Portrait of a Time Tourist

By Corey Mariani

Jerry is an alcoholic widower and a disappointment to his daughter. But that's all part of his job. Although he doesn't know it, he's a surrogate time tourist. And now his company wants him back to harvest his experiences. Transported over five hundred years into the future, Jerry is swept up in a world of corporate spies and Luddite revolutionaries. Struggling to find his way back home, he travels across the country to Washington D.C., where the choices he makes will decide the future of humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Corey Mariani
• Release date: Jan 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005611958

Corey Mariani

Corey Mariani was born in Bridgeville, California, the first town to be sold on eBay. He is a graduate of McKinleyville High School. He has traveled extensively throughout Humboldt County. His short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, Kaleidotrope, and Lore.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I WALK ACROSS THE LIVING room along a path worn in the carpet and stand at the front window, where the beer I opened for breakfast sweats next to an ashtray. I gulp a third of it down and light a cigarette.

Drank too much whiskey last night, I say into the tape recorder hanging from a string around my neck. Listened to a lot of Frank Sinatra, then dumped another ten gallons of macaroni salad on Aiden’s porch.

Through a pair of binoculars I watch Aiden, my neighbor, eat a bowl of cereal in his kitchen. This is the third day in a row I’ve smothered his porch in macaroni salad.

It’s research for my novel about Chaos Theory, about how everything is connected. My neighbor’s reaction to the macaroni salad could set off a chain of events leading to the death of a nomad child in Siberia, or a spike in banana prices, or a botulism outbreak.

Botulism!

Death by dented can. Anything can kill you.

Kate, my wife, died seven years ago because we were out of summer sausage—T-boned in an intersection driving to the store.

She never let me smoke in the house because of Lena, and the plants, which are all dead now, except for the Peace Lily and China Doll. I keep them in our old bedroom with her clothes that are still organized in mounds on the floor, the way she liked them. I could never walk around in there without disturbing the piles and getting in trouble. It was absurd, but I miss it. I miss her. When I water the plants I’m very careful. I tiptoe around the mounds. I used to tease her about them: These piles are a manifestation of what it’s like in your mind, messy and inefficient. Sometimes I worry my jokes were a form of abuse. Sometimes I seem like a monster in my memories. Sometimes I don't. Depends on the state of my gut at the time of recall, I suppose. Anyways, Kate never took me too seriously. Most times I think I was a good husband.

She used to make summer sausage enchiladas for me. That’s something else I miss. I try to recreate them every week, but it’s not the same. We’ll always have enchiladas, I used to say to her. You’re weird, she would reply.

As I mangle the butt of my cigarette in the ashtray, my neighbor opens his front door. I step behind a curtain and watch through the binoculars. He curses and tries to leap onto the banister to avoid the macaroni salad but falls in it anyway and curses again. I laugh.

Aiden appears to be unhappy, I say into the tape recorder as he grabs his hose from the side yard. I think he’s running late for something.

My neighbor is the antithesis of me. He has friends. He leaves the house. He goes kayaking. Kayaking! It’s hard to tell by watching him from the window, but I’m pretty sure he’s emotionally well-adjusted too.

But all that could disappear in an instant because of some little thing like summer sausage, or porch desecration, which could set off a domino effect that could eventually ruin his life.

I’m playing God with macaroni salad. And I don’t feel guilty. God has been playing God with me my whole life.

But that’s about to end. I’ve devised a way to break the chain of causality. Last night, drunk and blindfolded, I randomly picked two places on a county map, then flipped a coin to decide which place to go, and rolled dice for the date and time.

At 6:46 P.M. tonight, I will be on Bald Hill, where my current destiny will die and be replaced by something better, hopefully.

Maybe I’ll move out of this house. My family’s been trying to get me out of here since Kate died, trying to get me to move on. Or maybe I’ll become a better father, find a new career. Maybe I’ll finish my novel. Maybe this, maybe that. If things don’t get better, I’ll roll the dice again, and again, until I get on the right track.

I tried changing my life after Kate died. I used to be an accountant, now I work for the supermarket tabloid, Global News of the Week, writing stories about Liza Minnelli growing a clone of Walt Disney’s head on her hip, about alien spaceships fueled by menstrual

fluids. My last article discovered a small Midwestern town that shipped eunuchs from the Middle East to guard the virginity of their teenage girls.

I write at a desk by the window so I can keep an eye on my neighbor. In a way, he’s my only friend—him and Barry, the clerk from Ralph’s Deli who delivers my groceries.

After Aiden finishes hosing down his porch, he goes back inside to change his shoes, then leaves on his mountain bike.

I pour a cup of coffee and sit at my desk to write.

I keep my living space neat—immaculate counters, fluffed pillows, no dishes in the sink. The only signs of life, ironically, are in my old bedroom, with Kate’s piles of laundry, and her two dressers, their drawers empty, their tops cluttered with old receipts, photos, jewelry, magazines, perfumes, lotions, underwear…

Her clutter bothered me when she was alive. Now it’s like a shrine.

