The Map of Time

by Félix J Palma

  “Oh that … ,” said the traveler, waving his hand in the air.

  “I assure you those three people were going to die anyway. Guy, the tramp in Marylebone, would have been killed the following night in a fight with the one of his fellow vagrants; Mr. Chambers was to have died three days later when someone robbed him outside his tavern; and on the morning of the same day the lov-able Mrs. Ellis would have been fatally knocked down by a runa-way coach in Cleveland Street. In fact, all I did was bring forward their deaths by a few days. Indeed, the reason why I chose them was because they were doomed to die, and I needed three people I could eliminate with our weapons so that their murders, together with the fragments from your unpublished novels, would be reported in the newspapers where you would learn about them. I knew that once I had convinced you I came from the future, I only had to let you know the meeting place, and your curiosity would do the rest.” “Is it true, then?” asked Stoker. “Do you really come from the year 2000?” The traveler gave a wry smile.

  “I come from a long way beyond the year 2000, where, by the way, there is no war with the automatons. If only those little toys were our main problem—” “What are you insinuating?” said Stoker, incredulously. “Everybody knows that in the year 2000 the automatons will have conquered—” “What I’m insinuating, Mr. Stoker,” the traveler interrupted, “is that Murray’s Time Travel is nothing but a hoax.” “A hoax?” the Irishman spluttered.

  “Yes, a rather clever hoax, but a hoax all the same, although unfortunately only the passage of time will reveal that,” their host informed them, grinning smugly at the three writers. Then he looked again at the Irishman, touched by his gullibility. “I hope you aren’t one of Murray’s victims, Mr. Stoker.” “No, no …” murmured the writer, with gloomy relief, “the tickets are beyond my means.” “In that case you should be happy that at least you haven’t wasted your money,” the traveler congratulated him. “I am sorry you’re so disappointed to discover the journeys to the year 2000 are no more than a charade, but look on the bright side: the person telling you this is a real time traveler: as you will have deduced from the maps I left in your letter boxes, not only do I come from the future, but I am able to move along the time continuum in both directions.” The wind was howling outside, yet inside the haunted house all that could be heard were the sputtering candles flames that cast suggestive shadows on the walls. The time traveler’s voice sounded oddly smooth, as if his throat were lined with silk, when he said: “But before I tell you how I do it, allow me to introduce myself. I do not want to give you the impression that we in the future have forgotten the basic social graces. My name is Marcus Rhys, and I am, in a manner of speaking, a librarian.” “A librarian?” said James, suddenly interested.

  “Yes, a librarian, although at a very special library. But allow me to begin at the beginning. As you have seen, man will gain the ability to travel in time, but don’t imagine that where I come from we have time machines like the one in your novel, Mr. Wells, or that time travel is the order of the day. No, during the next century, scientists, physicists, mathematicians all over the world will become embroiled in never-ending debates about the possibility or impossibility of time travel. Theories will abound on how to achieve it, all of which will run up against the immutable nature of the universe, which, regrettably, lacks many of the physical characteristics necessary for them to test their theories. Somehow it seems as though the universe had been created impervious to time travel, as though God himself had reinforced his creation against this aberration of nature.” The traveler fell silent for a few moments, during which he took the opportunity to scrutinize his audience with his forceful gaze, his eyes as black as two rat holes. “Even so, scientists in my time will refuse to admit defeat and will persist in trying to find a way of fulfilling man’s deepest longing: to be able to travel along the time continuum in any direction he pleases. But all their efforts will prove in vain. Do you know why? Because in the end time travel will not be achieved through science.” Then Marcus began pacing around the halo of light, as though to stretch his legs, pretending to be oblivious of the writers” curious stares. Finally, he went back to his position and his face cracked into a smile.

