The Curiosity Killers

by K W Taylor

“Of course I recognized you, Mr. Wright,” Alison said, a sad smile playing across her face. “I’ll be top in my class in scientific history, thanks to this job. And you, doctor, what have you done? I always knew you were trying to do something secret, something dangerous, but time travel?”

  Vere sighed. “Well, if she knows, we might as well just let her know, hadn’t we?”

  “I think there’s a lot of things we all need to be caught up to speed on,” Alison agreed. “He’s worried he’s hastened your death, I think.”

  “My God, what is this? You think this thing has given me some sort of fever?”

  “Not really, no,” Vere replied. “I think this thing may have given you some sort of cancer, and back in your own time it’ll wind up mimicking the symptoms of typhoid to the point where they won’t know how to treat you and you’ll die.”

  Wilbur’s chest rose and fell slowly. “When?”

  “Nineteen twelve,” Alison replied.

  “Then I’ve got some time after all,” Wilbur said. “Not endless amounts, but enough, I suppose.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Show me everything this time has to offer. I’m a dying man, after all.”

  “Doctor,” Alison said, “do you think this is an opportunity to prevent the schism? Because without the interference of the Rénartians, wouldn’t your funding have been better? Wouldn’t you be able to do your research more openly?”

  “What’s this?” Wilbur asked. “Who are these Martians?” He paused. “Dear me, things are different. Things out of meteors have invaded us. Heavens, Wells was right.” He sighed and fell back against the nearest wall. “Does this happen in my lifetime? No, don’t tell me. It’s too frightening.”

  “The war,” Vere said. “It’s not Martians, it’s Rénartians—a political group, not an extraterrestrial one.”

  “Thank heavens.” Wilbur smiled. “Well, that sounds more reasonable to hear about. What happened?”

  Vere and Alison looked at each other. “Oh, screw it. Fine,” Vere said. “We’ve already damaged history, what’s a little more?” He retrieved something flat and leather-covered from his desk and then placed it into Wilbur’s hands.

  At first, Wilbur thought it was a book, but the edges did not reveal pages that could be turned. Vere touched the middle of the surface and a moving scene appeared. Wilbur gasped at the swirling colors. “Is it a window? To another world?” he marveled.

  “Something like that.” Vere told Wilbur to slide his finger along the bottom of the scene, and Wilbur obliged, causing the scene to shift and reveal several smaller moving pictures floating atop the larger one. “Press that one labeled ‘documentary,’” Vere instructed.

  As he did so, Wilbur was greeted with a full-color film taking over the object’s surface, complete with sound that Wilbur could feel vibrating against his hands. “It’s an entire cinema, right here,” Wilbur said. “I’m holding a veritable nickelodeon.”

  Vere sat beside Wilbur. “Yes, you are,” Vere agreed. “But if you want to know about what happened to the country, ignore the technology for a bit and just watch.”

  Over the next hour, Wilbur learned of the ideological split in the country, much like the Civil War that raged only a few years before his own birth. This one, however, seemed less concerned with mostly one issue but rather several, complex changes in society that came to a head when some states could no longer agree with each other. As states took sides and stances, the war began when one man—a gaunt-looking fellow called Claudio Florence—took power as governor of Nebraska and insisted on creating a new political party: the Rénartians, named after Reynard College, the governor’s alma mater. For having so much influence, Florence was seldom seen after he took the governorship and used others as the primary public face of the party. He called himself a governor rather than a president due to his dedication to decentralization. After several years in hiding, Florence appointed a Lieutenant Governor, a hyper-masculine, almost cartoonish man named Garrett Spaulding. Spaulding had been the public face of the RAA ever since, though few believed he held legitimate power.

  The documentary droned on to reveal a brightly colored map showing the division of the country. In green were states that joined a new union with Canada and Great Britain as the New British Empire, and the remaining areas were now known as the Rénartian Alliance of America, taking up the center of the former country.

  Abruptly, the surface of the object Wilbur held darkened and then reverted back to the swirling windows. Vere took it from his hands.

  “That’s quite a bit of history summarized very quickly,” Wilbur said. “I can’t say I’m terribly shocked, given what I know of the first war, but it’s still an unfortunate turn of events.”

