Sapphic Voices Science Fiction

Twenty-twenty Hindsight

Kylie stepped out of the airlock, removed her oxygen mask, and inhaled deeply. Within seconds, she sensed the excitement at the guard station. “Hey, John,” she said as she placed her hand on the ID scanner. “What’s up?”

The young man in the impeccably starched uniform beamed. “Good news. The best, in fact. Homeland Security approved our proposal for Technology Containment. So the project won’t be suspended after all.”

“That’s great! I was starting to think they’d decided to cut us loose,” she said. She smiled at his innocent young face. He had no meaningful memory of life before the New Revolution of 2013. He didn’t miss what he’d never had. Lucky him.

He nodded happily. “Yeah, they cut it pretty close. I was sure we’d all be out pounding the pavement come month-end.”

“Looks like we’re safe for now,” she replied. “Later, John. Have a good one.”

“Back at ‘cha, Kylie.”

A sense of irony washed over her as she walked to the elevator. Despite his concern, gainful employment wasn’t really much of a problem for John Landers; security guards were needed everywhere. But it was definitely problematic for female particle physicists.

In the face of stressful academic and career demands, Kylie Donovan had thrived. Now in her forties, she was still vibrant and healthy. Despite the setbacks to women brought about by the New Revolution, she was one of the most respected physicists in the field. She was blessed with a supportive partner and two reasonably well behaved teenage kids.

Under the New Revolution, the Revised Employment Practices Act mandated that a female could be employed in a professional position only if no qualified male was available. Starting in 2014, institutions of higher learning had been barred from enrolling women in science and math courses. With the exception of “secretarial science,” women had been excluded from business courses beginning the following year. The New Revolution was fulfilling its promise of a long overdue return to traditional family values. In a few short years, the transition would be complete.

Bypassing her usual stop for coffee at the cafeteria on the second floor, Kylie exited the elevator on the fifth and went directly to her cubicle. She stashed her oxygen mask in the bottom drawer of her desk as she sat. The imposing logo of Revolution Dynamic Research Corporation floated randomly around her computer monitor. She nudged her mouse to make it go away. Then she wished she hadn’t. Now visible at the bottom of the screen was the flashing icon indicating that someone on the Management Team had sent her a message.

Open sesame. Click. “Staff mtg 8:10 AM Conf Rm 5B. Attendance req’d for all members of Team Lightfoot. Johnson.” She glanced at the lower right corner of the screen. 8:05 AM.

Although she was three minutes early, Kylie was the last member of Team Lightfoot to arrive. She slipped into one of the two remaining chairs at the long simulated walnut conference table and waited to be told the news that John Landers had given her a few minutes earlier. Glenn Johnson, the Team Leader, was seated at the head of the table.

“Kylie, I’m glad you finally made it,” said Glenn. “Carmen brought in all the coffee stuff, but Mr. Patterson needed her upstairs before she had a chance to serve it. Would you mind?”

It wasn’t the first such episode. Not surprisingly, Kylie was the only female on the technical staff of Team Lightfoot. She was actually second in command in terms of both seniority and title. But with Carmen temporarily unavailable, she was the only possible choice. For a male to serve coffee at a staff meeting, especially to a female staff member, would be unconscionable.

“Certainly,” she said. She distributed the cups, saucers, napkins, and spoons. She placed cream and sugar in the center of the table. She worked her way around the table with the coffee pot. She poured coffee for each of them, including the three trainees who were in the process of learning their jobs from her. One of the older men thanked her. The rest said nothing.

Glenn Johnson tapped on his coffee cup with his mechanical pencil. “Okay, men. I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that we’ve been given the green light for the project. That’s the good news. But it’s not all roses and clover, as you’ll soon see. Further work is contingent on complete compliance with the proposal for Technology Containment, which henceforth will be called the Technology Containment Act of Twenty-twenty.”

Bob Hogan asked, “Will this compliance thing have much of an impact?” When Hogan had joined the team the previous year, Kylie had quickly pegged him as an aggressive up-and-comer whose idea of impressing the boss was to ask questions that were, in his opinion, extremely intelligent and insightful. Although he had never been able to grasp the concepts behind the project, he had somehow managed to hang on to his job.

