---

Love in the Time of Dust and Venom

By Sharon Joss

Using his walker to brace himself, Keiko watched her ancient grandfather stoop beside the packed dirt path and tug at a weed. Nearby, sprinklers sang shoop-shoop-shoop in the stillness, sending cascades of water across the wide expanse of lawns. She saw his eyes twinkle as he slapped the roots against the side of his worn black trousers. The scent of moist earth joined the fragrance of lavender and eucalyptus in the quiet July morning.  The old man stood and slowly put the dandelion in his pocket. He knew she didn’t approve, but this had become their little ritual.

When he first came to live with them, he spoke rarely, and then only Japanese; a language she struggled to recall from childhood. She found him to be a man of expression, rather than words. The first time she brought him to the LA County Arboretum he spoke to her of how much he missed his wife and home.  Now they came every Tuesday morning, after she dropped the boys off at school. There was no sense of time or country here.  They’d come to think of the botanical gardens as their special place.

He toddled over to their favorite bench; the rough wooden one beneath the purple jacaranda tree with a good view of the Queen Anne Cottage. Then, as the bees hummed around them, he took her hand as he often did, and her 97-year-old grandfather began to tell her about lightpulse technology.

---

Now that they were here, sitting in this dreary yellow reception lobby of Time Horizons Incorporated, Keiko realized she was going to have to face the fact that she was, essentially, sending her grandfather to his death. She was certain Ojisan didn’t think so.  His enthusiasm for the idea of travelling into the future had put the whole family in an uproar for weeks.

She glanced at her grandfather, sitting so proudly beside her.  From his shiny black patent-leather shoes to the brand-new Sears suit, to the top of his freshly shaved head, he was nearly glowing with anticipation. He’d even gotten her twelve-year old to shine up his walker with Windex.

Keiko put her hand on top of the gnarled fist. His tissue-thin skin was cool; too cool.

“Are you warm enough, Sofu?”

He merely nodded, his bright eyes glued to the red numbers of the digital display mounted on the wall across the room.  The aroma of new carpet seemed to suck all the oxygen right out of the air. Muzak played softly in the background. While they’d waited, she’d counted twenty-one orange plastic chairs in the waiting area, yet there were only four other people in the room. All were younger.  Much younger.

“Now serving number forty-six.” The disembodied digital voice echoed across the agnostic waiting room.

Her heart skipped a beat.  They would be the first.  Keiko helped her grandfather to his feet.  “That’s us, Ojisan.”  The frail old man was wide-eyed and eager, but even with his walker cane, he needed help getting up off the orange plastic, and he was heavier than he looked.

Once he was on his feet, he patted his jacket pockets carefully.

“I have it right here, Sofu.”  She pinned a wilted Sacred Lily leaf to his lapel. Rhodea Japonica was Japan’s most revered native plant.  She’d had to comb nearly every florist shop and plant nursery in Santa Monica before she found a place that carried them.  She’d been tempted to simply snip a hosta leaf from the botanical garden, but that would not have been respectful.

Following two steps behind, Keiko watched her grandfather shuffle toward the attendant, who held the door open for them.

“My name is Brad,” the young technician told them.  He motioned them into an interview room containing modern, Scandinavian-style metal furniture. Russet shag carpeting and more of the orange plastic chairs provided the only color in the white room. After they were seated, Brad glanced at his clipboard and made a face.  “I’m afraid I’m not very good with Japanese names.  Is it Tadeo Yakashita?”

“Hai,” her grandfather nodded.

“My grandfather does not speak English well,” Keiko explained.  “I am here to translate for him, if that’s okay.”  Grandfather was worried they would reject him because of his age, but she was more concerned they would not take him seriously without her there to speak for him.

“It’s not a problem.”

He opened the folder on his desk and Keiko saw he had some of Sufo’s medical records. Pages and pages of expert opinions; but in the end, they all said the same thing. Six months, no more.

“I understand, based the statements made by his doctors, his prognosis is terminal, and aggressive treatment is contra-indicated because of your grandfather’s great age and the advanced state of his disease.”

Keiko nodded.  “Yes.”

“I must tell you, most of our clients come here looking for a cure, but that’s not what is says here on the application.   Could you please explain why your grandfather wants to go into the future?” Brad pointed to the small camera located near the ceiling.  “And please be aware, this conversation is being recorded.”

