Black Balloon

Chapter 28

I was still recovering from the whiplash of emotions as we sat at the kitchen table in Gendelman's British-style manor home. The property had a beautiful view of the Swiss Alps, their peaks covered in snow despite it being mid-July. Moments ago, I had run headfirst into his arms and squeezed the old man's fragile body with more force than was probably comfortable for him. My tears dropped onto his wool sweater leaving dark spots, puddles of joy and grief. They were the tears of a man who had spent the last year in a state of profound state of loneliness, believing he hadn't a friend in the world. They were tears of uncertainty and doubt. All of it came pouring out. I sobbed openly and unapologetically into his chest. I felt like an orphaned child whose father had been brought back from the dead, and in a way, that's exactly what I was.

He patted my back and said in his thick but properly spoken German accent: "Ok, ok. There, there boy. There, there."

I was awash with questions, but it wasn't until we finally sat down and Northrup (that rat-fuck) left us, that I got the chance to ask them. Gendelman had dismissed the servants and grad students leaving the two of us free to talk.

My first question was a simple one: "How?"

It was vague but representative of the billion things I did not understand like 'How are you alive?' 'How did you find me?' 'How are you in Switzerland?' 'How am I in Switzerland?' 'WHY am I in Switzerland', 'What the fuck is going on?' Those sorts of questions.

"We have made great progress, young Miles," he replied, not answering the question at all. "You should see how far we've come in the short while you've been away. I cannot wait to show you."

"Progress with what?"

"With what I began in California, the reason you are sitting at this table. The Swiss government is much more interested than the Americans. They see the profound implications of being the only nation to possess such technology."

"The time machine? But the Americans have the same machine, right?" I asked.

He held his lighter to his pipe while taking short puffs in rapid succession. Sweet-smelling smoke rolled from his beard and evaporated into the surrounding air, like fog dissipating from a forest. Frank had aged a decade since I last saw him, a mere two years ago. His face was gaunt, his hair was white, his torso had that E.T. shape that old men seem to get after their pectoral muscles atrophy, liquefy, and drain into their soft little bellies. He looked like an alcoholic cancer patient with aids. I wondered if he was dying, or if I had only remembered him as being more youthful than he actually was. No, I was sure he looked older now. Much older.

"It was destroyed, remember," he said. "I told you all this, that night at the Officer's club. Don't tell me you have forgotten already? My colleagues suggested to me that time travel may cause cognitive decline, but I've found no evidence of that. However, if your memory is so profoundly impaired, perhaps that is worth revisiting."

"No, I remember. I remember you saying they were shutting it down, but they still have the technology, don't they? If not the actual machine. They could rebuild it if they wanted to, could they not?"

"They have the schematics and the blueprints, sure, but they don't know how any of it works, not fundamentally. Yes, they might be able to cobble something back together, but it's unlikely they could recreate the results. Building a house from a Sears catalog does not make one an architect. Americans are all nuts and bolts, hammers and nails." He paused and then back-peddled a bit: "That is not entirely true, not all of them, but their government certainly is. 'Can it make a big boom? And if so, how?' That is all they want to know. They do not care how it works, as long as it works. And by works, I mean kills a lot of people. You want tea?"