Uncommon Type: Some Stories

The Past Is Important to Us

Because his plane was getting a new designer interior installed, J.J. Cox was hitching a ride to New York on Bert Allenberry’s WhisperJet ViewLiner.

“I thought you were a smart man, Bert!” J.J. was yelling at his friend.

They’d known each other since they were twenty-year-old college kids, drivers for FedEx, full of moxie and spunk—their two heads bursting with ideas. They pooled their paychecks to rent a windowless garage on the outskirts of Salina, Kansas, which became their live-in workshop. After three and a half years of working 120-hour weeks, they’d come up with a prototype of the Shuffle-Access Digital Valve-Relay. They might as well have invented fire. Thirty years and $756 billion later, J.J. was just now learning that Bert had paid $6 million a pop to some outfit called Chronometric Adventures for—get this—time travel vacations. No, no, no!

Cindee, the fourth and youngest ever Mrs. Allenberry, was clearing the lunch china herself. She was well practiced at the chore, since she had been the flight attendant on the plane just a year ago. She had to work fast as there were but minutes before landing. Two problems with the ViewLiner: speed and vertigo. The flights from Salina to New York City took only sixty-four minutes, barely enough time to lick your fingers clean of BBQ ribs. The transparent floor and ultrawide windows made for a nail-biter of a flight, especially if you were afraid of heights.

“I thought they had dosed us with some narcotic,” Cindee called out from the plane’s galley. “You wake up with a terrible headache and the room looks all different. Then you conk right back out and sleep for hours.”

J.J. could not believe what he was hearing. “Let’s figure out this scam. You go into a room, you fall asleep and wake up when?”

“Nineteen thirty-nine,” Bert chirped.

“Of course you do.” J.J. smirked. “But then you pass out, wake up again in 1939.”

“Right there in the City. In a hotel on Eighth Avenue.” Bert was looking down through the fuselage. Pennsylvania was becoming New Jersey. “Room 1114.”

“And you spend the day sitting in a hotel room?” J.J. wanted to slap his own head, as well as some sense into that of his friend and partner.

“Everything looks real,” Cindee continued as she returned to her seat to buckle up for landing. “You can touch things. You can eat and drink. And smell. The men wear stinky hair oil and the women use too much makeup and everyone smokes. And their teeth! Crooked and stained.”

“Roasted coffee is in the air.” Bert was smiling. “From a factory in New Jersey.”

“You woke up in 1939,” J.J. said. “And smelled the coffee.”

“Then Cindee took me to the World’s Fair,” Bert said. “For my birthday. We had VIP passes.”

“It was a surprise.” Cindee shot her husband a smile and took his hand in hers. “The Big Six-Oh only comes once.”

J.J. had a question. “Why not go back in time to see the signing of the Declaration of Independence or Jesus on the cross?”

“You can only go to 1939,” Bert explained. “June 8, 1939. Chronometric Adventures has a franchise in Cleveland. You can go to 1927 and see Babe Ruth hit a home run, but I’m not a baseball fan.”

“Babe Ruth. In Cleveland.” J.J. nearly spit. “Jesus on the cross.”

“He’s gone back four times without me,” Cindee said. “I’d had enough of everyone thinking we were father and daughter.”

“I’m going again tomorrow.” Bert smiled at the thought.

J.J. was laughing now. “Thirty-six million dollars! Bert, for half that I’ll arrange for you to meet Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and do the naked limbo. You’ll just have to trust me on how I make it happen.”

“My husband would live in 1939,” Cindee said. “But he can only stay twenty-two hours.”

“Why only twenty-two hours?” J.J. asked.

Bert told him why. “Wavelength in the Time-Space Continuum is finite. You can ride the echo only so long.”

“They provide this money made of paper and old-fashioned coins,” Cindee said. “I bought a tiny, gold-plated space needle and globe.”

“The Trylon and Perisphere,” Bert corrected her.

“Right. Yeah. But when we woke up it had turned into dried-out putty.”

“That’s the Molecular Singularity.” Bert was not buckling his seat belt for landing. He owned the plane. Screw the FAA.

“Why not go back and change history?” J.J. wanted to know. “Why don’t you kill Hitler?”

“Hitler wasn’t at the World’s Fair that day.” The WhisperJet began to slow, the ground rising up to meet them. The articulating engines were tilting minutely, soon to allow a vertical landing on the roof of 909 Fifth Avenue. “Besides, it wouldn’t matter.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Singular Dimensional Tangents,” Bert said, looking down at Central Park, which hadn’t really changed all that much since 1939. “There’s an infinite number of tangents, but we all exist in just one.”

J.J. glanced at Cindee. She shrugged her shoulders—what could she do with the old guy?

“He likes seeing what the future was going to look like. But, we’re living in the future. You’d think that would spoil everything,” she said.

Twelve minutes later, J.J. was zipping along the HoverLine in his Floater, headed to his private island in the sound. Bert and Cindee had taken their private elevator from the landing pad on the roof and were settling into their apartment on floors 97 to 102. Cindee immediately changed into a new outfit from one of her closets. They were going to Kick Adler-Johnson’s twenty-fifth birthday party and a private hologram performance of the Rolling Stones. Bert could not stand Kick Adler-Johnson though he respected her husband, Nick, who had made a fortune buying up air and water rights around the world. Besides, the actual Stones had played the company Christmas party in 2019, when he was married to L’Audrey, wife number three. He wanted to stay home, but Cindee wouldn’t allow that.

Bert wished he could go through time right then, forward to the morning, then back to 1939, to the Fair that was filled with so many promises of the world as it could have been.

On that first birthday visit, Cindee felt ridiculous in the old-style clothes. Bert, though, was in heaven in a double-breasted suit made to measure by the tailors of Chronometric Adventures. He marveled at every little detail, every second of the twenty-two hours they spent in 1939. How small New York City seemed! The buildings were not tall at all, so the sky was much more open, the sidewalks had space for everyone, and the automobiles and taxis were huge and so roomy. The cabdriver wore a tie and complained of the traffic out to Flushing Meadows, but if that were a traffic jam, Bert would take it.

