What Lionel Did for Love
By: Bill Adler
Tags: Science Fiction, Relationships, Love, Fiction, Short Story

What Lionel Did for Love

A short story about the intersection of time and love

Photo by Bill Adler

Mark cocked his head to the side, sizing up his new client. “From what you’ve told me, no lawyer could get you off. The statutes involved — destruction of property, computer invasion, information security damage, computer hacking, denial of service, cyber terrorism — are all serious crimes.”

Lionel leaned back against the thick, leather chair, the fabric squeaking as he settled in. One of his sneakers had become untied, and he took a moment to retie it before taking a sip of coffee. “And the penalty?” Lionel asked.

“This will be a prosecutor’s field day. The number and magnitude of these felonies add up to multiple life sentences.”

“But not the death penalty.”

“No, not the death penalty.” Mark narrowed his eyes. “But something tells me you already knew that. Something tells me that’s not why you’re here.”

“Hmm.” Lionel took another sip of coffee and set the cup aside.

Rain pelted the window. The office lights flickered off for a moment after a bright, white lightning bolt struck the building’s roof. The sharp, metallic smell of ozone snuck through the gaps between the window and wall.

“Lionel Jones, BA from Harvard, PhD from MIT in physics, a professorship at Stanford at the age of thirty, the best selling ‘Small Rules: Quantum Physics and the Nature of Time,’ which Netflix made into a motion picture starring Jennifer Lawrence and Ryan Reynolds. You parlayed the proceeds from that film into building a quantum computer, beating Google and IBM to the miracle finish line.”

“Hmm.”

“It puzzles me, too, why you came to see me. I’d have expected you’d use a law firm on the thirtieth floor of the Transamerica building with five names on the marquee, rather than an attorney who’s one step removed from an ambulance chaser.”

Lionel turned his head to the far wall. “I like your taste in art.”

Mark smiled. “Ukiyo-e. Japanese, depictions of life in old Japan. The past is another world. There’s little in the seventeenth century that bears any resemblance to today. The past can be recorded in books, portrayed in movies and art, but modern humans don’t have an inkling of what it was like to live hundreds or thousands of years ago.”

Mark circled from behind his desk. He slid his chair across the floor so he was a foot away from his new client. “Why are you here Mr. Jones?” Mark leaned forward. “As I’m sure you know, I’m legally required to report crimes that are going to be committed. The moment you leave, I have to pick up the phone and report our conversation to the FBI. Client confidentiality doesn’t extend to future crimes.”

“I see.”

“Of course you see.”

Lionel balled his hands into fists and slammed them against the armrest. “Marcie Davenport.” He gripped the armrest so tightly that he almost bent the metal. “Marcie Davenport.”

“The Golden Gate Park killer.”

“No, she’s not. She’s innocent.”

“Isn’t she supposed to be executed soon?”

“Tonight. At the stroke of midnight, Marcie’s to receive a lethal cocktail of drugs that will stop her heart. Midnight, the hour of death. The time the state prescribes to end an innocent person’s life.”

“What is she to you?”

“Marcie’s my fiance.”

“Your what?” Mark rubbed his chin and adjusted his position in the chair. His cheeks flushed. “I thought I’d — ”

“Yes, you thought you’d investigated everything about me. Even billionaires have secrets, Mr. Halperin.”

“Why weren’t you at — ”

“I didn’t attend Marcie’s trial because I didn’t want it to be tainted by people’s opinions of me. She’s innocent, so I was confident the jury would acquit her, but even geniuses get things wrong. My blunder led to her conviction and death sentence. The justice system is a horse’s ass.”

Lionel walked over to the painting of two women in kimono seated on a pagoda in a park dotted with cherry blossoms. His eyes lost focus as they wandered across the landscape. He pressed his fingertips against the picture as if that would open a portal to the past, where he could undo his mistakes.

He spun toward Mark. “I considered financing a jailbreak. What would it take? A few hundred thousand dollars? A few million? It would have worked, too, because money can buy just about anything. But the risks would have been considerable. Somebody could have gotten killed, a prisoner or guard, and if that happened Marcie would be weighed down by guilt for the rest of her life.

“So this is what I’m doing and I want you to report it. Make your call. Make it now. I want the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons to know that they have to follow the law, their law. Marcie must be put to death at midnight, but midnight will never arrive. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever again.”

“This is for real?”

“Events are in motion as we speak and there’s no one on Earth who can stop it.” Lionel glanced at his watch. It was 1:20 p.m. Ten hours to go. Enough warning to land planes, surface submarines, safely stop the world’s machines, and for humanity to make its final Instagram posts.

“You’re doing this for one person? You’re going to destroy civilization just for one woman who’s been convicted by a jury of her peers? Phones, GPS, cars, planes, computers, trains, factories, television, the Internet, everything technological that uses clocks, they’re all going to stop in — ”

“In ten hours and ten minutes, at eleven-thirty p.m., there will be a quantum detonation, a literal time bomb. Like an electromagnetic pulse weapon that only destroys electronics, leaving living things unscathed, my quantum bomb will render all timekeeping devices mute, everywhere at once. Watches and clocks will stop, as will the more precise devices we use to divine time from the atom.”

“What about su — “

“Even ancient time keeping instruments such as sundials, hourglasses, water clocks, and candle clocks won’t work because I’m altering the nature of time itself. Distilled to its simplest explanation, time will refuse to be measured.” Lionel chortled. “Sports, too. Timing Olympic competitions — that’s never going to happen again.”

Lionel took in a long breath and continued. “I don’t know how far-ranging the explosion’s impact will be. Certain Einstein and Hawking equations suggest that time measurement may come to an end throughout the entire universe.” He shrugged. “But of this, I am sure: on Earth, midnight will not come today, tomorrow, or ever. There will be no midnight execution of Marcie Davenport.”

“When clocks no longer work, the modern world ends. Please reconsider.”

Lionel motioned to the phone on Mark’s desk. “Make the call.” He twisted his wrist and eyed his watch. “While you still can.”