February's Future

Jim looked at the time on the digital clock on his office floating shelf. The clock was old, probably 30 years yet worked wonderfully.

Today was Jim Carlisle's birthday. He was sixty-five today, and he had spent the day doing interviews. A science fiction book that Jim wrote twenty years ago had been made into a what used to be called a movie, but streaming had changed that into something else.

The image of a young man approaching the front door came upon Jim's work screen. He took his canes, and stood up, then walked to the front door.

At the front door the young man smiled, "Mr Carlisle, my name is Stanley Blemish, and I 'm your biggest fan."

Jim turned, and motioned the young man into his home. Closing the door, he mused that he must have heard that over a thousand time during the last twenty years.

Jim went behind his desk, and sat down. Motioning for the young man to sit in one of the two chairs in front of his desk. "Please sit, Stanley. I would like to get this over quickly. It is my birthday, and my publisher is taking me to dinner with the studio people to celebrate since the 'movie' is to be released in a two days."

"I understand." Stanley said as he smiled. Jim noted that Stanley seemed to be studying him. Observing him intently.

Taking his scanning tablet out, the young reporter asked, "May I call you JIM, sir."

He smiled back. "Since you're my biggest fan, then it's only right that you should."

Stanley smiled and nodded his head. "Jim, your "TNT, Time Not Time" series is one of science fiction's longest series with over thirty books published over the last twenty years. I read somewhere that you started writing after a dark time in your life. Could you tell me about that?"

Years ago, Jim would have flipped out over that question, but as they say, 'time heals old wounds', and through therapy, he had realized that everything that happened that day lead to his opportunity to become a wealthy writer.

Jim felt that everyone probably knew the story of that fateful day when his wife left him to have a night of sex with another man. That night not only destroyed their marriage, but his life as well. As the celeb foot ball player hurried his wife away, when Jim tried to follow them out the side door, He found three large friends of Marc Lavalliere waiting for him.

The men beat Jim, and left him for dead in the alley. The cold February night closed in on him. He laid in the alley for hours before the early morning dumpster pick up revealed his almost lifeless body. He would be a John Doe for nearly a week before he woke in ICU. Jim would find his spine broken, and his legs useless.

He would always feel it was his wife's fault that he was wheel chair bound. He hated her for it. They would never be intimate again even he wanted. The men had made sure of that. She tried to white wash it as it was only sex, and she felt she needed it as she needed to feel sexy again after having children. He despised her, especially when that's night's sex had left her with a special needs child, and guess who would not take care of his love child. Yes, Mr Celebrity Football himself.

The Player fought it in court. He couldn't believe that he could father a child with special needs, but the wonders of DNA cleared that up.

He told how he fought depression after divorcing his cheating wife. Being wheelchair bound made visitation with the children difficult, and as they approached teen years, his visits became less and less as Tommy and Emma did not want to spend time with an angry cripple. In a weird way, Jim being wheel chair bound helped him career wise. When his sales job meant traveling, Jim used the corporate card to woo his clients, but being stuck in the office at a desk made Jim work harder. He had always been competitive, so he was driven to have the best sales number regardless of whether in the office or the sales territories.

"How did you get past the depression?" asked the reporter.

"I had run into Linda at the market. It quickly became a screaming match. Her telling me that I'm a useless cripple that couldn't put his ego away and help her raise three children. I called her a whore that expected me to raise her retarded bastard child. Security was called and they escorted us out of the store. My escort was a black feller about my age. He picked up a discarded receipt from the parking lot, and wrote a number on it. He told me that this number was his 'shrink' that helped with his anger management issues."

The young reporter reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a bottle of water and took a sip.

"I am guessing that you made the call."

Jim couldn't help but smile. "That man changed my life. When I met his 'shrink', she was supportive but firm. It was Dr Gwen that made start writing as a way to get in touch with my feelings. These are the two people that made me the man, I am today." Jim tapped both his hands on his desktop.

"Off the record. What ever happened to your children?" was his next question.

