The Time for Love: Now!

By L. A. Zoe

In 2187, Marile Historian-1 just wants her Ph.D. She plans to earn her degree by traveling back in time to study Milton Carver, an Afro-American and the greatest physicist of all time.

The History Department's professors worry she inadvertently changes the past.

The department's head already knows she and Carver share a love that could instead change the future.

2187 a paradise? Thanks to the physics discoveries of Milton Carver in the early 21st century, energy costs nothing. Historians travel back in the past to study historical events.

No war, no hunger, no hardships.

Nobody suffers from relationship problems. The government assigns everybody a sex partner, and, via virtual reality, guarantees everybody four orgasms per session.

Marile likes her assigned sexual partner, and the guaranteed four orgasms she enjoys with him, but feels something missing from her life.

She wonders what happens in the past when men and women must find pleasure with each other as they wanted -- when they fall in love.

How could that happen?

Could she dare to fall in love with a man -- on her own. Just she and he?

Marile decides to write her Ph.D. thesis on how the physicist, Milton Carver, whose discoveries so changed the world, accomplished this feat despite suffering from poverty, racism, and academic prejudices against his theories.

Humanity survived the "Transition Period," a time of intense social change, political anarchy, terrorism, ecological disaster, destructive fanaticism, wars, and revolutions.

The Lawyers restored order, and imposed Risk Management on the entire Earth.

No freedom. No excitement. No love.

The Head of the History Department approves Marile's project, so Marile visits Carver in 1957, 1968, 1986, and 2002.

Marile does not expect to fall in love with Milton Carver. Or that he could fall in love with her. Or that she would further break 22nd century law by engaging in not only time travel interracial romance, but physical passion with Carver.

Even beginning an unauthorized and therefore illegal pregnancy within her womb.

Or that their romance could wind up not only helping Carver make his revolutionary discoveries, but also shake the foundations of the Lawyers who control her 2187 world.

In 2187, scientists, doctors, and others -- a small minority of people -- practice useful professions that require a real person.

Robots perform all the unskilled work.

The many millions of "social utility-challenged" persons lie in single pods in Warehouses, living through syntho story dreams.

Marile and Milton's love . . . their passion . . . their romance . . . reaches across the centuries. It defies both modern prejudices against interracial romance, a black man and white woman loving each other, and the 22nd century's ban on all love and romantic relationships. It triumphs despite Milton's intellectual inhibitions and Marile's fear of punishment.

Marile and Milton's love creates a secret ally to help Marile escape the 2187 Enforcers determined to send her to the Discorporation Center.

In this futuristic, science fiction time travel romance novel, the woman going back in time to find true love begins in our future, and thinks of our period as the past.

Download and try out The Time for Love: Now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Love Conquers All Press
• Release date: Sep 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516392094

Book preview

Prologue

Hayley Hall, University of Kiowa, Cromwell North Campus

Saturday evening, May 25, 20XX

The bright Day-Glo green nylon banners read:

CONGRATULATIONS!

HAPPY RETIREMENT, MILTON!

THANK YOU!

The blaring angry words jumped out at Milton Carver as the most muscular of his grad students, accompanied by a nurse’s aide, pushed his wheelchair through the center aisle leading to the front table.

The crowd stood and clapped. Like Brownian motion, the loud noise ebbed and flowed through Carver’s ears.

Smiling faces appeared in front of him like pop-up, jack-in-the-box, ghosts in a haunted house, monsters in cheap movies.

Women leaned down and kissed his cheek. He couldn’t feel them, but knew they avoided the spit dripping out of the right corner of his mouth.

Onto the towel draped over his right shoulder, protecting the fancy black suit the attendants worked his body into. It fit too loose of course. He had it tailored to his pre-stroke physique.

He knew these people. All of them. But their names remained behind a stone fortress, locked in an underground database stored on a part of his brain’s hard drive he could no longer access.

Not that his statue-stiff lips and tongue could speak their names even if he remembered them.

