Time After Time

Monday

I love to watch you sleep on a while each morning. When you finally awake, you stretch like a god cat, before wiping the sleep from your eye. This is my favourite part of the day. A moment of peace before we rise and join the others on the hunt. Through our tent door, the last cool of the night slinks away, and the warm of Ra’s beauty knocks loud, insistently calling us both to the service of our Pharaoh, Ramses.

This has been our happy life these last seventeen years. Years that I wouldn’t change for all the gold in the great pyramid. Some men chase wealth, some yearn for power, but as I pick my Aish baladi bread from the table, I reluctantly leave you with the same thing that I have promised, each day since we met.

“Now I must go do my duty, but please know that I live only to return to your arms. For I will follow you until the end of time.”

As ever, you kiss me softly and smile. “As you have proven so many times before, my dear,” you say, and I both understand and don’t.

Our daily ritual completes as you hold up the charm that has hung eternally from your neck, and I kiss it once. On my return, this ritual will end with a double kiss. The ceremony is both familiar and new to me, each day.

The hunt party heads home and our bejewelled and gold decked lord seems content with today’s haul. He made five kills, and these beasts are carried off to be prepared for the evening feast. I’m hot, sweating, and tired, but there is a feeling of pleasure in both a good day done well, and joy that I course back home to you now.

“I’m home.” I enter our little tent and am surprised to see it empty of all except you. “Are we going somewhere?” I ask.

You smile. “It’s time to move on my dear.” You step forward with the charm held out for me.”

“I had better seek permission if we intend to go far,” I say, “For I have work in the morning,” but as we do each day, I step forward and kiss the charm twice.

Tuesday

I love to watch you sleep on a while each morning. When you finally awake, you stretch like an angry tabby, the cold morning light disturbing a deep deep slumber.  I adore how the frown leaves your brow and slowly, ever so slowly, a Cheshire grin lights up the room.

“What is on the agenda for today?” you ask through yawns.

“More of the same research. We’ve been stuck for months now. Albert is convinced there is a link to be found somewhere, but I’ll be damned if we can find it.” My mind had already turned to the equation that was scrolled on my chalk board at the university. It hurt my head to think of it, but along with the beauty that currently lay next to me, I thought of little else.

“You know dear,” you say, “Maybe Mr Einstein could investigate a link between space, time, and energy. There may be something there.”

“Oh dear,” I say, “Surely an idea that simple would have been……….” I am struck dumb. Twenty years of seminars, lectures and experiments, and the love of my life may just have moved physics on five decades. “Sweet god, I love you. I must run.”

I jump out of bed and head for the door.

“Dearest,” you shout, aren’t you forgetting something?”

I turn back. “Sorry,” I run over and kiss her soft lips. She holds up the silly charm that she has worn since I met her. I kiss it too.

“Thanks,” she said, “But I was thinking more about trousers.” I look down at my bare legs.

“Yes, but that is still only the second-best idea you’ve had today,” I say, making my way to the wardrobe.

Wednesday

I love to watch you sleep on a while each morning. When you finally awake, you stretch like an Eluvian Mog. Your vaguely feline frame is silhouetted by the bright blue morning light, filtering in through the window of our 712^th floor apartment in the Tokyo Bay Arcology. I scan back through the seventeen years hard graft that got us up this high in the building. Like all but the hereditary class, we started out on the lower floors. I chuckle thinking of our first rooms. A tiny cold space, below sea level. The windows had leaked constantly and the noise of the pumps made sleeping next to impossible. Well, for me anyway. You only ever have to close your eyes a minute, and it is as if your spirit leaves the galaxy.  I trace my finger round your mouth and watch the Io freighter launch into the summer sky. I’m a little bit proud of my work on the electron drive that will allow the ship to reach the Jovian lunar colony in under two days. Yet, I know well the mathematics would have never been solved without your insight. With little more than rudimentary education in quantum chromodynamics, you didn’t know the answers, but your insight into the questions that should be asked, was legendary. Or would have been, had you ever permitted me to let the world know of your role in the discoveries.

