by Anthology
He’d aged terribly in just ten years. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin on his left cheek was mottled and red. He had a straggly grey beard and a nasty scar across his forehead. I could see his ribs through his grey t-shirt and his boots looked like they were held together with duct tape.
“Sell the stocks and the bonds and the house,” he said. “Buy some land in Montana. Learn how to shoot and hunt and ride a horse. Take a first aid course. And stock up on potassium iodide . . .”
GET ME TO THE JOB ON TIME
Ian Randal Strock
“Maybe it’s what you’d do with the knowledge that determines whether or not you’ll discover the secret of time travel.”
“What?” I asked the old man.
“I know for a fact that time travel is possible. I knew the man who discovered it. And you’ll never guess what he used his discovery for.”
Well, I didn’t believe that old man any more than you believe me, but we’d been waiting in that airport for four hours, so I humored him.
“All right, I’ll bite,” I said. “What did he use time travel for?”
“Wally didn’t need to see the pyramids getting built, or sail with Columbus, or even watch JFK’s assassination. What Wally wanted to do, more than anything, was get to work on time.”
An introduction like that demands a story, so I sat down and let him tell me.
Wally didn’t want fame [the old man said]. I think he would have been perfectly happy if no one but the payroll department knew his name. Did I mention we both worked in the same department?
Anyway, he loved his job. We were editors, and Wally simply loved being an editor; always got his work done on schedule, never made any mistakes, and there was no place he’d rather be.
But he had one big problem at work: Wally just could not get to work by 9:00 AM.
Some days it was a common excuse—train delays, doctor appointments, plumbing emergencies. And sometimes, the damnedest things happened to him—he got caught in hold-ups, subway hijackings, rat stampedes. Anything and everything, it seemed, conspired to keep Wally from getting to work on time.
And he could never understand it. On the one hand, his work was always done on time, and his lateness never affected anyone else—if I wanted to talk to Wally, I knew I had to wait ‘til late morning. On the other hand, he tried his hardest to get in on time, and the few times he made it, he’d usually left the house three hours early, and had been at his desk since 6:30. He just couldn’t win.
I never believed in a determinist universe, but in Wally’s case, I was starting to make an exception.
Discovering time travel, I think, was his calling. If he hadn’t, the perversity of the Universe would have been proven beyond all doubt.
One Monday, Wally and I both walked in the door at 9:00 on the dot. He wasn’t a few minutes late, nor screamingly early; he was precisely on time.
“Wally!” I said, “I’m stunned!”
“That’s two of us,” he said, and sat down to get to work.
I let the incident go, chalking it up to blind chance. I mean, if you’re working in a place for a couple of years, the odds have to favor walking in the door at 9:00 AM at least once, right?
Well, the next morning, wouldn’t you know it? He and I were in the same elevator, and on our floor at 9:00 on the tick.
“Okay Wally,” I said. “Two days in a row you’re on time. What gives? Are you leaving three hours early, and then waiting for me to get here on time?”
“No, no,” he stammered. “Nothing like that. It’s just . . . well . . . I think I’ve finally figured out how to get here on time.”
“How’d you do it?” I asked.
“Can you keep a secret?” I nodded. “I’ve discovered the secret of time travel.”
And he clammed up. Wouldn’t say another word. I looked over at him every now and again throughout the day, and when he caught my eye, he’d wink and smile a little, so I wasn’t sure if he’d been pulling my leg or not.
Come Friday, I couldn’t stand it. I sidled up to Wally’s desk about 9:30, and whispered to him, “Time travel, huh?”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said.
“So what time did you leave home to get here at 9:00?”
“You won’t believe me,” he said.
“Try me.”
“Today, I woke up at noon, watched the news, showered, ate breakfast about one this afternoon, took an uncrowded subway ride in to work, got to the lobby about quarter to two this afternoon, and then time-traveled back to 8:57 this morning. Then I stepped out from behind that big potted fern and joined the throng jostling for the elevators.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that cockamamie story?” I asked him.
“No, not really. But it’s the truth.” And he went back to work.
I sat down at my desk, staring at the papers in front of me and not seeing them. Then I gave up. I dialed Wally’s home phone number. It rang five times, and I was looking at Wally the whole time. On the sixth ring, a groggy Wally picked up; I knew his voice. I’m listening to Wally wake up on the phone while I’m watching him working at his desk not ten feet from me.
I hung up and went back to Wally’s desk.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “Before I woke up at noon, the phone woke me sometime in the morning, but there was no one there.”
I left the company a few years later, but by that time, I believed him. I think he really had found the secret to time travel.
I asked him about it at my going-away party. “If you’ve really discovered time travel, what are you going to do with it?”
“What do you mean, ‘do with it’?” he asked. “I get to work on time. Isn’t that enough?”
And the thing about Wally was, getting to work on time really was enough for him.
Then our flight was called. I boarded early to get to my seat in the back, while the old man waited for his row to be called. I figured I wouldn’t see him again.
On the plane, however, he smiled at me as I walked to the back.
And we landed two hours early.
GRANDFATHER PARADOX
Ian Stewart
A question of time.
I didn’t turn round.
