A Regretful Landing

The end, when it came, happened while he was making coffee. 

An innocuous act, one he carried out close to a dozen times each day, idly staring at the whiteboard he set up in his kitchen, so as to not miss out on a chance to scribble equations while his refreshment brewed. 

His phone chimed, forgotten on the counter behind him. Initially, his surprise was that it still held a charge - when was the last time he’d even brought it back to the lab with him? - but that bemused observation quickly shifted when he glanced over the notifications lined up on his home screen. All from various news apps, all announcing the same thing. 

With trembling hands, he opened one. Over the hissing and gurgling of the brewing coffee, the anchor’s tinny voice contained noticeable awe and amazement.

“-and if you’re just joining us, our top story once again is the announcement out of Trondheim that a successful venture through time itself has been accomplished…”

The battery died, the phone shutting down. A moment later, the coffee finished, and silence fell over the kitchen. It was over. Everything was done. 

He’d failed. 

_____________________________

For Nicholas Easom, life after that moment darkened, shadowed beneath a heavy curtain of grief. Initially, he avoided any further information, the details too painful to bear. His life’s work, the achievement he’d pushed towards for a half-century, completed by someone else. 

And not just anyone, but a rank amateur like Khoroushi! Oh yes, Nicholas knew, the moment he heard the news, who worked out of Trondheim. When the multi-billion dollar complex there began construction, he’d worked for months preparing a pitch to apply to be the lead researcher of the team being assembled. 

Instead, the politicians picked Farhad Khoroushi, charmed no doubt by his affability and friendly demeanor. It certainly couldn’t have been his scientific acumen, Nicholas thought with a grunt, staring at the blank whiteboard while he ate from a packet of crackers. The man was a dilettante, but a captivating one. Nicholas had lost dozens of grants to him over the years, committees and backers dazzled by his smiles and speeches. Someone like Khoroushi was never serious about the science, too caught up with unimportant people and their problems. 

It was pathetic. 

As the days stretched into weeks, however, Nicholas ended his avoidance and began voraciously consuming every bit of information he could gather on the Trondheim team’s achievement. He had to know how Khoroushi did it, how it could be that Nicholas himself wasn’t the one to crack the problem. He was smarter, more experienced, older; he’d published hundreds of journal articles, carried out groundbreaking studies, pushed the boundaries of theoretical physics beyond what anyone imagined! How could he have failed, after all of that?

It should have been him.

_____________________________

The weeks passed into months. News around the first voyage through time slowed as the immediacy faded and no further trips were announced. Nicholas spiraled into a grinding, desperate depression. 

Then, the regrets began. 

Oh, how he hated them. Nicholas long maintained, for the entirety of his life to this point in fact, that regrets were worthless. He’d sneered at those who waxed poetic over what could have, what should have been. Dwelling on errors and mistakes was for those who lacked the agency and intelligence to learn from them and do better. Regret was a feeling for simple, weak-minded people. The kind who stocked shelves, made him his coffee, cooked his food. For people that weren’t as capable. 

The kind of person Nicholas supposed he was, now. 

His lab - connected to his home - fell into disrepair and disuse. He’d lost contact or been cut off from most of his colleagues years ago, but the few emails and phone calls he received piled up in unread and unnoticed digital stacks. What even was the point, any more? He was an old man, not long for this world. Soon, he’d be forgotten, his accomplishments and degrees vanishing to dust while the names of lesser scientists were gilded into history. 

And so, Nicholas discovered regret, bathed in it, and lived with it as a constant companion. 

There were many things he thought about, things he might have done differently. Nicholas never failed to realize he was unkind, abrasive, and arrogant; he simply didn’t care. When one possessed the sort of intelligence and ability he had, though, personality hardly mattered. 

It turned out, though, to matter a great deal when it came to finding other scientists to work with him, or convincing backers to offer him grants, or labs to allow him to lead studies. That was why Khoroushi had the most advanced physics laboratory ever built, and why Nicholas was conducting his research out of his home. 

The idea was galling, that manners and feelings might have been what allowed lesser minds to achieve more than he. That taking the time to treat unimportant people well could have led him to a different end, to success rather than this ignominious end. 

Still, Nicholas did possess a great intellect, and with nothing else to do, he sat quietly and ruminated on his failures. Day after day, he sat in his kitchen and stared at the blank whiteboard, ordering himself to come to terms with what was, what would never be. To accept his failure, and own the role he’d played in bringing it about. 

He demanded this of himself, but as the months piled into a year, mostly Nicholas found himself thinking of Lia.

_____________________________

Never an overly sentimental person, Nicholas had little use for personal relationships. His parents ensured he had every educational opportunity, but once he’d made his way into the world, he worked with a single-minded determination. 

