It's About Time
Lunar Awards Season 2 Submission
The Tale of Clyde Richmond
His tombstone tells me that he was born in 2012, and died in prison in 2052—yet by all accounts, looked to be well into his 80’s.
How is that possible?
I am here to explore the Man, the Myth, and the Legend behind what might literally be the greatest fraud of all time: Clyde Richmond.
Biographical information about Clyde Richmond’s early life is fairly easy to come by, because of his prestigious father. I am speaking now with Gregory Chalmers of the National Archives, who is the foremost expert on the Richmond Family, Time Travel, and the people we have come to know as the Pacos.
“Mr. Chalmers, can you set the stage for me? Tell me about his father, and the life that Clyde was coming into when he was born.”
“Certainly! Clyde was the only son of Lawrence and Eunice Richmond. Eunice was an electrical engineer, and Lawrence was a Physicist. They met while in University and were married before she had even graduated. You see, Lawrence was pursuing his Doctorate and had as his pet project the subject of time-travel. He and Eunice met in the library of their university because they were both diligent students, and most of their courtship played out there.
“Time travel began as a thesis project but it consumed him and quickly became his life’s work. You can imagine, a son seeking his father’s love; a father pouring all his love into his sole obsession.
“Despite this, Clyde was clearly brilliant! Quite brilliant, very much the apple not too far from the tree! He showed an affinity for engineering at an early age and proved to be quite the inventor himself. From Eunice’s journals, we can tell Clyde grew up a happy, normal, well-adjusted child, near as we can tell. We have report cards from school, and we started to see something of a cheeky streak.
“Young Clyde realized quickly that he was far and away smarter than his peers at school, and began playing tricks on them—there is one example Eunice documented in her journal where Clyde came home with a backpack full of food. Clyde had taken the Lunch Eunice had made him, traded food throughout the day, and somehow managed to bring home the entire lunch of four other kids. This worried Eunice very much indeed.
“Clyde had just graduated from Highschool when his father perfected time-travel.”
“Tell us about that time? How would you explain it to someone unfamiliar with events?”
“So, an uncertainty in Lawrence Richmond’s studies was, what would happen when he turned the time machine on for the first time. It was a question of metaphysics, shall we say? Either time travel was theoretically possible, and so time travelers were already moving about throughout time and history and were going undetected; or time travel would only be possible from the moment the device itself was turned on, and forward. In the first case, a time traveler could theoretically go back to the Bronze age or go forward to whatever future lay ahead; in the latter case, a time traveler could only go back as far as the invention of time travel, but could go forward as far as he wished.
“It turned out the answer was the second case—time travelers could only go back as far as the activation of the time machine. We know this because Lawrence Richmond activated the time machine at 2:01pm on August 3rd, 2031. At the moment Lawrence activated his machine for the first time, something happened—an event which history remembers as ‘The Evacuation’. About 1.3 billion people materialized all over the world. They spoke a strange language; they wore strange clothes. Eventually, we were able to learn from them where they came from. In the year 5,366, on February 15th, at 11:43am UTC, a world-ending Asteroid will hit the earth, such that we believe all life on Earth will be destroyed. These people were fleeing the apocalypse and piled in to their time machines and travelled as far back as they could go. We call these people ‘Pacos’ because they were refugees from the apocalypse.
“This dramatically affected the entire world, as you well know. The population of the world increased by 10% in an instant. There were famines, economic crashes, cultural disruptions, political shifts. It was unprecedented—we still haven’t recovered, if such a thing is possible.
“Lawrence, of course, took this all very hard—and many people blamed him for it. It’s one of those unintended consequences, you understand? Clyde was 19 years old when The Evacuation happened, and it was just the next year that Lawrence and Eunice were murdered at the hands of an angry mob. Clyde went into hiding. He found a way to confiscate the time machine and take it with him. From there—there is very little in the records of Clyde.”
