Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 52 - A Long Detour

Photo by Aman Shrestha on Unsplash

With a bevel-edged dark gray metallic base, four aluminum cooling fins on one side, and a gold-colored ring with a thick hose running out of it on the other, a magnetron from inside a typical early-model kitchen microwave could easily be a prop from a B-grade 1950’s sci-fi flick.  

Inside a microwave, each magnetron contains two powerful magnets, at least two inches in diameter, made of either ceramic, alnico, or neodymium.

“What we want are neodymium magnets,” Becca instructed as she extracted the magnets from the microwave in that first house they’d broken into.  In place of proper respirators, Becca and Gordon wrapped damp rags over their mouths as they extracted the two magnets from the magnetron.

“Beryllium oxide,” Becca had warned.  “A boy I went to college with inhaled this stuff while doing exactly what we’re doing.”

“What happened?” Gordon asked.

“He developed berylliosis.  Nasty lung infection.  Incurable.”

Gordon tightened the rag covering his face. 

They moved systematically from house to house, finding more success in going through windows instead of large glass doors.

They hadn’t seen Charlie since he unexpectedly left their expedition several hours earlier.

“Garbage,” Becca said as she extracted another magnet.

“Why?” 

“The ceramic and alnico ones will work in a pinch, but not necessarily for what we want to do.”

“Which kind is that?”

Becca raised the magnet to the light streaming in through the kitchen window.

“Alnico,” she said.  “A nice one, too, but not what we want.  How many have we disassembled now?”

Gordon paused and thought.  “Eight.”

“And only two neodymium magnets so far.”

Becca dropped the screwdriver back into the small red toolbox and sat at the table, flopping down in exhaustion.  She crossed her arms across her chest.  

“I don’t think this will work,” she said.

Gordon reached into the toolbox and pulled out the two lone neodymium magnets they’d found and extracted from the microwaves they’d already dismantled. 

“Well, I still don’t follow how something as small as these could impact something as big as those black hole things,” Gordon said.  “Even if we created one of those electromagnets you were talking about.”

“I hoped we’d have a lot more by now,” Becca said.  “With the houses on this street alone, I thought we’d easily find a hundred, perhaps.”

Gordon looked at the two in his hand.

“We’ve got a ways to go then,” he said.

“At the rate we’re going, it would take us weeks to go through enough houses.  And even then, with one-in-eight odds of finding the right material, our chances for success look pretty slim.”

“So what do we do?”

“I’m not looking forward to another confrontation with Charlie at the moment,” Becca said.

“I don’t think he’s the type to hold a grudge too long.”

“I wouldn’t blame him, though,” Becca said. “He’s back from the dead like the others, it seems.  He has a chance to relive his life on his terms.  Maybe fix things he didn’t do right the first time around.  Erase some regrets.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Gordon said. He pulled the magnets apart and let them snap back together forcefully with a loud clack.  

“Careful with those,” Becca said.  “Get your finger between them, and you could sever it right off.”

Gordon slipped the magnets into his pocket. 

“I think there will always be regrets,” Gordon said.  “There will always be things we wished we’d said and things we wish we hadn’t said, too, for that matter.  Always things we wished we’d done or hadn’t done.”

“I wish I hadn’t come to Key West.”

“Then leave,” Gordon said.

Becca looked up in surprise.

“What?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve realized these last couple weeks,” Gordon said, “is that waiting doesn’t fix bad situations.  Waiting usually brings more regret because you missed something potentially good.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Becca said. 

“The key to living with regret is to quit doing things you’ll regret,” Gordon said.

“Is that so?”  

“Listen, you felt you needed to be here.  Why? Because you saw reports on television or something that everyone was leaving Key West because of those things floating over the water.  You knew something about those things, so you made your way here.  Don’t regret that.  You did something.  It’s not panning out, but so what?  Things don’t pan out all the time. You thought those things were only here, but we heard on the radio this morning that those black hole things are everywhere.”