Keiko took a deep breath.  Her grandfather’s future depended on how she answered this question. If she was not able to explain his reasons, his spirit would never be able to rest. The weight of Sofu’s soul felt heavy on her shoulders.

“My grandfather lived his whole life in the village of Okuma, Japan.  So did his grandfather, and all his forefathers going back, well, forever.  When the Fukushima Daiichi disaster occurred in 2011, the village of Okuma was within the red zone. My husband and I went over to Japan after the tragedy and brought him back with us, but he wants to die in the land of his ancestors. He believes that if he dies here, he will wander forever as a ghost and never find peace.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to send him into the past?”

Keiko smoothed down her skirt.  The small white room seemed to shrink with every word she spoke.  She struggled to keep the tremor out of her voice.  “My father and grandmother also lived in Okuma at the time of the disaster.  They were both killed in the tsunami. My grandfather wants to share his eternity with the spirit of his beloved wife and son most of all.”

Sofu nodded once, for emphasis.

“I see.”  Brad made several notes in the file. “Are you willing to let him go?  This is just a Beta test. The lightpulse jump might not be able to bring him back if there’s a problem.”

She reached for her grandfather’s gnarled hand, asking the silent question with her eyes.  He gave a determined nod and thumped his cane on the floor.

“Hai!”

“He understands the risk.  He says he wants to go. I respect his decision.”

Brad excused himself, and left the interview room, taking the file with him.

They did not have long to wait. When Brad returned, he was smiling.  “Your grandfather’s situation is out of the ordinary for us, but our legal department has given us the go ahead,” he said.  “You’re in.”

---

The lightpulse lab looked a bit like the pictures she’d seen on television of NASA control rooms.  One entire wall was filled with monitors and graphs and satellite photos.  A low white platform about six feet across rose from the center of the room, flanked on two sides by white-coated technicians seated at several workstations.  The air conditioning chilled the white room uncomfortably.  Someone had hung a child’s spaceship in front of the air vent, and the toy twirled gently in the draft. If there was ever a place less like the arboretum, this must surely be it.

She could not understand the lack of fear in Sofu’s face.  She had never seen him so excited.

As soon as the navigation engineer arrived, everything seemed to happen at once. A nurse checked Ojisan’s vital signs, while a doctor peered into his eyes and ears, and double-checked his reflexes. There were waivers to sign and coordinates to triangulate and calculate. But soon, too soon, it was time to say goodbye.

Her concern had been building from the moment they’d arrived, but now, more than anything, Keiko didn’t want him to go. She held her hand to her mouth to keep herself from saying anything. This was what he wanted, and how could she be so selfish as to deny him his peace of mind? But the pain in her heart was nothing compared to the twinkle of joy she beheld in her Sofu’s eyes.

The navigator, Dr. Orlov, explained what would happen.

“We’ve set the coordinates so that he will materialize on the street in front of his home one hundred years from today.  We know from current satellite photos that the rubble has been cleared, so we can be fairly certain that he’s not going to end up inside a wall somewhere.”

Two technicians helped her grandfather into the powder blue travel vest.  It was made of a lightweight, netted material with large zippered pockets; some obviously empty, others bulging with equipment.  It hung long on Sofu; halfway past his knees.  When they handed him the control device, Keiko translated Dr. Orlov’s explanation of how it worked.

“The green button will initiate the lightpulse jump into the future; the blue button will return you back to this time and place. The vest automatically records all the environmental measurements of that place and time. One hundred years in the future, there will be radiation but it won’t be strong enough to bother you.”

The old man clutched the controller to his chest and nodded fiercely.  “Hai!”

“And one more thing. For legal reasons, no one can push the green button for you.  If you wish to go to the future, you will have to push the green button yourself. If you decide to stay, remove the vest, press the red button, then zip the controller into the right front pocket.  In 60 seconds, the vest will return without you. Do you understand, Ojisan?”

They assisted him to the platform, and made sure he had a good grip on his walker cane.

“Are you ready,” asked the navigator.

“Yes!” Grandfather’s beatific smile lit up the laboratory.

Dr. Orlov began the countdown.  “Three, two, one, go.”

Nothing happened.

The technicians all cheered and raced forward to remove the blue travel vest.

“Ask him how it was!” Dr. Orlov was grinning ear to ear.

