The Cure

Chicago in the spring.

I remember it used to be freezing this time of year, but now it’s quite warm for March. Global warming, I’m sure. No matter, I think I’ll read my paper outside. When I say warm, I mean nearer to the mid-fifties, but I do enjoy the cold air. It invigorates me, wakes me up, and gets me ready for my day. Most people don’t want it; this is why I get strange looks whenever I go outside. I unload a few chairs off a table and settle in. Set my paper in the middle, my venti latte to the right, and my scone up top. I stir four packets of sugar into my latte; they were out of currant scones, so I am forced to enjoy a chocolate one instead. Now that everything is just right, I open my paper to read the day’s headlines.


“Marine Convoy Ambushed Outside Baghdad”


“20s Film Starlet Monica McAvoy Dies at 92”


“University of Chicago Sophomore Gunned Down on Street Corner”


“President Vetoes Health Bill”

I take a moment from my headline skimming to test the heat factor of my latte. Mmm, almost there. I break off a chunk of scone, letting it fall apart in my mouth; I detest the sound of loud chewing. While I wait for my latte to cool, I go back to my paper to finish reading about the six Marines. War, what a fetid business. Part Two deals with war in considerable detail. I should make mention of these marines in my rewrites. Enough of this, my latte should be... perfect. A long sip and I’m ready to read about-

“Hello, Michael.”

A tall man looks down on me. He’s dressed quite average, jeans with a navy blue peacoat. Below the peacoat, I can make out a bowling-style shirt; it has flames and a topless woman holding a martini glass... tacky. But the one feature that stands out is his white skin. Very white skin. If it weren’t for his thick black hair accompanied by his bushy black eyebrows, I’d swear he was an albino.


All the same, he looks as if his skin has never seen a second of sunlight. Perhaps he was one of those ‘vampires’ the kids seem to be so fond of. I wait for him to speak again so I can get a look at his teeth; some of these people actually file their teeth into sharp fangs or spend outrageous amounts of money for fake ones. But he says nothing; he looks at me.

“Hello, do I know you?”

“No, you wouldn’t.” He gestures to the chair across from me. “May I?”

“Please,” I say, inviting him to sit. I’m somewhat intrigued by this stranger. He sits down, hands in pockets, smiling. “Is there something I can do for you?” I ask, trying to be polite even though I’m a little irritated at being interrupted.

“I was hoping we could talk.” He relaxes without taking his hands from his pockets.

“Ok. What would you care to talk about?” Any normal person would ask a stranger to take their leave, but not me. Darn these manners.

“Your book.” He says.


“My what?” The book? How does he know about that?


“Your book.” He repeats this, the smile never leaving his face.


“I’m… afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I detest lying. “I’ve written no book.”

“You will.”

“I will? I will write a book. How could you possibly know that I will write a book?”

“Because I,” he leans in close to me, “am from the future.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Out loud. I am not a fan of science fiction. As a boy, I never read comic books, nor did I watch Sci-fi on TV. Never cared for Star Trek, Star Wars, or any of those other silly shows. So this future stuff was just ludicrous. “Listen, friend… I’m afraid I didn’t get your name.”

“John.”

“Well, John, I do appreciate your comedy, and I’m told a good laugh in the morning is a great way to begin your day. Tell you what, come back tomorrow morning with more of your jokes and I’ll tell you how they made my day. But if you don’t mind for now, I’d like to get back to my latte, my scone, and my paper.”

“That’s the most you’ve ever said at one time to another person, outside of your classroom lectures, of course. You’re a man of ideas, Michael. You have so many great ideas, and you write them down because you’re afraid to speak them aloud. But they’re brilliant; they’re ideas that will inspire millions to make life-altering changes. Ideas that will upset the status quo and turn the social hierarchy of the free world upside down. The one percent will lose trillions. Money will finally trickle down to the middle and lower classes, and people will experience income equality that has never been seen before in human history. The wealthiest one percent will no longer rule, and a pure, unpolluted democracy will finally exist.” John relaxes back into his chair. What do I say to this man? I’ve told no one about my book, and now here he is telling me that my book will… change the world?

“Did Parker put you up to this?”

“I think we both know Parker has neither the imagination nor the sense of humor to pull off a prank like this.” He’s right, Parker doesn’t. But Parker is my only friend; he’s the first person I had planned to tell about the book.

