If you could walk in your own time, you wouldn't be as scared as you are now. Would you be?
"Hello?
"Oh, hi, honey.
"How are you doing?
"My stomach hurts too, George, isn't that awful? I'm not sure what the doctors will find. I'm so scared.
"The doctor's said it's just stomach cancer, nothing that they can't handle, they think. But I will have a month of radiation, I guess. We have to hurry, tho.
"Thanks for the flowers, honey, I love them.
"We both love you too, sweetheart.
I stood in the middle of the airport. How had I gotten so lost in this time?
"George, come here and see the time machine! You'll love it."
I followed the professor, unable to speak. The small futuristic machine, sleek and modern and gleaming chrome on the white sterile walls of the airport, was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. It was exactly what I always imagined the future would be, and every technology I ever dreamed could be found inside of it.
"It's a time machine?" I asked, and I could tell that the professor found my astonishment child-like.
"That it is, son. That it is. That it-is," the professor said, and it sounded a bit like the other time travelers who'd gone before into the time machine, and come back. But he was my husband's father, my husband who had died a year ago and would never see me again.
"Get in, get in, get in," the professor urged. "We're headed to the space-time continuum, and if we don't go soon, we're going to miss our window. Look, I brought you to a whole bunch of luggage, at least all your things will be there for you when you time-travel. So let's give you a tour."
I followed the professor down a series of old hallways, bare white walls, white concrete floors and no furniture. There were no doors in the walls, except the door that led the way deeper into the fortress of the time machine.
The security lady's kind eyes stared out from a screen. The screen didn't blink at me, it waited for me to respond.
"Hello?" I said.
"Hey, are you our guest?"
"I'm his wife," the professor echoed as if in a dream, and I felt like we'd all just had dinner together. I looked at his face through the glass, his eyes closed. "He can't speak because he's having a stroke."
"Oh, well, we'll just have to help him, then. Can you help us help him, sir?" the security lady asked.
"Yes. Could you help us change? I'm getting old." I looked at my reflection in the security lady's screen.
"You need to put.. quickly. Clothing."
"People need to wear clothes? That's not right."
"No, animals do. Everybody wears clothes when they travel back through time. They lose their clothes. Most people claim that they keep their clothes, and they do, but they don't. So they change, while they travel, but they can't take their past clothes with them. Like my wife, she carried everything she owned on her original trip here this her entire life. She never traveled, but she did wear the same dress, I'm sure, right here in that," he said, pointing to a small closet near the time machine.
And then I realized, of course. I stripped off my clothes, along with my puffy pink cardigan, adorned with a pink monogrammed owl and my black cotton pants, and put on my new clothes. They didn't fit, and I looked ridiculous, but sooner than I could question anything, suddenly we were standing in the future.
"It's beautiful," I murmured, and the professor turned to look at me.
"What?"
"It's beautiful."
"Yes, of course it is. I had everything here once. It was all mine. I was the only time traveler and the only person in this time, in this world. Then George and Myra came, and now you.
"This is our time machine, this is our time, and this is our plane. That's us in a seat."
"The plane," I said.
"You said you wouldn't find yourself lost in time, in tears, and in sorrow, Billy. I'm only several hours old. George I've just discovered. We need to go.
"Please, Billy. We must go; we must go!"
The plane rose from earth, sailing through the sky and beyond, into the clouds, past forks in the earth. We were flying, we were free, we were not bound to the earth, always bound to the earth, we were free. I think that was the longest we ever stayed with the plane in the air. There were clouds and clouds, layer after layer after layer, it was so high up and so far away, I was afraid we weren't going to make it out of here, that this plane that was designed to go from here to another dimension was not designed to go through here and here and here, but only to go through the clouds, and the air, and the air.
And then, then we came out the other side. The plane seemed to change slightly, be a different plane, but I knew it was the same.
And then she screamed, and I don't know why, but I knew why.
"That is the past. This is the past, Billy. That is the past, the blink of an eye, the secret of the next heartbeat. I wish I could have lived my life here with you, but since I cannot live my life, or your life, or our life, or anybody else's life, but my own, I want to live our life together."
They were gone. And I was alone in the angry, violent, uncomfortable past.
His wife looked confused, so I grabbed her and I hugged her.
"I'll go. You go, keep going. I'll find you."
"I'll stop for you," he screamed at me. "I'll wait for you. I'll never give up looking for you."
"Will you go, for your wife. Will you?" I asked, and he turned to her and nodded.
I watched him disappear, and then I saw her, and then she was gone.
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