The Future of Another Timeline

^TWENTY-SIX BETH

Irvine, Alta California… Los Angeles, Alta California (1993 C.E.)

I stood in front of the double doors to my house, which were actually one door made to look like two because that gave the illusion that we lived in a castle instead of a condo. The moon was up and there were no lights on in the windows. I shivered. It was 2 A.M. and I couldn’t stop thinking about Tess calling my dad “mentally ill.” Not crazy or psycho or nuts. Her use of the more clinical term made it real. It also meant that Lizzy had seen what nobody else had. She knew my family wasn’t normal.

As quietly as possible, I unlocked the door, took off my sandals, and crept upstairs in the dark. My parents’ bedroom door was closed, and I made it to my room without any confrontations. I was suddenly so tired that I couldn’t do anything other than climb under the covers in my clothes and fall asleep.

The next morning, there was the same eerie silence as the night before. I pulled on jeans and sneakers before going downstairs, my muscles tensed for a fight. But my father had gone to the shop and my mother was on the phone, talking about the Orange Unified School District’s leadership training. She glanced up once from a notepad full of her tidy handwriting, its extreme legibility optimized for filling chalkboards with instructions. I stood in her gaze, waiting for a reaction. But almost immediately, her eyes abandoned me for the notepad.

I poured a cup of coffee and made toast for breakfast, stepping into the familiar role of pretending everything was normal. The L.A. Times was tossed on the table, and I forced myself to read the comics before flipping anxiously to news. There was a slightly more in-depth story than the one in the Weekly about how the Machines were exhibiting new behavior, but it mostly dealt with how India might leave the Chronology Academy and form its own regulatory agency. Nobody in the story talked about actual science, and I had nothing left to distract me from worrying about last night. Had Lizzy followed that guy Elliot and murdered him after I left? What did it mean that Tess remembered a timeline where I’d killed myself?

“You’re on restriction until you leave for UCLA,” my mother said. She’d hung up the phone and was using the impersonal voice she favored when meting out punishments. “Your father and I will talk to you about your behavior tonight.”

That was what I had expected, especially the part where my parents prearranged a yelling session for after work. I knew rationally that the whole situation was absurd because I was moving into the dorms next week. But I felt my eyes throbbing with tears anyway. This always happened when I was in trouble with my dad. It was a physical reaction I couldn’t control, like throwing up. At least this time I was able to blink my eyes clear, dislodge the lump in my throat with a cough, and nod at my mom.

“Do you understand what that means? You do not leave this house until we get home. No talking on the phone, and no inviting friends over.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

As my mom backed her car out of the garage, I thought about Tess. At least there was someone out there, somewhere in time, who knew how fucking shitty this was. Even if it was actually Lizzy, or some version of her. I still didn’t quite understand how that worked. It was scary to think about that other timeline of my life. Based on what Tess said, I must have stayed friends with Lizzy, and killed more men. That might have been enough to make me want to die. Still, I wondered if something else had been different for the other Beth too—something Tess didn’t know. Like maybe there was another horrendous shitshow along the way, some epiphenomenon that spun out of our friendship. Maybe jumping off the bridge was an emotional reflex like my tears, an uncontrollable reaction that took possession of my body. Maybe it was something I’d planned for weeks.

Probably I would never know. Whatever had changed, this version of me did not want to die. All I wanted was to get the hell out of my father’s house and never come back. Monday was move-in day at Dykstra Hall. That meant five days of restriction, then I was gone.

Those thoughts sustained me several hours later, when the plates were cleared from dinner and it was time for our “talk.” My father always started by telling me that he and my mother saw a pattern in my behavior that revealed my basic terribleness as a person. My disobedience was a symptom of how flawed I was. I was a sneak, a lazy cheat, and I was already on my way downhill despite my young age.

During these lectures, I coped by staring at one specific corner of the dining room. It was behind my father’s head, so it looked like I was paying attention, but I was really thinking about the calcium in the white paint, the chalky drywall below it, and then the cellulose and minerals that made up the bones of the house. When that got old, I recalled the first time I saw Grape Ape at a backyard show and how Glorious Garcia sang, “RISE UP RISE UP.” I thought about that painting from their EP Our Time Was Stolen, where the curved rock of the Machine sat undisturbed millions of years ago, long before humans learned to wreck each other’s histories. If I focused hard enough, my father’s face disappeared and so did his voice. It was me and the molecular structure of our house and songs about smashing the chrono-patriarchy.

