The Automated Repayment Plan by J. C. Laird (any book recommendations TXT) 📖

The Automated Repayment Plan

He had to pee. Jacob stared, bleary eyed, at the luminescent dial of the astrology alarm clock standing sentinel on the nightstand. It stared back. In the predawn darkness the glowing numbers revealed the time, the temperature, and the odds of an eventful day: 6:30 a.m., 76 degrees, and 100%.

Jacob snorted. He glanced at Lilah curled up next to him, still sleeping soundly, her faint snoring undisturbed. Back to the alarm clock: he could grasp how the thing might know the time and temperature, but how could it forecast how busy or eventful his day was going to be? Leave it to the scientists to come up with a new-fangled gimmick with clocks. He should never have allowed Lilah to buy it. What a waste. His wife was only 88, and he had become accustomed to the foibles of his younger mate. After 65 years of marriage he should have, anyway.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up with an audible groan, his bladder becoming ever more insistent. Jacob hobbled into the adjoining bathroom. His new knees and hips were holding up well, but if the know-it-all doctors kept fusing together his deteriorating vertebrae he would end up being only five feet tall.

Today was Jacob’s 100th birthday, so just how eventful could his day be, especially in an assisted living facility like Brookdale? He shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night watching that movie about —

“Is everything okay, dear?” It was Lilah. She was awake, her voice blurred by sleep.

“Just peeing, I’ll be right back.” Jacob tried to keep the grumpiness out of his voice. Apparently he failed.

“I told you not to stay up so late watching movies, especially those that have anything to do with time or time travel,” she admonished. “You know how they make you crazy, or as you put it, make your head explode.” She lowered her voice. “Mine too, for that matter,” she mumbled.

Jacob shuffled back to bed and crawled under the covers before answering. “The idea of time has made me crazy my whole life. Nobody can understand it, nobody can explain it. That’s why it’s great fodder for movies and books. Is time linear or nonlinear? Or the Butterfly effect—you know, how changing the past will change the present—and all the other theories that can be neither proven nor disproven. If I only knew the answer…”

“Happy Birthday, Jacob,” Lilah interrupted, having heard all this before. She kissed him on the cheek. “Stop getting yourself all worked up with that time stuff again. If you haven’t figured it out after 100 years, you’re probably not gonna.”

Jacob could imagine her grinning in the dark. “You got that right,” he said, still agitated. He was on a roll. “So what do you do? You go and buy me a clock that says it can predict the probability of my having a thrilling day or not. It’s my 100th birthday, and the damn clock says my chances are 100% in favor. It has to foresee the future to do that, doesn’t it? If that isn’t messing with my head, I don’t know what is. Anyway, the prediction is bullshit, you wasted your money. The only thing on tap today is my birthday party in the dining room tonight. A birthday cake and singing Happy Birthday doesn’t exactly constitute a 100% action-packed day.” That should wipe the smile off her face, he figured.

“I’ll take the clock back,” Lilah sighed. “But you shouldn’t be so sensitive about the vagaries of Time. But since you are, stop watching movies that deal with it,” she said, her voice rising an octave.

Jacob was a little chagrined. She was right of course. He shouldn’t be watching or reading things on the subject if it upset him. Although he’d never admit it, he did feel a perverse enjoyment in doing so even if it did make his head explode. “Sorry, Hon, I’m just a little cranky this morning. I guess my 100 years are catching up with me.”

It was early afternoon. Lilah was getting her hair done in the Brookdale salon, and Jacob decided to enjoy the late spring day in one of the building’s wonderful courtyards. He maneuvered his motorized wheelchair down the hallways, in and out of the elevator, through the maze of rooms and out into the large, pleasantly landscaped area. It looked like he had the whole place to himself. He pulled his wheelchair up next to one of the park benches and relaxed, enjoying the butterflies, the tweeting of the birds, even the occasional darting squirrel and rabbit.

His eyes were closed, and he was enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face and old bones when he sensed a faint rustle of clothing as someone sat on the wooden bench next to him. Jacob looked over at the intruder: a pleasant looking, white-haired man in his mid-sixties with a neatly trimmed beard complementing a full head of hair. He wore a slightly rumpled white linen suit, and carried an expensive looking cane with an elaborate handle. A little on the portly side, he was reminded of Burl Ives. Jacob didn’t remember seeing him around before, and assumed the man was a new resident at Brookdale.

“May I join you? I’m sorry if I disturbed you, but it’s such a glorious day and I was out for a walk. Just got a little winded, I guess, and needed to sit down,” the stranger said.

Jacob pondered a sarcastic reply at the interruption, but reconsidered; the beautiful afternoon had mellowed his mood it seemed. “No problem, I was just relaxing and enjoying the sun myself.”

The man reached over and extended his hand. “My name is Peter Barjona, it’s my first time here.”

First time here? Oddly put, but maybe the man was touring Brookdale for a possible future move, or more likely he was new to the place and it was his first time in the courtyard. Whatever, Jacob wanted him to feel welcome. “Jacob Anderson,” he replied, shaking the stranger’s hand. “My wife, Lilah, and I have been residents here at Brookdale for eight years.”

