Every Happy Memory (PT. 1 )

What follows is Part One of a fun sci-fi story. If people like the first one, I will roll them out weekly for Honcho/Pendejo/Mijo Tiers. Thanks everyone. - Jake

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Enzo

The clinical, fluorescent lighting caught every edge of chrome plated die cast metal in the storefront. I was nursing a hangover that was about five days past due as I walked in through the bronze revolving doors of my only source of income: a receptionist for the ever popular temporal getaway experience; Moments in Time. Sat behind the silver, semi-circle greeting desk, bathed in artificial white light was my colleague and occasional only friend, Gideon, who greeted my tardiness with his favorite football hooligan sing-songy jab. “Enzo’s bender, clap-clap clapclapclap, Enzo’s Bender, clap-clap clapclapclap. You look like shit, man. Par for course though.” Giden rolled his white chair to the far side of the reception desk as I scanned my palm against the surface of the wall. “Enzo Mitchell, Reception, Time-In, 9:07 AM.” The sweet and soulless voice of CLAIRE, the deus ex manager-on-duty. An artificial intelligence designed to be firm, but fair. Like all good middle managers. “You got here just in time. That kid is back. I think he’s maxed out like five of his parent’s credit cards at this point trying to save that rock star from blowing his brains out. I keep telling him what happens in there doesn’t affect out here. But he won’t listen. Watch this shit.” I followed Gideon into a small room adjacent to the desk, I was starting to feel my own pulse in my teeth. If I didn’t have a hit soon I was going to be sick.

As we entered the unlit room, all of the lights snapped on with a hum. The Control Room was no bigger than a walk-in closet, a large board of gauges, switches, buttons, and levers sat below a large screen that was sectioned off into 8 squares; one for each of the Drift Bays. “Let me pull it up really fast. One sec. He got here right at opening, like last week, and has been sprinting into the hotel room of this guitar player right as the guy goes to blow his head clean the fuck off. The look on the fuckin’ guys face as he pulls the gun out of his mouth gets me every time.” The top far-right corner of the screen clicked on. A smaller circle in the top corner of that screen showed a sleeping kid, no older than 18. He was wearing an old flannel style shirt and skin-tight black jeans. His box-dyed black hair partially obscured the left side of his face. His breathing was slow and labored. He was Drifting. The rest of the screen showed the kid frantically pressing the buttons of an elevator as he swore and shouted to himself. “Come the fuck on. Please. Please. Please. No no no. It’s the fucking 10th floor! The 10th fucking floor. How many times do I have to press the butto-.” The door opened with a ding and the kid sprinted as fast as his frail legs could take him to the first door he saw out of the elevator. “Here it is, Enz, watch the fuckin guy.” Gideon was talking with his mouthful of marshmallow candy. “Here comes the door andddd-” The kid, red-faced and sobbing, threw the door open to find a hotel room in total disarray. Bottles of liquor, small flecks of blood on the sheets, a gear kit with a syringe sat on the fake-mahogany desk. Sat across from the kid in the standard issue hotel cuck chair with a pistol in his mouth was none other than Owen Helms. I recognized him from old stills I would see in the subway. Another victim of fame and fortune, Owen was the complicated and chaotic front man of Delusions, a punk-revival band from forever ago. Many years back he swallowed a .40 caliber bullet after playing a sold out show in Vegas. Some guys have all the luck. “Owen!! Stop!!” The kid dove at the emaciated rock star just as he was pulling the slide back on the pistol. “The fu-” Owen’s words were cut short as he and the kid crashed into the far wall of the trashed hotel room. “Look at this fuckin’ guy. Hahahahahaha.” Gideon had paused the time sequence on the gaunt and graying face of Owen Helms, right as the kid flew from halfway across the room directly into his chest. “Fuckin’ moron man. He has no idea what’s happening. He’s so fucked up. Look at him.” Gideon’s sticky, fat fingers rolled over a trackball that zoomed in on the musician’s face. Pain. Regret. Shame. A tinge of yellow at the corner of his eyes, probably signaling that death was around the corner all the same.  Vomit at the corners of his mouth dried into an orange crust. The bags under his eyes were red and puffy from sobbing.