“Even in Chicago,” Becca said.  

“If things don’t pan out, don’t let yourself stay stuck,” Gordon continued.  “You’re not a prisoner.  If you’re going to regret having tried something that didn’t pan out, then why try anything at all?  Why not just sit in place and not move until you die? Regret comes from not doing something.”

“Is that what brought you here?”

“Absolutely,” Gordon said.  “When all of this happened?  The time shift?  When I came to, I thought I was dead.  Everything was like looking through a hazy cloud.  Fog-headed.  You know where I was?”

“I was in the bathroom at work,” Becca volunteered.  “Sitting on the toilet, staring at a report on dipole vectors.” 

Gordon blurted out a roaring laugh deep from the gut, his reaction surprising himself as much as Becca.

“No,” Gordon said and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his t-shirt. “Can’t say I was on the toilet taking a crap.”

Becca smiled widely and allowed herself to laugh, as well.  

“I didn’t say it was number two,” Becca said, and Gordon laughed again.

“That’s too funny,” Gordon said.  

“So, where were you?” Becca asked him.  

“At my wife’s funeral.”

“Oh,” Becca said.

“I came to exactly where I’d been forty years prior.  I was preparing to bury my wife for a second time.”

“I’m so sorry,” Becca said.  Her chest tightened once again with guilt.

“I was sitting there next to Delores, my mother-in-law.  I’d bury her a few years later.  I guess I’ll have to bury her again.  She encouraged me to come down here, though.  Didn’t want me to waste my life again.”

“No regrets,” Becca said.

“Exactly.  I saw my wife’s old college roommate who’d been in our wedding.  Didn’t even recognize her.  Went back to my house and found deviled eggs in the fridge. Appetizers for the wake.  Everything exactly the same.”

“What did you do?”

“Just a few days before all this happened, I got fired from a terrible job for something I hadn’t even done.  I’d worked there for over thirty years, doing the same thing every day because I didn’t think to do something different.  Things don’t pan out?  My life didn’t pan out.  But that was on me.”

Becca looked down at her hands resting on the table.  Nodded.  

“That was just a job,” Gordon said.  “That was meaningless.”

“Do you wish you could have seen your wife again?” Becca asked and then immediately shook her head.  “Of course you do.  What a stupid question.  I’m sorry.”

“No,” Gordon said.

Becca looked at him with wide eyes.  

“I don’t wish I could see her again,” Gordon said. “Because she was sick, and she would have died again, and I would never want her to endure what she had already endured.  I would never wish that upon her just so I could see her again.”

“You were a good husband.”

“I appreciate that,” Gordon said.  “I may have been a good husband, but I made a terrible decision and stayed wallowed up in my status quo after she died.   That’s what I regret.  After losing Marie, I acted like I was the one who died.  Like I wasn’t allowed to go on living after she’d passed.”

“Marie,” Becca said, momentarily letting the name rest in the air.

“Marie wouldn’t have asked me to live like that,” Gordon said.  “I didn’t like seeing her die, of course, but I lived the rest of my life refusing to let go of that grief.  If she could have lived instead of getting sick, and if I could have spent the last forty years with Marie, well, that’s what I would have gladly done.  

“Of course.”

“And I tell you one thing I don’t regret,” Gordon said.  “I don’t regret being with her as she died. But I regret staying in a place where I may as well have been dead, too.”

The kitchen fell into an uncomfortable silence.  A breeze sifted through the open sliding glass door leading to the back patio, and the refrigerator buzzed. 

“So leave if you need to,” Gordon said.  “Personally, I don’t think this is where you’re supposed to be.”

Becca looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

“Some things don’t pan out,” Gordon said, “like coming to Key West for a microwave magnet scavenger hunt.”

Becca let out a gentle laugh.  

“Don’t stay somewhere you don’t need to be,” Gordon said.  “That’s what you’ll wind up regretting.”

Photo by Frank Eiffert on Unsplash