The Time Traveler

by Tej Pratap Singh

  “Mike, what was it that I gave you?” he asked.

  “Nothing much. It was a locket, Jo. It had your name on it.”

  “The one that you told me you lost a week later?” inquired Jo.

  “Well, that’s what I told you. What could I do? You yourself had told me to only give it to you once you started asking questions. I had no choice, Jo, but to keep it from you all this while,” explained Mike. “But now I know the time has come to hand it over to you. And I hope it helps in some way in your search for answers.”

  Mike got up, opened his safe, took out the locket and gave it to Jo.

  Jo looked at the locket, “This looks pretty ordinary, Mike.”

  “So, what were you excepting? It’s just a locket,” smiled Mike as he reached back for his glass of whiskey.

  “But then why did I tell you to keep it from me till I asked for it?” he asked.

  “I have no idea what you were thinking. You were in a pretty bad shape at that time, remember?” said Mike. “Look, Jo, I don’t want to disappoint you, I know how badly you want to know about your past and I wish I could help but I know nothing more.”

  “That’s all right, Mike, I am not upset,” said Jo. “It’s just that I hoped that I would get some answers.”

  “You will. I am sure you will,” said Mike trying to cheer him up. “By the way how is your girl, what’s her name? Jenny?”

  “Yeah, she is great,” said Jo thinking of her and smiling.

  “Good. And how are her dad and mum?” asked Mike. “When are you planning on introducing me to them?”

  “Ah, Mike, her dad doesn’t stay with them. She stays with her mum,” said Jo looking again at the locket. “Will do it next week. What do you say? We can have dinner together.”

  “Yup, sounds like a plan to me, boy,” said Mike.

  “Alright then, I got to run now. Thanks for the locket,” he said, “I think I’ll go home and take a nap now.”

  “Are you sure you are okay, Jo?” asked Mike.

  “I am fine, Mike, thanks,” said Jo.

  As Jo stepped out of Mike’s house, he held the locket in his hand and looked at it once more. It did have his name written on it.

  He kept thinking, why would I want it hidden from myself? What could I have meant by asking him to give it to me when I ask for answers? Well, I am asking for answers right now, so what now?

  As soon as Jo reached his apartment he slammed the door, threw the locket on the table, took out his shirt and hung it on the mirror. He went in to the washroom and splashed some water on his face.

  Whole day wasted. Whole bloody day wasted. And, I have got nowhere in my quest to find out more about myself, he thought. Bloody hell, I just want to know one thing, who am I? That’s all. Who am I?

  “So much anger is not going to do you any good.”

  “Whoa! Who was that?” he said aloud stepping out of the washroom. “Who said that? Dan, is it you? Mike, is that you? Hello, who is it?”

  Suddenly there was a zapping noise. Zuppp, it went. Jo felt a buzzing sensation run through his body and fell to the ground. He somehow managed to get up. Once he was up, he immediately jumped to the corner of the room and picked up his baseball bat and turned around, prepared to face an attack.

  “Who is that? Come on out. Don’t mess with me. Come on out. Now!” challenged Jo.

  Jo looked around, he could see no one. What is going on, he wondered. Just then there was a zapping sound again. He turned towards the source of the sound and saw his locket rise up by itself.

  No, this cannot be happening, he thought. I have had a rough week. I must be imagining things.

  He took a step back, tumbled over his sofa and fell on the ground.

  And then the voice came again, “Scanning.”

  A beam of light was emitted from the locket and it did a 360-degree scan of the room twice.

  “Area secure. Client detected. Beginning transmission in 3, 2, 1.”

  The ray of light now concentrated right over the locket as it now started arranging and rearranging itself to form certain figures. Very soon Jo could see a figure; somehow it seemed familiar. No wonder it seemed familiar; it was him. He was staring at what looked like a hologram of himself. Jo looked at his watch, it was 11:30 a.m.

  “Hello, Dr. How are we doing? The very fact that this prerecorded message has been activated means that you, or should I say that ‘I have reached the ‘contact time’ and that I am in a stable state. I know this moment will be very stressful for you. As far as I know, at this point you won’t have a memory of anything. This was a near certain event and it is for this reason that I arranged for this message,” said his hologram image scratching his forehead. “I want you to listen very carefully to what I am about to share with you. There will be no interference till the end of this message as the time modulator has placed the next 5 minutes in a time loop.”

  He continued, “Your name is Dr. Kenneth Cent. Everyone calls you KC. You were born in the year 2933 in the ‘International Federation.’ You will be viewing this message in the year 2018. KC, everything was going the way it was in the 21th century until in the year 2260 a major international conflict broke out. During this conflict there were severe sanctions imposed on the defaulting and corrupt nations. This move over the next 50 years resulted in economic imbalances in the world, which eventually led to an all-out war in year 2310. So bloody was the war that two-third of the world population was wiped out, destroyed in cold blood and in bloody campaigns. All the weak and the unwanted were destroyed. The strong survived along with all of those who had been living on the earth’s only satellite, the Moon since the 2270s. Those few who were left on earth were the most powerful of all. There was rush between them to become the supreme controllers on Earth. Slowly over the next 300 years, the smaller powers with vested interests combined with each other and by the year 2570, the earth as you know was divided into two super powers, ‘International Federation’ and ‘Armed Power Union’, whereas a weak front existed on the Moon called the ‘Third Front’.”

