The Best of Edward M. Lerner

By Edward M. Lerner

One of the leading global writers of hard science fiction."
--The Innovation Show

Here are the gems! The gateway to the many worlds of Edward M. Lerner!

While you probably know Ed from his SF novels, including the InterstellarNet series and the epic Fleet of Worlds series with Larry Niven--Ed is also a prolific author of acclaimed short fiction. This collection showcases his finest and favorite shorter works.

Faced with the common question of which of his books should someone read first, he has carefully selected these stories to cover his wide range. Now he can answer, "This one!"

Alternate history. Parallel worlds. Future crime. Alien invasion. Alien castaways. Time travel. Quantum intelligence (just _don't_ call him artificial). A (sort of) haunted robot. Deco punk. In this book, you'll find these--and more--together with Ed's reminiscences about each selection and its relationship to other stories, novels, and even series that span his writing career.

These are the best, as determined by awards, award nominations, and the selective tastes of eight top editors and choosy _Analog_ readers.

Each excellent story stands alone--you won't need to have read anything prior--but you'll surely want to read more of Ed's books afterwards.

"Lerner's world-building and extrapolating are top notch."
--SFScope

"This collection demonstrates the author’s wide range within the field of science fiction. Fans of the genre are sure to find something to fit their tastes."
--Tangent

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReAnimus Press
• Release date: May 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005467845

Edward M. Lerner

Edward M. Lerner worked in high tech for thirty years, as everything from engineer to senior vice president, for much of that time writing science fiction as a hobby. Since 2004 he has written full-time, and his books run the gamut from technothrillers, like Small Miracles, to traditional SF, like his InterstellarNet series, to, with Larry Niven, the grand space epic Fleet of Worlds series of Ringworld companion novels.   Ed’s short fiction has appeared in anthologies, collections, and many of the usual science fiction magazines. He also writes the occasional nonfiction article, on topics as varied as asteroid deflection, privacy (or lack thereof) in the Internet age, and the role of communications in SF.

Book preview

Introduction

The first thing to share is this: every piece in this collection stands alone, and nothing after this brief introduction presumes that you’ve read these opening remarks. But if you’re curious how this collection came to be, or why particular stories came to be included, well, the next few pages are for you.

Among the common topics when people first meet is, So, what do you do? And the typical follow-up when people discover they’ve met an author (not to imply authors, even science-fiction authors, aren’t people) is some form of, Which of your books should I try?

This is like asking a parent, Which is your favorite child?

Okay, not exactly alike, although the gestations periods are often comparable. There’s no expectation any random new acquaintance might rush out to purchase either of my literal children. Still, I feel each of my literary offspring is unique.

My interests are eclectic, and so also my authoring. How, then, can I answer, Which book? Should I suggest a near-future, Earth-centric technothriller? A far-future, deep-space adventure? A science-fictional mystery? Something with time travel? Alien invasion? Artificial intelligence? Nanotech? I’ve written at least one novel of each of those types. Leaving me, when confronted with that dreaded question, tongue-tied.

Till today.

The stories in The Best of Edward M. Lerner pretty much run the gamut of my interests (this seems the place to mention degrees in physics and computer engineering, plus a first career spent in high tech), writing styles, and authorial moods. Are you curious how I approach any particular subgenre within SF? If I do humor? How my writing has evolved in the almost three decades I’ve been at this?

This book has you covered.

It contains some of the best from among my short stories, novelettes, and novellas.¹ Many of these tales evolved into multi-story arcs and even entire novels. What you won’t find here are excerpts from novels. Every item in this collection—however extensible it may eventually have proven itself—is self-contained. Each is followed by a few words of context. How a story came about, perhaps. What it grew from. What it grew into. Why it’s special to me.

You’re probably wondering: what determines the best, because these things don’t have official rankings. Fair enough. To select stories for this collection, I gave weight to: awards and award nominations. Editorial interest—which strives to mirror reader interest—in seeing a storyline continue. Reviews. Reader feedback. Republications in new markets. To a minor degree, my (purely objective, of course) opinion. On that personal-judgment basis I’ve included two stories, commissioned by and for small-press anthologies, of which I’m particularly proud. As much fun as such venues can be, they seldom get the reviews or award consideration afforded to stories in the major SF magazines or major-publisher anthologies.

Pieces chosen for this book were first published between 2001 and 2020, scattered across four SF magazines and the aforementioned SF anthologies. Given staff turnover at magazines and a pair of editorial dynamic duos, these selections reflect the tastes of eight editors.

Seven of my choices first appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact (hereafter, in most instances, just Analog), but these were accepted by the magazine about equally by successive editors. Also worth a mention: Analog invites its readers annually to rank their favorite stories and science articles, and six of the seven Analog pieces I’ve included in this collection were finalists in their respective annual polls. (The exception was a work of flash fiction, arbitrarily defined as 1000 words or fewer, a story category inexplicably ineligible for the annual poll.)