The World’s Fair featured the tall Trylon and the huge orb called the Perisphere, both one-of-a-kind architectural marvels that were bleach white and brilliant against the open blue sky. The Avenues of Patriots and Pioneers were meant to be taken seriously and—get this—Courts were dedicated to Railroads and Ships, celebrating technologies that required engines the size of his WhisperJet. There was a Giant Underwood Typewriter, an Aquacade Show, and Electro, the Mechanical Man—he walked and counted numbers on his steel fingers! Chronometric Adventures supplied a pair of VIP passes so Bert and Cindee never had to wait in line.

The fairgrounds were kept spotless. A light breeze wiggled the flags and pennants. The hot dogs cost five cents. Fairgoers were dressed to the nines, and some women even wore gloves. Hats were on most men’s heads. Bert wanted to see all of the World of Tomorrow, but Cindee was uncomfortable in her ugly shoes and wouldn’t eat hot dogs. They left around three in the afternoon, bound for drinks and dinner at the Hotel Astor in Times Square. Cindee was tipsy, tired, and sick of all the cigarette smoke by the time the two of them were back in room 1114 for Progression, the trip forward in time.

Two weeks later, Cindee loaded the WhisperJet with her pack of girlfriends and flew to a spa in Morocco, allowing Bert another twenty-two hours of 1939. He ordered morning coffee for just himself from Percy, the room service waiter. He had breakfast alone in the coffee shop in the Hotel Astor, the gorgeous place smack on Times Square. He had the same cabbie with the tie. Alone, he covered areas of the Fair he had missed, like the Town of Tomorrow and the Electrified Farm; he had lunch in the Heinz Dome, surveyed the Temple of Religion, and celebrated the workers’ paradise that was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He listened to the conversations around him, studied the enthusiasms of the fairgoers, noting the lack of foul language and the bright colors of the clothing—not a black-on-black outfit to be seen. Fair employees seemed proud to work in their various uniforms. And it was true; a lot of people smoked.

It was on that second visit, without Cindee, when he spotted a petite, lovely woman in a green dress. She was sitting on a bench by the Lagoon of Nations, overseen by the massive sculptures of the Four Freedoms. She showed a modest amount of leg over brown shoes with straps. She carried a small purse and wore a hat with a white bud of a flower on it, more of a cap, really. She was engaged in an animated conversation with a young girl, dressed more for Sunday school than a day at the Fair.

The two of them were laughing, talking with their hands, whispering secrets to each other like they were the best of pals on the best of days in the best of places—they were the spirit of the Fair in feminine form.

Bert couldn’t take his eyes off them, watching as they left the bench, heading arm in arm toward the Eastman Kodak Building. He thought to follow them, to see more of the Fair through their eyes. But his watch showed nearly 5:00 p.m., meaning there were little more than two of his twenty-two hours remaining. Reluctantly, he turned for the taxi stand that stood outside the North Entrance of the Corona Gate.

Another tie-clad taxi driver drove him back to Manhattan.

“Ain’t the World Fair something?” the cabbie asked.

“It is,” Bert replied.

“You see the Futurama? The trip to 1960?”

“I did not.” Bert, born in 1966, chuckled to himself.

“Oh, you gotta see the Futurama,” the cabbie said. “It’s in the GM Building. It’s a long line, but worth it.”

Bert wondered if the lovely woman in the green dress had seen the Futurama. And if so, what she thought of 1960.

Although the human body takes a terrific beating by traveling back and forth in time, the Chronometric Adventures Medical Team gave Bert the go-ahead for a third trip. The World’s Fair was too vast to see on just two visits, he explained to Cindee, which was true. What he didn’t tell her was that, on his return to Flushing Meadows in 1939, he’d spend the day looking for the lady in the green dress.

She was not in any of the buildings dedicated to the great humanitarian works of U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, or General Electric. She was not somewhere in the Plaza of Light, the Avenue of Labor, the Court of Peace, or Continental Avenue. She was nowhere Bert had searched. So, a few minutes before 5:00 p.m., he headed to the Lagoon of Nations, and, sure enough, the woman in the green dress was there, her little friend in tow, on that bench under one of the Four Freedoms.

He sat on a bench close enough to hear them compare notes on the marvels of the Fair, their local accents turning New York into Noo Yawk. They simply could not decide what to do next, before the evening came and the Fountains of Light would put on a show of technical, colorful wonder.

Bert was trying to summon the courage to speak to them when they rose up and hurried off to Eastman Kodak arm in arm, chatting and giggling. He watched them as they walked away, admiring the feminine carriage of the woman in the green dress, her hair bobbing against the back of her neck. He thought about following them, but the time was getting late and he had to return to room 1114.

For weeks, for every other minute, Bert thought of the woman in the green dress—of the way she talked with her hands and of her bobbing hair. He wanted to learn her name, to know her, if only for an extra hour or so of 1939. When Cindee announced she was joining Kick Adler-Johnson on a horseback ride through Cuba, he booked another exam with the Chronometric Adventures Medical Team.

He was on the bench by the Lagoon of Nations at 4:45, and yes, right on the tick of the singularity clockwork, the woman in the green dress and her young friend sat down and began their conversation. Bert guessed she was probably in her mid-thirties, though the fashions of the times made everyone look older by today’s judgments. She was heavier than Cindee, than most modern-day women, as the 1939 diet was not very calorie conscious and exercise, then, was the stuff of athletes and laborers. The woman had an actual figure; the curves did her service.

He’d planned on what to say in this first conversation with a woman he had wanted to meet for over eight decades. “Excuse me,” Bert said. “Do you ladies know if the Futurama is running today?”

“It is, but the line is very long,” said the woman in the green dress. “We spent all afternoon in the Amusements Area. What a time we had!”

“Have you rode the Parachute, mister?” The girl could not have been more delightfully enthusiastic.

