John Sutton

John Sutton is the first person Dan Davis meets after the time-displacement experiment deposits him in the past, and he becomes the practical ally who makes Dan’s second beginning possible. A shrewd, capable man with a strong sense of responsibility, John offers more than temporary shelter: alongside his wife, Jenny Sutton, he helps Dan turn hidden gold into working capital, investigate Belle, and establish Aladdin Autoengineering. His role is defined by trust made tangible—in a borrowed shirt, an honest accounting, an unclaimed debt, and, decades later, a letter that respects Dan’s wish to be left alone.

Identity and First Encounter

John is introduced in the mountains as a lean, well-built, bald-headed man of about forty. Dan, who has just fallen from the displacement apparatus, finds John standing over him with his fists on his hips. John looks competent and shrewd, though plainly annoyed by the unexpected trespasser on private property. Jenny stands beside him, wide-eyed; when John presses Dan for an explanation, she gently reminds him that Dan may be hurt. Her intervention establishes the couple’s complementary manner: John is direct and cautious, while Jenny is attentive to the stranger’s vulnerability.

Dan’s appearance gives John reason to question him. He asks how Dan arrived, whether a parachute caught in the trees, and why he is wearing what looks to John like a Mardi Gras costume. Dan recognizes that his clothes and speech belong to another time, but initially offers no explanation. After Dan asks the date, John and Jenny become the first people in the new era to receive him not as a puzzle to be solved but as someone they can choose to help.

Shelter, Trust, and the Gold

John does not accept Dan’s assurances blindly. When Jenny leaves them alone, he explains that if he is to vouch for Dan to the club, he is honor-bound to make sure Dan will not cause trouble. Dan tells him that trouble is the last thing he wants. The exchange captures the basis of their relationship: John extends help, but treats that help as a responsibility requiring judgment rather than sentiment alone.

The Suttons remain at the club until Monday morning, and Dan stays with them. The other members are friendly but unusually discreet about his private affairs. John and Jenny have their own cabin; Dan sleeps on a cot in the clubhouse dormitory, where the night is cold. The next morning John lends him a shirt and blue jeans. Dan’s own clothes, wrapped around the gold he has been carrying, remain in a bag in the trunk of John’s Jaguar Imperator. The loan gives Dan ordinary clothes, while the hidden bullion represents the fragile material means of beginning again.

John handles the gold with the same care he shows Dan. Over the next few weeks he gives Dan its exact mint value as bullion, less the standard fees charged by licensed gold buyers. He provides vouchers from the buyers, does not deduct anything for his own services, and does not volunteer details Dan has not asked for. Dan never sees the gold again, but receives its value without having to supervise the transaction. The arrangement turns an awkward secret into usable money while giving Dan concrete grounds to trust John.

Practical Partnership and Aladdin

With cash in hand, Dan starts work quickly. On Tuesday, 5 May 1970, Jenny drives him around, and he rents a small loft in the old commercial district. He equips it with a drafting table, a workbench, and an army cot, keeping the operation spare because he has to watch every dollar. John’s assistance does not replace Dan’s technical work; it gives that work a stable base and connects him to people who can manage the parts of a new enterprise that Dan cannot afford to neglect.

While Dan works long hours on Drafting Dan and Protean Pete, he also hires a detective agency through John’s law office to investigate Belle’s past. He supplies Belle’s address and the make, model, and license number of her car, suggesting that her marriage history and any police record be checked. The investigation is tightly budgeted, and when no report comes within ten days Dan assumes the money is gone. The agency eventually sends a thick envelope to John’s office. John’s legal connection thus gives Dan a route to information he cannot obtain through his own workshop, and the results expose serious uncertainty about Belle’s history and marriages.

John’s most consequential contribution is taking over the legal and organizational work of the new company. Jenny types descriptions, and John retains a patent attorney to help prepare the claims. Dan leaves the division of shares and the surrounding arrangements to John, explaining that he wants to remain free for his proper work and believes John cannot be tempted as Miles Gentry had been. He says he does not care about money as such; what matters is that John and Jenny prove to be the kind of people he believes them to be. Dan does insist on the name Aladdin Autoengineering Corporation, which John initially considers unnecessarily fancy. The naming exchange marks Dan’s insistence on shaping the venture’s identity even as he delegates its business machinery.

Debt, Confidence, and Separation

As the company’s preparations continue, Dan stays with the Suttons until the evening of 2 December 1970, the last possible moment before his planned departure. Component prices have been scandalous, and he has to borrow $3,000 from John. Dan offers a stock mortgage as security. John lets him sign it, then tears the document up and drops it into the wastebasket, telling him to pay when he gets around to it. Dan answers that it will be thirty years. John’s response—surprise at the length of the wait—does not undo the gesture: the loan is made without the protection Dan offered, on the strength of their relationship and their shared work.

When Dan is exhausted and admits that he has done all he knows how to do, he asks John to handle everything. The request is a transfer of responsibility, not merely a favor. John has already taken the patent and company work off Dan’s hands; now Dan entrusts him with the remaining arrangements as he prepares to leave. Their partnership rests on a deliberate division of labor: Dan builds and invents, while John and Jenny help make the inventions and the company viable in the world beyond the workshop.

The Later Letter

After Dan undergoes another long sleep and wakes in a later era, he finds a note from John dated a week earlier. John writes that he is complying with Dan’s request not to be met, despite Jenny’s wishes. He sends Jenny’s love and says they hope Dan will not be too long in looking them up; he has tried to explain that Dan expects to be busy for a while. John also reports that both of them are fine, though he now walks where he once ran, and that Jenny is even more beautiful than she used to be.

The note brings John’s character into focus across the long separation. He and Jenny remain emotionally present in Dan’s life, but John does not force a reunion on Dan when Dan has asked for privacy. His earlier reliability with money and business finds its counterpart in this final restraint: John keeps faith not only with Dan’s immediate needs but with the boundary Dan has set. The friendship endures in practical help, candid affection, and a promise left open rather than imposed.