“We are serious about this, Beth. If you can’t get your act together, that’s it. Say goodbye to the dorms. We won’t pay for them. You’ll live here and commute to L.A. with your dad. And if you can’t handle that, we’ll stop paying for your college, too.” My mother folded her arms.

I thought about my puny bank account, fed by a weekly allowance and summer jobs. If my parents cut me off, I wouldn’t have enough money to pay for a quarter in the dorms. I looked wordlessly at my mother, terrified. The prospect of going to college and getting away from them was the only thing keeping me sane. What if I had to stay here, with no escape hatch?

“You have to earn your right to go to college, Beth.” My father spoke with slow intensity. “You need to show us that you are committed to it. If you disregard rules, it’s clear you’re not ready for this level of responsibility.”

I couldn’t zone out on this conversation anymore. If I didn’t do what they said, my whole life would end. I was so panicked that I couldn’t figure out what exactly they were threatening. Had they already decided to cut me off? Were they saying I couldn’t go to college at all, or that I couldn’t live in the dorms? Everything I’d depended on was being yanked away.

Putting on my good daughter face, I nodded vigorously. “I understand.”

“I want to believe you, but you’ve let us down so many times.” My father sounded sorrowful. “How are we supposed to trust you after the way you’ve acted?”

This was the problem with tuning in to what my parents said during one of these sessions. At a certain point, it was impossible to know what they were upset about. Obviously they wouldn’t nuke my college education for not wearing shoes in the house. But I hadn’t left the house without permission before, so I didn’t understand the “so many times” part. Tess said my father was mentally ill, but that was hard to believe when he sat right in front of me with my mother agreeing with him. They both sounded so rational. I searched my mind for other crimes I might have committed, infractions so huge they added up to the punishment of taking college away. Was it possible they secretly knew about all the shows I went to with Lizzy over the past year? The abortion? Had I done something I didn’t remember?

Tears burned down my cheeks before I could help myself. If I tried to speak my voice would tremble so much it would be an additional humiliation. So I sat silently as my father painstakingly explained how I was a nothing who deserved nothing. If I didn’t pay attention, if I disappeared into the opening of the ancient Machine, I might incur further penalties. I had no choice but to take it all in. Every single word.

In the movies, going off to college is this tearful farewell with the parents forcing their kids to take bags of cookies and saying things like, “Don’t forget to write!” My parents said nothing on the drive from Irvine to Los Angeles. My mother had prepared a list in her tidy handwriting, reiterating our new rules and agreements. I would call them every night from the dorm phone to prove that I wasn’t going out; I would send them Xeroxed copies of all my syllabi so they could track my assignments; I had to earn straight As. Before I got out of the car, I had to sign the checklist. My mom had gotten this idea from one of her books about dealing with “problem students.”

My father helped carry luggage up to the dorm room I’d be sharing with another girl. When we arrived, my new roommate was standing in the middle of the room, eyeing the bunk bed.

Immediately, she gave us a big smile. “Hi, roomie! I’m Rosa Sanchez, from Salinas. Do you care whether you get top or bottom? Because I don’t care.” Her black hair was cut into a short wedge that flopped over the shaved back of her head. I liked her instantly.

“Hi! I’m Beth Cohen. From Irvine. I like the top.”

“Done! This must be your dad?”

My father put some bags carefully on the floor. “No.”

She glanced at me uneasily. “Okay, well, nice to meet you!”

My father ignored Rosa. “Beth, remember our agreement.”

“I will.”

He turned his back to leave without saying goodbye. I looked out the dirty window, straining to glimpse my parents driving away. But all I could see was a distant courtyard, surrounded by more residence halls.

“Was that your uncle or something?” Rosa was unpacking clothes and books on the lower bunk.

“It was my dad. He just doesn’t like to say that for some reason.”