 “Don’t make it about me,” you said as you wrote yourself out of award acceptance speech after speech. A world at peace with itself and the three races we discovered in near by systems, owed you more than it would ever know.

As the rocket disappeared from view, and its hydrogen tail broke and filled the sky with cotton wool buds, I looke back at you and see that you are awake.

“Good morning, sleepy,” I say. It’s a lovely day and neither of us have to work. What do you fancy doing?”

I detect a cloud in your eye. You hold up a finger and I kiss the tip. “I have to go now,” you say.

“But it is our day off,” I reply. I am more than worried at the finality of your statement. In our seventeen glorious years together, other than work, we have never once spent a day apart.

“We both have to go back now,” you say. “It’s time.” We lie face to face on the bed but your soft smile is countered by my mask of concern.

“Back where?” I hear the whine in my own voice. “We’ve always been together. I don’t know what you are saying to me.”

You run your fingers through my hair and then hold the ever-present charm to my mouth. I draw my head away. “What’s happening. I really don’t understand.”

You lay a finger on my chin and turn my head back. “Darling, you say. I want you to kiss the charm now, but if you can tell me my name, you don’t have to.”

I lie stunned. How can this be? The woman I met and married all those years ago. The rock that my life was built upon, the air that I breathe, how is it possible that I do not know her name? “Am I ill?” I ask. “Surely dementia was cured decades ago. Let’s go see the doctor now. We can get this sorted.”

She pushed the charm against my lips once. “There is no cure for what you have right now. Not in your world anyway. Nor is there a cure for the condition that I suffer from. It really was never meant to be like this, I promise you.” She pulled the charm away, leant her head in and kissed me. “If there is a way, I will find it, my love,” she said and put the charm to my lips again. As she did, she whispered. “I am Cassea. Look for me in the night sky.”

Thursday

The soft beep of the five o’ clock alarm starts, and with each repetition, gets a little louder and a lot more insistent. I turn to switch it off and feel something is wrong. The space between me and the clock is vacant. But it has been vacant for the seventeen years since I left university and entered politics. Why would it feel so wrong today?

With the alarm subdued, the usual soft knock at the door follows.

“Come,” I barely managed to growl.

“Good morning, Mr President.” Jordan is a fabulous butler but he’s always so god damned breezy in the morning.

“I hate you,” I say, as I have every morning since the two of us took up our roles in the Whitehouse, seven years ago.

“Now sir, is that because you are a grumpy pig or is it that you are racist and hate all black men?”

“Take your pick,” I reply, ceding the moral high ground while pulling the duvet back over my head. “You do remember that I am the second black president. Not sure you can beat me with that stick, my good man.”

“Two black presidents and I still don’t have my donkey,” he said, alluding to the con the Union army used to form black regiments in the civil war.

“Well here’s the deal, bugger off for a couple of hours and let me sleep. I’ll get you a herd of the damned things.”

“Tempting as that offer may be, sir. You have a meeting of the joint chiefs at six AM. Now get this coffee down you and get into the shower before I drag you there by the heels,” Jordan said in mock anger. The two of us had been friends since school. Jordan went into catering as I took the road to politics. Now President, the world called me the most powerful man on the planet, but between the two of us, both knew well that Jordan was the alpha male.

“Yes sir.” I said, sat up and saluted.

With the Middle East crisis settled, and relations between the US, China, and Russia on better terms than ever before, I believe that I had earned my Nobel peace prize. However, If there was a downside to global harmony, it made these security meetings as dull as ditchwater.

“Yes Mr president, Europe is booming, peace is sprouting across the middle east and China is opening up nicely since they agreed to dispose of all nuclear weapons. Apart from this asteroid that may pass rather close to earth, we have very little to worry about,” the general said.

Only partially aware of the conversation round the table, I had been looking through Tinder on my phone. For some strange reason, today, I’d woken feeling more single than usual. It felt pretty much the same as the last time I got dumped, back at college. There was a woman shaped hole in my life. Something drew me from the screen.

“Asteroid?” I suddenly perked up.

