A Perfect Day

The alarm blares at 7:30am like it did every morning. Cole reaches over slowly and turns off his phone alarm. He stares at the ceiling fan and tracks it with his eyes. Round and round all the time. Normally he would be up and about already. This morning, he is tired and takes a moment to contemplate. Sitting up at the edge of the bed, he gazes over at the velvet box sitting on his dresser. With a sigh, he stands up and crosses the room to the bathroom. For cosmetic purposes he swishes his mouthwash and brushes his teeth. He even flossed this time. He turns on the shower and waits until it's warm. Stepping into the shower, he lets it run lightly down his chest. The water pressure isn’t that great, he can’t help but feel slightly annoyed he never did anything about it. Cole's mind begins to wander, he cries a little in the shower but no one can see or hear him. Quickly centering himself, he takes a deep breath and steps out of the shower. He draws some warm water from the sink and pulls out a new razor. He begins to slowly lather his face with shaving cream. As he shaves, he is extra careful not to knick himself. Afterward, he splashes his face with cold water. He finishes up in the bathroom and heads over to his closet. He puts on his favorite pair of jeans and red polo. He sits down at the end of his bed and slips on his brown leather dress shoes. Tying them firmly so they won’t come undone. Turning his attention back to the thin velvet box in front of him. He slips it into his back pocket for the last time.

Cole steps out of his townhouse in Pasadena, California. It was late spring, sunny and 75. For most of his life he had been quite awkward and shy. It wasn’t until recently that he had found success with the opposite sex. Emily managed her own coffee shop down the street from his house. They had been dating for a few months now. Cole felt like he had known her for an eon. To him, she was everything he had been searching for in a partner. She was kind and personable without an ounce of pretension in her petite frame. She was certainly funny enough for the both of them. Cole was convinced she could do better than him in the looks department. For some reason she had decided she liked this nerdy, shy, average looking guy from nowhere Texas. Cole was going to ask her to be his girlfriend, his first girlfriend. She was the welcome antithesis to all of his current friends and coworkers. Cole was an academic working out of the high energy physics department at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Los Angeles. It was an academic environment and Cole worked with some highly gifted people. Most were not gifted with natural charisma. But, Cole learned not to stereotype.

Halfway to the coffeeshop, Cole’s newest annoyance stepped toward him. Nothing new had happened to Cole in quite some time. Rory was a pretentious asshole much like some of his gifted workers. The main difference is Rory loved to hear himself talk. Before explaining more about Rory we have to go back 14 months. You see Cole worked alone in a secluded section of the lab. His lone objective was to discover new methods for advanced space travel. The engine he was developing warped time and space. At least, that was just his running theory. He had been running iterations of tests at low power. His calculations must have been significantly off. In the middle of a test, an earthquake caused a power surge setting off the device.

Cole woke up at 7:30am the next day. At first he thought it was all a dream. After a week, he thought he was going insane. Everyday for 14 month at 8:49pm west coast time the disaster would strike and presumably Cole would die. Everyday, he would wake up at 7:30am alarms blaring. The only reason Cole knew what exactly happened at 8:49pm was because he had a friend that worked the night shift at California Integrated Seismic Network. He dropped in to see the cause of all this misfortune. May 11th, 2022 the United States would experience the worst natural disaster in modern history. The Cascadia subduction zone would trigger a massive set of earthquakes up and down the west coast. Followed by a giant tsunami hitting the pacific Northwest. Millions would die today. Cole was sure of it even if he would never experience tomorrow again.

