Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
"No," he said. "I've considered doing that, and decided against it.
Her voice and image come through for only about five minutes a day,
sometimes less. And those minutes are very precious to us. We don't
want any one else present, any one at all."
"Not even to convince me she actually exists?"
"You wouldn't be convinced anyway," he said very shrewdly. "No matter
what I showed you, you'd still find a reason to call it a fraud."
He was right at that. It would take a lot of convincing to make me
believe that a babe who wasn't going to get born for a thousand years
was in love with him.
By this time, though, I was sure of one thing--there was something
screwy going on in that laboratory of his. For five minutes a day he
was watching some dame's picture, listening to her voice. If I had an
idea what she was like, I might figure out where to go from there.
I began keeping an eye on Perry, dropping in at the laboratory to pay
him visits. There was what looked like a ten-inch TV tube in one corner
of his place, not housed in a cabinet, but lying on the table among
dozens of other tubes and rheostats and meters and other things I
didn't know about. Along the wall that led from this corner was a lot
of stuff which Perry said was high voltage, and warned me not to touch.
I kept away. I wasn't trying to figure out how to get myself killed.
All I wanted to know was when he saw this girl.
Finally I managed to pin the time down to between three and four in the
afternoon. For five minutes every day, during that hour, he locked the
door and didn't answer phone calls. I figured that if I dropped in then
I might get a glimpse of her.
And that's what I did.
At first, when I knocked on the door, there was no answer. In a minute,
though, I heard Perry's voice, but he wasn't talking to me. He was
saying, "Darling," and he sounded kind of sick, which I figured was
due to love. Come to think of it, he might have been scared a little.
I heard him say, "Don't be afraid," and it was quiet for about fifteen
seconds.
Then I heard a terrific crash, like lightning striking. The door shook,
and I smelled something sharp, and the first thing I wanted to do was
get out of that place. But I couldn't leave my brother in there.
I put my shoulder to the door and had no trouble at all. The explosion,
or whatever it was, must have weakened the hinges. As the door crashed
in, I looked for Perry.
There was no sign of him. But I could see his shoes, on the floor in
front of that TV tube, where he must have been standing. No feet in
them, though, just his socks. All the high-voltage stuff was smoking.
The TV screen was all lit up, and on it I could see a girl's face, the
same girl whose picture Perry had shown me. She was wearing one of
those funny costumes, and she looked scared. It was a clear picture,
and I could even see the way she gulped.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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