Fjords Reviews

November 09, 2023

Short Story by David Hutto

People From the Future

People from the future are following me. Or I should be more accurate, as accuracy is a praiseworthy virtue. I do not believe these temporal voyeurs are stalking me, but rather, I will no doubt some day do something to become famous, or to change history. Naturally, once time travel becomes possible, they will want to see me in my early days. At the moment, changing history does not look like the most probable line that I will need to insert on my resume, but who knows? At the moment, I work for Penn State University, in one of the agricultural research labs. My job is an enviable one, to study beetles in all their sublime genetic glory. My good fortune for now is to ascertain which beetles, among those that diminish productive yield of soybeans, have wings that are smaller than normal. Most of the time, however, the wings are normal. Everything is normal around here. Anyhow, people from the future are following me, and I don’t want to give myself too much credit, but I’ve managed to hide my awareness of their futureness. They don’t know that I know. When I walk by a table in a restaurant, to take one example, I’ll see them staring at me as I walk by. I have invoked my skills as a scientist, noting what they look like and whether I see any common features. So far I’m pretty sure they don’t like yellow.

I wonder sometimes if people in the future will be more like me or more like everyone else. Maybe the reason they come back from the future to look at me is because I’m rational like them. That is not the first aspect of most human behavior that strikes one’s attention. I think I am so rational because I am a scientist, in my work with agriculturally significant insects, specifically beetles. I am very rational about beetles. Do you know that there are more species of beetle than any other type of insect? Or that they are in the order Coleoptera, a name invented by Aristotle? But I do not want to overwhelm you with my rationality.

Because people from the future are observing me, I have begun to think more about what is yet to occur, not so much what I will do next week when daylight savings time changes, but what life will be like 200 years from now. I believe that in the future people will be rational about the way they dress, so there will be no neckties or baseball caps, for instance. And it looks like they will not wear beards. As evidence, none of the people who observe me has ever had a beard, though my scientific side says that this could also be a coincidence, that maybe I have just encountered beardless followers. Nevertheless, rational deduction allows us to note that beards are hot and dirty and symbols of the past, so it stands to reason that beards will not be part of the future. My downstairs neighbor on Nittany Street wears a long bushy beard, making it clear he is not from the future. I am not so sure he is from the past either, because he seems to be here in the present a great deal. He is always sitting on the front porch in good weather, and even when it is not good weather. It could be cold out, or raining, and on one memorable frenetic occasion I came home to a sky filled with glorious flashes of potential death, and there he sat, right in the present.

His name is Wardell, and I wonder whether that is a first name or a last name. I overheard the Mormons who come talk to him call him Mr. Wardell, indicative of family name, and he replied, “Yeah, what you up for?” At a later date, Lizzy from next door shortened the name into a possibly endearing diminutive as Ward, which, I believe would be a first name. Again, Wardell responded affirmatively, with “Yeah, how’s the dingle dangle?” Whatever the positionality of his name, Wardell is frequently present on the front porch, stroking that long beard, with a cigarette between his lips, staring out at the street with an expression implying either profundity or the early stages of a coma, while dropping cigarette butts in an empty bottle. Judging from the plethora of beard gracing the physiognomy of Wardell, perhaps you have acquired the impression he is an old man. It is true that here in central Pennsylvania we have our share of long-bearded old men. Characters come out of the hills and valleys who make you think “possum hunting” or “moonshine still”, but Wardell is only in his late twenties. When you see Wardell what you think is “unemployed philosophy major” or “poet who doesn’t yet realize he’s unemployed”. This is misleading, however, as Wardell is employed as a cook in a pizza restaurant.

My nextdoor neighbor, Oakwood, who is just ten years old, already assigns Wardell to a category lacking some necessary attributes.

“I don’t want to cast aspersions,” Oakwood says.

“How do you know that word?” I ask.

He ignores me and continues. “But I think he’ll commit a crime and be hung.” I had told Oakwood earlier in the year that his speech was not evocative of a 10-year-old. He said, “How do you know? You’re not 10. Maybe you labor under a misconception.”

“And what kind of crime do you think Wardell is going to commit?” I ask on the occasion when we contemplate Wardell’s prospects.

“Human trafficking maybe.”

“You have a suspicious nature, Oakwood,” I say.

“No, I don’t. If I had a suspicious nature, I’d suspect you. It’s not like I wouldn’t have reason.”

