The Girl & the Machine Read online

  “So…does it work?” Franklin asked, unable to take his eyes away from the gigantic machine that hummed with life.

  Heather walked around the machine, lovingly touching the metal, stroking it as she would stroke a lover’s skin. “Theoretically, yes. We’ve done all the tests and studies that we could possibly do. But we cannot make it actually work.” She looked up at him. “Not without you.”

  “Me?”

  Heather nodded. “We need you—or more precisely, we need your genetics.”

  Franklin looked down at his hands, then back up to Heather.

  “There’s something in your blood, in your DNA, that gives you the ability to travel. A mutation.”

  “Like the X-Men?”

  Heather laughed, but again Franklin noticed there was no humor in the sound. “Sort of,” she said. “Anyway, without this mutation, the time machine won’t work. We need you to make it work.”

  “How?”

  “It’s very simple,” Heather said. “What happens is, you step into the machine, we program it for whatever time and place you want, the machine reads your genetic code, and then it uses your own genetic mutation to send you exactly where you want to go—past or future.”

  Franklin stared at the machine, trying to think of all the things that he could do with it. Time travel could be rather mundane when one is limited to your own timeline. With a machine like this, he could see the dinosaurs. He could see whatever happened to humanity a hundred years—a thousand years—several millennia from now.

  “Yes, hello?” Heather said. Franklin looked up and realized she was using her cell phone. “One large.” She glanced up at Franklin. “You like pepperoni?” Franklin nodded. “Large pepperoni,” Heather said into the phone. She hung up. “We have to eat,” she said to Franklin. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  * * *

  They sat at the base of the machine on either side of the greasy pizza box, using napkins as plates. The pizza came from some local place rather than a chain, but the only difference between it and any other pizza he could get was that the crust was far too big and lumpy.

  Franklin sat with the machine behind him. It felt as if it loomed over him, watching his every move. He ate the pizza nervously.

  “Most people can’t travel through time at all,” Heather said. “Obviously. But since you can go to the past, there’s really no reason why you can’t also go into the future.”

  “I just assumed it’d make a paradox or something,” Franklin said weakly.

  “A paradox?”

  “Like, if I went forward in time, I’d break the universe.” He felt rather stupid in front of this girl genius. He should have learned more about his own condition, about the science behind it. He felt like a cancer victim who had never bothered to learn about germs.

  Heather dropped her half-eaten slice back in the box and scooted closer to Franklin. “It doesn’t work like that. You’ve tried to go forward in time, right? And it never worked?”

  Franklin nodded in agreement.

  “It’s like this.” Heather pulled Franklin up and led him to a gurney at the back of the lab. She pushed him onto the wheeled table and started to roll it forward. “For everyone else on Earth, we can only move through time in one direction.” She pushed the gurney forward. “We have no control over how fast we’re going, or that we can only move forward. But you do.” She tapped his knee, and Franklin dropped his foot to the slick, tiled floor, then used the traction of his sneaker to push back against Heather, making the wheels of the gurney go backwards. “But you’re still limited. You have a block of some sort, something that’s preventing you from moving more than backwards and forwards within your own previously-lived timeline. With the machine, we unblock the restrictions you currently have, and you’re free to go anywhere in time that you like.” She pushed him off the gurney, and Franklin was free to move as he wanted to.

  He still didn’t fully understand what the machine would do to him or how it would work, but Heather plopped back down in front of the pizza, satisfied she had fully explained herself.

  “What makes a person like you want to spend her life working on a machine like this?” Franklin asked, sitting back down. He didn’t eat any more. His stomach was upset; his nerves were on edge.

  “You made a lasting impression.” She stared at him with clear, sincere eyes. Then she shrugged. “I’ve always been sort of nerdy, anyway,” Heather said dismissively.

  To be honest, it surprised Franklin. Heather wasn’t super-model gorgeous, but she was hot enough. Her dark skin was smooth, and her hair had been relaxed and twirled up into a cute bun. Heather had a little bit of a hot-librarian-thing going for her. She wasn’t exactly slender, but she had an everyday-girl charm about her that Franklin found attractive.

  She didn’t look like a nerd. Like a genius.

  Gooey cheese slid down her pizza, landing with a greasy plop on the napkin. Heather looked down at it as if surprised she was still eating.

  “I wasn’t always the way I am now,” she said softly. “High school was hell. I was a ‘late bloomer,’ so to say. I didn’t get boobs until I was a junior. I wasn’t into the same things other girls my age were. Didn’t care about make-up or hair products. Never interested in boys.” She glanced up. “I’m not interested in girls, either,” she said somewhat defensively. “I have always only been interested in science. But try defining asexuality to a bunch of horny teenagers in high school. Try explaining to them that you really, sincerely would rather study and learn about physics and genetics than put on cheap glitter and go to a party. It doesn’t really work out well, let me tell you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Franklin said.

  Something like steel edged the look in Heather’s eyes. “I’ve changed some since then,” Heather said. “I had to.”