“I haven’t,” Bert confessed. “Should I?”

“It’s not for the weakhearted,” the woman said.

“You go up and up and up,” the girl said, waving her hands. “You think you are going to come floating down slow and soft. But you don’t. You land ka-joink!”

“It’s true.” The woman and the girl traded laughs.

“Have you seen the Futurama?” Bert asked.

“We didn’t want to wait through that long line,” the woman said.

“Well,” Bert said, reaching into the pocket of his double-breasted suit. “I have a couple of special passes I’m not going to use.”

Bert handed over the same two heavy cards Chronometric Adventures had supplied for his first trip with Cindee, the tickets embossed with the Trylon and Perisphere and the letters VIP. “If you show these to the attendants at the bottom of the ramp—I mean, the Helicline—they take you in via a secret passage.”

“Oh, that’s so nice of you,” the woman said. “But we are definitely not VIPs.”

“Believe me, neither am I,” Bert said. “I have to get back to the city. Please use them.”

“Can we, Aunt Carmen?” the girl asked, begged actually.

Carmen. Carmen was the name of the woman in the green dress. Carmen. The name fit her perfectly.

“I feel like a sneaky pete,” Carmen said, pausing. “But let’s! Thank you so much.”

“Yes, thanks!” her niece said. “My name is Virginia and this is my aunt Carmen. Who are you?”

“Bert Allenberry.”

“Well, thank you, Mr. Allenberry,” Virginia said. “We owe our Future to you!” Arm in arm, the women headed down Constitution Mall toward the GM Building, home of the Futurama. Bert watched them go, feeling grand, happy he had returned to 1939.

For months, he daydreamed of the lovely Carmen, the sneaky pete. Though his body was in the office in Salina, the board meeting in Tokyo, on the boat off Mykonos—his mind was in Flushing Meadows, on a bench under the Four Freedoms on a day in early June of 1939. When a shareholders’ meeting demanded his presence in Noo Yawk, he made time for another $6 million visit to room 1114.

The events played out as before. He offered Carmen and Virginia the VIP passes, and off they went, owing their future to him. Bert, though, wanted just a bit more time with Carmen—not long, just another half hour or so—so he stationed himself at the exit of Futurama. He waved to them as they came out.

“How was it?” he called to them.

“Mr. Allenberry!” Carmen said. “I thought you had to leave.”

“Oh, I’m the boss, so I decided to change the rules.”

“You’re the boss?” Virginia asked. “Of what?”

“Of all the people I get to boss around.”

“Since you are now in the presence of a couple of VIPs,” Carmen said with a laugh, “may I treat you to some pie?”

“I happen to love pie.”

“Let’s go to Borden’s!” Virginia piped. “We can see Elsie the Cow.”

The three of them sat together with ten-cents-a-slice pie, cut into perfectly measured wedges. Carmen and Bert had nickel-a-cup coffees. Virginia had a glass of milk and talked about what marvels the year 1960 would bring, according to Futurama’s predictions.

“I hope I don’t still live in the Bronx in 1960,” she said. Virginia’s family lived in an apartment on the Parkway with her mother (Carmen’s sister) and father, who was a butcher. She was in the fifth grade, belonged to the Radio Club, and wanted to be a teacher when she grew up, if she could afford college. Carmen shared a fourth-floor walk-up on East Thirty-Eighth Street with two roommates who worked as secretaries at an insurance company. She was the bookkeeper in a handbag factory downtown. All of them agreed that the World’s Fair of 1939 was even better in real life than in the newsreels.

“Is your wife in New York, Mr. Allenberry?” Bert wondered how Carmen knew he was married, then realized he was wearing the wedding ring provided by Chronometric Adventures. He’d put it on by habit.

“Ah, no,” he said. “Cindee is with friends. In Cuba.”

“That’s where Mom and Dad went on their honeymoon,” Virginia said. “I came along not long after!”

“Virginia!” Carmen could not believe her niece. “Be proper!”

“It’s true!” Virginia said. She had eaten all her pie filling, saving the crust for last.

“Are you married, Carmen?” Bert asked. “I’m sorry, I don’t even know your last name.”

“Perry,” she said. “Carmen Perry. So rude of me. And, no. I’m not married.”

Bert knew that already, as no ring rode her left hand.

“Mama says if you don’t find a man soon, there’ll be none left for you!” Virginia said. “You’re almost twenty-seven!”

“You hush,” Carmen hissed, reaching over with her fork to stab the best piece of crust, then popping it into her mouth.

“You dirty rat!” Virginia laughed.

Dabbing her lips with a napkin, Carmen smiled at Bert. “It’s true. I’m the last hen in the barnyard.”

Carmen was only twenty-six? Bert could have sworn she was older.

After the pie, they looked at Elsie the Cow, then toured the Academy of Sports. After watching films of trick water-skiers, Bert looked at his vintage wristwatch. It was almost 6:00 p.m.

“I really do have to leave now.”

“It’s a shame you can’t stay to see the fountains in the light show,” Carmen said. “It’s so lovely, they say.”

“And there’s fireworks every single night,” Virginia piped up. “Like it’s the Fourth of July all summer long.”

“Virginia and I have a spot picked out to watch.” Carmen’s eyes were on Bert. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”

“I wish I could.” Bert truly wished he could. Carmen was as lovely a woman as he had ever seen. Her lips were not too thin, her smile was firm and mischievous, and her eyes were hazel, emerald green, and tinted brown.

“Thank you for a great time!” Virginia said. “We were VIPs!”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Allenberry.” Carmen offered her hand. “You’ve been very kind and a lot of fun.”

Bert took Carmen’s hand, her left hand, the hand with no wedding ring. “I’ve had a grand day.”

In the cab on the drive back into Manhattan, Bert could almost smell Carmen’s perfume—vanilla-scented lilac.