  “No, the secret of time travel has always been in our heads,” he revealed, almost gleefully. “The mind’s capacity is infinite, gentlemen.” The candles continued to sputter as the traveler, with his smooth, downy voice, sympathized with them because science in their time was still a long way from envisaging the enormous potential of the human mind, having scarcely moved on from studying the skull to examining its contents to try to understand the functioning of the brain, albeit through primitive methods such as ablation and applying electrical stimuli.

  “Ah, man’s brain …” he sighed. “The biggest puzzle in the universe weighs only four hundred grams, and it may surprise you to know we use only a fifth of its capacity. What we might achieve if we could use it all remains a mystery even to us. What we do know, gentlemen, is that one of the many marvels hidden beneath its cortex is the ability to travel in time.” He paused again. “Although to be honest, even our scientists cannot identify the exact mechanism that enables us to travel along the time continuum.

  But one thing is clear: man’s brain is equipped with some sort of superior awareness that allows him to move through time in the same way as he moves through space. And even though he is far from being able to harness it, he can activate it, which is already a huge accomplishment, as I am sure you can imagine.” “Our brains …” whispered Stoker, with childlike awe.

  Marcus gazed at him fondly, but did not let this distract him from his explanation: “We don’t know exactly who the first time traveler was, that is to say the first person to suffer a spontaneous displacement in time, as we call it, because the earliest cases were isolated. In fact, if we have any knowledge of those initial displacements it is thanks to the esoteric and other journals devoted to paranor-mal activity. However, the numbers of people claiming they had suffered such episodes began to increase steadily, although at a slow enough rate for the strange phenomenon to continue to pass unnoticed, except by a handful of mad prophets whom people usually ignore. By the middle of our century, the world suddenly experienced an epidemic of time travelers who appeared to come from nowhere. But the fact is they existed, as if the ability to move along the time continuum were the next step on Darwin’s evolutionary ladder. It seemed that, faced with an extreme situation, certain people could activate areas of their brains which snatched them from the present as if by magic, and propelled them forwards or backwards in time. Even though they were still a minority and unable to control their ability, theirs was clearly a dangerous talent. As you can imagine, it was not long before the Government created a department responsible for rounding up people showing this ability to study them and help them develop their skills in a controlled environment.

  Needless to say, registration with the department was not voluntary. What Government would have allowed people who possessed a talent like that to roam free? No, Homo temporis, as they came to be referred to, had to be supervised. Be that as it may, the study of those affected did succeed in throwing some light on the strange phenomenon: it was discovered, for example, that the time travelers did not move through the time continuum at a constant speed until the inertia of the impulse was used up and they came to a halt, as in the case of Mr. Wells’s machine.

  Instead, they moved instantaneously from place to place, leaping through the void as it were, only able to control whether they landed in the past or in the future through intuition, as with the initial leap. One thing seemed clear: the further they traveled, the more their energy was depleted after the journey.

  Some took several days to recover, while others remained in a comatose state from which they never recovered. They also discovered that if they concentrated very hard, they could transport objects and even people with them on their leaps through time, although the latter proved doubly exhausting. In any even
t, once they had understood as much as they could about the mechanism in the mind that enabled people to travel in time, the most pressing question, the one that had given rise to heated debates even before time travel became a reality, still remained to be answered: could the past be changed or was it unalterable? Many physicists maintained that if someone traveled into the past, say, with the intention of shooting someone, the gun would explode in their hands because the universe would automatically realign itself. They assumed the universe must possess some sort of self-awareness designed to protect its integrity, which would prevent the person from dying, because they had not died. However, by means of a series of controlled experiments based on making tiny adjustments to the recent past, they discovered time had no such protective mechanism.

  It was as vulnerable as a snail without its shell. History, everything that had already taken place, could be changed. And this discovery, as you can imagine, caused an even bigger uproar than time travel itself. Suddenly, man had the power to modify the past. Unsurprisingly, most people saw this as God’s way of giving humanity a free hand to correct its mistakes. The logical thing was to prevent past genocides and afflictions, to weed out the errors of history, so to speak, for what lies ahead, gentlemen, is truly dreadful, far worse than in your innocent tale, Mr. Wells. Imagine all the good that time travel could do for humanity. For instance, it would be possible to eradicate the plague that devastated London, causing a hundred thousand deaths before the fire of 1666 ironically stamped it out.” “Or the books in the library at Alexandria that could be saved from being engulfed by flames,” suggested James.

