[Listen]
[Sound of an ax chopping wood. Quirky music fades in…]
Christopher Gronlund:
I want to make one thing perfectly clear: this show is not about lumberjacks…
My name is Christopher Gronlund, and this is where I share my stories. Sometimes the stories contain truths, but most of the time, they’re made up. Sometimes the stories are funny—other times they’re serious. But you have my word about one thing: I will never—EVER—share a story about lumberjacks.
This time, I’m back after the annual break following back-to-back episodes in November and December with a story about a guy whose time machine breaks down in the past on its test run.
But first, the usual content advisory…
“It’s Never Too Late” deals with regret, death (including a decayed body), personal loss, and the sound of someone vomiting. Also, if you’re driving, be aware there’s a scene with the main character following someone on foot that contains skidding tire sounds. I don’t want you to be driving and freaking out, thinking something’s coming at you! It’s just that moment in the story.
And when it comes to swearing, this one’s pretty tame, with a couple PG-rated words you’ve probably heard on TV this week.
All right, let’s get to work!
* * *
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE
October 13, 1983
3:47 p.m.
Albert Gladstone stood hidden in cattails at the edge of a field, watching his younger self spinning in the cool, unwavering breeze on his fourteenth birthday. For 41 years, it remained one of his fondest memories, the first day that year it truly felt like fall in his hometown south of Milwaukee. It was deep enough into October that the rest of the month would bring crisp mornings and cool afternoons. Warm days would not return until April.
He watched his younger self stop and raise his arms high above his head in a stretch as he filled his lungs with air. Eyes closed, head leaned back, savoring the experience and thinking, “I will never forget this moment.” In the decades that followed, he never did. It was a feeling he chased when life grew challenging, a thing eluding him no matter how hard he tried to recreate it. He wondered if, in hindsight, he had built up the moment into something far more than it ever was. But as young Albert exhaled and opened his eyes, his smile was proof that time—and all that came with it—had not distorted his memory.
When his younger self left the field, adult Albert walked to the middle and took his place. To his south was the neighborhood where he grew up. To each side, farmland rolling to the horizons. North of him, wetlands full of cattail mazes, marshes, and ponds. When he spread his arms wide and spun, it felt every bit as wonderful as he remembered—a decades-long craving finally satisfied. When he was done, the world and its ways seemed just as clear to him as it did on his birthday as a teenager. The life that followed may not have gone the way he imagined when he was younger, but that fourteen-year-old had no idea what he would do as an adult.
* * *
October 13, 2024
3:13 p.m.
It looked more like a bathysphere than a time machine, a thing constructed to scour the depths of oceans as an all-seeing, cyclopean eye. Instead, the steel sphere sat in Albert Gladwell’s basement, a ten-year project finally at an end. On the console next to his washer and dryer, diagnostics indicator lights came back all green. He imagined this moment since childhood, when the movie Time Bandits led to a fixation with how one would go about traveling to the past or future. Finally, it was time.
A small pile of checklists ensured every calculation would bring Albert to his chosen spot in his past. Every risk was assessed and mitigated to the best of his knowledge and imagination. It was a bold and risky endeavor, with the best outcome working exactly as planned—and the worst being the last thing he would ever do.
He opened the round door on the metal orb and climbed inside. After taking one last look at his basement through the porthole, he sealed himself inside the cramped, dim space. It was fitting the time machine looked like an old diving bell—the hum from outside the steel womb sounded like a world under water. Albert listened to his breath; and heartbeat. At 3:20 p.m., the countdown began. He joined in 10 seconds before 3:30.
He was about to see if he got it right…or very, very wrong.
* * *
October 13, 1983
3:58 p.m.
Albert wiped away the tears making the cold wind against his face feel like ice. Everything he was told could never work did, and the reward for his efforts was reliving a moment meaning more to him than he could ever explain. He was fascinated with the strange way we’re wired, how huge memories can slide away, while something seemingly mundane as appreciating an autumn breeze remained etched at the front of one’s brain until the end.
Albert knew staying too long in the field would ruin the moment. Perhaps part of why it stayed with him over the years was—even as a teenager—he knew when to step away. To steal more time would blunt the edge of such a sharp memory. He wandered into the cattails and stomped down a little space of his own in the reeds.
When he was younger, he and his friends cut their way through the cattails in the wetlands beyond the fields behind his house. In time, the trails became a maze with secret clearings hidden along the way for those in the know. There, he and friends spent hours on their backs looking skyward, inches above the wet ground below, talking about their lives and dreams. He missed a time when he could talk about something as outlandish as making a time machine and be taken seriously.
He reached into the mat of cattails below and came up with a small handful of wild mint. He popped a leaf in his mouth and closed his eyes, savoring the moment. When he was done, he watched the hands on his vintage watch creep toward the 4:30 mark, when the machine in his basement 41 years in the future would call him home.
At 4:30, nothing happened. Albert waited several more minutes, pondering what might have caused a drift on his wristwatch and the timer running the machine. There was nothing to account for not being recalled, except something going wrong with the controls in his basement. He wondered if the machine broke, or even exploded. He’d run countless simulations and considered all that could go wrong in the decade leading up to the day, but as the sky began to darken, Albert’s stomach churned as he came to the sobering conclusion that he’d just become a man lost in time.