There was a far away look on Jim's face. "I don't really know for sure. Emma went wild as a teenager. I heard a rumor that she had several abortions, which is something that I don't agree with. I have seen or heard from her in years. Last I heard she was a cocktail waitress in a casino out west. Tommy started getting into trouble at fourteen when he arrested for selling drugs. He's spent his adult life in prison. He's on his third time right now." A tear fell from Jim's right eye.

As with age, he understood that he should have been a better father instead of rolling around in his self pity.

"Still Off the record. What happened to your ex?"

Jim squirmed in his seat. "For a long time, I hated her. Really hated her, but I've been past that for over a decade. She made her bed and by damn, I wanted her to sleep in that bed every night."

"All kidding aside. I saw her in the market a while back, and she didn't look well. I know that she older, I'm older, but she looked worn out. She pushed her cart while that giant child-like son followed her around. I could hear her berating him across the aisles. I really don't know anything else about her other than she's having to take care of a man-child for the rest of her life."

"Did she see you?"

"I tried to make sure that she didn't."

The young man did some things with his tablet device. "You stated earlier that you were wheelchair bound, but Is aw you walking with a cane. How did you get there?"

"Medical science. Over the last couple of decades, it has improved. I have had two surgeries to repair the damage to my spinal cord. Though not perfect, I do have most of my feeling in my lower extremities, but I do need a cane to help me walk. I have an experimental device fused to my spine that by passes the damage areas."

The young reporter looked down, then up, and then down again to his tablet. "The personal interest part completed, so let's take about your NY Times award winning books. Did you write the first one after your therapy sessions?"

Bridging his fingers, Jim smiles. "No, the first one, I wrote in college. It sat gathering dust in a box in my storage unit for years, but it was the therapy that got me thinking about it. I had someone dig it out, and I slowly retyped it in my computer while updating it some as I went along. The rest is history."

Tapping his fingers across the screen, Stanley asks another question.

"Where did you get the idea for time travel books from?"

"My dad was a comic book nut, especially the X-Men. There was a story from his childhood where Kate Pryde traveled back in time through her personal history to change the future by controlling her younger self. There was also a TV Show from my childhood where a scientist traveled through time fixing a person's personal timeline by inhabiting their bodies. I liked that show."

"I took the idea from there, and wrote that first book. Making the idea that you could use your dna genetic memory to lock into different places in time. The I cam up with adventure ideas using that simple concept."

The young man leaned forward in his chair. "What if I could tell you that your fantasy is my reality."

Jim looked at him like he was crazy. Jeez, how did this nut job get past my publicist?

"I know that you think that I'm a crazy nut job, but I am not. I'm from thirty years in the future."

Jim tilted his head, and nodded left to right, but before he could ask the man to leave.

"I am a fan of your books. My grandfather was your biggest fan. He has all of your books in dirty old paperbook forms. As a child, he reads them to me over and over. Once I could read, I read them too. I am a scientist in the future, and I turned your fantasy into reality. Once I got top secret clearance, I got access to Tesla Tech which I used to send impulses down the timeline to biological lineages."

"The corporation that runs most of everything is using my tech to create divergent timelines so they can exploit the mineral wealth from those alternate universes. A few years ago, one of my team figured out how to open portals into those worlds so we could exploit them. I plan on changing the timeline so that it can't happen. Time travel doesn't happen, so I came back in time to change your timeline so I don't invent time travel. I need you to fix the moment where your life changed so that something good came from my experiments. I still need you to write those books so that I can always have them."

Looking at him, Jim pondered. "Won't that change your life as well. Yes, and NO."

"Yes but no, I have built what you would think of as a Temporal Faraday cage where my body is located while travel in time. The world may change around it, but the inside stays within the same timeline. A pocket universe, if you think about it."

"So what about your memories?"

"I will have two sets of memories. If it works the way that I think. This is undiscovered country."

He stood. "Jim, would you like to see the device?"

Jim looked at the clock. "Will it take long?"

"It's about time travel, we have all the time in the world."

Stanley drove Jim to a secluded old rusted steel building outside the city in the county. Years ago, Jim remembered bring the kids out in this area to pick apples and go to the pumpkin patch before their family was destroyed.

