“My mom once told me that’s the secret of life,” I say. “We all think we’re frauds. Everybody’s winging it.”
“I spent most of my life trapped in an ontological paradox and I’m supposed to just live with that?”
“Yes,” I say. “For the rest of the world.”
“What do I care about the rest of the world?” he says.
“Then just care about you and Ursula,” I say. “This is the best you get. Is a lifetime of loving each other, even if it was messy and secret and hard, is that really worse than no time at all?”
“At least in that other world I got to be a hero.”
“Lionel, you still can be.”
He doesn’t understand, of course. But I’ll show him. And then we’ll show everyone.
133
Look, I’ve never written a book before and I apologize if I did it wrong, especially here at the end. A lot more happens, but I feel like I’ve already asked for a lot of your time, so I’ll wrap this up as efficiently as my limited talents allow.
I let Lionel revive Wen and the guy seemed remarkably nonchalant about the whole thing. Maybe when you’re a chauffeur and bodyguard for a reclusive genius billionaire that’s just in the job description. We drove back to Lionel’s house and made some preparations for the arrival of my mom, dad, sister, and Penny from the airport. A typical flight from Toronto to Hong Kong takes about fifteen hours, but of course Lionel’s private jet was built to do it in a quarter of the time.
A change had come over Lionel. He seemed relieved he no longer had to enact his elaborate master plan, but he also seemed kind of lost without it. He was surprisingly malleable, ready to follow wherever I led him. Which was weird, for sure, but of course I’m also the one who gave him the elaborate master plan in the first place. I told him what to do back in 1965 and he spent the next fifty years doing it. He’s showing his age, too, like his single-minded pursuit kept his body in check and without it something vital sloughed off of him, leaving behind a very tired ninety-three-year-old man.
My family and Penny were brought to the house still unconscious and revived with some colorless, odorless vapor that counteracted whatever gas knocked them out. True to Lionel’s word, they were unharmed, including Penny.
There was some confusion and upset when they woke up on the other side of the world. Greta felt very strongly that she should be punching someone in the face but wasn’t sure whether it should be her brother, the stoic bodyguard, or the old guy. My mom wanted to call the police or the consulate or whoever had jurisdiction over international kidnapping. My dad had a lot of questions about how they got all the way to Hong Kong so fast. Penny said nothing at all.
I introduced them to Lionel Goettreider.
That got their attention. Lionel and I gave them a brief rundown of what had happened since they last saw me. They did their best to follow along but, as I’m sure you’re all too aware, trying to keep this time-travel crap straight in your head is a chore, particularly since in the end my big heroic accomplishment was keeping the world exactly as they’ve always known it to be. It’s tough to get worked up about what might have been when all you know is what already is.
The key was Lionel’s house itself—it proved that the techno-utopian world I’d described to them wasn’t just a lingering adolescent fantasy filtered through a nervous breakdown. It was real and it was all around them and it was pretty cool.
Lionel showed my mom and dad and sister his many outrageous inventions, but I could see Penny’s interest waver. She doesn’t care much for gadgets. She likes books made of paper and glue, pillows stuffed with feathers, chairs built with wood and nails, fruit grown in velvety earth, kissing the one you love.
We stood together at a wall of windows looking out over the rusty cliffs to the sloshing, white-peaked South China Sea. And we talked.
That’s another thing Penny likes—talking. And listening. Thinking things through. Considering points of view. Trying to understand.
I lost a lot in the decades I spent traveling to the past, especially what it feels like to connect with another human being. It got buried deep, sealed in concrete, shut in a steel box, shot into outer space, frozen solid, asphyxiated, drawn into the burning heart of the Sun. It felt gone forever.
It took ten seconds with Penny to find it again. She looked at me and there it was.
134
They do some pretty nice sunsets on Hong Kong Island and this one was dappling pinks and oranges across the water down below.
“I believe you,” Penny says. “For what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth a lot,” I say.
“But I don’t know if it’s enough,” she says.
“Is it at least a start?”
“It’s at least a start.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Of course,” she says, “it’s possible that this is all an elaborate hoax you’ve painstakingly cooked up to trick me into falling back in love with you. But if it is, I mean, points for creativity.”
“When you say falling back in love with me,” I say, “does that mean you fell out of love with me?”
“Yes,” Penny says. “Well, I don’t know. Most of the way.”
“And now?”
“And now it’s more complicated,” she says.
“I can’t change what happened. I have access to a time machine and I still can’t change it. Plus, I mean, it would require me to explain how reality is like a crème br?lée and I don’t think that’ll help my case. I believe that part of me is gone, but I understand if my assurances aren’t enough. I can apologize until the day I die, and I will if you’ll let me, but the best way I can think of to get back what we had is to show you every day of our lives that something like what happened to you will never happen again. But if you really feel we can’t go back, that what we had is lost forever, I’ll accept it. I will. Just knowing you’re safe and alive will have to be enough for me.”
“Yeah,” she says, “that’s not what I meant by complicated.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I’m pregnant,” says Penny.
“Like with a baby?” I say.
“Yeah. Pregnant like with a baby.”
“It’s funny,” I say, “because I just single-handedly saved the space-time continuum, human civilization, and reality itself, and yet this is the best thing that’s happened all day.”
Penny stares out the window. The sun is already half swallowed by the horizon, the hot disk melting into the cool sea—going, going, gone.
“I should’ve been there when you found out,” I say.
“You were pretty busy saving the world.”
“Reality itself,” I say.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she says. “Nobody outside of this room even knows it happened. In fact, all you really did was not screw up reality even more than you did last time. So, maybe let’s ease up on the time-traveling savior thing.”
“You know, in another reality I’m this, like, badass apocalyptic warrior.”
“Do you want to keep it?” she says.
“I’ve never wanted anything more,” I say.
“I kind of feel the same,” Penny says.
“Penny, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. And don’t say for what. Because, trust me, I doubted you to my core. I had some shitty, vengeful, dark thoughts about you. And it’s hard to wipe them all away and act like they never happened. But I’d like to try.”
“Me too,” I say.