  “It wouldn’t have been so bad,” Alison said, “if it weren’t for what the Rénartians began doing later.”

  “Alison claims we could have lived in peace as two separate nations,” Vere said. “I couldn’t quite be bothered to care, except after they began sabotaging our universities and sending our technology backward to nearly Victorian-era antiquity.” He paused a moment. “I suppose that’s not quite antiquity where you’re from.”

  “I’ve done enough research and development to know how limited my resources of time, money, and scientific advancement were,” Wilbur said. “To stymie progress and intellect…oh, dear.” Wilbur leaned forward to prop his chin on one shaky palm. “Is there no preventing it? What if the seeds of this dangerous proclivity of theirs could be subverted long before they’re sown?”

  “You want to go back to your own time and prevent an ideological shift that won’t even really begin to get groundswell until about fifty years after your death?” Alison asked.

  “You say that, and yet I have to know…is that ever quite how things happen?” Wilbur asked. “The war waged about slavery…that system existed for a century before people realized it was clearly intolerable and mounted a war. When you talk about when the groundswell for these new movements began…hadn’t those ideas been swirling about long before that?”

  Alison considered the question. “You may have something there,” she allowed.

  “This is all very dangerous,” Vere said. “I find it difficult to imagine you could really make much difference.” He gave Wilbur a sad smile. “I was a soldier for a time before I went to college. The war, when it stopped being a cold one and actually went into the trenches, was terrible. I…” His voice trailed off. “Never you mind, son. You do what you’d like, ask what you like. We’ve already told you too much. What’s a little more?”

  Wilbur paced for a moment. “What about my family?” he asked. “Even if I’m on my last legs here, does my family survive me by much?”

  “Yes,” Alison replied, “but honestly, Mister Wright, do you think they’d believe you, let alone be willing to become activists all of a sudden? Activists for things you can’t even imagine at your point in history?”

  “You say they began sabotaging educational systems,” Wilbur said. “I think I could get them invested that way, at the very least.”

  Friday, June 6, 2070, Avon, Vermont, NBE

  The grounds were dark. Claudio and Ambrose both wore black, head to toe, but Ambrose refused the ski cap Claudio suggested. This wasn’t as much of a problem under the moonless sky, but once they entered the building it left Ambrose’s light hair uncovered and reflecting back the red emergency exit lights.

  “Idiot boy,” Claudio said while they prepared. He pulled on his own skip cap. “If you get us caught, I’ll do worse than fire you.”

  “It makes me all itchy-like,” Ambrose whined, scratching his greasy head. “I don’t like it. We’ll be right as rain, sir. In out, spit spot.” He’d unrolled the building’s blueprints on Claudio’s desk. “We put it in the doctor’s lab, we barely even need to be in there. Load-bearing walls here, here, and here,” he’d said, tapping various points on the drawing. “My maths are perfect.”

  “If you say so,” Claudio muttered.


  But it was almost too late—they were moving along at a good clip, and Ambrose was stopping in front of Edward Vere’s lab space before Claudio even expected. “This is it?” Claudio asked. He handed Ambrose the lock pick kit and crouched beside him.

  “Yeah, just gimme half a mo’…there.” The door swung open and both men hurried inside.

  Claudio busied himself with the explosives, using the clay adhesive to stick them to the beam Ambrose’s blueprints indicated, but a low whistle from across the room distracted him.

  “Lord almighty, but this is a thing o’ beauty, Mister Florence, sir.”

  Claudio turned to see Ambrose standing in awe, staring at a contraption that seemed to Claudio nothing more than a meaningless set of connected bars, metal plates, and satellite dishes. “Boy, get over here. Help me set the timer,” Claudio stage-whispered. “Quit gawking at things you don’t understand and do something productive.”

  “Oh, but I do understand it, sir.” Ambrose whirled around, a shit-eating grin plastered across his rubbery cheeks. “Do you know what this fellow’s done?”

  Claudio’s eyes fluttered shut. “Do I care?”

