Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

Author:Robert J. Sawyer
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction - Science Fiction, Magic, High Tech, Science fiction, Higgs bosons, Juvenile Fiction, Space Opera, General, Fantasy, Science Fiction - General, Adventure, Fiction, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Time travel
ISBN: 9780765324139
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-08-02T20:00:00+00:00

17

"Hello?" A pleasant female voice.

"Ah, hello, is that—is that Dr. Tompkins?"

"Speaking."

"Ah, hi. This is—this is Jake Horowitz. You know, from CERN?"

Jake didn’t know what he’d expected to hear over the phone. Affection? Relief that he’d made the first contact? Surprise? But none of those emotions were conveyed by Carly’s voice. "Yes?" she said, her tone even. That was all; just "yes."

Jacob felt his heart sinking. Maybe he should just hang up, get the hell off the phone. It wouldn’t hurt anything; if Lloyd was right, they were bound to be together eventually. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that.

"I—I’m sorry to bother you," he stammered. He’d never been good at phoning women. And, indeed, he hadn’t phoned one—not like this—since high school, since that time he’d worked up enough courage to call Julie Cohan and ask her for a date. It had taken him days to prepare, and he still remembered how his finger was shaking as he stabbed out her number on the phone in his parents’ basement. He could hear his older brother walking around upstairs, the wooden floor creaking with each of his ponderous footsteps, an Ahab on deck. He’d been terrified that David would try to come down while he was on the phone.

Julie’s father had answered the phone, and then had called out to her to pick up on an extension—he hadn’t covered the mouthpiece, and he spoke to her roughly. Nothing like the way he’d have treated Julie. And then she picked up the phone, and her father had let the handset tumble back onto the cradle, and she said, in that wonderful voice of hers, "Hello?"

"Ah, hello, Julie. This is Jake—you know, Jake Horowitz." Silence, nothing. "From your American History class."

A tone of perplexity, as if he’d just asked her to calculate the last digit of pi. "Yes?"

"I was wondering," he’d said, trying to sound nonchalant, trying to sound as if his whole life didn’t depend on this, trying to sound as though his heart weren’t about to burst, "I was wondering if you—if you’d like, you know, to go out with me, maybe Saturday . . . if you’re free that is." More silence; he remembered when he was a kid the phone lines used to crackle with faint static. He missed that now.

"Maybe a movie," he’d said, filling the void.

Heartbeats more, and then: "What makes you think I’d possibly want to go out with you?"

He’d felt his vision blur, felt his stomach churn, felt the wind being kicked out of him. He couldn’t remember what he’d said after that, but somehow he’d gotten off the phone, somehow he’d kept from crying, somehow he’d just sat there in the basement, listening to his older brother pacing above.

That was the last time he’d called a woman and asked for a date. Oh, he wasn’t a virgin—of course not, of course not. Fifty dollars rectified that particular handicap one night in New York City. He’d felt terrible after that, cheap and unclean, but

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