AlexPGP's Corner

I hate it when tourists kick the bucket on my watch.

In 1975, I worked for—a company that might still be around, so to avoid any possibility of ruffled feathers (and potential lawsuits), I'll just say it was a company in the travel industry. My job was to pander to the whims of paying customers, iron out their difficulties, and generally keep them out of trouble as they toured cities such as Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev.

I had come down to the banquet room on the third floor of Moscow's Intourist Hotel about fifteen minutes before the group was scheduled to arrive for its farewell cocktail party. The four-man orchestra, dressed in national costumes consisting of fur hats, bright peasant shirts, dark baggy trousers, and gaudy boots, was tuning up in the corner. The table in the center of the room was impeccably set and so dense with food that you couldn't see the tablecloth underneath.

There were platters with smoked salmon, garnished with peas and radishes carved to resemble flowers. A whole sturgeon—cooked, sliced, and reassembled for serving—sat on a platform on a bed of greens. Other plates were laden with thinly sliced meats, edged with pickle wedges and red cabbage. Bowls heaped high with red and black caviar stood above the platters like scattered mushrooms, and bottles of Georgian wine, Armenian cognac, and Russian vodka rose like small towers over this plain of food.

I checked the table against the hotel's typed event menu and lavishly complimented Boris, the director of the floor's facilities, on the fine work of his staff. Experience had taught me that such effusive praise was essential to staying in Boris's good graces and, by extension, in the good graces of the staff.

Boris and I had our own version of détente going on. He had a weakness for Marlboro cigarettes, which as a foreigner I can easily get, while I had a taste for this obscure, bittersweet red Finnish liqueur that Boris could produce almost at will via his own sources.

On nights when my tourists were at the theater, or prowling assorted restaurants under the close supervision of the Intourist guides, Boris and I retired to a relatively private corner of the third floor where we smoked cigarettes and played chess. He tried to get me interested in playing cards a few times, especially a card game called preferans, but it's not a game that's well suited to just two players. There was another reason, too.

Before coming overseas, I had spent two years working in the security department of a Las Vegas casino, where I was trained to spot card sharps—so-called "mechanics" who were good at manipulating pasteboards—and Boris was a very good one, though not very imaginative. His standard shtick with attractive new waitresses was a card trick that involved "picking a card" that, as it turned out, was the one he wanted her to pick, because he had maneuvered the card to come between her fingers just as the fingers came together. The move is called a "force" and Boris was very good at forcing cards. We all have our faults. Given a chance, I'll cheat at chess.

A glance at my watch showed about five minutes until my hungry, thirsty horde arrived to do, to the hors d'oeuvres and liquor, a reasonably good impression of a school of piranha doing a number on a side of beef. I poured myself a shot of vodka, picked up a caviar morsel, and turned to Boris, who had similarly provisioned himself. As we had done so many times before, we drank to the success of the evening, and chased the vodka with the caviar.

I stood at the door of the room, dutifully greeted everyone as they arrived, and pointed them toward the food. After about ten minutes, Boris appeared at my side to ask how things were going.

"Fine," I replied. "This is a good group. Very disciplined. Almost everyone is here."

"What about your VIP?" he asked, pronouncing each letter of 'VIP' with a vaguely sinister Slavic accent.

"There are only two VIP couples in this group. Charles Dorsey is over there, with his wife," I said, and nodded toward a tall, virile man who had his arm around a well-preserved blonde. "He's an executive for a big department store back in the States. They're enjoying themselves, which is good, since the word from my boss is that they talked a lot of the other people here into coming. But between you and me, I'd wished they had left the Colonel at home."

"The Colonel?" asked Boris.

"Yeah. Colonel Alvin Post, United States Army, retired," I said, imitating the practiced way in which the Colonel introduced himself. "He fought in World War Two and served in some kind of key role during the Allied Occupation after Germany surrendered. Quite a lot of glasses have been raised in his direction all along the itinerary by various Soviet hosts. Personally, I think the man is an inexhaustible supply of whatever it is that crushes people's spirits, but he and his wife are the other VIP couple. And—" my voice dropped to a whisper, "speak of the devil—"

As if on cue, the Colonel marched through the door and stopped to survey the room. He wore a sky-blue leisure suit that sat on his ursine frame like a dress uniform. Boris turned his head and stared. Post's wife followed dutifully, a step or two behind. She was wearing a functional blouse-and-dress combination, in pastel green. She also wore a perpetually worried look. During a dinner at the beginning of the tour, she had confessed to me that the trip to the USSR had not been her choice. She would have preferred to go to Paris, to enjoy the "haute couture" and the "haute cuisine" of that City of Light, but Alvin had insisted on coming here.

