Unlucky Numbers Read online

  “I think it’s called a pocket universe.”

  “Who are you?” I said.

  I realized he was right next to me. The figure had a face that looked like it could be my father—at least what he looked like in pictures. “I’m you. And this is a time machine.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” I exploded. “I don’t know you. What the hell is going on here?”

  “I made you pick those numbers in the lottery. I wanted a slick way to get rich and now I’ve done it,” he said, smiling through a short gray beard.

  “You’re nuts,” I said, recovering my composure. “Especially if you think I owe you any money.”

  He tilted back his head and laughed. “I don’t want to take anything from you, I go back to my time and I’m already rich. Don’t you get it, I’ve fixed everything for us.”

  I shook my head. “If you’ve got a time machine why not use it to get rich in the stock market,” I said, smirking.

  “Think about it,” he said. “You’ve got to buy stocks with something. I can’t just bring my twenty-first century currency back here and walk into the New York Stock Exchange. Come on.”

  That actually made sense. I shook my head again.

  “You’re in a time machine,” he said. “You can go anywhere, do anything. Look what I’ve given you. What I’ve given us. I took initiative, I made something happen.” He chuckled and then said, “You don’t even know what that’s like.”

  I just stared at him.

  “You’ve never wanted to do anything with your life, even now that you’re here?” he said and spread his arms, gesturing around the strange room.

  I looked around and said, “I’ve always wanted to see my father. If you really know me then you know exactly what I mean.”

  The man stopped smiling and stood still. He nodded slightly. “Maybe we see how he was before he lost it," he said.

  He turned his back to me and approached the crystal in the center of the room. He laid his hands on it like a priest blessing a sick child. “This has got to be some kind of prank,” I thought.

  I got a chill as the room trembled. “OK, let’s go,” he said.

  We walked back down the tunnel. Again the strange buzzing and sense of bifurcation swarmed my senses. And then we were in a department store. “What is this?” I said.

  “Mom told me he always used to do his Christmas shopping here the night before Christmas Eve. He’s here somewhere,” the man said.

  We walked through the store. I felt terribly out of place, like the holiday shoppers would see me, and point me out like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but no one paid us any notice.

  “Where are the toys,” I said looking around for any signs.

  We made our way over to the toy section and there he was, browsing an aisle of baby toys. I tried to burn his face into my mind. I wished I could freeze that moment.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Don’t let him see you,” my companion said.

  My father grabbed a toy that had big wooden beads attached to curved wires like a goofy abacus and examined it. He seemed so intent. “Is that really him?” I said. We stood in silence for some time.

  My eyes were watering. I hoped that this guy didn’t try to get me to say anything else because I was pretty sure my voice would crack. If this really was my father over there, I was seeing positive proof that he cared for me in the form of his pottering around in a store when he just as easily could have been home watching Nightlight. I wanted to know more about him and realized I had never asked the questions of my mother that I should. I never tried to figure him out. I just saw him as a ghost. Yet here he was just doing his Christmas shopping.

  As we stood staring at my long-lost father completely unsure of what to do, the lights went out. Gasps and loud voices burst out all around. “What’s happening?” I said. It was too dark to see anything. I was locked in place. A few cries for help arose in the darkness.

  A light came up and I saw a small flashlight in the alleged time-traveler’s hand illuminating the aisle around us.

  “Let’s help Dad,” he said.

  We found him clutching the toy he had before. When he saw us approach, he said, “I need to pay for this.”

  “Uh, sir it might be best to head outside,” my supposed counterpart from the future said. “You can leave it by the door and when the power comes back we can ring you up.”

  What if he recognized me? Would he like me if he got to know me? We found our way towards the exit.

  “What’s that smell?” someone said.

  I started to smell it, too. “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  “Please put your purchase down, sir,” Future Frank said. “We’ll head out into the parking lot until everything is safe.”

  “Is this some kind of fire drill?” my dad said, putting the toy down.

