"It sure looks like it," she replied. "We followed the family line right down and it came to you." With an odd smile, she told him, "You are both the acorn that fell off the branch, and the acorn that became the seed."
"I think I liked it better when I thought I was just the sap," he joked, though his mind was racing at a rate of roughly a million miles an hour.
He continued pacing, occasionally stopping and starting to say something, then shaking his head and continuing to move. Finally, Heather said, "Garison, you're rubbing a rut in the carpet!"
He waved a hand and said, "We'll buy the motel a new one. Lord knows they haven't in some time." After a while, he sat down beside her and said, "This may explain the nausea."
"What do you mean?"
"The nausea, the headaches. Maybe I was actually...rewriting my genetic code. Anyway, think of what this means, Heather."
"And what is that?"
"Think of the old time-line. I was still the son of Robert Fitch and the grandson of Calvin Fitch, wasn't I?"
"I guess so. I mean, you'd know better than I. So what?"
"Then, trace that family line backwards to its origin. Who was the founding father of that line?"
"You?" she hesitated, unaware where he was going. She was still trying to work out the basic concept and had not moved on to cause and effect or any sort of extrapolation.
"I couldn't have been! For me to have been my own ancestor in that time line, I would have had to have been in the eighteenth century and that means I would have somehow let George die."
"You've lost me, Garison," she told him with a shrug.
He stood up and paced for another minute. Finally, he stopped in front of her and said, "Consider this: I am my own ancestor, right?"
"That's the way it looks now."
"Now, if someone else were my ancestor, then I would have been screwing everything up by marrying Sarah. See? if someone else had been married to Sarah in the other time line, then I would have ceased to exist at the moment Justin was born."
"Why?"
"Because Justin is my child. I know that for a fact. He has half of my chromosomes within him. If—well, look at it this way: Let's say my ancestor is John Doe. He marries Sarah and thus, their children have half of his chromosomes, right?
"Well, then, father begats son until my father begats me. Even though this is two hundred years later, I still carry some of John Doe's chromosomes. By that time, it is, maybe, one chromosome. I, obviously, don't know genetics as well as I do physics. But, anyway, that chromosome makes up just as much of me as the other ones do.
"Now, here I come back in time and it is me that meets Sarah and marries her, rather than John Doe. She becomes pregnant and gives birth to Justin. Justin does not have John Doe's chromosomes to pass down through the ages and, thus, I cease to exist."
Heather rose with a look somewhere between horror and understanding as she said, "So, what you are saying is that, somehow, you were your own grandfather in the other time-line, too?"
"Yes," he said, a grave expression on his face. "I don't know how, but somehow, I began—or begat—the family that lived through Soviet times just like I did the Fitchs in this timeline. Somehow, I went back in time and did not save George Washington."
Heather got up and started to walk away before Garison asked, "Where are you going?"
"To get some aspirin out of my make-up kit. This is giving me a headache."
He caught up with her and said, "I hope there's enough for me in that bottle."
"So," Heather asked, after they had both taken aspirin and sat quietly to sort things out and let the medication take effect. "If you were your own ancestor in the Soviet world, where did that guy come from?"
"Huh?" Garison asked, interrupted from another bit of reverie.
"You saved George Washington's life, right?"
"Yes."
"Well, for there to have been a Soviet world, George Washington would have had to die. For there to have been a you in the Soviet world, there had to have been a Garison Fitch as your ancestor there, too, right?"
"Right, I think," Garison nodded, beginning to see where she was going, though not sure.
"So, where did he come from?"
"A third time line?" Garison asked, afraid to even broach the subject. Would that mean he had a third set of memories he had not yet accessed? Would they start popping up soon? And of what sort of world would they be? Were the French in charge in that one? he wondered sardonically.
"If that's true," Heather told him, "It means that there had to be still one more Garison Fitch on that third time line who was the ancestor of that Garison Fitch. Then, there had to be another—"
"I see what you mean," he interrupted. "For what I have hypothesized—me being my own ancestor in a third time line—to be true, we would have to have an infinite number of time lines. This would also necessitate an infinite number of Garison Fitchs. And if that were true—"
"If that were true," Heather said, "I don't think you would have picked up the memories of the Garison Fitch I have known these last few years."
"Why not?"
"Because it seems to me you would have picked up the memories of either all the Garisons or none of them. It makes sense to me that there could only be two of you." She paused, held up her entire hand, and corrected, "No, wait, none of this makes much sense, but some of the chaos makes more sense than the rest of it. Follow me?"
It occurred to Garison to marvel at the differences between the female mind and the male mind. Men often, he thought, backed themselves hopelessly into a corner with their overly concrete thought. It then took a woman with the ability to see beyond—or through—the concrete to pull the man from the corner. Sarah had done this for him more than once, and it appeared that Heather had the same life-saving abilities. Although she was currently shoving him further into a corner of confusion, it seemed like she had a light for the end of the tunnel if she could just get to it.