I knew what was coming. It happened once a year, on his birthday. His choice: moral blackmail, perhaps? I sensed the misty shimmer forming in the corner of the room behind me, the impossible twists in directions that didn’t exist, the machinery and its increasingly haggard passenger solidifying from thin air.
On the sideboard was a faded monochrome picture: a confident young man and his beautiful new bride. Without turning, I spoke to the original.
“The answer’s still no, Hubert.”
“I’m not asking a lot,” he pleaded.
“Only murder,” I said, fingering the gun in my pocket. We went through the usual exchange. “If you don’t kill me, you didn’t get born.”
“I was born.”
“That’s because my causal loop is incomplete,” Hubert said angrily. “You’ve seen the analysis. You know what won’t happen if you let me live.” I had, and I did, and it made no more sense now than it had when The Beatles were recording Sergeant Pepper.
According to family tradition, Grandad had wanted to be an inventor, failed, and ended up running a pub. Actually, one invention had worked. I knew it was true. When a time machine materializes before your eyes, you believe.
Physicists and philosophers always say that time travel into the future is straightforward. It’s travelling into the past that creates the paradoxes. Grandad discovered that it’s not that simple.
The time machine had been Hubert’s only success, an ingenious application of Hamilton’s quaternions. He flight-tested it with a short hop into his own future, finding that he and his new bride Rosie were deliriously happy and a baby was on the way. Reassured and proud, he pushed the lever to return to the instant of his departure . . .
Nothing happened.
The machinery checked out, so he r
eworked the theory . . . and discovered a sign error. His machine could travel only into the future. By so doing, he had created a paradox. If he never got back . . . who had married Rosie?
He started skipping ahead a few weeks at a time, in a frantic search for inspiration. He haunted public libraries, boning up on physics and philosophy. As the years flicked by, he came to realize that he could never go back.
He watched his son’s christening, then his marriage. He was waiting outside the hospital when I was born. He developed a ‘chronoclastic calculus’ of space-time in an attempt to rationalize his fragmented life. Sitting in the back of the chapel at my father’s funeral, he suddenly understood what had to be done.
Time travel violates several conservation laws, but the Universe can borrow energy, momentum or matter—provided it repays the debt when the time machine returns to its starting point. Hubert’s dual existence broke no laws. So far. But it would if he could create a paradox so blatant that it could not be resolved by repaying what had been borrowed. This was why he kept begging me to kill him.
According to Grandad’s calculus, the basis of the Universe is not energy or information, but logic. If I killed him in my timeline he would never have invented his machine—so I wouldn’t be able to kill him. With its logical basis wrecked, the Universe would resolve the paradox by excising the time machine, and snap back to a consistent history in which Hubert married Rosie, with all of its consequences.
“You must help me!” he pleaded. His body trembled, his eyes were wild. His life now consisted of closely spaced episodes in which he begged me for death. It was a horrible way to live, and we were both becoming desperate.
Destroying the time machine wouldn’t help. Neither would suicide. Chronoclastic calculus allowed logic to be suspended inside the time machines causal loop, until the loop closed. The agent of his destruction had to be outside the loop, and it had to be a logical consequence of his hypothetical return to his past. That meant my dad, me or my kids . . . My kids!
This had to stop.
Grandad climbed reluctantly into his machine, hesitated, and pulled the start lever. As the machine began to fade, I took the gun from my pocket and shot him. I couldn’t risk aiming at the controls: I would have only one chance, and he was a bigger target.
I’d finally realized that his calculus was as defective as his machine. Yes, my timeline contained a grandfather who lived a happy life with his beloved Rosie—but it also contained a grandfather who materialized in a time machine. Hubert’s time-travelling causal loop was logically entangled with mine; if the Universe excised him, it would also excise me and my kids. So I trapped Grandad’s corpse in a frozen instant where no time passes and logic is suspended.
That faded photograph tells me I am no murderer. It lies. Oh, how it lies!
My grandfather wanted me to kill him, and when no other choice remained . . . I did.
And that’s the only reason why either of us was ever alive.
GREENWICH NASTY TIME
Carl Frederick
As somebody once said, “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be research.”
Leaning over the railing of the Red Osprey with Vicki at his side, Paul could make out not much more than the roiling of the sea. Midday, yet the mist lay heavy. The ferry had barely passed from the Southampton Water into the Solent, but still the English mainland appeared only as shadows. Their destination, the Isle of Wight just a few miles away, could not be seen at all.
“Timeless,” said Vicki softly.
Paul chuckled. “If it’s this bad at Shanklin, the navigation event will be a real challenge. We’ll hardly be able to see our own bikes, much less the markers.” He checked his watch—5:30 PM—and switched it to twenty-four-hour time in preparation for the event. “Map, compass, and odometer in the dark. Now that would be fun.”
His cell phone rang, startling them both. Paul pulled the phone from his jeans pocket. “My thesis advisor,” he said, gazing at the outside display. He flipped open the phone and, so Vicki wouldn’t feel left out, switched on the speaker.
“Hi, Dr. Richardson.”
“Paul. I think I have something of an idea.”
