A Lifetime of Questions

At the click of a button, Luca found himself in an empty lecture hall at the top of the staircase. He stared at the device in his hand, wondering where exactly it had taken him, and more importantly, when. At least a dozen rows of seats and crescent-shaped tables surrounded him. Each row had fewer seats approaching the stage where a large chalkboard spanned the front wall.

And then he saw her. Off to the side, there she stood behind a podium, rifling through sheets of paper. At least he thought it was her. The distance between them made it hard to tell. He moved closer just to be sure, practically floating down the stairs with his eyes locked on her. 

His tread must’ve been incredibly quiet because the moment he entered her field of vision, she lightly jumped.

“Oh!” She looked up at him with a startled expression that quickly neutralised. “I didn’t realise anyone was still here,” she said. 

It was her, there was no doubt in his mind. She looked exactly like she did in the photos, prettier even. Behind her thinly framed glasses were piercing dark eyes. Her smooth black hair curled behind her ears and down the collar of her blouse. He could barely believe his eyes.

“Did you have questions about the lesson?”

He suddenly remembered he wasn’t just looking at a picture, but engaging in a real life conversation. He failed to respond, but the raising of her eyebrows made him realise he’d already responded with the look of confusion he’d made.  

“Were you not in my class?” she asked as she fixed a binder clip onto the stack of papers in her hand. 

He shook his head timidly, closing his mouth realising it had been slightly agape the entire time.

“Oh!” she said again, but in a eureka sort of fashion. “You must be the student assistant Professor Hart spoke about.” 

He was milliseconds from shaking his head again, but stopped himself to reevaluate. Luca wondered if he took the honest route and told her who he really was, if she’d be startled and leave. He couldn’t let that happen, let his one chance slip away so easily. He only had a couple of hours here and he wasn’t going to let any time go to waste.

“Yes.”

She grabbed the book bag sitting on the chair next to her and slung it over her shoulder. With her stack of papers in one arm, she made her way around the podium and extended a hand to Luca. 

“Emily,” she grinned.

“Luca.” He returned the same smile. 

As they shook hands, he caught a glimpse of the top righthand corner of one of the sheets of paper in her arm. January 17, 2000, it read. Realising just how far from home he was, he wished so much that he could pull her into a hug and stay there until he had to leave. He fought that urge as he let go of her hand.

“You’re a bit earlier than I expected,” she glanced at her watch. “I was about to go on my lunch. You can join me if you’d like!”

~

Cool breezes made their way into the quad, but the heat of the sun kept them warm on the bench that they’d settled on.

“So what year are you?” Emily asked as she pulled a plastic-wrapped sandwich out of her book bag and took a bite. 

“Third,” he said without a thought. It was the first thing that came to mind. 

“For real?” she said with a hand over her mouth full of food. “I thought for sure you were a freshman.”

What was he thinking? Third year? He was barely a legal adult and looked it too. 

“I look young for my age,” he replied in a poor attempt to maintain his cover.   

She stared at him a bit longer, chewing her food, as though to guess his age, or to wait for him to say. But once she swallowed her chewed bits, she gave up and returned to her sandwich. 

“What’s your major?” she asked as she took another bite. 

“Quantum mechanics.” Easy answer. That was her major. He assumed the student she was supposed to meet would be working in her field. 

“I thought you couldn’t specialize that early.”

Shit. 

“No… what I meant is that I want to study quantum mechanics… later on.”

“So you’re in physics then.”

“…Yeah.”

He fiddled with the device in his jacket pocket, nervously running his fingers around the buttons and grooves hoping she wouldn’t catch onto him. No more questions about me, he thought. He came here to ask her questions after all. He only had about an hour left at most. He wished he could jump right into it, ask her about life, love, purpose and everything in between. But he knew he couldn’t, so he started off small. 

“What kind of sandwich is that?”

“Chicken and cream cheese. With jalapeños.”

He lit up. “My dad used to make me those for lunch as a kid.”

