Jack Yakowicz
Pd. 2
A Century Ago
“Game point, ladies!” It was a hot, July day at the beach on Lake Marion. I lightly tossed the multi-colored Wilson ball in my right palm. I switched the ball into my left hand, threw it up in the air, and swung my right arm towards it. The ball spun around in the wind like a globe. It made it over the seven foot net, and dropped on the sweltering sand, making a divot right next to David’s outstretched arm.
“He does it again! Jake White, folks!” Kyle came over and tackled me into the sand. That was our third straight win, and we were each now fifteen dollars richer. Kyle, David, Luke, and I headed down to the water, laughing about Luke’s girly serve, and David’s pulled groin.
“Was Lauren going a little too hard on you last night, bro?” David shook his hand, trying not to grin.
It was the summer after our sophomore year of college, but the four of us were still as close as ever. We had been coming to Lake Marion and playing volleyball ever since freshman year in high school, and five years later we were still sticking to the tradition. I carried my drawstring bag on my back, which had my iPod and cell phone in it, as well as a water bottle filled with Karkov. I didn’t hear my cell phone buzzing as I walked back from the water to my car, but once I got in the Jeep and opened up my bag I saw three missed calls from Professor Green. What the hell could he want? I hadn’t talked to my physics professor since May, when I left campus for the summer. I kept driving, debating whether or not I should call him back. Professor Green was the first staff member I got to know on campus at Lyndale University, in Iowa. It was about three hours away from my hometown of Apple Valley, where I was currently spending the summer with my mom and dad. I looked at my phone again, and noticed a voice-mail that Green left me.
“You have… one new message, from Professor Green at 3:07 on July 12th, 2011.” I was convinced that I had the most annoying automated message system out of all my friends. I guess that’s the cost of cheap parents buying me a Virgin Mobile phone. The message continued…
“Hey, Jake. This is Professor Green from Lyndale. I have an urgent request for you, and I don’t mean to interrupt your summer day, but if you could call me back as soon as you get this it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.” The message ended, and inevitably so would my summer.
Our ensuing conversation on the phone would be very brief. Green told me about him needing to do a research project to show to the Lyndale Board of Education to keep his job. It was supposed to be a three week project, and he needed a student volunteer to help him with it. For some reason, he wanted me. I wasn’t a terrible student, but the average GPA for kids attending Lyndale was about a 3.85. I had a 3.7. By any other school’s standard, I would be doing phenomenal. By Lyndale’s standard, I was below average. He wanted me to come down on July 16th, which left me with three and a half more days in Apple Valley. Those three and a half days zoomed by.
I was back on I-94 traveling south. The windows were rolled down in the Jeep, and I was listening to “Below the Heavens” by Blu and Exile. It was 2 o’clock on a sunny Monday afternoon, and I was about an hour and a half away from campus. When I hugged my mom goodbye, I assumed it was more of a “see you soon.” I didn’t know it’d be the last time I’d ever hug her.
I pulled into the student parking lot, alongside the intramural fields at Lyndale. I reminisced on winning the Intramural Flag Football championship game last fall, and the post-party at Graham’s apartment. I walked down the sidewalk towards the “Matthew Morris Building of Science,” and saw the crack in the sidewalk that still held a tint of red discoloration. I thought back on the fight freshman year. Joe Hughes approached me on the sidewalk and started pushing me. He was yelling about how Cassie was his first. He swung at my head, but I avoided it. I took his arm, and twisted it around until he was facing the opposite direction. I grabbed the back of his head and threw him towards the pavement. The blood from his mouth was still visible.
I walked into the door of the Morris Building, and Professor Green was waiting for me. “Jake! It’s great to see you, bud.” We walked down the corridor towards his room, which stood adjacent to the water fountain on the west end of the building. He took his key off of the lanyard in his pocket, introduced it to the lock, and the oak door swung open. There were five rows of seats in the back of the classroom, and various posters with cliché science aphorisms hung up around the room. A large glass box stood next to Green’s desk, and on his counter were a vast array of chemicals and beakers.
“What’s with the box, Green?” I asked suspiciously.
“Well… That’s what I need you for.”
Green’s plan was much more elaborate then he made it seem. He told me he was constructing a cryogenic gas that will disperse into the glass box. I would step into the glass box, breathe in the cryogenic gas as though it was oxygen, and I would pass out. When I woke up, it would be two weeks later. The study was merely designed to prove the existence of time traveling potential. He said there was no way I would be injured, or psychologically harmed from this experiment. I was still on the edge, until he told me the incentive: my senior year at Lyndale would be entirely paid for. I was in. He told me the materials would be ready for use the next day, and I was to return to campus around 9 AM.
