A Titanic Mistake

The champagne is flowing and the twenty-piece band is just getting started in the grand ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. All the celebrities and socialites are in attendance for the event of the century. The familiar clinking of knife on glass brings a hush over the clamor of the dancefloor. Benjamin Guggenheim takes the stage with a microphone and a beaming smile.

“Welcome friends! Thank you all for coming to celebrate this beautiful evening with my wife and I. Thank you to our dear friends, the Astors for hosting this joyous event. As you hopefully read on the invitation, today marks one-hundred-and-fifty years since my lover, Leona became my bride.” A loud applause erupts from the crowd. Leona stands shyly at the foot of the stage, and with some resistance steps up to join Benjamin on stage. “Yes, ever since I met this beautiful, intelligent and inspirational woman journeying here to New York City, I knew I would spend the rest of my life by her side. During our trip on the Titanic, we grew closer and closer and within a week of landing in New York, I proposed. And, as they say, the rest is history!” Leona blushes. Not one for the spotlight or speeches.

“Each anniversary, I like to surprise my wonderful bride with an incredible gift.” Benjamin smiles at Leona, and she shrinks under his gaze. “But what do you get a woman who has it all?” He asks the crowd. “In years past, we have undergone cell regenerative treatments to make us look and feel twenty years old again.” He does a quick spin to show off the results. “Not bad for a guy whose pushing two-hundred right? We’ve taken a space trip to Mars, installed neurophones in our heads so we can finally get rid of the clunky mobile phones, and last year I got her the Tesla Teleportal teleportation device. Now we’re never late to anything.” The crowd cheers wildly and shouts for Benjamin to reveal this year’s groundbreaking gift.

“I thought it would be impossible to raise the bar this year, but then the inventors over at Guggenheim Global achieved the unbelievable.” A spot light illuminates a massive box wrapped in gold and red paper. “Go on Leona, pull that string to open your gift!” Benjamin directs Leona, barely able to contain his excitement.

She pulls the string and the four sides of the big present box fell away revealing a large silver oval. It looks like a large empty frame of a mirror. She smiles but is confused, she cannot determine what it is or what it does. The crowd, equally perplexed, looks to Benjamin for an explanation.

He pauses, waiting for everyone's imaginations to run wild, and then announces with pleasure, “The world’s first Time Machine!” He hits a button on a silver bracelet in his hand and the machine comes to life. A burst of warping, whirling colors explodes from within the silver frame on stage. Leona jumps back in surprise and her eyes widen with excitement for the first time in decades. “With this machine, we can travel anywhere in time.” Benjamin presents. “The traveler need only think of a time and place, hold that image in their mind and then step into the portal. It is quite simple actually. The only thing the traveler must never forget is…” His presentation is interrupted by the sound of the machine leaping into action. Benjamin was too busy observing the crowd’s delight, that he did not see Leona close her eyes, imagine a time and a place and then disappear into the portal.

Leona lay naked in a bed that is not her own beside a man who is not her husband. Despite the nausea that accompanied the bending and whirling leap through time, she is elated to find him. The man she met so many years ago. The man she has been daydreaming of for as long as she could remember. The one that got away.

She can barely believe she is here, right now staring at his sleeping face, touching his soft warm skin. This was the first and last evening she spent with Henri all those years ago. They had met on the Titanic promenade one evening and both shared a love for French art. After hours of discussing their favorite artists, the cubist movement, Picasso, Braque and Cezanne, Leona was smitten by Henri’s knowledge and enthusiasm. Henri opens his eyes and smiles that big smile she remembered so well.

“You’re still here darling?” Henri asks in an odd high-pitched tone. Hearing his squeaky voice made her pull back. All these years she recalled his voice a bit deeper, and in her reveries his greetings were always slightly more…romantic. He slips out of the bed and crosses the room to the loo giving her a full display of his bare body. Her eyes widen yet again. A bit scrawnier than she reconstructed him in her mind so many times since they last met. And was his arse always so pimply? She thinks to herself. The nausea returns and she was not sure if it was the rocking of the ship or her gradual realization that she had made a very big mistake.

As Henri is busy in the toilet, Leona dresses herself and steps outside onto the Titanic’s promenade for some fresh air. It is late evening, and there is a cold, biting wind blowing across the open sea. She can hardly believe she is back on the Titanic traveling across the Atlantic. Lost in thought, she finds herself at the stern of the ship, staring up at the sparkling sky full of stars. She smiles and thinks about Benjamin and the guests all standing around at that party wondering where she went. And then it dawns on her. She had jumped into the portal, desperate to return to this evening she thought about so often and in her haste, she had left all her reason behind with no way of going back to retrieve it. For so long she lived in the past, caught up on the thought of Henri, the road not taken, the love not embraced, a life not lived. She had let her own life fly by before her eyes. And when the opportunity came to go back, she seized it without thinking. This time around she will make the right choices.