This is the time the best experts believe Clyde devised and implemented his fraudulent scheme. The SEC began investigating odd trading behavior which we now know was his time-defying stock market fraud. We may never know the full number of clients Clyde had, but it was discovered only by chance. I speak now with Mr. Lionel Hardy of the SEC’s Insider Trading division.
“Mr. Hardy, how is it that you became aware of the scheme? Can you describe it, for those who may be unaware?”
“It was our trade analysis algorithms that first flagged his activity. Clyde had ingratiated himself with the Pacos and was helping support them financially He did this by what we call now ‘snowballing’ what little money they earned. It made some of the Paco communities immensely wealthy at a time when the rest of the world was suffering dramatically.
His scheme was genius and remarkably difficult to pin down, so it was also the reason why the government needed to secure access to his time machine so it could be regulated after his trial. Clyde would take some seed money, go back to the day Time travel was invented, and deposit it in his investment account. He would invest the entire sum of the seed money into one company. And he would sell it at the highest point it achieved in its history, cash out, and bring the cash back to his clients. From the client’s perspective, they were paying him thousands today, and tomorrow he was returning with millions. He could time the market perfectly, because he had the advantage of both hindsight and foresight, with his time machine. His cut was non-trivial, and he was making a tremendous amount of money doing this, along with his clients. The returns, he could (and he would!) reinvest and repeat the process. You know that ‘self-made’ billionaire in the Paco community, Djobreki Mloburko? We think—but cannot confirm—that he was a client of Clyde’s. No one will testify that Clyde was involved.”
“What did Clyde do with this money?”
“Near as we can tell, he frittered it away. He was able to secure several fake ID’s so we don’t have solid confirmation, but stories started cropping up that bore the same pattern. A wealthy playboy buying cars, getting drunk, and wrecking them—and disappearing from the scene. A newcomer flashing huge wads of cash at parties. It was like he put all his energy into defrauding the Stock Market and didn’t know what to do with the money once he had it. From where I’m sitting, it looked like he was just wasting his life because he didn’t have anything better to do.
“Eventually we decided we needed to bring him in. Our algorithms started monitoring these massive sales—we could only capture the sales, but from there we could trace the purchases. There was a tremendous volume of purchases that were happening on August 4th, 2031. We eventually traced them to a shell company, then to a fraudulent identity, then to his real identity, and we coordinated with the FBI to stake him out and get his home-base.
“He had set up shop in St. Louis, for some reason. He had moved the time machine into a basement lab where he was tinkering on it while he was perpetrating his fraud. Eventually we coordinated moving in for the arrest, and we took him into custody and secured the Time Machine.”
The Clyde Richmond Trial was a national spectacle. The Government wanted to string him up for his fraud and for keeping the Time Machine proprietary. But the result was that he attained a kind of folk-hero status—aided, perhaps, by the fact that he was a handsome young man with a quick wit and natural charm. The person with the best view of the trial and his imprisonment was one Mr. Garrett Jones, who served as bailiff at the trial and guard while Richmond was in custody.
“You had unprecedented access to Clyde Richmond, Mr. Jones. What was your impression of him? What can you tell us about the trial and imprisonment?”
“I remember remarking to my wife after the first day of the trial that he just is so dang cool, you know? He was perfectly calm. If he was nervous, he didn’t show it. And he was a handsome fella, you know, he just sat there and smiled and the cameras ate him up. The government and the press, they made him out like some big criminal mastermind but now everyone could see him and—well, I’m on the side of the law, I’ve got to be careful, you know what I’m saying? But I see it—I see why people were rooting for him.
“Clyde and I actually got to chatting over the course of the trial, going back and forth between his holding cell. I don’t remember exact details from the conversation—he definitely didn’t strike me as being remorseful for his crimes but he was a deep thinker and he struck me as oddly sensitive. He cared a great deal about what people thought of him and what I thought of him. He asked me after the second day of the trial, he said, ‘How am I doing out there?’
“What could I say? I was the bailiff, I’m not there to console him and if the Judge thinks he’s innocent then he’s innocent. I said, ‘Leave it to the Judge,’ and he nods like I’ve just told him some great wisdom.