  She tossed her head toward the light gleaming from the machine. She wore a little makeup—just a thin outline of turquoise around her eyes and a burgundy shade of lipstick—and she’d obviously done her hair for both looks and practicality. For the first time, however, Franklin realized that Heather had carefully manufactured her appearance not so much to look good, but the same way a warrior might wear armor. Her neat, slightly preppy clothes, the way she did her face—it was all a front, a disguise so people would leave her alone and let her do what she wanted. It was easier for her to cave to the norms of society in her appearance than to argue that she didn’t care about it at all.

  “My senior year, I really figured things out,” Heather said, still not looking at Franklin. “I got the right clothes, the right look. I started blending in with the popular kids. I got invited to parties, but it wasn’t until my prom that I actually went to any.”

  The corner of Franklin’s mouth tilted up in a smile. “And then future-me crashed that party, right?” he asked, remembering the way Heather had described their meeting.

  She nodded.

  “And that changed everything.” She paused for a long time. “Anyway, what about you? What was it like, growing up with this ability to go through time?”

  “Not as glamorous as you may think,” Franklin said. “I could never go anywhere I really wanted to go.”

  Heather smiled. “Like to witness the big events of history.”

  “Exactly!” Franklin’s face lit up. “That’s why I’m a history major, I guess. I’m fascinated with the past, because it always seems just at the tips of my fingers. Honestly, I’m more excited about using the time machine to go into the past beyond my own timeline than into the future.”

  “Where would you go first?” Heather asked.

  “Um…” Franklin pondered the question. He’d of course thought about it before. As a kid, he’d wanted nothing more than to see an actual T-Rex. But now, he probably most wanted to see…

  “The JFK shooting?” Heather answered for him.

  “How’d you know?”

  “I told you, I know you!” Heather crowed. “How did you think I found you this morni
ng, studying at the grassy knoll?”

  Had it really only been this morning that Heather had plopped down into his life?

  “I wasn’t on the grassy knoll,” Franklin said. “But I guess it is kind of a creepy place to hang out.”

  “You are a proper Dallas boy after all,” Heather added.

  Franklin grinned sheepishly. Maybe it was weird that he most wanted to see another man die, but it was a topic that had always fascinated him. The shooter on the hill, the conspiracy theories, the end of an era. He wanted to witness it all.

  “And then just really momentous moments and people in history. D-Day. Alexander the Great. A slave auction. Hell, it’d be cool to go back far enough to meet Jesus, just to confirm that he was really there.”

  “You’re not interested in the future at all?”

  “One of the first things I’d do is go forward and find out the winning numbers to the biggest lotto in the country, that’s for sure,” Franklin said immediately. “And I’d do enough to make sure that I was never poor. Maybe get into politics. Buy the best houses. There’s this dick in my Reformation History class—I may try to screw with him a little.”

  Heather grew silent, watching him. Finally she said, “Have you ever done that before, screwed with people’s pasts?”

  “Well, yeah,” Franklin said. “Wouldn’t you? You have the ability to change the past—wouldn’t you do it to get revenge on the assholes in your life?”

  “Such as?”

  “There was this one kid—Jeremy—in my high school. He was always trying to one-up everyone. Freaking valedictorian, every teacher loved him, he was even star of the football team. Total cliché, total ‘good guy’ who never did anything wrong.”

  “What’d you do to him?” Heather asked quietly.

  Franklin shrugged. “I just…I went back in time and messed up his college applications. You should have seen his face when everyone else started getting accepted to schools, and he didn’t.” He shrugged again. “It didn’t matter anyway; the counselors at school made sure he got a late entry into one of his back-ups.”

  Heather’s eyes searched his. “If someone had messed with my MIT application, we wouldn’t be here now.”

  “Look, I know it was a jerk thing to do. But Jeremy totally deserved to be taken down a peg, that guy had it far too easy in life.”

  Heather didn’t say anything.

  “Okay, fine, I know I’ve been kind of an asshole about this whole ability in the past. It didn’t take me long to realize that I could basically do anything without consequences.”

  Heather waited for him to continue.

  “So, yeah, maybe I did some dick things. I shouldn’t have messed up Jeremy’s college apps. I…I stole, too. I’m not proud of it, but I did. When the latest games would sell out, I’d just go back in time to when the shipment arrived at the store, steal one, and then pop back into the present. It was easy. It didn’t hurt anyone.”

  She just watched him. It was like her silence forced him into a confession.

  “You can’t sit there and tell me that you wouldn’t do the same sort of thing,” Franklin said defensively. “You don’t know what it’s like, having this power and knowing you can do whatever you want.”

  “Well, as long as you didn’t hurt anyone,” she said in an even monotone.

  Franklin paused. That wasn’t really true, was it? He’d tried to ruin Jeremy’s life. And then…

  “I wasn’t a good person, okay?” Franklin said, looking down. “I…I wasn’t one of the cool guys, okay? I was always shy and quiet, and I was bullied a lot. Going back in time was a way to cope. I could solve my problems in the past, and then come into the future. If I hadn’t been able to do that, shit, I would have no confidence right now.”

  “What do you mean?” Heather asked, her voice still without inflection.