Science consumed him, an enrapturing mistress that dominated his being. He fell out of contact with his family, brothers and sisters no longer making the effort to reach out as birthdays, holidays, marriages, and eventually funerals passed by with no recognition from him. Nicholas never particularly cared; he assumed if they needed material help they would have asked, and he had no affection nor emotional assistance to offer. They had their lives, simple and toilsome, and he had his research, never the twain shall meet. 

It was little different for everyone else in his life. Being who he was, how he was, personal relationships were few and far between; romantic ones even more rare. While others chased women or men, Nicholas chased discovery. 

But then there was Lia Porini, and for the first time in his life, Nicholas had blinked. 

She was a statistician, a graduate student he’d consulted for a study he was carrying out. An Argentine national, they’d met when he briefly pursued a tenure-track position, hoping a university’s backing would further his ability to generate financial backing for his research.

Lia was mousy, dark, drowning in glasses too big for her face. Her appearance matched her personality - she was a quiet woman, kind and giving, and somehow patient enough to tolerate him. They’d had a brief romance that lasted nearly two years, and then he’d left, abandoning both Lia and the university system to seek out more lucrative backing in the private sector. 

Nicholas stared at the whiteboard in his kitchen and thought of her, day after day, for hours at a time, as though it were a screen replaying their moments together. He… loved her, he realized with a certain degree of surprise. He’d never said it, never even contemplated it while they were together, but reminiscing now it seemed so clear. 

Over and over, he replayed the moment of consequence, when he shoved Lia away without the slightest consideration. The whiteboard faded from his vision while Nicholas viscerally relived that instance again, countless times. 

It was a brilliant spring day, bright and crisp. They sat in a small cafe near campus, planning to make a weekend of his next conference presentation. 

“I defend my thesis in two weeks,” she said, the shine of the sunlight making her dark hair seem to glow when she tucked it behind her ear. “Did you decide on that job offer?”

“Yes, I’m going to take it. Their facility is top-of-the-line.” His younger self sipped from his cup. “Nervous about your defense?”

Her hand touched his. Softly, hesitantly. “Nicholas, it’s been more than a month. Can we talk about it again?” 

His brow creased, and Nicholas remembered the way irritation rose inside him. At that moment, he’d been thinking how Lia was always pestering him about plans for the future, for their relationship. There was some study he’d wanted to mull over, an idea he’d had that needed refining, and didn’t she know he liked to brainstorm while he had his coffee? 

Forty-two years later, Nicholas couldn’t even recall what the idea was; he never ended up fleshing the project out. Nonetheless, at that moment, he’d stared at Lia and made a decision. He chose science.

Oh, it didn’t happen straight away. But the gears shifted and his categorization of Lia changed. She wasn’t his partner, not any longer. She was an obstacle, standing between himself and greatness. 

Two months later, she left him. 

The whiteboard glinted as his focus came back to the present, its surface barren and empty. 

Yes, Nicholas knew regret.

_____________________________

“Dr. Easom, it’s great to see you again,” he said. 

Nicholas nodded, shaking his extended hand. “I appreciate you giving me a look around.”

Bin Kyong’s pride was apparent as they entered the Trondheim laboratory. Nicholas hired him as a postdoc right out of school eleven years prior, seeing a lot of himself in the young man. Kyong was ambitious, ruthless, eager to utilize Nicholas’ fading reputation to try and jump into a senior position elsewhere. Successfully so, judging by his current employment at Trondheim.

“I didn’t expect it to be so empty.”

“Well, the Norwegians suspended operations following the second trip. Claimed workplace safety concerns, for better or worse. You still work out of America, yes?”

“That’s correct. ‘Second trip’? I only heard about one.”

Kyong swiped his badge at a security door, admitting them into a central chamber. “Our first attempt wasn’t publicized. You’re familiar with the Tunguska event, in 1908?”

“Yes, the asteroid-” Nicholas stopped. “That was you?”

Kyong nodded, wearing a wan smile. “From that, we created a device that managed the energy discharge more effectively. Once it was ready, Dr. Khoroushi insisted on being the first to attempt a ‘manned journey’, as it were.”

“I would have done the same. Achieving the impossible, renowned beyond any that came before-”

“No,” the younger man interrupted. “He was worried, afraid it wouldn’t work. He didn’t want anyone to lose their lives at his order.” Kyong stared at him, quiet for a long moment. “Dr. Khoroushi always spoke very highly of you. He said you were his favorite professor.”

Nicholas cleared his throat. “So how does it work?”

Kyong explained the design and operation of the machine in great detail, freely sharing the formulae behind its engineering now that the patents had been filed and the papers published. Nicholas had scoured the lab’s employment roster, seeking an ‘in’ before finally landing on Kyong. He’d dangled a story about securing a grant and needing a co-author for the project. From there, talking himself into a personal tour of his associate’s current workplace was little trouble. 

“-and for ease of use, GPS coordinates are entered here. The distances are auto-formulated to account for destination and time period.”

