The Time Traveller's Almanac

by Ann VanderMeer

  He seemed to come to his senses then and he quietened down. Then he said, softly, “It’s the aliens.”

  “What about them?” I said.

  “Theyre...” He seemed to be trying hard to find the right words. “They’re palindromic.”

  “They’re what?”

  “They run backwards... their time is different to ours.”

  “Their time is different to ours? Like how different?”

  “It moves in a different direction... backwards instead of forwards – except to them it is forwards. But to us it’s—” JJ waved his arms around like he was about to take off. “Well, it’s bass-ackwards is what it is.”

  “What the hell is all the goddam noise about?” Ed said, turning over on the sofa. He reached for his pack of Luckies and shook one into the corner of his mouth, lit it with a match.

  I didn’t know what to say and looked across at Jimmy-James. “Maybe you’d better tell him – us!”

  JJ sat down at the table next to the two boxes, one full and one almost empty. He smiled and said, calmly, “It’s this way.

  “I’ve broken the basics of their language. It wasn’t really too difficult once I’d eliminated the obvious no-go areas.” He pointed to the almost empty box. “This is the ‘book’ they’re using now... the one that’s recording everything that happens here... here on Earth.”

  “Looks like a mound of clay to me,” Ed said, blowing smoke across the table and shuffling one edge of the box away from him.

  “That’s because you’re you,” JJ said impatiently, “because you’re from Earth. To them, it’s the equivalent of a diary... a ship’s log, if you like.”

  Ed settled back on the sofa. “Okay. What’s it say?”

  “It starts at the very moment they opened the doors. It says they found a group of creatures standing outside watching them disembark... get out. These creatures, their record says, held instruments... they thought at first the things might be gifts.”

  I frowned. “When was that? I never held no instrument.”

  JJ leaned forward. “That’s just it. You didn’t. It didn’t happen. At least it didn’t happen yet.” He lifted the box onto his knee and pointed at the shapes inside. “See, it’s all arranged in a linear fashion, with each piece linking to others, building across the box in waves and doubling back to the other side. It’s like layers of pasta furled over on itself. But see the way that it’s arranged... you can pull pieces out of place and the gap stays. It’s an intricate constructional form of basic communication. I say ‘basic’ because I’ve only been able to pick up the very basic fundamentals. There’s much much more to it... but I don’t have the time to work it out. Not now, anyway.”

  Ed tapped his cigarette ash onto the carpet and rubbed it in with his free hand. “Why don’t you have the time? What’s the panic?”

  “The panic is that the record goes on to say how surprised they all were to find creatures—”

  “Not half as surprised as we were to see them!” I said.

  JJ carried on without comment. “It goes on to say how they came out and stood in front of us and nobody – none of us – moved or did anything. We just stood there. Then we all moved away and went to some structures. They walked around and looked at the outside of these structures and then went back into their ship. They were concerned that they had somehow created the situation by their ship’s power.”

  “Huh?”

  JJ waved for Ed to keep quite and continued.

  “Listen. Then it says that, after some early investigations – they say that much more research has to be carried out – after these early investigations, we came on board the ship and borrowed their log.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ve got the log,” I said. “For what good it’s doing us.”

  “But none of that other stuff happened,” JJ said. “This stuff in here...” He pointed at the individual pieces of clay... lifted one end of the carefully interwoven sheet of linked pieces and tiny constructions. “This only amounts to less than one single day. The creatures have been here almost three days now. There’s no mention of all the other things that have happened. And bear this in mind... the stuff in here is what’s left, as far as we’re concerned.”

  I figured someone had to ask so it might as well be me. “How do you mean ‘what’s left’?”

  “I mean, we’ve been watching the creature remove stuff from this box all the time he’s been here, right?” I nodded and saw Ed Brewster do the same. “And,” JJ continued, emphasising the word, “what we have here, now – and which represents what’s left in the box after he’s been removing the clay stuff for almost three days – is a record of when they first arrived. The creature has been removing the stuff from the top – I’ve watched him... so have you, Derby; you, too, Ed – and leaving the stuff at the bottom completely intact. And that stuff records them arriving.”

  Ed and I sat silently, watching Jimmy-James. I didn’t have the first idea of what to say and I was sure Ed didn’t either. JJ must have sensed it because he started speaking again without giving us much of a chance to comment.

  “Derby, the creatures... have you noticed how they seem always to be turned away from you when you go up to speak to them?”

  We’d already figured that the clear part of the mushroom tops more or less worked as the things’ faces. And it was true, now that Jimmy-James mentioned it, that the things always had that part of themselves turned away whenever you went up to them.

  “That’s because at the moment you start trying to communicate with them, they’ve actually just finished trying to do the same with you.”

  “That sounds like horseshit,” Ed said. “Not even Perry Mason could convict somebody on that evidence.”

  “And have you noticed how they keep facing you when they move away? That’s because, in their time-frame, they’re approaching you.”

  Some of it was beginning to make some kind of sense to me and JJ noticed that.