That night I got a hotel room at the Ramada which was just a couple minutes north of campus. I debated calling my mom and telling her that I was going to be the lab rat for Green’s experiment, but I knew she would be too nervous about it and not allow me to participate. She wouldn’t even let me play football when I was younger because she didn’t want me to get hurt. I decided not to tell her. Well, not until after the two weeks and she learned that my fourth year of college was being covered. Back at the Morris Building, Professor Green was still finishing his product. His lab table was split between materials for the cryogenic gas, and materials for the experiment he was teaching at Science Camp next week. The experiment at Science Camp consisted of the freezing of rocks, and proved how microscopic organisms were still able to survive under the frozen conditions. Green was about to make the biggest mistake in his long career at Lyndale University. His unlabeled beaker of liquid nitrogen had the same clear blue tone as the neon used in the cryogenic gas (also unlabeled). Green mistakenly poured the liquid nitrogen from the Science Camp experiment into the beaker of cryogenic gas which would be used on me the next day. Trouble loomed.
My alarm clock went off at 8 AM the next morning. I went downstairs and got the all-inclusive breakfast from the Ramada kitchen, and then went back up to my room and showered. I was back in my Jeep by 8:45, and was on campus five minutes later. I parked my car, and headed towards the Morris Building where I was met by Green, who stood outside the door. He had a very excited look on his face, which made me chuckle. He was notorious on campus for his nerdy mannerisms, but that’s why everybody loved him. We headed back to his room, as I took the final sips of my Dr. Pepper. I set the near-empty can on his desk, and headed into the glass box. The last thing I remember is Green telling me to breathe just like I always do, but to shut my eyes and imagine I was back on the beach by my house.
When I woke up, something was different. My eyelids were very heavy, and I had to work to even open one of them. My arms were down by my side, and I couldn’t raise them. As my eyes finally woke up, I realized why I couldn’t move my arms. I was frozen from my chest down to my toes. A warm vapor was being sprayed at the ice block that held me. Shattered glass was all around me, and the steel frames that used to hold my glass box were corroded by rust. A strange foreign man was spraying me with the vapor. A class of young children was seated in the rows of chairs in the back of the class. Naturally, I started yelling. After five minutes, my body was dislodged from the block of ice, and I ran towards the man who was spraying the vapor. I grabbed him by the neck and threw him against the wall, as the class of young students started yelling.
“Where the hell am I?!” I shouted at the small man. His nametag said Professor Nariv.
“If you let me go, I will tell you everything,” said Nariv in a strange voice. I later wished he wouldn’t have told me any of it. I wished he would have just kept me frozen in that block of ice until I was dead, or that the vapor he sprayed at me was really pesticide that could have ended my existence on Earth.
The year was 2111. It had been 100 years since I stepped into that glass box in Professor Green’s room. Green, my family, and all of my friends were dead. Mohammed Nariv took over as head of the science department at Lyndale 60 years ago. Green was replaced in 2012, the year after the failed experiment with me. His replacement, Professor Horner, was replaced by Nariv after Horner failed to develop the vapor necessary to unfreeze my suspended body. It took Nariv all of his 60 years to successfully discover the recipe that could unfreeze the cryogenic-nitrogen. As Nariv was developing the vapor, a lot had changed in the outside world.
Inter-galactic space travel was finally available for non-astronauts. In 2020, the first citizen spaceship took off towards the moon. Fifteen years later, the solar system was cluttered with man-made planets that hosted extravagant resorts and museums. In 2062, Theodore Hilton (the son of Paris Hilton, and heir to the Hilton Hotel Franchise) bought out the entire chain of man-made planets and named it the Hitonius Strip. As years passed, the population of the Hiltonius Strip grew, and moved from a vacation getaway to a residential land filled with dream homes. It was a multi-cultural cluster of planets, filled with some of the wealthiest of Americans, Russians, Germans, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Canadian, and Brazilian men and women. Mass intercourse occurred on these planets to stretch the population of the Hiltonius Strip from 5,000 citizens in 2075, to 5 billion citizens in 2100. As the population of the Hiltonius Strip increased, the population on Earth rapidly decreased. Since virtually all of the wealthy individuals abandoned Earth, the remaining inhabitants were mainly poor individuals who couldn’t afford to have children. The birth rate diminished on Earth, but the crime and death rates were rising exponentially. By 2105 the Hiltonius Strip, out of arrogance, declared war against Earth.
I had woken from a 100 year sleep, and was now being called upon by Nariv and his classroom of children to take over as General of the Earth Army. They had selected me because I was the last remaining artifact of the 20th century, and the last remaining artifact of the upper class on Earth. The cryogenic-nitrogen preserved my body in the same shape that it was left in 100 years ago. I was a 120 year old man, with a 20 year old man’s body. Nariv looked at me with a blank stare. I asked him to repeat the question.
“Will you lead us or not?” he asked.
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