I finish my coffee and start writing one of my bizarre, coffee-induced articles:

"Nazi Vampire Gets Comupons! By Jerry Stanko

"Hans Krauthammer, former assistant to the notorious Dr. Mengela, was found dead last Monday in the cafeteria of The Correctional Facility for the Paranormal just outside of Tucson, Arizona, where he was serving out a life sentence. He was 192 years old.

"The prison’s official report, released the following day, stated Krauthammer had bled to death after being bitten in the neck by a fellow inmate, the werewolf Morton Eagleburger. ‘I just got tired of him spewing his hate,’ said Eagleburger, who was permitted to speak

with the press on Wednesday. ‘Every day at lunch he would tell me Moses was a child-molesting dog beater. I just couldn’t take it anymore.’

"Eagleburger’s arraignment is set for Friday.

It’s been nearly six months since authorities, working on an anonymous lead, found Krauthammer subsistence farming in Iceland. The trial that ensued, and the spectacle surrounding it, captured the attention of the entire world. Old wounds were reopened; conflicts that had long been smoldering erupted into flames. There were the neo-Nazi terrorists in Ohio, the bloody demonstrations in Israel, the distasteful choice of effigies in Iran—

Before I can finish, Barry pulls into my driveway and walks by my window lugging two five-gallon buckets. He makes a second trip to get a third bucket and a bag of groceries, then rings the doorbell.

Hi, Mr. Stanko, he says when I open the door. He’s breathing heavily.

Hi, Barry. What’ve you got for me?

All I could get was three-bean salad today.

I can work with that. As I reach for my wallet, a sheriff car pulls into the driveway next to Barry’s. A man with skinny legs, a bulbous belly, and a caterpillar mustache gets out and swaggers up the walk while I pay.

Good morning, the sheriff says. I was wondering if I could bother you with a few questions.

What kind of questions? I say.

Well…do you live here?

Yes.

Alone?

Yes.

He points a thumb over his shoulder. Have you noticed anything strange happening over at your neighbor’s?

No, why?

Well . . . . The sheriff exhales, widens his stance, removes his sunglasses, and lets his arms dangle at his sides. He's ready to pounce, like I'm his dog, and he's waiting for me to steal a dirty napkin from the trash so he can beat me, like Moses would have. He says, There has been a complaint this morning. It seems someone’s been dumping macaroni salad on your neighbor's porch.

That’s bizarre, I say.

The spot above his nose wrinkles as he nods. That’s what I thought.

Barry gives me a sheepish look and slinks away. I imagine him and the other clerks at the store will have a good laugh over this. That makes me happy.

What’s in these buckets here? asks the sheriff, pointing.

Three-bean salad, I say.

That’s a lotta three-bean salad. What do you plan to do with all that?

Eat it, what else? Is it a crime to eat three-bean salad now?

The sheriff steps onto the stoop and looms over me so that I can see the pours on his nose and feel the warmth of his breath. He puts a little gravel in his voice: If I get a call from your neighbor telling me that someone dumped three-bean salad on his porch, I’m going to cite you for trespassing and defacing private property, and whatever else I can come up with, y’understand?

You should be ashamed of yourself, is what I come up with to say. I hope he can smell the beer on my breath.

Chapter 2

I’M IN THE KITCHEN ORGANIZING my cup-boards when they arrive. Lena runs in and wraps her arms around my legs. Hey Smush, I say.

I can do a cartwheel, she says, Wanna see? Mom taught me how. Lena’s head is tilted back at an impossible angle. Her movements are abrupt and violent. An arm flails out for no apparent reason and just as quickly returns to her side, like she has no control over it at all. She bounces as she speaks. Come on, let’s go in the backyard. I can do a round-off too.

My sister, Melissa, leans against the kitchen counter, drinking from a large McDonald's cup. I shoot her a look that says, You gave her Coke again? But Melissa is too busy on her phone to see my rebuke.

I give Lena's nose a gentle pinch. I got a present for you, I say.

You do? she says, showing me her missing tooth.

She follows me to the bookshelf, where I pick up a clear glass bottle with a black layer of sand lying on top of a white layer. I give it to her and say, The apparent order you see in this bottle is just a construct of the human brain. Order, in fact, is just as random as Chaos; and Chaos is only another word for an Order that’s not yet understood. I shake the bottle. All outcomes have an equal probability. Whether the sand settles like this, with swirls of black in the white, or the colors mix in a uniform fashion, it’s all the same. If you shake this bottle long enough the colors will be separate again. It could happen on the next shake, or it could take an eternity, but that random pattern we recognize as Order will occur again.

Lena stares at the bottle with her mouth open. Melissa looks up from her phone to rolls her eyes at me. Are you kidding me? she says. She’s eight. What’s wrong with you?

Can we go outside, Lena says.

Not now, sweetie, Melissa says. I want you to tell your father what you told me.

Lena’s body language changes suddenly. She sways and chews on her hair. But I want to—

"Lena," prompts Mellissa.

I sit down at the kitchen table and crook my neck to catch my daughter’s eyes. What’s amadder honey?

Nothin.

What do you want to tell me?

Nothin.

"Lena," prompts Mellissa again.

