I had run up against the mother of time travel paradoxes – causality. I had changed yesterday and affected today. But, causality is obviously not quite as strict as some time travel theorists believe; if it was a rigid rule, I would not even exist. But, I came back to the present – it’s just that no one knew who I was.
Perhaps time travel is governed by the many worlds interpretation, popular in quantum mechanics and time travel circles. This theory basically says that everything that can happen, does happen. The universe is like a giant tree with an infinite number of branches – these branches are an infinitude of universes that contain every possibility. Even the possibility that I interrupted my conception, yet I still exist. I still exist as Phillip Donner in some parallel universe, but I arrived here a man without a past or a name.
As I was being led out, I saw a man, who I assumed was James Gruber, appear in the glass chamber. He had arrived from the past – they knew who he was. The man who had gotten my job because I didn’t exist.
I looked up my mom and found that she had died fifteen years later than she had when she was my mom. That’s good –her life had been relatively short in the original timeline, but in this timeline, it had been lengthened. I found out she had a daughter; her name was Angela Donner Caldwell. She was married with two kids. She was five years younger than me. Instead of me, my mom had birthed Angela in 1971.
I had nowhere to go. Someone else lived in my house. Someone else had my job. My friends didn’t recognize me. My credit cards didn’t work. After a few phone calls to his secret number, I had the full attention of the director of the department. Whether he cheated on his wife in this timeline, I don’t know, but the fact that I had his top-secret phone number was enough to secure a meeting with him. I told him the full story. Because he was the head of the time travel division, he was well versed in the many potential time travel problems and paradoxes. He empathized with my situation and pledged to help build a new identity for me.
He seemed sincere, and I had no else to trust.
It would take time, but he would secure new papers, compose a desirable resume, and hire me for the department. I had no choice but to accept his offer; after all, I was truly a man without a past, a present, or an identity. I hoped he could create a future for me.
If I hadn’t knocked over my mom’s travel bag, or hooker bag, as she called it, I wouldn’t have caused coitus interruptus and stopped the climax that resulted in my conception. But, I did, and Phillip Michael Donner was never born.
I did look up John Larkin and eventually found an article about a sentencing hearing in a Los Angeles courtroom. John Larkin was given thirty years for the rape of five women between 1966 and 1968. The identities of the women were not provided. I don’t know if my mom reported her rape, and if she did, how seriously it was considered by the authorities. I don’t know if John Larkin was ever captured in my original timeline, or if my appearance in 1966 had changed something that caused him to get caught. But he went to jail and perhaps there was some justice after all.
It did seem to change my mom’s life for the better, so that’s a good thing. I also achieved my original goal – I found out who my father was, even if my clumsiness had prevented my own conception from ever taking place.
But, I’m still alive. My forty-six chromosomes were orphaned when I interrupted a sexual assault fifty years ago, but I don’t seem to be disappearing or wasting away, so that’s a good thing.
A Not So Welcome Home
I drove the ship that eclipsed time and broke through the time/space continuum. Space certainly curved and the effects of time dilation expand exponentially the faster you go and the farther you travel from any gravitational forces.
I had traveled farther and faster than anyone. Ever.
I disproved the Law of Conservation of Mass – my forward leap in time took my mass and the mass of my ship to the future thus disrupting the constant amount of mass in both the past and the future. It wasn’t supposed to be possible. Mass in the past and in the future was a constant – it should have been a zero sum game if you moved mass from one to the other. But this trip was proof that most anything is possible.
I proved that time travel is not science fiction. I proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we knew less about physics than we thought. We probably know less about most things – we’re just reticent to admit it.
It was almost incomprehensible, but I spent my days blasting through Earth’s atmosphere, both an astronaut and a time traveler, about to return to my home. Waiting to return home to the adulation and cheers. No family would greet me – my parents were dead, I was an only child and had never married. That’s why I had been chosen. My friends, colleagues, and peers would be very old or dead. But I asked, almost begged to go. I wanted to be the first.
My last radio signal from Earth was a distant memory: months ago in my time and years ago in Earth’s time. Radio signals from earth to deep space were notoriously unreliable.
“Have a safe trip back.” The mission commander said.
“I will be back. I left older than you, but I’ll return younger than you.”
“I’ll still be your superior.”
“Yes, sir!” I laughed.
Words from my final conversation. The last human words I had heard. Only the beeping, whining, buzzing, and humming of engines and electronics remained to keep me company.
I had flown out into the heavens at alarming speeds. I had been gone for a year, my only companion was space, sterile machinery, and a hard drive full of movies and songs. I defied and escaped the old laws of physics. I had been where no man had ever been. Outside the galaxy. Beyond the stars.
When I entered Earth’s atmosphere, I experienced the usual balancing forces of gravity and drag. The blunt shape of my reentry capsule created a shock wave that, along with innovative ablative material and insulation, kept the intense heat from burning me to a crisp.
I tried the radio. “I’m home. Anyone there?” No one answered.
Once again, “I’m here!” The silence teased and frightened me.