“So, this book of mine-“


“‘The Cure’.”


My God! He knows the title, too? I must keep my calm. “And this ‘Cure’ is supposed to change the world?” He nods. “And you’re here from the future to help me write it?” He shakes his head no. “Motivate me?” Another no. “Why are you here then?”

John’s smile disappears. “I’m afraid I’m here to kill you, Michael.”

I almost spit out my latte. “To kill me?” That’s a rude way to begin a conversation. I instinctively look around, and then remember we are the only ones sitting outside. “You mean to kill me for a book I haven’t written?”

“Yes. Well, technically assassinate you, but then we’d just be arguing semantics.”


“What does my book do to you?”


“It does nothing to me, Michael. Personally, I have no issue with you. It’s my clients. They want you dead.”

“What did I do to them?”

“I just told you, you upset the status quo. There are many who don’t want the status quo to be upset. They’ll kill to keep that from happening.”

“So you are… an assassin?” Am I living one of those silly Sci-Fi stories?


“A professional. There are so many names for what I do. I wished I had the imagination and creativity to come up with a new one, but I like professional the best.”

“You kill people for money.”

“That’s a very simplistic way of looking at it. I solve problems for people who can afford my unique service.”

“I hate to break this to you, but assassins have been around for thousands of years. How are you ‘unique’?”

He clucks his tongue and shakes his head. “Michael, haven’t you been listening? I uniquely solve problems because of my unique talent.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. You can time-travel.” I’ve never found an occasion to be sarcastic; I was never good at it either, so I suppose that was why I wasn’t now. John reaches over and grabs my paper; he opens it to the next page and folds it. As he hands it back to me, I see a familiar headline.

“Read, please.” His smile returns. For some reason, his smile is comforting, even though he just admitted to being here to kill me.

I read the headline aloud. “University of Chicago sophomore gunned down on street corner.” I look to him.

He nods his head again. “Read on.”


Clearly, this man is sick enough not only to believe he can travel through time but that he must kill me for a book no one even knows about. I figure it’s best to humor him.

“Arthur Chan, a Political Science major at the University of Chicago, was gunned down Thursday night after leaving a downtown restaurant. The twenty-year-old Chan was shot to death on the corner of Superior and Michigan. Witnesses said the five gunshots came seemingly out of nowhere. At this time, police have no suspects or apparent motive for the brutal slaying.”

“Arthur Chan is the first Asian-American elected President.”

“An Asian-American has never been President.”

“And as long as my clients keep paying me, one never will.”

“Okay, I’m a philosophy teacher. I know nothing of physics or theories on time travel, but I do understand a bit of paradox theory. If you kill a man before he does whatever it is he’s supposed to do, that makes you want to kill him, won’t he then be unable to do that thing, thereby negating the whole purpose of you killing him? So then, if you don’t kill him, he does do whatever it is he’s supposed to do, so you will have to kill him, and so forth? It’s just a vicious circle.”

John leans back and smiles. “That is one theory regarding time travel. There’s also the concept of changing timelines and creating a new future. Multiple universes, etc.”

“Well, what happens? If you’ve done this before, what happens after you finish your job?” He couldn’t possibly be crazy enough to have figured this one out, could he?

“I don’t pretend to understand it, Michael. All I know is I do my job, and when I go home, my clients don’t even know they hired me in the first place. But I still have my money. Of course, I always get paid in advance. I learned that lesson the hard way. Now the real advantage to my talent is that there’s absolutely no connection to my clients. I finish my contracts ten, twenty, sometimes fifty years before my clients even know they want the target eliminated. For example, the people who hired me to take care of Arthur Chan at this time have no idea who the young man is. And they never will.”

“But you still have your money?” He nods. “Who wants me dead?”

“No one you will ever know.”

By now, my latte had gone cold, I had lost my appetite for a chocolate scone, but mostly, my patience was wearing thin. I certainly did not want to read more about our friend’s exploits in the paper. “Why? Why are you telling me this? If you truly mean to kill me, why would you sit down at my table to tell me so? Why would you be so…”

“Cruel?”


 “Yes, cruel.”


