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Acting in Time

a Filipino time travel story

By M.G. MaderazoPublished 3 years ago 18 min read
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I remember Nicky when he started acting in the play The Death of Ibong Adarna in his high school. His performance was outstanding. There was a standing ovation. And the drama club of the university awarded him the best actor of the academic year.

I waited for him at the theatre’s door. “Hey, Nicky! Your performance is really amazing,” I said and shook his hand.

“Thank you!” Nicky bowed courteously. The big smile on his face was unfading that day.

“Do you have a second?” I said.

He looked at his girlfriend, eyes asking for permission. She nodded lightly. He turned back to me.

“You’re really amazing, Nicky,” I said again. “Just want to encourage you to keep on acting. Reach your dreams no matter what. I know you will be successful. Become a matinee idol. You will star in blockbuster films. Box office films.”

“Thank you, thank you.” He tapped my shoulder.

Before they went off, I held his arm. “Remember this, Nicky. Never quit acting.”

***

“Madam Nina, Nicky will become a matinee idol in the future.” Jonie persuades Nicky’s mother who just lifts her eyebrows. “He will star in five blockbuster movies in the Philippine theatres.”

Madam Nina frowns. “How certain are you?”

“Come with us.” I chime in. “It’s engraved in the stars.”

Madam Nina’s face is full of doubts. Jonie is pessimistic despite his effort to persuade her. So, he puts the gray attaché case on the sofa table and slowly opens it. Three gold bars shine through her surprised face. Gold is cheap in our time. There are a lot of gold mines in the Magellanic galaxy. And we can’t bait her with money from our time.

“Are these real?” Madam Nina says, examining them one by one in her gentle hands.

“They are. If you like you sell one right now.” Jonie suggests.

Madam Nina looks at Nicky who is playing with soldier toys on the lawn. She looks back at the gold bars. She contemplates. And, in a moment, she nods while eyes fixed on them. She puts them down and hurries upstairs to pack up.

We take them to an isolated bushy part of the children’s park where the time machine is. At first, she hesitates for both of them to get into the machine. But we reassure her it would be fine.

We arrive in our time in an abandoned Mercury drugstore building. We leave the time machine in a secret chamber and lock it. We walk out to the road and take a century-old cab instead of a flying cab. It would have been their first time riding in a flying cab and we wouldn’t want them to throw up.

Madam Nina and Nicky are staring up at the hanging buildings. Flying cars reflect in Nicky’s bulging eyes. The fascination makes them silent. Then Nicky breaks it by asking where they are.

“This is your future. Our present,” I say and wave up my hands as if showing them the things that belong to me.

Madam Nina does not give us a single glimpse. Her mouth has been hanging open until we pull over in front of Maharlika Studio.

After two hours of pretentious discussion with the film execs, we settle everything for Madam Nina and Nicky. Two months’ accommodation for two in a 5-star hotel, two bodyguards, and a limousine.

The following day, the 45-year-old Nicky is waiting for them in the studio. I formally introduced them. Her son from her future completely amazed madam Nina. The 7-year-old Nicky sits beside her. For five days, the boy Nicky has attended an acting workshop. Adult Nicky has been too busy touring her long-lost mother in the city. They both have the same age at the time. People would think they are fraternal twins. Nicky tells her many things, including the day she died.

The following week, young Nicky has to do his lines, which is 10 minutes of the entire 2-hour feature film. The director commends him for only having a few repeats takes in all scenes. That shows he is really destined to become what his future self is now.

The Filipino War Hero is a box office hit in the country. It garners critical acclaim from film critics. Young Nicky wins the best child actor in the prestigious Gawad Luzon. People do not know the boy is also the matinee idol - adult Nicky. The secret is safe with Jonie, Nicky himself, Madam Nina, and me. We’ve named young Nicky as Erick Lenores and publicized that he is a talented boy from Davao City. We’ve circulated a story in mainstream media that a production staff discovered him, that we’ve got him right away because he looks like Nicky.

***

Two months have gone by and so we take them back to their time.

When Nicky is upstairs in his bed, we knock Madam Nina off on the sofa. We inject her with a drug that will erase her memory for the past 3 months. We go upstairs to do the same to Nicky, but he is gone. We search all corners of the house, but he is nowhere to be found.

“We mess up!” Jonie scowls. “We make sure we find him before we go back to our time.”