I felt a little sorry for Mrs. Post, who had the perennial look of a woman whose interests were always subordinated to the beat of martial drums, or the prospect of a trip to places like this. As the Colonel resumed his advance into the room, I decided to get my licks in first.

"Good evening, Colonel. Good evening, Mrs. Post. Welcome to the cocktail party. Why don't you help yourself to a drink?" I was momentarily startled by the sudden appearance of a tray of drinks held by a waiter. As the Colonel and his wife helped themselves, I looked over at Boris. Although the restaurant's staff routinely circulated with appetizers, I had never seen the staff serve drinks before. Boris looked at me with an expression that said "So I'm trying to be extra nice. Shoot me!"

Without waiting for his wife to get a proper grip on the wine glass she had taken, the Colonel gulped his vodka and said: "You know, you really ought to lay down the law to the pea-brained morons who run this show. As far as I am concerned, today's tour program was a complete waste." As he paused for breath, and as his wife said "Oh, Alvin, dear, there's no need to upset yourself," my eyes focused on a point somewhere behind him and, giving a fair imitation of a flunky whose presence was required elsewhere, I excused myself.

"My English is not so good," said Boris, who fell in step beside me. "But is it safe to presume that the Colonel is dissatisfied with something?"

"With him, I think that's a safe presumption, no matter where he is or who he's with."

Boris grunted noncommittally and then surprised me by personally picking up a tray of drinks and moving off to serve members of the group. He stopped by the Dorseys and presented the tray of drinks with a flourish, then he moved across the room, serving more drinks along the way, and finally repeated his performance with the Posts before handing the tray to a waiter. The party was definitely under way.

A few minutes later, I heard a crash, a scream that turned into a squeal, and then the music stopped playing. A crowd formed at the other end of the room. I wiggled through the scrum of humanity and saw Mrs. Post kneeling by her husband. An ambulance was called, but even before the doctors arrived to give the Colonel oxygen and a shot of adrenaline, it was clear the old warrior was dead. The police came and conducted a formal identification of the body. They inventoried the corpse's effects, and supervised as the body was removed. Mrs. Post, some bystanders, and I were detained for questioning.

By the wee hours of the next morning, it was determined that the Colonel's drinking (and not just that night, but over the entire tour) had been strictly against the orders of his doctor back home, because of a bad heart. His drinking, age, and physical condition, combined with his combative and argumentative personality, had doubtless contributed to the tragedy. Neither Mrs. Post nor the authorities insisted on an autopsy.

By the middle of the next afternoon, the group had come around to the idea that the Colonel had left this veil of tears while having the time of his life. And that's the frame of mind in which the group left for home two days later.

Over the next couple of weeks, however, after repeatedly replaying the evening's events in my head, I came around to the idea that the Colonel had been murdered. I recall it was a Thursday evening when I stopped by the third floor restaurant to find out the truth, but Boris was not there.

"The KGB, they came," whispered Svetlana, one of the senior waitresses on the third floor, "and they took him away. Just like that. Nobody knows why. Nobody dares ask."

I knew why, just as I knew how Post had been killed. The hours I had spent at the casino—observing how people moved and noting the little differences in how they moved when something not-quite-right was going down—had eventually focused my attention on Boris and that tray of drinks. When presented to the Dorseys, the tray had remained rock-steady, as it had every time Boris had stopped to allow someone to take a drink as he moved across the room. But when he presented the tray to the Colonel, the tray did not remain motionless. As the Colonel reached for some vodka, Boris moved a particular glass of the stuff to a point in space between the Colonel's fingers.

* * *
An envelope fell out of my suitcase as I unpacked it after returning home. The envelope contained a letter, written with impeccable, old-school penmanship. This is what it said:

If you are reading this, my secret has been discovered, I have been arrested, and a trusted friend has visited your room on the eve of your departure and placed an envelope with this letter inside your suitcase.

Believe it or not, my friend, Alvin Post did not die of a heart attack. I killed him. The details of how are not important, but I would like to share with you the details of why I killed him.

You see, my father was among several tens of thousands of Soviet people who were forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union after the war. Stalin had many of these people shot without trial upon arrival in the USSR. Others were kept inside the rail cars they had traveled in from Western Europe and shipped straight on, to prison camps in Siberia.

Some of those repatriated were tricked into boarding trains that were then sealed and sent East. Others, like my father, were delivered to Soviet authorities under armed guard. The American army officer responsible for doing this to my father was Captain Alvin Post, who had pretended to be sympathetic to the plight of my father and others like him, only to betray him at the last minute.