* * *
Albert’s first goal was finding food and shelter. His contingency plan accounted for the vintage clothing he wore, currency and a wallet from the time, the Timex watch his uncle gave him on his twelfth birthday, and a fake driver’s license, just in case. Reserving a room for the night was no longer had by a quick search on his phone, which—like all other personal items from 2024, except himself—was left in the now-future before the jump. He walked north for several hours before stopping in a McDonalds for a quick bite to eat, and then found a motel on the south side of Milwaukee where his counterfeit license was convincing enough to get a room.
* * *
Albert startled awake in the early morning, barely making it to the bathroom to heave his dinner. Gut health, and so many other seemingly insignificant things ignored in sci-fi movies for the sake of time, weighed on his mind before the jump. He knew he’d suffer a bit on longer leaps, but he wasn’t expecting his first jaunt to test that concern. With each unforeseen rush to the bathroom, Albert sipped water from his cupped hands over the sink, staving off dehydration until exhaustion finally pulled him into a restful slumber.
* * *
October 14, 1983
10:57 a.m.
Albert was never prone to fits of nostalgia, another Gen-Xer sharing memes on social media about how the 80s were far more brown than neon. But as he entered Kmart, he could almost see the commercial play out on old studio videotape, part of a compilation of retro commercials on YouTube.
“We’ve got it, and we’ve got it good…”
Amazing how a jingle can bore its way into one’s brain and live there like a cicada underground, only to emerge years later.
During Albert’s restless night, his mind turned from “What went wrong?” to “What will I do?” Perhaps the machine would be discovered during a wellness check after he stopped showing up to work or not paying his mortgage. Maybe somebody at the university where he taught would be called in—a colleague who insisted time travel was impossible—and they’d figure out how to bring him back, apologizing upon his arrival for never giving his ideas credence. But if the machine exploded during the jump or the problem couldn’t be found and fixed, he needed to accept the only way he’d see 2024 again is if he lived a long life and got there like everyone else.
Albert’s immediate needs were in his control: buying a couple more changes of clothes and a suitcase, grooming necessities, and a notebook with pencils and pens. On his way out, he spotted a tape recorder. He grabbed that and a pack of cassettes.
At the register, when the cashier rang up the clothes and suitcase, she said, “Going on a trip?”
Albert nodded. “You could say that, yes.”
* * *
October 14, 1983
12:17 p.m.
In the motel room, Albert inserted a tape into the cassette recorder and pressed the Play and Record buttons together. He gave it a moment and then said, “My name is Albert Gladstone, and I’m about to say the most ridiculous sounding thing I’ve ever said with a straight face: I am a time traveler. I left the year 2024 on a test trip to October 13, 1983, to relive a fond childhood memory as a test run for the machine I built. I don’t know why, exactly, I’m compelled to make this recording—maybe because if something happens to me, someone will find it, sooner or later. They’ll probably think I’m delusional, but in time, I’d hope some of the things I plan to talk about will occur and they will realize this is, in fact, real.”
Albert chronicled how he came to end up stranded out of his time, and then said, “My plans right now are simple: I need to find a job willing to pay cash, which means I’ll likely end up in the back of a restaurant or working on the docks. I need to find a cheap apartment that won’t do a deep background check. I brought enough money with me that I can pay for several months up front, and that should be enough to get me into a place. Then I guess it’s just saving as much as I can and investing in things that will turn into more sooner than waiting for Microsoft or Apple to pay out. Maybe a big Super Bowl bet or two along the way. If I’m going to be stuck, I don’t want to bring attention to myself, but I definitely I want enough that if I’m here for good, I won’t have to worry about work and money. I’m not getting any younger.
“Little realizations have been coming to me this morning: what if I get really sick and end up in a hospital? What if a cop questions me for some reason? So many things that could end up bad if my existence is scrutinized. I’ve thought about so many things regarding this trip over the years, but I never considered how lonely it would be if I got stuck and had to live out the rest of my life through these days again.
“Right now, I just need to make it to 1985…”
* * *
In two months’ time, Albert found an apartment and settled into a job as a line cook in a diner that paid under the table. At first, making it through the morning and lunch rush left him feeling broken, but he was pleased by how quickly his body adjusted and carried him through shifts. It was a far cry from teaching physics at The University of Wisconsin in Madison, but he came to appreciate that when work was done, time was his.
* * *
December 16, 1983
3:42 p.m.
On the Friday before schools went on Christmas break, Albert waited along the route his younger self took while walking home from school. It was time to test a hypothesis. He walked toward fourteen-year-old Albert wandering along the sidewalk. As he got closer, his younger self turned off the usual route and into a neighborhood he sometimes cut through for a change of scenery. Albert jogged to the corner and called to his younger self, who had now put on Walkman headphones.
“Albert! Albert Gladstone!”
He chased after fourteen-year-old Albert, so fixated on seeing if time would allow the paradox of meeting himself that he didn’t see the VW Rabbit run a stop sign and hit him. From the pavement, older Albert watched his younger self walk away—probably while listening to Rush’s Signals album—oblivious to what had just occurred behind him.
The kid in the Rabbit at least did a good job standing on the brakes before hitting Albert, leaving him a bit scraped up, but not damaged. The front of the car looked worse. The kid opened the door and leaped from the driver’s seat.
“I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay,” Albert said while getting up. “I think I’m fine.”
“Are you gonna get me in trouble with my dad?”
“No, why?”
He pointed to a dent on the passenger side of the vehicle.
“My dad will lose it if he finds out I had another accident.”
Albert slowly moved his limbs and took a deep breath, checking to see if anything was broken. He seemed fine.