  “Not exactly a drill, no,” I said. “Maybe it would be best if you were by your own car during all of this.” I said, ushering him toward the door.

  As we walked through the parking lot, the flashlight revealed that the air was getting foggy.

  “Something’s wrong,” Future Frank said.

  “What,” I said.

  “I can’t open the portal,” he hissed. “Wait here, I’m going to try and find a way in.”

  “There’s my car,” my father said.

  My older counterpart turned and walked back toward the building, searching for the entrance to the supposed time machine. The fog was very thick now. The street lights were on, lighting up the fog in eerie patches. I saw a dark shape moving in the fog. At first I thought it was a man on a big motorcycle.

  My father saw it, too. It lurched toward him and made a thick snorting noise. He screamed. “Dad,” I yelled. I couldn’t see anything but I ran forward a few steps and collided with something cold and metallic. I thought it was a car but it fell away. I looked for my father but I couldn’t see anything for a few moments. Then the mist started to fade.

  I saw him. His eyes were wide open and his mouth was moving but no words came out. It looked like he had blood on his arm. He was fumbling with the keys in his car door. “Wait,” I said, moving toward him.

  He didn’t even look up, like he couldn’t hear me. I took a few steps forward and then stopped. What am I supposed to say? I thought. He got the door open and jumped in the driver’s seat. He started the car and tore out of the parking lot, disappearing into the night.

  I turned and saw the flashlight cutting through the thinning mist. “We did it to him,” I said. “It’s our fault, those things are real.” Tears were streaming down my face.

  “Whoa, what are you talking about?” the future man said.

  “The thing from the bridge, it was just here,” I said. I hung my head. “I think it drove Dad over the edge. It attacked him.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. He was studying me carefully. “Look I know this is a lot to take in but you’ve got to keep it together,” he said.

  I grabbed his shirt. “Come on man, didn’t you see that? You’ve got to believe me there’s something really bad going on,” I said.

  “All right,” he said, prying himself loose from my grasp. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back through the parking lot. There was the portal in the brick wall of the building.

  I followed him down the corridor. That peculiar feeling of splitting myself apart was a welcome sensation after what had just happened. Then we were back in the domed room again. He approached the central crystal and laid his hands on it. There was a shuddering. He walked back to where I was standing by the hallway and said, “Go back out. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  I wasn’t sure that I trusted him at this point but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I turned and went back down the hallway. I found myself forgetting about the weird things that were happening as the psychedelic sensation of walking through the tunnel passed over me. The sound of music and voices pricked
my attention. I kept my steps short, afraid of what I might find. It was a big ballroom. Music was playing and people were dancing. Lights were flashing over the dance floor and an abundant buffet was laid out. It was a big party. I saw my co-workers, acquaintances from around town, complete strangers, some who looked like homeless people. I approached the bar. The bartender acknowledged me and gave me a beer.

  It seemed exactly like the party I would imagine to celebrate my winnings. I didn’t think I was dreaming. If I was going insane it seemed pleasant enough. I took a deep drink of my beer and moved onto the dance floor to engage in goofy dance moves to Duran Duran and other hits of the 1980’s. Then a trip to the buffet table. Mac and cheese with pork barbeque.

  I found myself eating near Melinda. “Hi,” I said.

  “Nice spread,” she said. “Congratulations on cashing out.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t know what to say next. I wasn’t quite sure if this was the past or future. Probably the future? “It’s weird, just feels like I’m getting stuff handed to me,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Most people who have anything in life got something handed to them along the way,” she said. “You just got a lot more than your share.”

  I grunted. “Yeah,” I said.

  “So what’s it like being a millionaire?” she said.

  “OK, pretty sure this is the future,” I thought. “About the same, I guess,” I said. An awkward pause followed. Next comes the part where I have to say something to keep the conversation going. “Have you ever had hallucinations?” I blurted out.

