No Early Birds: A Short Story Read online

  None of us were hurting for money. Faye always had a new minivan and Edna has a new Lexus every two years. Anna drives the same old car forever, but she probably has more money than the rest of us put together. She was the only one who kept a free standing house instead of a condo, though we teased her it was only so she could ogle the bronzed lawn workers and pool boys. We ended up there more often than not in nice weather because she has a Spanish style layout with a brick paved courtyard that was in shade by supper time with lovely plants and trees all around. It has the fake red tile roof because the real tiles aren't safe for hurricanes and wrought iron gates and grill work everywhere. All of us have stayed there a few times when a hurricane came through. We'd actually make a party of it then.

  We all talked about other things, avoiding talk about the morning, which would have spoiled dinner for sure. We all got along that way without making rules or discussing it. It was the sort of harmonious friendship you can't plan. We all had other friends and different combinations got tried almost at random it seems. When we four took a cruise together a couple years ago it just clicked. Nobody was weird about picking up a check or tried to calculate it to the penny. Nobody told all about their surgery while we were trying to eat. We all got along better than sisters.

  When we got back from the cruise we had a bond that is hard to explain. Now we pretty much know what we are going to do each week and if one goes off to visit kids or grand kids it seems to work as a three-some just as well any way you want to juggle it. I suppose if someone died we'd try out some candidates for replacement, but when you get right down to it the reason we stay at four is simple. We fit in a car comfortably with all the junk we haul around and four works for everything from a restaurant booth to cards. Another person just wouldn't work at all.

  After eating Anna started a couple citronella candles in little buckets she sets around. We cleared all the mess away and she brought out a big pitcher of peach Margaritas. We don't always do that, but considering the day we'd had she didn't bother to ask. She made them strong too.

  "Anybody come up with any ideas about the machine?" Anna asked after she took a good long sip of her Margarita.

  "The way the time those women stopped at the sale changed from what we remembered was spooky," Edna said. "I'm not used to the idea time can change. It's hard to even speak about it clearly with any English I'm used to using, and I was a school teacher. We need different tenses for time indefinite or time altered. I've been thinking about it a lot, and you know, I don't think they could have been aware there was any change. To them, they had to be stopping there for the first time, and I'm sure there was nothing happening to tell them something had changed and that change was reaching back in time to touch them. It's scary because the same thing could happen to us."

  "Why do you say they couldn't have been aware of it?" I asked. "Not that I'm arguing. I'm just not sure I understand."

  "Well why did things change when we tried to get the machine back to them?"

  "I'd assume the fact they died. Obviously reality will stretch far enough that they could buy a novelty bank and it being absent from the world isn't enough to cause a problem." I thought on it a minute, and she didn't interrupt seeing I still had my wheels turning on the problem. "Nor all the little things that go with being here to buy the bank. The extra money the person holding the sale got, the car rental and changes because they drove around in it. They burn up gas and are on security cameras around town. All those are sort of normal things that don't really make any difference.

  "But when you get run over by a concrete truck you have two dead bodies, and a wrecked car to remove and explain. It makes changes in all sorts of things that don't go away easily. It gets published in the newspaper and there are all the emergency services responding and the insurance and such. Not like the other little things that you'd be hard pressed to even prove they happened a couple days later. The bigger event extinguished the lesser. That's why we couldn't make a small change by giving them back the machine and erase the fact they were killed. Is that what you are thinking?"

  "Yes, but you said it better than I could," Edna admitted. "Now the two ladies in the Explorer - I assume they used the little time machine before. Just from the way they knew what they were doing at a sale they know their way around, uh, in our time." We all nodded in agreement. "So if they saw some spooky change that didn't make sense, like we saw their arrival time shifting, I bet they'd know something big was happening. Seems to me they'd go straight home to be safe and stay put and check the papers and stuff for our date until they knew what had happened big enough to make them see events shift."

  "But what if they couldn't figure it out or if it was something like their wreck that they avoided and couldn't ever know?" Faye asked.

  "Then I bet they'd stay away from this area, maybe even this date. They'd go to sales in a different city, maybe even a different state, and stay away from this date too. Maybe mark the whole week off limits instead of just a day," Anna speculated.

  "Maybe losing the time machine was the big change instead of the wreck," Faye suggested. "Maybe they were stuck here once that happened and the sooner they died the less stress on reality. They couldn't start altering this time bit by bit by introducing changes." That was an interesting idea too.

  "We didn't forget the first time we saw them stop at the sale," Edna pointed out. She didn't really ask it as a question, but it obviously perplexed her.

  "The little machine kept us anchored to that sequence of events," Faye decided. "I'd bet anything it can't make itself disappear. That would change much bigger things than a car wreck way into whenever it comes from."

  "Whenever...We're changing how we talk about it already," Edna said.

  "But I'm thinking about how we do things," I said. "We all have our own cell phones. And we all keep our own passports and charge cards and things even when we do things together. Wouldn't the other lady have her own time machine too?"