  “The I.F. had wealthy and resourceful men with innumerous resources as its strength while the A.P.U. had a very strong military presence and state of the art equipment and technology. All in all, both the International Federation and the Armed Power Union were equally matched, if the A.P.U. had the military might, the I.F. had the monetary resources and the brains to channelize it.”

  “There were small level conflicts between the two, but neither could make any significant gains, things had come to a standstill. Both desperately needed something that would give them an edge over the other.”

  “Because of this stalemate, in the year 2850 the I.F. funded a top-secret project to build a time modulator primarily to send information and radio waves back in time to facilitate propaganda against the A.P.U. and to finally get their cyber defenses destroyed. Unfortunately the project was a big failure, all the information sent back in time could never be recovered or transported across the time modulator. Finally, taking the ultimate risk the lead scientist of the project Dr. Hind transported himself in the time modulator only on a short five minute loop. The time modulation was successful, Dr. Hind went back in time for five minutes and came back, but, unfortunately, when he returned he had forgotten everything, his memory had been wiped out clean. The project was immediately shut down.”

  “In the meantime, in the year 2900, the lead researchers at the A.P.U. had created an electron impulse bomb. So deadly was this weapon that when it was dropped over the southern provinces of the I.F., it instantly evaporated all solid substances within microseconds and had such a powerful residual effect that any substance coming within 200 miles of the blast point would instantaneously vaporize. The A.P.U. had just used one such ‘EI bomb’ and soon they were going to use more. The only factor stopping them was that the raw materials required to build the electron impulse b
omb were found in the area dominated by I.F. But it was only a matter of time before the A.P.U would get their hands on the raw materials.

  “Under threat of complete annihilation, the I.F. once again started research on the time modulator and finally in the year 2955 the I.F. was successful in transporting matter and information back in time. This project was headed by none other than you, Dr. Kenneth Cent. In the following months you tried your best to send electronic interference back in time to destroy the A.P.U. data systems but it was not working the way you wanted it to. The results were out of control.

  “After a detailed study by you and your team of scientists, you realized that merely by sending signals or matter back in time, the present reality cannot be controlled as any change in the past will change the events of present irrecoverably and out of control. You found out that there are certain contact points in time and space which act as filters. If somehow one could be sent to these contact points, then any change of events made at these contact points could alter the future. This was a breakthrough. After months of research you found out that two such contact points existed, one was in the year 2310 and the second one was in the year 2017. The contact point of 2310 was out of question, because at that time the Great War was on, therefore the only option was to use the contact point of 2017.

  “Dr. K.C., so that was exactly what you did in the year 2956, you used the time modulator to jump time to the year 2017, where you are now viewing this message via the time-com of the model, J.O. (J- zero). This time-com will monitor your movement at all times and will lead you to your objective. Due to the time jump you have lost your memory, which will come back with time. Don’t push yourself, it will come back on its own, right now you must concentrate on your objective which will be shared with you at the right time. The time loop is at the end of its allotted five minutes. The information on the objective will be played at a later time. Ending time loop.”

  The hologram disappeared and the time-com fell to the floor. Now it just looked like an ordinary locket. Jo looked at the wall clock, it showed 11:30 a.m., the exact same time the transmission had begun. It was indeed a time loop! He sat on the floor motionless. He blinked his eyes as he tried to digest what he had just seen and heard. It was too much, too much by all means for him to take. And what made it worse was that he didn’t remember anything. He kept sitting there all day, all night, and didn’t move a muscle. He just kept sitting and thinking.

  What do I do now? He thought. He reached for the head of the sofa to pull himself up. He looked out of the window, it was morning, Sunday. He looked around, picked up the time-com and read out loud, “J.O., J-zero, crap, and I thought it was my name.”

  He put the time-com in his jeans’ left pocket, feeling the pocket to make sure that it didn’t have any holes in it.

  He came out of his apartment, didn’t even lock his door, somehow it didn’t matter anymore, there seemed to be more serious things to worry about at present. He wandered like a lost bum for the next 15 minutes till he reached his favorite coffee shop. He sat down thinking about the events, he suddenly felt as if he was 150 years old. The waiter got his favorite coffee, the one he always ordered. Sipping it slowly, he continued to think about what had just happened with him.

  “Hey, Mr., didn’t I tell you not to disappear on me?” said Jenny waving her hand in front of Jo’s face. “Hello, remember me?”

  With everything that had happened he had forgotten that he was supposed to meet Jenny today. He looked up and tried his best to smile at Jenny, but couldn’t.

  “Jo, what’s with your eyes? They’re red. You didn’t sleep well, did you?” she said placing her hand on Jo’s cheeks.

  “Jo, Jo? Am talking to you!” said Jenny

  “It’s Kenneth Cent,” said Jo sounding disinterested.

  “What? Who is Cent?” asked Jenny.

  “Jenny, I am Kenneth Cent. KC, that’s my name,” said Jo.

