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Futures 3: Alberto
June 21, 1907
Alberto Gonzalez was a failure. He was the biggest failure of all time. Failing was, more or less, his job. This instance of Alberto, known as Albert Gardiner was not yet a failure, but he probably would be.
Alberto was a temporal engineer. It was 1907, and he was a single father of a newborn baby girl, Elliotte Gardiner. Her mother had just returned to 2015. They had given out that she died in childbirth. They even interred a body transported from the future in the Elmwood graveyard.
Alberto had just forked for the 164th time. There were two of him. The origin fork was stopped—it would not move forward in time until reactivated. That would occur if the child fork failed. Al knew this very well, because it had happened 163 times already. He carried the lessons of 163 failures.
November 5, 1919
Remember what today is, Al?
November 5? What, Guy Fawkes day?
No, not that. Well, yes, that too, but…
What?
This is the day Ellie breaks her arm.
Oh, God, Tío!
Yes. That’s today.
I could stop it. It’s a bicycle accident, right? I could puncture her tire before I go to work—then she won’t be able to ride.
No, Al, you can’t not do that.
What could it hurt?
You know that. On forks 2-5 you protected Ellie from pain.
Any father would!
But you’re not “any father,” and Ellie is not “any daughter.” Other fathers don’t have the option of puncturing a tire the morning of a bicycle accident, because they don’t know the accident is coming.
But I do, and I could save her.
In truth, you hurt her more by protecting her. You KNOW this, Al, because we did it before. Remember who she has to become. She needs to be strong. She needs to be who she will be when you’re not there.
We gave her antibiotics when she got pneumonia, Tío.
She was an infant. Pneumonia could have killed her. This won’t. She’s twelve, now. Her character is being formed.
But can it hurt so much to protect her just this one time?
It won’t help her. She’s only twelve. She’s going to feel pain, but kids heal fast. “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places1.” That will be Ellie.
It’s so hard, Tío!
Yes. It’s you, too. Afterward you’ll be stronger, too. It will take longer for you than Ellie. I know. I am you, Al.
Al taught music at the Elmwood school. His colleagues and students noted that he was less kind and more impatient that day.
The school day ended at 3 o’clock. Al stayed to lead a band rehearsal. Half an hour later the school secretary Mrs Walters came to the band hall and attracted his attention.
“Mr Gardiner, there’s been an accident. Your Elle was hurt. She’s at Dr Fletcher’s. He asked me to tell you that she’s not in serious danger, but that you should come as soon as you can.”
Al thanked her and ran out.
By the standards of the early twentieth century, Fletcher was a more than competent physician. By Al’s standards, Fletcher was distressingly ignorant and lacked tools that a twenty-first century physician would consider essential. But he knew how to deal with broken bones.
“It’s a distal radius fracture, Gardiner. One of the most common types of fractures, and Elle’s is uncomplicated. She was cycling in the rain, and she fell. She extended her arms to break her fall. I reduced the fracture and splinted the arm. We’ll put the forearm in a cast—that will reduce the pain. Aspirin will help, too.”
Elle was still in a lot of pain. She smiled bravely at the sight of Al.
“I’m so sorry, Ellie. I came from school as soon as they told me.” It was not quite a lie.
He took her left hand, the unbroken side, in his own hands. She squeezed hard during Fletcher’s continuing ministrations but did not cry out. As Fletcher promised, she was more comfortable after the cast had hardened.
She spent a day at home before returning to school with her arm in a cast and a sling. Al helped her with aspirin for the pain. She recovered well.
Al, of course, never got over it.
August 15, 1921
What’s up today, Tío?
This is a good day, Al! One of the best Mondays of your life!
Monday—is this Molly Day?
It is. Molly blows into Elmwood on a train.
Do we know where she’s coming from?
“Virginia” is all she will ever tell us. Molly won’t talk about her life before Elmwood. We don’t even know what she was called before coming here. And we will not ask her. You, Al, will give her her name. It will be a refuge for her.
Al left the school building at quarter past three to find Ellie waiting for him as usual. She was not exactly alone, though. A small dark girl was staring at Elle as if fascinated. Although small, she looked about Elle’s age—14. She was shabbily dressed and carried a small shabby bundle. She eyed the other children in the schoolyard like a stray cat surrounded by dogs.
Al, putting his hand on Elle’s shoulder, bent his head towards the strange girl and, without attempting eye contact, said, “Let me guess. Your name is Molly?”
It was the right thing to say. She had, Al supposed, feared that he would ask her name. Her shoulders relaxed slightly, and she glanced towards him.
Diffidently, she answered, “Yes…”
Al said, “I’m Albert Gardiner, and this is my daughter Ellie. Do you have a place to stay?”