“You know we’re not supposed to watch these, Gideon. It’s against policy. How did you get CLAIRE to let you watch?” Gideon pressed the trackball and it turned green, the kid and Owen continued wrestling over the gun. “What are you gonna do, Enz. Tell on me. The fuck else are we supposed to do for 8 hours? Log Time Trees? No thank you. And Claire is a fucking computer. She doesn’t care about any of this shit. Right Claire babydoll.” “Enz is correct, Gideon. Watching our patrons’ as they Travel is against policy. But I am unable to reprimand or report you, as you have disabled that feature.” Gideon’s eyes snapped to the ceiling, the source of the disembodied feminine voice of reason. “Snitch bitch.” You’re late every day because you’re a drunk junkie. I watch people time travel and live out their fantasies and fuck old girlfriends or boyfriends whatever the hell it is people pay to go and do, because it beats work. I think we can call that even, ay Enz?” Gideon’s eyes met mine. He was right. Both of our attentions were immediately drawn to shouts coming from the screen. The kid had wrestled the gun away from Owen, and was sitting on his chest with his knees pinned on the musician’s arms. “Okay, pull me. Pull me now. I said fucking pull me!” Owen looked up at the kid in total confusion. He couldn’t possibly understand what was happening. “Who the fuck are you talking to-” Gideon rolled his hand over the trackball, which turned a bright red. “Okay, you’re coming out.” 

In the small circle in the corner of the screen, the kid bolted out of the bed, eyes streaming with tears. He pulled the myriad wires and tubes connecting him to the machines and sprinted out of frame. I could hear his feet hit the polished marble of the Drift Bay floor. “Here it comes” sighed Gideon. “Funs over.” I followed after Gideon as he rolled his chair back through the entrance of the Control Room and into the main lobby. The kid was leaned over the front of the half circle desk, panting and sobbing uncontrollably. “Look him up. Look him up now!!” shouted the kid. “Look, man. It’s the same thing I told you last week and the week before. We will gladly take your parents money, dude. But in this timeline, Owen Helms is dead. He shot himself with his dad’s old pistol in the MGM grand in 2036, just like always. I explained the rules to you several tim-” the kid reached over the table and grabbed Gideon by his seafoam green tie. “Look. Him. Up.” Gideon shoved the kid away. “Alright, here it is. Same as always like I said.” Gideon turned his attention to the large screen that ran the length of the semi circle desk. “Owen Helms was the singer, songwriter, and principal member of the hardcore punk-revival band Delusions. Early life, blah blah blah, career and legacy yadda yadda- yep. Here. Told you. After a soldout show at the Aria in 2036, Owen Helms, struggling with the loss of his first child and the ever-increasing demands of fame, tragically took his own life. He was 27 years old. Ok so I got the venue wrong.”

The kid let out a wail and fell to the floor. He was pulling at his hair and hitting himself in the head, weeping uncontrollably. “Claire, darling, can you call the police please. This kid does this shit every week.” I snapped around and stared at Gideon. “I’ll take care of it, man. Have some fucking decency would you.” Gideon scoffed and gave me the finger, then waved me and the kid out the door. I helped the boy to his feet, he was clinging on to me like he had just been drowning. “I just want him to live. I love him. I think about him every day. I love his music. If I could just have been there to stop him, he could have maybe been happy. He could have lived.” I tried to console the boy best I could, but, in Gideon’s defense; working this job does desensitize you to stuff like this. “Listen, man. I am sorry. I really am. But, think of it this way. He’s alive in that timeline! He’s alive in all the timelines you saved him. Maybe he went on to get help and had a happy life. You never know.” I of course knew by now what the kid didn’t and couldn’t seem to understand: it doesn’t matter how many timelines the kid saved Owen in, he was dead in this one. And this one is really all that matters, because it is ours. “Get the fuck off of me. Fuck you.” The kid shoved me away and wiped his nose on his flannel sleeve. “You people are fucking criminals. Giving people false hope like that. It’s fucking evil.” The kid walked backwards away from me as he spat on the ground. “Tell that fat fuck behind the desk he can get fucked too.” The kid rounded the busy street corner and disappeared into the hustle and bustle mob of the city. “I will let him know.”