“He says, ‘Yeah…yeah…the Judge is a good man. He’ll get it.’ and he goes quiet for a while.
“He asked me another time, later in the trial, ‘What makes you happy?’
“I was surprised by the question—this cat is cool as a cucumber and undergoing a trial to decide his life, and he’s all philosophical. I told him the truth— ‘Going home at night to a wife and kids. All that I do is for them—and that makes me happy.’
“I feel like he didn’t expect that answer. He got quiet again—he did that a lot. That was how you knew he was chewing on something.”
“Anyway, the trial itself lasted a week. When I went to get Clyde for the sentencing, well, for the life of me, I can’t explain it. In his cell was an old and gray man. He looked exactly like Clyde, he had the same coolness, that same charm even as an old man. It was Clyde but it…wasn’t the same Clyde? I brought him out anyway. Everyone in the courtroom gasped. The Judge looked surprised. I think they took 20 minutes to have a doctor do a quick test to confirm it was Clyde. the Judge proceeded despite something not feeling quite right.
“Clyde was sentenced to 50 years in prison. The government appropriated his time machine and that was that. This last twist of his—becoming an old man—really solidified his status as a cult-favorite among the people. The Pacos especially loved him—not least of all because of the financial support, but also since it was his old man that invented time travel in the first place. And that was that, that was the end of the whole drama.”
Epilogue
Clyde was sitting in the holding cell. It was almost midnight. In the morning was the sentencing.
I’ve wasted my life, he said to himself. I had a time machine and I managed to waste all my time. My father invented time travel, what have I done? Would he be proud of me? He threw his pillow across the room, his pent-up frustration welling up.
He watched the moon outside the cell, and wondered if he would ever see it as a free man. What makes me happy? He wondered.
The hair on his arm stood on end, and the air felt charged—there was a CRACK and all of a sudden, there was an old man wearing a weird metal vest in the middle of the room. He looked an awful lot like Clyde…
“Hey, idiot,” The old man said. “Quit moping around and get this on.” He started removing the metal vest.
“What is going on?!” Clyde asked. “Who are you? How did you get here?”
“I,” said the old man, “am you.” He winked. “But I am 83 years old. I’m from the future.”
Clyde—young Clyde—was shocked. “How did you do this? Is this a portable time machine?”
“Yep. You have a lot of time on your hands now to figure that out. Here’s a name and an address—that’s our wife—or, she will be. Go look her up, bring her flowers. I’ve reached the end—I figured it’s time to face the music. But I can also give us a second chance at life. Don’t mess it up! I know you won’t, or else I wouldn’t be here. Go live our life.”
The old man had put the metal vest over Clyde, but Clyde was overcome with emotion.
“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything and get out of here. I’ve programmed the time machine—you can go far away. Make a new life for yourself. Take care of this woman—she’s a good one, she’s good for you. It’s going to be OK.”
Young Clyde hugged his older self.
“Thank you.”
“Shut up and go.” the old man said. He pushed a few buttons on the vest, there was static in the air, there was a loud CRACK—and all of a sudden, Old Clyde was alone in the cell.
“It’s about time.” he said.
Thank you for reading!
This has been my submission for Season 2 of the Lunar Awards.
It is an absolute honor to put this story up against the the other worthy and admirable stories sent in for this season. It is going to be a tough competition! If you enjoyed, it would really mean a lot if you would like this story and share it with your friends. If you have any comments or constructive criticisms that would help me improve my craft of storytelling, I would love to hear it!
But most of all—just thank you for reading. Good luck to all the other competitors, and God bless you!
AJPM
Marvellous tale. Did not see the apocalypse refugee crisis coming, what a brilliant idea for time travel. Clyde is believable as a man who would frit his money away for sure, his boyhood daytrading for more lunch is hilarious. Bravo!
Love it!! Let me tell you, capturing natural dialogue in a "written interview" style is tough, but you NAILED it. I could hear every character in my head. Worth all the effort, Scoot! :D