“The impact should be minimal,” Glenn replied. “The Act is required reading as of right now. You can access it on the internal network server. It’s your top priority --- all of you. You’re not to do any further work until you read and understand it.” He paused, scowled at Kylie, then returned his attention to the group. “Kylie wrote most of it. If there’s anything you don’t understand, make sure she explains it to your satisfaction.”

Hogan turned to Kylie. “I’d like a brief summary.” It wasn’t a request. It was a command.

She smiled. “Certainly. As you know, Bob, Project Lightfoot is based on the recent finding in quantum physics that atoms aren’t matter, they’re actually processes. As you also know, one of the consequences is that electrons can move from one place to another without traversing space.” Hogan’s eyes were already beginning to glaze over. “Until twenty-twelve, they thought that the speed of light, considered either as waves or particles, was limited by the requirement of physical movement to get from Point A to Point B. That led to the theory of ‘worm holes’ as a possible way around the old limit.”

“Get to the goddam point, Kylie.” It was Tom Patterson, her nemesis from before the New Revolution. He had never bothered to hide his resentment that even the success of the extreme Right at turning American politics on its ear, turning back women’s “rights” a hundred years to where they belonged, had still failed to get rid of Kylie Donovan and her fucking Ph.D. and her fucking academic prestige and her fucking 2012 Nobel Prize in physics for her discovery of “matter as process.”

Kylie smiled. “The point, Tom, is this. Even as far back as Einstein, the connection between matter and energy was common knowledge. By the middle of the twentieth century, every school kid knew about ‘E equals m c squared’ with ‘m’ being matter, which they expressed as mass, and ‘c’ being the speed of light, which they considered a constant, and of course they expressed it in terms of distance and time. But when ‘matter as process’ was finally understood in twenty-twelve, the previous limitations went out the window.”

Tom wished he hadn’t spoken out. He didn’t understand matter as process or any of its corollaries. Until some new guy came along who did, they were stuck with this smartass bitch who belonged at home raising kids and taking care of a husband … that she didn’t even fucking have.

“So the implications with regard to time are obvious,” Kylie continued. She scanned the faces at the table. She had lost them all. Good. “And that’s all the Technology Containment Act is about.” She shrugged. “Simple as that. So as you’ll see when you read it, the impact on us is tangential.”

“But if our goal is to move something faster than the speed of light,” Hogan said, jumping in for yet another shot at an insightful question, “how can we not be concerned with time?”

Kylie smiled. “As you know, Bob, Project Lightfoot is concerned with ‘matter as process.’ In that context, we’re dealing with nanoseconds, at most. Time in the conventional sense is immaterial. The difference between one second and one year is irrelevant.”

Hogan stared at his coffee cup and nodded.

“As you know,” she added for good measure. Sure you do, she thought as she stifled a laugh.

Glenn stepped in. “Thank you, Kylie. That was very sweet of you to share.” He turned to the group. “Now in light of our new directive, I think it’s time to review the individual areas of responsibility and reset our milestones….”

Kylie tuned out. Forty minutes later, she became aware that the meeting had ended when she realized that people were leaving the room. Back in her cubicle, she spent the rest of the day considering the Technology Containment Act of 2020.

The problem wasn’t about the activities of Project Lightfoot complying with the Act. That was a laugh. The real problem, and it was Kylie’s very own, was how to apply the knowledge she had developed in the course of writing the Act. As she’d explained for the hundredth time in the morning meeting, the nature of the tasks associated with Lightfoot involved minuscule slices of time. What she hadn’t realized until she’d thought about constraints on the technology was that there existed a time spectrum, and all of her previous work had concentrated on the end point, the smallest time slice.

Moving from a point to a line added another dimension and an additional concept to the phenomenon of “matter as process.” The dimension was time, and the concept was time travel, and Kylie was apparently the only person around who came close to understanding it, and using the equipment at Revolution Dynamic Research Corporation she was pretty sure she could pull it off.

