Karen D. Badger - Yesterday Once More (18 page)

“This is a beautiful farm. A person could get used to living here.”

Kale looked around as the full moon cast muted shadows across the barnyard. “Yes it is. Jordan was fortunate to have grown up here. Vermont is a beautiful state. So beautiful it makes living through the long winters worth it.” Kale fell silent as they continued their walk.

Andi looked at Kale, noting the creases on his forehead. He was obviously deep in thought. “Tell me about Maggie.”

Kale stopped and looked at Andi. He signed deeply. “What I’m about to tell you is kind of off-the-wall.”

Andi blew on her hands to keep them warm. Kale reached for them and tucked them inside his jacket. Then he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close to him. “Better?”

Andi smiled. “Very much so, thank you. You can trust me. I promise to keep an open mind, okay?”

Kale nodded. “All right, here goes.” He looked at Andi. “Maggie is a ghost.”

Andi’s head snapped back. “A ghost? You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish I was. Maggie is the author of the diaries Jordan has been reading.”

Andi took a moment to digest what Kale was telling her. “You mean the diaries she found between the walls?”

“Yes. They were written about one hundred years ago.”

“So, she’s become infatuated with the woman who wrote them. I don’t find that so hard to believe. Haven’t you ever had a crush on someone unattainable, like a movie star or someone like that?”

“Yeah, I guess we’ve all had that kind of crush, but this is so much more than that.”

“In what way?"

Kale took a step back and began to pace. “This is where it gets weird.”

Andi watched him pace and stepped back to give him the space he appeared to need.

“Jordan claims that Maggie has contacted her.”

Andi cocked her head to one side. “Really? How?”

“Through dreams—or visions, as she calls them now. Funny thing is, I believe her.”

Andi stopped Kale from pacing by standing in his path. She reached up and took his face between her hands. The look on her face spoke clearly of her seriousness. “Sweetheart, you’re obviously worrying yourself sick over this. You don’t have to share this with me if you’re uncomfortable doing that.”

Sweetheart?
Kale blinked rapidly. “No, it’s all right. I really do need to share this with someone. Keeping it a secret from Peter has been hard enough. I can’t imagine keeping it from you—especially if you’re going to be around here for a while.”

Andi smiled. “I don’t plan to go anywhere, so why don’t you start from the beginning?”

* * *

Andi wiped a tear from her eye. “My God. That is so sad. She was far too young to have died, and so tragically. I don’t blame Jordan for being upset.”

“She was overwhelmed with grief. She cried about it for days.”

“I think Jordan has a very tender heart. Lost opportunity is one of the saddest things in the world. I can see why it would be difficult for Jordan.”

“She’s more than upset, she’s obsessed. I’m worried about her mental state. Worse yet, I’m worried about how Peter will view her mental state.”

“How so?”

“She’s in love with a dead woman. If Peter finds out, he might think she’s not stable enough for the implant. I don’t want that to happen to Jordan. She needs to be out of that chair and on the path to a normal, healthy life. She’ll never be able to fulfill her dreams if she isn’t.”

Andi was silent for a moment. “You said you believe Maggie has contacted Jordan through her dreams. Why do you believe that?”

Kale sat beside Andi on the couch, leaning forward so that his forearms were resting on his knees. He looked at Andi. “The first dream came after Jordan and I found that article and obituary.” He nodded to indicate the article and holograph. “In that dream, Jordan woke up and the house was all different, with different furnishings, and she was in her chair, something that had never happened in past dreams.”

“She was never in her chair in previous dreams?”

“No, she was always walking. Anyway, she saw Maggie in the dream. Maggie as a teenager. Like I said, we both thought nothing of it, except for the presence of the hover-chair. I think we attributed the dream to information Jordan had gleaned from the diaries. Then, the second dream changed everything. At that point, the dreams were no longer dreams, but visions to Jordan.” Kale stopped to reflect on how he was going to explain the subsequent dreams to Andi.