Rory closed the gap between them. “How long are you gonna stay here, I’m thinking about leaving your ass permanently. Maybe then you might decide you don’t want to live in an endless death loop. Get off your ass and fix the warp engine yourself.” Cole rolled his eyes at Rory. From what Cole understood, Rory was a time traveler extraordinaire. Rory had noticed the anomaly Cole’s machine had caused and decided to check it out. Only to find Cole, that poor bastard, stuck reliving the same day. “You know I can’t leave, if I leave she dies” Cole retorted. Rory without pause, “She dies anyway mate, 97% of them do. You’re the only guy in this mini apocalypse that can guarantee his own survival. All you have to do is come with me. I can only theorize your engine is meant to fold space in order to connect to two points. Except when you set the machine off you were really connecting two points in time. Creating the looping effect. A real bitch to fix I might add, you might be stuck here 1000 years and go insane before you fix it”. Cole did not appreciate the lecture. He stopped walking and looked back at Rory. “If you are so smart, find a way to take both Emily and I”. Rory grunted, “We covered this already, the only way I can save you from this Twilight Zone episode is by adjusting your energy field. We need to decouple you from the linear flow of time in order to stop the looping. You will cease to exist on any linear timeline but most importantly not dead or stuck here. Emily is experiencing time linearly. If I pull her out of the linear thread this will cause an unstable thread. It's the same reason I can’t just drop you off later in the linear thread. You were supposed to die and you didn't, so here we are. For reasons I don’t feel like explaining my ass would be grass if I did that”. Cole took a deep breath, “come back when you have an actual offer”. “That is the offer Cole, I’ll be surfing in Malibu if you change your mind today, you know my number. After that I’ll come back in one year's time”. With nothing but a Bloop, Rory disappeared.

Cole started back down the road. Rory was right about one thing, fixing his problem was no easy feat. Almost everyday Cole had been working on the warp engine. Rory had been dropping little crumbs of information during his monthly monologues. Cole had formed a hypothesis and had been refining it for the better part of a year. He had been testing for four months. But even now he wasn’t sure. Lately Cole had been doubting a lot of things. He wasn’t entirely sure of Rory’s motives or even his own ability to save himself. Cole always considered himself to be a laid back individual. His mind was still succumbing slowly to the stress. He was only sure of one thing. Leaving Emily alone to die in this disaster was not an option. “One last day, a Perfect Day” whispered under his breath.

There she was at the coffee shop, perfect as she ever was. Her morning shift was ending. Cole did not want to waste anymore time. “Hey, are you ready for our date?”. Emily smiled “Date? Well I didn’t have anything better planned”. Cole had it all planned out. They were going to get a late lunch down in Santa Monica. Then spend a few hours at the Santa Monica pier before heading off to the Griffith Observatory. That was what they did. They grabbed tacos on the beach and rode the old roller coasters on the pier. He tipped the operator to stop them at the top of the Ferris wheel. Cole had almost forgotten how grave his situation was. It was 6:00pm now at the Griffith observatory. The sun was still high in the sky so there was nothing to see except the Los Angeles skyline. The stars were hidden from view but he knew they were there. Cole wondered about the cyclical nature of things. In the vastness of space there was infinite destruction and creation. “What are you thinking about, you are doing that look you always do”. Emily interrupted his downward descent into despair. “Nothing,” Cole lied. “Here I have something for you”. Cole pulled out the velvet box from his back pocket and opened it. Inside was a heart shaped locket. Emily caught her breath and looked with big eyes back at Cole. He had purchased the locket the day before his accident and waited 14 months to give it to her. She took it from the box and he helped her put it on. In the months of despair there was one bright spot and she was standing right in front of him. “I have one last surprise for you but we have to go to my lab,” Cole said. Emily, still glowing, didn't even question it.

It was 7:00 pm now, most of his coworkers had gone for the day. No one was there to bother him. Guests were not allowed at the lab after hours. The security guard had left his post as Cole knew he would. They slipped in past the front desk. “What are we doing here?” Emily asked. “I want to show you something I’ve been working on,” Cole said as he kept walking. They went down one floor to the basement level. Cole’s lab sat in the back corner next to an empty office. There it was, a small, black box. No bigger than a shoe box. He stepped over to the control node. “It’s a little bright but it’s very pretty,'' Cole warned. Cole started the 10 second timer. He walked slowly over toward her. Emily opened her mouth but before she could protest the light show began. The room began to fill with a rainbow aura. Dazzling like fireflies all around them. Cole had set the machine to drop them one hundred years into the future. “Are you ready?” he asked Emily. “Ready for what?” she replied, still stunned by the lights. Cole wasn’t even planning on answering that question before Rory burst into the room. “STOP NOW” he screamed. Bloop.