The only other person who was aware of the situation was Maddie Logan, Kylie’s partner of twenty-two years. Their relationship had begun several years before the New Revolution. They had decided that they wanted kids, and Maddie wanted to carry them herself. So Kylie’s brother Jack had donated sperm. As the birth father of the two children, his name appeared on their birth certificates, and both kids bore the Donovan surname, much to Kylie’s delight. From the beginning, they lived in a two story Tudor about a mile from Jordan College, a house that Maddie inherited from her maiden aunt. Over the years, the house had undergone countless renovations.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, their lives proceeded pretty much as planned. Kylie, who had received her doctorate in 1998, worked for Dow Chemical. Progress of the LGBT movement was slow but steady. For every minor victory, there was anti-gay backlash. Three steps forward were usually followed by two steps back. Nevertheless, they were slowly moving ahead. When the kids started school, Maddie returned to her position as Associate Professor of History at Jordan College. But after the New Revolution, her job was secure only as long as no qualified male chose to displace her.

#

Looking back, Maddie thought that the trouble had probably started around 2007. President Gore had done all he could to save the planet, but he had gotten started too late. Seven years wasn’t enough time to undo the environmental destruction of a century. Study after study demonstrated damage so extensive that much more would have to be done to repair it. But at every opportunity, Gore’s opponents pointed out that the enormous investment of tax dollars had led to a record national debt while doing almost nothing to restore the environment.

The voice of the extreme Right had become louder and louder. More voters began to consider their simplistic message: it is far more important to minimize taxes and government spending than to solve any costly problem.

In 2008, the people expressed their discontent with the high cost of saving the Earth when they elected William Cunningham as forty-fourth President of the United States of America. Cunningham’s spotless record of fiscal conservatism appealed to large corporate interests as well as struggling taxpayers. His unblemished record of social conservatism appealed to religious fundamentalists, to anti-abortion advocates, and especially to anti-gay sympathizers, most of whom materialized, seemingly from nowhere, in unexpectedly large numbers.

LGBT and other civil rights groups were taken by surprise. They had grossly underestimated the power of the extreme Right to lure moderate voters into their fold. The new Congress, with over two-thirds of its members having been hand picked by the Cunningham camp, withdrew financial support of programs for disadvantaged citizens, paving the way to a tax cut for those making over a million dollars per year.

Then came a series of blows. Amendment XXVII to the Constitution of the United States, passed by the required two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress, restricted the definition of marriage to the union between one man and one woman. By Executive Order, government contracts were withheld from any business offering domestic partner benefits, and Federal financial aid was withdrawn from all local governments with anti-discrimination policies for LGBT people.

Financial crises in both the public and private spheres soon led to the reversal of fifty years of progress for the LGBT community. Private companies and government agencies became reluctant to hire gays and lesbians. Many of them, even those who had previously welcomed LGBT employees, found ways to terminate them.

Maddie became curious to the point of obsession about how and why their future, which at one time seemed so promising, had been suddenly and irrevocably destroyed. She determined to study, understand, and maybe even record for future generations the horrible events that had transpired. At first she concentrated on the 2008 election of President Cunningham. How could it have happened?

As she pored over the history of the first years of the millennium, the pattern emerged. The political pendulum, never at rest, had swung slowly but relentlessly from left to right. That was no surprise. Throughout the country’s history, momentum was almost always away from the party in power. President Gore had endured eight years of disaster. The Right blamed him for everything from the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, to the huge but insufficient expenditures to preserve the planet, and the resulting record high national debt.

The Cunningham Administration saved plenty of tax money by eliminating ninety percent of funding for environmental preservation. By 2015, air pollution reached the point that it was physically painful to go outside of hermetically sealed buildings without wearing an oxygen mask. Only the very rich could afford to buy meat, as animals raised for food could not survive outside of hermetically sealed structures whose ongoing costs were tremendous. Vegetable crops were grown in sealed greenhouses. The oceans sustained no life at all. The cost of living was astronomical. In order to maintain itself, the government taxed every income at a flat rate of fifty percent, with no deductibles. Very few could afford more than the basic necessities of life.