  “You ought to. And we oughtn’t explode this place ’fore he finishes.” Ambrose turned back to the contraption and withdrew his mobile phone. He snapped pictures of the thing. “Since it’s dead easy breakin’ in ’ere, we could come back, steal all his research, and use the tech ourselves.” Ambrose paused between photographs to pull a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, on which he scribbled hasty notes.

  Claudio strode over to the young man. “Why would we care about doing that? This technology is tainted. It’s theirs. They don’t invent important things. They don’t let us use what they design, just as we don’t let them use what we design.”

  Ambrose looked at Claudio. “We design things?”

  Claudio felt his face grow hot. “We hire people who can. And even though we don’t now, we could.” He stamped his foot. “We hamper the NBE’s ability to use existing technology. We stop their trade routes. We intercept their packages. We—”

  “We need to pay attention to this one,” Ambrose interrupted. He narrowed his eyes, and his upper lip quivered. “Sir, I’m sorry, but God’s honest truth, this bloke is on the verge o’ sussin’ out one of the most impenetrable mysteries o’ science, and I don’t feature you stoppin’ me from studyin’ it.”

  Claudio blinked, feeling as if he’d been slapped.

  “Don’t care if I work for you,” Ambrose went on, his voice rising in his excitement. “I’m a bloody physicist, not your errand boy, and I’ll thank you to start listenin’ to things I tell you.”

  Friday, July 4, 2070, Flussville, South Carolina, Rénartian Alliance of America (RAA)

  To Ambrose Richards, the machine—stolen though its conception may have been—was his crowning glory, proof of all his years of studying physics. Claudio may have thought him a simple man with simple tastes and affectations, but that was mostly due to his intense focus on those things that mattered to him: the space-time continuum and creating political anarchy. If he could use one to help the other, well then, that was a bright-blessed thing, wasn’t it?

  He spent weeks breaking into the lab at night, studying the changes Vere brought to the machine, poring over his notes, and replicating the clockworks and steam valves back at his own lab on the Rénartian border. The travel was a grind, the places he had to secret himself in between jaunts were filthy backwaters and roach-infested flops, but Ambrose presented his achievement to Claudio at last, his dingy teeth flashing in a giddy grin.

  “But why the hell should I even bother?” Claudio droned as he walked around the machine in lazy half-circles. “I care about now. I care about the future.”

  “Right you are, sir, but just imagine for half a mo’. What if you could fix up the present into the future by futzing about with the past?” Ambrose asked.

  Claudio pursed his lips and tapped a scrawny index finger against them. “Get what I want now by…” He waved his free hand in the air in the vague manner of a magician aiming at misdirection. “Accelerating some attitudes, as it were?”

  Ambrose nodded.

  “I want to get rid of the universities, that’s for certain. This side can’t be able to begin their own manufacturing infrastructure again, and inventions culled from research is the surest way for them to get back on their feet,” Claudio said. “The problem there is that would negate Doctor Vere’s laboratory, the very spot you figured out your little gearbox here.”

  “What if his were the only one?” Ambrose asked. “Or perhaps time self-corrects and the doctor still invents the thing, still leaves it out plain as day for me to cadge, but he’s got a…oh, I don’t know, mayhap ’e’s workin’ for you in private industry or some such. That’s possible, innit?” Ambrose raised his eyebrows, waiting for Claudio to reply. When he didn’t, Ambrose grew agitated. “See, mate, my theory’s ’at a paradox, what you describe there, that ain’t possible, not as such.” He made a sphere with his hands. “World won’t let it, ya see. So no danger o’ me not bein’ able to make this, ’cause it’s already been done. Yeah?”

  Claudio shook his head. “No, no, no, not yeah, you simpleton. If I’m unmaking and changing all sorts of things back there, God only knows what might self-correct.”

  “No, I s’pect only the time travel itself would self-correct,” Ambrose replied. “Not things unrelated-like.”

  “You’re giving me a migraine.”

  Ambrose felt a pang of concern. “You want some menthol drops, guv? They do wonders for the ol’ noggin, they do. That what me gran always used to give me.”

  “And clearly it did wonders for your intellect,” Claudio said. “Shut up and get the thing ready for testing.”

