“Harry, I want to let you in on a secret.”
“Okay.” After raising my glass to toast weekend, I leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “Your secret is safe with me. Tomorrow I won’t remember any of this.”
“I don’t know if you noticed but I’ve never mentioned my grandfather.”
“Either did I until the last round.”
“Nor have I told you about my father.”
“Dad was a consummate sportsman.”
My co-worker appeared to sober before my eyes as if the seriousness of his thoughts was enough to burn off the alcohol.
He stared at the table top. “We’ve been working together, what, three years now?”
“Department managers may come and department managers may go but the warehouse staff delivers.”
“Before that, I lived in a homeless community: alcoholics, institutionalized people set free, the down-trodden of various stripes. I didn’t even know my name.”
“You forgot your name?”
“I don’t remember anything from before I woke up on a hill seven years ago.”
Mulling over his statement, I signalled the waitress for another round. “So you’re saying you forgot everything?”
“Everything.”
“What was the name of your third-grade teacher?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was your first concert?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was your first kiss?”
“I don’t know.”
“Geez. You don’t remember anything.”
The waitress dropped off our drinks, collected our empties. The interruption gave me a chance to think things through.
There was that movie about the guy who had amnesia, the guy from the baseball movie, but he eventually remembered his past in time to save the woman who starred in that western. “Did you hire a private detective?”
“The social workers did after they exhausted their usual searches. No one had any idea where I came from. No one claimed to be missing me.”
“Did you try a hypnotist?”
“I’ve sought all manner of professional help, whatever the company insurance would bear. I even sprang for a woman who specialized in past life regressions. Nothing.”
“You have some special kind of amnesia?”
“More than one person said that it wasn’t as if my mind was throwing up some kind of protective wall, it was as if the memories had been completely erased.”
“How did they explain that?”
“They didn’t.”
I sipped my drink. “How do you explain it?”
“I don’t.” He paused. “Well, I have a theory.”
That was more than he could say for me. “I’m all ears.”
This time he paused for so long that I began to suspect that he was waiting for me to answer a question. I was relieved when he continued.
“I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction.”
“You think you’re an alien?”
“Do I look like an alien?”
Pointing at our drinks, I quipped, “I bet you feel like one tomorrow morning.”
He laughed at my joke before continuing, “Although I can’t say why, science fiction has been an incredible draw, particularly time travel stories.”
“Maybe you’re a time traveler.”
There was a brief pause this time, punctuated by a flash of sadness. “It’s a theory.”
That was raw. He had probably been some kind of brilliant scientist and now he was working in a warehouse with the likes of me. “Since you don’t remember anything, I don’t suppose you can make us a fortune so we don’t have to go back Monday morning.”
“Sorry. Perhaps that’s the price of admission.”
I finished my drink, a sudden wave of double-vision turning my co-worker into twins. It was almost funny, a traveler from the future forgetting his past. “Hey, it could be worse. You might have forgotten the next round is yours.”
“Nice try.”
I slapped him on the back. “See, you’re doing just fine. Drink up.”
Over three hundred of Stephen’s stories and poems have been selected to appear in more than a hundred publications. His website, www.stephendrogers.com, includes a list of new and upcoming titles as well as other timely information.
I loved this line. It’s an interesting theory, that in traveling to the past, you forget your own because it hasn’t happened yet. Very nice!