Looking Backward from the Tricentennial

Chapter Thirty-Nine

"Ray won't tell me what the journal said about our past," Edith complained to Julian. She stood in the open doorway to his bedroom, arms crossed in front of her slender frame, demanding answers. "What was it? We had a life together, didn't we?"

It was nearly noon on Friday, a few hours before Polly Sigh was going to present her proposal for a 2024 election strategy to Julian and those helping him prepare. Before that, he wanted to talk with Reverend Shaver and ask him to facilitate a conversation with Connor Sullivan. The wrongness of how he'd left their previous encounter was bothering him, and he hoped to clear his conscience.

Ray had been in an especially good mood all morning, cleaning up the condo in preparation for Stella Freedom's arrival. She was bringing a parting gift for Julian: a flash drive, backward compatible with Windows 10, containing an archive of election results and the American Union legislative packages for ten years, plus a general world history for the last five decades. Ray promised to help him download his journal entries from the Archive; he would bring those back on the flash drive as well.

Julian appraised Edith from his seat at the desk; she'd apparently decided to show up early in order to question him. He felt compelled to tell her the truth. "We didn't have a life together," Julian answered. "But in an alternate universe, yes, there was a Julian and Edith West who spent five decades together and raised a family. When I've left, Ray will share the journal."

"I knew it," she said triumphantly. "I knew it."

When Julian rose from his seat, Edith crossed the room, opening her arms for him. Their embrace reverberated with the echoes of those decades, but when she kissed him, he released her. "No," he said simply.

"No?"

"No." From an arms length away, Julian summarized how the oldest journal entries recorded AJ's life, including the moment where they'd fled the half-dozen gunmen at the reparations rally and allowed the assassination of Reverend Shaver to proceed unhindered. "Their marriage ended when AJ went back to save his life and try to make a better world. That sacrifice was what it took."

"I don't understand," she said. "You—CJ—had a wedding ring."

"CJ got married in the tricentennial; he had three years to wait while Charlotte constructed the timepad and the next window for time orbit opened," Julian explained. "Likewise, he was willing to sacrifice that relationship in order to steer the world you live in."

"That relationship?" Edith repeated, her eyes searching his face for clues about who it was—or confirmation of her suspicion.

"Yes," Julian replied. Soon enough, she'd see the pictures of CJ and Idabee enjoying their honeymoon in Cuba. Would her granddaughter criticize her for disrupting the life that might have been?

Her worldview was crumbling before his eyes. "I could have woken you up decades ago," Edith said bitterly. "After the first successful revivals took place, I planned on it. Ray was ten; he would have had two good men as father figures. But then a blue envelope arrived, telling me that time travel hadn't been invented yet, but in thirty years it would be. You asked me to have you revived on February 15, 2076, and I changed your medical records so that would happen."

Julian, who already knew what CJ had done, replied, "Thank you."

"Why?" she asked. "Why did you want to wait, unless you were going to go back to meet me while you were still young?"

From the hallway, the soft tone announcing a visitor in the parlor could be heard. It was certainly Shaver arriving, but Julian answered Edith's question anyway. "That was the date CJ's predecessor—I call him BJ—was revived. I think the expectation was that certain things would work out the same." The duplicated connection to Idabee had led to Philadelphia on the exact same Sunday. "CJ knew he'd failed to start the American Union and tried to position me to try again. And here I am."