  “You want we should find a recruit to—”

  “On me,” Claudio cut in. “We’re testing it on me.”

  Ambrose drew back, his eyes wide as he stared at his boss. It was then he realized common menthol drops were insufficient to repair what maladies resided in Claudio Florence’s brain.

  Thursday, August 30, 1888, London, England

  Claudio’s eyes were shut, but his nose was already assaulted. Sharp, sooty stenches assailed him—not mere smells, no, these assaults to his senses were stenches, hot and bestial—and he knew before opening his eyes that the process worked. It was coal and it was manure and nothing in the clean and tidy gardens of his southern compound just inland from Myrtle Beach. There it was salty sea air, singed car exhaust, and exotic flowers he imported from South America. Here…horses. Lots and lots of horses, and their hoof beats increased in volume from all directions, along with…no, he was still back in Ambrose’s laboratory, because that was his voice, wasn’t it?

  “Good clean fishes!” the voice rang out, always emphasizing the last syllable of its throaty cry. “Good hot breads! Good clean fishes!”

  Why was Ambrose telling him about bread and—oh. It wasn’t Ambrose. The tone was lighter, younger, though the accent was the same. Beneath him, Claudio could feel wetness seeping into his clothes, and there was a hard lump on the back of his head. He hoped it was something under him on the ground and not that he’d been injured and was now in the midst of developing a firm knot of swelling there.

  He let his eyes float open at last, and above him was sky, gray and unforgiving and on the verge of rain. Framing this desolate air were buildings coated in black from the visible smokestacks belching inky smoke. Claudio coughed. There was tightness in his lungs from the mere idea of inhaling that foul darkness.

  He sat up and spotted the food vendor.

  “Good clean fishes!” The boy was very young and very dirty, his clothing all colors identical to the sky and the smoke. Around him were other salespeople—saleschildren, in point of fact—holding out wilted flowers or dirty rolls. Claudio imagined trying to wrap his teeth around one of them and losing a crown in the process.

  “Soup only a pence! Soup only a pence!”


  Claudio’s head rang. The lump came with him from the street, causing Claudio to groan in pain. He stood on wobbly legs. His vision swam, leaving black streaks across his eyes for an instant, and he had a sudden urge to vomit. He looked around at a small alley adjacent to a wider thoroughfare—on market day, it appeared—and nearby was a rain barrel sitting beneath the sagging eaves of a pub. The nausea intensified, and Claudio heaved bœuf bourguignon and half a bottle of Spätburguner. Claudio thought through his sick, dizzy haze that the animal slaughtered for his meal wouldn’t be born for hundreds of years.

  The barrel reeked of red grape and hot, noxious sick, but as soon as Claudio raised his head, he smelled only the grime and horseshit. He suspected some of the latter resided on the sole of his right shoe, as there was a suspicious softness there with every other step.

  “You feelin’ a bit under the weather, luv? I got just the thing.”

  Claudio looked up to see a woman grinning at him.

  “Name’s Polly.” She batted her eyes and sidled up closer. “I got a bit o’ medicine back at me flat, if you’d like. It’s not far ’tall.”

  Claudio considered the offer. He had nothing in the way of appropriate money, but perhaps he could offer something in trade.

  The woman was snub-nosed, with her auburn hair in a messy topknot. Her clothes stank of drink and sweat, but there was a kind of devil-may-care appeal to her smile—yellowed teeth notwithstanding—that made Claudio think she could be an amusing companion for a few hours.

  Polly giggled when Claudio nodded and indicated that she should lead the way back to her place. “Won’t regret it, sir. I’m well taught in how to please a gent, if I do say so me self. Got some whiskey, too, if you’d like a nip.”

  “Sounds divine, fair Dulcinea. Do let’s make haste.”

  “Dulci-whatnow?” Polly asked. They walked together. “Oh, gov, you lookin’ for another girl? Said it was Polly, though me mum called me Mary. Never cared for that. Ah, ’ere we are.” She nodded up at one of the soot-colored buildings. A sign designating the place as an inn without a name hung half off its hinges above the door. “Not technically me own flat, but I’m paid up for a time.”