PART TWO
If there was anything worse than having your son hover over you as you tried to work, it was having your son hovering over you twice. Lloyd grumbled, and rolled his eyes as the teenage son who had traveled back to this time with him, and the son that his present son was going to be, snatched from further into the future, moved over him and critiqued his efforts.
"Dad, you'd move a lot faster if you used two spanners." One Phil said.
"I was just about to say that!" The other Phil replied. "And don't you think he couldget a lot more done if he rechecked the anaharmonic field generator. I mean, I sure as heck wouldn't want to fire up the coils if they weren't aligned."
"Exactly!" Older Phil looked to his past self. "I'll just get the phase inducers and…."
"I broke it and I can fix it!" Lloyd screamed out from the pressure. Rubbing his brow upset, he looked at the nearly identical stunned glances of young Phil and older Phil and exhaled a deep breath. "I'm sorry, guys, but this is just one Phil too many."
"One Phil is too many." Pim groused sarcastically and looked upon the two counterparts of her brother.
"I'm sorry, dad…" Older Phil turned sympathetic and reacted more like a peer to his father. "But you got to get me home. Keely's going to worry about me if I'm not home in…"
"Phil!" Barbara spun round once more. "Are you and Keely married? Am I a grandma!"
"I didn't say that!" Older Phil reacted to the confrontation. "You didn't hear me say that!"
"Phil…" Barbara took her future son's face in her hands and looked into those big brown eyes. "This is just between me and you. Do I have any grandchildren to look forward to?"
"Please don't answer that!" Pim reeled a bit drunkenly and unsteady. "My stomach is tying in knots!" She tipped back a bottle of Pepto Bismo to her lips and began drinking it straight down until it was empty. She reached for another and began peeling off the plastic wrap to open it.
"This is just a theory, but judging from where in time it linked," Lloyd was re-building the dimensional interface unit. "I'd say the unit latched on to Phil's bio-harmonic field and reached forward to himself in the future until it was another degree off." He paused and chuckled impressed with himself. "Isn't science incredible?"
"Yeah," Phil looked to his future self. "Incredible."
"So, brother dear," Pim tried to sound as sugary sweet as possible. "Please tell me what I'm doing in the future; rich and powerful, I hope."
"I don't know."
"Phil," Barbara turned round to the discussion from washing the dinner dishes. "How can you not know what your sister is doing?"
"Mom," Adult Phil looked up to his younger mother. "You and dad don't know what she's doing. All we do know is that she's constantly arguing with someone through her cellular implant, the government's frozen her assets like a million times and when she does visit you, she's always wearing a disguise!"
Lloyd and Barbara turned looking back at Pim and recalled on several of her "conquer-the-world" rants and sighed in chorus with each other. On the spot, Pim looked at them both, her head turning stiffly to her father then her mother in worried and anxiety-driven looks of repressed guilt. Could it be that she was still driven to try and take over the world and that she would be public enemy number one all by the age of twenty?
"Who are you going to believe!" She denied her future deeds. "Me, your innocent and harmless little girl, or some would-be future clone of my idiot brother!"
"We're going to have to have a long talk, young lady!" Barbara shook her finger at Pim.
"So tell me…" Eighteen-year-old Phil looked to his forty-two year old self. "What's it like being married to Keely? Any surprises?"
"You know I can't tell you that."
"Why not?"
"Because back when I was sitting where you are and asked myself that question, I didn't tell myself either!" Adult Phil told his past self.
"Phil…."
"Yeah, dad?" Both Phils looked to their dad.
"Adult Phil…" Lloyd scooted the chair to his adult son. "Are you having spontaneous chronal memories of this incident?"
"Yeah," Adult Phil responded, placed aside the disconnected warp coil and leaned back in his seat. "It's weird, but they didn't start happening until a few minutes till I fell through the causality field. They're like, memories that I'm suddenly recalling. Even as I live through this, I'm simultaneously having flashbacks of the same thing from when I was eighteen and met myself from the future. It's like a reverse state of amnesia…."
"Phil," Lloyd reacted with restrained excitement. "Do you recall how you got back to the future? Did you drop me off in the future to bring back the component parts I need for the time machine? Did you get back?"
"I don't know." Adult Phil looked to himself as a young man. "I don't think I'm getting hit with the full breadth of the memories. I think they're only coming back as I live through them. Curtis is about to come in."
"Whoops!" Wearing his mammoth skin coverings, Curtis came in through the back door and quickly turned back. "Did not know have company…" He spoke in a stilted and raspy version based on his knowledge of the English language. As he turned back out to hide in the garage, he felt himself held back by something and looked back to a strange man he had never seen before keeping him from leaving.
"Curtis, I miss you so much, buddy." Adult Phil rose and hugged his old friend. Phil mugged proudly and Lloyd looked over to Barbara. Pim merely cringed at the disgusting display of devoted friendship.
"And Curtis miss you too…." He pretended to hug this man hugging him. "Who this?"
"Curtis, this is Phil." Lloyd tried to explain.
"No, that is Phil."
"Curtis, that's me from the future." Young Phil tried to explain.
"How Phil be from future when Phil be here?" Curtis's eyes rolled from one Phil to the other.
"Curtis," Adult Phil tried to explain. "Trust me, here. In time travel, it's possible for one person to visit himself in different parts of his life at any age possible. Even if it is against my will…"
"Curtis," Lloyd tried to explain the incident in a way the slow-thinker could comprehend. "Right now, our Phil is a young man, but some day he will an adult man and that is the Phil who is here with us."
"Are you sure?" Curtis was still trying to understand. "So, Phil…" He was reacting oddly cocksure for a caveman. "If you from future, is Curtis with you in that future?"
"Well, actually…" Adult Phil looked to his young self and once again disclosed future events. "We did take you to the Twenty-Second Century with us, despite nearly forgetting you, but you didn't like it there and we took you back to your own time. It was your own idea; you told us: 'Too many rules and explosions….' " He mimicked Curtis's voice. " 'Please return Curtis to own time.'" He started speakinin his own voice. "I do miss you, buddy, but Keely and I visit you every chance we got and bring the kids with us – OOOPS!" He had said too much again. "You guys didn't hear that,did you?" He looked this century's version of his family.
"Keely and I are going to have kids?" Young Phil reacted with surprise.
"Grandchildren! Yes!" Barbara cheered with a victorious dance around the kitchen table.
"No, no, no more bad news…." Pim was reeling. "Please tell me you didn't reproduce." She clutched her stomach. "Am I the only one who can taste the bile? I'm going to be really, really sick!"
"Phil…" Lloyd was getting desperate as he pulled back the man his son was going to be. "You got to tell me how I fixed the time machine so we can get home and drop you off as well."
"I can't, dad." Adult Phil looked at his younger father as a peer rather than his guardian. "We spent seven years living in the past before returning to the present. From what I can tell, I got yanked back only two years into those seven years, and considering all we did, I can't take the chance of altering that past at the risk of changing my present. You have the live out the full seven years in the Twenty-First Century so that my marriage to Keely will still exist when I return to her."
