Get To The Interview On Time

Charlie felt like his heart could explode at any moment.

Four weeks of exercising every morning at six a.m. hadn’t prepared him for the late arrival of the early train. Last night’s rain as well as his dreams of getting a better job both slipped down the drain. As the city’s runoff emptied into the sewer, his legs pumped, shouting at him in agony as he ran on. His best-and only-dress shirt, tie, and khakis had stains from his sweat, and his undershirt had soaked through. His feet shouted at him from the unforgiving concrete pressing blisters into his feet, unprepared for running while clad in dress shoes that had no give. His freshly combed hair, sculpted into place according to every how-to-look-professional guide on the internet, flapped in the breeze.

Bodies jerked out of the way as they saw the man running towards them. Hands went over mouths, eyes turned down in disparaging glares at the disheveled state of him.

Ultimtech had called him in for an interview at nine. Eight years of schooling and multiple internships had led to the phone call of his dreams. All he’d had to do was ace the interview at nine. Instead, it was already six past nine, and he had more than four city blocks to go. All the other companies had offered positions moving not at a snail’s pace, but rather, almost glacial.

I’ve probably already blown past their patience, he thought, and slammed head-on into Failure-ville.

A bus was pulling to a stop so he pressed his taxed heart, already beating faster than he thought he could handle, into further service. With burning legs and screaming lungs, he managed to put a hand on the door frame just in time to catch the driver off-guard.

“H…hey!” he cried, forcing his way onto the bus. “Just a…minute!”

He flashed his debit card onto the fare reader, and the bus driver shot him an annoyed stare and thumbed him towards the back.

“Be on time, buddy,” the driver warned.

Finally sitting, he gasped huge gulps of air and shook his head, wiping his brow on a napkin he saw discarded on the seat next to him.

“Didja hear about the time travel stuff?” someone had said.

“Aw, that’s a rumor,” argued someone else. “Can’t believe that horse-puckey. Those articles will run away with ya if you let ‘em.”

Charlie wished at that moment he had time travel, or at least the ability to go back to last night and make sure his phone alarm was set for seven a.m. instead of p.m. At least then, he’d have woken up on time and wouldn’t be drenched in his own sweat after having run five blocks.

“You okay, mister?”

Charlie looked over and saw a young boy standing by his seat. “No,” he admitted. “I’m running late.”

“Well,” the boy declared, a cheery expression on his face, “I got faith in you!”

He thanked the boy and the boy moved on. The bus pulled through an intersection that turned red just a hair too late, and he thanked whatever deities reigned above. Another two blocks passed. He pulled the cord and the bus rumbled to a stop at the futuristic office building.

Stepping off, he lowered his head in frustration, still certain of his impending denial. Every video and training course he’d gone through in college told him the one thing that for certain killed a job interview was tardiness.

“Hi there!” the woman at the reception desk introduced. “May I help you?”

Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out his identification. “I…I got an interview,” he said.

She checked her computer. He felt like his soul would tear its way out of his body once the polite frown indicated his sunken chances. Already he pictured the bar he’d slink off to and drown his sorrows at.

A smile sprinted onto her face. “Yes,” she said. “Third floor, room eight-sixty-two.”

She handed him a visitor’s badge, which he took.

He stared at it in disbelief, then thanked her and strolled over to the elevator. Inside, he pushed the button and the vessel crept up to the eighth floor. When the doors pulled open, a sea of businessmen in suits comingling with scientists in lab coats parted, and he strolled down the hall to the room his interview would take place in.

“Welcome,” a friendly, familiar voice he couldn’t place called out. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m terribly…”

“Sorry you’re late?” interrupted the interviewer.

“Yeah, I’m so sorry,” Charlie said. He let the moment pass, and stared at the interviewer for a long moment.

This drew the man’s attention, and he gave a confused expression back. “I’m sorry, is something wrong?”

This immediately snapped Charlie out of his staring. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “No, not at all.” He chuckled as he sat down. “You just kinda remind me of someone.”

“Mm-hmm,” the interviewer replied, pulling up the documents on the computer. “Anyway, Charlie Rassmussen, you’ve applied for the position of Applied Research & Development in our new quantum energies department.” He looked over the documents on-screen. “Your grades are exceptional, and your internships at Mothan Technological and Ruthark Industries gave you glowing reviews.” He folded his hands together on the desk and stared front-facing at the young man. “Why do you want to work at Ultimtech?”

God, I just can’t help but think this guy looks familiar, Charlie thought, collecting his words together.