My mother soon died of grief. Afterward, while at the state orphanage, I strove to erase my family's shame, and I became an outstanding Pioneer and member of the Komsomol. And yet, I dreamed of someday avenging my parents. I am glad that I was able to realize that dream.

Do what you will with this note, as I am sure my situation cannot worsen. This way, at least someone will know the truth.

My conscience is clear. I would do it again.

Boris

The clamorous pounding on the door—relentless yet also somehow hesitant—stopped as if sensing the approach of someone from within. The lock made a sharp noise and the door opened a crack.

"What the—?" said the young man, blinking away the hall light that shone in past the barely open door and through the fingers of his raised hand. "Do you know what time it is?"

"My apologies for the brouhaha," said the man standing on the welcome mat. He was very short, dark, and wore black Nikes, black linen trousers, a black turtleneck tee, and held a pair of black leather gloves in his right hand. He pronounced the syllables of "brouhaha" as three separate words. "My name is Mickey. You Blinky?"

"To my friends," said the young man, and tried smiling, but not hard enough. "What can I do for you that can't wait for morning?" The door opened a few inches wider.

"Well, technically, as it is 3 am, it is morning, but let us not split hairs," said the man in black. He reached into a pocket and took out a piece of paper. "We really need to talk. We're here about this bill for 'costs incurred' you sent to our client."

"I don't understand. What bill? And, uh—we?" said the young man, opening the door even wider to stick his head out to see who else was in the corridor.

"Blinky, meet my associate Vinnie," said Mickey, indicating a big guy with a sunburned face who stood with his shoulder against the wall about a yard from the door. He wore jeans and a maroon-and-yellow tank top, which set off the coiled rattlesnake tattooed on his left bicep. His arms were crossed and he wore black gloves. "Vinnie, Blinky," said Mickey after a beat. Vinnie flared his nostrils in acknowledgment.

"So now that everyone has been introduced," said Mickey, "must we conduct our business on your threshold, like common street peddlers, or can we move our conversation inside?" Whereupon, the man in black extended two fingers from around the gloves in his hand and poked the young man in chest. As the young man rocked backward a few steps, Mickey stepped forward, into the apartment, to maintain his distance. His fingers made contact again and again, until the boy and the man in black were well inside the apartment.

"Hey! C'mon, what's this all about? Leave me alone, or I'll—" said the young man.

"You won't!" said Mickey, grabbing the young man by the arm in the dark. "We must reason together in this matter." Then, back over his shoulder: "Ain't that right, Vinnie?"

Vinnie had followed his partner inside and had closed and locked the door quietly. He made a unintelligible sound that Mickey apparently understood to be an affirmative. Vinnie switched on a light. The young man stood dressed only in a pair of boxers, wincing at the sudden light and trying not to look too hard at his visitors.

"Wh-what's going on? What d-do you guys want?" said the young man.

"This your bill?" said the short man, waving the paper in the youth's face. "The one you sent to your ex?

"Y-yes," said the youth after a moment, nodding slightly.

"Well, it says here the bill's for 'costs incurred during our relationship.' Is that right?"

The youth slowly moved his head up and down.

"And you're serious about this," said Mickey, giving the paper a little shake. "The letters, the phone calls." The young man's head stopped moving and he stood mute.

"So would you agree that—what's it they say?" said Mickey, looking up at the ceiling as if for inspiration, "'what is good for the goose is good for the gander'?"

"Huh?" said the boy.

The short man shook his head in disbelief and looked back at Vinnie. "Some education the kid's got, eh, Vinnie? He dunno that one—college degree an' everything, and he don't know—ain't that something?"

Vinnie gave a little shrug.

Turning back to the kid, Mickey dropped his voice a notch and said, "You gotta figure your ex had some costs in the relationship, too, kid."

The young man said nothing, but swallowed, with some effort.

"So, naturally, you can't expect to be paid the full amount," said Vinnie, speaking to the boy for the first time. Vinnie's voice was unexpectedly deep, smooth, and refined.

The kid looked at Vinnie, then at Mickey. "S-sure," he says, "no problem. I can settle for less." A spark of hope began to glimmer in his voice.

"Well, that's too bad, because see, you can't expect to settle at all," said the short man, as he began to don his black leather gloves. "Especially, considering how your ex incurred one huge cost by hiring Vinnie and me to come here and beat you within an inch of your life."

"Hold still, now, Blinky."

It was a mild, sunny afternoon and there was a light wind blowing from my right front. I aligned the sights of my M-14 on the human-sized target standing over a quarter of a mile away, got my breathing under control, and gradually increased pressure on the trigger until the rifle fired. Almost immediately, my target dropped from sight.