Nicholas’ mind spun. It was brilliant in its simplicity, and he naturally compared it to his own work over the years. He’d been close, most assuredly, but his focus on elegant and complex solutions handicapped him in this instance. There’s no way he’d have come to this on his own. “What exactly happened to Farhad?”

“He carried a piece of metal irradiated with a specific isotope to test whether humans could successfully complete the journey. According to contemporary news sources from 1994, an unidentified man’s body was discovered a few dozen meters from his destination, bearing that artifact.”

“So the discharge device you designed…?”

Kyong shrugged. “Maybe it shorted out, or maybe it could only manage the energy for a few minutes before overloading. We don’t know.”

His eyes locked onto the line of prototype devices, the ones intended to ‘safely’ manage the energy required to travel through time. “Do you still drink coffee?”

Kyong laughed. “I do, though I hope you’ve cut back. Come, the canteen is this way.”

They were nearly at the exit when Nicholas struck, snatching the badge off of Kyong’s lab coat and shoving the younger man forward before closing the door behind him. 

Nicholas paused just long enough to ensure the locks had actually engaged before turning back towards the machine, ignoring Kyong’s cries for him to open the door. Grabbing hold of one of the prototypes, Nicholas pulled off his coat before strapping it on, hoping to hide the awkward looking machine beneath his coat when he replaced it. 

For all the urgency of the situation, he felt nothing but a quiet serenity as he typed in the date and coordinates for his journey. It wouldn’t do to make a mistake now. Double-checking the numbers, he engaged the countdown and moved forward into the machine’s ‘launchpad’. Ten seconds. Hopefully Kyong hadn’t found help yet. 

Idly counting down in his head, Nicholas patted the breast pocket of his coat, feeling for the message he was to deliver. 

‘Here we go.’

_____________________________

It was over in a blink. One moment he was in Norway, in present day; the next, flat on his back in America, nearly a half-century in the past. 

A burst of searing agony accompanied his landing, easing in the next heartbeat as the prototype he wore kicked in, heating up to an uncomfortable degree. Nicholas tried to get to his feet as quickly as he was able, but the impact of the journey and his advanced age slowed him more than he’d anticipated. 

Finally getting his feet under him, he staggered out of the alley. Wincing at the bright sunlight, he was nearly struck by a car as he crossed the street, eyes locked onto the cafe he approached. 

The door jingled as he entered. There they were, there she was, even more beautiful than he remembered. He took two shambling steps towards them, pulling the neatly folded note out of his pocket. 

He’d always been a notetaker, jotting down random ideas on any available surface for as long as he could remember. This message was short, just two words, signed with his favorite series of the Fibonacci sequence, six numbers he often mentally repeated to clear his mind. 

Nicholas had to get this to his younger self. It was the only solution, the only way to correct his mistakes, to make it all worthwhile, to establish some sort of meaning. 

The device he wore continued to heat up, searing into his flesh. The metallic components must be white-hot, the thermoregulation quickly failing. Nicholas recognized the problem almost immediately, the solution to mitigate the issue springing to mind. 

Yes! That was it! Trondheim failed because they hadn’t experienced the journey, didn’t have enough data to understand the issue at play! But he understood, and he now had the missing pieces that Khoroushi had discovered. 

Lia tucked her hair behind her ear. The moment was nearly upon them! 

Gasping from the pain, the smell of burnt flesh stinging his nostrils, Nicholas nearly knocked a waitress over, fumbling for the pen the girl held. His hands shaking, body vibrating from the burning torment, he quickly began to scribble formulae onto the note, desperately making the additions that would unlock the secrets of time travel for his younger self. 

He could still have it all. He would have it all. There would be no regrets, Nicholas was a scientist, he had a solution and he would carry it ou-

_____________________________

“Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“Um, no, I don’t think so.” 

The policeman looked down at his notes, then patted her on the back and stepped away to speak with a firefighter. Her manager motioned her over, the two of them entering the evacuated cafe together. 

“You alright?”

She shrugged, equal parts stunned, bewildered, and horrified at what just happened. One moment she’d been refilling Table Seven’s water, and the next that crazy old man almost knocked her over before spontaneously combusting. “Listen, I, uh, I don’t know if I can work here anymore.”

He sighed. “Take some time away. I- I can’t imagine having a front-row seat for something like that, but promise me you’ll give it a few days before you make a decision, okay?”

She reluctantly nodded, though she doubted her mind would change. “Okay.” 

On her way out, her eyes were irresistibly drawn to the spot it happened. She should’ve called out sick today; something she’d no doubt regret in the future. 

A soggy, crumpled note, its edges blackened from the flames before getting doused with water sat on Table Seven. She cocked her head, eyeing the strange series of numbers, what looked like mathematical equations, and, at the top, two words in neat, even handwriting. 

Choose Her.

“Crazy old man,” she muttered, slinging her purse over her shoulder and walking out of the cafe.

FIN