Say your prayers, the woman told you, and so you kneel at the foot of your bed and pray, your eyes filling with tears, because if there ever was a time to pray, this is it.

  * * *

  You dream of fast cars and fighter jets, but you wake only to find that the world you now occupy considers such things to be wild flights of fancy. Absurd science fiction.

  “Hurry, Al,” you hear the woman you must call “Mother” shout to you from the kitchen. “Better get up or you’ll be late for work.”

  Work, you think. Yes—that’s right—last night your “father” said you worked for the railroad… but doing what? How could you show up there, not even knowing your job? So you head into the kitchen and strike up a conversation with your mother, who cooks up some dark pancakes she calls flapjacks, hoping to tease out some intel about your job.

  “I’m tired of working for the railroad,” you tell her. She takes it in stride, without even looking up at you.

  “It’s only been a week. Give it time.”

  “Yes,” you say, “but it’s the same old thing every day….”

  “No, it’s not,” she says as she serves you up some piping-hot flapjacks. “The newspaper is different every day. If you get there early enough, maybe you can read the paper before you start selling them to passengers.”

  You gloat happily. So, I sell newspapers on the train. “I guess you’re right,” you say. “But it’s such a long walk to the train station.”

  She scoffs. “What a complainer you are! I would hardly call a half mile downriver a long walk!”

  After scarfing down your flapjacks, you slip out the door, with all the information you need. “Later, Mom!”

  “What’s later?” she asks, not quite getting your futuristic lingo. You’re out the door too quickly to explain yourself.

  * * *

  “Morning, Al,” says the round, runny-nosed man who hands you a stack of papers. “Better run, the 8:40’s about to pull out. Miss the train, miss a day’s pay.” The bundle of papers feels lead-heavy. Are you expected to carry these things?

  You hear a train whistle, and the man glares at you. “Waiting for an invitation, son?”

  Heaving the bundle of papers on a shoulder, you plod off toward the train. About halfway there, the steam engine begins to move—you can hear a series of clanks running down the spine of the train as each coupler tugs at the car behind it. The wheels grind into motion, and the whole train begins to move.

  “Oh no!” You pick up the pace, but the train’s already pulling out of the station. There’s a baggage compartment, its door wide open. You cut a diagonal path, hoping to intercept the door before the train picks up too much speed.

  Your legs pumping at full strength, you reach the open doorway and hurl the newspapers into the car. So far so good. You leap, figuring you just made it—but your legs are too tired to give you any momentum. You fall short and your fingernails scrape on the wooden floor of the baggage car. Halfway in and halfway out, your legs dangle beneath the spinning wheels of the accelerating train. You’re slipping! If you fall, you’ll be sliced in two! No surgeon in this time—or even your own—would be able to save you.

  Your nails slip, and your body begins to fall beneath the train. You scream—

  —and a pair of hands reaches out, grabbing you by the ears.

  “I’ve got you, Al,” the deep voice of the conductor says. He tugs you up by your ears so hard, you feel something snap inside your head. Your ears burn, they’re ringing—but he doesn’t release his grip. He lifts you by your agonized ears into the baggage car. The stinging pain in your ears brings a flood of tears to your eyes.

  “Close call,” says the conductor, not even noticing. You feel like screaming at him, but instead you try not to show the pain. After all, you should be grateful; the man saved your life.

  Thanking him, you take your stack of newspapers and begin making your way through the stuffy, overheated train, selling your papers for two pennies apiece.

  The passengers are all what you expect. Well-dressed businessmen, dainty women. The women are strongly perfumed, but it doesn’t hide the stench of sweat already in the air. “Someone ought to invent deodorant,” you mumble to yourself.

  A man next to you chuckles and says, “Why don’t you, Al? You’ve got enough chemicals in that cellar of yours to do the job!” The man must be a friend of your family. You return his smile as if you know him.

  “Hey,” he suggests, “maybe you can invent something that’ll stop people from sweating!”

  “An antiperspirant.”