“No way! It’s not a very popular sandwich combo,” she said. “My lab friend teases me every time I bring it.”

“My friends too.”

“Do you want one?” She pulled a second chicken and cream cheese plastic-wrapped sandwich out of her book bag. “I have two.” 

Everyone told Luca she was generous. He finally got to see it firsthand.

“Sure,” he said as she handed him the sandwich. It tasted exactly how his dad used to make it. It was a staple in their family, but somewhere through the years, they’d forgotten.  

“Do you always carry around two lunches?” he asked midway through his lunch. 

“The second was for my boyfriend.” She looked out into the distance. “He was supposed to meet for lunch. He emailed me last minute to cancel.”

“Did something come up?”

“Doubt it.” 

Her tone was harsh. Like there was more to be said. 

“Oh.” Luca sensed he’d maybe crossed a boundary, asked too much. He was a stranger to her after all. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” she replied. “We had a fight about it the other day and things have been kinda rough.”

“What about?” he asked, realising he might’ve sounded too forthright, “…if you don’t mind me asking.”

She was silent for a moment but then all at once, her words left her mouth like they’d itching to escape.

“He wants to get married and settle down and I’m not ready for that. I mean I want to get my PhD and that’s gonna take another couple of years. And I wanna work in my field or teach or I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet. I just don’t wanna—“

She caught her breath while he took it all in. He wondered about the boyfriend, if he was who he thought he was.

“Ugh TMI, am I right?” she laughed at herself as she stood up with her book bag. 

“I don’t mind,” he said. And he didn’t. He liked hearing her rant and letting her confide in him. She could never say too much. 

“Do you have a lab coat?” she asked suddenly. . 

“No.”

“Hmm,” she muttered. “That’s fine, I can show you around the lab without one.”

It wasn’t far from where they’d sat. She unlocked the door to reveal a room no different from the labs he’d seen at his high school. Lab benches surrounded the room in a familiar fashion, the only difference being the high tech machines at every corner. She walked him over to the bench with an incredible amount of clutter.

“This is my area,” she said. “Don’t mind the mess.”

Parts and wires and papers were scattered across the space. He recalled all the times his grandmother had complained about his messy room. She’d say he was just like her. 

“Maggots must love you,” he joked in his grandmother’s voice. 

“What?” she asked, although Luca had trouble figuring out if she hadn’t heard him or if she didn’t like what she heard. He was starting to think the latter, but repeated it anyway. He nervously fiddled with the device in his pocket again as he heard the hesitance in her forced laugh.

“So this is our section,” she waved her hands around to direct his attention to half of the room. “The other side belongs to another physics research group.”

“So what’s our research on?”

She glanced at him sideways. “Time travel.” 

Luca knew that, but only after he said it did he realise his alias would’ve probably known that too. 

“What’s the theory?”

“Hart didn’t tell you much, did he?”

He shook his head, nervously. 

“Our working theory is that our timeline is fixed. This means no amount of backwards time travel can change the future. If someone were to go back in time and return, their presence in the past would have already been accounted for. Make sense?”

He nodded. He’d already understood that to a degree. His dad had relayed a bunch of it to him, as much as he could anyway. He mainly liked hearing her talk. Especially about her passions. Her eyes lit up the more she spoke. She continued about the theory and its details, some of which he had no idea. She showed him her prototype travel device. It was chunky and heavy, about the size of an old television set, though with less screen and more buttons. Her and her team had already figured out a way to go back seconds in time, but hoped to go much further one day. 

Then suddenly at the end of her spiel, she glared intensely into his eyes, almost to look for a specific reaction. He responded only with a blank and clueless stare, but grew increasingly uneasy, fiddling with the device some more. Her gaze was piercing, wearing him down with each second. It was as though she could read his thoughts, asking her what was wrong. 

“You’re not a student here, are you?”

“Wha—? Why would you say that?”

“You seem to know very little about physics. You answer every question I ask incorrectly. You walk like you’ve never seen this campus before. And not to mention, you’re a third year physics student with no lab coat.”