He looked at the kid and said, “How ‘bout I give you an early Christmas present and we keep this our little secret?”
* * *
Other attempts to meet his younger self were met with similar results—something always thwarting the actual moment of connection. He had no memories featuring a man in his mid-50s telling his younger self he was him from the future, and it seemed the timeline ensured that would not change.
Attempts to call were met with broken pay phones or his old phone line ringing with no answer. Knocking on the door of the house where he grew up was met with no answer—either no one home or, on occasions he knew people would be there, a broken doorbell or enough noise inside that his knocking was not heard. Tapping on his bedroom window was met by a slumbering teenager lost in deep dreams or wearing headphones, while lost in music. One night, while attempting to get into the basement through a window, a passing cop car stopped between his yard and the neighbors. Albert hid in the window well, nervous he’d be spotted by the officer or his younger self thinking someone was breaking in. When the patrol cruiser moved on, so did Albert. He accepted that while a paradox apparently couldn’t occur, he could still end up arrested without being able to prove who he was.
* * *
December 25, 1983
Albert inserted a cassette tape into the recorder and waited a moment.
“Merry Christmas to me, I suppose—even though it’s a weird one. In other ways, there’s a lot to be happy for, the least of which is a day off from the diner. I’ve settled into my new place and new routine. I even bought a sailboat, so I have something better to do on my days off when it warms up than to dwell on things. I’ve accepted this is my life now. It’s a weird position to be in, knowing all the things yet to happen and wondering how I will relate to them a second time around. This is a kind of do-over, I guess, and I’m not ruling out living an entirely different kind of life than what I’ve lived to this point. It’s just a matter of figuring out what that looks like.
“I’ve also been testing a hypothesis some have proposed when it comes to time travel: that a traveler can affect things, but not do something that would create a paradox. I never met my boss at Liam’s Place, so to him and me, it’s a new relationship. But if I try preventing major events I remember happening, my attempts are thwarted by the timeline. I don’t remember being a teenager who had a strange guy come up to him one day and say, ‘Hey, I’m you from the future,’ so that can’t happen. But if I wanted to meet someone and start a family, I could.
“It’s a weird place to be: 55-years-old and knowing so much of what will happen in the world. Wondering if the machine’s been discovered in 2024 and I’ll end up being pulled back. Or, because who the hell can really say how any of this works, if that’s even a possibility? Are things still happening in my basement in the future, or is that part of my timeline on hold until I’m dead or live long enough to catch back up? I could easily drive myself sick thinking about all the possibilities. So, for now, I’ll just keep working and sticking to the plan.”
* * *
March 26, 1985
10:18 a.m.
Albert watched the comings and goings around his uncle’s house for several weeks. One morning, he even saw the man he most looked up to when he was younger, when he opened his front door and grabbed the mail from the small box beside the entry. Gone was the fit adventurer Albert knew as a child, the man who had seen the world and promised he’d one day take him along on his travels. In his place was a large man with a limp, someone only recognizable because Albert knew who he was. All his life, Albert heard how much he looked like his uncle when he was younger. Family photos confirmed what he was told. There was still a resemblance between the two as adults.
He wanted to rush up to Uncle Stanley and tell him who he was and what he had done—show him that while he had never traveled like him, he was now on an adventure few could even imagine. One day, after seeing no activity around the house for a few days, he summoned the courage to go up and ring the doorbell.
There was no answer.
He rang the bell again and knocked. Maybe Uncle Stanley was out, even though his car was in the driveway? He walked to the side of the house and peeked in through a window.
Albert’s uncle sat slumped in a chair in front of the TV. Albert knocked on the glass, but his uncle didn’t move. He watched his uncle’s chest, waiting for it to rise and fall if he was napping. It didn’t. He walked into his uncle’s overgrown backyard and broke a window pane in the back door. The odor from inside rushed through the small opening, causing Albert to step back and turn away. He pulled the front of his shirt up over the bottom of his face, making sure his nose was covered—even though it had little effect in taming the smell of decay.
Albert reached inside to unlock the door. The kitchen was full of empty take-out boxes and fast-food bags. Dirty dishes towered in the sink so high that Albert trod softly across the floor out of fear of them toppling. From the living room, he heard the New $25,000 Pyramid on the television.
Albert stood before his uncle as Markie Post and a woman played the game show on TV. After a big fight between Albert’s uncle and his father, he never saw him again. He received the odd letter or card, usually with the promise that after graduation, he’d take Albert along on a grand trip. But it never happened.
The tears Albert shed were for the loss of a favorite relative, but they were also cathartic tears for himself, a release of bottled-up emotions from the last 17 months, waiting for the bittersweet day he dreaded as much as anticipated.
* * *
March 26, 1985
9:45 p.m.
Albert arrived at the marina in his uncle’s car late enough that few people were around, but not so late to arouse suspicion. He pulled the rolled-up rug from the trunk of his uncle’s car and strapped it to a dolly. This was the part of his plan that could all come apart. All he needed to do was make it to his sailboat.
When he reached the dock where his boat was moored, he heard someone say, “Need any help?”
Albert turned his head, half-expecting to see a cop. How would he explain his uncle wrapped in a rug was not the way it looked? How would he explain being there at all? He was relieved to see someone who’d just come in from the lake.
“Thanks,” Albert said, “but I’ve got it. Had a couple drinks with a friend this evening, and he had this fabric set aside for me. Been planning to begin reupholstering the cushions in the cabin this weekend—get ready for spring. It was just easier to drop this off while in the city than hauling it back to the suburbs and then back on Saturday.”