  The man laughs, thinking it all very funny. However, there’s someone else on the train who takes you seriously. He’s a kid—same age as you—with reddish hair and a piercing gaze. He’s staring at you from the far end of the car. It makes you uncomfortable.

  “Paper?” you ask him, as you reach his end of the car.

  The boy shrugs, and speaks in a heavy Scottish brogue. “No point in it. It’s all old news.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  You’re about to go on into the next car, when the kid says something that stops you in your tracks.

  “What I wouldn’t give for Wi-Fi right about now,” he says.

  You snap your head around so quickly, it makes your aching ears ring louder.

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m thinkin’ that you heard me.” The kid’s smile is about as wide as the train. You look to the woman sitting next to him, who isn’t fazed in the least. “That’s me mum,” he tells you. “She’s deaf, you know—but even if she could hear, she’d be thinkin’ it’s gibberish we’re talking.”

  You sit down in a seat facing his, dropping your pile of newspapers. “You’re from the future!”

  “Not anymore,” he tells you. “I’m from the present now. And a fine place it is, too!”

  “Fine?” you say, incredulous. “No cars, no electricity, no phones. What’s fine about it?”

  “The possibilities, Al! The possibilities.”

  “How come you know my name?”

  He leans back, silent for a moment, grinning all the while, like he knows something you don’t. Then he holds out his hand. “My name’s Aleck,” he says. “Got switched here in a thunderstorm, same as you, I’ll fathom. I even had to learn me accent.”

  “No way!”

  “I convinced my mother to make this trip to America. I told her I wanted to see the world. But the truth is, I came to find you!”

  “Me?”

  Then he leans in and whispers. “We’re going to be great adversaries, you and I. I thought we should begin with a friendship. Like two boxers shaking hands before the fight.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Aye, but you will,” he says, so sure of himself it makes you angry.

  Then a man clears this throat behind you, and you turn to see the conductor standing in the aisle, hands on his hips, not too pleased with you.

  You stand and pick up your bundle of newspapers.

  “Sorry, sir,” you say, not even knowing his name. “I’ll get back to selling papers.”

  “You’d better do just that,” he says in a voice suitably menacing, then he turns to Aleck.

  “I’m sorry about that, young Master Bell.”

  “That’s all right. I rather enjoy chatting.”

  It takes a moment, but you make the connection, like a circuit finally closing. “Aleck Bell? As in Alexander Graham Bell?”

  He nods. “Remember the name,” he says. “You’ll be hearing no end of it soon.”

  The train vibrates and rolls beneath your feet, but it’s more than just the train. You feel dizzy and dazzled by the presence of such greatness before you. Alexander Graham Bell! You even did a report on him, a couple of years back. It’s hard to believe that this grinning kid sitting here is only a few short years away from inventing the telephone!

  The conductor roughly nudges you away. “Move on! The next car needs papers too.”

  “Goodbye, Al,” says young Master Bell. “Or should I call you Tom?”

  And in a daze you say, “Call me Al. Everybody calls me Al.”

  * * *

  With your feet still feeling as if they’re on the train, you walk home. It was a long day, but that’s okay. It’s given you time to think; time to accept the end of your old life, and the beginning of a new one. You wonder how the real Al will do, over a century and a half from now, when he finds himself trapped in your old body, wearing Nikes, playing your Xbox, and trying to comprehend the mysteries of the web. You wish you could be there, but you know that you won’t. You’ll die somewhere around 1930, a very old man. That much you remember.

  “Good evening, Mother,” you say as you enter, giving her a peck on the cheek.

  She laughs, looking up from the dinner she’s preparing. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing,” you tell her. “It’s just a great time to be alive.”

  Then you open the door to the cellar. In the dim light spilling through the cellar window, you see a table down there, covered with jars full of chemicals and all kinds of little gadgets. You take a deep breath of joyful anticipation. The future rests down in that cellar—and someday there will be records, there will be movies, and there will be electric light.

  “Thomas Alva Edison!” calls your mother. “Are you going to spend the whole evening tinkering around in that cellar again?”