Stanley unlocked the triple dead-bolted door which creaked as it opened. He flicked on the lights when they entered the building. Jim guessed the building was probably 30 by 30, but it was full of a wild array of electrical equipment. Wires and cable were run every where, on the wall, across the ceiling,and down the walls. In the back was an old massage chair. It was very similar to one Jim had purchased after Emma was born.

"What a mess." Jim joked.

"It is." Stanley replied. "In my time, this can fit in one of your suitcases, but making it with mid-twenty-first century tech was a challenge."

Was this real? Jim thought. It seemed like a lot of work for a ruse. He watched as Stanley brought power across his systems. Most of a wall looked like it was filled with servers. "Doing this the old fashioned way. I can't have this information going digital across the old fashioned internet."

He walked over with his cane balancing him and sat in the massage chair. "Looks like a lot of work just to get my attention."

"Sir, I have been coming back and forth, high-jacking my relatives for nearly five years as I slowly built this. Everything here is for tonight. So that I can get you a different life. I want you, my inspiration, to live a better, pain-free life."

The young man tried to look sincere, but Jim saw something else in his face.

"You look like older version of one of my brother's grand-kids. I see it in the eyes." He sternly asked Stanley. "What are you really? Who are you really?"

The air came out in a sigh. "I am your great grandson. In this timeline, our timeline, your daughter Emma, my grandmother had my dad at fourteen, and her mother made her give him up for adoption."

Jim stared at him. He wasn't surprised by this news but he felt a loss within.

Stanley continued. "This body is my father's. I been high-jacking him, his father, his brother, and even you."

Laughter filled out the room as Jim laughed. "Me, when I was a cripple?"

"No sir. Farther back, much farther back. In the early days of college are there spots that you don't remember. Blank areas of memory." He tapped his forehead. "I'd pick times after you were drinking too much, and took over."

Times came to his mind when his friends asked why he blew them off on campus as he didn't remember seeing them. Wrote it off as too binge drinking at his frat parties.

Concerned that this might be true, He has to asked Stanley. "Is this about your grandmother?"

"In a way. The Bemishes are great people, but if I'm going to change time, I would like to be reunited with my blood family."

Nodding that he understood, Jim drew a breath. "If I buy this craziness, what are we going to do?"

Clapping his hands together, Stanley smiles. "Great. For you it will be pretty simple. I'll hook up up to these sensors, and put this helmet on your head." He held up an old motorcycle helmet that dangled wires. "I will give you a light sedative so when you wake up, you will be inhabiting a younger version of yourself. Once there, don't try to be weird because you will remember doing things that you did then. Be as normal as you can. Enjoy spending time with Emma and Tommy as children."

As he glued electrodes on Jim, he continued. "I want you to know its me in the past. In whatever body that I am in, I will say "Jim, it's wonderful to see you.', and then I will shake your right hand while touching your right elbow with my left hand. Understand?"

"The projector is set to February 25, that's four days before leap year when your family changes forever."

As a writer, Jim understood details make the mission believable. "So what exactly am I to do once I get there?"

"You know what to do. By any means necessary do not go to that nightclub on Leap Year Friday night." Pointing his right forefinger at Jim. "Do NOT let that predator destroy our family!"

The helmet felt snug on Jim's head. "Good luck, Grandpa Jim. I see you on the other side."

Stanley pressed a tablet screen, and the sedative entered Jim's neck at the bottom of the helmet. "Five...four...three...two...one."

He woke from this crazy dream. The bed was so soft like one he slept in years ago. He felt that he recognized smells long forgotten. Before he could open his eyes, he felt a presence in bed with him. It moved about in the bed, as he felt a warm soft body squish against him. He realized that he had a 'morning woody' when a hand touched his penis and stroked it. It had been ages since he had a morning erection.

He opened his eyes. Shock rushed into his brain. He was in bed with Linda!!! A young Linda! Shit, he didn't dream it. Fuck, it was real!

"Linda?"

