Paul Jones - Towards Yesterday

What he did know was that he liked being in her company and he found himself taking advantage of any opportunity to be with her that presented itself.

For six more hours, they worked at the keyboard of her computer, running over the data collected during the period just after the S lip occurred, through to the present day. She was indefatigable; checking and rechecking data. They cross-referenced all the information collected by the mainframe system with the paper printouts she had pulled from the systems. Those systems were linked directly to the tachyon receivers that continuously monitored the ether , pulling in the tachyon fallout from the slip .

Sitting next to Rebecca now, listening to the soft lilt of her voice as she read data to him from a large printout of concertina-paper, Jim realized his respect was turning into something more. It was normally just a fluttering distraction in the back of his brain but being this close, his attraction to her became overwhelmingly diverting, and he felt his concentration wavering. Instead of focusing on verifying the figures on the screen, he found himself tracing the outline of her face with his eyes as she read from the computer printout resting on her knees. He allowed himself to follow the curve of her nose to the fullness of her lips. From her lips his eyes flowed over her chin and traced the arch of her throat until— “Jim? Are you alright?” She was staring right at him, a perplexed smile on her lips, her head tilted questioningly to one side.

“Umm!” he stuttered. He felt his face flush. “Hey! It’s getting a little late, don’t you think?” he said glancing at his wristwatch. “Maybe we should call it a night?”

“Okay. But are you sure you’re all right? You look a little flushed.”

“I’m fine, just a little bushed,” he said, standing. “How about we pick up from where we left off in the morning?”

Rebecca smiled up at him from her chair. “It’s a date,” she said playfully and Jim couldn’t help but let out a stutter of laughter.

Half way to the door, he turned and looked back at her watching him leave, and then, after a moment’s pause asked, “Are you hungry? Would you like—“

Before he could finish, she was standing and making her way to join him, “I thought you would never ask.”

It was eleven-fifteen at night and the refectory was cloaked in darkness save for the green electronic glow of the digital clocks of several microwave ovens. Jim stood in the open doorway allowing the light from the corridor to illuminate the room while he searched the wall for the light switch with his free hand. Finding it, he flicked the bank of switches and the overhead lights flickered on, pushing back the darkness.

“Welcome to Chateau Baston,” he said in his best mock French accent while holding open the door for Rebecca.

They made their way over to a rack of glass-fronted refrigerators. Peering in at the stacked racks holding an assortment of readymade sandwiches, pies, cookies, and candy, Jim continued his impersonation, “On tonight’s menu we ’ave…” He pushed the button to rotate the plates of food around the cabinet, “… Bologna sandwiches—sans mayo. Fruit pie and…” after one more row of plates whirred into view, “…the piece de resistance—macaroni and cheese.”

Through a half suppressed fit of the giggles Rebecca managed to blurt out her choice: mac and cheese.

“An excellent choice, mademoiselle, if I do say so myself. Let’s make that two.” Jim carried the cardboard containers of ready-to-heat food over to the bank of microwaves and placed them inside.

“Not bad. Not bad at all,” said Jim, a few minutes later as he tasted his nuked meal.

“So tell me something about yourself, Jim, “Rebecca asked, as she sipped from a can of diet cola.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything,” she said, then added, “We’ve worked so closely since we got here but I know so little about you. Mina said you were a writer. What did you write about?”

Jim swallowed the remainder of the food in his mouth and patted his lips clean with his napkin before replying, all the time keeping his eyes focused on the beautiful young woman who sat across the table from him.

“Science fiction… mostly. That was what I was well known for but when the Slip happened I was finishing up a personal work.”

“Your autobiography?” she guessed.

“I suppose you could call it that. It was more an accounting of my life. I never really intended to publish it, but don’t tell my agent that. Like I said, it was a very personal book for me. I felt I needed to bring some strands of my life together that had slipped away from me. Do you know what I mean?”

She nodded.

“I didn’t realize just how many strands there were though, when I first started,” he continued. “It’s strange how, over a lifetime, you can lose track of —” Jim realized the woman who sat before him could not personally understand what he was talking about because her life had been cut so tragically short. How does a man who has experienced the closeness of his final days, convey the experience of a life that has almost run its full course to someone who had not even made it out of her twenties?

He changed the subject. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to travel down that road.” He tried to sound cheerful, “Your turn to tell me something about yourself.”

“Well there’s not much to tell,” she said. “I come from a small town in Nevada. I majored in applied—mathematics at college. My first boyfriend’s name was Frank and I had a dog named Fido.”

“Fido?” Jim said incredulously a fork full of macaroni stalled halfway to his mouth. “Really?”

“Really,” she laughed.

“Well ten out of ten for originality… I guess?”

As the laughter subsided, a silence descended between them. Not the awkward silence that can develop between two people who have nothing more to say to each other; this was more of a warmth that filled the space between them, something that only they could feel, alleviating the need for conversation.

Rebecca broke the silence a few minutes later. “I suppose you know about my death.” Her brows crinkled and her mouth drew down on one side. “That sounds so strange. I’ve never said it that way before. Odd.”

Jim paused before replying. “Yes. I know.”

When he next spoke, his question caught her off-guard. Occasionally, someone asked whether she remembered anything about her final moments; her killer, what he looked like, was she frightened… how it felt to die. No one had ever inquired past that point, so when Jim asked her “Do you remember anything after the time you died?” she was surprised. A fleeting memory played across her mind, more an emotion than anything, but it faded before she could hold onto it.

“Have you ever woken from a dream that was so vivid it seemed too real?” she asked. “A dream that’s so intense you feel sure that you will remember every detail of it. You fall back to sleep and when you next wake up all you can remember is a sense of it? It’s not even a memory, more a feeling of how the dream made you feel.” She turned her eyes away from the empty food container and looked up at the man sitting across from her, locking her eyes with his, challenging him to laugh or contradict her, searching for any sign that he may be mocking her. “That’s what I felt when I first woke up after the Slip —like I had forgotten a wonderful dream.”

Jim reached out across the table and squeezed her hand. “I believe you,” he said matter-of-factly.

Later, as they stood at the door to Rebecca’s apartment, after they had said goodnight for the third time, Rebecca turned and kissed Jim gently on the cheek before stepping into her apartment.