Time Twisters

by RABE, JEAN

  The old DVD-R drive ground to a stop, and David’s finger jabbed the green Play button.

  The two scientists’ heads drew close as they watched the flickering image on the small, black-and-white monitor. Jack Hollister, their partner and coinventor of the temporal displacement chamber, as it was officially referred to in all top secret government documents, stepped into their time machine and disappeared in the space between two seconds.

  Jack walked down the street in a daze, numb with the idea that their machine could actually transport a human being back in time. But the scientist’s part of his mind chided him. Twelve minutes left, Jack, better hurry.

  Shaking his head, Jack squinted up at the sun and the impossibly blue sky over his head—did people really live with all this light a century ago? Apparently so, he thought, and quickened his pace, scanning the houses on both sides of the street. Five buildings down, he found the one he was looking for.

  It was nearly indistinguishable from the rest on the block, a low-eaved, brown brick two-story home with an open porch and steps that led up to the recessed front door. Jack almost started marching up the sidewalk, then realized his folly with his very first step. Yeah, and what am I going to say to them? “Hi, I’m from the future, and I’m here to talk to your foster child for a few minutes?” He wasn’t even sure how she would react upon seeing him, especially dressed the way he was.

  Jack shook his head. He had tried to pick a time when the young girl might have been outside, but the stress of planning the unauthorized trip in the first place—not to mention the completely unknown effect of spatial and temporal dilation on time travel in the first place—had made positing an exact time nearly impossible. But if he didn’t see her in the next eleven minutes, everything he had sacrificed—his career, his life, such as it was back home, would have been for nothing.

  But isn’t that exactly what you’re going to be sacrificing in a few minutes, everything you know, everything you’ve ever done? The sound of a slamming screen door broke Jack’s train of thought, and he looked up to see her come bounding down the steps.

  “Attention!”

  Instead of his spine imperceptibly straightening at the armed guard’s clipped command, David’s shoulders slumped. Oh God, not now.

  The thick, duty-gray permasteel doors rumbled open, and in walked General Anthony “Razor” Steele. Unlike the frail and weak scientists, his body was a perfect example of the developed human specimen, honed by years of military training and selected experiments to ensure that every soldier was in peak condition. Bulging muscles flexed and relaxed as he crossed the room to the two scientists, tossing off a casual salute to the guard at the door as he passed.

  “Doctor Melchior, Doctor—” The General’s eyes darted to her chest for a second “—Marikova.” As he did every time the General greeted them, David squelched the urge to punch the other man out, as ludicrous as that sounded. He shook off the brief fantasy of himself standing over the general lying prone on the floor, to hear the end of Steele’s sentence.

  “—thought there weren’t any tests scheduled for today?”

  David stared at the taller man helplessly as he realized he didn’t have the faintest idea of what the general was talking about. Just as he was about to stammer a reply, he felt his airway closing, and he erupted in another coughing fit, all the while thinking, Thank God.

  “Is he all right, Doctor?” The expression on the general’s face was solicitous enough, but he made no move to help David either.

  Irena shoved her water bottle into his hand again as she addressed the general. “Yes, there was a power surge in the room, and no, we did not have any tests scheduled for today, general.”

  David grabbed the bottle and gulped more tepid water to soothe his aching throat. Did he see the surge from the displacement himself? I’m surprised he even knew what it was.

  “I see.” Steele looked around. “Something’s different here. Aren’t there usually three scientists in this room?”

  David lowered the bottle before he sprayed droplets all over Irena and Steele. Coming from the general, that simple sentence was the equivalent of any other person saying that they had figured out a way to travel faster than light speed. A side effect of the treatments that had been performed on General Steele was that he had also been given the perfect military mind to go along with his very competent military body—able to accept commands from his superiors without question, and fearless—or stupid, as David suspected—enough to go charging into the mouth of hell itself if so ordered. Such esoteric things as time-travel were light-years beyond him, although apparently the simple math classes he had studied as a boy had stuck with him.

  “As Doctor Marikova said, there weren’t any tests scheduled for today. And you are correct, General, there usually are three scientists in this room. However, unfortunately, Doctor Hollister has—left.”

  “Left?” the General’s face wrinkled in puzzlement. “But he can’t leave—none of you can leave this room until your shift is over.”

  “Again, you are correct, sir, but Doctor Hollister didn’t leave through the door—he went into the displacement chamber. That was the power surge you registered upstairs.”

  “Ah—so where is he?”

  David and Irena exchanged glances, then both shook their heads in resignation. “The question, sir, is not where he is, but when. And we’re working on figuring that out right now.”

  “So an unauthorized displacement has occurred in this room, and has involved a human being—correct me if I’m wrong, but the first human being to undergo this sort of journey, right?”

  David grudgingly revised his estimation of the general up a notch—he knew many smarter men who would have had a hard time grasping the implications of what had just occurred. “Yes, sir.”

  And the general’s next words surprised him even more. “All right, so what do we do now?”

