A Postcard from the Past

When Horace got home from work it felt like a normal Thursday evening until he noticed the mail deliverer bouncing down the steps toward him.

“You’re late today,” Horace said as they passed.

He only paused to turn his head and say, “a couple special deliveries, looks like you got one.”

Horace picked up the mail from the box and looked through it to figure out which one Jeremy meant.

“Wait, which…” Horace called as the mailtruck drove away.

Horace watched it drive down the street and caught a glare in the late summer evening, squinting for a second. He saw a man in a car across the street put something down before it peeled out of the spot and sped away.

That was odd, he thought, turning to open the door. A small envelope clanged against the metal before Horace bent over to pick it up. He turned it over to find it barely sealed and flicked open the flap to reveal the top of an old looking postcard and a small gold chain draped over it.

Lifting it with his wife Shelley’s heart shaped locket attached, his kids ran down the stairs to hug him, as they did every day when he got home, and screamed, “Daddy!”

“Hey Louis, hey Lydia, I love you two. Is your mom home yet?” He asked.

Mildred, their nanny, called through the hallway, carrying what looked like a load of laundry, “we haven’t seen her all day.”

Horace barely had time to get concerned before the phone rang. He pressed a button on the wall to answer and turn on the speaker phone. On the other line was Shelley’s partner, William.

“Hey William, how ar-“, Horace managed to get through before he got cut off.

“Have you seen Shelley today?” He blurted out, trying to stifle his frantic breath.

Now seriously worried, Horace answered, “No and I just got an envelope in the mail with her locket in it.”

“You need to get down here now, I think something’s wrong. She hasn’t been here all day.”

“She hasn’t been here either, I figured she stayed late at the lab last night when she didn’t come home,” Horace said as he opened the locket to make sure that the pictures of their kids were still there.

“How soon can you get here?” William asked.

“I’m leaving now,” Horace said as he hung up the phone. “Mildred, can you stay a little late and make the kids dinner?”

He raced out the door too quick to hear her call back, sure thing. As Horace ran down the steps, skipping every other one. He glanced up at the street as he got into his car, full except for the empty spot from where the car sped away as Horace walked in.

Horace arrived at Shelley and William’s lab office just a few minutes later and glanced into the review mirror as a car pulled in a few spots behind him. He got out of the car and walked briskly into the building, where William was holding the door.

“That didn’t take long.”

“I’m pretty freaked out, man, what’s going on?” Horace said through quickened breaths, adrenaline still pumping from the drive over.

“It’s best if we wait until we get to my office,” William answered as they walked inside.

Horace practically had to bite his tongue to not launch into questions. As they got in the elevator and the door closed they saw a man try to catch the handle as the outside door gently latched.

Expecting the elevator to ascend, Horace almost stumbled when the floor started downward. Seeing the surprised look on his face, William chuckled slightly, “the first of many surprises. I don’t think you could possibly have imagined what actually goes on here.”

Suddenly at a loss for words, Horace stood in silence until the elevator reached the bottom floor, minus 13. The doors opened into a hallway, painted white by both paint and the fluorescent bulbs. William led him to the right before turning left around the corner, stopping just before another turn to scan his thumbprint. Horace expected the door to unlock, but instead a slot slid open to scan William’s eye. Next a keypad appeared where he punched in an eight-digit code, unlocking the door. William sat down carefully at his desk and gestured to the other chair.

“Do you want to take a guess, or do you want me to explain?”

“You should explain. Shelley told me as much as she could, which was nothing really because her clearance was so heavily classified. I figured it had to do with military operations and equipment up in space,” Horace fumbled.

“In a manner of speaking, you’re right,” William replied. “It is top secret, and has everything to do with space, but nothing at the same time.” He paused, and Horace could tell he was figuring out how to start.

“What do you mean?” Horace asked, trying to help him along.

“It has everything to do with the universe beyond our planet in that, Shelley and I have been continuing our study of astrophysics that we started when we met getting our PhDs. After so many years gazing up as the stars, we never expected to be so focused here on Earth. When we were getting really close to publishing our research, we were approached by some government agents who told us that wasn’t going to happen anymore. They took us to this lab here and explained that our findings had direct applications to time travel. Then-.”

“Are you kidding? Time travel?” Horace gasped.

“That’s what we thought, too, at first. We couldn’t believe it and were adamant about leaving as soon as we could. They wouldn’t let us leave before thinking on it, also telling us that the only way we could work on our research was to do so here, classified, or give it up and never speak of it again. They also offered us a huge salary as an incentive to cooperate. Despite our hesitations, we agreed.”

