[ejenk21]

Synopsis: A man determines to fix the mistakes of his squandered youth.


"So you see," the man across the desk continued, "you can do everything the right way."

"I'm afraid I don't see it," said Frank. "If you want that much money, you'll have to explain it again."

It seemed like the twentieth time to Marlon Webber, but it was realistically only the fourth. A helluva way to make a living. "You're an intelligent guy. I'm sure you understand more than you think you do. Rather than go through everything, why don't you tell me about the parts you don't understand."

Frank Pilchanish gave him the look you give a terminally sleazy car salesman. "Hello? Hello? You've got one more chance here. You are the one making the pitch. Sell me."

It was a common (and exceedingly tedious) experience for Marlon. "Very well. You've seen the TV advertisements, the testimonials. The mistakes of your life can be corrected. The girl you should have kissed in high school. The calculus exam you didn't study hard enough for. The way you insulted your Dad when you were a thoughtless kid of sixteen -- the words you have never forgotten but weren't smart enough to swallow before they came out. You can fix all that. Do it right the first time."

"But it's not the first time. It's the second," Frank argued.

(Of course he wasn't starting from scratch. They just talked like that. Marlon was right to at least try for just a recap.) "That's not a flaw, that's a benefit. You know that you're doing it right. Your memories, your self-awareness don't disappear. To be honest, we don't know why that happens. But it's the basis of our entire business."

"Okay. I go into your lab, I get into your booth and I'm sent back in time. I avoid all the errors of the past and I wind up King of America."

"If that's what you want. You have to tell us what the mistakes were. Only you know what those were."

"I thought you said you could see the past, see all the mistakes."

"Yeah, we can. But you're the one who thinks they were mistakes. Be fair. It's June 3, 1996. You have escaped the gym of Gerald R. Ford Junior High School and are lounging outside with Sara Chacrolsky. She's backed herself up against a wall and is slouching there, exactly right for you to stare down her dress. It isn't an accident.

"It's hot. The smoke from her cigarette hangs in the steamy air. She's waiting for you to make a move, big shot. Close enough so far?"

Frank was lost in memories. (Webber had cheated a tiny bit, actually having the lab techs review the real scene. This customer had mentioned this missed-kiss scene eight times in two interviews.) "Uh-huh. Close enough."

"I'll be honest with you. I missed copping a few feels in when I was a teen, but I don't brood over it. To me, it wasn't a big failure. So we can't know that it was Sara who matters to you. You have to tell us."

Frank snapped out of it. "Yeah. Sure. I understand now. I tell you what's important."

"And we constrain your path in space-time so you can't help but pass through events the way you want. You KISS her. Expertly. So expertly she wants more. She gets it. You emerge from that night the psychic equivalent of a millionaire. You will draw on that confidence every time you meet a girl. You'll do great things." He reached casually for the WhorlMaster (with built-in RetnaChek). "Ready to put down your John Dillinger?"

"Wait a minute." (Why did they always do this, say this? It was like a broken record. Marlon could scream.) "Okay, you fix things so I'm back there. How do I know it takes place as you say?"

"Now look," Marlon snapped angrily. "You have to accept the premises here. Does this look like a prungbox operation to you? I told you this already. You, this you, the now you, are there. And that you is there too. He (you) will act as you (now you) should have acted. Now you will see the whole thing, feel it, enjoy it. This worldline disappears and hooks in with the other one."

"But I die." (So he was paying attention.)

"No. Your body dies. You don't. Your...(how was this best put to this one?) your soul leaves your body and goes to the other place and merges with your body there."

"So I have to thumb sign the Hayworth form."

"Yes (yes Yes YES), you do. No big deal. Technically it's a type of assisted suicide. Just technically. Look, we're regulated up the kazoo. Absolutely nothing to worry about.

"My wife, my kids?"

"Hey, just the usual. Same as anybody who takes the Hayworth option. Except for our fee, they get your estate and the government sweetens it with another eight percent. Minus taxes, naturally." (He refrained from making a joke about death and taxes always going together but never dating. This guy was too touchy.) "Say," Marlon said brightly, "I bet that eight will more than cover our part of it." (He knew it would. He'd already run a credit analysis. Cost a few bucks, but he did it routinely. Helped guide the sale.)

"I'm gonna die. Die. I don't really want to do that. Naah... Naah. Well, I've been here long enough. Got to go. Thanks for your time."

(Steady, steady. This is all routine...) "Hey, it's up to you. I guess your current life is really what you wanted all along, once you thought about it. Your wife was cute once, right? Your kids aren't worse than the usual run of today's little monsters. Your job doesn't actually SUCK, does it? Hey, your boss can't possibly be as much of a sulfane-breath boofhead as mine is. You've got enough saved to avoid the gerrystacks, don't you? Don't you?"

Frank wavered again. "I can plot the whole thing out with you? I kiss Sara, go to MIT, get the patent on the paraberyllium fusion catalyst instead of Trochneer, live on the Moon..."

"Uh, sure. If you can afford it."

"Huh?"

"Well, the basic package just gives you one fix. In your case, Sara."

"What IS this shit!?"

"Hey, keep it clean. Twisting worldlines, picking wave functions from a continuum away, forcing stuff to go the way you specify -- it doesn't come cheap. Not that we can't do it. Just not for the basic package price."

"You cheating bastard!" Frank cried, leaping up.

