The Time for Love: Now -- Extract

L.A. Zoe

Cover graphic design by Drew at idrewdesign on Fiverr.com.

The right of L.A. Zoe to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyrights and Patents Act 1988.

Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

"What do I want with you?" she asked in return.

"Yes."

"You didn't buy the time traveler from the future story?"

"No."

She sighed. "I don't blame you, but . . . "

He waited. Why didn't he just throw her out?

Because she was a beautiful woman and he hoped to get lucky for the first time in his life?

Yes.

She didn't seem to pose any threat. Maybe she was demented. That would explain things. A lunatic who had some kind of fixation on him. Maybe his mother once worked for her, so she'd known of him since he was a baby.

They locked her up in an insane asylum. Every once in a great while, she escaped, or they let her out. And she came to him.

They took good care of her, which explained why she still looked only twenty-five years old.

She paid him the compliment of paying more attention to him than any other woman. Even more than most of the physics faculty, except she didn't understand the technical parts.

So all he had to do was humor her for another day and a half, and she'd be gone. Probably back to the asylum. That made sense. She got a two-day pass.

Just his luck. A gorgeous woman finally likes him, and she was nuts.

He started to pat her knee, then held back. He didn't want to encourage any delusions. "I'll do some work now. If you want anything, just let me know."

"I'll sit here and watch you. You've already taught me so much."

He marked the homework quickly. It took longer to really examine each student's work. Did they seem to understand, or at least could follow the example in the book? If wrong, were they at least in the ballpark? Or hopelessly lost? Some he would counsel to drop the course while they still could without penalty.

He picked up one of his notebooks and studied his notes for his next journal article, a collaboration with a friend he made last year at a conference, who attended the University of Texas. They agreed on the foolishness of tachyons -- the theoretical particle that could travel only faster than light. Yet some superstring models required its existence. Though of course one had never been detected and, almost certainly, never would be.

As he worked, he couldn't forget his visitor. She sat quietly and watched him, trying not to bother him.

Carver felt something wrong. Some wall between them that shouldn't be there. As though, if he could remove it, he would feel the warmth and love he missed his entire life.

The inner sense the universe was not only complicated and infinitely interesting, but compelling as well. As though star light were something more than just one of the four basic forces.

As though the stars too smelled of wintergreen. And shone with the sound of a French horn. Time was a friend instead of a rigid taskmaster. And the unknown dimensions tasted like homemade cheeseburgers, stacked with thick juicy ground beef, a slice of lettuce, one of red onion, one of tomato, a chunk of Colby cheese -- served on a thick, soft buttered hot bun.

Hours later, Carver yawned, then rubbed his eyes. Nearly eleven thirty.

Marile slept leaning to one side.

Carver lowered her head, getting her arms out of the way, then pulled her legs and feet up to lay them on the couch.

So much for his resolution to be a gentleman and give her the bed. No way was he going to try to carry her. She wasn't a big woman, but he never developed big muscles. And he didn't want to wake her.

Placed a light blanket over her, then pulled the window down, leaving it open a crack so she would have fresh air.

And so much for the chances of any romantic episode.

No, he couldn't. Not with a mentally unbalanced woman, no matter how pretty and sexy.

Wearing only his cotton boxer gym shorts and a t-shirt, Carver fell into bed.

But of course he couldn't sleep. He reviewed his memories of Marile.

The first time, he was such a young, little boy. And until he was sixteen, when they were suddenly important again, he let his first memories of her remain buried under the many other experiences of growing up.

How could he now be certain what really happened, and what was a child's embellished, fanciful imagination?

He remembered older boys threatening him. That part could easily be real. Although Marile protected him that day, older boys, sometimes including his own brothers, beat him up every so often for years to come.

Marile watching as he swung on a swing. Quite probably a true memory. He even remembered how she encouraged him to jump off at the peak, telling him to fly to the moon, and how much fun that was.

And teaching him how to fold an origami crane with flapping wings? Quite possible. He didn't know any other kids who folded animals like that, at home or school. It wasn't part of his kindergarten curriculum.

Especially not to the lengths he took it. One of his proudest moments remained when he saw the look of surprise and admiration on Marile's face when she stepped into his bedroom and saw his folded inventions.

As for the chaste kisses she bestowed on his cheeks, well, they could be real too.

The only crazy part was his conviction she was an angel.

And Ma once told him that until he met Marile the angel in the park, he didn't talk. Not at all. But he didn't remember that. Maybe he was just a quiet kid. He was sure the quiet type now.

Marile coming to the park party when he was sixteen . . . that was clearer, more reliable.

She did. And protected him from a police bust even while they thought she was some kind of outside agitator, maybe the brains behind the Black Cougars' attempted assassination of Richard Nixon the day before.

And later that evening, she convinced him not to drop out of school. Now, he could not remember how she persuaded him, but when he woke up the next day, he took all his classes seriously, especially all the science courses. From that time forward, he received straight As.

So by the time he graduated he had strengthened his GPA to a respectable score. One year at the local junior college, and a teacher and counselor helped him apply for the grants and scholarships to move there to Cromwell and attend the University of Kiowa.

Bachelor of Science, Physics Masters, and Ph.D. Supporting himself as a teaching assistant. Butting heads with the professors, but powering through on the strength of his knowledge.

Now, thirty-four, struggling toward the next step, an assistant professorship, Marile again appeared to him.

For a lunatic released only once a generation or so, she helped him a lot.

If this be insanity, let us make the most of it.

If she were really from the future, what was his? The professorship he already earned several times over, which would be handed to him like the crown jewels if only he would 'convert,' support the superstring theory.

Not to mention puckering his lips to lick their backsides.

But what he could do with some grant money . . .