She is torn from her thoughts by an awful wrenching noise from the front side of the massive ship. The entire vessel shakes and almost causes her to go over the railing. A man with a dark black beard helps her regain her balance. She thinks for a moment she knows the man, but cannot be sure. She thanks him, and runs off to get a look at what caused the commotion. Gripping the side railing, she watches in horror as a massive iceberg rips through the walls of the ship. This isn’t supposed to happen, she thinks frantically.

She thinks of running to her husband Benjamin, but quickly realizes she won’t find him here. Well, at least not the version of him she had come to rely on. She rushes back to Henri’s cabin, but he is no longer there. News spreads as quick as panic. People are running up and down the ship deck, desperately searching for answers and solutions. Leona, had to find Henri. She had traveled through time to be by his side, and now with time running out, she wants to be near him. She pushes through the mobs of people, shouting his name. She is jostled and shoved by the women and men struggling to get to the lifeboats. “Ma’am, please get on the lifeboat, it is nearly full.” One of the crew shouts to her. But she would not depart the ship without her love, Henri. The ship lurches to the side causing everyone to slide. Leona falls to the ground and is nearly trampled if not for the help of that bearded man yet again. He reached a hand down to her through the pile of people and lifted her back to her feet. She looked at him with a strange feeling that she knew him, but she had to focus on finding Henri.

Leona is freezing as she runs back and forth on the deck of the doomed ship. “Henri! Henri!” She shouts with a hoarse voice. She is about to give up hope when she sees Henri running her way. Her relief was quickly replaced by a pang of heartbreak. Henri is holding another woman’s hand and that woman is holding a small child. Henri, rushes right by Leona as if she were a ghost. She watches Henri, the woman and the child board the lifeboat. She runs to the railing and watches the boat being lowered down into the heaving waters below. He never once looks up at her. Their brief fling ends once again without a proper goodbye.

“That man doesn’t know what he’s walking away from.” A familiar voice snaps Leona back to her present predicament. The bearded man stands by her side at the railing. And now, with the opportunity to take in his full appearance, Leona realizes who he is.

“Oh Benjamin!” She wraps her arms around his neck sobbing. “I can’t believe you’re here.” Burying her head into his chest, for a moment, the crying and wailing of all the passengers fades.

“Ever since you vanished without a trace, I have been on a very long journey searching for you my love. I traveled back and forth across the eons. I went to the circus with Picasso, painted with Cezanne and worked with Gaudi on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona waiting for you to turn up. I leaped endlessly from one crusade to another, nearly having my head chopped off a few times. I went back to witness each of our children’s births, but seeing you in that pain, I quickly realized you probably would never want to relive those moments. I even got stuck far in the future where technology ceases to function. I spent what felt like an eternity in a black hole until another traveler came along by accident and found me. And I would do it all again to find you.”

“Oh my dear Benjamin, I am so sorry I caused all of this trouble.” She finally realized that he truly knew her. Over the years, they had discussed everything from interests, to dislikes, to hobbies, dreams and goals. They had lived a full vibrant life together and built a family. And she was the one to blame for the distance between them, she was the one floating on driftwood in a sea of regrets. “But how did you think to look for me here?” She asked.

“Deep down I knew it all along. It was one of the first places I thought to look. Not because it was the first time we met. Although that was the most joyous day of my life. No, unfortunately not for that reason. But because I have always known about your daydreams. Your longing for this other man ever since we were married. I always tried to give you the life you desired and help you let go of the past, but no matter what I gave, attention, affection or affluence, you were always far away across an ocean of time in a world of your own making. All these years of traveling through time, I put off this journey because I could not face the fact that you could find your happiness here with someone else. But I grew weary of my self-imposed ignorance and came to realize that I simply wanted you to be happy. Even if that meant losing you. So, I decided to come and ensure that you did find the happiness you were seeking.”

Tears roll down her cheeks as she tries to catch her breath through her sobs. “I have made a gigantic, titanic mistake. The past I conjured up in my head was nothing like the reality. I have been a fool, falling for my mind’s tricks. Even if we are doomed to freeze in these waters, please forgive me and know that I loved you all these years.”

“Of course, my love. I did not give up on our love through all this time and I will not do so now. But it seems you coming back here has caused a disturbance in this timeline, pushing the ship off course resulting in this misfortune.”

“It is all my fault, is there any way to make it right?” She looks around, feeling sorry for all the panicking people.

A loud cracking sound echoes as the deck panels begin to splinter beneath their feet.

“Well my love, what good is owning a time machine if we cannot go back and fix things?” Benjamin says with his optimistic smile. “By returning to the moment we left, we can avoid this entire misadventure. And no one will know a thing besides the two of us. Now, as I was saying just before you leaped into the portal last time. The only thing a traveler must never forget is this Chronoring.” Benjamin pulls up his sleeve to reveal the shiny silver bracelet. He taps a few invisible buttons and a portal springs open. Leona takes her husband’s hand for the first time in a long time. They step forward into their future together and away from this nightmare.