Future Threat

18

He looks like he wants to say something, but his lips press in a tight line and he nods. I should apologize to him for being so jumpy and for pushing him away, but I can’t get the words out. I’m too scared of what I’m about to see.

“You guys…” Chris says with a laugh. “My son is a lawyer. A freaking lawyer! He went to Harvard and everything. Guess I didn’t screw him up too bad, eh?”

In the other future we visited, Chris was dead and his son was in prison. Hmm. Maybe this future won’t be so bad after all.

“That’s great.” Adam’s eyes go distant. A sign he’s using his flexi.

“Wait.” I grip Adam’s arm, suddenly hit with a new thought. “What about the cure?”

His brow furrows, and he focuses on me again. “What about it?”

“Promise me you won’t look it up. Like Chris said, if you get the cure here, you’ll be stealing it from your future self, not actually creating it on your own. You can’t cheat fate like that.”

He stares at me for a long pause, and I think he might argue with me. But then he brings my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles one by one in a way that makes my pulse race. “I won’t. I promise.”

“Thank you.” I slide my arm through his, leaning against his side. I don’t want him to be upset with me, but this is important.

He gently takes my chin and captures my lips with his, showing me he’s not mad at all. I kiss him back, my fingers tracing the stubble along his jaw, and allow myself to forget everything but this moment for a few blissful seconds.

“Okay, let’s do this,” I say when we finally pull back. “And if we see something bad…” I swallow hard. “Well, we know we can change the future.”

“We won’t see anything bad. Of that I have no doubt.”

That gets a smile out of me. “So confident.”

“I have faith in us.” He gives me another quick kiss. “Are you ready?”

“Ready,” I whisper.

But I’m not quite ready. Instead, I watch as Adam’s face changes, as he gets lost in whatever is inside his flexi. After a minute, a slow smile crosses his mouth. He looks up and meets my eyes, but perhaps he senses I want to see it for myself, because he says nothing.

That’s when I do it: I search for myself.

Last time I did this, I didn’t get anything current on myself, not among the dozens of other Elena Martinezes of the world. Mainly because I’d been dead for thirty years. Now, I’m the first hit in all the searches. And the second, and the third…

Except my name isn’t Elena Martinez anymore. It’s Elena O’Neill.

Oh my God. Adam and I are married in this future.

Before I let that bombshell sink in all the way, I click on the first link. It’s a Wikipedia page on me. Me. I have a freaking Wikipedia page.

Elena Milagro Martinez O’Neill is a Mexican-American business-woman and philanthropist. She is the CEO and cofounder of Future Visions Industries, the founder of the Esperanza Foundation, and the wife of Nobel Prize–winner Adam O’Neill.

There’s a picture of me on the side of it, older than I am now. I stare at it for a long minute, noting my wrinkles, my wavy hair, my black suit. Me, wearing a suit. I’ve never worn a suit in my life. And how did I become CEO? Is that a mistake? It has to be…right?

I scroll through the rest of the article, trying to figure out how this is my life. Each new revelation is a shock that sends me reeling.

Adam and I got married in our twenties, after I graduated from college and he finished his PhD. But instead of becoming a social worker, as I originally planned, I went to business school for some reason. Around the same time, Adam, Chris, and I formed something called Future Visions Industries together. Through it, Adam developed and distributed genicote, the cure for cancer, along with other groundbreaking medical advances over the next few years. Chris led an engineering division that revolutionized how engines work, allowing them to run cleaner and to use just about anything for fuel. And I guess I was pretty good at the business stuff, because the three of us turned our little start-up company into one that rivaled both Aether Corporation and Pharmateka.

But the Esperanza Foundation, according to a quote on the Wikipedia page, is what I considered my greatest achievement. It’s an organization that helps kids in foster care find homes, assists them with college applications and scholarships, and offers job training and placement. Many of the kids in it go on to work for Future Visions Industries, which is Esperanza’s number one backer, of course.

My heart swells about ten times reading this. No wonder I went into business instead of social work—I must have realized I could do more good by helping Adam and Chris form a company and using our success to help foster kids that way. And from the look of things, we really did it.

“You guys,” Chris says, laughing. “We’re billionaires!”

Adam’s face is lit up with a bright smile that makes him look so handsome my heart clenches. “We must have taken the money we got from Aether and used it to start Future Visions.” His face searches mine, but he doesn’t mention that other thing, the thing I’m still processing. It hangs between us in the silence, and I look away, unable to take it any longer.

Adam and Chris talk about the company we’re going to start together and all their plans for the technology they want to develop, but I tune out the science talk. Even though Chris jokingly calls Adam a nerd sometimes, he’s just as big a geek when it comes to this stuff.

I wish I could be as happy as they are. And I am, truly. This future seems perfect. So why is it harder for me to accept that Adam and I are married than that we created a multibillion-dollar company together?

I can’t look at my fate anymore. I close the page and let my mental interface go blank. Now that I know I’m alive and that my future isn’t a disaster, I don’t need to stress anymore.

I don’t want to know anything else.