Time After Time (6 page)

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Authors: Karl Alexander

BOOK: Time After Time
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He had been traveling for twenty-three minutes. If his calculations were correct, he would be arriving in 1979 at 7:57 A.M. So he hadn't died along the fourth dimension. He had merely been sleeping while his body metamorphosed into a vaporized state.
He laughed. He was going to succeed! He bounced up and down in the chair. Exhilaration and euphoria came over him, and with a religious fervor he shouted out that he, H. G. Wells, had done it. He had conquered the mysteries of the fourth dimension, and if he could do it, so could others. There was nothing left beyond the grasp of mankind. Human intelligence was infinite! Man could progress to eternity! Man was king!
“Do you hear that, God?” he exclaimed triumphantly, then
immediately felt foolish. If he were in fact vaporized, nothing at all could hear him.
At 7:54 the swirl of colors began to fade into gray, and H.G. knew that the machine was preparing to drop into 1979. He got dizzy, sick and disoriented again, but it was not as bad as the first time. And when the panic started to come on, he controlled his mind by concentrating on possible problems that he could do nothing about, like a malfunction in the IVR. Or what if he had a chemical reaction to 1979 and exploded? Or imploded?
At 7:56 sharp there was a report like a loud clap of thunder. Everything went black. Wells slumped in the chair, unconscious.
 
 
The sound of distant voices and echoing feet woke him. His initial thought was that he had been in a comatose state for an eternity and was now confined in a futuristic hospital where advanced human beings were testing his nineteenth-century mind and body. A quick glance around the inside of the time machine told him that this was not so. He then critically inspected his immediate surroundings and was surprised. The control panel was cracked and faded, the once-shiny ivory switches now a dirty brown. The glass over the dials was intact, but so discolored with age that the numbers and digits were almost impossible to read. The Rotator Control was rusted and stuck in its eastward position. He would have to fix it if he ever hoped to get back home.
He turned in his chair, unlocked and opened the cargo hatch. The water had evaporated, the food was a pile of aging dust and the clothes disintegrated when touched. Something had gone wrong. He turned further and noticed that the chair swiveled with ease. The flight harness that held him in the chair was as good as new, and the Accelerator Helm Lever still glistened with the light coat of oil he had applied the day before he left.
He frowned and cursed himself. He had made an almost fatal mistake in design. He should have mounted the entire cabin gyroscopically in order to keep everything inside free from the devastating effects of high-energy rotation. Had he gone much farther into the future, the controls themselves might have disintegrated.
A sudden thought struck him. Why hadn't the machine appeared aged after it had delivered Stephenson into 1979?
He didn't quite understand, but he speculated that there must have been some matter-rejuvenation principle at work when moving back through time. That meant that he would have to think twice about ever journeying into history. When the technology of the machine did not exist, then … He frowned. That was a problem for another day. He grinned ruefully. What the devil. This trip was over. He had arrived safely. And what would a test flight be without technical problems?
He unbuckled the harness and got out of the chair. He immediately felt dizzy and had to sit down again. He took several deep breaths and, when he felt stronger, slowly stood. He leaned against the side of the cabin and peered out one of the windows for his first look at the future. The glass was opaque and cracked. He couldn't see a damn thing.
Muttering, he turned and unlocked the door with the special key that overrode the RRL. He certainly did not want the machine to automatically return to 1893 and leave him stranded. Then he noticed with surprise that the door handle had been recently cleaned and oiled. And when he pushed the door open the hinges did not groan and creak as he would have suspected. They, too, had been freshly lubricated. Had someone else been caring for his machine?
He stepped out into 1979.
He inspected the outside of the time machine. All had held up well except for the brass name plate above the door. The letters spelling THE UTOPIA had eroded into a crusted green patina. He
certainly hoped that that wasn't indicative of the particular time plane he'd stepped into.
He slowly turned and found himself standing on a dais spotlighted from directly overhead. The platform was in the center of a huge circular room with high ceilings and an ornate, arched entrance way. What had become of his laboratory? Theoretically, his time machine should not have moved except along the fourth dimension. What had happened? Something had gone wrong!
In front of him in three large, glassed-in cases were a host of leather-bound original editions and framed diagrams. The only set he recognized were the ones he had drawn for the time machine. He looked to his right. In the far corner of the room in another display case he saw the familiar covers of the Pall Mall Gazette, now yellowed with age. He stepped off the dais and moved in that direction, a man in desperate search of the old and the familiar. He ran into a purple-velvet rope barrier that bordered the entire area. He turned again and beheld the scene.
A sign on the wall read, “H. G. WELLS—A MAN BEFORE HIS TIME.”
Oh my God, he thought, have I done all this? Has my laboratory become a bloody museum? Have I joined the relics of science past? Have my triumphs and defeats become antiques to be fingered by tours of schoolchildren?
He moved closer to the center of the room to get a better view of the exhibit. He was awed and bent. The wonder of it all, the sudden realization that he had become a famous man was almost too much for him. What was left for him if he had seen all the fruits of his life's work at age twenty-seven? Why hadn't he thought of that before so blithely hopping into the time machine? And worse, almost all the books and inventions were ahead of him in time! Would he now know everything before he did it? Maybe. Maybe not. He didn't have to investigate all these things. Suddenly he burst out with a victorious
chuckle. Maybe if he hadn't time-traveled, then he wouldn't have gone back home and eventually done all this writing and inventing. And it was comforting to know that he had made it back to 1893 London. If there ever was a case of optimism maintaining sanity, this was it.
Curious, he began to examine his life's work more closely, despite his earlier reticence. He felt better and had somewhat regained his usual scientific detachment.
Until he saw an old photograph.
His eyes widened. He shrank back, and wanted to look away but was compelled to stare.
There was a man in the picture. A rather stout and portly man with receding hair, heavy jowls and a multitude of wrinkles. The man wore rimless glasses and was frowning at someone. He did not look at all happy. A caption below the picture read, “H. G. Wells at age fifty.”
Astonished, he stared at the photograph. Time machine or not, the print confronted him with the image of his own mortality. The ultimate question flashed before him. When did life end for H. G. Wells?
He looked around wildly, certain that the exhibit contained an obituary somewhere. Thank God it wasn't in large letters under his name. He didn't want to know, he didn't want ever to know
He sagged and felt sick. He had to get away from this place. He started for the rope barrier, forcing himself not to look at anything else in the exhibit. Instead, over the door to the room, he saw a clock that read 4:04. He stopped, frowned and pulled out his pocket watch. 8:04.
He moaned, now completely disoriented and on the verge of panic. He knew that his calculations weren't that far off, unless something drastic had happened. His laboratory was gone, the house was gone, everything was gone, and he appeared to be in a museum. The
time wasn't at all right, and the displays seemed to be extra-temporal mockeries of his mind.
He heard voices and footsteps approaching the room. The presence of those alien sounds forced him to act He saw that he could not escape undetected, so he hurried back to the time machine, got inside and huddled on the floor.
A tour guide led a group of fifteen into the room. “Another giant figure to emerge from the late nineteenth century was H. G. Wells. Author, scientist, social critic, historian and inventor,” droned the guide.
Awe-struck, Wells listened.
“Six months ago, archaeologists working ahead of London's massive urban-renewal project uncovered Wells's obscure laboratory that had been inside a bricked-up basement. And of course you all know what was found inside.”
H.G. pushed the door open, then poked his head partway out of the hatch so that he might see these late-twentieth-century folk.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the guide continued with a flourish, “the California Academy of Sciences and the Science Museum of San Francisco are proud to have on public display the famous Wellsian time machine!”
San Francisco! How the devil had he ended up in San Francisco when his machine was supposed to travel only along the fourth dimension? He thought furiously and soon it came to him. Of course! If archaeologists had “discovered” his laboratory and the time machine, then undoubtedly his device would have gone on a world tour. Or maybe the city of San Francisco had purchased the device outright, although he couldn't imagine the British Government allowing such a transaction unless the spheres of influence had changed considerably. He remembered that in the early nineties wealthy British royalty had purchased Egyptian relics and had them shipped to England. So why not H. G. Wells to America? Egypt had
been weak and powerless. Was England now in a similar position? No, never. The time machine must be on a world tour.
“Of course, the enigmatic man's labor was fruitless, for the device is never known to have worked.”
H.G. sat up indignantly.
A small girl in the audience saw Wells. “Mommy, what's that funny-looking man doing in there?”
The guide turned and saw Wells slam and lock the time-machine door. “Hey, you! You're not supposed to be in there!”
H.G. frantically grabbed the Rotator Control and tried to force it into the westward position so that he could get out of 1979 and back to his own time. He couldn't budge the lever. He had one choice. He could go farther into the future, but he'd be damned if he'd do that, given his machine's present condition.
The tour guide was rapping on the door. “Sir, the exhibit is off-limits!”
With a cry, H.G. unlocked the door and shoved it open. It smashed into the guide and sent him sprawling. Then H.G. vaulted out of the machine and hurdled the rope barrier. The people got out of his way, some laughing with surprise. He raced out of the room and soon was lost in a maze of hallways and corridors. He heard whistles blowing behind him as security guards gave chase.
He had never been so terrified in his entire life.
 