Having done the math, you may also be wondering about the absence from this collection of anything from my first decade as an author. As with most skills, writing improves with practice—but that’s only a small part of the, ahem, story. Most of that initial decade overlapped with a demanding day job. The longest chunk of that period, seven years working on NASA endeavors while employed by Hughes Aircraft, offered tons of grist for the authorial mill—and precious little opportunity to turn the authorial crank. The Nineties did see publication of my first novel (Probe), two short stories, and... that’s it. (Being fair to myself, in that era I also managed to start a few other projects, most notably what became my second novel. Moonstruck didn’t achieve a complete first draft, however, till 2001.) Given my I don’t tease readers with excerpts philosophy, there’s good reason why the earliest story from this collection is from 2001.

So: which book do I recommend to anyone expressing curiosity about my writing? As of now, this book.

                —Edward M. Lerner

                   April, 2022

Time Out

I’m coughing, choking. Every breath sears my throat and rasps like sandpaper at my lungs. Fire licks hungrily at walls, furniture, equipment. Smoke is everywhere: thick, black, and toxic. The flames hiss, crackle, and roar.

But nothing masks the screams.

I fear I’ve been reliving it aloud, because the cop seated across the table glances at the wall with the one-way glass. Following his eyes, I catch my own reflection. That slump-shouldered, expressionless figure seems at least twice my thirty years.

The cop’s look asks, Do we let him keep talking or read him his rights?

My rights. I try to care. Only the flames and smoke—and the screaming—are real to me.

Maybe I overlooked some signal. Maybe the cop made up his own mind. He begins reciting, You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can...

No matter my rights, I must remain silent. I dare not let anyone even suspect, or it will all have been for naught.

The horror once more washes over me, untouched by conviction I could not have done anything else. Again memories obliterate the present.

I’m in the warehouse. I feel the scorching heat, and I hear the screams, and I smell—

Convulsively, I throw up.

CHAPTER 1

The tale began and ended—if it has ended—with Jonas.

I would have liked to see myself as Watson to Jonas’s Holmes: a colleague, though not an equal. I knew better. I was more clueless even than Watson.

Better to call me Ishmael to Jonas’s Ahab, Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, Igor to his Victor Frankenstein. There were no happy endings to those pairings.

So, Jonas....

~~~

Mornings spent in the Home Depot parking lot had cured my pallor. Flab, alas, did not yield so easily. The owlish glasses probably didn’t recommend me, either. Whatever the reason, the weathered-looking men in their battered, mud-spattered trucks had yet to acknowledge me, much less to offer me work.

A Mutt and Jeff pair, grinning, had ridden off on the flatbed of a pickup, twenty or so minutes earlier. Likely they were the last who’d get work today. The main thing that I’d learned about day labor was that construction jobs began early. That, and that soon the store manager would tell us rejects and laggards to shove off, before the parking area and the store got busy. The understanding was we’d be elsewhere by ten.

I’d barely set off for home, such as it was, the June day already warm and humid, when the Hyundai station wagon pulled up. Dirt lay as thick on it as on any truck that had come trawling for cheap laborers, but still it didn’t fit. The back seat was folded down, and the cargo deck was filled with—I had no idea what. Like a tornado had hit a Radio Shack, and deposited the debris there. The driver’s shirt, seen through the grimy windshield, might have been white. The faint music sounded orchestral and baroque.

A window slid down. (The music swelled; Vivaldi, I decided.) This was where the would-be employer would shout out for carpenters, or painters, or just strong backs.

This guy was at a loss what to ask, but managed to come up with, Who speaks English? He himself had a trace of an accent. Slavic, I thought.

Most everyone answered yes (or sí, or twice da). Three of us stepped up to the Hyundai.

The driver had a square face, clean-shaven, with epic frown lines. His gray hair was as snarled and unruly as a Brillo pad. Sixty-ish, I guessed. His eyes, small and close-set, darted about.

Beneath the edginess, I sensed something else. Determination. As for the hiring of day labor, he didn’t know what he was doing.

That was okay. I didn’t know what I was doing, either.

I said, A priest, a minister, and the Dalai Lama walk into a bar. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

The man in the station wagon smiled uncertainly, displaying large, uneven teeth. He said, I’ll take that as a yes.

How can I help you? I asked.

Odd jobs in my workshop. Cleaning. Furniture moving. Sort and inventory a bunch of stuff. Run errands. Just so you know, I have some high-voltage equipment. It’s all labeled. You’ll need to stay away from it.

I can do odd jobs, I assured him, and not electrocute myself, either. I’m Peter Bitner, by the way.

Jonas, he answered reflexively. Have any technical aptitude? Electronics, computers, ham radio, that kind of thing?

None whatsoever, I told him.

He nodded. Ignorance, apparently, was a good thing.

The men who had stepped forward with me sidled back. Too many had been stiffed at the end of a day’s work. When, in the charitable expression, you’re an undocumented worker, as many here were, or working off-book for cash, as did everyone here, to whom would you complain? People learned to avoid anyone who felt off.

Jonas felt off to me, too. So what? I was divorced, disgraced, and destitute. Disowned by my parents and deserted by my so-called friends. (Except, when I was honest with myself, the few who had tried to stay in touch. Them I was too ashamed to see.) Days away from homelessness. Rejecting a job—if Jonas offered me one—was a bigger risk than getting cheated.

I asked, What do you say?

We haggled a bit and came to terms. I got in the car beside Jonas.

So, Jonas finally said, a priest, a minister, and the Dalai Lama.

Sorry about that. I was improvising. Here’s a joke I do know. What do you call a thousand lawyers, buried up to their necks, at the bottom of the ocean?

I don’t know. What?

A good start, I told him.

From his bitter laugh, I guessed that Jonas, too, had had a run-in with lawyers.