For a second he thought of his mother and father. They could barely believe when he graduated from college with a four-year degree in Physics. How amazed they’d be to see this mostly-white crowd applauding their youngest son and his career.

The room smelled of gamma rays.

How he wished he would die right there, right then. Let lightning strike him—the third stroke, the one that would kill him, right in front of the entire faculty of the Physics Department and whatever flunky University of Kiowa President Kearney ordered to stand in for him, because Kearney hated Milton’s guts, and knew Milton returned the sentiment.

So this was all it came down to. Over fifty years as a U of Ki employee, from teaching assistant to Department Head. With time off for bad behavior.

Forced out by his treacherous body—so the Biology Department won the final grant funding war—and the gang of superstring theorists embarrassed because he did not kowtow to their theories.

Next semester they’d be back in front of their classes, and Carver would lie in his bed in the rehabilitation wing of the Parkside Towers Nursing Home.

Stephen Hawking got a custom-built wheelchair, special devices allowing him to communicate via his cheek muscles, and as many nurses, aides, and grad students as he needed.

Carver would get a gold watch and pension.

And he was so close to tying quantum mechanics to general relativity.

So close!

Not Einstein’s idealized Theory of Everything or Unified Field Theory, which would never happen, but explaining the transgeometry of quanta, pointing the way to humanity learning to harness the latest discoveries of dark matter and dark energy. And how the infinite numbers of universes connected.

With the new data that just came in from the Large Hadron Collider, he would have soon finished his final paper.

Then let the superstring theorists do their worst. Let the third stroke come.

If only he could get that article completed and submitted, he could tolerate dying, and whatever may follow. Whether a spiritual Heaven and Hell beyond the reality science examined—or the mindless oblivion of a biological creature which just happened to have an organ of bio-electric self-consciousness worn out by time and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Marile!

If ever he needed her, it was now.

My darling guardian angel, my love—where are you?

Chapter One

History Hall, University of Kiowa, Cromwell North Campus

Monday morning, January 15, 2187

Marile Historian-1 left the ro-cab as soon as the door slid open. She tilted her left hand to shield her imPlant from the bright sunlight, so she could read the screen.

8:52 A.M.

Right on time for her nine o’clock appointment.

She had to make a good impression on this panel of her faculty advisors, especially on Sonny Boy Historian-9.7, the head of the History Department.

She wore a simple, turquoise blue cotton shift that went down to just above her knee, accenting her eyes. A thin black patent-leather belt. Brown pumps. A touch of rouge and lipstick. A blue silk head scarf. Costume pearl earrings. A floral perfume.

She spent hours in a clothing store designing her outfit, choosing the materials, getting them to fit, then starting over from scratch.

She didn’t know exactly who, besides Sonny Boy, out of the entire faculty of the History Department, would be on the panel. After graduating with a major in History, over three years studying for her Masters, and then five years of work toward her Ph.D., she knew everyone and everyone knew her.

Still, she wanted to come across as a student worthy of the opportunity she was requesting. Not the same student slouched down listening to their lectures. Or desperately writing essays in Blue Books. Or socializing with them at the Long House, a favorite off-campus hangout for both students and faculty.

This meeting could determine her entire career, all the rest of her life.

She wanted this panel to understand how seriously she took history. That she already carefully studied the Transition Period of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. She wasn’t requesting permission to travel back in time to simply gawk like a tourist, but to examine it as a professional researcher.

She spent her time studying actual history, not experiencing syntho stories: costume dramas and bodice-rippers.

With her outfit, she could blend in almost any street or shopping mall during the Transition Period.

She could have even added a Land’s End label to the dress, but, though the company was out of business, somebody might still own the trademark, and she didn’t dare risk a lawsuit.