On the other hand, the economy had received a significant boost when three large contractors, all carefully vetted by the Administration, undertook the daunting but lucrative task of retrofitting every structure in the country (outside of poverty areas) with hermetic seals. Larger and more prosperous businesses also installed airlocks, ensuring that no polluted air could sneak into their work environments.

#

Maddie was in the den when she heard the door open and quickly close, followed by the familiar voice calling her name. “In the den, sweetie.” Her gaze remained on her computer screen.

Kylie appeared and kissed her lips lightly. “Hi.” She turned to the screen. “What’re you looking at?”

“Email from Robbie. He wants us to transfer five hundred bucks to his account. Lab expenses, he says.”

Robbie, their nineteen year old son, was a Junior at Cal State University in San Francisco. His parents were used to the exorbitant cost of college, but they hadn’t completely adjusted their household budget to accommodate it.

Kylie perched on the corner of the desk. “Well, today is Robbie’s lucky day, because his Mama Boo found out she has a job beyond the end of the month.”

Maddie turned to her, wide-eyed. “Seriously?”

“Yep. The powers-that-be decided that the proposal for Technology Containment is enough to keep them in complete control. So we’ve got funding for another year.”

“Did they … did anyone pick up on the time thing?” She referred to the veiled revelation that Kylie had included in the document as personal insurance against future accusations that she had not provided critical technical information.

“Nope. You know, there’s a test in technical writing about that. It’s called ‘understood if already known.’ The writer explains something. If the reader is already familiar with it, the explanation seems clear. Otherwise, it’s just a string of words.”

“Then your secret is safe so far.”

Kylie shrugged. “I guess so. Not that it’s worth anything at this point.” She stood and stretched. “How was your day, lover? Learn anything new?”

“The pendulum swings.”

“Uh huh. The clock ticks. The cookie crumbles. The --- ”

“The political pendulum,” Maddie interrupted. “If it’s on the left, it swings right. If it’s on the right, it swings left.”

“And your point is?”

“When William Cunningham was elected the first time, the pendulum was swinging right. Five years later, the New Revolution was a reality and the LGBT movement was history.”

Kylie grimaced. “Thanks for enlightening me. Now I know that the reason why we’re back in the closet is that the pendulum was swinging right instead of left in two-thousand-eight.”

“Really, sweetie, I think it’s true.”

“You think if the pendulum had been swinging left it would have turned out differently? How could that have happened? I mean, if the election in two?thousand had turned out differently…. You think if that other guy --- what was his name?”

“Bush. George W. Son of the other one.”

“You think if George W. Bush had won the election in two-thousand that the pendulum would have been swinging left eight years later?”

Maddie grasped the arms of her chair and stared at the ceiling. “I’ve never thought about that. But based on what we know of political history, it seems likely.” She looked at Kylie. “That was a strange election. We watched it unfold on TV, remember? The vote was so close in Florida that they had to do a recount.”

“I remember it,” Kylie said. “God, it seems like so long ago. We were just kids. The ballots were paper or cardboard or something like that. They said the other guy --- Bush --- was ahead of Gore. And the woman that got shot and killed --- the Florida Secretary of State --- what was her name?”

“Something Harris, I think,” Maddie said.

“Yeah, that’s it. They found out later that she’d been about to stop the recount, so that Bush would have been declared the winner in Florida. That would have given him the grand prize.”

Maddie nodded. “But as they found out when the recount was finished, Gore really did get more votes. And he won the popular vote nationally, too.”

“Because somebody shot that woman before she could make Bush the winner in Florida.”

Maddie stood and began to pace. “This is bizarre. I remember hearing about that woman’s life after she was killed. She was an extreme Right fanatic, probably anti-gay all the way. And if she had lived, her actions might have changed history in our favor. We might be free and equal now.”

“Do you recall anything about the shooting?” asked Kylie.