She took out a piece of paper and a pencil she had found somewhere since asking Garison for his pen. Horizontally across the paper, she drew several lines. Going to a line in the middle of the page she put a dot. She explained, "Now, let's say this dot is you. You are born here, so we will mark this spot 1975, and then we move down the time line" [to the right] "a short distance to 2005. At this point, you travel back in time."
She drew a line going from the 2005 dot on the first time line to a point on the line below it, but back to the left, marking the spot 1739. She explained, "What we have just been saying, is that this time line is a separate time line entirely, right? You jump on it, father Justin Fitch, then jump forward to 2005—on this second time line, right?" She made a dot on the line just below the 2005 dot she had made on the first line and colored in a space between the 1739 dot and the 2005 dot.
"Right," Garison nodded.
"That means, that this other time line—the Russian one—still exists, you're just not on it anymore. So, if another Garison Fitch from a third time line," she indicated the line above the first one she had marked with years, "Did the same thing, he is now living on your time line in the year 2005. He's dealing with the Russians and the Japanese war and all that. For this to be true, it means that a Garison Fitch from each of these time lines jumped to the line below him. That's what we're saying, right?"
"Yes, so?" It was very confusing, but he had been able to follow her so far.
"My Garison Fitch didn't jump. I know; you are my Garison Fitch. And, you being him, it means he did not jump to the next time line, but, instead, stayed here, on his original line."
He struggled to understand what she was getting at, but could not. He did, however, know she was right in saying that he was both Garisons mixed into one. He knew that to be true. It was not something he could have explained, but he knew it for a fact. It was not as if he had become possessed by a spirit, he had just completely merged somehow.
"So," he said, "Tell me what you're thinking. Your last move has
me so confused I can no longer guess."
She turned the paper over and drew one line across it. She drew a short cross line on it and wrote in "1975" above the cross line. She darkened the line (moving to the right) to a point marked "2005."
She explained, "This is you, in your old time line. At this point—marked 2005—you launched yourself back in time to land here," she drew another cross line far to the left and wrote in "1739" above the cross line.
She continued, "It's my contention that you re-entered the same time line you left from when you went back in time. You married and had children by Sarah Fitch, and saved the life of George Washington. That act changed the future for everyone. By doing that, the time line you were born in was not destroyed—it never even existed."
He pointed to his head and said, "But I know it did. It is all up here. Are you saying I am making all this up?"
"No," she told him truthfully. "I believe all those events happened to you. I believe you were born in that time. But you are the only one. No one else was ever born in that time. Those people, those events, they never existed. When this time line that you and I are sitting in now came into being, it meant that time line would never happen. Do you see what I'm saying? The only reason you did not cease to exist was because—by marrying Sarah—you produced the offspring that would one day lead to you."
"Yes," he nodded, though not fully comprehending. "But, if that's true, it still begs the question of who my ancestor was. Was another time line destroyed by—"
"That's what I've been saying," Heather said, a little testily. "If that were true, then no time line could ever exist. You and I could not be here now because these circular events would never allow a time line to exist beyond that morning you went back in time."
"Then who is my ancestor?" he asked.
She shook her head and began to laugh. She told him, "You know, you have completely overpowered that aspirin I took a while ago." She took a deep breath and said, "You are your own ancestor—present tense. That other time line never existed, because you saved a little boy. Maybe our small minds were not intended to comprehend such incredible things, but you were—are your own ancestor and there's only one time line.
"I would bet," she said, thinking, "That your hypothesis about changing yourself at the genetic level is correct. If we could somehow take a blood sample from you before you went back in time, then another one now, I bet there's a genetic difference.
"Remember what your mother said about the cone? I heard you two talking about it while I did my hair and I caught most of it. If you went back in time and—pardon me if this concept is gross—fathered a child with your own mother, that child would not be you. But you went back far enough along the cone that you changed your genetic structure but didn't destroy it."
She counted on her fingers and said, "There are either eight or nine 'greats' in there, right? Add in the wives in question and we have sixteen or eighteen people. If you replace your father, you are fifty percent different and, basically, don't exist. But you replaced one part out of sixteen. Statistically speaking, that's not very much. Throw in that those eight or nine wives also had ancestors, and your percentage of what you contribute or bring to a family line further diminishes. Toss in all the odds that go into eighteen couples meeting—especially when you consider the USA timeline verses the Soviet timeline—and I think your part becomes even smaller, maybe.
"The Garison Fitch I know and love built a machine. He may not have traveled back in time. I can't believe he would have married anyone else. But, where ever it was he went on his experiment—and maybe you'll be able to remember that eventually—when he came back he was you. And you, are your own ancestor."
"But how could I be?"
She paused, then a light came on in her head and she explained, "Didn't you say a minute ago that, when you married Sarah you should have destroyed yourself because you would have changed that one gene or chromosome, or whatever?"
"Yes."
"There's your answer. There was another progenitor of your line and your father is the proof."
"Huh?"