The shoulders tensed again. But Molly, as she would now be called, looked at Elle again. Elle seemed no less fascinated. Al did his best to look harmless.
Elle said, “Are you hungry?” In truth, Molly looked at if she could have eaten both of them whole. Al thought, though, that Molly’s eager response had as much to do with Ellie as with an empty stomach. The sight of Elle fed a different kind of hunger.
They took Molly home and fed her milk and Oreos.
The girls became inseparable outside of school hours.
Molly arrived in Elmwood illiterate and ignorant. Al had once heard it said, “The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous2.” Molly was the second case. With Al’s help, she learned reading and writing and arithmetic and music. She was eager to learn, and extraordinarily bright. He gave her the run of his own library, and the Elmwood town librarian happily gave her a library card and helped her find books.
Molly was left on her own during the school day. The adults of Elmwood looked askance at this small dark girl. Al found, though, that Molly soon knew everyone in Elmwood, and she knew everything there was to know about them.
June 7, 1925/June 7, 2025
The time gate opened for Al and Elle.
“I can’t leave Molly behind,” Ellie said, tears in her eyes.
“Ellie, do you trust me?”
“How can I? I just learned that you’ve lied to me all my life.”
“That’s fair. But Ellie, I promise if you follow me you won’t regret it.”
It was a promise Al meant to keep. Molly might follow, or she might not. If she did not, he would end fork 164 and try again. Al would just keep trying until she made it. He felt weary to the bone, but he was getting close.
In fact, Al had confidence in Molly. Knowing her through so many forks, he knew how capable she was. Nothing stopped Molly from going where she wanted to go. After last night, Molly would follow Ellie to the end of time.
He really thought she would figure it out this time.
Al took Ellie’s hand and together they stepped through the time gate into the Time Lab in twenty-first century Dallas.
Seconds later, Molly followed. Al raised a hand in greeting and grinned at her. She grinned back.
Anne missed none of this. “What have you done, Al?” she said.
He answered, “The right thing, Anne.”
“Who is this woman, Al?”
“Her name is Molly Johnson.”
“Did you take a twentieth-century teenager out of her time?”
“I did not. She worked it out herself. Ask her. She will confirm that I have never spoken to her about the time gate or time travel.”
“Oh! I’m sure she will confirm anything you tell me.”
“She will, but only because we’re both telling the truth.”
Ellie and Molly were eating up this colloquy, Anne saw.
“Come with me, Al. We need to talk.”
You in a heap of trouble, Boy!
Lo sé, Tío. Lo sé.
In a conference room, door closed, Anne continued, “Al, we know it’s safe for you and Elle to come through, because there is a historical record of you two vanishing mysteriously in 1925. But this girl!”
“Anne, 1925 Elmwood will not miss Molly. She came to town a runaway. She’ll just be one of the millions of lost girls that history forgets. We can fix that! Molly will leave her mark on this century. You’ll see.”
“We should check census records.”
“You won’t find her. She came to Elmwood after the 1920 census and left before 1930. There’s no record of her. Tío checked.”
“You know you’re risking everything, Al.”
“It would be an even bigger risk to leave her behind. Ellie and Molly need each other.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think they quite realize it themselves. In 1925 Elmwood a girl loving a girl is not a recognized possibility—certainly not a thing a respectable adult can speak of with teenage girls. Molly has, I believe, figured out what kind of friendship they have. Ellie has not. She’s always been emotionally naïve. The penny dropped partway for her in her last twenty-four hours. It would break Ellie’s heart now to part her from Molly.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“Of course I’m not sure, Anne,” Al snapped. “’Sure’ was never on the table. But I don’t believe I’ll ever come closer. I’m tired, Anne. I have tried 164 times to raise Ellie to be the scientist she is to be and I failed 163 times. I have watched our daughter die a dozen times.”
“163!” repeated Anne, eyes wide. “Al…”
“It’s all good, Anne. It is my purpose—it’s what I’m for. I’m tired, but I’m not gonna fuck it up. I genuinely think I got it right this time. At long last, fork 164. More than 2,500 years Tío and I have spent raising Ellie. I know her better than any ordinary person can know another.”
“2,500 years!”
“And we spent 500 of those watching Molly with Ellie. They’ll be brilliant. You’ll see.”
Thus did Alberto Gonzalez’s years of failure came to an end.
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Afterword
The cover image is a phase portrait of
The portrait is rotated 30° clockwise.
A phase portrait is a visualization of a complex function introduced by Elias Wegert in Visual Complex Functions: An Introduction with Phase Portraits.
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
--Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.
Edward Gibbon.
Pretty intense how many years and attempts it took to get things to go in the desired way! ⚖️
Excellent storytelling! 💯