~~~

We rode in silence, apart from tinkly harpsichord music, to a seedy, light-industrial neighborhood. Jonas parked outside a wooden warehouse, its paint cracked and peeling, the name of a defunct moving-and-storage company faded almost to illegibility. I began my first chore: toting in the boxes and bags that filled the station wagon. Wherever Jonas shopped, it wasn’t the mall. As for his so-called workshop, it dwarfed my house.

The four-bedroom colonial I had once owned, not the dingy, little more than a closet that I rented in a transient hotel.

Grime coated the warehouse floor, and slogging along we added to the already innumerable shoeprints. Oscillating fans stirred the dust. More dust danced and sparkled in the sunbeams slicing down from windows beneath the eaves.

The ceiling was at least twenty feet over my head. Along one edge of the cavernous space, above a glass-walled row of mostly vacant offices, was a partial second story accessible from one end by a cargo elevator and from the other end by a narrow flight of well-worn wooden stairs. Paint lay so thickly on the treads as to almost mask the gaps between planks. Beneath the stairway, strata upon strata of paper sheets, flapping to the back-and-forth cycling of the fans, covered a long corkboard.

Jonas had not been kidding about high-voltage stuff. Opposite the offices, within a padlocked, chain-link enclosure, was what looked like a Dominion Power substation. Something inside the fence put out a tooth-rattling bass hum. Fat insulated cables snaking along the concrete floor supplied power from within the cage to—I had no idea what.

Gray cabinets, many with their doors hanging open, lined the remaining two walls. In a corner, amid heaps of scavenged electronics, were two freestanding metal strongboxes each the size of a file drawer. I couldn’t imagine what Jonas imagined anyone might want to steal from here.

Computers, instruments, and tools covered the tops and lower shelves of a dozen wooden workbenches; more gear overflowed into the aisles aboard wheeled carts. Colored wire, as abundant as tinsel on a Christmas tree, hung everywhere.

Needles leapt and twitched, digital readouts blinked, and weird shapes morphed and spun on large displays. Of the instruments near enough to read, about half showed the current time. I thought nothing of it: half the gadgets in my former home doubled as clocks, too.

This was some workshop.

So are you a mad scientist? I asked him.

Not yet. Just peevish.

Taking the hint, I finished unloading the station wagon without asking anything more personal than, Where do you want this? (I staggered under a couple of the boxes, but didn’t ask for help. If my new boss hadn’t noticed that I was a runt, I saw no reason to bring it to his attention.) When I encountered a chicken-wire pen with four guinea pigs, I told myself these were pets, not, well, guinea pigs.

Chore two, long overdue, was mopping. Wash water turned black within minutes; I rolled my bucket to and from the single utility sink as much as I swabbed. I hadn’t finished half the floor—what showed of it—when Jonas was ready to drop me off. Apart from muttering as he tinkered, his words incomprehensible when they weren’t inaudible, he had had nothing to say about what he did.

The good news was, he paid everything to which we had agreed and tossed in a couple extra bucks for my dinner. The better news was, he wanted me back the next day.

~~~

As I scraped and scrubbed the biology experiment that had once been a refrigerator, Jonas stopped mumbling to himself long enough to comment, You do good work. He retreated into a cluster of bench equipment faster than I, in my surprise, could summon a thank-you.

It was our third day together, and I still had no idea what he did, or why his workshop brimmed with clocks and computers, or why he had enough smoke detectors, their boxes sealed, to fill a cabinet. Though he muttered as he worked, I wasn’t often close enough to make it out. When I could hear, I still made no sense of it. I’d never heard of entropy, tachyons, isotope separation, or recombinant DNA.

When he took a break from his work it was to surf the web; he still muttered, only louder. From time to time he’d print off an item, highlight or underline or circle all over it, and pin it with the collection already on the corkboard. The printouts, at least, I sometimes understood: ways in which the world was going to hell.

If Jonas wasn’t a mad scientist, he had advanced beyond peeved.

The next day, as I shuttled old gadgets from his scrap heap to shelves I’d improvised from concrete blocks and boards, Jonas looked my way to ask, What did you do before?

I didn’t care to share, but neither could I afford, however metaphorically, to bite the hand that fed me. And Jonas was decent enough, in his mad-scientist way. That morning he’d sent me with a twenty to buy pizza for our lunch. When I offered him his change, he’d waved it off.

Before was nonspecific enough to leave some wiggle room without, quite, lying.

I was in banking, I told him. That answer satisfied most people. Between the housing bubble going pop and the Great Recession, banks had done plenty of downsizing.

Where you worked as? Jonas asked.

A clerical, I equivocated.

Because mortgage workers didn’t get much sympathy. Notaries who certified robo-signed eviction notices got none.

Never mind that I either approved everything as I was told or got fired. Never mind that the homeowners involved were invariably months behind in their payments. Never mind that the lawyer who managed the delinquent-accounts department, who demanded we dispose of thousands of bad loans every month, got off with a tsk and a fat severance package.

Britney had been shocked—shocked!—to find out what her trusted assistant had done.

There wasn’t as much as a tweet to show what she had ordered me to do. She’d always given orders verbally.

Clerical, Jonas repeated. I can see that. You’re organized. Very systematic.

Doubtless why I’d made such a good prison librarian. Notary fraud is a felony.

Thank you, I said, wishing he’d drop the subject.

And then Jonas surprised me. He said, I don’t keep records very well.

Big surprise.

He seemed on the verge of adding something, and then thought better of it. When you’ve finished clearing that pile of old gear, we’ll call it a day. Tomorrow, you can organize the storerooms upstairs.

