Future Imperfect
by Peter Wood
“Whatever happened to the flying cars we were supposed to have by now?” Darla asked Mike. She held up an old science fiction magazine she had found in a box of odds and ends she was sorting in her grandfather’s attic for the estate sale. On the magazine’s cover a young couple flew off into the sunset in a finned convertible.
Mike looked relieved to have a reason to stop rummaging through the clutter. He dropped a pile of magazines in front of Darla. “I found a stack of those old pulps over there.”
She picked one up. Its faded cover showed a buxom woman in a tight space suit. A hovering man wearing a rocket pack held a ray gun.
Her grandfather had haphazardly hammered a plywood shelf about waist high along the length of the wall. Endless teetering magazine stacks precariously reached to the ceiling. “Those magazines didn’t predict very well. They missed the Internet.”
“Sometimes I wonder if we were led down the wrong path,” said Mike. “We got drones in front of computer screens instead of aliens and rocket ships.”
“Nobody picked the computer over the flying car.”
“Yeah, I know, but that fifties future seems too real. It couldn’t have all been made up. Wouldn’t it have been cool if we really had the jet packs and the moon base and the robots?”
Darla laughed. “And, I missed it?”
Mike was so focused on his theory that he actually let his ringing phone go straight to voice mail. “I don’t know. It’s almost like it was here and then it was taken away.” Mike pointed to the magazines. “Look at them. The same ideas keep popping up.”
Darla scanned the covers. They all shared the same vision. She shrugged. “So, they copied each other.”
Mike leaned forward, emphasizing his words with exaggerated hand gestures. “Maybe when there is a huge shift in the way things are supposed to be, that reality doesn’t disappear entirely. It leaves ripples, shadows, some sort of impression that things aren’t quite right.”
“Why did this future not happen?”
“The time machine? Maybe somebody changed everything. Maybe one guy invented all that future technology. Maybe he was never born. Maybe he was convinced to go to Pharmacy School instead of tinkering in his garage.”
Darla smiled wistfully. “Sounds like my grandfather. He was an electrical genius. He worked out of his basement until he got this great job from West Coast Technologies. Made really good money in the fifties, but he didn’t have time for his workshop anymore.”
“Your grandfather didn’t exactly strike me as a company man.”
“He wasn’t. He got a job offer he couldn’t refuse. He always wished he could have kept tinkering full time. He hated West Coast. They shot down all of his ideas, he always said. And, he wasn’t allowed to work on his—”
She stopped in mid sentence. She reached into the box and held up what looked like a sleek silver water pistol.
“I got a feeling that’s not a toy,” said Mike.
Darla scrutinized the gun. Tiny script on the handle said: Planetary Munitions. Photon 3000.
“Something slipped though,” Mike muttered.
He forced open the attic’s lone window and pointed the gun at a small sapling. A thin red beam shot out and the tree disappeared in a flash of light.
“My God,” gasped Darla.
A calm voice interrupted from the shadows. “Not exactly.” A tall thin man in a gray suit with a skinny black tie stepped into the ray of light from the lone window. He held a gun like the one Mike had just fired. “Hand over the ray gun, please.”
Mike gave him the Photon 3000. “Who are you?”
“My name is Graves. I’m tying up loose ends. We zoomed in on the energy signature of the gun. Sometimes no matter how hard we try things still slip through from the other reality.”
“The one with the flying cars and the rocket ships?” Darla asked.
Graves gave an oily smile. “Exactly. Nobody is ready for that world.”
Mike glared at Graves. “Who says we’re not ready?”
The man shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. But, trust me, you’re better off.”
“We know that you changed history. You can’t make us forget,” said Darla.
The man shrugged. “No, you have no idea what you know. But it doesn’t matter. A little time modification and none of this will have happened.” He held a small item that looked like a television remote control. “I think the slippage probably emanated from when we gave your grandfather that great job offer.”
Darla stared at him. “And he didn’t invent—”
Graves smiled. “The jet pack. The ray gun. All that stuff that you didn’t need.” He noticed the stacks of magazines on the shelf and walked over. “Amazing. No matter how hard we try the ideas still slip through. You can’t buy a writer with a corporate job. They’d rather be unemployed.”
“What are you going to do?”