“Visions often imply predictions, and predictions imply future events. How could she predict the future of someone who lived in the past?”

Kale looked at Andi. “My thoughts exactly—at the time, anyway. Jordan called them visions because she saw events in a dream prior to reading about them in the diaries. In the next two dreams, she explained in vivid detail what had happened, then showed me the diary entries she had read after she had already had the dreams. The diary entries matched her dreams exactly. How could she have possibly known what would happen in the diary if there wasn’t some sort of psychic connection between her and Maggie?”

Andi sat back, thinking about what Kale had told her. For long moments, neither of them spoke. Finally, Andi broke the silence. “Are you sure they were dreams, or visions, or whatever you want to call them?” Kale looked at her, confused. “Is it possible that she was actually there when the event happened?”

Kale looked at Andi as though she didn’t understand what he had been telling her. “Andi, she was here all the time, in the year 2105. In her bed. How could she have been both here in the present and there one hundred years in the past—at the same time?”

“Did Jordan actually have any interaction with Maggie in the dreams?”

Kale thought for a moment about what Jordan had told him. “In the first two dreams there didn’t appear to be any. Maggie didn’t acknowledge her at all in the first dream—the one in which Maggie was a teenager. In the second dream, Jordan implied there was some interaction on her part, but no response from Maggie. In the third dream, Jordan claims to have interrupted a sexual attack on Maggie by Maggie’s then-girlfriend.” Kale stopped and threw his hands into the air. “Can you see how crazy this is?”

“To the casual observer, maybe, but I’m not so sure. Have there been any other dreams? Specifically ones where interactions have occurred?” Andi asked.

“One more. While Jordan was in the hospital, she dreamt that she awoke in Maggie’s bed one morning, fully intact—no hover-chair or anything. She says she found a note, specifically addressed to her, which Maggie left before going for a morning horse ride.” Kale suddenly stopped talking and gasped.

The change in Kale’s demeanor startled Andi. “What is it?”

“The letter! Wait right here. I’ll be back in a second.” Kale left Andi sitting in the living room while he ran into the kitchen and retrieved his jacket. Andi watched him closely as he reached into the inner pocket and pulled out a worn, folded piece of paper.

“What is it?” Andi asked.

Kale unfolded the paper. “I found this in the back pocket of the jeans Jordan was wearing the day she was admitted to the hospital.”

Andi took the paper from Kale’s shaking hands and carefully opened it.

When she finished reading the letter, she looked at Kale through the veil of tears that had filled her eyes. “Oh, my God! Is this the note Maggie left for Jordan?”

Kale shook his head. “I don’t know. It certainly looks very old, but if it is the letter, it would have been written long before Jordan was even born. This doesn’t make sense. How would Jordan have gotten this note?”

Andi examined the letter once more, noting the apparent age of the document and the faded print before she looked back at Kale. “There’s mention here about Jordan moving a well out of the north pasture. Didn’t you say Jordan was injured when her horse stepped into a well? I wonder if that’s why she wasn’t in her hover-chair in that dream.” Andi looked up. “What else did Jordan say about that dream?”

“Jordan was alarmed when she realized the date was March 29, 2019—the day Maggie died. She rode out after Maggie but arrived too late. She found Maggie lying at the bottom of a cliff where her horse had thrown her. Jordan reached her in time for Maggie to die in her arms.” Kale stopped and inhaled deeply. “She was devastated, Andi.”

Andi touched his arm. “You asked me to be open-minded about this. Now I’m asking you to consider the same.” She flicked her long hair back over her shoulder as she turned to face him. “Consider the possibility that she may have been in both dimensions at once—here in the physical, and there in the emotional. You’re a scientist. You believe in time travel. Open your mind and consider the possibility. Maybe physical time travel isn’t possible, but intellectual time travel is? Maybe Jordan was there. Maybe Maggie did write this letter.”