~~~

On the eighth day, Jonas reached a decision.

"Look, Peter, I need a regular assistant. You can see as much. You’re hardworking and surely capable of more than I’ve asked of you so far.

The thing is, my funds are limited. Suppose we stop the day-at-a-time arrangement and I set you up rent-free in a room upstairs. Same pay, still off the books, and I’ll furnish all your meals.

Saving me the daily rent I’d been paying on the rathole where I was living, not to mention that any of the second-story rooms I’d emptied out would be larger. Jonas, I’d found, already lived in a room upstairs. I was tempted. But—

I’ll need to know a few things before making this permanent, I said. Respectfully, how do you pay for this? And for how long could he afford to keep paying? It wasn’t like I’d seen a customer, or that we were in a high-rent district. These might be hard times for mad scientists, too.

And I’d learned a hard lesson on the limits to trust.

I’m not rich, Jonas admitted. I’m not without resources, either. The lease here is prepaid for another fourteen months by an NSF grant I used to have. Most of this equipment is castoffs, from my colleagues at the university. For day to day expenses, I have some savings.

You’re affiliated with the university? Which one?

Smithson-Briarwood, he said, not meeting my eye. To be more precise, my former colleagues.

Expired grant. Former colleagues. Old enough, no doubt, for tenure, and yet....

Jonas sighed. "You’re right to be skeptical. My research is... unorthodox. I admit it. But I’m close, Peter. I’m close. And when I succeed—he gestured grandly at the clutter all around—everything will become so much better."

"What is your research?" I asked. It was politer than either question I wanted to ask: How much in savings? What happened to your grant?

It’s quite abstruse physics. Look, I can promise you this. If my savings run out, you can continue living here rent-free while the lease lasts.

And you’ll put that in writing?

He nodded.

Somehow, I had to ask. Abstruse physics. How will that make everything better?

His face reddened, and I feared that I’d gone too far.

I was just curious, I backpedaled. It doesn’t matter. As the silence stretched, I sweated.

My peers didn’t understand. I sensed Jonas answered himself, not me. "So much rides on this, and yet they mocked my theories as foolish. Mocked me. Conspired to usurp my grant."

So I think we have an agreement, I told him.

No one’s books are perfect, he droned on to himself. "Of course they found an irregularity or two. The excuse they were searching for to reclaim my funding."

Auditors? I guessed.

His eyes snapped back into focus and he noticed me again. Yes, the damn auditors. I appealed their ruling, for all the good it did me. When they denied my appeal I tried taking them to court, only to be told the matter was between me and the NSF.

I recalled how bitterly Jonas had laughed that first day at my lawyer joke. It seemed we had more in common that I would have guessed.

I told my boss, I’ll move in tomorrow.

CHAPTER 2

My first few days living in the warehouse, I spoke more to the guinea pigs than with Jonas. I got to know the manager at the local bodega and the counter staff at the nearby eateries from which I picked up our takeout. I started flirting with the cute blond cashier, she of the most striking green eyes, at the 7-Eleven.

Whereas Jonas, after I moved in, hardly ever left the building.

Perhaps that was why, at long last, Jonas ceased his muttering and emerged from among his clustered workbenches to ask, Do you ever wonder?

Amid the monotony of my duties, I did little but wonder: about the shambles my life had become. About the choices I’d made, and that Amy, my ex, had made. About what Amy was doing now, and with whom. About the dreary and lonesome existence stretching ahead of me. I wondered if my scuzzball former boss was lolling on a beach, sipping mai tais.

None of which I was about to share.

Sure, I told Jonas.

Maybe the world doesn’t need to be this messed up.

If the world would leave me alone, I would gladly return the favor. I said, Maybe some things are meant to be.

Fate? Jonas looked disappointed. God’s will? Karma? Here I thought you were an educated man.

Did I believe in fate? Or did I only wish I did? How liberating it would be to blame forces bigger than myself for my failings. Because then they wouldn’t be my failings, would they?

None of which I was about to share.

Not all education is the same, I said. You scientists learn to ask why things work. Engineers learn to ask how things work. Accountants learn to ask how much things cost.