  You toss her a grin before you descend the stairs. “Remember the name,” you tell her. “You’ll be hearing no end of it soon.”

  Mail Merge

  <***Welcome. You are in “Hyperwarp” chat room***>

  Barbarella: So, like, what if there were an infinite number of parallel universes?

  Wyrmhole: Yeah, but how could you get from one to another?

  Morlock: If you could get to another universe, they wouldn’t be parallel anymore.

  StarWart: How do you parallel park in a parallel universe?

  Barbarella: If you could move faster than the speed of light, you could punch a hole in this universe.

  Morlock: Very carefully.

  StarWart: :)

  Spacecadet: My dad once got hit by a guy trying to parallel park.

  Wyrmhole: Was he from a parallel universe?

  Spacecadet: No, I think he was from Jersey.

  Morlock: But you can’t move faster than the speed of light.

  MCsquared: Yeah—time dilation. Einstein predicted that.

  StarWart: Jersey kind of is a parallel universe, know what I’m sayin?

  Spacecadet: What’s time dilation?

  StarWart: It’s what happens when your teacher is boring. A single period drags on for days.

  Spacecadet: I had my eyes dilated once. Things were blurry for an hour.

  Barbarella: It means that time slows down the closer you get to the speed of light.

  MCsquared: At the speed of light time stops.

  Wyrmhole: And you become heavier.

  <***PIKA-CHELSEA has entered the room***>

  Spacecadet: So if you go real slow, you lose weight?

  PIKA-CHELSEA: HELLO. WHO’S IN HERE?

  Barbarella: Mass, not weight.

  Wyrmhole: Hi, Pika-Chelsea.

  Spacecadet: I went to midnight Mass last Christmas.

  StarWart: So how do you reach a parallel universe?

  Spacecadet: My friends said the pope would show up, but he didn’t.

  Barbarella: You don’t.

  Morlock: Hi, Pika-che.

  PIKA-CHELSEA: WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

  Wyrmhole: Maybe time travel can send you to alternate dimensions.

  Morlock: Maybe there’s a different dimension for every moment in time.

  MCsquared: Huh?

  PIKA-CHELSEA: WHAT IS EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT?

  StarWart: Stop shouting, Pika.

  Morlock: Think about it. You go back in time, but you’re really not going back in time, you’re jumping to a parallel dimension where everything’s exactly the same as this universe, just ten years back.

  PIKA-CHELSEA: IS THIS THE POKÉMON CHAT ROOM?

  MCsquared: Why ten years?

  Spacecadet: I do NOT want to relive the last ten years!

  PIKA-CHELSEA: I GOT SOME CLASSIC POKÉMON CARDS TO SELL.

  Morlock: It doesn’t have to be ten years.

  PIKA-CHELSEA: I GOT CHARIZARD—HE’S REALLY RARE.

  Barbarella: If you go back before you were born, you could become your own father.

  Morlock: I’d rather die.

  Spacecadet: I still don’t understand.

  PIKA-CHELSEA: I GOT A MISPRINTED BULBASAUR—WORTH A LOT!

  Barbarella: Take a hike, Pika-Chelsea, you’re in the wrong room.

  StarWart: Wait, did she say Charizard??

  Barbarella: Stay on topic, StarWart.

  Wyrmhole: I understand your parallel temporal dimension theory, Morlock. In fact, I have a similar theory myself.

  Morlock: I’m glad someone understands.

  Wyrmhole: There’s a different universe for every single quantum of time, right?

  Morlock: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

  Wyrmhole: What about infinite universes that are identical, except for one small difference?

  Morlock: I was just about to say that!

  StarWart: Isn’t Quantum an airline?

  Morlock: I think that’s Qantas.

  Barbarella: They say time and space are interchangeable.

  Spacecadet: I flew Qantas once. I had the chicken lasagna.

  StarWart: My mom says I’m good at taking up time and space.

  PIKA-CHELSEA: WHAT POKÉMON CARDS DO YOU HAVE?

  Barbarella: Will somebody punt her out of this room?

  MCsquared: Einstein predicted parallel universes.