  “Whoa. Hold on, Jo,” said Jenny. “Where did you learn that from?”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said continuing to sip his coffee. “I… I kind of need time… to…”

  “Need time from us?” interrupted Jenny.

  “No, Jenny. God no. Not from you. Look… I…,” he held her hand.

  “KC, just tell me that you trust me,” said Jenny. “Look at me. Listen, I know I can’t help you, but just give it a shot. Maybe it might help if you share. Come on, KC, just tell me.”

  “Alright, Jen. I’ll tell you, but you might not believe me,” he said.

  “Why do you keep saying that? You know I’ll believe you,” she replied. “I am here, with you, after what happened on Friday. Which means I am here to stay, okay? Now, come on, spit it out.”

  “All right, Jen, you asked for it. Here goes,” he said keeping his cup on the table. “It turns out that I am a scientist and that too a pretty smart one. Born in the year 2930, I went on to develop a technique to time travel. Very soon I would use this technique to travel back to the year 2017 to change the present by changing the past. This was all done apparently with the intention to teach some bad guys a lesson. And, of course, you know my name now, it’s KC. And, Jo actually stands for ‘J-zero’ which is my time-com, the locket that Mike found on me. That device played a prerecorded message, which told me all of this. So, what do you have to say now?”

  “Waiter. Oi, waiter,” said Jenny raising her arm. “Do you serve Vodka?”

  “Yeah, like that would help,” said Jo. “Jen, if you don’t believe me I’ll understand.” He kept his hand on his head, closed his eyes and said, “Crap! You must think am a nut or something.”

  “KC, I don’t know what to say. I mean, well, you know what I mean right?” said Jenny. “You must’ve also initially found all of this hard to believe, so you can imagine how difficult it is for me to digest all of this.”

  “Yeah, I guess, you are right, but, no matter what, please don’t tell this to anyone,” he said. “This is… this is… crazy. It’s best that we don’t tell anyone till I figure out what’s going on. Don’t even tell Mike. Something does not seem right.”

  “Are you kidding me! Of course something’s not right. What you just told me…” said Jenny.

  “No, Jen, I mean even within whatever I told you, something seems amiss,” he interrupted.

  “I mean, to design a time travel device I must first be fairly smart to make such a device. And if I’m that bright then how come I did something so stupid as to come back in time myself. I mean why did anyone have to come back? I could have easily just sent back some radio signals or something else. Also why was I all beaten up when I reached here? Think about it, if I’m so smart then how did I land up in such a mess? I am missing something here, Jen. Besides, what about Friday? Why did that happen? How does that fit into all of this?” he said.

  “Wow. You really have been thinking hard, haven’t you?” said Jenny

  “Yes I have and it’s driving me crazy,” said Jo sinking his face into the coffee table.

  “Just relax, you just need a break,” said Jenny gently running her fingers through his hair. “Come on, let’s go home, my place. I’ll treat you will some of your favorite hot chocolate. That ought to do you some good.”

  “Yeah, hot chocolate. A favorite of mine currently,” said Jo raising his head. “Who knows what I like in the future, in the 29th century. God, I don’t even know whether they have hot chocolate in the 29th century. May be I’m an alcoholic in the 29th century. Anyway, let’s go, I need a break from all this.”

  Jenny went to the washroom. The waiter came and placed the check on the table.

  “That will be $5,” smiled the waiter.

  Jo checked his pocket, no cash. He looked around, Jenny’s purse was lying on her chair, it was so huge he reckoned he could pack all his clothes in it. Why do girls use such big bags? What do they even carry in them? H
e wondered.

  “Sir, that will be $5,” said the waiter again. Jo checked his other pocket but there was nothing there either, except the time-com.

  “Sir, my shift is getting over, if you can please make the payment I can be off soon,” said the waiter beginning to get irritated.

  “Alright, wait up, will you?” said Jo as he finally grabbed hold of Jenny’s bag. He blindly felt the insides of the bag in search of some money and pulled out a few notes. He paid $5 and put the remaining money in the bag just as Jenny came out.

  “So, we’ll walk then,” said Jenny.

  “Sure, let’s walk back,” he said.

  Jenny and Jo started the walk back home. Jenny held Jo’s hand and rested her head on his shoulder.

  Jo was like a man who was walking on a thin rope tied between two buildings on the 150th floor, with great difficulty he had walked half of the distance between these two buildings, balancing his life while doing so, and then, just for fun, someone had added a new variable to the equation, he was told that for the sake of fun he would now have to cover the remaining distance blindfolded.

  This was sure a bad situation but Jo preferred to look at the bright side, he said to himself, “So what if I am blindfolded at this moment. It is a bloody rope and it’s only going one way, straight. It’s not turning anywhere so I can do without my eyes. What I need is balance and that only comes with closed eyes, so maybe, just maybe, this actually is a good thing. In fact it’s great. Let me not crib about this shit anymore.”

  “Hey, KC. What are you thinking? You haven’t said a word all this while,” said Jenny still walking with her head on his shoulder.

  “Nah, it’s nothing, Jen. I was just thinking…” his voice trailed off as he was once again lost in his thoughts.