Dear Goldie

From: Daryl Lamieur

To: Goldie Tempa

RE: Our Future

Dear Goldie,

It’s a cruel world, but know that I will always love you.

I hope to see you again, but it may not be for a long time, at least for you.

I hate the goddam miners. They literally manufacture money. But I literally give money away in interest on debt that I can never pay off. I owe almost $100k now, paying for a truck that I bought for the business that I now can’t sell because it doesn’t run, paying for health insurance to keep me alive when I sometimes feel that I’d be better for you and Alice if I just died. I wish I were a fucking programmer, not an artist who has to work in retail just to eat. It seems like no one appreciates those of us stuck in the arts.

The government is offering me a deal, though. Maybe you’ve seen it. “The Future Is Here For You” is on Facebook ads all over. I know you don’t use it. I don’t know if I want the deal. I need you to know what it is, though.

We’re broke, but the government will pay us to go away. The thing is – we will be going to the future. 20 years, 30 years, I don’t know yet. It’s a fucking time machine. The smart guys built one and now the government is using it. You probably read about it because you like reading those science articles. If we go – I am deciding for me and Alice, by the way – we can’t come back. There is no time travel back in time, the physicists say. If we go, I will show up 20 or 30 years into the future with plenty of money to live a nice life practically anywhere. But when I get there, I will hopefully see you. I will be the same as I am now, but you won’t.

Unless – and this is why I need you to know about it – unless you also go into the future. If you take the deal, we can both arrive in the future our current age and be financially set.

Damn, I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to leave our kids, but I can’t see you or them anyway because we have no money to travel and no way to make enough to clear our debt, not in this lifetime. The kids definitely don’t want to go to the future with us. I haven’t asked them, but they love their friends and they have a future, especially a future if they don’t have to support us.

You’re a thoughtful woman. I love the way you think. I don’t see any way around having to take the deal, but maybe you do. Or maybe you’ll take a deal, too.

Please write me back. I miss you.

Love, Daryl

From: Goldie Tempa

To: Daryl Lamieur

RE: Our Future

My darling Daryl –

I have missed your touch, your voice, your beautiful eyes and the way you look at me. I miss your music and what it reflects in your soul. You will always be my soulmate, if you’re here, there, or anywhere.

I didn’t know about the Time Traveler program until your note. It scares me. I know they say it works and I’ve even seen some of the scientific evidence supporting it, but that’s all on nothing larger than lab rats. You are not a lab rat! The time travelers are going at least 15 years into the future – that’s the soonest into the future you can reappear. THEORETICALLY! The technology is only five years old, so we don’t know if any person will actually show up. I want to believe it – you know how I love technology – but this is your life that you’re risking!

I want to beg you to not go. I want you here with me. I want at least the hope of having you here with me. This cruel world seems so much less cruel when you’re with me. If you go 20 years into the future, I won’t have hope for 20 years. I don’t know what this world will do to me in 20 years.

But if it’s 20 years that I have to wait for your touch, for your eyes to be happy again, for your music to return, I can feel the hope in that.

And you won’t actually have to wait for me. That’s so strange to get a grip on. If you go tomorrow, you could see me in your version of tomorrow, even if it’s 20 years for me. You can hold me tomorrow, you can see me tomorrow, you can play for me tomorrow. I love saying the words to give myself the hope, even if it won’t be tomorrow for me.

So I can’t beg you to stay in the present. It seems like a much better future to jump to. I just don’t think I can go and it breaks my heart. Leaving my family, especially my parents, who won’t make it another 20 years, is really hard. Please let me think about it at least a week before you decide.

Your cherished, Goldie

From: Daryl Lamieur

To: Goldie Tempa

RE: Look in your heart

Goldie, my love –

I am going. I have to go. Alice doesn’t want to go and I don’t really want to convince her, but she doesn’t have the money to stay. I don’t know what will happen to our debt if I just disappear and she stays. The government offered us both the deal and I’m afraid to ask what they’ll say if only one of us takes it.

I’m going 20 years into the future, not 30, because that gives me more hope that you will be there if you don’t join me now. I’m going to the place in the photo in the heart-shaped locket that I got for you. It’s a dream to live by the water. I think this program can allow me to reach my dreams to play music by the water and be with you, especially if you come now. Please take the deal. Present day life is killing my spirit.

Look into your heart and you'll find me.

From: Bruce Hamilton

To: Goldie Amman

RE: Good work

Goldie –

Thanks for the forwarded emails. I also just got Daryl’s signed approval to travel. He’s scheduled for 3 days from now. Great job on your first case. You sold him on it. We’ll probably need to find a dream for his wife to latch onto in order to get her to go, too, but I’ll get Robbie to work on it. It’s a better future for them, a better present for us. All in the name of making a more perfect society!

Bruce Hamilton

Director of Time Traveler Recruitment

Time Travel Bureau

Washington, DC