  “And we’ve all commented on how their attitude to us is changing,” he said. “You said they seemed to be getting slower... more cautious.”

  “That I did,” I remembered.

  “Well, they’re getting more cautious because where they are now is they’ve just arrived. Where they were when we first saw them was in their third or fourth day around us. They were used to us then... they’re not now.”

  “Okay, okay, I hear what you say, JJ,” I said. “Maybe the creatures’ time does move in reverse, if that’s what you’re saying. I don’t understand it, but then I don’t understand a lot of things. The thing that puzzles me is why you’re getting so hot under the collar about this. Everything’s going to go okay: we saw them ‘arrive’ – which you say is when they left – and nothing happened in the meantime. All we have to worry about is our future which is their past... and they’ve come through that okay haven’t—”

  I saw JJ’s face screw up like he’d just sucked on a lemon. He reached over and pulled the full box across to the edge of the table, held up another of those interlaced jigsaw puzzles of multi-colored clay pieces. “This is the previous diary,” he said, “the one before the one they started after they had arrived.

  “You remember I said there was an entry in the current ship’s log about the creatures being concerned that they had somehow created the situation they found when they arrived?” We both nodded. “Well, that situation is explained in a little more detail in the previous record.” At this point, Jimmy-James sat back on his chair and seemed to draw in his breath.

  “Okay: the log says that they were following the course taken by an earlier ship – one that had disappeared a long time ago – when they experienced some kind of terrible space storm the like of which had never previously been recorded. For a time, it was touch and go that they would survive, though survive they did. But when the storm subsided, they were nowhere that they recognised. After a few of their time periods – which, based on the limited information in the new book, I would put at quarter
days... give or take an hour – there was a sudden blinding flash of light and a huge explosion. When they checked their instruments, they discovered that the ship was about to impact upon a planet which had apparently appeared out of nothingness.”

  Ed looked confused. “So this explosion went off before they hit the planet?”

  JJ nodded.

  “I don’t get it,” Ed said.

  I said to let Jimmy-James finish.

  “There hadn’t been any planet there at all until then,” JJ said. “Then, there it was. And that planet was Earth.

  “They narrowly averted the collision,” JJ went on, “and settled onto the planet’s surface. After checking atmospheric conditions they prepared to go outside. The log finished with them wondering what they’ll find there.”

  While JJ had been talking I’d been holding my breath without even realising it. I let it out with a huge sigh. “Are you sure?”

  The owner of the best mind in town shook his head sadly.

  “But you think you’re right.”

  “I think I’m right, yes.”

  “And they found us, right?”

  “Right, Ed,” JJ said. “They found us.” He waited.

  I thought over everything I had heard and knew there was something there that should bother me... but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. Then it hit me. “The blinding flash,” I said. “If before that blinding flash there was nothing and after it there was the Earth... then, if the creatures’ time does move backwards, and their version of their arrival is – or will be – our version of their departure, that means the aliens will destroy the planet when they leave.”

  JJ was nodding. “That’s the way I figure it, too,” he said.

  I looked across at Ed and he looked across at me. “What are we going to do?” I asked JJ.

  JJ shrugged. “We have to stop them leaving... in terms of our own time progression.”

  “But, in their terms, that would be to stop them arriving... and they’re already here.”

  “Yes, that’s true. In just the same way, if we do something to stop them – and I see only one course of action there – then, again in our time, they never actually ‘arrive’... though, of course, they’ve arrived already as far as we’re concerned. What we do, is prevent their departure in our terms.”

  Ed Brewster shook his head and pushed himself off the sofa onto the floor. “Jesus Christ, I’m getting a goddam headache here,” he said. “Their arrival is our departure... their departure is our arrival... but if they don’t do this, how could they do that... and as for palindoodad...” He stood up and rubbed his hands through his hair. “This all sounds like something off Howdy Doody. What does it all mean? How can we play about with time like that? How can anybody play about with time like that?”

  “I think it may have been the space storm,” JJ said. “I think, maybe, their time normally progresses in exactly the same way as our own... although Albert Einstein said we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be railroaded about time being a one-way linear progre—”

  “Jesus, Jimmy-James!” Ed shouted, and JJ winced... glancing upwards towards his parents’ bedroom while we all waited for sounds of people moving around to see what all the noise was about. “Jesus,” Ed continued in a hoarse whisper, “I can’t keep up with all of this stuff. Just keep it simple.”

  “Okay,” JJ said. “I figure one of two things: either the aliens always move backwards in time or they don’t.

  “If we go for the first option, then we have to ask how they found their way into our universe.”

  “The space storm?” I suggested.

  “I think so,” said JJ. “If we go for the second option – that they don’t normally travel backwards in time – then we have to ask what might have caused the change.” He looked across at me again and gave a small smile.

  I nodded. “The space storm.”

  “Kee-rect! So either way, the storm did the deed. But whatever the cause, the fact remains that they’re here and we have to prevent whatever it was that caused the explosion.”