“Not much. I know that she was shot by another woman. I guess I remember that because it’s kind of unusual. I suppose we could learn all the gory details on the Internet. Just for the hell of it, let’s see what we can find.”

On the Internet they found over a hundred newspaper articles about the assassination in 2000 of Katherine Harris, Florida Secretary of State. Harris was gunned down in her office. Within moments, security guards apprehended the alleged shooter, Albany Jean Rasmussen, 27, of Key West, Florida. It was later learned that Harris had told a group of local reporters outside her office that she had decided to issue an order to halt the recount of any and all Florida ballots cast in the 2000 election of President of the United States. It was known that George W. Bush held the lead at the time of the shooting. Albany Rasmussen was later convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Maddie continued to pace. “It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? I mean, the implication that if Gore had lost in two-thousand, Cunningham might never have been elected in two-thousand-eight. And if Cunningham hadn’t been elected, the New Revolution might never have taken place and the gay rights movement might still be alive today.”

“You’re actually serious, aren’t you?” Kylie was surprised at her partner’s speculation. Maddie rarely engaged in flights of fancy.

“I know it’s silly. But I can’t help wondering.” She snapped her fingers. “I have an idea. Remember that history simulation program I told you about … the one the History Department got a couple of months ago?”

“I think so. The company that designed it asked you guys to beta test it, right?”

“Right. The idea is to input alternative parameters into historical events and see how they might have affected the outcomes. The ultimate goal is to develop a better understanding of how to allocate resources --- the few we have left. Ben Kane has already done a lot of simulations varying troop levels in the Civil War. His results are amazing.”

“Amazing in what way?”

“Ben found that there’s a sixty percent probability that the South would have won the war if their troops had been deployed according to a certain pattern.”

“Wow.” Kylie shuddered.

“Of course it never could’ve happened, because the Confederate Army had no way of knowing the relevant details about the Union Army. Ben had the advantage of knowing the complete history of the war, so he was able to input the exact data into the simulation that led to a different outcome.”

“Or so your program claims. That’s a pretty bold assertion.”

“It isn’t a ‘bold assertion’,” Maddie protested. “It’s just an estimate of the probability of a certain outcome, given a certain set of parameters.”

“Okay, smarty pants, why don’t you have the program run a simulation of an alternate outcome of the two-thousand presidential election? If Bush had won in two-thousand, what’s the probability that Cunningham would’ve won eight years later? And while you’re at it, what’s the probability that the New Revolution wouldn’t have taken place? Geez, Maddie, how depressing can you get?”

#

Three days later, Maddie reported the results of her simulation. If George W. Bush had been elected in 2000, then the probability was ninety-eight percent that he would have been re-elected in 2004, the probability was ninety-five percent that William Cunningham would not have been elected in 2008, and the probability was ninety-two percent that the New Revolution would not have occurred.

Kylie shook her head. “It sounds like just a matter of bad timing. But considering the people involved, I wonder if there’s such a thing as good timing.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” replied Maddie. “Those people are always there. They stay quiet --- sometimes for years --- until they sense a chance to spread their venom. Then, look out. If normal people underestimate them until it’s too late, we can kiss our civil liberties good-bye for another century, maybe longer.”

“Yeah. Their good old New Revolution fixed our little red wagon for generations to come.”

#

On the heels of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integration and Calculator, the first totally electronic computer) in 1947, commercially feasible computers were introduced in the 1950s. Each computer had several huge components, and their handlers walked around among them. Instructions in crude, low level program code were punched into cardboard cards and fed into the ancient machines. The expense was enormous and the capabilities extremely limited. This technology evolved so quickly that by 2020, Kylie Donovan and the majority of people in the developed countries of the world carried in their pockets affordable devices with over a hundred times the computing power of the old giants.

At Revolution Dynamic Research Corporation, the laboratory for Project Lightfoot occupied less than a thousand square feet, and most of it was taken up by desks and chairs. All the hardware, which sat on a wooden table in the center of the room, would probably fit in a small suitcase.