  After some discussion we decided we didn't know enough to know if the time machine was common, or expensive where, or rather when, the ladies originated. They had to be common enough that they could use it to acquire collectables. We supposed they were doing so for a profit motive. That also suggested that other more direct ways to make money with it were either prohibited or just didn't work. Faye suggested we be very cautious trying to use it that way ourselves.

  If the other lady did have one then the police likely had it and we could expect they'd be looking in it just like we did for information to try to notify the next of kin. No doubt any good detective would figure out what the machine was just like we'd done. Somebody else having one seemed to make it more likely a change could be made with it that would alter us. That idea kind of scared us, but there wasn't really anything we could do about it.

  "What do you girls want to do?" I asked them directly. I looked at Edna in particular because I was concerned, worried really, that she would want to go back and visit her husband on his last day. How she thought she'd get herself out of the way or how it could have happened since she didn't remember it were things I didn't want to have to argue with her. Logic wasn't what drove her to have the idea in the first place, and there wasn't any good argument against what she felt in her heart. It just was.

  "I've gotten over that idea, Vi. It seemed like a good idea when it first popped into my head. But I can see after thinking on it that it is really dangerous," Edna admitted.

  "I'm glad. I didn't think it would be good for you or him, but it's better you figured that out on your own without us brow beating you."

  "Oh, you wouldn't do that. Maybe Faye a little, if I took too long to clue up on it," she admitted. Faye just looked amused and didn't seem offended. "Looking back we had as good a day as I could wish. We stayed in all day, and at the last it was hard for Mark to go out. We didn't argue about anything. I never could keep a secret from the man. If I went back I'd be making a mess of myself trying to find special things to do to show
I loved him. He'd get all suspicious and know something was up. He'd probably think I spent money on something foolish or put a ding in the car. No, the quiet day we had will do just fine. He always did tell me he loved me a couple times a day. Not like some men, who are so cold. It would be cruel if he figured out I knew he wouldn't see the next dawn. He never morbidly dwelt on the idea himself even though he knew he was seriously ill. I'm past the idea and OK, truly."

  "I've been thinking about it," Anna said quietly. "I'm comfortable as things stand, but anything we wish to do may require funding, so I'm interested, not in becoming filthy rich, or altering the future economy so heavily that we call attention to ourselves, but I would like to use the machine to improve our economic standing."

  "I agree," Faye cut in. "I have something particular in mind. I figure from what I read that there are going to be medical advances in the near future that will stop a lot of the effects of aging. If we can find out what they are, and maybe slip ahead and get treatment, there's no reason why we can't make sure we don't have to suffer from Alzheimer's or heart disease or cancer. But we might have to pay for treatments if we don't have the same sort of health insurance in the future, or if it's too hard for our younger selves to walk in and use our real identity."

  "We can go to the public library and do a lot of research," Edna suggested. "I don't want to look on the computer from home. I don't think it's possible to be private enough. I get ads for things sometimes that are like they are reading my mind. You know we can't just take our car forward five or ten years, and drive around town. The License plates would be expired and our insurance proof would be no good. Even my driver's license expires in three years, but if we transition in time to the library parking lot we don't have to go out on the road at all."

  "That's a good idea dear. Even the ladies who owned this little machine used a rental car. Going the other way would be hard too. Wouldn't it be kind of obvious to show up in a car that wouldn't be for sale for years? And we'd have to find an old plate that wouldn't match if the police checked it. But I think it would be easier to take counsel of those most interested in our success," Anna told her.

  "Who's that?"

  "Why, our future selves. All we have to do is come back and drop a letter in a mailbox. We can tell ourselves what works and what pitfalls to avoid without jumping blindly into the future," Anna said a bit smugly. "That's undoubtedly why I had this letter in my mail box today. It says, "Save to share after dinner." on the flap in my own hand, but I don't remember sending it. It must be from a future me."

  We all stared at the common number ten envelope like it was a space alien.

  "Well open the damn thing," Faye insisted. "I can't believe you didn't rip it open the minute you found it."

  "But I didn't want to." She pointed out reasonably. "I mean the future me didn't want me to. Lord, it gets confusing knowing which me we're talking about." She was ripping it open as she spoke which was good. If she hadn't Faye looked ready to explode out of her chair and snatch it out of her hand. She pulled out several sheets and a couple other flat items, and read to us.

  * * *

  Hello Girls, this is by Anna's hand with input from us all.

  We won't be using the mail in the future. They lose too many letters and people in the Sarasota office are ripping open letters and looking for money in envelopes. There will be a big fuss about it in the paper and on TV in about a year. We shall leave things under Anna's welcome mat or use FedEx.

  Edna has a small tumor in her right breast that required a lumpectomy and she has been fine since, no problem. However if you wish to avoid the whole upsetting ordeal here is a little blister card of pills. Take one a day until they are gone and the matter will never come up. We don't know here what they are. They came back to us from up-time.