“Gotcha. Probably about time for me to do that, too. Have a good evening.”
“You, too.”
Albert’s heart finally stopped racing when the guy got in his car and drove off.
* * *
When Albert’s uncle wasn’t traveling, he was on Lake Michigan in his sailboat. When Albert was ten years old, he and his uncle sailed from Milwaukee to Muskegon, Michigan, where they had dinner in a restaurant overlooking the lake, and then spent the night on the boat. The following morning, they sailed home. The trip came with a promise that one day, Uncle Stanley would take Albert on some trips as he got older—the grandest of them all, Antarctica when he graduated high school. His uncle had set foot on six of the seven continents and said there’d be no better way than to see the last than with his nephew. After returning to the car to retrieve a roll of chicken wire and chains, Albert powered up the boat’s engine and headed out from the dock before going to sail.
He told himself repeatedly that his uncle would not mind what he was about to do, that he’d understand and be happy to give him the freedom to exist without worry. Uncle Stanley always said that when his time came, he’d rather be scattered in a lake or ocean than buried in a cemetery with hundreds or thousands of bodies.
When Albert reached deep water with no one else in sight, he spread out the chicken wire and chains he grabbed from the car. He placed the rolled-up rug containing his uncle’s body on the wire and struggled to wrap chains around him. When that was finished, he wrapped the chicken wire around the chains and rug like a cage, securing it through links with electrical wiring.
Albert retreated to the cabin and came out with a portable stereo. He pressed play and listened to Bob Dylan sing his uncle’s favorite song, “When the Ship Comes In.” He let the tape play to the end, and sat in silence for several more minutes after “Restless Farewell” finished.
The warm day had given way to a chilly night. How easy it would be to wrap a blanket around himself and fall asleep while listening to the wind and waves. Albert considered flipping the tape over and playing the entire album through to the end. He was stalling. Ten minutes later, he stood up.
“I feel like I need to say something big and important right now, but I’ll keep it simple.
“I love you, Uncle Stanley. I promise I’ll do right by your name. Thank you for being the one person in my life who always listened to and believed in me.”
After struggling to get his uncle overboard, Albert stared at the dark water, imagining his uncle sinking to the bottom of the lake. Eventually, he stretched, turned the boat back toward Milwaukee, and set off to begin a new life.
* * *
March 27 – 29, 1985
The next morning, Albert returned to his uncle’s house and cleaned. It was just the chair where his uncle died, the rug beneath it, and the floor, but the best means of cleaning and disposing of such a mess were no longer a Google search away. He washed and scrubbed until he knew anything he smelled was just in his mind. When Albert dumped the worst of the items, he eased his nerves by reminding himself forensics were still limited compared to 2024.
Unless his uncle had accumulated a pile of debt or had a criminal record and been fingerprinted, assuming his identity was the safest option Albert had. On paper, his uncle existed—from his birth certificate to recent checks. Still, what if he was called to jury duty? Would his uncle’s driver’s license and a physical likeness be enough to pass? What if he bumped into someone his uncle knew in a store? How would he pass off knowing nothing about the stranger, but feigning his way through a conversation? The more scenarios Albert considered, he realized the best decision would be to leave the area.
* * *
Albert was gathering fallen tree branches and pulling old vines from bushes when he heard someone say, “Stan?”
He turned to see a man standing on the other side of the chain-link fence dividing his uncle’s yard from next door.
“Hey, how ya going?” Albert said.
“Good. Haven’t seen you in forever. You’re looking great! Lost a lot of weight.”
“Thanks,” he said. He knew nothing about the man before him—not even a name. Were he and his uncle close, or were over-the-fence pleasantries the extent of their relationship? Had he seen Uncle Stanley in recent weeks, the large person only peeking out to grab the mail? How could he explain a hundred some-odd pounds weight loss to someone who’d seen him recently?
“I got tired of moping around and feeling sorry for myself,” Albert said. “Finally got a VCR player and bought one of those Jazzercize videos. Felt kinda funny doing that, but I’ve been losing weight and feeling great. Cleaning myself up a bit and trying to get back to normal.”
“How’s the leg?”
“Good…good. How have you been?”
“Busy. Happy it’s been a bit warmer this week.”
“Yeah. I’m getting a jump on spring cleaning.”
“I should do that myself,” the neighbor said. “But it’ll probably end up snowing next week, for all we know.”
“True. Probably should have waited another few weeks, but I’ve been feeling so much better.”
“That’s excellent. Well, I’ll let you get back to it. It was really great seeing you, Stan!”
“You, too.”
* * *
March 30, 1985
10:37 a.m.
When he wasn’t cleaning up the yard, Albert turned his attention to the inside of his uncle’s house. He gathered all the documents he could find. Uncle Stanley’s checkbook was a map of what bills would need to be paid. None of his IDs were in jeopardy of expiring, and his bank account had funds to pay all bills that would come due in the coming months. While dusting a bookcase, Albert found several travel journals.
Collected within, stories about all the countries his uncle had visited, places he told Albert he’d one day take him. Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu; wild nights in Madrid and Paris. He found the odd photo tucked away in the pages: his uncle in the Australian Outback or standing on Table Mountain, overlooking Cape Town in South Africa. Reading through the last entries, Albert discovered his uncle shattered his leg while rock climbing in the Italian Dolomites. After that, the journal became a bitter diary, the story of a man who returned home to heal but didn’t. When things got worse, he did the one thing he promised himself he’d never do: buy a house and settle.