After one too many encores by the holographic Rolling Stones, Kick Adler-Johnson’s birthday party had gone until four in the morning. Cindee was now asleep in bed, with the door closed and the blackout shades tightened down. Bert, though, was up at eight, showered and dressed, with a coffee in his hand. He had a breakfast of Mixed-Juice and an In-One protein roll, then ordered a SoloCar as he rode the elevator down to the street level.

A moment after confirming his destination as Chronometric Adventures, the car began to drive itself down Fifth Avenue at an algorithmically safe seventeen miles per hour. It crossed town on Fifty-Second, bypassing the Times Square Dome, then made three left turns before stopping on Eighth Avenue between West Forty-Fourth and West Forty-Fifth Streets.

Bert exited the car at the building that had been, in reverse order, the Milford Plaza, the Royal Manhattan Hotel, and, in 1939, the Hotel Lincoln. Most of the structure was now a service area for the Dome, which it bordered, as well as offices related to the Times Square Authority.

Chronometric Adventures was located on floors 9 through 13 of the building, not by choice or convenience, but because of historical flukes and miracles of science. Enough of the building retained the exact architectural lines of its hotel days, and one room in particular, 1114, had miraculously escaped every remodel and renovation since the place opened in 1928. With its dimensions unchanged, the room possessed the Volume Authenticity needed to echo—with pinpoint accuracy—a ripple in the Time-Space Continuum, an arc intersecting with June 8, 1939. The massive pipes, cables, and Plasma-Grids needed for Time Travel had been retrofitted to the exterior of what had been the Hotel Lincoln, above, below, and leading into room 1114; the equipment was filled with about a million of the Shuffle-Access Digital Valve-Relays invented by Bert Allenberry.

He took the lift up to the ninth floor, hearing a feminine voice announce “Chronometric Adventures” just before the door opened. The company’s motto—The Past Is Important to Us—was inscribed on the wall, and, under it, Howard Frye was waiting.

“Mr. Allenberry. Good to see you again.” Howard had been the facilitator of every one of Bert’s adventures. “I trust you are well?”

“Dandy. You?”

“Just over a cold. My son brought it home from school.”

“One advantage of not having kids,” Bert said. Cindee had not once said anything about wanting a child, L’Audrey before her would have made as horrible a mother as she did a mate, Mary-Lynn very much wanted to conceive but when a doctor told her that Bert’s low sperm count made the biology highly unlikely, she looked to other men for satisfaction. She had remarried and quickly popped out two girls and a boy. His first marriage, to Barb, produced a baby girl. But the divorce was so filled with rancor and enmity that the only contacts Bert had with his daughter—once she turned eighteen—were occasional dinners in London, where she lived far too comfortably thanks to his support checks.

“Shall we get you to Pre-Ad?” Howard asked.

“Time’s a-wasting.”

“Funny, but time is actually a-plenty.” Howard chuckled.

In the Pre-Adventure room, Bert was rechecked by the Medical Team. His fluids were sampled and scanned, his heart registered, and the twelve other physical properties that are affected by Progression/Reprogression were tested. He was given the five injections that would bolster his body on the molecular level and the antinausea meds to ease those initial moments of 1939. He removed his clothes as well as his rings, watch, and the thin gold chain he wore around his neck. No items from today could survive the trip to yesterday, as their molecules could irreconcilably screw up the process. Once naked, he put on a robe with the Chronometric Adventures logo and sat through the pro-forma legal warnings.

First there was the video—slick and snappy—warning of dangers and explaining the protocols. Then came the reading material, which repeated—word for word—what had just been said. Bert already knew a person could die during Reprogression, though no one ever had; an adventurer had options for experiences—one could spend the day doing anything he or she wished—but none when it came to certain key procedures. With his thumbprint, Bert acknowledged—once again—that he understood and agreed to it all. Then Howard came into the Pre-Ad room with the large shake-like drink that would protect his digestive tract from pesky germs, circa 1939.

“Bring on the shoe leather, Howard,” Bert said, toasting his glass at him.

“By now you should be able to recite this to me,” said Howard, clearing his throat. As Bert sipped the blueberry-flavored liquid, Howard put into simple terms the conditions Bert had already agreed to. “You have voluntarily chosen to have Chronometric Adventures provide physical time Reprogression to this very location on June 8, 1939, for a period of no more and no less than twenty-two hours as measured by standard recognized time. From the same Volume, at 7:00 p.m. of June 8, 1939, you progress back to this place on this very day. You understand that, don’t you?”

Bert nodded. “Yep.”

“Chronometric Adventures in no way claims your holiday in the past is free of risk. Your adventure is governed by the same laws of physics, rules, and behavior as we know to be common.”

“I fall down, I break a leg. I get punched in the nose, it’s broken.”

“Indeed. You will be unsupervised during those twenty-two hours. We suggest you adhere to the Agenda we have prepared with you. Another day at the World’s Fair, yes?”

“You should go yourself, Howard.”

Howard laughed. “Being African American, 1939 New York doesn’t hold the same wonder for me.”

“I get that,” Bert said. On his trips back in time almost every black face he saw belonged to a porter or a janitor. Though there were black families at the Fair, taking in the same exhibits, dressed for the occasion, they were looking for promises of a future different from his.

“Should you change plans—like seeing a show or loafing in the park—there is no risk as long as you adhere to the protocols for Progression.”

“I’m going back to Flushing Meadows. Maybe next time I’ll loaf in the park.” Bert thought of spending a day with Carmen in Central Park and wondered how he could pull that off. Virginia could ride the carousel! They could take in the zoo as it originally looked!

“Ah, yes. Next time.” Howard called up Bert’s file on his pad. “Mr. Allenberry, I’m afraid you have reached your limit for Reprogression at this C.A. franchise.”

“What?” Bert still had a third of his shake to finish.

“Your numbers from the Pre-Ad exam were a bit off from your last trip with us,” Howard said. “You are showing elevated levels of Trillium in your blood and lowered measurements of cellular fluidity.”

Bert didn’t like the sound of that.