Alone in the lab, Kylie concentrated on that hardware. Understood if already known, she thought. Even for the Nobel Prize winner who had discovered the phenomenon of matter as process without the slightest awareness of the related time spectrum, it had been a difficult step forward. Difficult, but done. The concept of time travel was obvious, once she had made the obscure but critical connection.

Time travel paradoxes had always fascinated her. If you went back in time and killed your grandmother when she was still a young girl, then you never would have been born, in which case you couldn’t have done the deed because you didn’t exist. Therefore, your grandmother lived and you were born so you did exist. And if you went back….

Then there was the “primary directive” imposed by all those authorities in science fiction novels: No Meddling! It was forbidden to alter the course of civilization in any way, and that included time travel. Ray Bradbury had written a book about a guy who traveled back in time about a million years, stepped on a butterfly, and almost caused the end of the world as he knew it. Scary.

Technology was supposed to help people. But the whole planet was doomed and everybody knew it and nobody talked about it. Every year it got harder and harder to produce food. Air pollution continued to worsen. The lifeless oceans had begun to give off toxic fumes. Lesbians, gays, people of color, and anyone else who could be categorized as a minority had become the designated scapegoats and were routinely punished for their contribution to the disaster. How could technology resolve problems like that?

Kylie stood over the wooden table and concentrated on the Project Lightfoot hardware. “By stopping William Cunningham from becoming the forty-fourth President of the United States,” she whispered.

The pieces fell into place. Clothing styles hadn’t changed enough in the past twenty years to make a difference. She would carry her Revolution Dynamic Research badge, oxygen mask, personal electronics, taser gun, and a newspaper photo of Albany Jean Rasmussen in the suitcase with the Lightfoot hardware. In terms of elapsed time in the lab, her mission would begin and end in less than a minute.

#

The directory in the lobby of the R. A. Gray Building on South Bronough St. in Tallahassee indicated that the office of Katherine H. Harris, Secretary of State, was located in Room 313. According to news reports, that was where she had been shot and killed later that morning.

Kylie stepped into the elevator. Prior to September 11, 2001, security in government buildings was almost nonexistent. Thanks to the presence of over a dozen news crews and their cumbersome paraphernalia, the suitcase she carried drew no attention.

The elevator door on the third floor was about twenty feet from Ms. Harris’ office. The frosted glass office door was closed, apparently locked. A handful of reporters waited in the wide hallway. Kylie recognized Albany Rasmussen. Leaning casually against the wall, the young woman appeared bored and relaxed. Her skin was a healthy shade of pink. Her curly strawberry blonde hair hung loosely just above her shoulders. But as Kylie approached her, she saw an almost frightening intensity in the young woman’s eyes, and she was somewhat surprised when her gaydar sent her an immediate and strong signal that Albany was family. The connection gave her a reasonable excuse to strike up a conversation. Kylie drifted over and set her suitcase on the floor.

“Is she here yet?”

Albany shook her head. “I don’t know if she’ll even show up.”

“You look familiar,” said Kylie casually. “Have you ever been on an Olivia Cruise?” It was the best she could come up with for a twenty year old code word. The long defunct company had been one of the first victims of the New Revolution. But she and Maddie had gone on an Olivia Cruise for their first anniversary, back in the day.

Albany flashed a big grin. “I hope to take the Alaska trip next summer, if I can scrape together enough dough for a ticket.”

“I’ve heard that’s a good one.” She frowned. “So, what’s the latest word on Harris?”

The smile disappeared. “There was a leak from the inside. She’s under pressure to halt the recount. Considering her political leanings, she’s likely to cave … unless somebody can stop her.”

“Do you believe Gore will win if they finish the recount?”

“Everybody seems to think so.” She glared at the locked office door. “The woman has to be stopped. The fate of the country depends on it.”

“Maybe,” Kylie murmured.

“There’s no ‘maybe’ about it,” Albany snapped. “Do you know what those people stand for? They’re out to destroy everyone who isn’t exactly like them and every obstacle, including the environmental health of the Earth, to getting even richer than they already are.”