“Where are we going to find him? He was in his bedroom in a minute. Now, gone!” I almost yell, but remember, we don’t exist here.

“Let’s look outside, in the backyard, maybe he’s just around the house.” We go around the house and run to the steel gate to find it is bolted. We go back in and double-check the bedrooms upstairs.

Suddenly, we hear a car in full throttle banging the steel gate. We run downstairs, go outside, and pass through the wrecked gate, but the car has just turned into the corner.

“You see that?” Jonie says. “He’s with someone.”

Jonie is right, someone is driving the car for Nicky and we don’t know who the hell it is. We are now totally messed up. We’ve lost them. There’s no way to track them. This is not our time. No tracking chip implanted on citizens to track them. We have no option but to head back to our time. Jonie and I both agree to go back and so we hire a cab driver to take us to the children’s park.

***

We reach our present. When we go out of the abandoned Mercury drugstore building, everything seems different. The warm air smells of burned car wheels. The atmosphere is dark even though it’s noon. I feel everything is not right. It seems isolation devours the place.

We look at the hanging buildings. No flying cars crossing. No film trailers playing in its four enormous walls but news about the Prime Minister’s visit to Cebu City after a riot in jail killed 67. The ticker shows his name. Nicolas “Nicky” Pagado. Jonie and I stare at each other. My heart beats faster. I look back at the news. There’s kidnapping, carnapping, drug trafficking, and a lot of bad news.

At night we learn from the past newspapers that film showing got banned a decade ago, a time when Nicky was voted the powerful person in the country. The following day we went to our friends and colleagues, but they didn’t recognize us. They would say they have never met us. Jonie gets disappointed and ends up locking in his apartment for a few days.

I head to a public library and do some research about Nicky’s life. I find out that Madam Nina died due to drug abuse. They kidnapped young Nicky. Police searched for him in the city and neighboring cities. News spread and concluded the boy was probably dead. The noise had stopped until after a year when someone found Nicky in a children’s park, grimy and begging for food. No relative came in to claim Nicky. So, the DSWD took care of him, and then a rich but corrupt political couple adopted him. He has never stepped into acting. His adopted parents had encouraged him to enter politics. They honed him to become a dirty politician, according to his parents’ critics. At 18, he became the youngest mayor of the country because of vote-buying.

A week passes and I watch news of Jonie’s murder in his apartment. I am the primary suspect.

Police cars are hovering like bees outside the house. They would arrest me for a crime I didn’t do. I run to the attic and rummage through my airbike. I take off through the window and shift toward the Mercury drugstore building. I expect a non-stop chase because I have a tracking chip planted in my heart. I entered the building through the open window on the 3rd level. I smoothly glided the airbike down to the secret chamber. I rapidly tuck open the chamber, get in the time machine, and brood for a moment.

Where am I heading to? I ask myself. Back to where it started, I think. When Madam Nina dies because of the drug we inject. Maybe I could prevent her from death.

I couldn’t remember the exact time we took Madam Nina and Nicky back to their house. I set the machine’s timer to the exact date, though.

***

I’ve instructed the cab driver to stop in front of a house located a block away from Madam Nina’s house. I pay him a golden watch. I go out of the cab and saunter to Madam Nina’s house. I look through the steel gate. The door is closed. I think no one is around, so I climb the palm tree by the concrete wall, hop onto the wall, and jump onto the lawn. I break into the house through the back door and have waited inside for more than an hour.

The front door creaks in. Madam Nina enters. Behind her is the boy Nicky, Jonie, and my younger self. It is the first time to see my actual self. It sends shivers down my spine.

“Come on in. Feel at home.” Madam Nina offers the sofa to them. “Coffee? Tea? Or juice?”

“Coffee,” Jonie says.

“Same.” My younger self says.

Madam Nina proceeds to the kitchen.

I’ve been hiding under the staircase, and I overhear what they talk about. I’m looking for the timing to get Madam Nina’s attention furtively, but Jonie fixes his eyes on her wherever she goes.

When Nicky goes upstairs, I stealthily follow him. I catch his arm before he gets inside the bedroom. He looks at me and my outfit. He’s about to shout, but I cup his mouth.

“Listen to me,” I whisper as I look directly into his eyes. “I’m taking you and your mom away from them. They will kill you and your mom so you can’t tell anyone you went to the future.”