“Everyone’s constitution is different, Mr. Allenberry. In fact, some of our clients have been allowed only two or three of our packages. Six is going to max you out.”

“Why?”

“Molecular dynamics, Mr. Allenberry. The round trip to 1939 is a very long haul for your tissues, your body proteins, your marrow density, and your nerve endings. We can’t run the risk of wearing you out. It’s hypothetically possible a seventh, or even an eighth adventure to the World’s Fair would be safe for you, but our insurance model disallows that. That’s the bad news.”

Bert was thinking of Carmen, of Virginia, of the three of them eating pie and visiting Elsie the Cow. He would do those things with them just one more time. Bad news, indeed.

“The good news,” Howard chirped, “is that your Chronometric Adventures don’t have to end in 1939 New York. There’s Nashville in 1961. You could go to the Grand Ole Opry. We have a franchise opening in Gunnison, Colorado—a beautiful cabin in 1979. Not much goes on there, but the views are terrific.”

Bert had stopped drinking. He was thinking of Carmen, of her vanilla-lilac scent and her hazel eyes.

“I am sorry, Mr. Allenberry, that’s the way it is. The past is important to us, but your long life is more so.”

“In that case, I’m going to need something else to take back with me,” Bert said.

Bert felt the compression suit tighten as all the atoms of room 1114, including his, were jigged up by the mechanics of Chronometric Adventures. He had learned not to panic during Reprogression but still was not used to how cold it got, so cold that he lost all focus, all equilibrium. He knew he was lying on what would become a bed in 1939, but everything was tumbling. He fought to stay awake, alert, to see the actual process of the room reverting in time, but, as before, he passed right out.

When he felt a pounding headache, he knew he was in 1939 once again. The headaches were brutal but mercifully brief. Bert fought his way out of his compression suit—like a scuba diver’s, one size too small—and sat naked on the edge of the bed, biding his time until his cranium no longer felt the crash of ball-peen hammers.

As before, the double-breasted suit was hanging in the open closet with shoes and socks on the floor. On a thin wire hanger was a button shirt and tie. Undergarments were in a basket on a chair. On the nightstand were the watch, a wedding band, a signet ring, and the wallet that contained his ID and other items that were accurate for the period and made out of pre–World War II materials. There was cash, a total of fifty dollars in the funny-looking paper currency that was once legal tender. There were heavy coins as well—a half dollar imprinted with a lady holding wheat looking toward the setting sun and ten-cent pieces, called dimes, with the head of the god Mercury. Nickels were worth five cents, and single pennies had real value in 1939.

He collected the compression suit and locked it in the vintage suitcase on the luggage stand, hiding it until he’d put it back on for Progression. Then he slipped on the vintage watch, already keeping time at three minutes after 9:00 p.m. He put the signet ring on his right hand, but remembered to leave the gold wedding band where it lay.

He saw the envelope on the desk, which would have his VIP passes for the Fair—he had ordered three for this, his last trip to 1939.

The window onto Eighth Avenue was open just a crack, allowing evening air to come into a room that had yet to know air-conditioning along with the sounds of traffic from Times Square. Bert wanted to get up, to get dressed and go out into the night, to walk down to East Thirty-Eighth Street, where Carmen lived in an apartment, but his body ached so. Damn the physics! He felt tired, just as before. He lay back on the bed and fell back to sleep, just as before.

He woke up when dim light was coming through the window and the city was quiet. He felt normal, like he’d taken a Green Tab and slept a healthy ten hours. His watch read ten minutes to seven. It was the morning of June 8, 1939, and he had all of twelve hours to find Carmen and Virginia. He lifted the heavy telephone receiver, pressed the only button on the phone, and was connected to the hotel operator. Once more, he asked for room service. After the same five minutes, a uniformed waiter named Percy was at his door with a tray holding a silver pot of coffee, a pitcher of real cream, cubes of sugar, a glass of water, and the morning edition of the New York Daily Mirror. On five previous mornings, Bert had tipped the waiter a dime, prompting a polite response of “I thank you, Mr. Allenby.” This morning, Bert palmed Percy the half-dollar coin, and the man’s eyed went wide. “Oh, Mr. Allenby, ain’t you flush!”

Real cream makes coffee a thick, heavenly pleasure. Bert enjoyed the second cup as the water for his shower heated up—with the plumbing of 1939, this took a few minutes. After his scrub, he dressed. He had been taught how to knot his tie, which he thought was a silly thing to wear, but he loved the double-breasted suit that had been tailored for him nearly a century later. The fabrics were from the period, the socks did not have much elastic in them, and the shoes were like gunboats, wide and heavy, but comfortable.

Riding down in the elevator, Bert again smelled the operator’s hair tonic. He didn’t think it was all that stinky.

“Lobby, sir,” the elevator operator said as he opened the meshed grate.

Bert was now familiar with all the smells of the Hotel Lincoln, and he liked them—the cigar smoke mixing with the wool carpets, the flowers being arranged by the black housekeepers, the florid perfume of the well-dressed ladies heading out for their day in Manhattan. Outside on Eighth Avenue, taxis idled and buses headed uptown, spewing fumes of combusted gasoline.

On foot, Bert turned right out of the lobby and right again on West Forty-Fifth Street, inhaling the scent of roasted coffee, wafting on a breeze from the Hudson River, from the Maxwell House Coffee factory in New Jersey, coffee that was good to the last drop.

This morning of June 8, 1939, he’d not take breakfast at the Hotel Astor, with its famous clock and its opulent décor. Instead Bert was going to poke his head into as many nearby coffee shops and cafes as time allowed. Carmen lived only seven blocks away. What if she was nearby, grabbing a quick breakfast before taking the subway to the Bronx to pick up Virginia? Maybe she was sitting in a Broadway diner right now, having coffee and donuts. He could meet her right then and not have to wait all day for that moment on the bench by the Four Freedoms.

