Someday We'll Be Together

Chapter 15- Schrödinger's Birthday

"Is this the place?"
Tyler lifted his head and looked at the small apartment in the narrow, "suburb" labeled streets of the town.
"Yes, you live on the fourth floor here," Marla said, laughing at Tyler's surprise.
"Jeez, this place looks like a dump."
Tyler pushed the door, and it opened with a creak. Marla, following behind, could feel the damp smell in her lungs. They climbed the stone stairs together and reached the fourth floor. Marla pointed to the door:
"It's supposed to be here."
Tyler knocked on the door nervously. No one answered.
"Isn't your dad home?" Marla asked.
Tyler knocked again.
"Even if he's not home, my mom should be."
"Weren't your mom and dad divorced?"
Tyler suddenly turned to Marla.
"What?"
"You told me your mom and dad were divorced."
Just as Tyler was about to say something, the door opened. Tyler's father—older and heavier—stood at the door with a frown. Without taking the cigarette out of his mouth, he spoke:
"Come inside. I said don't be late."
As Tyler stared at his father in horror, Marla took him by the arm and helped him inside. The interior looked quite small and old. It seemed like it hadn't been cleaned in years. Tyler was sure his mom didn't live here. He knew she wouldn't step into such a dirty house.
After jumping over a box that hit his foot, he sat on the edge of a dusty couch. There was a horse racing program on the TV. His father was betting.
"Beer?"
"No, I won't take any," Tyler said, indicating his discomfort.
His father looked at him harshly:
"I said bring me one."
Tyler nodded to show he understood and went to the kitchen right next to the living room. The fridge had only beer and leftover ready meals. He took a beer from the fridge and handed it to his father. The small table in front of the TV was also full of empty beer bottles. Next to one bottle was a book titled "Legendary Sports Games from 1980 to Today." Taking advantage of his father's focus on the TV, Tyler slipped the book into his pocket.
"Do you make money only by betting?" Tyler asked in a flat voice.
His father nodded without taking his eyes off the TV.
"What about your job at the school?"
His father gave him a harsh look.
"Drink less, Tyler."
Tyler couldn't make sense of what was happening. His father had practically lost his job and his wife.
"If you want to eat, buy something with your own money. I used my last money to pay off my debts to that Italian bastard Michelangelo."
Hearing this, Tyler felt a pain in his chest. Marla, noticing he was staring blankly at the floor, stood up:
"I should go."
"Wait."
Marla looked at Tyler.
"I'm coming too."
They walked to the front door and left the house. Tyler felt like he was about to faint.
He sat on the steps at the entrance of the building and put his head in his hands. Marla slowly sat down next to him.
"What's wrong, Tyler? You don't look well at all," she said softly.
Tyler lifted his head and looked at Marla with horrified eyes. "I want to go home, Marla."
"But this is your home."
"No, it's not. This isn't even my dad," Tyler said, shaking his head.
"Then who is he?"
"I don't know. A man who looks like my dad but doesn't act like him at all."
Then he looked at Marla again.
"I want my mom."
Marla looked at Tyler with concern and held his hand.
"Do you want to tell me what's going on?"
"Even if I told you, you wouldn't believe me," Tyler said, shrugging.
"I would believe you. I believe you," Marla said in a reassuring voice.
"But don't tell anyone else."
Marla nodded resolutely.
"Watch me."

"Are you going to tell me why we came to the forest?" Marla asked curiously.
"I need to talk to someone," Tyler said.
"This isn't George W. Bush Street, is it?" he then asked. Marla shook her head. After following the path, they came across Mrs. Lincoln's house.
"Do you know this scientist?" Marla asked.
Tyler nodded. Then they walked towards the house.
Tyler knocked on the door. After a short while, the door opened slightly. A very old woman was looking at them through the crack.
"Mrs. Lincoln. It's me, Tyler. I'm one of the children you sent to 2008 twenty-five years ago."
Hearing this, the woman opened the door all the way, her eyes widening in shock.
"I remember..."
"What's going on?" Marla asked, turning to Tyler.
"Come inside, I'll explain everything."
Tyler and Marla went inside. It looked like nothing had changed in twenty-five years. Schrödinger rubbed against Tyler's legs, showing he remembered him.
"How is your cat still alive?" asked Tyler looking weirdly at Schrödinger beside his legs.
"Well, I couldn't turn my dead dog back to life but I found a solution for my cat to make him live longer." Mr. Lincoln explained with a weird smirk.
Tyler didn't seem surprised at all.