Across the street, a ro-mower rolled down a long row of fresh grass, sparkling green. As its carver-valve powered the whirring blades by sucking in energy from the on-going crash of an unformed galaxy of cosmic matter meeting a similar cloud of anti-matter in the X Dimension, it emitted the characteristic low buzzing sound. The odor of new-cut zoysia hung in the air.

Its height setting needed adjustment, however, as the grass behind it was nearly as tall as the grass yet to be clipped.

Marile’s eyes then drifted to the red granite, gray marble, and gleaming glass building on that side of the road, occupying the entire block. Ten stories high. Dwarfing the rest of the campus.

Across the door:

Milton Carver Building

Physics Department

Right there is where it all happened. Where Milton Carver reformulated the laws of physics to make possible the world of peace, prosperity, and plenty they now enjoyed.

Free, unlimited, nonpolluting energy. Time travel. And so much more.

How appropriate the U of Ki’s History Department sit right next to where history was made.

And for her to show respect for that, before her panel interview.

Not that Milton Carver himself ever saw the building erected in his honor.

He did all his work in an old-by-his-time, ordinary, decrepit red brick monstrosity. She saw the pictures in the downtown Cromwell Milton Carver Museum.

That attracted her to history. How much people in the past accomplished despite the most adverse circumstances: the necessity to work jobs for money, wars, racial and ethnic prejudice, revolutions, environmental catastrophes, poverty, primitive equipment, unsupportive families, famines, hurricanes, blizzards, and other bad weather, and so many more obstacles and hardships.

Milton Carver died right after submitting his final paper. Without even seeing it published, let alone knowing the cataclysmic impact it would have on all of humanity.

Marile waved her left hand at the History Hall entrance scanner. It read her imPlant ID and checked its database for authorized faculty and appointments.

As a grad student, she could enter the area containing lecture halls and classrooms, and the teachers’ offices where, as a teaching assistant, she had a tiny cubicle. But she had never before had business there in the back, in the administrative section.

The panel flashed:

NO ADMITTANCE—UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

Her appointment was in two minutes.

She used her imPlant to call.

Sonny Boy Historian-9.7’s avatar materialized beside her. The Head of the History Department was a short, broad man with skin the color of caramel toffee. His avatar wore a navy-blue pinstriped suit and shoes with spats.

He liked to dress up too. That reminder made Marile feel more hopeful.

In his deep, Mississippi Delta, Bukka White voice, he said, I am busy at the moment. Please leave a message so I can return your call.

This is Marile Historian-1, she said. I’m here for my interview, but the door won’t let me in.

The department head’s avatar shimmered, then flashed, and his right-now figure replaced the recorded avatar. Today he wore a brown suit. He appeared heavier, and had less hair. He wore shining black leather shoes, no spats.

Another administrative botch-up, he told her. I’ll be right down.

The image vanished, but in five minutes the entrance panel slid back with a raw metal, scraping noise.

He noticed her wince. I apologize, but the physical crew is behind in maintaining the robots. Come on in.

Probably the supervisor in charge spent his days on syntho stories instead of double-checking behind the maintenance equipment.

I understand.

Sonny Boy gave her a warm, friendly look. My, aren’t you dressed up nice today.

Not too fancy. But I wanted to make a good impression.

I wish I could take you back to the Cromwell Ballroom so we could cut the rug. Circa nineteen-sixty.

Oh, I’m not dressed for that. But I wanted to come in person. I know it’s old-fashioned, but—

Sonny Boy waved away her apology as they stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for Floor 3. We’re all old-fashioned here. You know that. He smiled with unexpected warmth. Occupational hazard. If we’re any good.

Was he validating her oddball choice of clothing, or just lying politely to make her feel good, so she couldn’t sue the university if the panel failed to approve her research project?

The elevator rose, then stopped so fast it shook Marile’s stomach. She hoped the queasiness didn’t show on her face.

We’ve also asked Maintenance to adjust the elevator speed, Sonny Boy said. He shrugged his shoulders. While we’re waiting, we’ve gotten used to it. Or take the stairs. Can I get you anything? Decaf? Herbal tea? Juice? Water?