“You are a smart boy,” I tell him. “And I like you as well as anyone could. But you are not the precious child you could be.” Oakwood is drinking from a bottle of chocolate milk, to which he seems to have a strong attachment.

“I’m trying to hide my basic nature,” he says. He turns up the bottle and finishes off his elixir of cocoa. “Precious children get snatched by human traffickers.”

“They would still take you,” I say. “They would just train you to be a small assassin.”

Oakwood’s little eyes light up. “Could I use a dagger? Maybe I should go talk to Wardell.”

“The only thing you are going to get from Wardell is lessons on making pizza dough.”

As I mentioned, young Oakwood only left the womb a mere ten years ago, so he is still a blithe spirit of youthful enthusiasm, with much to learn in addition to making pizza dough. I would be willing, for instance, to teach him the benefits of agriculturally useful beetles, such as Onthophagus gazella, one of the more interesting dung beetles. Oakwood oddly shows little interest in beetles, but still, his whole life is ahead, most of it in the future.

I see one of the people from the future one day when I am swimming at Whipple Dam State Park. It is a warm September, a Saturday afternoon, so it is a locale in much demand. I swim a few laps back and forth around the shrieking children in the roped off area, then I go up to the concession stand for an ice cream sandwich, which I regard as one of the higher attainments in the lacto-cereal category of frozen snacks. As I am walking across the tiny beach, I notice a woman lying on a towel staring at me. Ah hah, I think.

When I have my ice cream bar in hand, I decide it is time for a mostly honest conversation. I walk back onto the beach, then I stop by the woman’s towel and kneel down. “I know why you’re here,” I say and smile at her.

“Do you?” she asks. She looks at me a bit lazily, with an unflattering indifference, pretending she does not know who I am. “Are you part of Susan’s wedding, too?”

A cover story, I think. Oh, you rational people of the future! You’ve thought of everything. “Yep,” I reply, playing along. “I am.” She smiles back at me, a funny little smile that does not entirely indicate humor.

“Then I guess we’ll see each other there,” she says.

“Yes,” I say, “I guess we will.”

Having confronted my time-traveling observer, I begin to think I might engage in this bold directness each time I see one of them. They have, after all, endured temporal displacement just to observe me in real life, whatever their reason might be, so maybe they would even like a chance to talk. Probably they would, I decide. The next opportunity occurrs when I am riding my bike to work on campus. I glide gracefully down Pollock Road when I pass a beardless man, immobile, watching me ride by. It takes a couple of seconds before I register who he is. I turn around and ride back. I come up to him and say, “How’s the weather where you come from? Does it still rain?” Then I feel foolish. Of course it must still rain in the future.

Analogous to the woman at the lake, the man looks at me as though he has no idea what I’m talking about. “Not much this time of year,” he says.

“It has been drier than usual here this year,” I say.

“It does seem kind of dry,” he replies.

“Not as many insects,” I say.

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty later on,” he tells me.

“Ahhh,” I say, “in the future,” and I wink at him. Then I wheel my bicycle around and head on to work.

When I get home that evening, Wardell is taking seriously his mission to pollute the porch air, and nicotinic clouds surround his brow like storm clouds encircling Zeus. “How’s it hanging?” he asks when he sees me.

“That question is a little intimate for our current relationship,” I say. “Perhaps if I get to know you better. But I have a question for you.”

“Put it out here in public,” Wardell says and nods at me.

“I heard a rumor.”

“Those can be true,” he says.

“That you are running for borough council.”

“Citizen, that’s not a rumor. I am.” He nods and looks satisfied with his level of participation in democracy. “Thought it was time I contributed.”

“And what is your platform?” I ask.

“I don’t really have a platform so much as the lumber to build one.”

Did this odd metaphorical mix indicate an unexpected cleverness on the part of Wardell or an incapacity for clear language? “But what do you want to do in town?” I ask.

“Well sir.” Wardell stops and thinks for a bit. “I think I’d start by changing the name of the town. State College is a stupid name for a town.”

“Then you can count on my support,” I tell him. “You are the first person I have heard willing to step up and address this strangely flawed nomenclature.”

“Be sure to vote on election day,” Wardell says. He reaches down and drops the cigarette butt he’s holding into the bottle beside him, where it descends into a quick hiss of extinction.

The next time I talk with Oakwood I happen to mention this stimulating development in local politics.

“I don’t believe I could support his candidacy,” Oakwood comments.

“You are ten years old,” I say. “You cannot vote.”

“But I could pay someone to vote for me. I even know who.”