Keiko shook her head.  “But nothing happened.  It didn’t work.”

“Oh yes it did.  Like I said, he returned to this time.  Just ask him.”

The despairing look on her grandfather’s face told her all she needed to know.  The Sacred Lily leaf she had pinned to his lapel was gone.  She wanted to go to him, but they were too busy checking his medical signs. His hands were dirty; his shoes scuffed and coarse with dust and bits of dried mud. A tang of ozone filled the air of the lab. When he spoke, her heart squeezed in her chest.

“Tell me what he’s saying,” Orlov demanded.

Keiko couldn’t stop the tears of both relief and sadness. “He says he wants to go back.  He wants me to tell you there is a shrine at the top of a hill overlooking the village. He wants you to send him there instead of back to his house.”  She stifled a sob.

“What?  What else did he he say?”

She could barely choke out the answer. “He says next time, he wants to go two hundred years.”

---

The technicians at Time Horizons had taken all of Sofu’s fine new clothes when he returned from his lightpulse jump, so when they went back to the Time Horizons headquarters the following week, he was forced to wear one of his older suits and a pair of black Nikes.  She had not been able to find any more Japanese Sacred Lily leaves, so they’d clipped a sprig from a huge cedar tree at the Arboretum.  When they reached the reception lobby, Dr. Orlov was waiting for them.  He looked like a man who’d just won the lottery.  Or maybe a Nobel Prize.

“Mrs. Erikson, please extend our grateful thanks to your grandfather for his bravery.  We’ve only just begun to analyze the data gathered from his trip.  The value and importance of this information to mankind supersedes even what scientists have even been able to extrapolate from Chernobyl.”

Keiko had spent all week trying to talk Sofu out of returning, but in the end, she’d had to obey his wishes.  Now, her only hope lay with the navigator.

“Dr. Orlov, I would like you to tell him that there has been a mistake.  Please, tell him the machine is broken. Or that you’ve found someone else.  I don’t care what you say, but I don’t want him to go.”

He gave her a puzzled look.  “Why would I do that?  Have you any idea the significance of your grandfather’s contributions to science?  The dust on his shoes alone–.”

“I don’t care,” Keiko’s mouth trembled with the weight of her emotions.  “He’s been having nightmares. He’s so upset by what he saw. He says the town is filled with angry ghosts.”

Sofu put his heavy hand on her shoulder for silence.  “Two hundred years, Orlov-san,” he said. “I am ready.”

Just as before, they helped Sofu into the heavy travel vest.  For this trip, Dr. Orlov explained, they added several additional measurement devices, and a digital camera.  As the technicians showed him how to operate the equipment and Keiko translated the navigator’s instructions, she saw the gleam of pride return to Sofu’s weathered face.

“Now I don’t want you to worry, Mrs. Erikson.  Your grandfather’s suggestion to place him at the shrine is brilliant.  Those temples were really built to last.  Even if people have returned to the area, they’re not likely to have torn the place down, and he’ll be as safe there as anywhere.”

Despite the heaviness of the equipment, Sofu stood straight and tall upon the platform. She shook her head. Somehow, this whole thing had gotten changed around.  Sofu was no longer at peace. The angry ghosts of his ancestors truly terrified him. It was as if he believed serving the people at Time Horizons was now more important than saving his own soul. She’d tried to convince him to die in Los Angeles, but he’d refused to listen. Most of all, she hated the thought that Dr. Orlov and the scientists were using her grandfather as an experiment.  They probably thought he was just some old man.

She kept her thoughts to herself.

This time, however, when the lightpulse shimmer completed, her grandfather dropped the controller and fell to his knees.  He hid his face behind puffy, mottled red hands and keened softly. His walker cane was gone.

She rushed forward, but Orlov held her back so the medical technicians could treat Sofu.

“What is it?  What’s wrong with him?” She twisted away from Orlov.

“Ask him!”

But Sofu answered before she could ask.  “Bees,” he said.

They gave him Benadryl, and within thirty minutes, he was resting more comfortably.  Keiko counted seventeen bee stings, mostly on his hands and arms.