Heather pointed out, "You told me that both you and your father were only children, right? But you're not now. Your grandfather and father from your other time line must have carried some gene that made it difficult for them to produce children. Low count, or something," she hypothesized uncomfortably. "But when you married Sarah—instead of whoever was supposed to marry Sarah—you provided a different gene, one that wasn't going to break down in two hundred years."
"So how did I get the name 'Fitch.'"
"From Sarah's first husband," Heather replied, then wished instantly she hadn't said it quite that way, realizing it hurt him to think of it as much as it hurt her to think of him being married to Sarah. She quickly added, "His name carried down to you, then got carried through the line again when you went back."
"I agree most of all on one point," Garison finally said after a long pause.
"What's that?"
"Our small minds cannot comprehend what has happened here."
Chapter Twenty-five
Garison and Heather talked until the wee hours of the morning, though they stopped understanding what they were talking about long before they ceased conversing. When they finally did turn off the lights and lay down in their separate beds to sleep, it had taken them both nearly an hour to drive the myriad thoughts from their minds. Both had slept fitfully at first, though Heather eventually relaxed enough to actually rest.
Garison found himself awake at his usual time of six-thirty and, unable to go back to sleep, took his cousin's book into the bathroom where he could turn on the light and read. It was a chilly morning, so he continually restarted the timed heater as he read through the book as quickly as he could.
In the back of the book, Maureen Carnes had provided several charts which chronicled all the branches of the Fitch family she had been able to find in the early nineteen fifties. While she only went into detail about the "Colorado branch" she was from, she had gone beyond yeoman's work in putting together the extended tree. Garison scanned the later names out of curiosity and was surprised to find that—as of 1955, at any rate—a family of Fitchs was living in nearby Alexandria. Garison slipped into the bedroom and pulled out a Greater Alexandria phone book then crept back into the bathroom and looked for "David Fitch" or "Donnell Fitch." He was surprised to find both.
Heather knocked on the bathroom door just then and asked sleepily, "Garison, are you all right?"
"Uh, yeah. Why do you ask?"
"Because you're hanging out in the bathroom." Touching her tummy lightly, she told him, "I'm the one who's supposed to be doing that at this point in the pregnancy."
He opened the door just then and almost blinded her as the light from the bathroom spilled into the still shade-darkened bedroom. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, he told her, "You're not going to believe this, but I think I found one of my descendants living right here in Alexandria."
Still trying to adjust to the light, and feeling as if the previous night's discussion had left her with a hangover, she only replied, "Really?"
He nodded and anxiously went over to the bed, turning on what was to her another blinding light. He put his hand on the telephone and told her, "I'm going to call and see if there's anybody home—and if it's the right person."
"Isn't it kind of early to be calling strangers?"
"You're still on Colorado time. It's eight o'clock, here. I'm going to call."
"You do that. I think I'll throw up and then take a shower."
He looked up sympathetically, but commented, "I thought you said all you ever got was nauseated."
Just before darting into the restroom, closing the door, and turning on the vent fan to drown out any noise she might make, she told him, "I guess the rules have changed."
Garison dialed the number in the book and was quickly answered by a low but friendly voice. Garison said, "You don't know me, but my last name is Fitc
h, too. I got a hold of an old book about the family and it listed a David Fitch living in Alexandria, Virginia, and I was wondering if you were the right David Fitch." After the man's reply, Garison asked, "Was your father Wesley Allen Fitch? Great! I know you don't know me from Adam, but could I come visit you this morning? I'm in town." After Garison had gotten the directions, he thanked the man and hung up.
When Heather came out of the restroom, already dressed for the day though her hair was still wet, Garison told her where they were going as soon as he had showered. With concern, she asked, "Why are you trying so hard to delay reading Sarah's letter?"
He shrugged and replied, "I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm afraid the letter might not be there after all this time. It has been two hundred and nineteen years. But really, I think the 'deep down reason' is that I know this letter will be the last contact I ever have with Sarah and I want to make it last."
Heather shook her head, "This won't be your last contact with her." At his puzzled glance, she put her hand over his heart and assured him, "She'll always be right here with you."
He took her hand in his, then leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. He whispered, "I'm remembering why I married you. I'm also really sorry that I haven't done a good enough job of telling you these last three years."
She looked him in the eyes and smiled, "These last couple days, when I started realizing my Garison—you—you were still in there somewhere, " she touched his head, "I started telling myself that this would be a new start. But maybe I need to tell you that, Garison. I need to tell you that I love you and that I'm making a new start and I don't want to repeat our old—my old mistakes."
After a hesitation, he said, "I can't even tell you what I've been thinking over these last few days. I'm not even sure myself. And, well, this isn't going to make much sense, but, well, the me that has been married to you for three years really wants to do a better job of being a husband—and start a good job of being a father."
He was a man in his late eighties and he lived in a fairly large house just to the south of town and his name was David Bryan Fitch. He was sitting on his front porch in a rocking chair when Garison and Heather had shown up in their rented car. He smiled and waved, although he looked a little suspicious.
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time Page 33
