January 1, 2000
"Happy New Year!"
Champagne glasses are raised as the year 2000 is rung inside Romance at the Top of the World, near the top of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas, Nevada, which overlooks the Strip and the rest of the metropolitan area.
Jason Treborn, decked out in an expensive-looking tuxedo, wraps his arms around his wife's waist and kisses her.
"Happy New Year," he says to Andrea.
He looks around, greeting happy new year to the other guests.
"Happy New Year, Jason" says Scott Treborn, touching his champagne glass to Jason's champagne glass.
"Happy New Year, Scott," replies Jason.
"Thanks, brother. It was nice of you to book me and Dana a suite here and an invitation to the New Years' Eve party here."
"Too bad this place is at the north end of the Strip," says Dana. She looks through the glass towards the Strip, seeing landmarks like the Circus Circus, the Stardust, the Mirage, the New York New York, the Luxor, and the Mandalay Bay. "It takes so long to get to all of the casinos."
"Happy New Year," Andrea says to Scott and Dana.
A few minutes later, Jason and Scott sit at the bar, ordering another round of drinks.
"Life's looking up for me," says Scott. "Every morning I look forward to waking up next to Dana, you know. Not as much as you, of course, with being chairman of some multi-billion dollar corporation."
"Hard work, Scott," replies Jason. "There's some pleasure in building something up. Of course, you always have to watch out for people who want to tear it down. They're out there, you know. Once you make it to the top people always want to tear you down."
"How's Andrea?" asks Scott, changing the subject.
"She's great," says Jason. "We still love each other so much. It's hard for her, sometimes, especially if I have to fly to meet with some corporate bigwigs, but all in all, our marriage is very rewarding."
"That's good. Chrissy seems to be doing fine. Her anniversary with Roland is coming up in a few months. And the baby's due in April."
"Cool, you're gonna be a grandpa soon."
"I met Roland's family. They have a tradition of sticking together, like us Treborns. No wonder he ended up with my Chrissy."
"They are having their first child at such a young age."
"You were twenty-two when you had Evan."
"I know," says Jason, sipping his blue-colored drink. "You know, it is his senior year. He graduates this June."
Ooooooooooo
March 31, 2000
Jason Treborn enters the conference room just across the hall from his private office. The table is long, made of mahogany wood. A side table holds a coffeepot, and a water cooler sits in a corner. This room is used for board meetings and meetings with the corporate staff, like right this Friday afternoon. The Temporal Financial Services chairman sits on a leather chair at the end of the table.
An aide, clad in a black skirt-suit, hands out papers to the executives.
"We will discuss the current trend in the NASDAQ," says Jason. "Mr. Jones, if you will."
"The NASDAQ closed at 4572.83 today," says Mr. Jones, a securities market analyst. "That is 159.99 down from the opening price on March 1, a reduction in value of three percent."
"Three percent loss in one month?" asks one of the executives, a balding man in a gray suit.
"A large portion of the stocks on the NASDAQ index have had zero income so far," says Jones. "I would conclude that a lot of the price increases in the past year or so was due to investors speculating that the price will continue to rise. The prices of those stocks are now going down."
"And what of the Dow?" asks CEO Bob Schnaufer.
"Over the same time period?" asks Jones, flipping through the reports in front of him. "It is up 793.21, closing at 10921.92, an increase of over seven percent."
"We do have a lot invested into NASDAQ stocks," says Jason.
Ooooooooooooo
June 16, 2000
The sun shines on the athletic field. Three hundred boys, seventeen to eighteen years of age, clad in red gowns and red caps, all sit. Their families watch from the sidelines. In the distance are the brick buildings for this elite private all-boys high school.
"Evan Treborn," announces a voice.
Eighteen-year-old Evan Treborn rises up, walks to the stage, and shakes the hand of the principal and one of the school's trustees. Smiling, he walks back to his seat. He had done it. He has finished high school. He is now a graduate, ready to spread his wings.
Then the caps go up.
He disperses along with everyone else. It had been a long, exciting day for him. In the morning he and the rest of the class of 2000 were recognized in the school's auditorium.
Among the vast crowd, he finally sees his parents.
"Congratulations," says Jason, embracing his son.
"Thanks," says Evan.
"So proud of you," replies Andrea.
"Time to take more pictures," says Jason, taking out a Nikon digital camera.