  “You said you learned how to be hot, got invited to parties and stuff, right? I learned by going back in the past, doing things over. It gave me confidence. I’d go back in time and crash parties. There were no consequences in the past, yeah? I could do what I wanted. No one would ever catch me. I started going to parties a couple of towns over, meeting girls I never would have met before. Drunk girls do a lot to boost a nerdy guy’s confidence, let me tell you.”

  Franklin could tell Heather was judging him, and it made him feel as if he had to prove that he was right. “Okay, so, look. I was at this one party. It was huge. There were dozens of people there, maybe a hundred. My own prom and the party after had been…god, it was a disaster. Total swing and a miss. But at this party, I didn’t know anyone, not really. And if I made a complete fool of myself, I could just disappear into the present, yeah? So there was this one girl. Total hottie. She was quiet, like me, and by herself. By the pool. So…no consequences, right? I talked to her. She was nice. Maybe a little drunk, but who cares? I took her to the pool house, and we did it. She was reluctant, but it didn’t matter. Losing my v-card like that; shit, the next day at school, I walked like a king. And the other guys could see it, too. Things changed for me.”

  Heather waited until Franklin met her eyes. “So you raped her?”

  Franklin’s face registered shock. “Rape? I wouldn’t call it rape! It’s not like I ambushed her and ripped her clothes off and forced her.”

  “You said she was reluctant.”

  “Yeah, well, she had obviously been a virgin, too.”

  “Did she say yes?”

  “She didn’t say no.”

  “Stop, uh-huh, I want you to think about this. You walked into the party looking to get laid. You knew you would have no consequences for whatever you did there. You met a girl, alone, and took her to a private place. I want you to really think about that night. Did you rape her?”

  Franklin wasn’t sure why Heather was so stuck on that point. What did it matter? It was in the past… All he remembered of that night was the warmth of her body, the thrill of the conquest. It had been a conquest. A battle to overcome. Because…she had fought. Weakly, he thought, but maybe she’d been tired or drunk. The word “no,” had never actually been said, but then again, he hadn’t been listening, had he? He had barely even looked at her. Because when he did, when he looked down at her terror-stricken face and deadened eyes…no. He had just looked away. Easier to not look, to just feel. If she hadn’t wanted it, if she hadn’t wanted him, she should have said no. She should have fought harder. It wasn’t rape. Rape was done by criminals who jumped from dark shadows. Rape was violent. It had just been sex. He had wanted it.

  But he had never really checked to make sure she had.

  “Okay, fine, I’m no saint,” Franklin said, his voice rising. He found he couldn’t meet Heather’s eyes. “Maybe that played out badly.”

  She didn’t answer him. The words hung between them. He could tell that she was disappointed in him, and it upset him in a way he hadn’t expected. When Heather described meeting the future version of him, it was noble. A man using his abilities for good, not just to get laid by a girl he didn’t even know.

  “Were there other girls?” Heather asked. “Other girls who didn’t know you would have ‘no consequences’ for whatever you did?”

  Franklin looked away. There had been. A dozen or more. He had learned—after trial and error—that the best method for him was to find the quiet girls, the ones who didn’t really seem to belong to the parties, the ones who followed him to the private places, the upstairs rooms or the dark backyards. He had learned to not look at them after he started. He had learned not to say much, to go straight to the action. And he had learned to disappear quickly after he finished, to leave them on the bed or in the damp grass, to walk out of sight and silently slip back to his own time. He had learned, he realized, to never even think the word “rape,” that it was only the word that made it true to him.

  “I’m not that kind of guy anymore,” Franklin said quietly. He didn’t need to be. Being with those girls had given him the confidence he needed to be m
ore outgoing, to join a frat, to risk meeting girls in his own timeline, to not fear rejection.

  His abilities had turned him into the man he was now—confident, courageous, sure of himself and his potential.

  “I haven’t been the best guy I could be, I guess,” Franklin said. “Maybe I did use my powers greedily. But you met the future version of me. Clearly I can change. Clearly this is the point where I stop using my ability to benefit just myself and really try to do things that are better for other people.”

  Heather shot him a small smile. “I am sure that will be the outcome,” she said. She slapped her knees and stood up. “Are you ready to try?”

  Franklin stared at her. “Tonight?”

  Heather nodded. “Why not? It won’t take long to run just a simple trial.”

  Franklin wanted to say no, but there was really no reason to. “What will it do?” he asked. The steel and chrome and wires and glass seemed heartless and menacing.

  Heather took him by the hand and led him to the metal tube. Pushing a button, it opened with a hydraulic hiss. “You get in here,” she said. “The machine will read your genetic code—it will have to take a small sample of blood, but it won’t hurt—and it will use that to fuel the machine. Then you get out, stand on the platform, and go anywhere in time you want to go.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  She pushed him gently toward the open tube. He stepped inside—it fit him perfectly, like a custom-made coffin. Heather leaned on her tip-toes, her breasts pressing into his chest as she pulled down a set of tubes from the top of the metal enclosure. At one end was a long needle.

  “Take your shirt off,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “I—really?”

  “Really.”