As he and Marla sat on the couch, Mrs. Lincoln came in with a tray of cookies.
"These don't have cat milk in them, do they?" Tyler asked, pointing to the cookies.
"Oh no, I threw that device away after you left. It wasn't working, to be honest," the woman said, laughing.
"Okay, I came here for something important."
"I can guess," the woman said. "Lena and Max didn't come."
"That concerns me."
Marla still looked like she was completely out of context.
"Marla, I'm a time traveler," Tyler said in a serious tone.
Marla looked at him with her mouth open.
"W-what time are you from?"
"2008. But not here. In the world I came from, everything was very different. My life was much different than it is here. But we accidentally went to 1983 and had some minor issues that completely changed our future. I say 'we' because Lena and Max were involved in this too."
Marla nodded, still with her mouth open.
Tyler turned to the woman:
"I came here for this. I want to go back to my own time."
"You can't do that," the woman said. "You've already written the future."
"I want to go back to 1983 and fix my mistakes," Tyler repeated.
"If you go to 1983, there will be another you there. Can you imagine what will happen if you encounter yourself?"
"You'll destroy the entire universe," Marla said, trying to process what she had heard.
"Precisely. You'll create a paradox," the woman nodded.
"I can't continue living like this. I don't even know where my mother is."
"So why didn't Lena and Max come?"
"I don't know about their lives, but mine changed significantly. In a bad way. In a very bad way."
"Because of something you did in the past, one of your lives might have improved greatly while the other's got worse."
"Mrs. Lincoln, please let me use the camera. I'll be very careful."
"Tyler, what you're about to do could make everything worse," the woman said seriously.
"I can't keep living like this!" Tyler said, almost shouting.
"The camera isn't with me," the woman said.
"What do you mean?"
"You have the camera. You just took the box from the forest and went to 1983."
"A time machine... is a camera?" Marla asked, trying to understand what was happening.
Tyler sat on the couch and put his head in his hands. As he waited anxiously, the woman came with a small box. Tyler and Marla watched attentively as she took something out of the box. It was a very old-looking Canon Powershot A70 camera.
"This is Max's camera," Tyler exclaimed.
"The camera he left in 1983," the woman said. "I developed the time machine and created this."
As Tyler turned the camera in his hand, Marla also examined it with interest.
"It no longer runs on uranium or the city's electricity but works much more simply by converting chemical energy into fusion energy. The time circuits are on this screen."
The woman opened the camera's fuel tank and, to the children's surprise, poured Tyler's cola and chips into it.
Then she showed the red cap on the photo button.
"Also, there's a safety lock."
"Wow. This is much better than the Polaroid."
The woman took the camera from Tyler's hand and put it back in the box. "Unfortunately, I can't let you use it," she said.
"You don't understand, Mrs. Lincoln—"
"It's too dangerous."
"Then why did you invent it again, and even improve it?" Tyler asked.
The woman thought for a while.
"For emergencies."
"I want to use it for an emergency right now."
"Not for that kind of thing. You can't risk the entire universe just to fix your life because it's gotten worse."
Tyler didn't say anything.
"This is your fault."
"No, you're wrong. The future is determined by your own choices."
"It was a mistake to invent this device in the first place. Now you've ruined my life too."
"Listen, kid, it's not my fault. If you can't adapt to the life you've created, you can stay at my house for a few days. But I can't do anything more for you."
Tyler nodded.
"Fine, I'll stay here today."
"Good," the woman said, shrugging. "You know where the bed is."
As the woman stood up, Tyler called after her:
"By the way, you know you do owe me your life, don't you forget that."
The woman turned and looked at Tyler as if asking what he meant.
"Have you ever thought about why you threw that box into the pit?" When the woman didn't respond, Tyler continued, "You didn't throw it because you fell in with the box. Remember how we warned you repeatedly when we took you there. You left that box in the pit a day later, didn't you? Because if it weren't for us, you wouldn't be here to have this conversation right now."
It was clear that the woman was deep in thought. She bent down, picked up her cat that was wandering around her feet, and left without saying anything.
"So, in the 2008 you came from, this woman wasn't alive," Marla said to Tyler, who was watching the woman walk away.

Tyler slowly opened his eyes and saw that his digital watch showed 2:35. He tried to sit up, but Marla's arm was across his chest. He slowly moved his legs from under Marla and gently lifted her arm off his chest, placing it back on the bed without waking her. He quietly went downstairs and pulled the box where the woman had hidden the camera from the shelf. He felt Schrödinger wandering around his feet. Tyler gestured to the cat to be quiet, but the cat just stared blankly. Tyler took the camera out of the box and pressed the power button. Since this was a 2002 model camera, he knew how to use it much better.