“Jacob Anderson… Jacob Anderson… I saw that name on the bulletin board. You’re the gentleman having a birthday party tonight, celebrating your 100 years on earth, right?” Peter asked.

Another oddity in phrasing things, Jacob thought. “I guess you could say that. But it is a little depressing. On the one hand it seems like a very long time, on the other it feels much shorter. I look at pictures of myself and others, both past and present, and am continually amazed at the changes...the aging… and so many of my friends have passed away. Sometimes I sit mesmerized, watching the second, minute, and hour hands of the clock ticking away my life, powerless to halt its endless journey. With no understanding of the whys and wherefores, of course. And don’t get me going on those time travel theories, either…”

Jacob stopped, embarrassed at his sudden babbling in front of the stranger. But somehow he felt comfortable around the man; it was easy to talk to him. “Sorry about going off on a tangent there, Mr. Barjona, but the concept of time has always befuddled and bamboozled me. It seems to aggravate me more the older I get. Just one of my idiosyncrasies, I guess. Maybe I’m going senile… but if only someone had the answer…

“I do,” the man said. “And please call me Peter.” He sighed and leaned back on the bench.

“What… what did you say?”

“I said, please call me Peter.”

“No, the other part.”

“About Time? I said I have the answer… some of it, anyway.”

Jacob laughed. “No need to humor me, Peter, but just out of curiosity, what is YOUR particular theory?”

Peter gifted him with a benevolent smile. “Time was created just for you,” he said.

“What?” Jacob’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped in surprise.

A blush suffused Peter’s face, contrasting nicely with his white beard and hair. His smile disappeared and he became contrite. “Oh, I’m very sorry Mr. Anderson, how embarrassing. I phrased that incorrectly, and I apologize. I should have said Time was created for Man… Mankind I mean.” He glanced down at his shoes, still distressed at his miscue.

Jacob’s dumfounded expression didn’t change. “What are you rambling on about?”

“Time was all my Boss’s idea. I’m just one of his assistants, and I’m not very adept at discussing these things. Just the luck of the draw I guess. It’s usually one of the other guys. I mean, hell, I was just a fisherman by trade my whole life on Earth.” He sighed again, something that was becoming more frequent. “I had assumed I was higher up the food chain… but you know what they say about assuming… and the Boss knows best, of course.” His voice trailed off as his eyes drifted skyward.

“And your boss is whom?” Jacob asked.

The man’s chestnut brown eyes refocused on him. “He goes by many names, but you probably know him best as God,” Peter said.

“Your boss is God?” Now Jacob figured Peter was a walk-away from Brookdale’s Alzheimer’s wing and looked around the courtyard for an attendant, but saw no one. He decided it was best to humor the man until someone came for him. Jacob’s head was spinning, but his mind latched onto several threads of memory. “I’ve got it now,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Your first name is Simon… Simon Peter Barjona. You’re St. Peter!”

The stranger chuckled. “I don’t know how I ever got tagged with the ‘Saint’ moniker, considering some of the questionable things I did during my lifetime. But He’s the Boss of Everything, so it is what it is.”

“You don’t look like a career fisherman, or resemble your Jewish ancestors in any way,” Jacob said. “Pale skinned, portly, well dressed… not exactly what—

Peter interrupted. “Me and the boys… and girls, of course… are allowed to choose our physical forms, within reason, when we have an assignment down here. Most of the time this particular body seems to work well,” Peter said.

Jacob’s blossoming apprehension was tempered by fascination and curiosity. “I thought you were in charge of the pearly gates and all that.”

“No, Mr. Anderson, and I’m not sure where that comedic idea came from; I must Google it when I get the time,” Peter mused. He pulled a small notebook and pencil from his coat pocket and wrote in it. “My memory isn’t what it used to be, so I make a ‘to do’ list to keep things straight. Now where were we…?”

“You said your boss, God, invented Time—just for Mankind.”

“Right, Time… of course. Time exists nowhere else, the Boss created it especially for you…” Peter winced and shook his head, “…sorry again, I mean for Man in general. You have to realize time doesn’t exist for God. He is eternal, doesn’t need it, so He didn’t create it. Not at first anyway. Like the Bible says, ‘a thousand years are as a day.”’ Peter paused, beaming with pride. “I wrote that you know,” he added. “It went something like that, anyway…” His smile faded and he looked contrite. “Oh my, my, my… not good… the Boss frowns upon excessive pride… and me being a Senior Aide and all… I’ll end up getting demoted…”

Jacob stopped paying attention and glanced around the courtyard nervously. They were still the only ones outside.

But Peter had continued talking, and was now back on topic. “… it’s called His ‘Automated Repayment Plan’ set up by God for his fallen angels…”

Jacob’s head jerked back towards the man, his attention regained.

“… the whole thing is so gosh darned complicated,” Peter was saying. “Hell, the Boss showed me the original blueprints for His Time idea, and I plowed through the first 250,000 pages before I gave up. I was completely lost.