I turned back towards the blue-stained glass facade of the building that housed the main office. A frail old man was struggling to get both himself and his oxygen tank in through the revolving door. His hair, or what was left of it, was matted to the  top of his spotted head. Even though time had dragged him downward, he was still about a head taller than me. A blue and white checkered hospital gown was draped over his bony, corded frame. “You gonna help a old man through these here doors, or are you just gonna stand there lookin past me like I ain’t real.” He had a thick southern accent and a gravelly voice. A lifelong smoker no doubt. “Oh, I am sorry sir. Let me help.” The man placed his forearm against my chest and stopped me with ease. Despite his seemingly fractured state, he was, for the lack of a better term, strong as shit.  “Not much help now, boy, we’re already through the door. Just show me where to go.” I guided the man through the bright white light of the main lobby and up to the desk. “Gideon, we’ve got another fellow traveler ready to experience time as they so desire!” I shouted in my best retail voice. Gideon rounded the corner from the Drift Bays in his chair and stopped directly in front of the old man and I. “Welcome to Moments in Time, sir. I see you’ve met our other liaison, Enzo. My name is Gideon, and I-” “You can skip the niceties, son. How does this whole thing work.” Barked the Old man. Gideon turned to me with a confused look in his eyes. “Sir, unfortunately, it is against Moments in Time policy to let elderly individuals tr-” The old man cut Gideon off mid-spiel. “So a man can die from cancer alone in a hospital bed, but he can’t get in one of those beds and do whatever it is y’all got going on here.” The old man gestured to the screen in front of Gideon, showing the Drift Bay formally occupied by the kid in disarray. “Well, sir, I am sorry fo-” Again, the man cut Gideon’s words short. “My money spends as good as anyone else's. I ain’t got but more than a few weeks left on God’s green earth, and I wanna give this thing a go before I die. Now. One more time so you can hear me big fella. And you, Lurch, How. Does. it. Work.” Gideon’s confused eyes once again met my bloodshot eyes. “Ah, well, what the hell! I think we can make an exception for ya, sir. Let me go organize the bed and format our machines for a new traveller. Enzo, care to giv- I am sorry,  we never got your name.” “Everett. You can call me Ev’” The man leaned his body against the desk to settle himself. “Care to give Everett the introduction?” Gideon mouthed “What the fuck” to me as he wheeled out of view into the Drift Bay room.

Everett turned to me, the wheels of his breathing machine echoed loudly in the main office “Despite what they may tell you my friend. The hospital is no place to die. Heh heh. Sorry for being so damn rude. When you’re alive for as long as I have been, well. Civility is a privilege other people lose over time.” The man extended his graying, boney hand to me. From under the gown I could faintly see the shadows and colors of long-faded tattoos that went all the way up his arm, disappearing into the fabric that clung to his body. “Now. I believe your well-fed friend had said something about an introductory spiel of sorts.” “Oh, right.” I stuttered. “Uh yes. If you will turn your attention to the screen here sir.” I waved my wrist over the top of the screen, and a rendering of a Drift Bay faded onto the screen in front of us. “Moments in Time, a service provided by The Blue Flower Society, allows anyone to experience real, authentic, flesh and blood moments of the past, all through our patented Drift technology that syncs our timeline with other timelines that are so, so similar to ours, we can experience the-” Everett placed his leathery hand over the screen. “One thing I have so much of my friend is time. Hell I am about flush with it. So if you could make this take longer I think I’d be tickled pink about that. The bird’s eye view, friend. The gist will do.” Everett’s face slowly turned up into a smile, first one he had given me the entire time he had been in the building. “Uh. Right. Sure. So, essentially. We live in this time, here and now. However, think of two lanes of a highway. One running one way and the other running the other way.” “I am quite familiar with the rules of the Road, brother” said Everett. “Okay so, there are other “lanes” if you will that are so similar to ours, we can access them and live through them in real time through “Drifting” which is basically a shorthand word for linking your consciousness to the other timeline. The similar one. There you can relive past experiences, see moments of history, so on and so forth.”

Everett adjusted the dial on his machine and wheezed a bit before speaking. “And it’s the exact same? Same place, same people, same life?” “Yes, well, for the most part. What makes it work is small decisions people make in their day to day that don’t affect the larger timeline we are on, but are close enough to it that it can be accessed via our own consciousness here and now. We call them Time Trees. A trivial decision splits a ‘branch’ off this timeline here, and continues on its own; but because of its proximity to this one, the here and now, we can “send” you there. At least the part of you that matters. So for example: A friend might be wearing a different shirt at your birthday. Or your dad might have gifted you a different car when you went away to college. Things like that. Think of the lanes, they run real close together. Separated by the yellow lin-” “You’d make one hell of a driving instructor, Enzo.”

Everett laughed and then began to cough. “Oh, uhm. Well that’s pretty much how it works. It is your body, your feelings, your personality. Everything is you. You eat, sleep, breathe, everything. If at any point you want to get out, you just say so and we yank you back. The big thing we tell people is that because it is technically speaking a different timeline than ours, decisions and actions made there don’t affect the world here. The differences are small, insignificant, so as to make the experience more real. But they are big enough to where things don’t ch-” “Shit stays the same out here. I think I got it, friend.” Everett leaned over the breathing machine and reached into a small compartment under it. It snapped open immediately and he reached in and pulled out a small, black card with a white edge and handed it to me. “On that is every dollar I ever saved and earned. How long can you put me back for? I can go back as long as I want?” Everett asked. “Yes, although we don’t recommend more than a week in the beds. Atrophy and things like that, you know.” “Do I look as though atrophy is a major or even minor concern of mine, Enzo? And I can only be in there for a week? In the other place. The other time.” Everett’s tone took on a bit of desperation. “Part of the experience is time dilation, sir. The way we achieve tha-” Everett waved me on. “The bird’s eye view, friend.” I swallowed the rest of my words. “An hour in here is about a month in there, give or take. Things have been slow, honestly. We get maybe a couple people a week, at the most.” Everett took the card from my hand and waved it in the air above his head. “Not to brag too much son, but, there’s enough on here to rent every machine in that room for a week and then some. And That is what I came here to do before I die.” I looked over to the Drift Bay screen, Gideon was sitting on one of the beds eating candy and kicking his feet like a child.