  Jack stared at the little girl holding her doll as she walked down the steps, the expression on her face serious, as if she had already seen too much of the bad parts of life in her eleven years on this planet. She did not walk with the carefree joy of a young girl, but quietly, as if, even out here, she was worried about making a noise that would bring someone’s wrath upon her.

  A fair assumption, given how she was raised, Jack thought. Even so, he had chosen this age to contact her, in the hopes that perhaps all of her childhood innocence hadn’t been stripped away yet, before the rigid mindset of a teenager—any and all teenagers—set in. Still, from what he knew of her, it was possible that he had come back too late.

  A shadow fell across his feet, and Jack looked up to see her staring at him from a few yards away. He glanced down at his clothes—the form-fitting nylon jumpsuit, stained and wrinkled from too many hurried meals and countless days sleeping in his chair before and after his shift. His eyes came up again, and he took in her shabby, brown plaid dress, scuffed Buster Brown shoes, and falling-down, dingy white socks. Her dark brown hair hung limp around her face. “Guess I must look pretty strange to you, huh, Lana?”

  Her brows knitted in puzzlement, and Jack continued before he frightened her away. “Yes, I know your name—you could say that I know a whole lot of things about you, even though you’ve never seen me before.”

  The little girl cocked her head, the frown now warring with a bit of curiosity. Jack pressed on. “I’m from somewhere very far away, and I know a great deal about you. For example, I know that the people who are raising you here are not your real parents. They are Gloria and Dean Tavermeier. I know that Mr. Tavermeier loves you very much, but Mrs. Tavermeier, well, I’ll bet she can be very strict sometimes, isn’t she?”

  The little girl looked back at the house, the doll clutched tightly to her chest. Jack looked up as well, scanning the house for a form at the curtains, or the door cracked open so someone might be able to hear outside. Nothing moved in the late afternoon sun, and the house remained silent, motionless.

  Jack looked dow
n to see the little girl had now halfway turned back toward the steps, as if she was about to bolt for the relative safety of the home. He willed himself not to move, as if she were a doe, and any sudden motion on his part would frighten her off, never to be seen again. Even his breath caught in his throat as he waited to see what her decision would be.

  Lana turned back toward the bungalow one more time, then back to Jack, nodding her head once in response to his question as she did so.

  Jack let out the breath he had been holding in a whoosh, once again aware of the incredible pureness of the air around him. “It’s all right, Lana. I wouldn’t hurt you, not for anything in the world. In fact—” He smiled, and knelt down so that his head was on the same level as hers. “I’m here to help you.”

  David rocked back and forth on his heels, wondering how to explain everything so that the general would understand it all. “Now? Well, we don’t really know, sir. I mean, the chamber has been tested first with inanimate objects, then with programmable, remote-controlled vehicles that recorded what they saw, so we were able to prove that indeed they had traveled through time.”

  He paused for a valuable breath, and Irena took over the summation. “We had only recently begun testing by sending animals through, but all initial tests seemed to indicate that they had adjusted to the process with little or no short-term effects. Long-term ramifications are unrecognizable, since there hasn’t been enough time to really study the effect of time-travel on living beings.”

  “Fine, fine, but that isn’t my point. What are the ramifications of Doctor Hollister going back in time?”

  David and Irena exchanged helpless glances. “Frankly, sir, we have no idea. Even though we’ve been studying it for almost two years, time travel is such a theoretical field that the data gathered is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. It is possible that Jack going back might have already changed things in the future. But how would we know? After all, this isn’t like the movies where we would see big sweeping changes around us.”

  Irena spoke up again, and David was glad for the respite. “Alternatively—again, this is just hypothetical—there is a theory that every decision made by a person creates a separate reality—an infinite number of them, given the millions of decisions that are made throughout the world on a daily basis—and so therefore we would be faced with trillions upon trillions of separate timelines, each one representing the culmination of millions of separate choices made by people. As for what effect Jack’s travel will have on this timeline, I guess it depends on whether there is only one timeline, or many divergent ones.”

  “What about sending someone back to find him?” the general asked.

  Irena shrugged. “Well, we do know that he went to just after the post-World War II period, about 1948, but we don’t know exactly where on the planet he went to. When he set the longitude and latitude for his jump, he programmed the computer to erase the numbers after the trip was made.”

  “Even if we knew where he was, we couldn’t make another jump for about an hour, and by then he should be back here, given the trip’s standard duration of fifteen minutes,” David said. “All we theoretically have to do is wait for him—assuming that he is in the exact spot he was transported to when he traveled to that time in the first place.”

  The general’s brow raised. “Why is that?”

  “Well, sir, the one thing that we have figured out is that the universe does strive toward a semblance of order.” David stared at the displacement chamber as he spoke, wondering what his friend was doing at that exact moment. “If something—or someone—is out of place chronologically, then after approximately fifteen minutes, a second timehole opens up back to that person or item’s originating time period, and they can go back through. It’s the only way we’ve been able to get any data back. Jack stumbled upon the phenomenon accidentally when he piloted one of our drones back through the rift. In approximately ten minutes—assuming he wants to come back—Jack should reappear in the chamber. His condition—well, that may be another story, since we have no idea if a thinking life form can survive the trip with their faculties intact yet.”