“Parents are so weird.”

“Yeah.” I laughed, glad there was an easy way to frame that conversation as if it were a wacky moment from a teen comedy. “They really are. You never know what they’re going to do next.”

Rosa and at least a dozen other students on our floor were also in my chemistry class. Everyone said it was one of UCLA’s most terrifying weeder classes, jammed with so much information that only a tiny handful of people got higher than a C-plus. And it was almost impossible to ask questions. Weeders were taught in auditoriums that held hundreds of students, and were seemingly intended entirely to dissuade the vast majority of us from majoring in science.

At least that made it easy to avoid Lizzy. I spotted her once across the room, but she was busy taking notes. I usually sat with Rosa and other people from the dorm. With so many of us crammed into the same classes, it was easy to study and socialize in packs. My days began to blur into a routine. Every night I stepped out of the student lounge, leaving my books under Rosa’s care, to call my parents on the pay phone in the hallway. Depending on my father’s mood, I was either on my way to scientific superstardom or on the precipice of doom. I tried to keep my voice steady and friendly, to obey all the rules. I kept picturing what would happen if they cut off my dorm payments. One day I’d find all my stuff in the hall and someone else in the top bunk.

But for now, I had a weeder class to deal with. The night before the chem midterm, it seemed like the whole fifth floor of Dykstra was freaking out and pulling an all-nighter with the help of coffee, NoDoz, sugary snacks, or meth. A woman snorting glittery powder off her physics textbook in the hallway shrugged at me. “What? It’s only speed. You want coke, you gotta go to the fancy dorms.”

Rosa and I stuck to cigarettes. After my nightly parent call, I grabbed a lighter and poked Rosa. “Let’s take a smoke break.” We took the elevator down to the butt-encrusted smoking area outside, trading questions about the differences between organic and inorganic acids. The midterm was in roughly fifteen hours, and it was definitely time to inhale some gas and particulates.

“Do you think you’re ready for the test?” I exhaled and flicked some ash in the general direction of the bin.

“Yeah. I’m pretty good with tests. That’s how I got into UCLA, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I got 1550 on my SATs.”

My eyes bulged. “Wow—that’s super good.”

“Yeah. It’s how I got my scholarship. But I still need to do work study to pay for everything.” She blew a smoke ring.

“What’s work study?”

“It’s like a financial aid thing. I work part time in the library and it helps pay for tuition and dorms or whatever.” She wouldn’t look at me. “I guess your parents pay for college, huh?”

“Yeah. Right now they do.” An idea was forming in my mind. “But they won’t be soon.”

Rosa glanced up. “It’s expensive, right? I know lots of people who start work study in sophomore year. It’s good if you can focus on school when you’re a freshman taking all the weeder classes. Working is a pain.”

I offered Rosa another cigarette and we kept talking about financial aid. Listening to her made it seem reasonable and real. Maybe I could do work study and support myself. I imagined a future without the nightly calls. Without the fear. It was a tiny vein of hope.

I went to the financial aid office the next day, after the chem midterm. An administrator with a cheesy UCLA tie walked me through some of the forms, and promised I could apply for winter quarter if I needed to.

“Get your parents to fill this out.”

“I’m independent from my parents. I mean, I want to be classified as independent.”

The admin paused. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“So do you have legal documentation? You need to prove your parents aren’t supporting you.”

“What if I can’t get documents from them? Like is there a way for me to declare myself independent?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think so. But you should ask a lawyer about that. We have lawyers available for students—make an appointment down the hall.”

Walking down the tiled hallway reminded me of leaving my parents’ house without permission. I had no idea what to expect, or where I was going. I was breaking the rules.

Soon I sat on a cracked leather sofa facing a woman with a fluff of gray-brown hair and droopy stockings.

“I’m trying to find out how I can declare myself independent from my parents so I can get financial aid on my own.”

“Well, that’s something I don’t hear every day.” She perked up and jotted something down on a legal pad. “What’s your reason?”

I thought of a million excuses, and then I remembered what Tess had said.

“My father… he’s mentally ill. I need to be on my own.” I could barely hear myself over the blood throttling my ears.