The general did well to hide his annoyance at all the important items had been ignored, but this bit of frittery drew his commander’s attention. “Yes, sir. Rather strange one this. The boffins didn’t even detect it until last night. It’s not expected to hit the earth, but it may scrape the top of the atmosphere. Should be quite a light show.”

“Not Siberia again, I hope,” I asked. “Somewhere I can go take a look?”

“The general punched some keys on his pad. “You’re in luck, it’s going right over Washington. Just about midnight tonight.

With the staffers and politicians on the grass, and the public on the pavement, an expectant crowd gathered both sides of the Whitehouse fence. Annoying my security team intensely, I made time to shake hands with people through the iron railings. There was am excited atmosphere. The asteroid was expected any minute.

“Thanks for coming out, folks. I better get back to the house before my security chief has a heart attack,” I said and waved to the well-wishers while crossing the lawn. Half way there, I realised that I’d gained an extra shadow, and on looking up I saw the light from the astral body as it entered the planet’s upper atmosphere.

“It’s started,” said one of the young astronomers that had first detected the visitor with his home telescope. This really embarrassed the professionals and their multi-million dollar arrays.

“What have you decided to name it?” I asked.

The young man blushed and then bowed slightly. “Eh… Sir… if it is okay, I want to name it after my granma. She was called Cassea.”

Something akin to the tolling of a bell sounded in my head. “What a lovely name,” I said to the young man that now stood with a blank expression on his face. “You okay, man?” I said, but the lad didn’t move.

Suddenly, I was aware of the silence, and looking around, not one of the hundreds of watchers that stood either side of the fence moved a muscle. As I looked skyward, directly over my head, the fireball sat, silent and still.

“It’s beautiful, no?” came a voice from behind. A voice both strange and somehow known to me. I turned and gazed into eyes never seen before, but I knew them better than my mother’s.

“Cassea,” I said, unsure how I knew her name, or why I understood that I had loved her all my life.

“You remembered,” she said and smiled. Your cure was simple, but my condition is so much more complex. For I was sent to you before. My given task was to evaluate that your people are ready to join the universe.”

“We’re ready,” I said, a little too eagerly.

She put a finger to my lips. “You’re on the road, but it will be two hundred years before all the ills of this planet have been cured. Together, you and I woke on that day. That day yesterday, two hundred years from now.” She touched my forehead and a hundred lifetimes with this woman flooded back into memory.

“You were the signpost. A beacon that would light the way for humankind. Your job is done. They are on course now. That will not change.”

“Then why are you back?” I asked.

“It was never meant to happen, but I fell in love with the hunter, with the mathematician, and with the scientist. Your people’s destiny goes on, but you don’t.” In a familiar action, she took my chin and turned my head. About six feet away, stood a frozen man, gun held up, pointing at my head. “You were chosen because you wouldn’t be around long enough that, even if you recalled my visit, you could never pollute the timeline. You die today, my love.”

I sighed, “I think I always knew.” I looked back up at the frozen fire, hanging above the world. Somehow, I knew my fate was irrevocably tied to this heavenly visitor. The scientists only knew it existed for a day, but I have waited for this all my life.”

The wind, like the planet stood still, but a chill breeze ran between us, and she raised a hand to push a strand of hair from her eyes. “Then are you consoled that your fate lies here, today and for ever after? Is this the destiny that you choose?”

I looked at the killer and then turned to Cassea.  “I think I made you a promise once.” I always keep my promises.

Friday week.

Jordan woke to the dull grey morning and incessant rain. The weather suited his mood. He had the onerous duty of burying his best friend yesterday. Had he woken to sunshine today, it would be just plain wrong.

Love really wasn’t a word that Jordan and Elliot used when talking about each other in life, but since he was gone, each morning, Jordan touched the man’s photo on his bedside table and whispered, “Love you man.”

He got out of bed feeling ten years older than a week ago. “Coffee will do the trick,” he said and headed for the kitchen. The blinds were closed but as he put the kettle on, he heard noises from his front garden. “Must be the dust bin men,” he guessed and pulled the string to open the blind.

“Well I’ll be….”

On his formerly manicured lawn, stood twenty to thirty donkeys, happily chomping on the very expensive grass.

Jordan looked to the sky and laughed.