Nicky’s eyes get bigger the way they were when he was gazing at the flying cars. I drag him slowly into the bedroom. I move to the window and look down. I pull the bedsheet and blanket and make a rope. I tie him up and gently lower him down to the lawn. I rappel down warily.

Nicky knows where his mom usually places the car keys. It’s in the plant vase beside the garage. I take a glance through the window to see what’s happening inside while he gets the keys. I notice Madam Nina lying on the sofa, unconscious. Nicky and I quickly get inside the car. I don’t mind if the steel gate is closed. I start the engine and wait for a minute. I bump into the gate.

On our way to the children’s park, Nicky tries to get out of the car. “I want my mom! I want my mom. I want to be with my mom,” he shouts.

I pull over and hold him tight on the shoulders. “Look! If we go back to your mom, both of you would be dead.”

“What about Mom?” He sobs, a pool of tears running down his cheeks.

“I will get her to you. For now, come with me.”

“To your time?” He snorts.

I nod.

“You think they will kill Mom?”

“They won’t,” I say and start the engine.

The time machine is running, but I still hear Nicky silently whimpering. I see his face twisting against flowing tears that have wetted the strap of the seat belt.

Unforeseen things always happen. It’s a reality. Like the time we injected Madam Nina with a drug dosage which her body couldn’t stand. Or the time they murdered Jonie. Now another unforeseen thing happens. I didn’t see Nicky unstrapped the seatbelt.

“I want to go out!” he yells. “Let me out! I want my mom!”

I turn to him. He keeps on pushing the buttons on the console. I unbuckle my seatbelt. The time machine’s engine hiccups. Before I could stop Nicky, the hatch had already opened, and he stepped out at a different time. I leap to grab his arm, but he’s already engulfed by the surroundings that have been transforming. In a moment, his arm collapses into tiny bits of matter and he’s totally gone.

I reach for the console and push auto-fix. I turn to the hatch. The surroundings have sprung up. Construction workers bulldoze the bushes and build walls in milliseconds. Concrete wooden flooring appears over the time machine. Through the flooring gaps, I could see people rapidly pass to and from beside the walls like shadows. And they’re suddenly gone. The sky-blue paint of the walls slowly fades and tiny debris falls down. And the flooring above me collapses like a sandcastle. A chamber has emerged to conceal me and the time machine. I slide the hatch closed, move back to the console, and fix the time destination.

***

I don’t know where Nicky is now. I don’t know exactly what time he jumped into.

I get out of the time machine and reach for the doorknob of the chamber. I cautiously open it and hear the conversation. I peer through the threshold and am surprised to see Nicky’s goons outside. I close the door and lock it back. I go back into the time machine and ponder on what to do.

I go back to the time we persuaded Madam Nina to get Nicky to act as Pepe in the film The Filipino War Hero. I should be there before Jonie and I arrive. I must stop them from going inside Madam Nina’s house. I must tell them to change the plan as it would mess up our present time. I must tell them to go back to our time and find a child actor who exists in our time instead. Yes, that’s what I would do. It would bring everything back to normal.

The time machine sings a buzzing sound. After almost half an hour, the buzzing intensifies. I think something is wrong. And I guess I’m right. The engine dies down. I try to restart it, but it doesn’t work. I try for the second, third, and a hundred times, but to no avail.

I must fix the time machine or else I’d be stuck here in this timeline. But how? I know nothing about engines, particularly a sophisticated one like this, I say to myself as I open the console and check the wiring inside. But I find no breakage.

More questions hit my mind. What if I’d be forced to live in this timeline? How about the young version of me here? What if I meet him? What if the unforeseen incident of Nicky jumping into a different timeline has just made everything worse? With all these questions, I remain inside the time machine for hours. I fear what is waiting for me outside. However, I realize I don’t have a choice now but to go out and live as though I belong in this timeline.

I look down at the timer on the console. The time has stopped halfway to my destination. I suppose I’m seven in this timeline. And at seven, we lived in the slum areas near Mandaluyong city hall. It’s just a two-hour ride from the children’s park.

***

The time machine is concealed under the concrete flooring of ongoing building construction. I hear footsteps and murmurs overhead. I’ve waited for a few hours until silence fills in the air. I climb up and go out through a trapdoor. Once outside, I examine the place. I would find Nicky, who’s now 14 years old.