“Okay, interesting,” Horace said as he tried to process what he heard. “What happened to Shelley then? Did they take her?”

“No, nothing like that,” William reassured him. “We knew that was a possibility, though, and with my family and yours we knew we had to be really careful. In an effort to be preemptive, we made a pact that if anything were to go wrong, we had a fail-safe in place. That’s where the locket comes in.”

Horace pulled the gold chain and heart shaped locket from his pocket. “She would never part with it unless it was taken from her.”

“Exactly, that’s why it’s a signal. Almost from the beginning our fears were confirmed, that the government had nefarious intention for this new technology. They promised up time and again that they wanted if for historical research, but the way they went about their business gave us no peace of mind.”

“What do you mean?” Horace asked.

“We could tell by the way they handled things that they wouldn’t take care going back in time. At first, we had no conception of how time travel worked, but we assumed that you couldn’t do anything really without dramatically altering the timeline. That’s where the locket comes in. We tried to hold on to a little hope that they wouldn’t abuse the tech, but when it got to the point where we had no doubt that they would permanently harm the flow of time, we would take the time machine and run.”

“Wait, so you’re telling me that you and Shelley figured out not only how time travel works but also built a fully functioning time machine?” Horace exclaimed, barely containing his bewilderment.

“Yes, and it normally lives back here,” William said as he got up and opened the blinds covering the window in the back of the office that Horace hadn’t noticed. It showed a vast, rock-walled chamber with mechanical and electrical equipment scattered across the floor, but no time machine.

“Where is it if it isn’t here?” Horace asked.

“Well, we have been starting to take it on missions,” William explained. “It was the only way we could test whether our theories of time travel worked. But we don’t have time for me to elaborate here. We have to go.”

“Wait, then why did we come here? And where are we going?” Horace asked.

“I didn’t think you’d believe me if I didn’t bring you. Shelley and I set up a rendezvous point just outside the city, where we can land the time machine without being seen,” William said as he picked up a few things and ushered him out the door and to the elevator. “We shouldn’t say anything more about this until we are safe.”

“One more thing first, what happens if they alter the timeline?”

“We have no idea, but it can’t be good.”

The elevator doors closed, and they rode up in silence. As they entered the lab office lobby and walked outside, William said, “you drive, my car is too far.”

Two hands reached out from behind the door and grabbed Horace by the arms. Horace turned to see the man he saw earlier sitting in the car and trying to get into the building trying to drag him down the sidewalk toward the parked cars.

“Don’t move and don’t follow me,” the man shouted at William while he put a gun to Horace’s forehead.

Before either the man or Horace could reach, William pulled a pistol and shot the man in the elbow, dropping the gun, releasing Horace, and sending blood onto him and the sidewalk. William grabbed Horace by the arm and led him to the car, sitting him in the passenger seat. William walked around to the driver’s side, pressed the start button and floored the pedal, electric motor revving the car away.

“Since when do you carry a gun or know how to shoot!” Horace half asked, half yelled.

“Since the first day those goons showed up,” William said coolly.

Horace caught his breath and tried to calm down as William raced the car through the streets and around the traffic. They made it to Horace and Shelley’s house in record time. William didn’t even pull into a spot.

“Let’s do this as quick as we can,” William said. Horace nodded.

They rounded up Louis and Lydia and told Mildred to go home. Horace frantically tried to grab everything he could think of, telling the kids he would explain when they get where they were going. Just as he realized that he didn’t have a go-bag of any kind, William came down the stairs with four medium sized bags.

“We’ve been ready for this for some time,” he said. “Between this and everything else that’s been happening lately, we decided to be prepared.”

The four of them climbed into the car and sped to William and his wife, Lorie’s house as William called her. She seemed prepared, making Horace wonder if he told her everything already. With their infant son Evan, they still had four bags, barely fitting in the trunk. Lorie sat in the back with him on her lap as city blocks flashed by the windows.

Dusk fell as William pulled into an empty field. They got out of the car and looked around, William expecting to see the time machine. After a few minutes, a bright blue light flashed, and it appeared. A young woman opened the hatch.

“Five of you? Alright, get in,” she said.

The pod clearly wasn’t meant for six, but Evan sat on Lorie’s lap again. A loud whir filled the air and a sudden jolt meant the time machine jumped. The woman opened the hatch to a bright blue sky and a clearing amid a grove of trees. The six time travelers climbed out of the pod and toward a campsite. Shelley was waiting, but seemed confused to see them.