He covered Times Square and the side streets, ducking in and out of cafes and peering through the windows of diners, but there was no sign of her. Reluctantly, he gave up, taking a seat at the counter of a place on Seventh, paying twenty-five cents for a breakfast of eggs, sausage, pancakes, juice, and coffee.

Bert was leaving a Mercury dime as a tip. “Ma’am,” he said to the uniformed waitress with overpainted lips, “is it possible for me take the subway to the World’s Fair?”

“Honey,” the waitress said, “it’s the best way to go.” She swept the dime into her apron pocket and gave Bert directions to the IRT line.

His first ever trip on the subway cost only an Indian head nickel. The car was a jumble of people, who all smelled of something, if only the laundry starch of their freshly pressed clothes. No one was staring at a phone or tablet. Most of the riders read the morning papers—some oversize rectangles of newsprint and ink, others the smaller-formatted tabloids. And there were magazines with pages that held more text than pictures. Many people were smoking, even a few men with cigars and two puffing on pipes. Judging from all the guidebooks and flyers, many passengers were, like Bert, making for the World’s Fair.

At each stop Bert stepped off the car just long enough to scan the stations for Carmen and Virginia because, who knows? They could be riding the IRT out to Flushing Meadows. If so, Bert could ask them for directions, they would volunteer to guide him along since they were going, too, he could confess that his three VIP passes were burning a hole in his pocket and why not let him treat the two ladies to a hassle-free day of no lines, no waiting? And just like that, what had in the past been less than two hours with Carmen would, in the present, become an entire day together.

But Carmen never got on the train.

“Wow! Look at that!” a rider shouted. Out the window were the Trylon and Perisphere—the Fair. Bert could see the huge globe and its attendant tower, bright and white in the morning sky. Everyone on the train gave the landmarks a glance.

The IRT discharged fairgoers at the Bowling Green Gate, where Bert paid seventy-five cents for admission and bought a guidebook for a dime.

It was only 10:30, so unless fate was to intercede there were hours before he would see Carmen again. He took a look at the Home Building Center, admired the sofa beds in Home Furnishings, and found the exhibits in the American Radiator Building just about hilarious. He kept chuckling to himself at the dazzling-in-those-days presentations by RCA, American Telephone & Telegraph, the Communications Building, and the museum-like presentations of the Crosley Radio Corporation.

He joined the line for Democracity, the lesson in social studies that was inside the Perisphere. He was soon talking with the Gammelgards, a family of six including grandparents, who had taken the train all the way from Topeka, Kansas, to spend a week at the fair. This was their very first day, and Pop-Pop Gammelgard said to Bert, “Young man, never have I dreamed the good Lord would allow me to see such a place as this.” Bert was happy to be considered a young man. His $756 billion afforded him every procedure in the world to look much younger than his sixty-one years.

He told the Kansans he had friends in Salina, which prompted an invitation for dinner at the Gammelgards’, should Bert ever find himself in Topeka.

All morning he checked out every woman dressed in green, hoping to find Carmen. He toured every building in the Court of Power, the Plaza of Light, and along the Avenue of Labor, where uniformed ladies working for Swift & Co. demonstrated the slicing and packaging of fresh bacon. At noon, he blew two nickels on hot dogs at Childs and compared the cut of his double-breasted suit to the fashions-to-come, according to the prophets of Men’s Apparel. He then walked all the way to the Amusements Area, heading for the tall iron tower that was the parachute drop. The Amusements were the Fair’s most popular attractions, and the carnival crowd was thick and jumbled. Bert circled the area again and again, stopping at the parachute tower repeatedly, expecting to find Carmen and Virginia as they rose up, up, up, and came down ka-joink. But they were never there. So he started one last, slow walk around the area and back toward the main fairgrounds.

Then he saw her! Not Carmen at first, but Virginia! He was crossing the bridge by the Amphitheater, where the Aquacade performed, when a multicar tram passed him, Virginia sitting on the rail and, yes, Carmen beside her! They had been among the amusement rides after all, and were now en route to the Plaza of Light. Bert checked his wristwatch. If he could catch up with that tram, he’d meet Carmen nearly an hour early! He ran.

He kept sight of the tram all along the Avenue of Labor, but lost them at the Schaefer Center on Rainbow Avenue. He just couldn’t keep up. The tram continued, passing the Court of States, then stopping at Constitution Mall to empty and take on new passengers. They had to be nearby! Sweating in that double-breasted suit, Bert checked Beech-Nut, Jewish Palestine, the YMCA, the Temple of Religion, and the Works Progress Administration, but no joy. Resigned to the singularity of the Time-Space Continuum, Bert was pivoting toward the lagoon benches when she appeared right in front of him.

Carmen was coming out of Brazil, holding Virginia’s hand. They were laughing. Good Lord, the woman laughed so much and her smile was so adorable. He almost called out her name but remembered they had yet to meet, so instead he fell in behind them by a few yards, following them across the walkway over the man-made river that fed the Lagoon of Nations. He didn’t trail them into Great Britain but headed for the bench. A few minutes later, there she was again, with Virginia. Right on time.

“Excuse me,” Bert immediately said, just as Carmen and Virginia were sitting down. “Do you ladies know if the Futurama is running today?”

“It is, but the line is very long. We spent all afternoon in the Amusements Area. What a time we had!”

“Have you rode the Parachute, mister?”

“I haven’t. Should I?”

“It’s not for the weakhearted.”

“You go up and up and up. You think you are going to come floating down slow and soft. But you don’t. You land ka-joink!”

“It’s true.”

“Have you seen the Futurama?”

“We didn’t want to wait through that long line.”

“I certainly don’t want to miss it.” Bert reached into the breast pocket of his suit. “And I have these special passes.”

Bert showed them the three heavy cards embossed with the Trylon and Perisphere and the letters VIP. “I’m told these will get us into the Futurama via a secret passage. No waiting. I have three. And I’m alone. Would you like to join me?”

“Oh, that’s so nice of you. But we are definitely not VIPs.”