Paul rolled his eyes. His advisor seemed to start every conversation the same way—almost as if “I think I have something of an idea” meant hello. “About the project?” said Paul to fill the void.
“We know the EPR waves are a surface phenomenon—solid surface.” Richardson spoke with both his usual enthusiasm and his characteristic Boston accent. “They won’t propagate through liquids. I’m sure the waves would be amplified if surrounded by water.” Paul heard the sound of a hand slapping a desk. “If I were back at Harvard, I’d just bundle the experiment into my sailboat and run it from the middle of the Charles. The wave amplification is what we’ve overlooked.”
“We wouldn’t want it too amplified,” said Paul. “If you’re right about the theory, it could be dangerous.”
“Of course I’m right. You do have the capsule with you, yes?”
“What?” said Paul, momentarily disoriented by the seeming non sequitur. “Yes. I take it everywhere with me.”
“Good. By the way, where exactly are you?”
Paul smiled at Vicki. “Vicki and I are on our way to the Wight Wabbit Mountain Bike Festival—on the Isle of Wight.”
“Vicki?”
“She’s not a physics student.”
“Oh,” said Richardson. “Dating civilians, are you?” he added with a smile in his voice.
“And a native,” said Paul lightly. “She was born in Southampton. She studies Brit Lit.”
“Well, enjoy yourselves—but keep the capsule close. Might need it soon. Maybe even tonight.” Paul heard a click as Richardson broke the connection.
Paul blew out a breath and returned the phone to his pocket.
“Is he always so abrupt?” said Vicki.
Paul nodded. “Always.”
“And civilian?”
Paul laughed. “Non-physicist.” An outline in the mist caught his attention. “Hey! Land ho!”
“Cowes, I think—our destination.” Vicki paused. “By the way, what was all that about a capsule?”
“I haven’t told you anything about my work, have I?”
Vicki smiled. “Are you allowed to tell civilians?”
“I am, but . . . but only if they’re unlikely to understand it.” He nodded over to a stairwell. “Come on. Let’s go down to the entrance level. I’ll explain it as we go.” He hefted his pack to his shoulders. “Have you heard of the multiworld theory of quantum mechanics?”
“You mean that the Universe splits into multiple universes sometimes?” Vicki hoisted her knapsack as well.
“Yeah. Whenever there’s a quantum event.” Paul was impressed. “You may not be the civilian I thought you were. Well,” he went on, “my advisor is the creator of the micromultiworld theory.”
“That theory,” said Vicki, “I haven’t heard of.”
“Not many have.” Paul led the way to the stairs. “Richardson says it’s too much to ask that the entire vast Universe split at every quantum event. He believes that only the region directly surrounding the event splits.”
“Which means?”
“He believes that a similar region from a parallel universe is switched in—a corresponding region of space, but not necessarily the same time. He believes the vacuum fluctuations are really just these little regions being swapped in and out.”
“I don’t know what vacuum fluctuations are,” said Vicki. “But you keep saying ‘he believes it.’ Do you?”
“Me?” Paul bit his lip, pausing on the stairs before answering. “I don’t know—but the work should get me a Ph.D.—which is why I followed him when he came here on sabbatical.”
A few minutes later, the Red Osprey slid into its berth. Paul and Vicki collected their bicycles and wheeled them into the Cowes terminal.
“Your advisor mentioned an experiment,” said Vicki as they we
nt.
“The idea is to force a measurable region to swap in from another universe.”
“But you said it was dangerous.”
“Well, it’s possible that we could really mess up space and time.”
Vicki stopped, cold. “You’re not serious?”
Paul laughed. “No, I’m not. Even if the experiment is wildly successful, a small region around Richardson would swap with a region from a different time—but only for an instant.”
“Well, that sounds sort of dangerous.”
“But unlikely,” said Paul. “Very, very unlikely.”
Vicki gave him a long look. “You’re not just saying this to make me not worry, are you?” She glanced at his pack. “This capsule you always have with you. What is it? And is that dangerous?”
“It’s perfectly safe. It’s an EPR experiment, but with a very large number of particles. I have one capsule and Dr. Richardson has the other.” Paul gesticulated with the hand not guiding his bike. “Each capsule is in a single EPR superposition. If I were to measure the capsule’s quantum state, Richardson’s capsule would collapse to a single eigenstate—and that should trigger a region swap. A short time later, the swap would reverse. And if it didn’t, then when my capsule is moved to Richardson’s location—his nexus, as we call it—the swap would be forced to reverse.” He glanced at her and saw a puzzled expression. “I’d better explain it more slowly.”
“No, don’t,” she said. “Don’t explain. I think I’ll go back to being a civilian.”
Outside the terminal, they mounted their mountain bikes for the short ride to Newport where they’d buy provisions for the weekend. Paul noted that now the air was clear. No problem with navigation here. He glanced out across the Solent, but the English mainland was still invisible in the sea mist.
Just outside a grocer’s shop in Newport, they dismounted. Just then, Paul’s phone rang. “It’s Richardson,” said Paul, looking at the Caller ID. “Why don’t you go in and get what we need? I’ll stay out here and watch the bikes—and deal with Richardson.” He flipped open the phone and again for Vicki’s sake activated the speaker.