“If I’m totally honest,” Charlie said, “it’s because I heard this company is going places no one else is going. That means growth like no one else. I want to go there.”

The interviewer, whom Charlie noticed looked kind of like his late father at the age of about forty or so, gave a nod. “What do you think of time?”

Charlie flinched at the question. “I think it’s very important to a company,” he spouted off, following his instructors’ advice never to let a question linger without an answer.

The interviewer shifted into neutral at the answer. “Yes, yes,” he said, a hint of annoyance in his tone, “but what do you think of it?”

“I’m fascinated by it,” Charlie admitted. “Ever since I watched all those time travel movies as a kid, I always pondered the paradoxes and how they would work in the real world.” He paused, trying to read the interviewer’s expression. When he couldn’t, he continued. “I never really thought of it as possible, but I always felt like if it was, quantum energies would be where they’d be.”

Just then, the door burst open. “Doctor R?” a voice called out.

Charlie looked over and saw a young woman, nervousness crawling across her face, holding a small tablet computer in her hand. The interviewer sighed. “I thought I told you I’d scheduled…!”

“I know!” she retorted. “But it’s urgent!”

The interviewer raised a hand at Charlie. “Forgive me,” he admitted, “I’m going to have to deal with this.”

He left, and a good minute and a half passed before he returned. When he did, Charlie noticed the man patting his hair back into proper configuration. Heh, he thought, nice to see someone else worries about their hair looking right like I do.

“Everything okay?” Charlie asked.

The man nodded. “Yes, problem is dealt with,” he said. “Anyway, I really appreciate your candor about time.”

“Sir?”

The man paused and looked straight at him. “Yes?”

Charlie clasped his hands together in front of his lips, breathing in as he steeled his wits about him. “This is going to sound like the mother of all stupid questions,” he admitted, “but do I know you?”

All he got for his question was a tilted head gesture and a confused look. He sighed and laughed at the absurdity. “Oh, it’s just that my dad always used to call me ‘Mister R’ as a nickname and it reminded me of him.”

The interviewer stared straight ahead as the pause became awkward. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Would you save him if you could?”

This hit Charlie like a baseball to the back of the head. “Oh,” he asked, “you mean like time travel?”

The interviewer nodded. “Just a hypothetical,” he said.

Charlie pondered it. “No,” he admitted, shaking his head. “No, because the man knew his time was up. He’d smoked his whole life, and if he changed that, who knows what things would be different?” He sighed. “Honestly, I thought about this every time I saw a movie about time travel. But the more I think about it, the more I think, ‘I might change some little thing, but the big stuff?’” He lowered his head. “I don’t want to move a stone that big. It might roll down the hill and flatten the whole town.”

The interviewer laughed. “I like you,” he admitted. “Also, I have a confession to make. I’m not your real interviewer.”

This caught Charlie off-guard. “What do you mean?”

The man stood up and headed for the door. “Come with me,” he implored.

They walked down the hall and took a turn through a pair of large steel doors. Inside was a machine that resembled an MRI on steroids. Charlie marveled at the equipment. “My god,” he uttered, hand going to his mouth, “this is a quantum field stabilizer!” He stared at the man. “How do you have this? I heard this was twenty years off!”

“Thirty,” the man simply stated.

Charlie pulled back, ice freezing over his mood. “No,” he whispered, taking it in.

Doctor R, he thought.

The man resembled his dad. He walked with the same gait, and had the same tics about his hair being disheveled.

The interviewer saw the bewildered expression. “You figured it out,” he said. “I’m you.”

“But,” Charlie protested.

The man flipped a switch and a violet light shot out of the machine and opened a hole in space. Past it, Charlie recognized his room from the night before. He watched as his one-day-younger self got home, threw his clothes on the floor, and set his phone alarm to seven p.m. before dropping it onto the charging pad and flopping face down on his thick bed.

The interviewer pulled Charlie through. “We shouldn’t be here,” whispered Charlie.

“You don’t know how long I’ve worked to fix our lives,” the older Charlie whispered. “It took me years of struggling through jobs at other companies to try and pull us out of the muck. It felt like dragging a truck by my neck.”

Charlie looked closer and saw the stress wrinkles all over the man. He looked much older than he should. “So, what do we do?”

The interviewer lifted the cell phone off the charging pad, unlocked it, and set the alarm to seven in the morning instead of at night. “Simple,” the older him said, pulling his younger self back through the portal before it shut. “You get to the interview on time.”