“You are vaguely insidious, Oakwood.”

“We’re talking about politics,” he replies. “That’s a positive quality.”

“Why don’t you focus on something normal boys like?” I ask. “Like insects. Do you know there are more types of beetle than any other type of insect?”

“Isn’t a cockroad a beetle? You know how disgusting they are?”

“A cockroach is not a beetle,” I say. “That is a common misconception that denigrates the beetles by association.”

“No, I think a cockroach is a beetle. And they’re disgusting.”

There are types of ignorance that would require a full hurricane of enlightenment to blow away the incomprehension. Oakwood, normally a clever boy, insists on confusing a cockroach with a beetle. How can I correct an error so existentially wrong?

I am contemplating the beauty of a beetle’s body architecture the next day as I walk across campus to lunch. It is a lovely fall day, and I decide I will walk downtown to treat myself to a burrito, a culinary invention of some popularity in my family. As I stroll, I ponder the sublimity of design of the elytra that cover beetle wings. Wafting along in contemplation, I almost do not notice the middle-aged woman sitting on a wall on College Avenue. She is staring very hard at me.

Following my new policy of engagement, I walk up to her. “Making notes?” I ask her.

“I don’t need to make notes,” she replies. “I’ve got it all memorized.”

“Yeah?” I say, adopting a popular friendly colloquialsim of affirmation. “You learned how we do things back here?”

“Of course,” she says. “We were well trained.” She stops and watches a leaf float down. “And I learned about you.”

“Then tell me what it is that makes me famous in the future,” I say.

“You’re not famous,” she answers. “No one’s ever heard of you.”

How am I to use this disturbing news? My quest for immortality is not going to work.

“Then why are you here?” I ask. “Why are people from the future coming back to look at me?”

“You’ve got a healthy ego, don’t you? We’re not coming to look at you. Oakwood sent us.”

“What!? Oakwood?”

“He said he was your neighbor.”

“He is my neighbor, but he is a 10-year-old child. Granted, he is a precociously disturbing 10-year-old child.”

“He doesn’t stay a child,” she says, and she looks at me in a way that I think is derogatory regarding my intellectual attainments. “Ninety-four years from now he’ll be 104 years old. He sent us back to talk to you.”

A thought occurrs to me and I make use of it. “Aren’t you worried,” I ask, “ that I’ll go tell him about this, that you’re here claiming he sent you?”

“No. We considered that. If you tell him you’ll look crazy.”

I cannot locate an error in her logic, as I pride myself on not being crazy. “Why would Oakwood send you back in time?”

“He wants you to stop another one of your neighbors, a man named Wardell.”

Oh, here is Oakwood and Wardell again. “Stop him from doing what?” I ask.

“He’s about to run for borough council.”

“Well my God!” I exclaim. “It’s one thing to not vote for someone when you cannot legally vote anyway. But to send a group of people almost 100 years back in time to stop the man. Other than the beard, what does Oakwood have against Wardell?”

“A position on the borough council was the beginning of Wardell’s political career,” she says. “After several years he ran for mayor and won.”

Time travel has its problems, one of which is choice of verb tenses. She is describing Wardell’s activities in the past tense, when none of it has happened yet, and it all sounds, in any case, like questionable probabilities at best.

“Let us suppose you are right,” I say.

“You don’t need to suppose. It’s in the history books.”

“Which I have not seen,” I reply with a slight sensation of aggravation at her temporal know-it-all attitude. “Let us suppose you are right, and some day Wardell becomes mayor of State College. Other than vacuous leadership, why is that a problem? Why does Oakwood think this requires a time-travel mission?”

She sighs, which I think is an excessive vocal addition. “It’s not just Oakwood who thinks so. We all think it’s worth it. Oakwood is the one who invented the time machine. It was also his idea that you could do something about Wardell. He said you’re friends.”

“Oakwood has misrepresented—”

“You just referred to the town as State College,” she continues, not allowing me to complete my statement. “That’s not the name we know. Wardell was able to change it after he became mayor.” She sighs again.

“And what is the future name?”

“Pennstateville.”

The hair on the back of my neck stands up. “Oh my God!” I say. “Why would he do that?”

“There’s a theory that he was paid off with football tickets.”

“But he has no interest in the games,” I say. “In any case,” I say, “I do not believe it is proper for me to interfere with the democratic process.”

“ Oh seriously.” The woman rolls her eyes. “Everyone interferes with the democratic process. You’d be doing the entire town a favor. We’ve had 75 years of ridicule because of our stupid name.”

