Time Slip by ML Banner Read Free Book Online

movement.

Chapter 19
    In The Future
     
    Finding Dr. Mendelson’s house was easier than he expected, as he remembered the map’s details quite well before his slip through time: all he had written was an address and cross streets to jog his memory; it wasn’t like there were public phones with attached phonebooks around anymore to look up addresses. The doctor’s unassuming two-story stucco stood in a neighborhood of what looked like two and three-story upper-middle-class homes. It had been a suburban utopia at one time, with manicured lawns and bushy trees, sharp-looking streets crowded with children playing, a paperboy chucking the daily onto driveways, and crossover vehicles racing from garages to get to work, their drivers applying last-minute lipstick or taking sips of their morning coffee. Now it was a scene from a disaster movie or an ongoing nightmare: most of the homes were burned to the ground. The few remaining, like Mendelson’s, were looted, with doors open, a scattering of windows broken and various belongings tossed into the yard. It was a soulless place.
    Dr. Ron pulled out his hand-scrawled note, inspecting it more closely to make sure he wasn’t reading a 1 as a 7 or a 5 as a 6. Betsy always chided him for his poor penmanship, often looking at his handwritten notes and asking, “What does this say?”
    “It says 5-1-1-6,” he answered, speaking to a black roll-a-board in front of him on the lawn. “This is the place, Bets.” And he just stood there, shoulders sagging, heart pumping. He really longed for her and felt regret at leaving her for this lame-brain scheme of his that now looked to have little chance of working. Even when he had told her about his plan, as the words were coming out of his mouth, he had started to question its feasibility: how would he convince this Dr. Mendelson to give him the formula, how would he find him… Endless questions filled his mind. But then his life partner so enthusiastically embraced it, squeezing his hands and telling him, “I trust you, husband, and I know you will be successful.” This made the plan real and gave him certainty. A certainty he didn’t feel now, looking at this abandoned home.
    Perhaps he should have just stayed with her and comforted her in her final hours. At least they would have been together in her last few months… days. Instead, he left her to die alone. That thought stuck at the bottom of his gut; a sour taste of bile tried to work its way up.
    His sagging head eyed the doorway, not wanting to go in, afraid that this would be the end of the line, that he wouldn’t find this Mendelson. He could see that the man wasn’t going to be home, and that most likely there wouldn’t be any leads inside. So he just stood there, filled with doubt. This was a rare sensation for him, as doubt never played a part in any of his decisions; he always knew what to do because science guided him. And when he wasn’t sure, he retested until he was. Even with matters of the heart and his love for Betsy, it was easy. Their love was something tangible to him, as real as the laws of physics: his love for her guided him in everything related to her.
    What would she say right now? A smile built, as the answer came to him. “There’s always an answer somewhere. If you haven’t found it yet, it’s because you weren’t looking in the right place. Keep on looking until you find it.”
    Still straddling the bicycle, he swung one leg over it, letting it drop against the discarded luggage. He repositioned the canvas bag slung around his shoulder, transferring the strap’s bit to another part that didn’t hurt as badly, and stepped up to the threshold and into the home. If this wasn’t it, he’d find another place until he found him.
    A boot print dented the faux wood door just above the stylish brass handle, but the frame had received the brunt of the violence and now lay broken and in pieces scattered around the doorway. But then he saw a torn piece