And English majors? What do you learn?

To ask, ‘Do you want fries with that?’

Jonas chuckled, but I hadn’t diverted him. He tried again. "But maybe the world doesn’t need to be this messed up."

Forget fate, I thought. Just look at human nature. Evenings, if I took the time to surf the news, now that I again had access to the net, the world seemed pretty determined to go to hell.

What was on Jonas’s mind today? Economies in freefall? Climate change? Nuclear proliferation? Terrorism? Narco-states? On his wall of woes, all had a prominent place.

What do you mean? I asked.

Jonas followed my glance to his corkboard. "Suppose someone knew what was coming. Would we listen?"

Had I believed anyone ever listened, I would have been a whistleblower instead of a patsy. Or maybe my character flaw was the lack of guts, not a lack of belief. Either way, I had held my tongue and held onto my paycheck for a few more months, while Britney’s orders outvoted my conscience.

Still, talking about most anything would beat the customary grim silence and nonstop introspection.

The problem is, no one knows. I gestured, vaguely, toward his corkboard. The world is full of so-called experts who claim to know best, and who don’t agree on the time of day.

A sad smile flickered over Jonas’s face. No, they don’t. When I didn’t comment, he turned back toward the workbenches and his whatever-it-was.

Suddenly I was loath to let our first real, however vapid, conversation end. To Jonas, but really talking to myself, I said, We don’t need more experts. We need a do-over.

"Exactly, he said. Suppose you could warn the world about Hitler in 1938. Not that he was an evil, ambitious man, or that he meant to start a terrible war—but that he had started a war. That millions died. That the whole political order of Europe was shattered, and that as a result, the communists occupied half the continent to enslave millions more. Would you?"

I’d been giving fresh food and water to the guinea pigs when all this started. Much to Jonas’s amusement, I had given them names. I finished, latched the cage door, and stood.

That’s tricky, I said. Stop Hitler and what else do you alter? Millions of lives saved, sure, but billions of lives changed.

Not so tricky, Jonas said, glowering. Not for everyone. If you came from Poland, it would be easy. Between the Nazis and the Russians, one out of six Poles died during World War II. For decades after, the communists oppressed and impoverished those who had survived.

Anger brought out the accent I had almost ceased to notice. From the short letter that passed for a contract between us, entitling me to live upstairs for the next fourteen months, I had learned Jonas’s full name. His family name was Gorski. I wondered when, and under what circumstances, he had moved to this country.

Or I could go back to my youth, I said, changing the subject without too overtly changing the subject. If Jonas had the locks changed while I was out running an errand, what could I do? Hire a lawyer? I’d teach my younger self everything I’ve learned about women. It wouldn’t take long.

I laughed at myself. After a second Jonas joined in.

But I kept picturing my younger self meeting the near-indigent I had become. I couldn’t imagine that overconfident, snot-nosed teen listening. Or me of a year—and a lifetime—earlier, either.

Did Jonas wish he could tell his earlier self to take better care of his grant’s finances? Or to choose a research topic more respectable than whatever it was he did do? Or to seek friends beyond his circle of fickle colleagues?

As Jonas went back to his enigmatic task, I couldn’t help feeling there was something more that he had wanted to discuss.

~~~

For all its awkwardness, the stop-Hitler-early conversation had knocked down the wall between us. That afternoon as we worked, we talked baseball. That evening, in the former break room become our improvised kitchen, we discussed music over pizza and beer. But when Jonas began frothing about a financial crisis, this latest one, apparently, embroiling Europe, I nodded along and concentrated on my beer. Whatever had gone wrong with Greece’s debt, no one could fault me.

The next day, as I cleared breakfast dishes from the workbench that served as our dinette table, Jonas talked about entropy. Whatever that was. Something to do with his abstruse physics, I guessed. He’d mumbled to himself about entropy often enough.

This once he noticed my blank expression. Disorder, if you will.

"If I will what?"

Jonas shook his head, smiling. Think of entropy as measuring the homogeneity of a system.

That doesn’t help, I said.

A coffee mug sat on a workbench beside him. He pointed. There’s milk in my coffee. It’s well mixed, making the color within the mug uniform.

Uh-huh.

He persisted. The coffee is hot. At a molecular level the coffee and milk are rushing about. Despite that random motion, you never see milk gathering itself and the rest of the cup’s contents turning black. Entropy is why not.

I frowned, trying to puzzle that out. It’s some kind of force that operates on milk?

Only metaphorically, Jonas said. The force of numbers. There are countless ways for the milk and coffee to arrange themselves in which the fluids remain blended. The arrangements in which milk and coffee have separated are vastly fewer.

"But it could happen," I challenged.

It could. He stroked his chin pensively. Deciding whether to go on or cut his losses? You’re familiar with the physicist Murray Gell-Mann?

I’d heard of Einstein and Newton and an Italian. It took me a moment to retrieve that name, Galileo. I had my doubts I knew any other physicists. I don’t think so.

No matter. Perhaps not, but Jonas looked thwarted. Gell-Mann once said, ‘That which is not forbidden is mandatory.’

"So we should be seeing milk separate?"

Yes, but not in our lifetimes, Jonas said. Gell-Mann’s domain was particle physics. I don’t know that he ever thought about milk dispersing. The thing is....

Yes?

"The laws of physics, all of them, work the same forward and back."

Forward and backward, I repeated.

In time, he added. Suppose a car maintains a constant velocity due north at sixty miles per hour, and I know where that car is at this moment. By elementary physics I can as easily tell you where the vehicle was ten minutes ago as where it will be ten minutes from now.

My mug was empty. Pouring a refill, I wondered about Jonas’s day-earlier wondering. I took a great intuitive leap. You’re interested in time travel.

I am.

So that someone could stop Hitler.

Merely as an example.

I’d been right from the first. I worked for a mad scientist. Outside of a Terminator movie, who talked about time machines?

But dusting in Jonas’s room, I’d seen framed doctoral degrees in physics and electrical engineering from Harvard and MIT. On the wooden crate that served him as an end table, a beer stein emblazoned with a Smithson-Briarwood crest congratulated him on making associate professor. It wasn’t hard to believe he had once won an NSF grant.

So: scientist, crackpot, or both? My thoughts spun around and around, like the wheels in a slot machine.

There was no jackpot.

As I hid behind my coffee mug, Jonas stood. I have a list of groceries for you to pick up. After that, and taking care of the guinea pigs, I’ll have you start with—

What does time travel have to do with coffee and milk? I blurted out. I mean entropy?

Blinking at the interruption, Jonas still managed to look pleased. He must miss discussing science with colleagues. As sorry a substitute as I must be, I had shown interest.

He said, What isn’t forbidden is mandatory. Time travel, as far as anyone can tell, is not forbidden.

Even I could complete the syllogism: Ergo, time travel is mandatory. But I could not bring myself to voice the obvious implication.

Jonas spoke for me. So where are the time travelers?