“Change the name back.”

“Several people died trying to. The university is too powerful.”

“I am sorry,” I tell her. “I sympathize, but I think Wardell should have the right to run for borough council.”

“The future could use your help,” she says.

“The future has done nothing for me,” I answer. “I have beetles to think about.” I turn and head on toward my burrito lunch, which by now has become a more pertinent biological requirement.

When I get home that evening, Wardell has put up a campaign sign in the front yard, black letters on a yellow background: Vote Wardell And All Is Well. I hope he is not paying hard-earned pizza-making money for someone to think up his campaign slogans.

That evening Oakwood comes over and points at the campaign sign. “Did you notice it rhymes?” he says, pointing at Wardell’s sign. He is holding a bottle of chocolate milk.

“Of course I notice it rhymes,” I say. “Are you assuming I do not understand the basic sounds of the English alphabet?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Aren’t you a biologist?” He finishes his chocolate milk. “It’s not a good rhyme, though.”

In the next two weeks, several times I am approached by people from the future, coming back to beg me to intervene in Wardell’s campaign. One of them is a young woman, maybe a future graduate student, who stops me just outside my house. “Ugh,” she says, looking at Wardell’s campaign slogan. “Look how yellow that sign is. How can you not oppose him just because of that?”

Another time it is a young man, who begins talking to me about the negative social effects arising from lack of civic pride, about the psychological damage from poorly conceived naming schemes, and about how tea is better for you than coffee (I think that last one was just his personal whim).

Spurred just slightly by these conversations, I decide to at least investigate a bit. Casually I broach a bit of football repartee with Wardell, to see how he reacts. “There’ll be some pigskin flying this weekend,” I say. “Buddy.”

“Lot of folks like that stuff,” Wardell says, but then grows distracted by a black carpet beetle, Attagenus unicolor. He, Wardell, that is, does not exhibit a high degree of interest in our conversational topic. His expression is more vapid than pleased. I remain committed to my policy of inactivity.

A moment of great import, however, arrives on a Thursday afternoon. The futurians are growing more bold, and a man comes to my office this time. “We’ve been talking to Oakwood,” he says. “He thought you might like to know about the political career of Wardell.”

“Oakwood might be wrong.”

“We think this may be of interest to you.”

“Actually, I have lost a good bit of interest since this started,” I say. “I am thinking of not voting.”

The man from the future ignores my declaration of bad citizenship and says, “After Wardell has been mayor for twenty years, he will be appointed Secretary of Agriculture by the governor.”

“Wardell?” I say. “Wardell as Secretary of Agriculture?” This sounds impossible based on everything I understand about human existence.

“To what extent does your culture value the truth?” I ask.

Again he ignores me. “What may particularly interest you,” he says, “is that while he is serving as Secretary of Agriculture, Wardell will institute policies that cause seven species of beetle to become extinct.”

I stare at the man dumbfounded.

“This is a very serious matter,” I say.

“Indeed,” he says. “Especially for the beetles.”

“And which species?” I ask.

“The first one to go extinct was Cicindela sexguttata.”

“Oh no,” I say, “oh no.” I stand and walk to a poster on the wall showing some of the beetles of Pennsylvania. “This is Cicindela sexguttata,” I say.

“I’ve never seen one,” he tells me.

I reach out and gently touch the poster of the pretty green shell, then turn back to the man sitting in my office. I say, “Tell Oakwood I will do what I can to stop Wardell.”

I consider whether I might try to simply talk Wardell out of running, but that seems unlikely. He does not have much else to do, and running for office might be his new hobby. I also wonder whether, given his obvious lack of qualification, I might keep him from getting elected by helping increase his exposure to the voters. Then I consider that winning or losing an election is not related to qualification. In the end, I just start pulling up his signs at night.

If you are a devotee of paradox, it will come as no surprise that of course Wardell wins, in spite of my vandalistic endeavors. You cannot change the past, although I somewhat resent the idea that I live in the past. So Wardell becomes a member of the borough council, where he seems to have no effect on anything.

I wonder whether the people from the future could be mistaken, or have mislead me for some reason. Nevertheless, as a precautionary measure, I become much friendlier with Wardell. Gradually, I will teach him about beetles, about how interesting and useful they are. I also give him a framed photograph of Cicindela sexguttata, because who could resist that lovely viridescence?

The next time I see Oakwood, I ask what he thinks of Wardell’s electoral victory.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It kind of bugs me.”