By Larry Hodges

“Timecars, take your marks.” All ten gunned their engines. 

This is it, Stillions thought. The final payoff for a hundred billion in research and development. He was about to race to the end of time in the fastest timecar ever built. It was all part of the annual Pi Day festival honoring the great Albert Einstein, on the 200th anniversary of his birth on March 14, 1879. 

He had to win. Always. 

“Ready to roll, boss?” asked co-pilot and lowly employee Leah, who had a PhD in something or other and wore a flaming pink jumpsuit. He often mused on how someone so tiny and Jamaican could pilot a timecar, but she’d been highly recommended.

“Ready to win!” 

“We’ll do our best.”

“I don’t pay you to do your best, I pay you to win.” He liked the sound of that word. 

Her laughter sounded like a dying woodchuck. “Don’t worry, boss, nobody’s gonna beat us.”

“Good. When’s the starting gun—” 

BANG.

And they were off! 

According to Stillions’ techies, the jazzed-up spherical timecar—green, of course—should make it to the end of time in a record sixty minutes, where race officials awaited to anoint the winner. Astrophysicists said that would take place at thirteen seconds past 10:04 p.m. on May 4, 42,314,271,602 AD, when the universe would start contracting due to gravity, eventually leading to the Big Crunch. But Stillions didn’t care about that. 

His phone beeped—a text from Randolph, his best friend, fellow trillionaire, and hated enemy, who he had to beat. “Wanna double the bet?””

Stillions texted back, “Triple.”

“Done.” 

Easy money. 

“Oops,” Leah said. Another of her woodchuck laughs.

“What’s wrong?”

“We’re going the wrong way.” 

“You mean back in time? Away from the finish line?”

“Yes, boss.” 

“Turn us around! *Now!”

“Can’t, have to wait for the next exit. Long way off.”

“Dammit!”

“Enjoy the view, boss.” She clicked a button, and the sides became transparent. There were grassy fields in all directions.

“Are those elephants?”

“Woolly mammoth, boss. I set the window to show snaplets of the outside timestream.”

“Didn’t know we could do that.”

“That’s cuz you never read the specs.”

“I’ve got you to do that. But while we’re taking a tour, everyone’s pulling ahead. We’re going to lose because of your mistake.”

“Nobody’s gonna beat us, boss.”

Stillions steamed in silence. As soon as they finished, he’d fire Leah and start preparing for next year’s race.

Still angry, he dozed off.

“Boss!” 

Stillions lurched awake. “Huh?”

“Look, we’re into the Jurassic—there’s an Apatosaurus!”

“Who cares—what?””And there it was. Much bigger in person than in the movies. “Wow. Will it eat us?”

“Don’t think so, boss. Ooh, there’s a T. rex!” 

“Where?”

“Back there, you missed it. Here’s the exit.” Stillions felt the sideways g-force as the ship swerved. “We’re back on our way.”

Dammit, he was losing and he’d missed seeing the T. rex. He sighed. When he was done with Leah, nobody would hire her to even fly a cab.

“Oops,” Leah said. More woodchuck laughter. 

“What’s wrong now?”

“Took the wrong exit from a time circle. They’re sooo tricky. We’re in the wrong timeline.”

“What?”

“I’ll U-turn when I can. Look, Velociraptors and Pterosaurs with machine guns! Asteroid must not’ve hit in this timeline.”

A war was going on outside between the quick, toothy Velociraptors and the flying Pterosaurs. It was bloody and mesmerizing. He couldn’t look away. 

“Turning back now, boss, should get back to our timeline soon.”

Stillions leaned back in his chair. The race was lost. 

He received another text from Randolph. “We’re halfway. How you doing? Wanna double again?”

“Sure,” he texted back. He didn’t care. 

Time passed. Depressing time.

“We’re approaching our time again, boss. Look, I think that’s Jesus on the cross!”

Wow! So that part of the story was historically accurate.

“We’re going full blast, we’ll catch up.”

“What’s the point? We’ve lost.”

“Stop your worrying, boss, nobody’s gonna beat us. Enjoy the view.”

The view was incredible. He wondered if Leah was intentionally taking the slow, scenic route. Maybe he should set up a historical research department. 

“Oh, look,” Leah said. “There’s the alien attack that kills off humanity in a thousand years. We really shoulda prepared better for that.”

They watched as Earth’s surface was decimated. 

So were his dreams of victory. 

“We’re movin’ real fast, boss, we’ll catch up.”

More depressing time passed. But it wasn’t so bad. He watched the rise of the aliens on Earth, then squirrels advanced and took over, then it was giant toads. Empires rose and fell as they lagged further and further behind. 

He no longer cared. 

They watched the sun go nova and Earth burn away, leaving them surrounded by a kaleidoscopic panorama of stars. He couldn’t look away. 

“Oops.” That and her woodchuck laughter took him out of his reverie. 

“Did you make another mistake?”

“No, boss, just kiddin’ ya. We’re approaching the end of time.”

Randolph would be waiting at the finish line, smirking. He’d have to liquidate some holdings to pay off their bet. Randolph would rub it in forever.

But the sights we’ve seen!

“Arrivin’ now, boss,” Leah said. 

They came out of the timestream on some asteroid where they’d put the FINISH banner, forty-two billion years in the future. The other timecars were already there—he’d come in last. And yet he couldn’t stop smiling. He couldn’t wait to go back and spy on Jesus and other religious and historical figures, T. rexes, intelligent squirrels and toads, aliens, and so much more.

“I told ya, boss, nobody beat us.”

“Huh? We came in dead last!”

“Look at the big screen, boss, they’re showing the replay of the finish.”

And there it was—all ten timecars emerging from the timestream at the exact same time. 

“It’s a tie, boss, like every year. You really should read the specs. Don’t matter how long it takes to get here, we all come out at the same time.”