"Shhhhh. Last night was wonderful, and I hate this to go to waste." She squeezed his boner, then sliding her hips over him, she slid down on his dick until she engulfed it all, and began to slowly ride up and down.

"You have to be quiet or the kids will be running in here."

Her beauty had been forgotten by Jim. How he had felt that regardless of having children, she was the most incredible woman in the world to him. Until four days from now.

His hand reconnected with her body. A body that he had not touched in over thirty years. The plump fullness of her breasts, her slender waist, and tight ass. He didn't kiss her as they coupled, but he watched her face as she smiled as an orgasm approached. Over the next fifteen minutes, she had several orgasms. He loved the tender squeeze her pussy made when she came him. A pleasure long forgotten.

He could feel it building within him, but before he could release, the once familiar sounds of toddler Tommy and young Emma running down the hallway to their room interrupted his release.

Linda jumper off of him, and pulled the covers up over them, and smiled. "I got mine, but you get your later." And she winked.

A tear came to his eyes as the small children rushed into their room, and dove onto the bed. Tommy jumped up and down while Emma laid onto of the comforter and hugged her daddy.

After getting the kids off for breakfast, Jim picked up his old cell phone, and looked at the screen. It was Tuesday the 26th, not the 25th. Guess it's not an exact science.

As the family ate breakfast, Linda asked Jim. "Is something wrong this morning, you keep staring at me."

"It's nothing. I had forgotten how beautiful you are." Which was true, but he could help but think that he needed to find out if she knew the other man before that night. The night four days away.

Jim felt his body shudder for a second. Like a shiver, as if something had happened to him as he resided within his younger self.

He was amused as he went through his day. It was entertaining, and he was surprised that he remembered what his job was like thirty years ago. He enjoyed as he watched former co-workers as he knew where their futures would take them.

Arriving home, Jim spent too long playing with Emma and Tommy which caused Linda to fuss that dinner was getting cold, and he was upsetting their schedule.

Herding the children to the table, he came up behind her to wrap his arms around her. It was so natural. He kissed the back her neck as he ran his hands gently down her ribs and over her lovely hips.

She slapped his hands away when he started back up her torso.

As they ate, Linda gave Jim a sexy smile.

Jim cherished putting the children to bed. It had been so long that he had forgotten how special it was to him. H e wandered back to the family room, and sat down beside Linda where she instinctively leaned into him, and snuggle against him. It felt so natural. He thought he remember who the winner of the dance show was going to be, but he wasn't so sure.

Linda raised up and kissed him softly. For no reason other than love. He smiled, and kissed her back. This was his Linda, not that Linda. It felt strange that he could divide them into two people in his mind. He desired this Linda where the other turned him off. It was weird even for Jim to believe.

The young couple were intensely making out. Jim had his hands under Linda's sweatshirt, and her hands were in his joggers. They kissed passionately and with a hunger that needed fulfillment, but then came a knock at the door.

Knock. It came again.

Jim stood and rearranged is erection before going to the door. He peeked through the peephole, and saw his mother-in-law.

"Linda, it's your mom."

Linda rearranged herself before joining Jim at the door.

Jim opened the door, and his mother-in-law walked in from the cold.

The tiny woman shivered as she took Jim's right hand into hers, and touched his right elbow with her left hand. "Jim, it's so good to see you."

"Mom, what are you doing out this late? Is something wrong?"

"No, Linda. I wanted to bake a treat for the children this weekend, and I decided to go to the market tonight, and your father wants his pecan praline ice cream that he likes."

She turned to Jim. "Jim, honey, I think my tire is going flat can you look at it?"

"Sure." Jim grabbed his coat and gloves and went out side.

Linda watched from the window that overlooked the driveway as Jim got down on his knees and Mom stood behind him chatting away.

"Stanley, what's up?" asked Jim as he pretended to look at the tire.

She smiled. "I jumped back to today to tell you that I sent you an audio file that I recorded today at the Sports Club at lunch."

"I know that you were worried that Linda had somehow been seeing the Asshole before that night, and after what I overheard and recorded today. I can assure you that Linda does not know 'ML'."