  StarWart: No he didn’t.

  MCsquared: Yes he did. It says so on Wikipedia.

  StarWart: I rest my case.

  <***PIKA-CHELSEA has left the room***>

  Barbarella: Good riddance.

  MCsquared: Interesting fact: Did you know Einstein was eaten alive by piranhas?

  StarWart: No he wasn’t!

  Barbarella: And then there are black holes…

  MCsquared: Well, he could have been, in a parallel universe. See what I did there?

  StarWart: My parents say my bedroom is a black hole.

  Spacecadet: I took a bus tour through a black hole once. It wasn’t that bad.

  Wyrmhole: You can’t go in a black hole, bozo—you would be crushed to subatomic particles.

  Morlock: You can’t go into a black hole, dweeb—you would be crushed to subatomic particles.

  Wyrmhole: Hey, we both said the same thing! How did you know I was going to say that?

  Morlock: I’m spychic.

  StarWart: Black holes are in space, Spacecadet.

  Spacecadet: Can you see them with a telescope?

  Morlock: I mean psychic.

  StarWart: If you could, they wouldn’t be black.

  MCsquared: Stephen Hawking predicted black holes.

  Barbarella: I like spy chic better.

  StarWart: :)

  Morlock: Stephen Hawking was cool.

  Wyrmhole: Stephen Hawking was cool.

  Morlock: There we go again. Spy chic!

  Wyrmhole: Spy chic!

  StarWart: My Mom was a spy chick.

  Morlock: Hawking’s amazing—the greatest mind in the world, in a damaged body.

  Spacecadet: What about green holes and blue holes?

  Barbarella: I think maybe Morlock and Wyrmhole are the same person.

  Wyrmhole: As opposed to me, the greatest body in the world, with a damaged mind.

  MCsquared: They should have frozen his head like they did with Disney.

  StarWart: That’s a myth. Disney wasn’t frozen. But they did keep Einstein’s brain in a jar without his permission.

  Barbarella: Hey—maybe Morlock and Wyrmhole are the same person in parallel universes!

  Morlock: Not very likely.

  Wyrmhole: Not very likely.

  Morlock: There it goes again.

  Wyrmhole: There it goes again.

  Spacecadet: Didn’t Stephen Hawking write “The Shining”?

  StarWart: No, that was Stephen King. Close but no Haw.

  MCsquared: Haw Haw.

  Barbarella: What do you think happens when two parallel universes collide?

  StarWart: Traffic jam on the interstellar highway.

  MCsquared: Big explosion.

  Morlock: The end of life as we know it.

  Barbarella: Maybe not. Maybe one just absorbs the other.

  Wyrmhole: You mean kind of like two raindrops that get too close?

  Morlock: Kind of like raindrops that get too close.

  Barbarella: Wow—you guys really are kindred spirits.

  StarWart: My mom says I’m in my own universe. A universal pain.

  Spacecadet: I went to Universal Studios once. I threw up a little on the Harry Potter ride.

  Wyrmhole: Hey, Morlock—are you really psychic, or are you just repeating me?

  Morlock: Neither—I’m typing the same things you are, at the same time.

  MCsquared: Stephen Hawking was my next-door neighbor.

  StarWart: No he wasn’t!

  MCsquared: He was—in a parallel universe. Einstein was too. Before the piranhas, that is.

  StarWart: And in a parallel universe, I come over to kick your ass. Oh wait—that’s this universe.

  Barbarella: What if you guys really are parallel beings?

  Morlock: We couldn’t be, we’d have to have more in common.

  Wyrmhole: Nah, we’d have to have more things in common.

  MCsquared: You’ll have to find me first!

  Morlock: Hey, Wyrmhole—what’s your mother’s name?

  Wyrmhole: Angela

  Morlock: That’s my mother’s name too!

  Wyrmhole: You’re lying!

  Morlock: Am not!

  MCsquared: Am not!

  Wyrmhole: Oh, now MCsquared is repeating us too.

  MCsquared: Am not!

  StarWart: Guys, this is a sinking ship, and I’m bailing.