 
He came to a fire door marked “Emergency Exit” and pushed through it. An automatic fire alarm went off which further added to the confusion of the guards, for now they had to evacuate the building.
H.G. hurried down a short flight of stairs and found himself moving past a series of basement rooms full of old display cases, broken pedestals and antique junk no longer deemed worthy of the hallowed
rooms upstairs. He saw lights from the bend in the corridor, but heard no voices. He continued past the junction in the corridor and eventually saw an exit.
He went outside, then up a flight of stairs to a concrete walk. He moved away from the museum and tried to appear casual even though he heard an uproar as the guards were evacuating people out the front doors. The path led him into some trees, and once the museum was out of sight, he was relieved.
He noticed that the weather was similar to the atmospheric conditions which plagued London. The sky was overcast and a light fog was blowing through the trees, although the temperature was slightly higher and the humidity less than London's. But the air smelled funny—it lacked the distinctive flavor of burning coal.
He went down a curve of rustic steps, through a gateway and discovered that he was in a Japanese garden. He felt more relaxed and paused to admire the beauty of the flowers and the exquisite colors of the large carp in the ponds. He touched a bonsai tree, smiled and was somewhat reassured. Up Park (the estate where his mother lived and worked) had a garden like this one, only much smaller and not as elaborate. It lacked the arched bridges and the curious little shrines. Nevertheless, he recalled that he used to read there and write an amateur newspaper which was distributed among the domestics under his mother's charge. He wiped away a wistful, emotional tear. Those were the gentle, idle days when he was recovering from the traumas of abortive apprenticeships. And those days were no more.
Suddenly he squared his shoulders and turned his back on the bonsai tree. The garden was beautiful—no more and no less. He should accept that as a sign that 1979 was both an old world and a new one; a world that combined the good things of the past with the better things of the future/present which he hadn't seen yet. He did admit to himself, however, that it was nice to know that the
world still abounded with flowers and trees and grass and other pastoral forms of life. He resumed walking, following a path which led around the main pond and presumably out of the garden.

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