The lawyer nodded and I thought sympathy inhabited the lines of her face. “I see. Let me research this and get back to you? I think we can figure something out.” Then she jotted down another note, as if everything was normal. I was flooded with relief. Her reaction didn’t feel like the fake normal I knew from home. Maybe she was actually going to help me.

I had one more midterm left, and it was the worst. Cultural geology was my least favorite part of geoscience, and this class involved a lot of hypotheses about travel that couldn’t be proven with repeatable results. Yet somehow Professor Biswas made it interesting. Besides, anything was better than weeder bullshit like chem. The problem was that Biswas had assigned a midterm essay about the Great Man vs. Collective Action theories of history. I was still struggling with those concepts, so distant from the molecular structure of acid or the decay of metals over time. Checking my watch, I decided I still had time to make it to her office hours.

The geology department was in a cluster of old brick buildings surrounded by plots of thick ivy and pine trees. Inside, the upper floors were a maze of narrow hallways lined with office doors. Some boasted a plain placard with the professor’s name; others were covered in cartoons, GIS maps, cutaway views of sedimentary layers, and covers of scientific journals. I waited my turn to see Professor Biswas, sitting behind a few other students on the cool linoleum floor, staring at a two-hundred-year-old map of the Caribbean islands taped to her door. A few minutes later, Biswas motioned me inside. Her window looked out onto the dingy geoscience courtyard, mostly used as storage for particularly large rocks.

“Nice view, Professor Biswas.” I immediately regretted my terrible attempt at a joke, but she smiled.

“Please call me Anita. My father is Professor Biswas. What can I do for you?” Sitting across from her, I realized Anita was pretty young for a professor—possibly in her early thirties.

“I don’t understand the difference between the two theories of history. Isn’t collective action still aimed at affecting a few great men? I mean, a protest is a form of collective action, but aren’t they protesting because they want to change what powerful politicians do?”

Anita twirled a pen over her thumb and nodded. “That’s a good question. The difference is that the Great Man approach assumes there are only a few people who can change the timeline at any given moment, and by the way they usually happen to be male.” She snorted. “But the Collective Action approach assumes that change is a complex process that comes from many quarters, with many people participating. So the end result might look the same, but the process is quite different.”

“But it still seems like you have to be a powerful person to change the timeline.”

“Maybe. From my perspective as a traveler, I think the main advantage of the Collective Action hypothesis is that it accounts for context. Let me give you an example. In 1993, I can be a professor and order you to write a midterm essay and you’ll do it. I’m kind of a great man, if you think of it that way. But when I’m back in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, where I do my research, most people assume I’m a slave. Sometimes I get classified as a free person of color because I’m half-Indian. My point is, there is no way for me to become a great man in that era, no matter how great I might be objectively. If I want to change anything, I need a community that recognizes my inherent awesomeness. That’s where your collective action comes in. You can’t become great without a community that recognizes you. But the Great Man theory suggests that certain special people are great regardless of context.”

I thought about that for a while. “So does collective action mean a bunch of people have to band together to edit the timeline, or can they be… kind of disconnected people making a lot of different edits?”

“It’s probably a mix of both, but the honest answer is that nobody knows for sure.” She ran a hand over the close-cropped froth of her hair and I noticed she wore purple nail polish. “Are you interested in traveling one day?”

“I like your class a lot, but I’m more interested in the physical side. I want to study the origins of life in the Cambrian.”

“Well, most of the Machines seem to originate in that same geological period, so maybe you’ll wind up studying them a little bit too. There is some great work on wormholes happening here at UCLA.”

I’d never thought about researching time machines, and I was suddenly intrigued. “Where do you think the Machines come from?”

Anita gave an elaborate shrug. “It’s not really my area, but the jury is definitely out on that one. Some people say it’s a natural consequence of crustal formation that we don’t understand yet. But that doesn’t explain the interface, and why it filters out weapons but not clothing. I’ve always been fond of the idea that it was aliens.”

I was surprised. “Really? Do people think that?”