  “Yeah,” she said, without missing a beat. “But I knew they weren’t real. Why do you ask?”

  “I guess I’ve been under a lot of stress lately,” I said.

  “Well I know a good doctor, if you’re looking for help,” she said. “He taught me to rate my anxiety on a scale of one to ten, that way I know when I need to get out of a situation.”

  “That’s a really good idea,” I said. “I’m going to try that. Parties make me nervous but it’s only like a four.”

  She laughed and said, “Me too.”

  I went to grab another drink and when I turned around Melinda was caught up in a conversation with a couple of guys. Why did I invite all these people? Kevin popped up in front of me out of nowhere. I jumped a little.

  “How’s it going, Frank, good life treating you right?” he said.

  “So far, so good,” I said.

  “Well that’s great. Now that you have all that free time you ought to hit the links, try it out” he said, brandishing an imaginary golf club.

  I had a tough time imagining myself on the golf course but I said, “Maybe I will Kevin, maybe I will.”

  “I know you always hear me talking about the municipal course, but you’ve got it made now, we could make an appointment up at Bywater, I could show you around,” he said. It actually sounded tempting.

  “Sure Kevin, I’ll give you a call.”

  I drank a few more beers before passing out in the bathroom. Martin and Kevin carried me up to a hotel room and put me in the bathtub. It was weird, I could see them doing it, like I was hovering just above myself. “Am I dying?” I wondered. There was a strange buzzing in my ears.

  As the two chuckle-heads took off laughing at me, the sound grew more distinct. I tried to get up but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I stared down at myself and tried to yell but no sound came out. I knew I was breathing. I could see my chest slowly rising and falling.

  As I watched myself inhale it suddenly seemed as if the whole world inhaled. Everything swelled for a moment like a bubble and I felt like I might burst. Then it sank away. I saw my body in the tub shrink and unfold like poorly-made origami. The surface of my face and the inside of my skull merged. Time stretched out like an unraveling sweater. Martin and Kevin were a centipede of limbs endlessly carrying me, depositing me, receding, and laughing over and over. I looked away for fear that my mind might snap.

  My vision swirled like a kaleidoscope of windows, a vast mountain of shifting vistas. One of them grew like it was coming toward me. It enveloped me and I was on the lip of a deep hole, like a giant porthole over a vast underground metropolis. The panorama receded into darkness but I could see a pile of structures, roads, doors, paths that led upside down and round about like an M. C. Escher print.

  As I gazed down, I saw them Dozens of hulking insects. It was difficult to determine their size. They skittered around on four legs and held their shelled bodies nearly upright. The had narrow spindly arms with twitchy appendages like fingers at the ends. Atop the bodies were heads with large black eyes and ever-clicking mandibles. They were dashing all over the vast city. I felt my stomach drop and I tried to pull away from the precipice. Instead I plummeted down into the depths of their world. There were lattices spread across great domes and tunnels drilled far into the ground. The air was thick with strange smells.

  The gloomy halls led down to a vast spherical chamber hollowed out in the earth. There were huge glowing columns and the insect people scurried around in all directions. There were strange machines clustered about on the walls. The sense of up and down disappeared as if gravity no longer applied.

  My vision faded into darkness and I felt a coldness grip me. The was a chill sense of being watched by unblinking eyes. I was inside some black bubble and a force pushed against it from outside. The barrier buckled. Everything fell away.

  ###

  I was no longer floating in limbo. I noticed the familiar things about my body, the breathing, the limbs, the facial expressions, blinking eyelids. I came to in the domed time-room with my future alter ego. I was lying on the ground. I sat up.

  “Had too much to drink,” he suggested.

  I opened my mouth to speak but nausea prevented it for a moment and I closed my eyes. “Yes,” I said.

  “I just got back from the bridge,” he said.

  I looked at him. He was looking at the ground. He looked old, older than I thought he was. I felt a coldness in my chest, knowing that this is what I would look like one day. I said nothing.