“Believe me, neither am I. Not sure why I even have these.”

“Can we go, Aunt Carmen?”

“I feel like a sneaky pete. But let’s! Thank you so much.”

“Yes. Thanks! My name is Virginia and this is my aunt Carmen. Who are you?”

“Bert Allenberry.”

“Well, thank you, Mr. Allenberry. We’ll see the Future with you!”

The three chatted as they walked the length of Constitution Mall, below the huge statue of George Washington, and around the Trylon and Perisphere. Virginia told of all they had seen of the Fair in that day, most of it spent on the rides in the Amusement Area.

“Have you seen Electro, the Mechanical Man?” Bert asked. “He can add up numbers on his metal hands.”

The General Motors Building was next to that of the Ford Motor Company. Ford showed fairgoers how their automobiles were built, then let them drive a car along a dipsy doodle of a road around the building. GM took its visitors into the future, first by ascending a long ramp, one so modern they called it a Helicline, to a cleft in the architecture so majestic it looked like a gateway into the Promised Land. The line of people waiting to see Futurama looked to number in the millions.

But, flashing their VIP cards at a pretty girl in a GM uniform, Bert, Carmen, and Virginia were taken to a door on the ground level.

“I hope you aren’t tired,” the girl said. “We have a few flights to climb.”

The machinery of the Futurama bumped and whirred around them. They could hear music coming through the walls along with the murmur of a narration.

“You’ll notice the soundtrack matches exactly what you are seeing,” the girl explained. “GM is truly proud of the engineering that went into the Futurama. It’s absolutely modern.”

“Are we going to be driving a car?” Virginia asked.

“You’ll find out!” The girl opened a door revealing the starting point of the ride—sunlight and people were streaming in through the opening. “Enjoy your stay,” the girl said.

There were no automobiles, but rather a long train of wheeled, sofa-like carts lined end to end, each enclosed in a shell. Passengers were climbing into the shells, which never stopped moving as the cars passed through the opening of a tunnel.

The three intrepid voyagers climbed into one, Virginia first, then Carmen, followed by Bert. Before they knew it they were in darkness. Music played and a narrator welcomed them to America, as it would be in the year 1960. The voice was so clear it was like the announcer was in the car with them.

A city appeared before them—a world in miniature that stretched to the horizon. The skyscrapers in the center stood like trophies, some connected to each other by sky bridges. The narrator explained that in just a few decades American cities would be planned and built to the specifics of perfection. Streets would be clear and ordered. Highways would flow with modern automobiles—GM cars, each of them—with traffic that never cluttered or jammed. The sky would be filled with aircraft carrying goods and passengers to terminals as conveniently placed as filling stations. The countryside would be scattered with farms, homes, and power stations, supplying 1960 with all the food, space, and electricity the American people would need.

The houses and towers and cars and trains and planes were filled with a happy, invisible populace that had tamed the wild chaos of the past; they’d figured out not only how to build the future but how to live in it side by side, in peace.

Virginia was riveted to her seat as the future rolled by. Carmen smiled at her and looked at Bert. She leaned toward him and whispered, “She’ll live there and likes what she sees.”

The words landed on Bert like so many soft kisses. The narration had paused, leaving only the swelling strings of violins and cellos from the musical score. He smelled Carmen’s perfume, the soft whiff of lilac mixed with vanilla. Her lips stayed close to his cheek.

“Do you think it will all happen?” Carmen asked quietly. “Just like this?”

Finding her ear surrounded by the dark curl of her black hair, Bert whispered back, “If it does, it will be wonderful.”

When they exited, the afternoon shadows had grown longer. As they crossed the Bridge of Wheels over the Grand Central Parkway, Virginia announced that she would be thirty years old in 1960. “I wish I could jump in a time machine right now and go there!”

Bert checked his watch—it was 5:56 p.m. In the past, he had been in a taxi by now, on his way back to room 1114. By 7:00 he had undressed, removed all the items that had been provided for his adventure, like the rings and the watch, had squeezed back into his compression suit, and was lying on the precisely placed bed for Progression out of 1939. He should be leaving right now; the taxi stand was just outside the gate on the other side of Chrysler Motors. Instead, he asked Carmen when the Fountains of Light show was to start.

“Not until dark,” she said. “Hey, since you are now in the presence of a couple of VIPs, may I treat you to some pie?”

“I happen to love pie.”

“Let’s go to Borden’s!” Virginia said. “We can see Elsie the Cow.”

Over pie and coffee, he relearned about Carmen and her niece—of the Radio Club and the roommates on East Thirty-Eighth Street. Everything was just as it had been. Then the past took a turn.

“Do you have anyone special in your life, Mr. Allenberry?”

Bert looked into Carmen’s eyes. Framed now in the décor of Borden’s Food Court, they’d turned an even deeper shade of green.

“She means are you married!” Virginia teased.

“Virginia! I’m sorry, Mr. Allenberry. I don’t mean to be forward, but I see you have no wedding ring and I just thought, well, a fellow like you must have someone special.”

“I’ve thought so, many times,” Bert said, wistfully. “I’m forever looking, I guess.”

“You bachelors are so lucky. You can wait and wait for the right girl to come along and nobody says boo.” She rattled off the names of movie stars and athletes who had yet to marry, names Bert did not recognize. “But us ladies? If we wait too long we become old maids.”

“Mama says if you don’t find a man soon, there’ll be none left for you!” Virginia giggled. “You’re almost twenty-seven!”

“You hush,” Carmen hissed, reaching over with her fork to stab the best piece of crust, then popping it into her mouth.

“You dirty rat!” Virginia laughed.

Dabbing her lips with a napkin, Carmen smiled at Bert. “It’s true. I’m the last hen in the barnyard.”

“How old are you, Mr. Allenberry?” Virginia asked. “I’m guessing you’re like Mr. Lowenstein, my school principal. He’s almost forty. Are you forty yet?”