His vision of attaining respectability transmuted into a dream of marrying Marile, and he accepting a prize when Marile shook his shoulder.

"Wake up, sleepy head," she said. "Put your clothes on. Come out here and look."

The sound of her voice and the warmth radiating from her flesh pulled him up. Pants on, half his brain still sorting out the dream of marrying her, he followed.

Without allowing him to switch on any lights, she opened his front door and dragged him out to the small concrete apron between his building and the three steps to the yard.

Silence over the air like a thick quilt. No car engines racing, no stereos playing, no parties jamming. No people talking or yelling or crying. No birds singing or insects chirruping. No wind rustling the autumn leaves or clacking tree branches together. The world was holding its breath.

Above, the air was equally still and magnificently clear. Not even the hint of a cloud or a wisp of air pollution.

Someone must have switched off Cromwell's bright city lights, for the black sky shone as clear as Carver could ever remember seeing it, even in the mountains he once visited with an grad student buddy.

The first quarter moon hovered near the horizon. Beyond its light, stars shone across and throughout the sky. Sparkling jewels big and small. Some with faint glimmers of other colors besides white, but all magnificent lights playing a symphony of sound to make Beethoven's heart soar.

Marile held his upper arm with both hands. "Tell me, please, Milton. What do you see up there?"

Carver looked to see if she were joking, or laughing at him, but saw only rapture on her face, and so took the chance.

He pointed. "That's Polaris, the North Star. It's almost perfectly aligned with Earth's North Pole. So navigators in the northern hemisphere have used it for many years. It's at the end of the Little Dipper, and is four hundred thirty-three lightyears from Earth."

"That means the light we're seeing now was generated from the star four hundred thirty-three years ago, right?"

"Give or take a few days."

"Tell me more," she said, excitement brightening her voice.

"Venus is the brightest object after the moon, but it's too early now. And I don't know if it's even close to Earth or not."

"What do you mean, too early?"

"It's closer to the sun than Earth, so it's only visible just after sunset and just before sunrise. The closest star is Alpha Centauri, only four and a third light years away. Actually, it's a binary star system. Two suns rotate around each other, and a third one."

"Any planets?"

"We wish. We don't have the technology to discover them yet."

"So some of that light is only four years old. And how far away is the oldest star?"

"We're working on that," Carver said. "Besides the Milky Way, there're millions of other galaxies. We'll know more after the Hubble Space Telescope is launched."

"Billions of stars, millions of galaxies . . . what else?" Marile asked.

His feet felt cold, but Carver didn't want to stop. He hadn't had an audience like her since . . . never.

"Black holes. Neutron stars. Matter pressed so close together there's no space between the subatomic particles. Gravity so powerful light itself cannot escape. Microwave radiation leftover from the Big Bang."

He kept going. He didn't want to stop. He wanted her to understand, to feel as he did.

"It's sort of strange," he said. "But astronomy is another way to study physics, even though it's about objects much larger and farther apart than the human mind can comprehend. And physics is about particles much smaller than we can comprehend."

"You work with them."

"We can compute the math. But outer space is a huge physics laboratory. Light waves in a vacuum. Fusion generators. Gravity influencing objects many lightyears distant. And we never would have detected dark matter and dark energy just here on Earth. Yet, I'm sure, they're key to discovering the underlying unity."

"See?" she said in a teasing voice. "Time travel is real. We're looking at the past right now. Most of it a lot farther from now than this time is from where I come from."

"Well, we're all traveling into the future at the rate of one day every twenty-four hours."

"And other dimensions?" Marile asked. "Other universes? Don't you believe in them?"

How did she know that?

"Where are they?" Marile asked.

"We can't see them," Carver said. "But I feel them in my gut, just like the paper I folded. What you saw in my room. Somehow, someway, things can be far apart in space, but folded close together through another dimension of space."

"Maybe that's where I come from. Your other dimensions fold time together too."

"It's a nice theory." Carver said, smiling, "Don't kill your grandfather."

Her hands slid down his arm and held his left hand. "It's a big, tremendous universe, isn't it?"

"More than we can really comprehend. More than we can imagine. Every day we learn more amazing things."

"Do you believe in God?"

"Sure, it's pi."

"Pi?"

"The mathematical constant we use to calculate the dimensions of a circle or a sphere. It's infinitely long, and always changing."

"I don't understand."

"It's like an eternal spring, bringing forth water and new life. Numbers just keep pouring from it. Computers have divided it for tens of thousands of places to the right of the decimal. The answers are random. There's no pattern. Just raw chaos, like the ancient horn of plenty."

"And you're going to discover your piece of creation, aren't you?" she said, squeezing his hands tight.

"Lots of people are studying it. Astronomers. Physicists. Biologists. Chemists. Many people smarter than me."

"Your time will come, Milton. Don't ever give up, no matter how hard things get. Promise me you won't."

"I don't need to promise, Marile. This is my life. This is all I want. Someday, I'll discover something worth the sacrifice. And if I don't, that's all right. This is still all I want."

"No wife, no real girlfriend?"

"No woman wants to live with a guy like me," he said. "Even you're leaving soon."

"Let the universe love you back," Marile said in a hushed voice at such a low volume Carver wasn't sure he heard her correctly.

But something in her voice flashed in his heart, a new color of the rainbow, a new sound in the Music of the Spheres. He smelled spring, and tasted the Big Bang.

He suddenly realized what to do, and leaned his face down and kissed her.

And he folded into the fourth dimension of his swollen penis, or it folded over into his brain, for it just didn't stick out in front, but was the entire universe, and then inside Marile . . .

. . . and exploded with the flash of a supernova, a sonic boom that shook his entire body.