The present could accommodate the past, but the past cannot erase the present

Roderick Fisher. He lifted a corner of his lip lightly in a swift movement, if they didn't look closely, they wouldn't see his smile.

Source
He traced his fingers over the names on the aircraft, walking until his fingers had gone over all 14 letters before turning to Sampson, the science wizard.

“I love it”. Then marched on to his office, causing 11 crew members to tap their hands in the air, behind him.

Roderick Fisher, ex-commander of the federal army and world-leading scientist. Those were his only assets, names, and titles.

He had not always been the man with a slash across his left eye, who lived as if in exile in a dysfunctional spaceship, now converted to a gigantic science laboratory where some of the wildest inventions, like the rat robot, had been created.

He had once been a real man, grinning unashamedly from ear to ear, crouching with arms spread for a little human to run into a warm embrace, planting his lips on the forehead of a beautiful woman who couldn't take both her eyes and hands off him. Until he joined the army.

“You don't have to go, Rode. We could just move somewhere far, you know. Start our lives in Cuba or a completely different continent like Asia…”

“There is no escaping this war Myrtle.” His blue eyes glistened with heroic passion. “This fight is my fight. If I chicken out now, so will a hundred more men.”

He wasn't incorrect, he had gotten a letter from the government to mobilize men, as a man of influence, to fight the war. Two days later, he got calls from various people; the men he knew, and the ones referred to him. The question on their lips was, “Will you lead us to war?”

It wasn't just because his father had served as a major general for 35 years before he died, it was also because he had taken on forty bandits alone with just self-made bombs when he was 20, receiving a national badge of honor for that act. Even then, he had refused to join the army because of Myrtle and Pauline.

“So, what happens to your daughter if you don't come back? What happens to me? To the Fisher name?”

“Oh, Roderick Fisher will always be a legend, with or without the war. But as for you and Pauline, you both will go to Peru. My uncle lives there.”

As he sucked on his fountain pen, he didn't know which of the decisions he made wrong. If he hadn't joined the army, would they still be jumping on his lap and struggling for his attention?

If they hadn't boarded that flight to Peru, would he have come home one day to shrieks and high-pitched laughter?

He rubbed his eyes wearily and leaned back on the leather chair. He had asked those questions for 30 years, both to people and himself, but no one had answers for him.

“Life is unpredictable Rode…”

“Don't call me that! Only Myrtle called me Rode” his eyes were teary, but tears refused to come. Grief refused to seize him. His uncle placed a comforting hand on his shoulder,

“Roderick, these things happen. You have to accept it.”

But how come something in his system kept fighting to see them? How come their framed picture together still sat on his desk, their memories as fresh as when they were alive? How come he had an intuitive feeling that he would see them again?

He was going to find out. He clicked on the intercom.

“Sampson Tailor, I want you in my office now.”

He heard the re-echo over the intercom calling for Sampson Tailor who was already scurrying over to his office. The bald-headed man rushed in with his head bowed.

“Let me see your models for the new spaceship.” Sampson glanced at him briefly, then stretched out a drawing pad to him. He flipped the pages uninterestedly but stopped at one.

“What's this?”

“It's a proposed time travel machine. I still don't know how to make it run into the future, but it can run 10 minutes into the past.”

Roderick rose with his mouth open.

“Summon the entire crew. We're going to make this thing run 30 years into the past.”

Now as he stood before Myrtle, he realized that he was the only one who hadn't changed. She touched his left eye gingerly, “What happened to your eye?” He couldn't say anything then, he just allowed the grief which had finally come, to drop him to his knees in uncontrollable tears.

He realized that the present could accommodate the past, but the past could not erase the present.

He could only visit that time 30 years ago but could never really be with them again.