“Sure. Or that it was a primordial civilization on Earth. There’s so little evidence that you can imagine a lot of things. Most geologists agree that the Machines were built, or at least the interface was. There’s some kind of intelligence behind them. It’s not a phenomenon created by plate tectonics or weathering or any other known geophysical process.”

“But there is a physical process involved. The timeline itself—”

“Sure. The Machines seem to be exploiting a force that pulls potential timelines into our own. But there’s a conundrum there, too. Let’s say there is a cosmic force that is engaged in a constant background shuffling of timelines in the universe. It’s like gravity, or an unknown form of energy—it’s causing historical change all the time. If that’s true, maybe the Machine is simply a viewing booth that allows us to see the shuffling. So we think we’re changing things, but that’s an illusion. We’re merely witnessing, or remembering, a change that would normally be imperceptible.”

Now I was frustrated. “So nobody knows how historical change works culturally or physically? How can we… I mean, what are we even doing?”

Anita grinned. “You really should study time machines. We all start out with that same what-the-hell feeling. It’s probably the main driver of scientific insight.”

I wasn’t any closer to knowing what I wanted to write in my essay, but I was intrigued by the idea of studying the Machines. As I wandered into the afternoon sun, I thought about all the possible timelines reshuffling in Tess’s wake. Was it a natural process that Tess could see because she used the Machines? Was she a tiny part of an unfathomably complex collective action that caused the shuffle? I wandered south toward Westwood, barely noticing as the hangar-sized campus buildings gave way to city streets. I passed a few bars and a Tower Records before finding myself at Falafel King, where I realized that I was incredibly hungry.

Falafel King served up the best pita sandwich in L.A., topped with crispy disks of potato and at least five kinds of spicy salad. As I ordered, I wondered with a twinge if I’d be able to afford this place once I was on financial aid.

All the tables in the restaurant were jammed, so I hunkered down on the warm sidewalk outside, watching a line of students waiting to order stoner fuel from Stan’s Donuts nearby. I was wiping some white sauce off my T-shirt when I heard a familiar voice.

“Hey, Beth?”

I looked up and immediately wished I wasn’t holding a messy sandwich that kept dripping tahini. “Hey, Hamid.” I scrambled up and surreptitiously wiped my hands on my jeans.

“Fancy meeting you here.” He had the same lopsided smile that made me want to kiss him, and I tried not to think about that as I twisted the edges of my sandwich wrapper.

“What are you up to?”

“Getting some donuts for my study group. Midterm madness.”

“Oh yeah? What class?”

“History of film.”

That was unexpected. “What happened to pre-med or business?”

“I keep forgetting to take classes in those.” He leaned easily against the wall and I realized he wasn’t exuding that melancholy neediness I remembered from high school. He seemed more stable. Happier.

“I’m getting ready for a midterm too. I have to write about collective action in history, but it turns out that nobody knows how history works.”

We started talking about the timeline, and the montage technique in film, and whether chocolate donuts were better than glazed. After I finished my pita, I decided to get a donut at Stan’s. Hamid said his study group was at the library, in the same general direction as the dorms, so it made sense to walk together back to campus.

“I’m glad I finally ran into you. I thought I would probably see you at some point.” Hamid ducked his head and looked embarrassed. “Not that I was hunting around for you or anything.”

“I’m glad we ran into each other too.”

“Hey, do you have… an e-mail address?” Hamid said the word “e-mail” like he was describing something extremely obscure and fancy.

“Of course. I got one on my first day of classes.”

“I just got one! I could send you my first e-mail!”

“Really? Your first e-mail? Didn’t your family have AOL?”

“I mean, I guess my sister had AOL. I never used it, though. It seemed like it was mostly for people talking about boy bands.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, allow me to introduce you to the wonders of e-mail. I’m elizabethc@magma.ucla.edu.”

“Easy to remember. I’ll mail you some electrons!” He gave me a quick hug and raced off in the direction of the library.

I stood there for a moment thinking about the hug, and what I wanted it to mean. Then I took the long way back to the dorms, puzzling over my essay for Anita. By the time I got back to my room, I was still unsure what to write. I knew history could be changed, but none of the hypotheses fit my own experience. Why wasn’t there a scientific theory that described how we change our own lives and the lives of our friends?