~~~

Where are the time travelers?

I take my coffee black, but I couldn’t not reach for the milk pitcher. I kept pouring, my coffee turning paler and paler. I didn’t stop till liquid lapped at the brim.

The future is a long time, I said, If ever time travel is invented, wouldn’t someone come back to our time?

You would think, Jonas said, watching me intently.

In my confusion, I managed to bump the table. Coffee sloshed, ran off the bench top, and splattered my shoes. I hardly noticed.

The more time goes by, the more thoroughly milk and black coffee must mix. As the future inevitably stretched out after the inevitable invention of time travel, must not the pre-discovery and post-discovery eras eventually mix, too?

So where were the time travelers?

Perhaps they lived among us in secrecy. Or maybe recorded history, all of it, was somehow a vanishingly improbable era, our coffee and their milk staying separate despite the odds. Or....

Suppose the metaphorical coffee of our era remained black because there was no metaphorical milk of time travelers from the future. Suppose the future—at least for humanity—came to an end before the invention of time travel.

Jonas’s sneering at fate notwithstanding, the litany of the world’s ills on his corkboard assumed a sickening new inevitability.

I hope you’re a raving loon, I said.

I hope so, too, Jonas answered.

CHAPTER 3

Eventually I stopped counting my days in the warehouse. I had a job, however menial. Instead, as Jonas’s mood grew ever darker, I wondered how many days’ work remained.

Because whatever he attempted to build here, it wasn’t working for him.

He cursed out his equipment, slammed doors, growled at me, punted innocent wastebaskets. Twice he flung things against a wall. Whatever an oscilloscope was, it shattered impressively.

It was a dreary Thursday, the thunder all but constant, rain in sheets cascading down the few, high windows. Inside the warehouse, the atmosphere was grimmer. With gauges and meters I could not begin to name, Jonas checked and double-checked his latest setup. Muttering became snarling—and swearing, when I asked what I should work on next. I made myself scarce, but slams and thumps pursued me.

From deep in one of our electronics scrap heaps I recovered an old boom box. Radio reception sucked, staticky whether from Jonas’s equipment or from the storm, but a few FM signals were tolerable. I changed stations the moment any news came on. Why add to Jonas’s frustrations?

I was surveying the refrigerator when Jonas appeared. He looked... beaten.

What do you feel like for lunch, I asked.

He didn’t respond.

Tell you what, I said. I’ll go out and leave you alone. Living and eating for free at the warehouse, I’d retained most of my meager earnings. I could afford a Big Mac. Fries, even. Can I bring back something for you?

Shoulders slumped, he said, Anything not forbidden is mandatory.

"Outside Hollywood, maybe it is forbidden," I said.

You’re not alone in thinking that. Jonas popped the cap off a beer bottle and took a long swig. My backstabbing, unimaginative ‘peers’ insist cause must always precede effect. I don’t believe that.

He refused to believe, his posture told me. Because if it were true, he’d wasted... years?

Shall I leave the music on? I asked, headed for the kitchen door.

What?

Music. You know, the radio. I gestured at the boom box on the counter. I got this clunker out of the scrap heap. Not that the reception here is anything to write home—

Something flashed in his eyes, stopping me. Not depression, or disappointment, or anger. Something more thoughtful.

Something—could it be?—hopeful.