The next day, I go to Nicky’s address. I’ve stayed outside the gate pretending to be a peddler. I’m thinking he must not be living there. He must have been adopted by the corrupt politician and must have been living in a luxurious house in this timeline. I wait for one more hour and still nobody goes out. So I press the doorbell.

Madam Nina opens the entrance door and approaches me. I’m surprised she’s alive! The drug didn’t kill her. Or perhaps everything that happened didn’t really happen in this timeline.

“Who is it?” she says, peering through the steel gate.

I fear she would recognize me. But I guess everything is in order in this timeline. She looks at me like a complete stranger. And then I hear Nicky calls her out to ask who I am.

“Sorry, I’ve got the wrong house,” I say and leave right away.

I stalk Nicky for a week now to know his whereabouts. I find out that he’s into acting in his school theatre. I watched his performance in the play “The Death of Ibong Adarna” at his university foundation celebration. The drama club awards him the best actor in the academic year. I wait at the theatre’s door and approach him. He is with a beautiful girl. We talk for a moment, but I can feel he’s in a hurry. I finish the conversation with an encouragement, “Never quit acting. Your future is in your hand.”

***

The following day I visited the boy in the slum—that’s me.

I remember when I was seven; I lived in a rickety shack with walls made of patched wood and flattened plastic bottles. I dropped my poop in the filthy river flowing under the floor. I was with Uncle Ron at that time. He sold our only dwelling, became a bum, and left me to a concerned yet poor neighbor.

I’m now standing and looking at the mouth of the slum. I don’t get inside. There are a lot of bad guys in there. People said all criminals are hiding there and that no police dare to get in because they get out dead. There have been occupants going in and out, and it’s only after half an hour when I notice Uncle Ron wobbling his way out with a bottle of gin in his hand. A skinny boy is following him.

“Go back there, idiot!” Uncle Ron shoos the boy away. I couldn’t remember that specific time in my life. That is because there wasn’t a day that Uncle Ron isn’t mad at me. He blamed me for Mother’s death.

I swallow a lump that’s forming in my throat. I want to take that boy away from him, take with me. But it would only aggravate my current situation. I leave with teary eyes. After all, my focus is to make sure that Nicky pursues an acting career. I reckon it will change my present time back to normal.

***

One night after Nicky and his girlfriend dine at McDonald’s, they stroll along Roxas Boulevard. I’m following them from a distance. A guy from across the boulevard approaches them. My heart beats fast. I feel something wrong would happen. I hurry to them.

The guy pulls out a balisong from his pocket and flips it. He holds Nicky in the arm and declares a holdup. Nicky’s girlfriend is terrified and is stuck from where she stands. Nicky digs into his shoulder bag. I jump and grab the robber’s hand with the balisong away from Nicky. The balisong rebounds to the ground. He pushes me hard, but I don’t let go of his arm. We drop to the ground. He is an expert grappler. I crawl away from him. He scrambles up and looks for the balisong. I stand up and we look at each other. He pounces on me and tries to cut me, but Nicky knocks him off from the back. The robber falls down.

The robber rises and turns to Nicky. He swoops at him. He would stab him. What I’m thinking at that moment is the effect that it would do to me if Nicky gets killed. So I jump up to the robber, snatch his hand, and pull him off. I hear his weight hit the pavement. I then help Nicky up. Suddenly, I feel something cold cut through my back. And in a moment, the pain spreads to my chest. I lose balance.

Nicky lays me on the ground and I hear him say, “Stay calm. I’ll go get some help.”

I taste iron in my throat and slowly blood coming out of my mouth. I’m fighting for my breath. My heartbeat is shrinking. My vision has become blurrier, but I could still make out Nicky’s girlfriend crying and trembling. A crowd gathers around me. Then I hear a siren coming.

Inside the ambulance, the rescuers check the stab. They set me to my side so that I’m facing Nicky. I notice his shoulder bag. The lid was flipped open. Inside is a book. The Filipino War Hero by Alfredo de Marzo. What I see reassures me that my present time is now back to normal. Frigidity has spread throughout my body. My heart only beats every three seconds. I hear Nicky’s voice echoing in my mind, “stay with me, stay with me.” I shut my eyes and think of the poor boy in the slum. I say his name - my name - over and over again until I could no longer hear my voice.

Short Story
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About the Creator

M.G. Maderazo

M.G. Maderazo is a Filipino science fiction and fantasy writer. He's also a poet. He authored three fiction books.

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