  Marcus gave a derisive smirk.

  “Yes, a million and one things could be done. And so, with the blessing of the people, the government called on a group of doctors and mathematicians to analyze the set of aberrations that made up the past, in order to decide which acts deserved to be wiped out and to predict how this would affect the fabric of time, for there was no reason to make things worse. However, not everyone was happy, and voices were instantly raised against the Restoration Project, as it was called. Some considered this happy manipulation of the past that the Government was about to embark on unethical, and one section of the population did everything it could to try to sabotage it. This faction—let us call it conservative, which was gaining more followers by the day—argued that we must learn to live with the mistakes of the past, for better or for worse. Things being as they were, the Government found it more and more difficult to continue with the project.

  Then everything permanently ground to a halt when the time travelers, fearful of becoming the target of a new wave of xeno-phobia, began fleeing through time in all directions, creating an inevitable wave of panic throughout society. All at once, the past had become soft clay in the hands of anyone who felt like altering it for personal gain or simply by accident. Suddenly, the history of the world was in jeopardy.” “But, how can we know when someone has altered the past if in so doing they change the present?” asked Wells. “We have no way of knowing whether someone is manipulating History; we would only experience the consequences.” “I applaud your perspicacity, Mr. Wells,” said Marcus, pleasantly surprised by the author’s question. “According to the laws of time, the consequences of any change to the past are transmitted along the time continuum, modifying everything in their path, like the ripples from a stone tossed into a pond. Consequently, as you have pointed out, it would be impossible to detect any manipulation, because the ripples produced by this change would affect our present as well as our memories,” he paused, before adding, with a mischievous grin. “Unless of course we had a backup copy of the world with which to compare it.” “A backup?” “Yes, call it what you will,” replied the traveler. “I’m referring to a collection of books, newspapers, and other material documenting as exhaustively as possible everything that has happened up until the present, the whole history of mankind. Like a portrait of the true face of the universe, you understand, one that enables us to detect at once any anomaly, however small.” “I see,” murmured Wells.

  “And this is something the Government has been working on since the first epidemic of time travelers, with the aim of preventing anyone from unlawfully manipulating the past,” Marcus declared. “But there was one problem: where could such an archive be kept safe from the harmful ripples caused by any changes?” The writers gazed at him, enthralled.

  “There was only one possible place,” the traveler answered his own question. “At the beginning of time.” “The beginning of time?” asked Stoker.

  Marcus nodded.

  “The Oligocene epoch, the third epoch of the Tertiary period in the Cenozoic era, to be precise, before Man had set foot on the Earth, when the world was the preserve of rhinoceroses, mas-todons, wolves, and the earliest versions of primates. A period no traveler could go to without linking various leaps—with all the risk entailed, and where there was no reason to go because there was nothing to change. In tandem with the project aimed at training time travelers, the Government had in the strictest secrecy organized what we could call an elite team, made up of the most gifted and loyal travelers. Evidently, the team’s mission was none other than to transport the world’s memory back to the Oligocene epoch. After countless journeys, the chosen travelers, of which, as you will have guessed, I was one, built a sanctuary there to house the world’s knowledge in. The place was also to become our home, for a large part of our lives would be spent in that epoch. Surrounded by immense grasslands we were almost afraid to step on, we would live and bring up our children, whom we would teach to use their talent, as we had done, in order to travel through the millennia, keeping watch over History, that timeline which began in the Oligocene epoch and ended at the precise moment when the Government decided to scrap the Restoration Project. Yes, that is where our jurisdiction ends, gentlemen. Any time beyond that moment is unguarded, for it is assumed that the physiognomy of the future can absorb any changes the time travelers might bring about because it occurred after they appeared.