(Same old, same old.) "Some would say you're the cheat, not me. You made your choices; now you want to back out and zip off to another quantum universe. I'm just the facilitator here. You're the one in charge."

"You bet I am. And I'm leaving!"

(Careful, casual, careful.) "It's a sliding scale. Depends on how different you want history to turn out. More energy and computer time required. Like, if you really want to scoop Trochneer, that's going to be a hard universe to find." (Just sales bullshit. All changes were about equally difficult.) "Tell you what. You didn't go to MIT, right?"

"No. Walston Community. Fiber optics technician. I was good enough for MIT. My scores said so. But at eighteen I wanted to have a lot of party time. I had it."

"The Trochneer business will cost you ninety percent above basic package. I'll throw in MIT. To get to the Moon, you'll have to do it on your own nickel."

Frank considered. "That's, uh, ninety-five thousand?"

"Right." (A little push over the edge.) "We eat the tax. A business gesture. Gimme your thumb."

Frank gave it.

(Big, big stroke.) "Wunnerful. Wunnerful. Smart move. Smart. And I like the Moon idea. I'm sure you'll make it on your own. Of your own free will."

"We can get you going right now. Into the lab and you're on your way to Sara!" (Move him along, he could still back out.)

Marlon accompanied Frank into the lab. "Hiya, Jerry, Sue, Milton! This is our voyager, Frank Pilcanish. Just sit here in this comfy beanbag chair, Frank." Vivaldi trilled in the background.

"No ultraviolet decontamination, no scrubs, no shaved heads, no chromium skullcap?"

"Too many fifty-year-old movies, Frank. Too many movies. Just sit here." He gave Frank's hand his sincerest shake. "All of us here at Paradise Found wish you the very best. May all your dreams come true this time around."

A flash of laser light and Frank slumped over. Jerry and Sue, knowing the moment, pulled him off the chair and onto plastic sheeting before he voided too badly. Sue squirted cleaner onto the little that did grace the vinyl and wiped it all away.

"Good job, boys and girls," Webber said. "Check for your tenths tomorrow."

He strolled back to his own desk. They each got a tenth percent of the estate, and he got 1.7 percent. "Bind not the mouths of the kine that tread the grain." Plus decent salaries and bennies.

We don't know that it doesn't happen, he thought to himself. There was that one guy who did appear in our worldline and insisted he was fixing up the mistakes of his past. He described technology a lot like this.

Just convenient that it was accomplishing the ends of the Hayworth Act. Even the gerrystacks cost a lot. Ten percent was lots cheaper than gerrystacking.

All in all, a good day's work. And he still had time for one more suc...customer. Where did they think the testimonials came from?

[Corneac]

Very funny ejenk! I enjoyed this one a lot.

A flash of laser light and Frank slumped over. Jerry and Sue, knowing the moment, pulled him off the chair and onto plastic sheeting before he voided too badly. Sue squirted cleaner onto the little that did grace the vinyl and wiped it all away.

That was the only bit I was confused about, what did Sue wipe way, what graced the vinyl?

I'll post this now. Nice job.

[SeaN]

This story was allot of fun to read! thanks for sharing it. I think you highlight a number of social shortcomings we fall victim to as a society today. For one- playing the role of the gullible consumer:

:::Frank Pilchanish gave him the look you give a terminally sleazy car salesman. "Hello? Hello? You've got one more chance here. You are the one making the pitch. Sell me.":::

I love these lines. In the bo-tox/fast-food/sign-and-drive world in which we live, we will so often have faith in the quick fix solution. After a lifetime of accumulating problems, faults and debt it is unlikely we will find salvation through technology.

Secondly, I love the concept of the "salesman" completely repressing any sense of moral corruption in the pursuit of wealth. For his fat paycheck, he is willing to deal death day in and day out. That is to say nothing of the families these "travelers" leave behind after selling the farm. One is left wondering if he might have some explaining to do himself in an afterlife.

Furthermore, I enjoyed the somewhat cryptic "Butterfly-effect-esk" ending. The idea of someone realized the danger of this technology, and using their influence on the past to effectively prevent the future. Really makes you think. Well done!

[Bluejay]

Interesting little story! I liked the way you got to see Marlon's thoughts as he was speaking, to see the contrast between what he was saying and the sales process he was running through. It was telling that customers were more or less all the same.

I also liked that you weren't really sure in the end if it was for real or not. I wasn't sure if

All changes were about equally difficult.

meant that they actually were doing something, or if the changes were all equally difficult since they weren't doing anything at all.

As I was reading this, I was curious to see how the whole Sara thing played out (how changing the universe really affected things). But I must say, I wasn't disappointed with the ending, even though I never found out.

Well done!

[brutusshh]

Impressive! The original idea and the impeccable style make it a great read. I didn't find it funny at all, because death in this manner is no laughing matter. The fact that people are willing to believe in something that can't be verified is perfectly true. The personality of the salesman is rather one-sided, but there was no way you could have developed it in such a short story. The way I see it, he symbolizes all the priests that try to convince us that a better fate awaits us after death. But in order to get it, we have to obey them in this life. The rhetorical question in the ending brings in discussion the validity, logic(or rather lack of) obvious in religion. I also think the "testimonies" are a direct reference to the Bible, which has been the base of Christian religions for so long that we take it for granted, without even questioning its accuracy. Huge change change in matter of topic, in comparison to your other stories, but it is masterfully done and for that I congratulate you.

[McCoy]

I enjoyed it, good job