As Albert picked up the first journal with the intent to start from the beginning, there was a knock at the door. He ignored it, choosing to open the journal instead. The knocking turned to pounding. He heard his father’s voice.
“Stanley, I know you’re in there!”
If Albert was going to assume his uncle’s identity, there was no better test than facing his brother.
He opened the door.
“What do you want, Ben?”
Albert’s father opened his mouth, but no words came out. He scrutinized the man before him.
“What’s wrong?” Albert said.
“I want you to leave Albert alone.”
“What do you mean—we’ve been through this. I’ve been leaving him alone.”
“You’ve still been writing to him and telling him you’ll take him all around the world. Talking to him and filling his head with shit, even after I told you to stop calling. I heard him tell a friend he still calls you from pay phones. He needs to be thinking about school and college—not following in your footsteps.”
“Why? What’s wrong with taking some time after graduation and traveling? Or hell, even following in my footsteps?”
“It’s not responsible. You may be having fun now, but you can’t keep going on like this. What if you injure yourself? If something happens to me, I have insurance. When I’m old, I’ll have my pension. You’re one accident away from tragedy. I don’t want Albert to reach a point in his life, when he’s older, that he has nothing. I want you to leave him alone.”
Albert looked past his father and took a deep breath.
“Are you okay?” his father said.
He nodded. “Yeah, I promise I’ll leave Al alone, but before I do, you’re gonna shut up and listen to what I have to say. You’re setting him up for a life he’ll grow to resent. What becomes of him if he does what you demand? He goes to school and more school and then gets a job and a house? Maybe gets married and then—because all he does is work—his wife leaves him? Maybe he finds a pet project others think is a ridiculous waste of time…builds something in his garage or basement. If he did even that much, he’d have more than you—just sitting on your ass, watching TV, and waiting to retire so what, you can watch even more TV?
“Think about this, Ben. Maybe Al will try to find me after he graduates high school, but I’ll be gone. He’ll wonder if I died or if I blew him off to explore the world. The poor kid will hope I died, because the alternative is me never thinking about him or fulfilling my promise to take him on a couple big trips before he figures out what he wants to do with his life. Not you—not me: him!
“He’ll grow to hate you, Ben. He’ll always wonder about me, but I know this as much as I know anything: he’ll shut his door to you. One day he’ll marry, and you won’t be invited into his new life. Another day, you’ll be planning for your retirement and find out that lingering cough isn’t harmless, and your final thoughts will be that you worked too much. Albert will show up to your funeral out of courtesy to Veronica, and later find out she went elsewhere to find affection because she sure as hell wasn’t getting it from you! And because he came from such a serious, stilted family, his life will be every bit as unhappy as yours.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” his father said. “Are you drunk?”
“Shut up and listen to me for once!”
His father held his hands out in front of him and took a step back from the angry man before him. Albert continued.
“But if I had to bet, when Al’s wife divorces him because he was never around or wanting to do anything—when his life crashes down around him—he’ll take a trip that makes any I took pale in comparison. And in the last decades of his life, he’ll get a do-over. It’ll feel too late, but also be appreciated in ways he’d never have known had he taken off as an 18-year-old and done what he wanted, instead of what you demanded.
“So, yes, Ben: I’ll leave Albert alone. I’ll go away. He’ll never know what happened to me, but he’ll come to grips with it—ultimately believing me dead instead of abandoning him. That’s on you. One day, though, he’ll find out what really happened—and he’ll hate you even more if that’s possible. Now, get the hell off my porch before I drop your ass and drag you to the street…”
* * *
March 30, 1985
3:42 p.m.
Albert turned on the tape recorder, waited a moment, and began speaking.
“I saw my father today. Not from a distance, I spoke to him as my uncle. I’ve spent the rest of the day thinking about it. I have to believe—just like when I came here to see my uncle—that my father would have seen Uncle Stanley dead in his chair. I spent years wondering what happened to him. Google said he died today, so I thought I had time. I almost hit my father when it dawned on me that he likely found my uncle dead, reported it, and just never told me. It would have been one less problem to him. At least I know I can pass for my uncle.
“I’ve started reading through Uncle Stanley’s travel journals. I always wondered how he was able to keep going all those years. I never knew he wrote for magazines. When he wasn’t selling travel articles, he worked odd jobs. Even when he came back to the states, he often traveled around here. But he wasn’t always on the go. He settled in places—at times, for years. A bit of stability in the unstable world my father believed he lived.
“I’ve been thinking about what to do next. It’s clear I can’t stay here. There will be a time I bump into somebody who knows my uncle, and I won’t be able to pass for him under scrutiny. What’s to stick around for, anyway? What do I do, spend my days watching parts of my life play out from a distance? Stick around and watch myself graduate high school and college and become boring like my father? Watch myself meet Patricia for the first time, knowing it ends with me working too much and her finally having enough and leaving?
“Reliving my past would be the saddest thing I could ever do. Even if I could meet and warn myself, I’m human and would make different mistakes. Or do things that aren’t even mistakes, but deemed such in hindsight. The past is a sad place to dwell. Fixing things only works in movies. I could spend the rest of my life tinkering with past regrets, but to what end? ‘Oh, this all worked out, after all!’ when I know that’s not real? It happened—it was all real, and it’s best left behind. What wouldn’t be real is changing it to suit my desires based on what I know now. I’d always know, in the back of my mind, that this is not what really happened. Besides, were I able to change things, Patricia seemed happy the last time I looked up what she was up to, and it’s not my place to take that from her when I was the one who let it all slip through my fingers.