Okay, okay. She looks up at me and talks very fast. Sophie said that Mom wasn’t my mom, that she was your sister and that my mom died after I was born.

This Sophie girl’s a liar, I say. You tell her that the next time you see her. Tell her you have papers to prove everything too.

Then why don’t you and Mom live together like the other parents? she says shyly.

That’s because your mother and I are divorced.

Why?

Well, uh, we . . . . It's better this way.

Lena tries to furrow her brow, but her skin is too tight.

Mellissa stands above us, arms folded, lips white, eyes slits. Lena, she barks. Go into the living room and watch TV.

Lena looks at me. I nod. She sighs and drags her feet into the living room. When the sounds from the television reach the kitchen, Mellissa explodes: You son of a bitch! What’s wrong with you anyway? Are you trying to be an asshole? Is that it? How long do you think you can keep this from her? She’s going to find out sooner or later. The other kids are already talking about it. The longer we wait, the harder it’s going to get for her. And she’s going to wind up hating both of us.

Relax Missy. It’ll be fine. It’s better this way. Trust me, I know.

You don’t know shit. Mellissa pushes on her temples with the tips of her fingers and takes a deep breath. Okay, she says, I don't have time for this right now. I'm running late. But we're dealing with this later.

All right, but there’s nothing to deal with.

Mellissa takes another deep breath. I need you to watch your daughter tonight.

I can’t.

Why not?

Got shit to do.

Like what?

I have to break the chain of causality.

Mellissa rolls her eyes again. Come on Jerry, can’t that wait? I have a date tonight.

With who?

Dale Grover.

Dale Grover! He’s an alcoholic.

Mellissa gives me a cutting look that says, You should talk.

A violent one, I say defensively. And I don’t want him around Lena.

Mellissa throws up her arms and storms out of the room, her head shaking. I follow. I’m sure the martyr can handle another night alone in her martyrdom. It’s the only thing that makes her happy anyway.

Ignoring my comment, she turns off the TV. Come on Lena, get your coat and say goodbye to your father.

I slip the coat off the rack and kneel down to help Lena shove her little arms into the sleeves. But I didn’t get to show him my cartwheel, she says. Why are we going?

Because I have stuff to do, I say, suddenly remorseful.

What stuff do you have to do?

I have to do something spontaneous.

What does that mean?

It means…that I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.

Chapter 3

I CATCH THE LAST BUS on the corner at 6:15. It stops at the airport at 6:32, half a mile from Bald Hill, where my destiny will be forever altered.

Night is closing in, and there’s only one other passenger on the bus with me, a middle-aged woman sitting in front with one arm around a rolled up foam mat, the other around a purse. The blood has risen in her face and colored her cheeks in scattered blotches. Occasionally, she exchanges friendly remarks with the driver.

The bus shakes from side to side as it heaves itself down the narrow two-lane roads of town, lurching dramatically forward as it stops, then back as it accelerates. I watch the woman’s head sway back and forth each time the automatic transmission grudgingly shifts gears.

Between downtown and the airport, the driver slams on the breaks in the middle of a straight stretch, and I almost fall out of my seat.

Sorry, ‘bout that he says over his shoulder as he pulls the bus over.

With a push of air and a sharp squeak, the doors swing open. The driver comments to the woman in front: I haven’t picked anyone up here in almost a year. They were thinking of taking this stop out. Don’t know why they put it in in the first place. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Then, to the figure ascending the steps, Where’d you come from?

A woman steps onto the bus, her chin pointing forward as she feeds the machine two dollars. The future, she says.

The driver and the woman with the mat look at each other with exaggerated surprise—another crazy person to gossip about later.

The lady from the future glides down the aisle with an almost comical elegance, considering the setting. She’s young, in her twenties, frail and slight, with a long, slender neck, cropped, black hair, and a large, smooth forehead.

Out of all the open seats on the bus, she chooses the one next to me. She sits uncomfortably close. You’re a frumpy looking character, she says. I didn’t expect you to be this…unkempt.

What? I say.

Do you like conversation? she asks.

I’m sorry?

Do you like conversation? I mean, on a bus, does it bother you?

Uh, no, I guess not.

I would like to engage you in one.

Is that so?

She pushes out an amused breath of air. I like conversations on buses, or planes for that matter. Strangers eavesdropping, silently judging you by what you say. It excites me.

Does it?

Let us have an interesting one, shall we?

I’ll do my best. Sarcasm has always been my best defense against whackos.

I’ll start. What do you do?

I laugh. This doesn’t seem to be off to a very interesting start.

It has to start somewhere. Oh, of course, names come first; we will start with names. I am Sonny, she says, placing an open hand on her chest like she’s trying to establish grounds of communication with Tarzan. It is short for Sonora. I named myself after the desert. Hot with passion in the day, but cold and lonely at night. Romantic, is it not? The dichotomy of my being.

I hold out my hand. Jerry.

Pleased to meet you, she says, shaking my hand with vigor. Puzzling. I am not sensing any pheromones coming from you. That doesn’t seem right. Somehow you have become genetically inferior.

I didn’t know pheromones could be sensed consciously, I say, trying not to laugh.

"If you were