  The past, on the other hand, is considered sacred and must remain immutable. Any manipulation of it is a crime against the natural order of time.” The traveler folded his arms and paused for a few moments, studying his audience warmly. His voice sounded eager when he took up again: “We call the place where the world’s memory is stored the Library of Truth. I am one of its librarians, the one responsible for guarding the nineteenth century. In order to carry out my task, I travel from the Oligocene epoch to here, stopping off in each decade to make sure everything is in order. However, even I, who am capable of making jumps spanning tens of centuries, find the journey here exhausting. I have to travel more than twenty million years, and the librarians who guard what for you is the future have to cover an even greater distance. That is why the timeline we are protecting is dotted with what we call nests, a secret network of houses and places where we travelers can stop off to make our journeys less exhausting. And this house, of course, is one of them. What better place than a derelict building that will stand empty until the end of the century and is allegedly haunted by an evil ghost that keeps intruders at bay.” Marcus fell silent again, giving them to understand he had finished his explanation.

  “And what state is our world in, have you discovered any anomalies?” Stoker asked, amused. “Are there more flies than there should be?” The time traveler indulged the Irishman’s jest but with a strangely sinister chuckle.

  “I usually always find some anomaly,” he declared in a somber voice. “Actually, my job is rather entertaining: the nineteenth century is one of the time travelers” preferred eras for tampering with, perhaps because in many cases their interference has extreme consequences. And no matter how many of their muddles I sort out, nothing is ever as I left it when I come back. I wasn’t expecting it to be any different this visit, of course.” “What has gone wrong this time?” asked James.

  Wells could not help noticing the note of caution in the American’s voice, as though
he were not completely sure he wanted to know the answer. Might it be the men’s clubs, those luxurious redoubts where he took refuge from the loneliness that stuck to him like a birthmark? Perhaps they had never existed prior to a couple of time travelers deciding to found the first one, and now they would all have to close down so that the universe could go back to its original form.

  “This may surprise you gentlemen, but nobody should ever have captured Jack the Ripper.” “Are you serious?” asked Stoker.

  Marcus nodded.

  “I’m afraid so. He was arrested because a time traveler alerted the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Jack the Ripper was caught thanks to this “witness,” who chose to remain anonymous. But in reality that is not what should have happened. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of this time traveler from the future, Bryan Reese, the sailor known as Jack the Ripper, after murdering the prostitute on November 7, 1888, would have boarded a ship bound for the Caribbean as planned. There he would have pursued his bloodlust, murdering several people in Managua. Owing to the distances involved, no one would ever link these crimes with the murdered East End whores. Thus, for the purposes of history, Jack the Ripper would have disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving behind him the unsolved mystery of his identity, over which as much ink would be spilled as the blood that had flowed under his knife, and which throughout the ensuing century would become the favorite pastime of researchers, detectives, and amateurs, who would all root around in Scotland Yard’s archives, desperate to be the first to put a face to the shadow time had converted into a gruesome legend. It may surprise you to know that some of the investigations pointed the finger of suspicion at a member of the royal household. It would appear that anyone can have a reason for ripping a whore’s guts out. In this case, as you can see, popular imagination outstripped reality. I imagine the traveler responsible for the modification couldn’t resist finding out the monster’s true identity. And as you deduced, Mr. Wells, no alteration was detected and everyone fell victim to the ripple effect, like the rest of the universe, for that matter. But this is an easy change for me to sort out. In order to set history straight, I only need travel back to November 7 to prevent the time traveler from alerting George Lusk’s Vigilance Committee. Perhaps you don’t consider this particular change to be for the better, and I wouldn’t disagree, but I must prevent it all the same, for as I explained, any manipulation of the past is a criminal offense.” “Does this mean we are living in … a parallel universe?” asked Wells.