“I’m coming to accept that. My life hasn’t stopped, it’s just changed…like it would no matter what time I’m in. I’ve thought about building a new machine to go back, but the tech isn’t here, yet. But even if it were, what matters is now. The future will one day be full of busy people obsessed with ‘mindful living’—being present, even though many of us couldn’t focus long enough to read a 500-word article or listening to a podcast. It’s really weird talking about the future in past tense.
“But there is something to living right now, beyond the slower pace of things many of us will one day miss. I’ve lived through all this once before, and I don’t need to live the life I lived again…even if I could. And what happens if I could return home? I created something that would change everything, and probably not for the better. Hell, for all I know, others have done the same thing I did and kept quiet about it after coming to the same conclusion: it can be done, but should it? Were the machine discovered, it would likely be taken from me and used by the military or some asshole billionaire claiming he made it and then he’d make even more. I don’t regret what I’ve done, even though it’s now become apparent it was both my greatest and worst idea. I did something I wanted to do—a thing no one believed was possible—and that’s enough. At least for me.
“I was always a time traveler, someone waking up with a new day before him, and a past I lived through and remembered. I didn’t have to go to the past to fix mistakes—I just didn’t have to repeat them once I knew better. And if I didn’t, it’s not likely anything I went back to fix would stick anyway. So, I guess that’s where I am: right here, here right now, with time moving on and a world of opportunities before me if I stop getting in my own damn way…”
* * *
July 22, 1985 – January 4, 1986
Albert took off from Chicago and landed in Miami, before continuing on to Lima, Peru. As the ground fell away beneath the 727, he thought about how quickly he’d built up a new life and then stripped it all down to fit into a tiny storage unit in Milwaukee. The power from the three engines at the back of the jet was still more impressive to him than the machine he’d built in his basement in the future. No matter how many times he flew, it never got old.
Growing up, Albert imaged Lake Michigan to be much like an ocean, but seeing the Pacific coming ashore on the edge of Lima, knowing how far away those waters got their start, humbled him in the same way looking up at the night sky did. That he could put his feet into something so massive, imagining others thousands of miles away doing the same—and creatures living miles deep below the surface—gave him a similar sense of connection as welcoming the wind in his favorite field back home.
Albert spent five days on the Inca Trail, hiking the undulating vein through jungles and stony mountains devoured by clouds. Morning rains broke as he arrived at Machu Picchu, the mist retreating in time to reveal the lost city below. Weeks later, the other-worldly terrain of the Atacama Desert was a surreal experience after time spent in green places. For the next five months, Albert visited cities in Chile and Argentina, while also trekking through the countryside on his slow voyage south. Each stop seemed more amazing than those before, with the pinnacle being Torres del Paine National Park, in Patagonia, where granite peaks climbed high and caught the sun like flames.
* * *
January 6, 1986
Albert left Ushuaia, Argentina on a boat bound for Antarctica on the morning of January 4. The following morning, he was awakened by the sound of a book slamming to the floor and his backpack sliding around his tiny cabin. Sprays of water slapped the porthole window, letting in the muted light of a gray day. He was warned the Drake Passage could be rough, but he’d not appreciated what that meant until passengers were confined to their quarters as the ship rose and fell, making its way through 50 knot winds driving 30-foot swells. Moments of exhilaration turned to fear each time the ship leaned beyond the point Albert deemed safe in his mind. He lay on his bed, waiting to be sick, but it never came. The worst Lake Michigan could throw at a ship paled in comparison to the seas outside, but it prepared Albert for a day in bed, where he finally read the paperback copy of Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew he’d picked up in Chicago at the start of his trip.
The next morning, as the ship sailed into calm seas, passengers were summoned to the deck. Gray skies were mirrored by still water—the only way one could tell where one ended and the other began was by the steady march of colossal icebergs on the surface and Albatrosses following in the ship’s wake in the sky. Two hours later, Albert got his first view of land.
The ship sailed along the coast, where penguin colonies waddled along trails on the icy, alien terrain. Seals lounged on ice floes riding the gentle current along the coastline. While Albert marveled at distant mountains and blue glaciers, what struck him the most was the lighting. It was like looking through a fog, even though views were clear to all horizons. Light seemed devoured and scattered at the same time, bathing the otherworldly place in a magical glow more perceived than seen.
After breakfast, passengers were told to gear up. Albert caught the first raft to the mainland, the massive scope of the place growing as they neared. A guide steadied the inflatable vessel against the shore, and Albert set foot on the only continent his uncle never visited.
He reached down, patted the icy ground, and said, ““We made it, Uncle Stanley.”
* * *
1986 – 2024
The rest of Albert’s life was not unlike his uncle’s: traveling when the mood struck him and settling in places for years when he needed a rest. That combination of adventure and getting to know a place well enough that it felt like home satisfied him. He thought, “Sometimes you want to face the fury of nature by sailing around Cape Horn, but other days you want to sit beside a fire on a snowy evening with a good book.” It was a good way to live.
In time, chronicling his adventures on cassettes moved to a Hi-8 video camera. Eventually, analog gave way to digital. The only time Albert returned home to Wisconsin was to place more memories of his life in a storage unit in Milwaukee.