I called the shot as a dead-center bull's-eye, but a few moments later, the target reappeared and a red disk was raised to its top right-hand corner. My shot had scored a "3" and a small black spotting circle sat a little above and to the left of the "head" of the torso-shaped target. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and uttered a one-syllable expletive.

"Don't dwell on it, private," said my coach, a Marine PFC who had himself only "graduated" from recruit training a few weeks before. "Clear your head. You've got plenty of time. You can still qualify as 'expert'."

It was the Friday of our platoon's second week at the rifle range at Parris Island, the day all of us had been training for during the previous two weeks: Qualification Day.

Ever since the start of boot camp, we had been taught that every Marine, no matter what his day-to-day job, was a marksman first. This had been true back in 1775, when shipboard Marines fired at enemy sailors and officers from their own rigging and tops, and it was true that Friday, almost two centuries later. On "Qual Day," each of us was expected to shoot our rifle and qualify as a marksman (or better, as a sharpshooter or expert).

Pretty much all our waking time during the first week at the rifle range had been spent alternating between the classroom and "snapping in" on the grass. The classroom instructors had introduced us to the terminology of marksmanship—concepts such as "firing line," "sight picture," and "aiming point"—as well as to the actual how of accurately firing an M-14—sight adjustment to account for target distance and wind effects, trigger control, posture, breathing, and so forth.

"Snapping in" involved learning how to hold the rifle while contorting one's body to become an Immovable Object—or as close to such an object as possible—that could fire at a target a football field or more away and consistently hit the bull's-eye. Learning the positions was easy, practicing them until they became second nature was tedious and, at times, painful.

We also worked in the protected "butts" at the target end of the range, pulling targets up and down, marking and scoring shots, and covering the resulting holes with small squares of adhesive tape in preparation for the next shot. While there, we learned the arcana of scoring. A shot that hit the line between two target "rings," for example, was scored at the higher ring value. If two shots appeared in a target before it could be pulled down—from time to time, recruits did mistakenly aim at the wrong target—the shooter was given the benefit of the doubt and awarded the higher scoring shot. A clean miss was called a "Maggie's drawers" and was signaled by waving a red flag across the target from left to right.

I had done well in the days leading up to qual day. Although I had "jerked" a few shots here and there and "chased the bull's-eye" once from 300 yards, overall, I had scored as a sharpshooter twice and once as an expert. I had also noticed an improvement in the tenor of recruit life, because there had been a perceptible change in the way our drill instructors treated us. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but the DIs were so supportive, we recruits almost felt human.

After scoring the "3" from 500 yards, I had eight shots to go and needed to shoot 36 of a possible 40 points if I wanted to qualify as an expert. Halfway to that goal, my coach was called aside by Sgt. Beadle, who took my coach's place next to me on the firing line.

"How're you doing today, private?" asked Beadle, as he checked my posture and the tightness of my sling.

"Sir, the private needs to score 17 of 20 to qualify as 'expert', sir!" By now, the end of the seventh week of boot camp, enclosing everything I said inside a matching pair of the word "sir" and referring to myself (and to the people I spoke with) in the third person had become second nature.

"Outstanding, private!" said Beadle. "I have every confidence in you. In fact, there's something I would like you to do for me. Purely voluntary."

"Sir, yes, sir!" I said, and wondered what service I could possibly perform for Beadle from the firing line.

"I will return in a few minutes and comment on your shooting position," explained the sergeant. "When that happens, I would appreciate it if you shot your next round at the target immediately to the left of your own. Preferably a bull's-eye, private. Any questions?"

"Sir, by doing so, the private will be giving up all chance of shooting 'expert', sir!" I said.

"That may be true," said Beadle, "but you'll be helping a platoon-mate qualify. The choice is up to you." The sergeant took his leave and my coach resumed his position.

Several minutes later, with two rounds left to fire (and needing to score 8 or better for the expert badge), Sgt. Beadle paused at my firing point to nudge my left leg with his boot. "Watch your posture, private," he said, and nodded to my coach as he continued on his way. I made my decision and deliberately fired at the target to the left of mine, almost in unison with the Marine to my left. When the target reappeared a few moments later, a white disk stood at its center, indicating a bull's-eye. I was happy to see the score, but disappointed at the same time. Still—qualifying as a sharpshooter was not all that bad.

Before I could settle down to fire my last round, Beadle materialized at my side. Without making a big show of it, Beadle produced one round and put it on the ground next to my marksmanship notebook. "You would appear to have two shots left, recruit," he said. "Make them count."