“Young lady, I am going to throw you into the Lagoon of Nations! Mr. Allenberry, I’m sorry. My niece has yet to learn the practice of tact. Maybe by 1960.”

Bert laughed. “I’m like your aunt Carmen. The last rooster in the barnyard.”

They all laughed at that. Carmen reached over and took his wrist. “Aren’t we a pair?” she said.

Bert should have excused himself right then. Six p.m. had passed. If a cab was available, he could be in room 1114 just in time for Progression. But this was his last day ever with Carmen. He would never see the woman in the green dress again.

Now, Bert Allenberry was a smart man, many say a genius. His invention of the Shuffle-Access Digital Valve-Relay had changed the world and garnered him the rapt attention of audiences at conferences full of movers and shakers—in Davos, Vienna, Abu Dhabi, and Ketchum, Idaho. He had teams of lawyers obeying his dictates, researchers and developers turning his ideas of whimsy into realities. He had more money than the GNP of most nations of the world, including those where he owned factories. He had donated to very good causes and had his name on buildings he had never even bothered to visit. He had everything a man—a very rich man—was supposed to have, need, or want.

Except for time, of course.

Chronometric Adventures said he had twenty-two hours of June 8, 1939, to do whatever he wanted. But now, what he wanted was to stay awhile. There must be some wiggle room, right? After all, Progression, or was it Reprogression—he was never sure—could not begin until his body, all his atoms and molecules, were in place in room 1114 of the Hotel Lincoln on Eighth Avenue. He understood why Chronometric Adventures demanded such terms—to cover their asses! Why did he have to be in that tight compression suit and on that bed according to the tick of the clock? Was he Cinderella at the Ball? Why couldn’t he saunter into the room at, say, midnight, then slip into that rubber suit and then whoosh away? What was the big deal?

“Have you seen the Time Capsule?” he asked Virginia.

“I read about it in school. It’s buried for the next five thousand years.”

“They have what’s in it on display in Westinghouse. Electro the robot, too. Do you know what television is? You just have to see television.” Bert was rising from the table. “Shall we go to Westinghouse?”

“Let’s!” Carmen’s eyes were smiling again.

The Time Capsule was loaded with silly stuff—Mickey Mouse comics and cigarettes and whole sets of books printed on microfilm.

Though the Time Capsule and Electro were impressive, television was what had Virginia over the moon. She could see her aunt and Mr. Allenberry on a small screen, in black and white, almost like they were stars in a movie, but their images were in miniature, projecting from a screen in a cabinet no bigger than the radio at home. In fact, they were in another room, standing in front of a camera, one unlike any she had ever seen, and they were also in front of her. The vision was thrilling. When they switched places, Virginia waved and spoke into the microphone: “This is me, on the television saying hello from right here and you can see me right there!”

“Look at you!” Carmen said. “You look so pretty! So grown up! Oh, Bert!” She turned to him. “This should be impossible, but here it is!”

Bert was looking not at Virginia on the screen but at Carmen. He was thrilled that he was no longer Mr. Allenberry.

Checking his watch, Bert saw that it was 7:06. The deadline had passed, the twenty-two hours were up, and, lo and behold, there was wiggle room!

They visited the DuPont, Carrier, and Petroleum Industry Buildings, none of which had the socko exhibits to match television. The Glass Building, the American Tobacco exhibit, and Continental Baking were just time killers; the longer they lingered in them the sooner came darkness and the light show.

After watching films of water-skiers in the Academy of Sports, he bought cups of ice cream, which they ate with little wooden spoons.

“Here’s our spot for the show!” Virginia claimed a bench for the three of them. In the growing indigo of the evening, they could see all the way from the Lagoon to giant George Washington, silhouetted against the Perisphere, surveying the great nation he had sired. As night fell, the buildings of the Fair became so many tracings of brightly lit lines on deepening black. The skyscrapers of Manhattan lit up the horizon. The illuminated fairground trees looked to be glowing from within, from their own inner light.

Bert Allenberry wanted this night to last forever, for all time. He wanted to sit beside Carmen at the Lagoon of Nations, listening to the murmur of the Fair, with her scent of lilac and vanilla stirring the warm air of 1939.

When Virginia collected their ice cream cups and took them to a trash bin, Bert and Carmen were alone for the first time ever. He reached for her hand.

“Carmen,” he said. “This has been a perfect day.” Carmen was looking at him. Oh, those hazel eyes. “Not because of Futurama. Or television.”

“Elsie the Cow?” Carmen said, her breath catching as she smiled.

“Would you allow me to give you and Virginia a ride home when the Fair closes?”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. My sister lives too deep in the Bronx.”

“We’ll take a taxi. Then I can drop you off at your place. On East Thirty-Eighth Street.”

“That would be very kind of you, Bert,” Carmen said.

Bert wanted to hold Carmen in his arms, to kiss her, maybe in the back of a taxi on East Thirty-Eighth Street. Or, in room 1114. Better yet, on the one hundredth floor of his building at 909 Fifth Avenue.

“I’m glad I came to the Fair today.” Bert smiled. “So I could meet you.”

“I’m glad, too,” Carmen whispered. Her hand never left his.

Music began to play from speakers hidden around the Lagoon of Nations. Virginia ran back to the bench just as the fountains shot water into the sky, lights turning the geysers into columns of liquid color. Every patron of the Fair stopped to watch. Projections turned the Perisphere into a luminescent ball of clouds.

“Wow!” Virginia loved it.

“Beautiful,” Carmen said.

The first fireworks broke into the sky, bursting into cascading comets, fading to smoke.

That’s when Bert felt a ball-peen hammer strike his forehead. His eyes went painfully dry and scratched terribly. His nose and ears started to run with blood. His legs went numb, and his lower back seemed to separate from his hips. A hot, searing pain shot through his chest as the molecules that made up his lungs began to separate. He had the sensation that he was falling.

The last words he heard were Virginia yelling, “Mr. Allenberry!” The last thing he saw was the fear in Carmen’s hazel eyes.