He picked up the remote and twisted some dials. “I’m going to go back to the day your grandfather took the job. Shouldn’t be hard to fix.”
Graves grabbed a pulp magazine. The stack wobbled slightly and Darla had an idea. With Graves distracted she nudged the shelf hard. The stack collapsed like a deck of cards, starting a domino effect, taking other stacks with it. Hundreds of magazines fell on Graves knocking him to the ground.
The remote control slid out of his hand.
Mike took the ray guns from Graves and pointed one at the intruder.
“Give those guns back to me,” Graves gasped.
Darla picked up the remote. It looked simple enough to operate. It had a date March 26, 1952 punched in. That must be the date her grandfather took the job.
“I think we’ll go back and make sure grandpa keeps working in his garage.”
“You can’t do that.”
She smiled at Mike and took his hand. “Sure I can. And, then maybe we’ll go for a ride in our flying car.”
She pressed the remote.
For me this is a perfect RGR story. It even has RAY GUNS!
Thank you! I had fun writing it. I love the old pulps.
I really enjoyed the story. It brought back fun memories, and kept me guessing until the end. I want more.
This was a lot of fun – but I want more. A novella at least
Good job. Compact little story with a nice old fashioned pulp feel. Would have found it in Astounding back in the day maybe. I liked the irony of having Graves done in by stacks of pulps.
Liked the idea of it, but ONLY the idea. The writing is dry and completely generic. First of all, this should’ve contained at least double the word count, and some build up.
The pacing is very rushed. If you found a ray gun which wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place in your attic, and disintegrated a tree with it, I think your reaction would’ve been a little more intense than a simple ‘gasp’. The same is when a man appears out of nowhere behind you. These aren’t common things, and would surely stun a person both physically and mentally, but your ‘Mike’ and ‘Darla’ seem to overcome their shock in about a milisecond and accept it as totally and utterly normal, like ray-guns and people teleporting form different realities are no more stranger and weird than cats and dogs.
Also, you have 3 characters without a single word of description. They are names only, and for all I know, they might have been green, or had two heads and tentacles instead of arms.
To sum it all, it’s a 5/5 for the idea, but 1/5 for the writing. 3/5 in total from me. A great idea gone to waste by poor writing.
Overlords’ note:
Apologies to Shaft for not approving this comment sooner – we convened the Hive Mind to discuss Our stance on comments before just letting it loose. As one of the Overlords put it, we’ll publish comments as long as they don’t contain profanity, spam, or ad hominem attacks. It’s no fun for a writer to receive harsh comments, but that’s part of putting your work out there. And as others noted, the comment criticized the story and not the author, and despite the tone, the criticism was constructive. This is why Comments are enabled in the first place.
Finally, and most importantly, we’re genuinely interested in creating a community here, and providing various forums for conflicting ideas is one of the ways that comes to pass.
Thanks to everyone for reading. Shaft, thanks for your comments as well. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.
FWIW, back when I used to write I’d have killed for a detailed piece of criticism like that but I’d reserve the right to disagree. A bit more fluff around the characters, sure, but you can bury an idea in too many words, IMO.
I enjoyed the story though it certainly could stand to be longer. I felt the description of the attic was sufficient for me to see the characters. However, Shaft may have a point about wanting some more description of them. I don’t think it is truly necessary since the story begins from a place where we are already in the room with them. As for Graves I’d like to point out to Shaft- he’s “A tall thin man in a gray suit with a skinny black tie”. not green.
Nice work Pete. Keep at it.
I liked this story. Sure, anything could be made longer and have a lot more detail, but this felt about right for what the author was doing. I was engaged from start to finish, and that’s the one thing short stories must do.
Nice job. Four stars….
Elevator, Anton, and Seatlle Jim,
Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate you reading the story and taking time to post.
Pete
Great old-time type story! Particularly relevant for me in that I do have stacks of old pulps like that. I’m a pulp-lover from way back. Except I have ‘em in poly covers and stored so that they don’t fall over and crush any innocent aliens that might drop by! That would be against Intergalactic Law, last I heard. THIS IS A GREAT, NOSTALGIC SF E-ZINE. Glad I found you!
Short, smart and cute.
Thanks!
Great story, Pete. Liked it — smoothly told. Congrats!