Aiken Park

Malcolm Bello met a girl from the inevitable future in one of his walks.

Malcolm Bello walked in the morning. There weren’t too many people in the park at 7 A.M. So, Malcolm felt at ease. His vitality in the morning was not necessarily because of a goodnight's sleep but from his habit of drinking instant coffee. He was an avid consumer of instant coffee, and after years of drinking that type of java, he found out that it did not affect his balance, in reference to his nerves. It did not make them worse. Malcolm Bello was born with mild cerebral palsy. The exercise (although he had just taken it up) was a great remedy to improve his body equity.

Three weeks into the workout, he found that his arms flail more at his sides, maintaining his balance more, and in return, he fell over less. He was more conscious of wavy dirt and protruding rocks and acorns. Around the one-mile track, there were seven park benches. In the first days, Malcolm sat in all of them to catch his breath. The moment he ran across the girl, he wasn’t sitting. He was actually walking straight and calm, and he was happy about it, given that the girl was all poised and athletic. “Hello,” she said. “May I say, you’re doing awesome.”

Malcolm stopped all of a sudden, almost tipping himself forward.

“No, no, keep going,” said the girl. She was dressed for jogging, aqua-colored leggings, and a long-sleeved zip-up jacket. Malcolm did as he was told. “Each week, I see more of you at this park,” the girl said. “Pardon me, I don’t mean to be intrusive. But you seem to be dedicated to your walking and I see you’ve come more often. Which is good!”

“You’re pardoned,” Malcolm said.

The girl laughed. But not in a light, flirty way, which Malcolm got. In fact, he felt the importance of the girl communicating at that instance that he stopped completely and braced himself to the trunk of a sassafras tree.

“I have a favor,” said the girl. “See those three drinking fountains?” She pointed at them, maybe twenty yards away, still by the track. “Will you walk or jog behind each time you passed them? That may sound like a weird request, but…what’s your name?”

“Malcolm Bello,” Malcolm said.

“Hi, Malcolm. I’m Kendall. Nice to meet you.” Kendall kept smiling, her eyes, bright as the sun coming up sparsely from behind them.

“L-l-likewise,” Malcolm uttered.

“Malcolm, behind those drinking fountains is a buried heart-shaped gold locket. It has been there so long that it has sunk through layers of soil, clay…dirt. If you run behind them instead of on the track, you would wear the ground thin enough that in the year 2028, a flash flood would come over this park and free the locket.”

Malcolm was stunned, not by what the girl was saying, but by the fact that he believed her.

But Kendall was still unsure of how she must appear to Malcolm, giving him a shock of her announcement at this early hour. So, she said, “My name is pretty upbeat in your time, right? Kendall? But, from where I come from, it’s really kind of old-fashioned. Do you understand?”

Malcolm nodded. “In your time,” he said. “Kendall is like…Edith, in my time.”

“Yes, exactly!” Kendall was amazed at how intuitive her chosen person was.

“But why a locket?”

To this Kendall offered her would-be digger to sit down at a park bench. But Malcolm insisted he was okay by the sassafras tree. Kendall complimented him on his focus to improve his balance and began to expand on her story. “I’m not from the year 2028,” she said. “That’s just when the locket is unearthed and is freed to be open…hopefully. I am from a time when we say ‘heart-shaped,’ people wouldn’t know what shape that would represent. Because people from my time literally speak from their minds. The use of hands and the tactility from hands are there, but they are obsolete. Our potent mind takes care of everything. I am having the time of my life now having to use most of my body in a physical way. It’s like you going to a drive-in theatre for the fun of it when you can stream Netflix in the comfort of your sofa. Anyway, the locket must be opened!”

“Ooh,” Malcolm said and apologized immediately. In his quaky, choppy voice, he said, “I shouldn’t be mocking, right? Till I know…what I’m mocking.”

“Quite okay,” Kendall said. “Mocking is actually a pastime from where I came from, like watching your UFC. How tremendously liberal, that one.”