 “Michael, when a man is assassinated, he knows why. Whether he is a world leader, a federal witness, a drug dealer, or something else, when that bullet rips through his heart, when those last few seconds of life are rushing out of him, he knows why. He knows that he’s been assassinated and for what reason. But with my gift, my targets don’t know why because they haven’t done anything yet. Honestly, I think that’s cruel. Some of my targets, and you’re one of them, Michael, deserve to know why. I didn’t have the opportunity to speak with Arthur Chan, and in his last few seconds of life, he didn’t know why.”

“Why do I deserve to know? What makes me special?”

“I like you, Michael. You’re a brilliant man; I read your book, quite an amazing piece of work. It’s a shame no one else will ever read it. I don’t talk to all my targets; in fact, I haven’t admired anyone as much as you since Andrew Stevely.”

“Who’s Andrew Stevely?” I regretted asking as soon as the words left my mouth.

“He was a democratic senator from California. He served as Clinton’s Vice President, becoming President in 2000. He pushed through an energy bill, which eventually reduced the world’s oil consumption by almost ninety-five percent. He began social welfare programs that got thousands of families off of welfare.”

“Al Gore was Clinton’s Vice President, and George Bush won the election in 2000. And we’re as dependent on oil now as we’ve ever been.” For some reason, even these facts now seem questionable to me.

“I know, Andrew Stevely died in 1982.” John points at the paper. He has that smile again.

I read aloud. “Police have no suspects and no apparent motive.” I wasn’t sure how much to believe him. Time travel and my book changing the world aside, this man meant to kill me; that much had to be true. “I’m afraid I really don’t feel comfortable talking to you anymore.”

“But Michael, I have so many questions. In chapter two, you speak of...”

“How can you possibly have read it? It doesn’t exist! Now, please, leave me alone!”

“But how do you account for...?” He continues like we’re actually having a conversation about this.

“Nothing! I account for nothing! I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you have the wrong man. I’m nobody. I have no ideas, I have no book.” It was high time I left, so I made my way to the door. What if he follows me? What do I do? Scream? Call for the police? I can’t possibly outrun this man.

“Michael Danforth Taylor, born on December 27th, 1971, in Dearborn, Michigan.” Of course, I stopped to listen. “You did your undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and got your Master’s and PhD. at Northwestern. You’ve co-authored three textbooks and several articles. For the last eleven years, you’ve taught philosophy at Coleman College. You inherited your grandfather’s temperament, your father’s nose, and your mother’s dislike for beets. When you leave here, you’ll go to your apartment at 4471 North Malden Avenue, apartment 3C, where you’ve lived alone for the last eight years.” He turns around to look at me. “I have the right man.”

“Please leave me alone.” I plead.

“Michael,” he continues as I walk away, “I’m truly sorry. It’s not personal. It’s just business.”

I hurry through the coffee shop and out onto Wilson Street. My apartment is only a block away, I can run that, I think. What would I do then? Call the police. And tell them what? Hello Officer, a man from the future is here to kill me because my book will change the world...You’ll have a unit here right away? Grand, grand.

I’m a block away from my apartment. I don’t see him anywhere. I finally reach my door and fumble with the keys. Why do people always fumble for the keys when they’re being chased?

I look up and down the street, but he’s nowhere in sight. Did I imagine all this? Was the milk in the latte bad? Was the scone past its due date? Can bad dairy cause a person to hallucinate? I didn’t think so.

This was not the way I wanted to start my weekend.
All I wanted to do was have my latte, eat a scone, read my paper, and perhaps take the train to the museum. Maybe take in a movie at The Biograph, followed by dinner at Joe’s Crab House. That’s all I need to make a nice weekend, I don’t need some hallucination from the future telling me he’s going to kill me.

I make it up the stairs and through my front door, hurrying inside. I take off my jacket, carefully hanging it. I look out the window… no one is there. It had to have been in my mind; no one knows of my book, not a single person. It was all in my mind, yes, that’s all it was.

I think I’ll take a nap before I head downtown, put all of this behind me. This will all be just a bad dream by this afternoon.

I hear the window smash a split second before I feel the punch to my chest.

Police have no suspects and no apparent motive.

I didn’t even hear the gunshot.

I wasn’t imagining it after all.

As I lie on my floor, the last few seconds of my life rushing out of me, I wonder if someone will find my manuscript hidden under my bed. If they do, will they try to publish it? I’m sure Parker will; he’s good like that.