After the camera turned on, a four-digit password screen appeared, something not seen in normal cameras.
"God, did she really put a password on it?" he muttered to himself.
At that moment, he heard a creaking sound. He turned his head towards Schrödinger lying on the mat. The sound hadn't come from him because someone was coming downstairs. As the creaking of the stairs got closer, Tyler quickly put the camera back in the box. Marla, blinking her sleepy eyes, looked at Tyler frozen in place with the box in his hand.
"Thank god, it was you." Tyler said, relieved. "Why are you awake?"
"What are you doing here?" Marla asked, ignoring Tyler's question. Tyler shook the box in his hand.
"Help me get this working."
"Doesn't it turn on when you press the power button?"
"The damn camera has a password."
"What? That's crazy."
Marla laughed and approached Tyler, examining the camera. "What could she have set it to? Have you tried anything?"
"We only have three attempts. It says the alarm will go off after that."
"Oh, okay. What could she have set it to at most?"
"There are nine to the power of four possibilities."
"Nine to the power of ten. There are ten digits," Marla corrected.
"That's even worse. Are we going to try all 10,000 possibilities?"
"No, Tyler. You need to think smart. She's an old woman. She wouldn't set a complicated password because she'd forget it."
"Maybe she set it to an important date for her to remember easily," Tyler suggested.
"Yeah, that makes sense."
"But what could it be? How are we supposed to know what dates are important to her?"
"I don't know, think Tyler. Maybe she set it to the date she started inventing this machine."
"Maybe she set it to the year."
Without waiting for Marla's response, Tyler entered "1983" into the password field. However, the camera didn't unlock.
"I don't think it's the year. It can't be that easy, but it can't be something too complicated either," Marla said.
"I can't think of anything else. You try something," Tyler said impatiently.
Marla took the camera Tyler handed her.
"Tyler, I don't know anything about this woman. But you do know something about her."
"Yes, but that password could be anything. I mean, it could be her birthday, the day she invented the machine, or even her cat's birthday!"
When Marla heard this, a look of realization appeared on her face, and she bent down to examine Schrödinger's collar. "August 26, 1983" was the date on the other side of the tag with Schrödinger's name.
Marla entered "0826" into the password field while Tyler watched in amazement. The camera's time circuits appeared on the screen.
"Hey, hey, how did you do that? How did you unlock it?" Tyler asked in astonishment.
"It was her cat's birthday," Marla said, shrugging. Then she walked towards the backyard. Tyler followed her.
Marla handed the camera back to Tyler:
"When do you want to go?"
Tyler looked at the camera's last used date:
"November 12, 1983. The day of the big game."
Marla looked puzzled.
"My dad wasn't in the game that would have continued his career. I knocked my dad out to save Lena, and he couldn't play in the game. Instead, Lena's dad made the final score, and as a result, my dad's career as the school basketball coach was ruined."
"You saved Lena?"
"Now I need to prevent myself from knocking my dad out. That way, he can play in the game and—"
"Tyler, you can't do that. The woman was right to some extent. You can't encounter the 1983 version of yourself."
"Then I'll make sure Lena doesn't wait in the locker room. That way, she won't meet my dad, and I won't have to knock him out to save her."
"That would completely affect Lena's family's future too."
"I know! But my family's future was ruined, and I can't keep living like this! I want my mom back, Marla. I want my home, my dad, my mom... I just want them back."
After saying this, Tyler turned his head away. He felt like he was going to cry and didn't want Marla to see it.
Marla held Tyler's shoulders and looked him in the face.
"Fine, let's do this. I'll do everything I can to help you get your previous life back."
"Really?" Tyler's eyes sparkled.
Marla smiled and nodded, hugging Tyler. Tyler hugged her back.
Then they turned back to the camera.
"Did you set the date?"
"Yes," Tyler said. "November 12, 1983, at 12:00 PM. One hour before the big game."
"I told my dad I'd be back in twenty minutes."
"Don't worry, he won't even notice we're gone. Because I'll set it to return to the exact moment we left, so it'll be like we never left."
"Okay, how do we go to the past?"
"It's very simple. Just pose in front of that tree."
"Like this?"
Marla stuck her tongue out at Tyler.
"You look great."
Then he pointed the camera at Marla and took her picture. Again, a white light flashed, and Marla and Tyler had to close their eyes.