This is how it went for decades…
* * *
October 13, 2024
3:08 p.m.
It had been thirteen years since Albert returned to Wisconsin. He wasn’t sure he would make it back to the day he dreamed about seeing since his botched leap back in time. He walked into the backyard of the house he left in his machine and reached beneath a bush near a small bistro set in his garden. He came out with a fake stone. Albert opened the tiny door in its bottom and grabbed the key to his back door. He looked at the Timex wristwatch his uncle gave him when he turned twelve.
Inside, in the basement, his adult younger self would be running final diagnostics on the machine, preparing to jump back 41 years. He entered the house and listened at the basement door, to the hum of the machine and himself moving in the utility room on the other side of his rec room. He quietly opened the door, made his way halfway down the stairs, and sat down. He heard the metal door to the machine open and close at 3:18.
Albert made his way down and tip-toed into the utility room. It was still a strange sight: cabinets full of blinking lights along the wall next to the washer and dryer. The metal sphere nestled in a large coil at the back of the room beside the sump pump. He moved to the main computer station shortly before the countdown at 3:20.
Once the countdown began, it was a race against time, double-checking lists to see if something was missed. Scanning the myriad indicators for amber or red lights, instead of green. Nothing seemed off. Triple-checking his procedures revealed what his initial check 41 years prior showed: he’d done everything right! So, what the hell was wrong?
As the 10-second countdown began, Albert heard rattling. A moment after the jump, metal clanged against cement. The limiter panel lit up red, and Albert saw its connection separated from the machine. Unregulated power began a feedback loop that would not end well. Time seemed to slow, like that moment one narrowly avoids a car accident and wonders how they ended up safe on the other side. With seconds to spare, he locked the connector back to the machine, hoping it was enough. The machine returned to its steady hum.
Albert sat down on the stool before the machine’s main system and considered what likely happened when he made the jump. He concluded the loose cable caused a limiter malfunction, and the machine exploded. The damage would have been catastrophic by his estimation, taking out Madison and hundreds of thousands of lives.
“My god, what did I do? What the hell did I do?”
It was only when the machine began running diagnostic checks at 4:15 that he stopped dwelling on the damage and grief caused by his hand had he not lived long enough to stop it.
* * *
October 13, 2024
4:30 p.m.
From the stool, Albert listened to the machine function as designed, hopefully calling himself back. When his 55-year-old self didn’t emerge right away, he stood up, preparing to open the door to the sphere. When he heard laughing from inside, he sat back down.
The door to the time machine opened, and middle-aged Albert climbed out. He panicked when he saw the old man sitting on the stool in front of the controls.
“What’s going on? Who the hell are you?”
Old Albert smiled. “I think you know. Happy birthday, by the way.”
His younger self scrutinized the man before him.
“If you had to guess, who do you think I am?”
“Me?”
Old Albert nodded.
“Well, happy birthday to you, then, too.”
* * *
October 13, 2024
4:36 p.m.
At the kitchen table, 55-year-old Albert said, “Can you tell me what the hell’s going on? Everything!”
His older self grinned. “That would take a very long time.”
“Well, then, tell me something? How…just, how?”
“The machine broke, and I was stuck.”
Old Albert told his younger self about the limiter malfunction and the damage likely done by the failure. When he was done, he said, “We can’t use the machine again.”
When the weight of the catastrophe lifted from younger Albert’s shoulders, he said, “But we know what happened. I can ensure it doesn’t next time.”
“We can’t be sure of that. What if something else goes wrong and it ends in a similar result? Imagine the trip you just took, but instead of being recalled, you were forced to live out the rest of your life wondering if something terrible happened. Hoping you’d survive long enough to see what went wrong and stop the devastation you may caused. I know you better than anyone—you’d not be able to live with yourself knowing hundreds of thousands of people died, just so you could keep satisfying your curiosity. We did it. We’ve both traveled back. Isn’t that enough?”
Middle-aged Albert looked down at the kitchen table, considering the question. He raised his head and nodded.
“Yeah, I suppose it is. Not completely, but I understand your point.”
He surveyed the lines on the face of his older self, a map of all the places he’d been and things he’d seen.
“It’s funny saying ‘your point,’ when you’re me. But we’re not the same person, are we?”
Older Albert shook his head. “No. We’re very different people today.”
“So, what becomes of me now that everything I’ve worked for is done?”
“Whatever you want—well, except using the machine again. It seems daunting, I know, wondering what to do with the rest of the time you have. But imagine wondering, ‘what now?’ in a motel room back in 1984. It’s not something I’d normally say, but if I could do it, so can you.”
“Will you help me?”
“Yes, I will. But not right now. I have a couple things I need to do. Early next week, though, I’ll answer all your questions.”
Older Albert stood up.
“Can I at least give you a ride somewhere?” Younger Albert said.
“Thank you, but I’m good. I have a bus to catch.”
Middle aged Albert walked his older self to the door and extended his hand. Older Albert gave his younger self a hug.
“That felt good,” he said. “We should have been kinder to ourselves all these years—not so hard. I’m glad I finally learned that. I hope you can, too.”
* * *
October 15, 2024
7:00 a.m.
A light rain stopped as Albert made it to the marina. He shuffled to a boat slip, where his charter prepared a 40-foot Beneteau sailboat for a morning on the lake.
“Albert?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Please, come aboard.” He extended an arm and helped old Albert onto the boat.
“I have coffee and pastries if you’d like?”