  “I was at the footbridge the night you won the lottery,” he said, looking at me.

  “I’m really confused,” I said, my head throbbing.

  “I came back to your time to get you to pick the winning numbers,” he said.

  “Right, I got that,” I said. “I’m not that stupid.”

  “After that I hired a lawyer to take care of the particulars of setting things up the way I wanted so I would be super-rich in the future‒—my time.”

  “Then you contacted me,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I thought it would be funny to leave you at that party. So after that I went back to my time to enjoy the fruit of my labors. I figured I’d be rich and living on easy street. I thought I could take care of everything.” He sighed.

  “You saw that thing in the fog,” I said.

  “I saw a bunch of them,” he said. “I think they’re following me.”

  “Well that’s just great,” I said. “You come back here and meddle in my life and you bring monsters with you.”

  He held up a short rod with a star-shaped crystal on the end. “Xanthros gave me this,” he said. “I can use it to detect time anomalies with it. And those fog-beasts are the most anomalous things around.”

  I frowned. “Nothing you just said made any sense,” I said. “Who is Xanthros?”

  “He’s a bug from the future,” He said. “He gave me this time machine.”

  I closed my eyes. “A bug from the future gives you a time machine so you can travel back in time and screw up everything for the sake of some lottery winnings?” I said.

  “Look I did what I had to do,” he said. “Obviously things didn’t turn out how I planned.”

  “So you’ve got a plan,” I said. “Could have fooled me.”

  He nodded and pointed toward the glowing hallway. “Go back out there. Set up the party and remember to book room 435 in the hotel.�
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  I looked at him. I felt numb. He gestured again towards the hallway and I went. After the effects of the time corridor faded, found myself back in my apartment and jumped into my bed without even bothering to remove my shoes. When I woke up I noticed I had a bunch of messages from my mom. I called her back. When she realized it was me calling, she said, “Congratulations, dear, I thought I would be the first person you would call.”

  “How did you find out?” I said.

  “Your lawyer contacted me,” she said. “He’s not very personable. I’m amazed you lined up a lawyer so fast. The drawing was only two days ago!”

  I winced and hoped to navigate my way around her hurt feelings. “I hope you’ve picked out a new house,” I said.

  “I haven’t picked a new house. I don’t want to move. I like this house, it’s old, like me,” she said.

  “OK, mom, but it’s kind of run down. Wouldn’t you like to move to a new place where you wouldn’t have to worry about fixing stuff?”

  “No,” she said. “There’s work to be done everywhere. I just need to hire some workmen to update a few things.”

  “OK, I’ll help you find somebody to help fix up the house,” I said.

  “And I want a pool,” she said.

  “OK we’ll get you a pool,” I said.

  The lawyer set me up with a new apartment and it was a big step up. It had a master bedroom, a big living space with an open kitchen, a balcony, and more rooms that I couldn’t even find a use for. I bought a new computer and set it up in my bedroom. I ordered pizza and beer. Finally some time to relax and get back into Gammon and take my mind off all the weird things that had happened.

  Between games I called a party planner to take care of things with the hotel and invited everybody I knew. I figured even if they didn’t think I was very cool they would come anyway because I was rich.

  The days slipped by. I got that flying unicorn. I made it to level 100. I ate a lot of pizza and drank a lot of beer. I don’t think I saw the sun for two whole weeks. Then it was time to go to the party.

  I showed up late. I paused outside the ballroom. The planner had taken care of everything. I didn’t really need to be there. I contemplated seeing all those people again and cringed. Then I thought about what had happened in the hotel room and I couldn’t even bring myself to enter the ballroom. “The anxiety is only a six”, I thought. I already knew I had survived whatever happened. I walked into the room. It looked like it had before. In the future. Emily appeared before me and said, “Great party, dude. I’m totally going to have a party like this when my money comes through.”