No, no thank you, Marile said.

Indirect, artificial sunlight lit the conference room. The outer wall was transparent, giving a full view of the Milton Carver Building across the street. The room smelled of lemon cleanser.

Large, framed color 3-D holograms hung on the wall.

In the first, large numbers of naked brown and black men carried large rocks. Some pulled ropes wrapped around large blocks of white limestone.

The label below it read: Construction site of the Great Pyramid of Giza, 2562 BCE.

Other holograms showed George Washington on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, taking the oath of office as first president of the United States, Genghis Khan riding a horse, and Queen Elizabeth I of England sitting on her throne.

Three History professors already sat in chairs around the large oblong plastic table.

Good morning, Marile said.

Sonny Boy read off their names for the official record:

Ferris Historian-5.1. A white man wearing conventional yellow leotards that showed off a red dragon tattoo sprawled across his chest. Still pretty young. Not yet sixty. Specialized in the Chinese Ming Dynasty.

Kiko Historian-3.2. A dark-skinned man with shoulder-length, gleaming black hair and two gold earrings, wearing a long brown robe. He didn’t look up to make eye contact with Marile. Expert on Medieval Europe, especially the Baltic countries.

Oh no…

Sophie Historian-7.3. A black-haired white woman wearing lightweight, cotton sweats and grimy running shoes. She smiled and greeted Marile. Pre-Islamic Arab studies.

She hated Marile. She gave Marile her first (and only) B in a history-related course.

Sonny Boy pulled out a chair at the head of the table, and Marile took her place at their feet. The interviewee.

She took a deep breath and tried to relax. She tried not to think about how important this meeting was to her career, the rest of her life. If she couldn’t get permission to use the university’s time travel machine for her research project, she wouldn’t get her Ph.D. She couldn’t become a professor of history. She couldn’t teach. She couldn’t perform other research into her field.

She’d have to spend the rest of her life like most people, living through syntho stories.

Blagh!

Sonny Boy cleared his throat. Everybody’s present, so if we’re all ready, we can begin.

The other three professors didn’t react, but Marile nodded.

By the way, we are recording. This is a formal hearing to discuss Marile’s Ph.D. field project and thesis subject, as required by law and university regulations. At issue are both its appropriateness given her expressed interests in the field, and whether the field project risk would be worth the final value.

Marile wanted to scream, but carefully kept a placid look on her face.

Risk. Always the risk. Not the resources. Time travel demanded a huge expenditure of energy, but thanks to Milton Carver, that was no obstacle. A huge carver-valve pulled the energy into this universe. Any residue of heat, radiation, and light leftover from the time travel operation was shunted back to the other universe.

Therefore, a million time machines could return to the past every day without reducing the energy needed to keep the lights on and most of the population cocooned in syntho stories. And without affecting the overall planetary climate.

According to the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle and Larry Niven’s Law of Conservation of History, nobody could change the past, so there was no risk of affecting history.

No, the only ‘risk’ was some idiot sprain their ankle and sue the Lawyers.

They could have her foot, her entire leg. Just let her go back and study.

Sonny Boy leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers together in his lap. Marile, I’ve appointed myself your academic advisor for your Ph.D. project here at U of Ki. Nobody else is focused on the Transition Period, but I do study nation-states. Their rise and, of course, their fall. So there is an overlap.

The distant past was safer for a historian. Less controversial. Only the few remaining religious fanatics got emotional about anything that happened over a few hundred years ago. Marile realized that several years ago, but decided not to let it affect her professional interests. What if her studies unearthed facts that contradicted the official account of those turbulent years?

Besides, she was interested in the lives of the people, ordinary and extraordinary, not in the politics. How humanity lived and progressed.

Marile smiled and nodded, acknowledging the compliment of having direct access to the head of the department. That made him the most important person in her life. She had to convince him of the value of her proposal.