“Coffee, please. It always tastes better on the water.”
The charter poured a cup of coffee from a carafe and said, “How do you like it?”
“Black is fine.”
He handed Albert the warm mug and said, “Have you sailed much?”
“I used to. Had a 30-foot Chris-Craft Capri from the 70s. Tried sailing every weekend. When I retired, I traveled, but here and there, I still got out on the water. It’s been a while, though.”
“Well, sit tight and we’ll be off soon.”
* * *
Most people Albert knew preferred warm days on the water, but it was his favorite kind of morning: mid 50s and breezy. Enough wind to really move, but not so much that there was any concern. The charter made his way to the coordinates Albert gave him and heaved to, bringing the boat to a stop.
Albert smiled. “I sailed out and interred my uncle’s remains on this spot in 1985. I wanted to see it one last time.”
“I can go down to the cabin and give you a moment, if you’d like?” the charter said.
“No, I’m fine. He was a neat guy. I looked up to him so much that I all but became him when I got older.”
“I have an uncle like that,” the charter said.
“Do you mind if I play a song?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
Albert pulled his phone from his pocket and played his uncle’s favorite song, Bob Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In.”
When it ended, he looked at the water and whispered, “Thank you, Uncle Stanley. For everything.”
* * *
October 15, 2024
5:52 p.m.
Albert walked to the middle of the field and took a deep breath. He loved the way this time of year smelled, the crisp breezes from the north mingling with remnants of harvests decaying in distant fields. Trees putting on a colorful display before sleeping until spring.
Albert stretched his arms wide and began to spin. He couldn’t put into words why whirling in the field on his fourteenth birthday had such a profound effect on him. It was likely others had simple moments that lingered in their minds for all their days, but this experience was his alone. The best he could conclude: it was the day he felt a greater connection to things bigger than him—old enough to have a deeper understanding of where he stood in the world as the future began rushing toward him. So many possibilities and experiences to be had, depending which path he decided to follow or make.
He spun and laughed, pausing only to fill his lungs with deep breaths of cool air. For every breath he took, in all the places he had seen, none felt as good as home. When the sun sunk toward the horizon through broken clouds, he walked into the cattails and stomped down a little bed in the reeds. Rain from the previous day settled beneath the green shoots supporting his back, holding him just above the wet earth below. He reached down and grabbed a small handful of mint, popping a leaf into his mouth.
A wanderlust passed to him by his uncle was satisfied on every continent, but no matter how far Albert roamed, an internal compass always pulled him to the fields behind the house where he grew up. Had he traveled the universe, he was sure a part of him would still always know its way home.
Above Albert, the sky darkened, and stars filled the firmament beyond the broken clouds. How enormous it all was, and how tiny—even insignificant—it was to be. And yet, imagination was endless if allowed to run free. Albert was positive humans were not alone in the universe, but it was likely what he’d done in his basement was an accomplishment unique to him. Even if it wasn’t, at that moment, he was the only one on his back in the field he loved, looking beyond the clouds while eating wild mint and savoring the breeze.
There was no better moment to close his eyes, doze off, and take his final rest.
* * *
October 18, 2024
10:57 a.m.
Middle-aged Albert was in the basement, drawing up plans to disassemble the time machine, when the doorbell rang. He trotted upstairs and opened the door. Before him, a FedEx driver held out a clipboard. Albert took the pen and signed his name. With a bend of the legs, the delivery driver handed Albert a box that was heavier than he expected.
“Have a great day.”
“Thank you,” Albert said. “You, too.”
He shut the door with his butt and placed the box on the coffee table in the front room. He retreated to the kitchen and returned with a paring knife. Several swipes along the packing tape sealing the box shut, and he was inside.
Inside, a pile of cassette tapes, videotapes, DVDs, and micro-SD cards were packed around an old tape player and Hi-8 video camera. A hand-written note and an envelope were placed on top. The note read:
Albert,
Inside the envelope is a copy of my will. It says it’s from Uncle Stanley, but it’s really from me. It will all make sense when you listen to the first few cassettes.
I hope everything in this box inspires you to live the life you always wanted. I’ve ensured you will never want for anything but that which you want to do. Time is truly yours, until it ends. I have to believe you’ll be as long-lived as me—at least close. Don’t go gettin’ yourself killed! Hell, in time, maybe technology improves and you live even longer.
It might feel like you’re on the back side of life, but I assure you: your best days are yet to come. I won’t tell you to ignore the past, because it got you to where you are today, but don’t dwell there. What’s done is done. And I won’t tell you to never think about the future because we all need a destination or two. Just never get so fixated on tomorrow that you miss today.
All that’s guaranteed is right now.
Make the most of it!
The Other You
Albert pulled the cassette player from the box and opened the tape labeled Start Here – #1. He pressed Play.
Seconds later, he heard himself say, “My name is Albert Gladstone, and I’m about to say the most ridiculous sounding thing I’ve ever said with a straight face: I am a time traveler…”
[Quirky music fades in…]
Christopher Gronlund:
Thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks.
Theme music, as always, is by Ergo Phizmiz. Story music was by Roots and Recognition, licensed through Epidemic Sound.
Sound effects are made in-house or from Epidemic Sound and freesound.org. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the show, the voice talent, and the music. Also, for as little as a dollar a month, you can support the show at patreon.com/cgronlund.
In May, it’s a story about a mudlark who finds something very strange during low tide…
[Quirky music fades out…]
[The sound of an axe chopping.]
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!