The old man's thin, wrinkled hands moved like those of a plumber under a sink. With purpose and speed he connected wires and capacitors on the green circuit board under a silver metal hatch.

"Damn", he muttered. He looked down at his hand. His knuckle oozed sticky red blood in a steadily growing bead. He brought the hand to his mouth and kissed it, his lips a cracked gasket. He rose from his knees, wincing as his right knee popped. With a sigh he shuffled to the paper towel dispenser and pulled on the gray handle three times. He ripped the paper towel off, crumpled it up, and dabbed it on his wound. Looking up from his hand he gazed lovingly at his project. A perfect sphere of silver metal with an oval door half open sat on a three pronged stand. It looked like a giant had taken a set of jacks and placed the rubber ball on top. The old man reached to a white plastic first aid kit that was bolted to the wall. He opened it up, removed a band aid, and closed the kit. He began walking back towards the silver ball as he fumbled with the wrapper and put it on.

"Back to work, Jon. You're not going to get any more slack because of my clumsiness."

"Dr. Riley, I believe it was you who just cut yourself. Don't blame me for your own mistakes", Jon rebutted with a grin. He took a long pull from his straw, the cold lemonade running down his throat. Even inside the institute the air conditioner couldn't keep up with the July heat.

"So, have you decided when you'll be going after we finish work on the Marble?"

"I've always known, Jon."

"Really? It was only last night that I decided when I would go when it's my turn. I want to see the Wright Brother's first flight. They were the first to ever fly an airplane, just as you and I will be the first to ever travel through time."

"Jon, we've been through this before. Everyone travels through time. It is only you and I who can travel both forward and backward."

"You know what I mean." Dr. Riley picked up an instrument that looked like a screw driver with a sharp point. It had a wire with an alligator clamp running off to the side, and a light bulb that lit up as he tested the circuits on the green board. Finally he closed the metal hatch and replaced two screws in the lower left and right corners.

"That should be it. Prepare the test subject."

"Yes sir." Jon jogged to a cube shaped metal cage on the far wall. He opened the cage and reached inside for the hand of a small chimpanzee.

"C'mon, Chronos." Chronos jumped out of the cage and eagerly followed Jon back to the Marble. Jon undid his watch and fastened it to the wrist of Chronos. She popped through the small oval door, closing it behind her. A slight rumble could be heard as the sealing mechanism cut off all contact between the outside world and the electronic world inside of the Marble.

"I set it for five minutes ahead. All she has to do is hit the red button like she's been trained."

Suddenly the air around the Marble shimmered like a hot tar road in the Arizona sun. The effect radiated outwards from the sphere, a pebble dropped into the three dimensional lake of time. With a bang the Marble disappeared. Dr. Riley and Jon stared intently at the space that it used to occupy.

Dr. Riley laughed, "Of course. After the Marble left for the future, the air collapsed around the hole that it left. Similar to the relationship between lightning and thunder." Both Dr. Riley and Jon looked anxiously at their wrists.

"Bother. Chronos has my watch. How much longer, Dr. Riley?"

"Three minutes. I'll give you a countdown for the last thirty seconds." Jon nervously shifted his weight from one leg to the other, then walked to a nearby desk and retrieved a dark blue chair. He sat down, his back and neck erect.

"Thirty seconds. . . " Jon stood up quickly.

"Twenty. . .Ten, nine, eight. . ." At time zero there was a burst of strong wind that caused both doctor and assistant to raise their arms over their eyes and squint. When the wind suddenly ceased the Marble was once again perched on its stand. Jon raced to the door, which slowly slid open automatically. Chronos was halfway out of the door when Jon grabbed her hand to read the watch.

"Dr. Riley, what does your watch say?"

"Seven thirty three."

"Yes! It worked! My watch says seven twenty eight!"

"Wonderful, Jon. Now it is my turn."

"When did you say you were going?"

"I didn't say. You were too eager telling me about the Wright Brothers. I have figured out a way to have eternal life with this device. I will not be coming back, but I will program the Marble to come back on its own so that you can still use it."

"Eternal life, with a time machine? You must be kidding."

"I am not kidding. I am sorry that I couldn't tell you this earlier, but I was afraid that you and others would think that I was a crack pot. Now that it is down to the wire there is nothing that you can do except allow an old man his fantasies. I am getting old, and I may die any day and end my existence if I do not do something soon. More than anything else, oblivion scares me. You know where all of my notes are. I give you permission to take all credit for the work that we did together. You will surely get a Nobel Prize. Good-bye, Jon."

Dr. Riley climbed awkwardly into the machine and closed the hatch behind him as Jon watched in astonishment. He quickly punched in the date of his destination, programmed in the return time, and hit the key labeled "execute" .

"But. . ." was all Jon could get out before the Marble shimmered and disappeared with a sharp crack. Moments later, Jon heard a huge explosion from what seemed to be the floor below him. Jon raced out of the lab and headed for the stair well. He ran down one flight of stairs and onto the first floor. Weaving through hallways, he looked into several small rooms through the tall, narrow windows set into the doors of each room. Jon stared in awe. Inside of the molecular biology lab the Marble sat half imbedded in the floor. Large chunks of concrete and floor tiling were strewn around the room. Jon ran to the side of the time machine and pawed at a panel whose seams traced a small square in the shiny metal. He flipped it open, and a large red button saying "Emergency open" popped up. Jon pressed the button, and explosive bolts released the door of the Marble . He frantically lifted the door off of the hinges, and looked inside. It was empty.