  Enclosed is a separate list of stock trades to make. Note these are all buy and sell instructions. Later when you have more money we will be telling you a small number of stocks to buy and hold. Don't buy more than you are told. Being greedy may deprive someone of shares who used them as the basis for a personal fortune or to reinvest in a business that is an important part of our reality.

  Just as early birds snatch up everything good at a sale, we are told from our future that early bird time travelers can ruin things for everybody else. That is why you must be discrete. Eventually, after time travel is discovered there will be alternate banes of reality created that should not have come into existence. Some are sufficiently nasty that there are a sort of police who trim out the nastier ones by intervention. That had to wait on better tech that allows traveling between less similar realities. By the time somebody could do that some of the unpleasant alternates had progressed long enough to be difficult to eradicate.

  That is not something done lightly, because sometimes the agent of such an action disappears with the prohibited bane. We want to be the sort of innocuous early birds that they look at as not worth the risk and effort to eliminate because we are too intertwined in events to remove easily and there is no real benefit apparent from doing so.

  To help you understand, some early travelers did make changes that resulted in dictatorships or horrible wars. The sad thing is almost all those actions were the result of well intended interventions. Making a little money or helping an ordinary person almost never hurts anything. But trying to reform a political system, or create a theocracy will almost always go bad. Even things that sound like a wonderful idea such as stamping out poverty or insuring universal health care can turn quickly to the bad because we simply don't know enough to foresee all the consequences of our actions. Trust us on this, because it is the word from far up the time line. They say some such branches are there forever and can't be 'pruned'.

  You don't want to be a lotto winner. That is too significant an event. But one of you can choose a number that matches all but one digit which pays out about $25k. on a buck wager. Bet four dollars please. After taxes, this is seed money for all of you to use as instructed. No need for any of you to front investment money. If all of you won above this level it would be too obvious. Enclosed find lower prize winning numbers written down for the next four months. Have Faye buy them for you, and each turn one in, because she is already in the habit of buying a lotto ticket every week anyway."

  We will send another packet in a few weeks. Just do all the things you usually enjoy. Some of them will be lost in time and you might as well enjoy them while you can. For example the Waffle House will close in about five years because the land was just worth too much money for that use and they sold it to built an office park there. We double back and enjoy a Waffle House now and then, but there are a finite number and none of them are our Waffle House. But don't feel too bad, we found another really cute place to go in our time.

  All for now,

  Anna

  * * *

  "Well, how exciting. Do you want these dear?" Anna offered the pills to Edna.

  "You bet. I trust us not to send something back that isn't safe." She took them and put them in her purse, looking a little rattled.

  "And for you," she gave a slip of paper with some numbers to Faye. "I didn't know you played the lotto."

  "I never tell anybody because it's a sucker's game." Faye admitted. "At least it was with me picking the numbers."

  "Here's my dollar," Edna said taking it from her wallet. "Just because it will make big bucks doesn't mean it's fair to make you pay the four bucks for all of us." We all scrambled to do the same. Fair is fair. I should have thought of it without being told.

  * * *

  Anna's husband was a stock broker when she married him, and then later in life he got involved with investment banking. She learned enough from him she still actively managed her own accounts, so she set us up an investment account with all four of us as joint tenants.

  Some of the things we were instructed to buy seemed downright silly. A toy manufacturer? Really? And then the computer screen maker, something we thought a very mature bu
siness. But then there was the fad of wearing video t-shirts, using tech the screen maker invented. It didn't last long but we made a ton of money off a very small share while it lasted. Not that that was the end of the company. I have one of their dresses for evening wear, and can set it to red silk or blue velvet, violet with gold diamonds or floral designs. It's almost impossible to run into someone at a party wearing the same thing.

  The first couple decades after we got the machine every one of us benefited from medical advice, and twice had medicine sent back to us. The investment advice less often but it was still very effective. It wasn't unusual to go a month without any communication. Once we were told to drive up to Atlanta and take clothing for a couple weeks when a supposedly weak hurricane turned out to be more serious than expected.

  We kept expecting to watch the news one day and see them announce that somebody had invented time travel. After all, the little device had English words and familiar characters on the screen we could understand. We also wondered about how long it would run. There wasn't anything that looked like solar cells on it. There was a seam all the way around the edges, but none of us thought it was a good idea to peek and see if it used batteries. Then in the next note we were told not to worry about it.

  We underestimated the power of the media to slow the change of language. It was a shock in time when German became an extinct language of scholars. Slang of course, changes. But it also usually goes away and is forgotten. I remember when I was middle aged, I had a cousin who was horribly needy. If you went to a family reunion she'd latch onto you like a leech and ruin your visit. Back then we said she 'glommed onto you'. Currently you'd just say she is 'sticky'. It'll be different in fifty years, but the core words endure.

  One of the first clues we had just how far in the future time travel would be discovered was when we got an uptime communication that wasn't for us, but to relay. We immediately recognized it as one we'd read before, but subtly different. The uptime us didn't trust their memory of the older English usage to say what they wanted clearly. They were right too. We changed three words. It would have sounded slightly odd without the editing.