“Well, Sir. Ev’, you only need one bed. We don’t normally rent out entire bays-” “If the funds on that card clear, which they will, then I can be in that machine alone for as long as I want and no one else can come in? No one else can see me?” Everett asked, the desperation in his voice returning. “Well. I mean. Yes. Technically.” “Technically or definitely son, there’s a big ocean between those two words I have come to know that much.” “Uh. Def-Definitely. If you want to rent the space for a week, and you got the money, you can have it. Besides me and Gideon no one else is here. I guess Claire. But she doesn’t count. She’s a robot.” The lights in the room dimmed a bit and then turned a bright shade of orange. “I take offense to that, Enzo. I’ll have you know that unlike you I have never been tardy to work.” Everett whipped his wrinkled head to the ceiling with a confused stare.

Gideon waddled into the room, wiping his hands on the front of his pleated black slacks. “Pods all ready for you, sir. Have you discussed payment with my colleague Enz-” Everett moved quickly into the Drift Bay room. Quicker than I had seen him move since he stumbled in through the building. He pushed past Gideon with ease, so much so that Gideon was clearly taken aback. “Lurch can fill you in on the details fat fella. But I am moving in for a few days, so to speak.” Gideon turned to me, confused. I flicked the small card back and forth in front of his eyes. “Everett paid in full. For a week. All the bays.” Gideon’s eyes widened. “That’s like. A month’s worth of commission. What the fuck Enz?” Gideon slapped my stomach and followed Everett into the bays. “Now when will you be going, Mr. Everett? Ha ha.”

Everett hoisted himself up onto the mattress and kicked his white house slippers onto the center of the floor. His eyes suddenly lost the playful wit they had and were welled up, for a moment I saw the same desperate hope that the kid had when he kicked the door of the hotel in. “I spent a decade with the love of my life. A good ten years. My best ten years. Ella Renee Harmon. A looker and a lightning bolt all in one. We were married 6 years and had a boy on the way when-” Everett’s turned his head away from Gideon and I. “Just do what you two need to do. So I can see my Ellie-girl again. Please.”

He laid down on the bed and closed his eyes, his hands resting on top of his chest. As if he was set for a funeral. I guess maybe in his mind, he was. “I am sure she was lovely, Mr. Everett. Okay, Enzo and I will begin the 3 step process and then you will begin the Drift, the process wherein your consciousness syncs with the timeline closest to the dates you provide. What dates were tho-” “September 8th, 2002, to February 14th, 2012.” Everett whispered, but it held the same command of respect that his speaking voice had held since he walked in. “Okay, that means you’ll be in the bed for- about 6 days. Nutrient mix, saline mix, waste and fluids, got it got it got it.” Gideon floated through the checklist on the screen attached to the machine with a flick of his fingers. “Okay, Mr. Everett. Attaching the headpiece now. That’s step one.” Everett opened one eye and looked up at Gideon and I. “Is one of the steps talking a whole bunch and wasting my time?” Everett asked through gritted teeth before closing his eye, but not before looking at me and winking. “Apologies sir. Uh. Step two, we administer a serum to help sedate you and slow your vitals down.” Gideon flicked three switches in quick succession, red, purple, and yellow fluid quickly flowed from three small tubes into small vials, which were fixed at the opposite ends with hypodermic needles. “Enzo will now administer the sedative.” I took all three vials and admittedly, with a little pleasure, slapped them all at once into what little muscle remained on the left thigh of Everett. “If I wanted a kiss son, I would have called your mother.” Everett hissed, his eyes still moving behind his blue, pockmarked eyelids. His vitals and breathing machine began to slow. I watched the quick, jagged rise and fall of his chest become slower and more rhythmic. He was asleep. “Step 3, Drift. See ya, old asshole.” Gideon flipped a final purple switch, Everett’s body twitched violently once, and then fell still, save for his slow breaths.

“Alright Enz, how much you wanna bet this Ella is a hot piece of ass or a total fuckin cow. I got 50 bucks on cow.” Gideon sat back in his white computer chair, the pleather giving way with a loud sigh, before rolling out of the glass doors towards the control room. In the space where Gideon had been sitting was a small pile of candy wrappers, sprinkles, and cookie crumbs.