As soon as he hit the execute key, Dr. Riley felt the sensation of falling. "Curious", he murmured, and was suddenly slammed into his seat. Dr. Riley was thrown around in the spherical room, bouncing from wall to wall. His sense of direction was completely disoriented. Even the simple idea of "up" lost all meaning as it seemed that he was spinning. Slowly Dr. Riley's sense of direction settled down, and he found that he was sitting on the ceiling.

"I knew I should have given this thing windows." He pressed the button in the middle of the door marked "open", and a slight whoosh of cold air filled the spherical room. Pushing the door open, he was suddenly squinting into a white glare. Dr. Riley slowly exited the Marble and looked around, his right hand acting as a visor to keep some of the brightness away. He stood at the bottom of a small snow covered hill in a narrow valley. A wide path of smooth, crushed snow showed where the Marble had rolled down the hill. Dr. Riley followed the path up. It began one third of the way up the hill with a crater.

"I was afraid of this", he quietly said to himself. "The Marble travels through time, not space. The space that the second floor of the institute occupies in our time is actually hanging above part of this hill in this time." Dr. Riley walked back down the hill to the empty sphere. He reached his arm inside, pushed some buttons, and quickly closed the hatch. He watched as the Marble shimmered and disappeared with a bang. Dr. Riley buttoned the top button of his shirt, drew his arms around his chest with a shiver, and began walking.

"One ticket to Stillwater, please", Dr. Riley said.

"Yes sir", replied the ticket woman behind the stained oak desk with a demure smile. Dr. Riley headed for the waiting room, looking at his ticket. It said "Grey Hound bound for Stillwater, Minnesota. Departure time 3:00 p.m., 1/4/1945." He pocketed the ticket and looked at his watch. It said 8:13. With a smile he re-set his watch for 2:37 from a large wall mounted clock.

The bus stopped at the depot, and Dr. Riley rose from his hard bench seat with a stifled groan. He shuffled out of the bus behind a small line of people, smiling at a seated lady he passed. Her hair was tightly curled, her waist was narrow, and her breasts were perfectly conical. She reminded him of the old advertisements found in Time magazine during the War. Memories of pictures of his father in his dark blue Navy uniform washed over his mind like a wet sponge on a chalkboard.

As Dr. Riley approached the hospital doors his pace quickened. Immediately beyond the entrance he stopped at the information desk. "Could you please direct me to the maternity ward?"

"Certainly. Just take a right, go up two flights. . ."

Dr. Riley took off before the instructions were even completed. He moved as quickly as his old body would take him up the stairs, and his breath came in quick, short gasps. He put his right hand to his left shoulder, and a pained expression crossed his face. Gritting his teeth, he slowed his ascent to the next flight. Rounding a corner, he saw to steel swinging doors with small square windows at the far end of a short hall. A man wearing dark brown slacks and a white dress shirt sat on an oak bench against the left wall. He was reading a newspaper, and a suit coat was folded beside him.

"Is Mary Riley in the next room?" Dr. Riley asked between heavy breaths.

"Yes. What's it to you?" the man asked.

"I'm family. I'm a second cousin of Mary, and I heard that she was finally in labor."

"Yeah, well she's been in labor for the last thirteen hours. You sure seemed in a hurry to get here, with the way that you stomped up those steps. If you would have been here earlier you could have shared more of this excitement."

"I have a feeling that she's going to deliver soon", Dr. Riley said. Muffled sounds could be heard from behind the doors. Dr. Riley stood and walked towards the shiny silver doors.

"Hey, you can't look in on my wife!"

"Relax. I'm family, remember?" Dr. Riley put his face to the window and peered in. A woman laid on a table, her body profiled to him. Her legs were spread apart and in leather stirrups that hung from tall, thin chrome poles at the foot of the table. Her hands were both on her partially exposed stomach, which looked like an orange pumped with air, smoothing all the wrinkles and bumps of the peel out. Like an infant before the dried umbilical cord falls off, her naval was enormous and popped out of her belly. Without turning to look at the seated man , Dr. Riley called out in a loud voice to be heard over the noise of the ward.

"Most people live only once. Their lives follow a straight line through time, then come to an abrupt end. There are a few, however, whose lives follow a loop. They live forever, living the same lives over and over. A perpetual deja vu."

The man merely shook his head in silent scorn behind his newspaper. A baby's thin scream could be heard through the thick metal doors.

"Finally", the man said. Putting his newspaper down to meet the immanent nurse's visit, he frowned. Directly in front of the ward doors the old man was lying on the floor. His eyes were partially open and a small puddle of saliva had dripped from his lax mouth. The metal doors opened from within but were stopped after only a few inches by the prone body. After a few seconds, the door jerked open and a woman and man in white uniforms looked out.

The nurse asked, "Mr. Riley, what happened?" The man on the bench answered, "I don't know. I just looked up, and he was lying on the floor." Several nurses from inside of the ward raced out and kneeled at Dr. Riley's dead body. The nurse who had first found the body merely stepped over it and continued on to Mr. Riley, still seated on the bench. "Mr. Riley, you have a healthy baby boy. . ."

Copyright 1997 Brian A. Dukek