My ship landed on the pitted and cracked runway. As my ship decelerated, I noticed the dilapidated buildings and the rusted cars. A few palms tress swayed in the breeze; otherwise the scene was motionless.
I returned, barley having aged a few years, and yet my home, my big, blue, oblate spheroid home had aged by decades. And when I landed at the same spot from which I left, I knew that my historic trip would never go down in history.
No one greeted me. No crowds, flags, bands, or cheers. As I looked out on an empty landscape, I realized I that there was no one to be seen. I was the only one left.
“I’m home.” I said to the emptiness. Only silence answered me.
I unfastened my safety belts, slowly straightened into a full standing position, and gathered up some of my belongings. Freeze-dried food, water, a few tools – all stuffed into my backpack. I unlatched the door, lowered the steps, and walked out into the blistering heat. Shielding my eyes from brilliant sun, I gazed out across a desolate landscape. When I took in a deep breath, my lungs didn’t fill with toxic air.
I had no idea what had happened; what catastrophic event had left an empty, deserted base. Was it local, national, or global?
On trembling legs, I slowly descended the stairs – the command center my destination, though I knew I’d be walking far beyond there.
“Welcome home.” I said to no one.
If an astronaut returns to Earth and no one is there to greet him, did he really return?
SECOND CHANCE FOR A MARRIAGE
Second chances are like the scattered junk inside an antique store. Some of those items deserve a new home, a new place in this world, while some things just need to be taken to the town dump and discarded like rotting food.
I thought about a second chance every evening, lying in bed, my brain synapses firing instead of turning off and shutting down for the night. Mae West said, “All discarded lovers should be
given a second chance, but with someone else.” I thought differently; this discarded lover is going for a second chance...with the same person.
The day Doreen left me, my world imploded like an aging building filled with modern explosives. I suppose she had been looking at me for a long time with divorce eyes instead of a loving gaze, but it still came as a shock the day she officially decided to kick me out and file for divorce. It was the same day I went down to the basement and began finishing the project I had been working on for the past two years. It had been a hobby of sorts, but on that day, it became an obsession.
She took the kids and the newer vehicle, and I moved into a condo across town. She wanted the house, and I couldn’t have cared less. I mean, the kids needed their home. I told her it would take two weeks to get my stuff out and find a place to live. I gathered some clothing, a few miscellaneous items, and a picture or two, then threw everything into one old suitcase and two large plastic bags. I took the vehicle with over 100,000 miles on it.
Then I worked in the basement, during the day while she was at work. She never walked down the rickety steps to the basement; she had no idea what I was building. I had two weeks before she would probably change the locks.
I called in sick to work over and over again. I had several days of paid sick leave and I made sure I used them. I didn't go out with my buddies, didn't hit the clubs to find a woman, and certainly didn't call out for an escort service. I had better things to do with my time.
I worked on my machine.
I had worked for twenty-odd years for Science Technology Applications. It’s a publicly-traded company with 8,670 employees across the globe, give or take a few cubicles. It made a profit of $650 million last year and is one of the largest defense contractors in the country specializing in creating futuristic technologies with military applications. One of its divisions makes time travel machines. Well, it doesn’t genuinely make them since no one is quite sure how to build one that actually works. But, the company has scientists from Cal Tech, engineers from Princeton, and programmers from Stanford. It has an unlimited budget, a public one analyzed by stock brokerage houses and investment gurus around the world, and a secret one known to only a select few. This secret source of capital is hidden in one of the many appropriations bills that Congress passes behind the voters' backs.
The company also doesn’t mention time machines in its annual report distributed to shareholders.
Two weeks were up and I handed Doreen my keys, hugged my kids, and told them I would see them next weekend for a fun time at my new condo. Doreen followed me out to the car.
“You didn't take anything.”
“I took some clothes and some other shit. You know, the basics.”
“Almost everything you own is still in the house. You must need some dishes and silverware and things like that.”
“I'm fine, really.”
“You had a U-Haul. All you took was that crap outta the basement.” Most women would love to have a husband who can fix things with their hands and who knows his way around a toolbox, and who, when divorce happens, takes all their junk away. But the sarcasm poured out of her eyes.
“I have a husband who builds weird looking contraptions in the basement. Lord knows what purpose they serve. Lords knows what he's gonna do with his contraptions.” She rolled her eyes, like she was Lady Macbeth disapproving of her husband’s evil ways.
“I'm gonna fly away to another planet.” She rolled her eyes again, this time in more of a glad-I’m-leaving-this-asshole manner.
Well, not exactly. Fly off to another planet, that is.
I messed up. I mean, you get familiar and comfortable, and you begin to take the one you love for granted. I'd been a nerd my whole life, long before nerds got the girls. But, I got the girl, the one I loved, and then I fucking blew it. You understand guys, right? You still love her, but so many other parts of your life get in the way. Things get busy at work, the big game is on TV, sex and romance gets routine, and a few of the little things she does just plain annoy the hell out of you. And then one day, she tells you she wants a divorce.
That happened to me.