Oooooooooooo
"Congratulations," says Evan, now sitting at a cloth-covered table in a dimly-lit restaurant.
"You too, friend," says seventeen-year-old Lenny Kagan, reaching for a tortilla chip to dip into a spinach-artichoke dip.
Lenny had his graduation ceremony the same time Evan did. The Treborns and the Kagans decided to celebrate their respective graduations together, since the two of them could not attend each other's commencement ceremonies.
"So, Lenny," says Andrea, "you excited about the future?"
"Yeah, I'm looking forward to college," replies Lenny. "I know it'll be tough."
"I am sure Lenny will do fine," says Mr. Kagan. "You know he graduated with honors."
"Evan graduated with high honors," says Jason.
"Let's not compare, Dad," says Evan.
"You should be proud to graduate with high honors, Evan," says Mrs. Kagan.
"Thanks, Mrs. Kagan," says Evan. "I remember back when I first met Lenny; it was his fifth birthday. So much time has passed. So many people come and gone. Sometimes I wish I can go back."
"Yeah, we sure made memories."
The waitress comes by, serving the entrees to the party.
"Jason once showed me this trick, about twenty years ago, when we were in college," says Andrea. "He told me that he can recall a memory if it was photographed. Like, he can recall everything that happened."
"That's really neat stuff," says Lenny. "You mean Mr. Treborn could like, revisit your wedding day?"
"I could," says Jason, sticking a fork into a small boiled carrot. "Of course, I wouldn't be able to show you since I can't take you along."
"I suppose the mind plays tricks," says Evan. "I'm thinking of becoming a psychology major when I go to college."
Oooooooooooo
December 15, 2000
Jason Treborn looks at the Yahoo! Finance web site. He makes calculations using the Calculator desktop accessory.
"Look!" he says to Bob Schnaufer, sitting across from him. "NASDAQ's down thirty-six percent since the start of the year. Dow is down nine percent."
"Well, sir," says Schnaufer, "the stock market's been going up these past few years; there's bound to be a downturn."
"We invested a lot into those tech stocks. Yahoo went down ninety-two percent! You know how much our company invested in Yahoo? Down seventy-one percent. Apple is down eighty-six percent. Even Microsoft is down fifty-eight percent! Why did I ever go into these tech stocks?"
"Now, now, Mr. Treborn," says Schnaufer. "Sure, our company will be in the red this year, but we're still better off than we were in '95, when we started shifting our assets to tech stocks. We still have investments in other industries like energy and pharmaceuticals and property development."
"And my net worth, two-thirds of it was wiped out!"
"We'll just have to reassign assets to more profitable ventures, and hope for the best."
"I promoted these stocks on national television! Do you realize what this will do to my credibility?"
"You're still the chairman of the most successful financial services company in the world. Come on, even Bill Gates and Warren Buffet had bad years before. And you are still better off than when I first started working for you. You initially invested in Microsoft when it first went public, right?"
Jason nods. "Yeah, that was in '86. And I did invest thousands into Apple back in '84, when they came out with the Macintosh."
"You're not going to be a pauper. And our company will still go on."
"We lost so much money. It could have been avoided, Schnaufer! Those, those bastards probably did this. They did this to screw me over!"
"The past is the past."
Jason opens the folder containing pictures from February of 2000; he remembers that was when the stock market went bear. He opens the icon of a JPEG file dated February 1. He stares into the image of his face.
Ooooooooooooo
February 1, 2000
Jason notices that he is holding a Nikon digital camera. He looks and sees that Bob Schnaufer is not inside his office.
Opening the TeachText program on the Power Macintosh G4, he types a message for himself.
December 15, 2000
February 1, 2000
Make sure to dump Yahoo!, Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and other stocks dealing with computer hardware and software.
The prices will start a plummet lasting to the end of the year. Shift these assets into bonds.
From the future,
Jason Treborn
He saves the text document. He then proceeds to upload the digital image that had just been taken by his younger self into the Macintosh's hard drive.
I hope this works.
It is about three hours before Jason flashes forward.
Oooooooooooo
December 15, 2000
The images flash by as Jason returns to the present. He looks at the date on the computer screen even as a salty taste reaches his lips.
He gets up and suddenly feels a pounding headache. He continues walking across the tiled floor towards the double doors, the headache getting stronger and stronger, like a howitzer barrage.
He opens the door.
And he falls.