Instead of laughing his head off, Malcolm attempted to do what he had not done ever, especially at the first encounter. Malcolm would ask a girl to breakfast at Waffle House. Kendall smiled, and before she could speak, Malcolm thought to delay whatever her answer would be and asked, “What’s inside the locket…may I know?”

It appeared he had just dodged a bullet. Which Kendall read. She smiled again. “Nikola Tesla, the engineer-scientist, gave this locket to his secretary, Ava Laurea, for safekeeping. In it is an equation for using radio signals without wavelengths. Tesla had this idea a hundred years ago. But Tesla lacked social graces. After he fired Ava for putting on weight, Ava fled here to her family, from New York City. This very spot used to be a pick-up landing, where people waited for their buggies and rides. Ava forgot that she had Tesla’s possession, and in her journal, had jotted down she didn’t care about it and added that her former boss had no heart, and anybody who happens to find that locket, don’t be confused of the indication!”

Malcolm became more smitten by his messenger. He began to feel flushed and embarrassed about his breakfast invite.

But Kendall looked at his red cheeks, which suspended his flickering eyes, and said, “Sure, let us go to this Waffle House.”

The restaurant was just a few blocks away from the park. Kendall had made sure Malcolm finished his exercise rounds at the park. He said he would do more walking later in the day, perhaps to please Kendall. In his Kia, he wondered about car travel in the future. “We have them,” Kendall said. “But there are more collisions then when people use them. Not so orderly as you have now.”

Malcolm laughed heartily as he drove.

“Cars are an option,” Kendall said. “The normal, safer way is to hove, as in the air, where there is plenty room. But people like to feel the earth, be adventurous and daring. They don’t listen to their parents. If you’re in body insurance, you are pretty wealthy from where I come from, especially ear, clavicle, and the nose department.”

Malcolm was liking the conversation. In the restaurant, he made sure Kendall was ambling carefully as he let her in the booth, take what he had just learned about “body parts” insurance.

Once relax and comfortable, Kendall said, “In the future, the mind on its own, does a lot of things. Not just 10% of what the brain could offer, as believed today. I see you don’t have a smartphone.”

“It’s not so friendly to me,” Malcolm confessed, demonstrating the unsteadiness of his hands.

“That’s okay,” Kendall said happily. “In the future, that smartphone will be in here.” She pointed to her head. “And it can do almost everything. It could call your friends, book a hotel room, and it could be your House Representative. Yes, your government, complete with judge and jury. The downside is outside your thought realm—which is the rest of the world—there is wrongdoing, crime, anarchy, that possibility of losing everything you treasure.”

Malcolm was amazed, and for the first time that morning, he wished Kendall would stay in the present time. Because of what he had heard so far, Kendall was capable of disappearing back into her own time without much effort. Malcolm ordered dishes for the two of them. Kendall requested for “meljarines,” and had to pardon herself for wanting something that had not been hybridized yet.

“It has the texture of a cantaloupe, but small, and has the taste of the ice cream of your choosing. But totally a fruit.”

“Super,” Malcolm said. “So, in your time…there’s hardly any problem if you have mind control over it.”

“I’m afraid most is not under your control. Outside your mind, or this control you speak of is an empty, unforgiving place. People’s intelligence also varies in the future. Education, aptitude, luck…all pitch into your well-being. What’s important about Tesla’s equation in that locket, buried in that park, is advancing people’s ability to use their intuitions more accurately. Communication without wires is what you have now. Communication without wavelengths is a step up. Tesla was meanspirited to Ava, but what they had in their fallout could make the future more bearable and less dystopic.”

Malcolm looked into Kendall’s eyes—brilliant green they were—and said, “I will wear down that path behind the fountains.” Kendall looked very pleased. The two of them enjoyed their breakfast that normal, downcast morning.

When it was time to part, Malcolm said the next time he would see Kendall, he would have perfect balance.