This time the interview took much longer.  She held his hand as she translated for Dr. Orlov and his team.  Sofu described the changes he observed in the immediate vicinity of the temple. The landscape had become overgrown, he said; the people had not yet returned to live in the village.  The sky was yellow; thick with clouds which rained down ash. In the distance, Mount Fuji had been belching noxious gouts of gas and lightning. He had been making his way around the temple when an earthquake struck, and the beehive had been knocked to the ground close to where he had fallen. Unable to get away from them, he pressed the return button when the bees began to attack.

As before, he was determined to go back.

“No, Ojisan,” she begged tearfully. “You cannot”.  His puffy, swollen face and arms bore testimony to the danger of returning.  She could not bear the thought of him lying in a distant future; suffering and dying alone. He might as well be on some distant planet.

Sofu’s chin jutted forward resolutely.  “One thousand years, Orlov-san,” he said. “I am ready.”

---

They waited for weeks for word, and when none came, Keiko began to relax.  The bee stings seemed to take the starch out of Sofu, at least for a while. He slept a lot.  Things at home with Dan and the kids went back to normal.  Christmas passed, and then Valentine’s Day.  Sufo accompanied her to the kids soccer games, and on the Tuesday mornings, they visited the LA County Arboretum.

By the end of April, his appetite began to fail.

Dr. Orlov’s assistant Brad called to say that if Mr. Yakashita was still interested in making a lightpulse leap of one thousand years, Time Horizons would be willing to send him.

That night, she tried again to reason with him.  She pointed out that in a thousand years there might be nothing left of earth. What if something worse than bees happened to him? What if he was trapped there with the angry ghosts?  When she suggested that Dr. Orlov was just using him as a guinea pig, he turned his back to her.

---

This time, she dressed in black. She brushed her long dark hair until it shone, then twisted it up into a tight chignon, holding it in place with new bobby pins.  She found a little pillbox hat with a bit of veil and wore her good wool suit, even though it was May, and nobody wore mourning clothes in LA anymore.  In the car on the drive over, neither one of them spoke.  She’d hoped the traffic would make them late, but the universe turned against her and they arrived early.

She whipped her BMW into a spot in the visitor parking lot, stomping the brakes abruptly. He sat as a stone against her and she was ashamed. This was not the way she wanted to say good-bye.

She reached out and caressed the empty place on his lapel.  “I am a stupid, stubborn woman.”

All the tension went out of him then. He took her hand and held it against his heart for a moment.  “Yes.”

---

Someone had blown up one of the photographs Sofu had taken of the shrine taken during the trip 200 years into the future, had it framed, and hung on the wall of the laserpulse lab.

As the technicians helped the frail old man into his blue travel vest, she saw his eyes glisten and knew he would not be coming home with her. When Orlov spoke the countdown, Sofu winked at her, something she hadn’t seen him do since she was a little girl. The digital clock in the bottom right corner of each of the monitors said 9:23am.

She held her breath.

This time, the lightpulse shimmered and Sofu was gone.

On the floor of the launch platform, the weathered blue vest lay in a jumbled heap. When the technicians opened the bulging zippered pockets, they were filled with hundreds of Sacred Lily blossoms.

---

Host Commentary

By Valerie Valdes

Once again, that was “Love in the Time of Dust and Venom” by Sharon Joss.

The author had this to say about the story:

This story was inspired by the baby tortoises we had when I was a kid. They hatched in the spring after the first rains and it was always fun to search for them; like easter egg hunts! I always thought they looked like aliens–nice aliens.

One of the great delights of time travel stories is seeing what kinds of rules they establish, and how those rules impact the structure and plot. Can we go to the past and change it? If we go to the future, are we stuck there forever? Is everything predetermined and set in stone, or can the world be wiped out by a butterfly effect? Are there multiple branching worlds made from every choice, past and present and future, such that we can skip between them to see what happens? In this case, the rules of time travel are in the service of a single, essential human concept: hope. In a time of fear and doomerism about climate change and ecological disasters, the ability to look forward to a future filled with flowers may seem like a small thing, but it’s emblematic of the larger belief that our current problems can be solved. Maybe we can’t fix them quickly or easily, maybe not in this generation or the next, but we can fix them if we resolve to do it. Without time travel, we may not be able to see the results of the work we do today, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plant the seeds of hope so the future can fill their pockets with flowers. If anything, we should plant even more.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please do share it.

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And our closing quotation this week is from Hayao Miyazaki, who said: “Yet, even amidst the hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist.”

Thanks for joining us, and may your escape pod be fully stocked with stories.