“Are you seeing someone?” I ask.
“Jesus,” she replies, more out of pity than contempt.
“You sure?” I ask. Unsure what others words to say. Should I have gotten down on my knees and begged? Should I have shed a stream of tears? Should I have threatened to kill myself? I’m not that dramatic. I didn't do any of those things, of course. I did what I always do – I accepted my fate and complied with her wishes.
I wished I had done more, but when the glass is half empty, you know nothing you could have done would have filled that glass to the rim.
But, I could do it over. I could do it better the second time around. At least, that’s what I thought as I worked on my machine every day for two weeks in the basement, and then for a few more weeks in my new condo.
Using everything I had learned at Science Technology Applications, I created a machine that I believed would take me back in time. And why did I want to go back? I'll get to that in a minute.
At STA, they were working on traveling into the future using the concept that in some places time flows at different rates; if you could connect them in a way, you would be able to build a time-travel machine and speed off into the future. Einstein's theory of relativity predicted that time would flow more slowly in stronger gravity; some fancy rich guy living in the penthouse of a swanky high-rise apartment in New York would age faster than the homeless guy sleeping on a pile of discarded New York Times just outside the entrance to that building. It's absolutely true; gravitational time dilution has been proven by real scientists, not mad ones like me. The difference is in nanoseconds, but someday technology might be able to exploit that difference and make forward leaps of time more substantial.
Maybe time was flowing at different rates in my house. Perhaps I was aging slower than my wife because I spent so much time in the basement and she spent so much time upstairs. More likely, the result of that was divorce, not time travel.
Though the geniuses at STA were delving into forward time travel. I wasn't interested in traveling forward – I wanted to go back to the past. Maybe 10 years. Maybe 20. I had to figure out when things started going wrong between Doreen and me. When did I stop treating her the way she wanted to be treated? When did I lose my husband-of-the-year trophy? I wanted to go back and create an alternate history line – a parallel universe if you will.
Which is exactly what I did.
Having my own place allowed me to work on my own, without interruption from my family. I purposely didn't get cable television so I wouldn't face the temptation of the news, a game, or some inane sitcom. I also quit my job. I had enough money saved up to pay alimony, child support, and the various bills of modern life until I figured out how to escape the present.
The knock on my door sounded desperate, almost frenzied. I opened it, fearful that the police had heard I was building a time machine in my living room. It was my wife.
“I heard you quit your job,” she screamed at me. My silence made her even angrier. “How in the hell are you going to pay for your kids? Just because you're out of the house doesn't mean you can forget them.” Her eyes wandered to the interior of my apartment and she spotted the machine in my living room. “Jesus Christ, you’ve gone absolutely nuts. You're goddamn crazy. You've got that hideous machine in your living room.” She looked up and down at the door. “How the hell did you get that monstrosity in here?”
“In four different pieces. I put it back together once it was inside.”
“Jesus. You’re absolutely nuts. Makes me even more sure of my decision to kick you out!”
“So, I guess you aren’t here to ask me back,” I joked.
“Hardly. Now, now, I don’t know what to think. You’ve gone off the deep end,” she scolded. “Well, miss one payment to the kids and you’ll hear from my lawyer.” With that threat, she turned and stomped aw
ay. It was amazing how tantalizing her hips and the curve of her ass were as she walked away, even after all these years. I had kind of forgotten that. Guess if I had remembered that more often I wouldn't have had to build a time machine.
I knew I had to speed things up. I knew I had to get away as quickly as possible. Which is exactly what I did.
With the power of caffeine, some good old-fashioned rock and roll, and a frenetic sense of urgency, I finished in three weeks. I stopped only for a few hours of sleep and to send a couple checks to Doreen to keep her happy while I disappeared from the world.
I used to work on wormholes at STA. Wormholes are those highly elusive tunnels that promoted time travel. STA had created methods of inducing them to appear. I had to reverse many of the company’s equations and methods to travel backward instead of forward, but the math seemed to work – though I wasn’t sure if the science would.
In addition, STA had created an unstable yet powerful energy source which would enable the creation of wormholes and the power to blast someone through them to another point in time. The power source was a combination of unstable chemicals, and I’d have to kill you if I told you which ones and in what amounts. You would have to possess a thorough understanding of the periodic table and know your way around the chemistry lab to understand it all.
STA had tight security, but if you worked there and brought donuts to the guards every week, security was much less restrictive. With my name badge, retinal scan, and one of the guards munching on sprinkled donuts, I managed to sneak out enough to power a one-way trip to the past.
Was I sure my machine would work? Hell, no. Being the pessimist that I am, I didn't think it had a chance. Wait, let me amend that – I believed it would work only half way, or better put, half-assed. Like, I would get stuck between times or dimensions. I would get stuck in a purgatory bordering heaven and hell. One foot in the past and one foot in the present. Or maybe I'd get transported back in time but end up in the middle of the ocean or stuck in the foundation of some building. Something more horrible than death.
Altering the Apocalypse: and Other Short Stories About Humans and Time Travel Page 7