Sonny Boy continued: We’ve all read your Master’s thesis on the connection between music and the psychology and sociology of the Transition Period. We agreed it was an excellent work.

Thank you, Marile said, nodding to everyone though, so far as she could see, only Sonny Boy was paying attention.

Marile couldn’t believe Sophie shared that glowing assessment, but never mind.

Sonny Boy chuckled. I even remember my parents listening to a few of the artists you wrote about, he said. I guess I shouldn’t admit I’m already one hundred eighteen years old.

Ferris, though still staring at the wall, suddenly said, Let’s cut right to it, shall we? You want to study the life of the man whose work changed humanity more than anyone since the person who discovered how to use fire. Of course it’s a relevant subject. But the risk, the risk.

Kiko twisted his hands. We can’t depend on Novikov.

If something went wrong, Sophie said. You may overturn everything the Lawyers have built. Without unlimited energy, the population implosion, the eco-zones to stabilize the climate, where would we be now?

We don’t want to find out, Ferris said. Even if we no longer remembered this way of life.

Of course I understand your concerns, Marile said. But I have no desire to change anything in Milton Carver’s life. My focus is on how people advance despite difficult circumstances. I agree to abide by all the noninterference regulations.

But what guarantees do we have? Sophie asked in a demanding voice.

The project itself, Marile said. I propose making five visits. Like taking representative samples, cross-sections of his life at those periods. His most important work came just before he died. If anything about my project goes wrong, abort the project before that final paper can be affected.

You must abide by all rules, regulations, and terms of service, Sonny Boy said in a stern voice.

Of course. Marile waved her hand at the photographs on the wall. Obviously, you have sent people back to other important events, and with high-tech cameras.

None of those periods have such a direct link of causation to the present, Ferris said.

Sonny Boy stared at her with flat, black eyes, all friendliness gone. That is a cogent observation. We would expect the highest professional and ethical standards from you and your behavior while in the past. If you deviate from those standards to any degree whatsoever, it would be my lawful duty to not only abort the project, but also to recommend you lose your student status.

And thereafter Marile would have to spend the remainder of her entire life in a tiny pod in a giant warehouse along with hundreds of thousands of other social utility-challenged persons, experiencing syntho stories.

An ordinary citizen. With no access to the past. No access to an eco-zone. No freedom to change location. No right to reproduce, ever.

Marile would rather die.

I completely understand, she said. She tried to choose her words carefully. It’s my responsibility to study—only. I have no wish to change anything. The past is past. History. I’ve been fascinated by it for as long as I can remember. History in general, but especially the Transition Period. I don’t know why.

Maybe that was a little white lie.

An ancient memory popped into her mind.

When Marile was small, before she even began school. Ordinary people could still own and drive their own cars. One day her mother overrode the automatic driver, and took Marile outside of town to an abandoned children’s playground close to a former, now-forgotten park.

Weeds grew up through the cracked asphalt. The jungle gym had been pushed over on its side. The teeter-totter boards fell down. Mud and weeds filled the concrete tunnels.

But the hard iron frame of the swing set was still firmly set into the ground. And the chains, although so rusty they squeaked loudly, still held her weight as she sat on the dirty hardwood seat.

Her mother taught her how to swing her feet in rhythm with the motion, and pushed her to get her started.

After a time, she learned to swing herself. As her mother watched, she swung as high as she could get, even trying to go all the way around the bar, but never could.

At the top of her forward swing, she suddenly got an idea. She wanted to fly to the moon. She let go of the big chains, and flew through the air, screeching with delight.

She landed with more force than she expected, so her Adidas twisted back as she fell forward, and she landed on her hands and knees. She scraped her palms with small rocks, and tore her pants, and cut her knees.

Then ignored her mother’s frantic cries to run right back to the swing and begin again.

On the way home, her mother tried to explain why the Lawyers no longer allowed little children to play on swing sets. Too much risk. See, Marile scraped her palms and knees.