  “Maybe so, but who knows what havoc he’s wreaking back there. Nineteen forty-eight—did he go back to assassinate Stalin? Truman, God forbid? What is he planning to do? Why did he risk everything to go back?”

  Only silence answered the general’s question.

  “How?” the girl’s first word was so quiet Jack almost didn’t hear it. “How are you going to help me?”

  A myriad of answers flashed through Jack’s mind—all things he knew about this girl. That she would be abused by a seventeen-year old boy in the next foster home she would go to. That she would slink through high school, never working up the nerve to be able to talk to the boy she liked there, and never getting the chance to go to college, which was her dream. That she would end up marrying not one, but two deadbeat husbands that would slowly drain the life and the spirit out of her, emotionally and physically abusing her throughout both relationships. That she would have three children, a daughter from her first marriage who would carry on a tradition of ignorance and small-mindedness, and two sons, whom she would live for, simply because there would be nothing else in her life. That she would end up living in a small apartment, alone, waiting to die, her only accomplishments being her two sons, and leaving behind a life of struggle, heartbreak, and loneliness.

  “Even though you’ve never seen me before, as I said, I know all about you. I want to tell you about three men that you need to stay away from when—and if, he thought—you meet them later on in your life.” As much as Jack wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what the first guy would do, but he described him clearly, and also where and when she might meet him, and described him in an ominous-enough tone that he was sure she got the point. He also told her about the two potential husbands, giving her their names and where she might meet them. “And never, ever give up on your dream of going to college.” Her eyes widened, and he kept going, hoping that his words would imprint on her, and somehow stay with her through the years. “You can do it, even though it will be difficult at times. But I know you can succeed, and become a nurse, just like you’ve always dreamed of doing.”

  Lana’s mouth hung open, and Jack smiled, as he was sure that she might not have even thought about what she wanted to do at this age. “If you take anything away with you after this, know that out there somewhere is a man who always believes in you, no matter where you are, or what you are doing. Most of all, be true to yourself, and don’t let anyone tell you how you should think or what you should do, unless you agree with them. Only you can possibly ever know what’s best for yourself. Understand?”

  Lana nodded, just as the screen door creaked open. An iron-haired, stern-faced woman appeared in the doorway. “Lana, you come in this house right now!”

  The girl turned to go, but looked back at Jack one last time.

  “Remember what I said, Lana, and trust in yourself. You can do it!”

  She lifted her hand in a shy wave, and then ran up the steps to where the woman waited, her hand on her hip. “What have I told you about talking to strangers?” she scolded as she ushered the girl inside, giving Jack an icy glare as she closed the door.

  Well, at least she’s teaching her that much right away, I suppose. The encounter had gone faster than Jack had expected, and he actually had a little time left to himself. Time to do what—walk around this world that had no idea of what lay ahead of it—Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, Iran, the Sino-Chinese War, and a world brought to the brink of destruction less than seventy-five years from now? Is that any kind of world to leave to one’s children?

  He turned and began walking down the street, back to his starting point. But by doing this, have I truly made any kind of difference at all? I don’t even know if she will take my words to heart and change the path she is on—she might just chalk it up to the ramblings of a strange old man who accosted
her outside her house one summer afternoon.

  The sound of a window opening behind him made Jack turn his head to look behind him. The window of the lone upstairs dormer in the Tavermeier home, which he could have sworn had been closed, was now open, its curtains fluttering softly in the breeze. And there, framed in the window, was Lana, waving good-bye.

  Jack raised his hand and waved back, a faint smile ghosting across his mouth. Then again, maybe she will be better off. He continued on down the street. He had lost track of how many minutes he had left in this time, but figured that the return hole would be appearing very soon. Which begs the next question: am I going back?

  In all their research at the military redoubt deep in Cheyenne Mountain, they had never been able to answer the age-old questions of time-travel paradox. Jack knew that if he did go back, he would face a swift trial for unauthorized use of military equipment during a time of war, and most likely be accused of treason and anything else the government could cook up.

  Perhaps I will be able to stay here, he thought, even as the logical part of his mind figured that would be impossible, especially if Irena’s theory was correct, and that the laws of the universe tended toward order. As a man displaced out of the time he should be in, that left a whole lot of unknowns that possibly might come crashing down on him. I could end up disappearing for good, vanishing from the universe forever. I could explode in a burst of complete cellular disintegration. I could—just end up staying here, trapped forever in the past.

  A spark of white light across the street caught his attention, and Jack walked toward it, knowing that the return timehole was opening, growing to form a rift in the continuum that would enable him to enter it, if he desired. On its edge, he hesitated for a moment, taking one last look around, particularly at the house halfway down the block. He thought of the little girl who lived there . . . and what she might accomplish in the hopefully new future that stretched out before her.