My spirits lifted, those last two shots I fired were both bull's-eyes. I had scored 'expert' with two points to spare. The recruit to my left had qualified, just barely, as a marksman, and quite dramatically, as it turned out. You see, two holes had appeared in his target on his last shot: a dead-center bull's-eye and a shot in the 4 ring, above the silhouette's right shoulder and perilously close to the 3 ring.

For a long time, I felt a modicum of pride in having justified my drill instructor's confidence in my shooting skill and in having helped a fellow Marine avoid the disgrace of failing to qualify as a marksman by a single point.

And then one day some time later, in a blinding afterthought, it occurred to me—maybe the shot that missed my neighbor's bull's-eye had been... mine?

Time travel is not all it's cracked up to be, at least not for amateurs.

For one thing, the process apparently conveys only what's "inside" your skin, in your body, so if you put a coin in your mouth and hold another coin in your hand, the one in your hand won't make it. At least that's my theory, based on the fact I arrived with all my dental work intact.

I'm also thinking that it's impossible to properly pronounce the words for time travel unless your mouth is completely free of obstruction, so the whole coin-in-the-mouth idea is probably moot. What is not moot are my chances—zero—of getting back to my time, since I was holding the book with the words to go back in my left hand when the lights went out and I started traveling back through time.

I regained consciousness in an alley in a sleepy village that looked relatively recent and European. I was naked—clothes, like books, don't survive time travel—and the first group of villagers who saw me didn't seem too happy, as they started yelling and gesticulating as they ran toward me. In fact, the tone of their voices—vaguely French-sounding—seemed downright hostile, and when one of them stopped to grab a pitchfork before renewing his headlong rush in my direction, I got the hint and quickly looked around for refuge. I managed to make it through the door of the village church before the pick-up vigilance committee could skewer me.

The village priest was a kind, patient fellow who saw to the wounds on my bare feet, clothed me, fed me, and accepted my story—expressed in halting high-school French—of being a foreigner set upon by criminals who had stolen every stitch of my clothing before dumping me, unconscious, where I had awakened. He told me I had been left in the village of Villefranche-sur-Hôc, and that I was welcome to stay at the church until I regained my feet. For about a week, I slept in an outbuilding on the church grounds, did odd jobs, and took stock of my situation.

And my situation was grim. I was a child of the late 20th century, adequately schooled for my time but with no skills useful in the now. I could use a keyboard, but not even typewriters had been invented yet (forget computers). I could fly a small airplane, but I couldn't build one. I could drive a car, but knew nothing of horses or carts. I was literate, but my foreign language skills were poor, and nobody in town wanted to learn English, at least not from someone who was dressed like a charity case, which is what I was.

Now was 1867 and knowing that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated two years before while attending a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater in Washington D.C. did nothing to help me put bread on the table. Moreover, the arcane knowledge I had accumulated in my pre-time-travel youth—such as a 2008 catalog value of $14,000 for a mint specimen of a pink three-cent U.S. postage stamp printed in 1861 and depicting George Washington—was of no use at all.

The only work I was apparently fit for was physical labor, and it was all I could do to keep body and soul together with my pay, which wasn't much considering my lack of skill and knowledge in just about every practical area. There were times I seriously considered stepping off the town's bridge into the rushing water below.

Then one afternoon, after a day spent digging post holes since shortly after sunup, I was walking back to my mattress in the loft above the town's stable when I happened to glance through the window of the café and saw two well-dressed young men eating, drinking, and playing chess. The owner wouldn't let a dirty, seedy-looking character like me inside, so I stood on the street and watched the men play.

They were playing for money, and although I was no master, my 20th century experience playing chess against the hustlers in Greenwich Village told me I could handily beat both of the fellows on the other side of the glass. And if they were playing for money, well—an idea started to form dimly in my mind.

As the pair climbed into their carriage to resume their journey, I caught enough of their conversation to understand they were headed to Paris, where a great tournament was to be played at the Café de la Régence.

The light came completely on inside my head and the despair that I had felt since awakening in this 19th century world suddenly vanished.

Two months later, after having sacrificed the three gold caps on my molars for a new suit of clothes and passage to Paris, I walked into the Café de la Régence, and sat down to play a few, uh, friendly games for moderate stakes. A few hours later, I walked out with enough cash to get by comfortably for at least a month.

In the years since that day, I haven't forgotten my future self. I've put together quite a collection of classic French postage stamps, which I've bought at face value in between visits to the Café. Conservatively speaking, the collection will be worth about six million dollars by the time I buy the miserable book of incantations that brought me here. Maybe, if my future self comes into possession of this collection, I won't ever run across that book!

So all I have to figure out now is this: How do I send something to myself a century hence?