”
“But why?”
“Because,” he/I said slowly, “Laura is dead. She died
thirteen years ago in a compucar crash.”
I was speechless. My future self waited patiently. “I
know how you feel. I felt the same way when “I” talked
to “me” fifteen years ago. I feel the same way now.
You and I have lost, will lose, the only person who
made life worth living for us. You are fated to
continue on as I have, a broken, empty vessel.” His/my
voice choked with emotion. We sat silently for several
minutes staring forlornly at one another. Then he/I
cleared his/my throat and spoke softly. “Now I must
tell you, as I was told, what you need to know to save
humanity in your present. Never mind the paradox that
the information comes to you from your future self
who, fifteen years ago, received identical info from
that same future self who, fifteen years before that,
etc. The paradox is insoluble. Who was it that said
that in the end, the only thing we experience is
ourselves?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I know you don’t,” he/I said gently and drew a deep
breath. “Here it is, quite ridiculous, really. When
you return to your present you must go immediately to
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. At the Fell Street
entrance you will find a small black stone, an onyx.
You can’t miss it because it is engraved with ancient
lettering that has no bearing on anything and that you
need not bother to try and decipher. You and Laura
will then drive to Ocean Beach where you will walk
together along the shore. When you reach a spot
directly opposite Seal Rock (and believe me you will
know without question which spot that is) you will
remove the onyx from your pocket and hurl it into the
ocean.”
I stare at me/him incredulously. “That’s it?”
He/I nodded. “Don’t ask me why. I doubt there’s a why
there.”
Simpson, stirred from somnolence, began shouting.
“What’s going on? You can’t use that!”
My/his visispace image vanished.
“Who was that?” queried Simpson.
“An old friend,” I said sadly. “Don’t worry about
repercussions from the powers that be. If you check
your records, you will find that this was supposed to
have happened.”
When Hudson returned for the day shift I told her that
I was ready to return to my present.
“We knew that. The Tempora is all set up for you.”
In contrast to the exuberance with which I had
arrived, I left Future Seven (no longer Seventh Heaven
in my mind) in a dither of despair.
Even Laura’s smiling face peering at me from the rim
of the Tempora console upon my return did not cheer me
up.
“Whatsa matter, Buster? You sure look down.”
I managed a weak grin. “No reason to be. I’ve found
the answer.”
Laura unleashed a war whoop, the Tempora techs crowded
around me, slapping me on the back (several of the
women techs pinched my bottom.) The Wells Institute
director, an elderly blonde, pumped my hands
vigorously and discreetly ran her hands up and down my
thighs. “Great work, boy,” she effused. “Tell us what
to do and by gum we will do it.”
“Sorry, I can’t.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t talk to anyone about the solution. That is a
strict condition that the future has imposed on the
past. I’ve got to solve the problem myself and I’ve
got to do it now. I reached out my right hand to
Laura. “You must come with me, my lulu, my ladylove.”
“Sure thing, Buster,” She gave me a suffocatingly
affectionate squeeze. “I’m so proud of you I could
just bust.”
The Director loaned us her compucar and Laura dialed
in the directions to Golden Gate Park. “You know,
Buster,” she said dreamily, “I was really worried
about you. Three and a half days without solid food is
a long time. You wanna stop at a nice Mohican
restaurant on the way?”
“Maybe later. There’s something we must do first.”
At the Fell Street entrance Laura steered the
compucar into a stationary hover and I climbed out. In
the middle of the street squatted the black onyx. I
knelt and picked it up, noting its curiously velvety
feel. Slipping the stone into my pants pocket, I
returned to the compucar. I kissed Laura gently on the
lips. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Sounds good to me,” she grinned infectiously. “Hey,
how’s about a little hanky panky later?” She leered
and with lecherous intent laid hands upon me.
The flight to Ocean Beach took eleven seconds. A fog
bank hunched over the coast. We removed our footwear
and strolled in the cool sand. Laura held me close,
warming against the chill of the ocean breeze. “You
know, Buster,” she said contemplatively, “a week ago I
wouldn’t have believed there was any way out of the
mess we’re in, much less that a historian, much less
you (and you know I love you dearly but you have to
admit that beauty, not brains is your strong point)
could extricate us from it.”
I said nothing. All I could think of was that two
years from now Laura would be dead. Present humanity
would continue on to the bliss of Seventh Heaven, but
Laura would not share in it.
We reached the base of the cliff opposite Seal Rock
and just as my future self had predicted
(retrodicted?) I knew the spot when we came to it.
I removed the onyx from my pocket,
It seemed to weigh a couple of tons.
“The great thing, Buster” Laura was saying, “is that
now we can make plans. Hey, let’s have some kids. I’ve
always wanted a girl to carry on the family name and
wouldn’t a cute little bouncing boy be nice, one who
looks just like you? Say I forgot to ask, did you find
out in Future Seven whether we have kids?”
I shook my head and gazed at the stone. “Too bad. Oh
well, we probably will. We do in the other six
futures, you know, and the kids stay with us right up
to the very end.”
“What?” I stared at her.
“Yeah, I checked into it while you were gone just in
case your Future Seven trip didn’t pan out. In Future
One we have a girl and in Futures Two through Six we
have two girls and two boys although why we would have
wanted to bring children into a world that we knew
full well was going to end soon, I don’t know.”
“Maybe,” I said, “our future selves don’t know what is
going to happen.”
Laura snorts. “Now how is that possible?” She looks at
me with great tenderness. “Since we know everything is
now gonna be hunky dory, Buster, let’s have some kids,
OK?”
I swept her into my arms. “OK.”
“Oh Buster, I love you so much.” She drew back and
looked at me with shining eyes.
I put the onyx back in my pocket as we walked back,
arm in arm, to the compucar.
“And I love you, darling. You will never know how
much.”