“Listen, Albany. At this point in history, most people are unaware of global warming. Of those who’ve heard about it, most don’t believe it. When President Gore ….” She stopped abruptly. “If Gore gets elected and spends a fortune to save the planet, on top of the tragedy of September ….” She stopped herself again. “At this point in history, people don’t understand the extent or the cost of the effort needed just to get the Earth back to the point where we can survive. If Gore were to spend big bucks on that effort, the political backlash could have unimaginable consequences. I think this is a case where things have to get much worse before they can get better.”

“You’re wrong,” Albany insisted. “Time is running out. We can’t wait another four years. Something has to be done.” She touched her pocket where it bulged slightly. “Right now. Today.”

Kylie’s hand shielded the tiny taser. “I’m sorry, Albany,” she whispered as she reached for the woman’s arm.

The jolt was minimal. Albany slumped against the wall. Kylie grabbed her before she slid to the floor. Supporting Albany on her right side and carrying the suitcase on her left, she struggled down the hall and stumbled into the Women’s Room.

Fortunately, the restroom was empty. She dropped the suitcase, wrestled Albany into a stall, lowered her as gently as she could to the toilet seat, and locked them in. She retrieved a capsule from a small container in her pocket, broke it open, and spread the liquid contents over the inside of Albany’s right wrist. She pulled the pistol from the woman’s pocket.

“You’ll be good as new in a few hours,” she said just before she slithered under the stall door.

#

The lab was still there. Except it wasn’t the lab. It was a room full of beige stychophin file cabinets. She squatted and opened the suitcase. It held only her personal items and a pistol that looked to be over twenty years old.

It was obvious from the nearly empty suitcase that there was no Project Lightfoot. The Lightfoot hardware must have ceased to exist in the hours after her exit from the third floor restroom in the R. A. Gray Building in Tallahassee. Time travel was once again, as it always had been, a fantasy.

Nobody paid any attention when Kylie stepped into the hallway. On the short walk to the exit, she learned that the building no longer (or maybe, more appropriately, never had) housed Revolution Dynamic Research Corporation.

Outside, only about half of the people were wearing oxygen masks. She rushed to the Trans Stop and boarded the first car that was headed in toward home. She held her breath as she placed her hand on the ID scanner. To her relief, the green light flashed. At least the Electronic Credit System was intact.

She reached home a thirty minutes later. The house was a different color and there were a few minor differences, but at least it was there. She hoped it was still hers. But just in case, she rang the bell.

The door opened almost immediately. “Thank Goddess your safe,”

Maddie cried. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, Maddie, I’m so glad to see you.” She hugged her tightly, and only then did the tears begin to flow. “I was so scared. I was afraid I might have lost you.”

Maddie stepped back and laughed. “I’ve been here all along. You’re the one who was lost. I ran into one of your students on campus, and he said you didn’t show up for your seminar this morning. Where were you?”

“My seminar? What are you talking about?”

Maddie tensed. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“I think so, but bear with me, Maddie. Humor me. Answer some very basic questions, okay? Here goes. Are the kids all right, where do I work, what’s my job, and who were the Presidents of the United States from the year two-thousand until now?”

“Okay, I’ll play along. But only over coffee. C’mon.”

Over cappuccino and cinnamon rolls, she paid close attention to Maddie’s answers. Then she accessed the Internet for a quick review of the history of the twenty-first century.

Maddie told her that George W. Bush was elected President in 2000 and 2004. She didn’t catch the name for 2008, but it definitely wasn’t William Cunningham. Bark O’Brahma, or something like that. She wondered what he and his successors looked like, what they stood for, and what they had accomplished. Most important, she wanted to know if the extreme Right had again been underestimated, or if the one and only second chance to secure world freedom and human rights had been successful.

- End -

If you have enjoyed Vicki Stevenson's "Twenty-twenty Hindsight", then please be certain to  Contact The Writer  and thank her for posting this Story.

Click here for a list of all of Vicki Stevenson's Stories and Poetry at  Sapphic Voices Authoresses.