  We sat for a minute or so considering that. I didn’t like the sound of what I’d heard but I liked the sound of the silence that followed even less. I looked at Ed. He didn’t seem too happy either. “So how do we do that, JJ?” I said.

  JJ shrugged. “We have to kill them... kill them all,” he said. He pulled across the almost empty box that we all reckoned was the alien’s current ship’s log and lifted up the few lace-like constructions of interwoven clay pieces. “And we have to do it tonight.”

  I don’t remember the actual rounding up of people that night. And I don’t recall listening to JJ telling his story again and again. But tell it he did, and the people got rounded up. There was me, Sherriff Ben, Ed, Abel, Jerry and Jimmy-James Bannister himself. We walked silently out to the spaceship and weren’t at all surprised to see faint wisps of steam coming out from the sides or that the platform was up for the first time since... well, the first time since three days ago. As the platform lowered itself slowly to the dusty ground of the vacant lot across from Bill’s and Ma’s poolroom, I heard JJ call out my name.

  “Derby...”

  I turned around and he held up his rifle, then nodded to the others standing there on Sycamore Street, all of them carrying the same kind of thing. “Instruments,” he said.

  By then it was too late. The bets were placed.

  As soon as they appeared we started firing. We moved forward as one mass, vigilantes, firing and clearing, firing and clearing. The creatures never knew what hit them. They just folded up and fell to the ground, some inside the ship and others onto Sycamore Street. When they were down, Sherriff Ben went up to each one and put a couple of bullets into its head from his handgun.

  We continued into the ship and finished the job.

  There were sixteen of them. We combed the ship from top to bottom like men in a fever, a destructive killing frenzy, pulling out pieces of foam and throwing them out into the street... in much the same way as you might rip out the wires in the back of a radio to stop it from playing danceband music. God, but we were scared.

  When the sun came up, we put the aliens back on the ship and doused the whole thing in gasoline. Then we put a match to it. It burned quietly, as we might have expected of any vehicle operated by such gentle creatures. It burned for two whole days and nights. When it had finished, we loaded the remains onto Vince Waldon’s flatbed truck and took them out to Darien Lake. The barrier – or ‘force field’, as JJ called it – had gone. Things were more or less back to normal. For a time.

  It turned out that JJ found more of those ship’s logs that night, when the rest of us were tearing and destroying. Turned out that he sneaked them off the ship and kept them safe until he could get back for them. I didn’t find that out right away.

  He came round to my house about a week later.

  “Derby, we have to talk,” he said.

  “What about?”

  “The aliens.”

  “Oh, for cris’sakes, I—” I was going to tell him that I couldn’t stand to talk about those creatures any more, couldn’t stand to think about what we’d done to them. But his face looked so in need of conversation that I stopped short. “What about the aliens?” I said.

  That was when Jimmy-James told me he’d taken the old diaries from inside the ship.

  Walking along Sycamore, he said, “Have you ever thought about what we did?”

  I groaned.

  “No, not about us shooting the aliens... about how we changed their past?” Someone had left a soda bottle lying on the sidewalk and JJ kicked it gently into the gutter. The clatter it made somehow set off a dog barking and I tried to place the sound but couldn’t. It did sound right, though, that mixture of a lonely dog barking and the night and talking about the aliens... like it all belonged together. “I mean,” JJ went on, “we changed our future – which is okay: anyone can do that – but we actually changed things that, as far as they
were concerned, had already happened. Did you think about that?”

  “Nope.” We walked in silence for a minute or so, then I said, “Did you?”

  “A little – at first. Then, when I’d read the diaries, I thought about it a lot.” He stopped and turned to me. “You know the big diary, the full box? The one that ended with details of the explosion?”

  I didn’t say anything but I knew what he was talking about.

  “I went into more of the details about the missing ship... the one that had disappeared? The last message they received from this other ship was at these same co-ordinates.”

  “So?”

  He shrugged. “The message said they’d been moving along when they suddenly noticed a planet that was not there before.”

  “Do I want to hear this?”

  “I think the Earth is destined for destruction. The aliens were fulfilling some kind of cosmic plan.”

  “JJ, you’re starting to lose me.”

  “Yeah, I’m starting to lose me,” he said with a short laugh. But there was no humor there. “This other ship – the first one, the one that the diary talks about – I’ve calculated that it’s about forty years in their past. Or in our future.”

  I grabbed a hold of his arm and spun him around. “You mean there’s more of those things coming?”

  JJ nodded. “In about forty years, give or take. And they’re going to be going through this section of the universe and BOOM!...” He clapped his hands loudly. “‘Hey, Captain,’” JJ said in an accent that sounded vaguely foreign, “‘there’s a planet over there!’ And there’s no kewpie doll for guessing the name of that planet.”

  “So, if they’re moving backwards, too... then that means they’ll destroy us.” The dog barked again somewhere over to our right.

  “Yep. But if the aliens we just killed were going to do the job, how could the others have done it, too?”

  “Another planet?”

  JJ shook his head. “The co-ordinates seemed quite specific... as far as I could make out. That’s another problem right there.”