A broad grin lit Jonas’s face. Peter, he said, you’re a genius.

~~~

I returned that afternoon from the bodega to encounter Jonas in safety goggles, drilling into a strongbox. The strongbox door hung open, so I had no idea why. The squeal of the drill was piercing, and I didn’t try to ask.

The strongbox steel was tough, or the bit wasn’t, or both. Jonas snapped three bits and burnt out two drill motors before punching through. Setting down the third drill, he attacked the hole’s rough edge with a sturdy rasp.

By then, my sleeves rolled up, I’d begun mucking out the guinea-pig cage. My chore might have gone faster, too, if I weren’t still fixated on that recent outré breakfast conversation. Surely Jonas had been pulling my leg!

But what if he wasn’t? The lab was full of clocks and I couldn’t stop staring at them. Could any of Jonas’s gadgets have traveled through time?

No, I guessed. The clock displays all read out within seconds of one another.

Give me a hand, Jonas called. He’d unlocked the gate of the chain-link cage.

What’s with the strongbox? I asked as we rolled out a table-sized wooden reel of electrical cable.

You’ll see.

The cable unspooling behind us was massive. To feed power to a freaking time machine? If he wasn’t toying with me.

Anything else I can help with? I asked.

Can you run a camcorder?

I think so.

Be certain, Jonas said. He got a camcorder from a cabinet and handed it to me. This is important.

I roamed about the warehouse, shooting and playing back short movies—except that nothing in them moved. I tried filming the guinea pigs, but they didn’t stir till I dropped cucumber slices into their cage. I don’t know why, but they loved cucumber. By the time I’d mastered the camcorder controls, Jonas had stowed some of his gear at the bottom of the strongbox, beneath its single shelf. An end of the thick cable we’d rolled over now ran through the hole he had so painstakingly drilled.

Ready? he asked.

Ready. For what, exactly? I wanted to ask.

I raised the camera to my eye, pushed rec, and Jonas began to speak.

~~~

You see here an apparatus of my own design. In a few minutes, I will lock it inside this strongbox. Walk with me—guidance to the cameraman, I decided, and I followed Jonas around the workbench—and you’ll find but a single small opening in the box.

I zoomed where he had pointed, to where he had puttied the hole. But the filler wasn’t putty, but rather a quick-setting glue of some kind. When he prodded the material with the tip of a heavy rasp, it went thunk. As you can see, I’ve even sealed the crack around the power cord.

Jonas spoke as a scientist—to posterity, I supposed, or to the colleagues who had doubted him—not for the likes of me. I soon lost the thread. I dutifully captured it all, zooming in when directed on his massive wristwatch. It, like the digital clock on the workbench beside the strongbox, showed 2:02 p.m. Then I shot the timepieces side by side: the steady sweep of the seconds hand on the one, the flickering digits on the other.

He slipped off the wristwatch and set it on the strongbox shelf. Beneath the shelf, the apparatus he’d built had a keypad and two displays. With a few keystrokes he set both. One display held steady at ten minutes; the second, on which he had entered sixty seconds, began to count down when he tapped enter.

Jonas shut the strongbox door and spun the dial of the combination lock. He said, Now we wait, until 2:14 by this clock. You’ll observe that the strongbox door remains closed the entire time.

That was more guidance for me. I held the camera steady on the strongbox and clock.

He fidgeted as the minutes crept by. At 2:13, he said, This is interminable, isn’t it?

The clock on the workbench rolled over to 2:14. With a flourish, Jonas unlocked the strongbox, swung open the door, and raised his watch to the camcorder.