He didn’t know what to say. Or maybe he did, but didn’t know how to say it. 

“What have you been fiddling with in your jacket pocket all afternoon?”

“Nothing.”

She held her hand out like a disappointed parent.

He took it out of his pocket, reading 15 minutes on the countdown before handing it over. 

“What is this?” she asked as she examined it. It was just about the size and shape of a calculator but with fewer buttons. 

Before he could think to answer, her eyes widened. First at the device, but then at Luca.

“You’re not from here.”

She paused not for an answer, but to connect dots.

“You know me somehow. Your father makes you my chicken and cream cheese. I’ve never heard anyone say the ‘maggot’ phrase, except for my own mother. Who are you?”

With less than fifteen minutes left, he figured there was no use in lying anymore. And her accusations left him with no other choice. 

“I’m your son.”

The anger and confusion that had painted her face washed away in an instant, and was replaced with shock. Her eyes left him and danced around the room. He tried to imagine what thoughts were racing through her mind. Maybe every interaction between them was like a puzzle piece in her mind, making up the picture that was this moment. Had she some idea of the truth the whole time? What if the truth wasn’t to her liking? 

She then returned her focus to Luca, but with a calm demeanour. 

“How many years from now?” she asked.

“25.”

“Incredible.” she said, eyes as bright as the sun. “Who made this?” She held up the device.

“You did.”

“Hmm,” she muttered, as though impressed with herself. “Do you know how?”

“No. By the time I learned how to speak, you weren’t there for me to ask.”

“Oh.”

She sat with the idea of her imminent death. An inescapable fate that was suddenly closer than she’d previously thought. Knowing her, she was probably making calculations in her head, figuring out how many years were left for her. 

“My dad said you left it for me,” he tried to change the subject. “Waited till my sixteenth birthday to give it to me so I could come see you.”

The smile she returned was bittersweet, but hopeful.

“What can it do?” she asked. 

“It can only be used once to make one round trip,” he said. “There’s a time limit, though. I have a few minutes left before it sends me back.”

She sat down on a stool by her lab bench, and he dragged one over from another bench to join her.

“There’s so much I wanna ask you,” she said. “A lifetime of questions and no time to ask them.”

“I shouldn’t have lied about who I was. Maybe you could have asked me all your questions and I could have asked you mine. But I was worried about scaring you away.”

“You probably would have, with the pressure of having to choose between settling down and realising my passions ,” she chuckled. “It’s nice to know I eventually did both. In my own time.”

“Em!” a young man suddenly came through the doorway. A bright smile grew on Emily’s face as she headed towards him. Luca could feel the heat radiating off of them as they spoke to one another. There was something familiar about them together, about him. The more he stared at him, the more he realised who the man was.

“Who’s this?” the man said in his direction.

“This is Luca,” she replied to him, before turning to speak to Luca. “This is the lab friend I spoke about.”

“No way!” the man said. “My abuelito’s name was Luca.” 

His father shook his hand before directing his attention back to Emily. 

“You spoke about me?” he asked her.

“Don’t flatter yourself…”

Getting just a glimpse of his parents falling in love was worth the trip alone. He gave them space, retreating back to the stools, but very soon, him and Emily were alone again. He assumed she’d sent him away.

“One minute!” she said, holding up his device.

They sat together, eyes locked on one another. A lifetime of questions ran through his mind, none being able to escape his mouth. He wished time would stand still so he could say everything that ever came or would ever come to mind. He looked his beautiful mother in the eyes wishing he could bring her back with him. No photo could replicate the beam of radiance sitting in front of him. He dreaded the coming days, knowing he’d miss her more than he ever had before.

And then without warning, she reached her arms out and wrapped them around him. He’d never hugged her before, and yet it felt so familiar. Like a repressed memory of the first couple years of his life. Suddenly, he was a baby again, being soothed by the hold of his mother. His mind was at ease, hushed to a silence. Nothing else mattered except this. And they stayed in that hug until he had to leave.