“You’re kidding, right? Einstein’s theories of time travel all involve the possibility of transferring the human form from one dimension to another. There is nothing in his work that suggests the mind is capable of traveling through time all by itself.” Kale ran his hand through his hair and walked a few feet away from Andi.

“All I’m asking is that you keep your mind open to the possibilities.”

Confusion and concern clouded Kale’s features. “Okay. Let’s say intellectual time travel is possible. How the hell am I supposed to send only her mind through time and then manage to bring it back when she’s ready to come home? Shit! How would we even know when she returned? Would she be in some sort of trance while she was gone? Would she be in a coma? Would she suddenly wake up and say, ‘That was cool, let’s do it again?’ If she did go into a coma, how would we know it was because of time travel instead of something gone wrong during the attempt?” Kale dropped his head back and looked at the ceiling for a long moment before looking back at Andi.

Andi wrapped her arms around Kale’s waist. “Sweetheart, everything you say may be true. I don’t know if the machine will work. I don’t even know where to begin, but I do know that Jordan appears to be very much in love with Maggie, and she must be dying inside knowing she may never get the chance to be with her. If you were Maggie and I were Jordan, I would do everything in my power to be with you. I couldn’t bear the thought of never touching you, never seeing you, never holding you in my arms, never knowing what it was like to make love to you.”

Tears sprang to Kale’s eyes. He blinked rapidly and then lowered his forehead to Andi’s. After a few moments, he lifted his head and placed a gentle kiss where his forehead had just been. “You’re right. How can I deny her this? Come hell or high water, I will try to bring them together. I promise you, I will try.”

“Well, no time like the present.”

* * *

Andi watched Kale as he slowly walked around the time machine, explaining his failed attempt to send the old boot back into time. As she watched, she admired the degree of passion with which he applied himself to his work. Once again, she thanked the heavens above that she had been given the opportunity to meet this extraordinary man.

“When the boot failed to disappear, I carried out a controlled experiment with smoke to understand why, and I realized that there was a minute amount of gravity still remaining in the center of the sphere as it rotated. The amount of smoke that remained in the exact center of the sphere was so small it was nearly indiscernible, but still, it was there. In order for the machine to work, there has to be absolutely no gravity within the sphere.”

“How do you plan to correct that problem?”

Kale stopped and grinned at Andi. “I hope it’s already corrected. It was Jordan who came up with the solution. Can you believe it?”

Andi smiled. “Jordan? Really?”

“Yeah. When the experiment first failed, I was pretty bummed out and went into the house looking for sympathy. Of course, Jordan being Jordan, she was anything but sympathetic. In fact, her lack of compassion made me even more determined to try again. I discussed the results with Jordan, and she suggested I apply a counterforce to the spinning rings. That suggestion led to the idea of internal rotating rings. They should eliminate the remaining gravity, creating a black hole. But they should also cause this black hole to rotate. According to Einstein’s energy equation, rotating the black hole would finally give us the amount of energy we need to make time travel possible.”

Andi looked skeptical. “You mean to tell me Jordan realized all of that?”

Kale chuckled. “Hell, no! Jordan is a brilliant doctor, and she’s a whiz with computers, but she has absolutely no clue when it comes to metaphysical science. Her comments and suggestions did, however, prompt me to do the research I needed to come to these conclusions. Any way you look at it, she deserves a great deal of credit if we get this to work.”

Andi clasped her hands together. “I totally agree, but let’s not put the cart before the horse. What do we need to do to get started?”

“I’ve already fitted the second set of rings. The next step is testing.”

“Okay, then,” Andi said. “Let’s get started.”

“Before we conduct any experiments, we need to do another smoke test. If you don’t mind, I’d rather be fresh to do that. Let’s plan to start right after the crew leaves tomorrow. Okay?”

Andi nudged the door to Jordan’s room open with her foot as she carried in a tray of breakfast foods. Kale had left early that morning to meet one of the technicians at the lab. Jordan was not only awake, but also not in her bed.