The wristwatch, still sweeping out the seconds, read 2:04.

~~~

That night we had champagne. Cheap champagne in mismatched water tumblers, but still.

Jonas raised his glass. A toast: to understanding, at long last. I couldn’t have done it without you.

We clinked glassware. Understanding what?

Where the time travelers are.

And I had contributed? I’m not following. Where are they?

Still in the future, Jonas said. He patted the boom box I had salvaged. You can’t recover a radio signal without a radio receiver. Pregnant pause. It turns out you can’t move anything through time without a proper receiver, either.

Anything such as a wristwatch. I was still struggling to wrap my brain around that feat. And?

He finished his champagne, poured a generous refill, and topped off my glass. And so there can’t be time travel—not of a person, not of a scrap of paper—without a compatible device to receive the traveler.

So till someone builds a receiver....

As I’ve done.

Then should we expect scraps of paper from the future? Or did he mean to build a much larger unit? A person-sized unit? I shivered.

One step at a time, Peter, he said. We wouldn’t want to rush into any Grandfather Paradoxes, now would we?

Which is?

A riddle of cause and effect. Imagine I travel back in time and prevent my grandparents from meeting.

If his grandparents never meet, then his parents... aren’t. Therefore he... isn’t. But if he never existed, he can hardly travel back. Then his grandparents do meet. Then...?

Jonas laughed. You look suitably perplexed. My point is, one shouldn’t use this technology lightly.

"How should time travel be used?"

Carefully, Jonas said, and for very serious matters.

CHAPTER 4

In the days that followed his breakthrough Jonas was manic. He puttered with his apparatus, fine-tuning it, I gathered, and tidying up what he’d built. Passing through his lab area on my chores, I often found him hunched over a tabletop, furiously scribbling in a bound, canvas-covered notebook.

Then, late one morning, the beeping started.

At first I ignored it. The tones sounded like our microwave oven. Hay fever had my ears clogged, and I had little sense of direction for any noise’s origin. But as every few minutes the beeping recurred, the microwave seemed an improbable source. How many cups of tea could Jonas drink?

Then a beep triplet came just as I passed Jonas’s workspace. I saw him look up from his lab book, set down his pen, and open the strongbox door. He took a wooden ruler from the box’s shelf, compared that ruler to a ruler on his bench, and nodded with satisfaction.

They look the same to me, I volunteered.

As they should, Jonas said. But it’s best to confirm these things.

The beeps are from a timer?

He shook his head. I modified my rig to beep when it receives something.

Pairs of ordinary items—mugs, tape measures, pens—surrounded him. I gather you’ve been sending through lots of stuff, I said. Did everything emerge okay?

The pen still writes and the ruler remains a foot long.

And you’re sure the things in the box didn’t just sit there the entire while.

Of course I am, he snapped. The tripping of a sensor circuit triggers the alert tones. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.

Sorry. The handyman’s opinion wasn’t always welcome. It’s after twelve. I thought I’d go out and grab some lunch. What sounds good to you?

Jonas sat, his head cocked, his lips pressed thin, not responding. Ah, he finally said. He stepped off his stool and trundled over an industrial platform scale. Weigh yourself. Tell me if this works.

With shoes on and fully clothed, I registered scarcely one forty. It works.

Now help me with the strongbox.

We lowered the strongbox to the scale platform. The safe out-weighted me by ten pounds! Jonas had gotten it onto the workbench unaided.

Now watch the scale, he said.

If you want to convince me, wouldn’t a peephole be easier?

The field projection must be invariant, lest temporal displacements fluctuate within the transported object. To maintain that uniformity, the integrity of the conductive enclosure is essential.

Huh?

It works better with metal all around, he translated. Just watch.

He opened the strongbox and set a brass cylinder on the shelf. A standard calibrated weight. One kilogram. Correct?

The scale’s digital readout had bumped up a bit more than two pounds. Agreed, I said.

Crouched to reach into the strongbox Jonas tapped away on the controls. He stood and closed the door. I’m sending that weight ahead five minutes. Keep an eye on the scale.

Seconds later the readout dropped by two pounds. Five minutes after, simultaneous with the final beep of a new triplet, the two extra pounds again registered.

~~~

A little after one-thirty I returned from Taco Bell with a bag of burritos. Jonas, his back to me, was again hunched over a workbench. Two boxed smoke detectors sat in front of him.

As though all his high-voltage stuff weren’t enough to make the old warehouse a fire hazard, there were the stacks of wooden pallets, the kerosene space heaters we’d surely need a few months hence, and cabinets filled with aerosol cans. It nonetheless remained a mystery to me—one among many—why Jonas owned so many home smoke detectors. The open rafters overhead showed plenty of sprinkler heads with their own smoke detectors.

I have my doubts two more smoke detectors will make a big difference, I said.

He jumped. I didn’t hear you come in.

Are you okay?

A little before one o’clock, the transceiver beeped. The thing is, I had nothing due to arrive. And I’ve never sent smoke detectors.

Then how...? Oh. Future you sent them.

So it seems. Only I, he, sent just one of these detectors. The second unit I retrieved from the supply cabinet.

I’d known Jonas happy and sad, manic and dejected. I’d never seen him awed.

You weren’t ready to try moving something backward, I guessed. I had hoped. Grandfather paradoxes scared me.

Not hardly. Jonas laughed humorlessly. But future me was. Is.

How far into the future? Do you know?

I will, Jonas said. Because I, he, intends that I know. A smoke detector with the identical serial number was sitting in my cabinet.

~~~

Who knew that the guts of a smoke detector were radioactive?

Jonas did; that’s why he owned so many. A bit of radioactive material ionized air within the detector’s case, the ionized molecules completing an electrical circuit. Let soot particles intrude, and the level of ionization dropped. The resulting dip in the circuit’s current was what the detector actually detected.

Unlike most things radioactive, no one knew or cared how many smoke detectors someone bought. And why would they care? Even out of its case, a few centimeters of air sufficed to block the radioactive pellet’s feeble emissions.

With a sniff at my ignorance, Jonas harvested the radioactive material from both detectors. His instruments showed both still radiating, but one not quite as much as the other. One detector’s pellet had decayed.

When Jonas did the math, that pellet came from five years in the future.

~~~

We dined out that evening, Jonas splurging on a place with waiters and white damask tablecloths. As the maitre d’ led the way to a booth, I detoured to the men’s room. I rejoined Jonas to find he’d ordered a bottle of wine. We were celebrating, he told me; as he all but swilled a glassful, the trembling of his hand said something more.

That he, too, was conflicted made me feel just a tad better.

It was a Wednesday and not yet