Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine (32 page)

Caitlin reached under her business suit and revealed a bead necklace with a prism hanging from its end. “A new world religion even started. It is a beautiful religion. Nothing about God or life after death in it. It just recognizes the one great sacrifice that changed the world. Every moment since is celebrated and Baronists aspire to sacrifice themselves for others as Saul Baron did. Like all religions it has its lunatic fringe. For example, there is one church of Baronists who mutilate themselves, sacrificing fingers and sometimes whole limbs. At its best, it brings out people’s deepest nobility.”

“
You’re a Baronist?”

“
No, I’m not religious at all. I’m strictly science. Though, to be honest, Saul Baron left his mark on science too. A whole new branch of science started. It’s called paradoxology. Paradoxologists study the implications of time travel. The main question they try to answer is what happened to the reality Saul Baron came from. Did it cease to exist or does it still exist parallel to this reality?”

“
What do you think?”

“
I have no clue and I don’t really care,” she replied. “To me it’s as irrelevant as wondering if there is a God. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. My life is empty and unfair is either way.” Caitlin smirked for a split-second then became serious. “A lot of people care a great deal though. For instance, the people who kidnapped you when you were a child. They were part of a group that scientifically proved that if you do not go back in time to 2032, the world will either revert to the nuclear winter Saul Baron saved us from or worse yet, it will fall into total chaos. “

“
If that’s true…” Saul began.

“
Then we have to try to send you back. The problem is that there is another group of paradoxologists who have proven just as convincingly that we are now living in a new, better reality and if you go back you could change a tiny detail and mess everything up. The American government has been getting hell from both groups for the last seventeen years. I guess it’s a matter of which bunch of scientists end up being right.”

“
When did they kidnap me?” Saul asked.

“
You were two months old; your family was killed and you disappeared.”

Saul nodded. He supposed the information should shock him but how could he mourn parents he had never known.

“
They were extremely well organized and well funded. They had supporters all around the world. They chose the underground caves in Cape Town because South Africa’s government was in total chaos. The country was ravaged by civil war. It was the perfect place to disappear. Four years later when they kidnapped the other eighteen children, they kidnapped them from different parts of the world so that the abductions would not be linked. If it was not for the unwavering determination of Gabrielle’s uncle, who knows if you ever would have been found.”

“
And if people really believe that I’m the saviour and all that, why didn’t they go crazy looking for me?”

Caitlin explained. “The American government pretended we still had you and that we were keeping you protected. That limited panic.”

“
Panic?”

“
You have the potential to make a time machine. Do you have any idea how much power that is? Temporal research is banned worldwide. It’s more feared than nuclear technology. Can you imagine a world where terrorists could go to a building two days after the president was there and send a bomb back through time? Nothing could protect from that. When you disappeared as a kid, the US government figured that fanatics had got you. I guess we just hoped it was the fanatics who wanted to kill you.”

“
Is that what you’re going to do?”

“
No,” she replied. “That’s not what we have planned for you at all.”

XVI

Trees and a lake. That was the good part. The US government holed Saul up in a cabin surrounded by the scent and vibrancy of reclaimed nature. In the early morning, Saul stepped onto the porch and looked out on a verdant valley and the sun rising. He wanted it to move him more than it did. He had spent his life holed up underground but all the landscape awoke in him was a detached appreciation
.
Still, all things considered, not the worst place in the world to be.

The bad part was it was just another prison. It was more picturesque than the tiny cell the South African police had kept him in but it was just as confining. There were four soldiers outside the cabin at all times and they were just the ones who were visible.

When Caitlin came to see him with a folder full of papers, he knew what they were before she passed them to him. Diagrams of machinery, complex equations and pages and pages of text. Some of them he recognized from the underground lab, but there were others he had never seen before.

“
I thought you said temporal research was banned.”

Caitlin absently sucked her bottom lip. “It was. Of course, every country clever enough to research it in secret is hard at work. That’s why there’s been so much uproar about you and the other kids. By what we can gather, you are all the world’s leading experts on temporal research. The people who kidnapped you were crazy but they sure as hell knew what they were doing. It looks like you were getting close. Austria’s claimed that Gabrielle girl you were asking about Harindra’s gone back to India which is worrying. They’ve got the money and resources to really exploit…”

“
I want to speak to Gabrielle,” Saul interrupted. “I’m not going to look at any of these papers until you put me in contact with her.”

Caitlin looked at him and smiled. “Good for you, asserting yourself and all that. You’ve been so meek that I wondered if you had any strength in you. Unfortunately, we can’t put you in contact with Gabrielle. Austria’s keeping her under lock and key just like we’re keeping you. That’s not going to change and you need to accept it.”

“
I won’t help you unless you let me speak to her,” repeated Saul.

“
I’m not toying with you. We really can’t put you in touch with her. There are things you can ask for. We can’t let you out into the world because you’d be in too much danger but we can make your life better. We can bring you whatever you want: vids, books, that’s the sort of thing you can ask for.”

Saul was quiet, determined to be uncooperative. Caitlin did not push him further. She just left the pile of papers with him. Before going she said, “You might as well.”

XVII

Friendship was a surprise. Caitlin returned a few times every day to try and persuade Saul to cooperate. They always chatted and she told him about the world
.
As much as he struggled against her, he could not help but laugh at her acerbic sense of humour. Talking to her made him feel comfortable.

Saul’s diet expanded as his stomach adjusted to food other than ration packs. Caitlin introduced him to honey, avocado, fried fish, toffee and cheese. One Thursday she brought him groundnuts and showed him how to crack the shells and pluck out the juicy cores. “You’re wasting your effort,” he confessed. “I was never good at temporal physics. Besides inventions are more than just intelligence. There’s also random luck. Newton getting hit on the head by an apple, Alexander Fleming leaving out an unwashed culture and returning a few weeks later to discover Penicillin
.
Who knows what serendipity led to the future Saul Baron to develop a time machine? Even if I have his exact brain chemistry, I will never be in the exact same circumstances.”

“
You may be right.”

“
Then why don’t you let me go?”

“
There’s a chance that it’s your unavoidable fate to build a time machine. Even if it’s not, enough people believe you can build one. As long as we have you, other countries will always be afraid we have a secret time machine hidden away somewhere. Don’t fool yourself anyway; life in the outside world would not be easy for you. Between the factions that would want to deify you and the ones that would want to murder you, you would never have any peace. That’s one thing we’ve given you.”

“
If you won’t let me leave, can you at least bring some people here? It’s extremely lonely.”

“
That can be arranged,” replied Caitlin. “If you take a look at those schematics and tell us your ideas.”

The bargain was struck. Saul looked through America’s temporal research notes and in return, he was moved to a military base where he was allowed to interact with the families of the personnel
.
It was not so different from how his life had been underground. He accepted it and tried to find contentment.

XVIII

“
Happy Birthday,” Caitlin said to him, entering his room with a communion link. She plugged the link to the screen in the corner of Saul’s room and it illuminated. “Your conversation will be monitored and if you talk about where we are keeping you or mention anything to do with temporal science this will never happen again.”

Saul only understood when Gabrielle’s face blinked onto the screen.

“
Saul,” she said. Seeing her made him quake with longing. She looked different yet the same. Her hair was now curled into ringlets her lips were dyed red. She was in a white cotton dress and a silver necklace fell over her chest. Her eyes were gleaming with tears. “I was so worried about you.”

“
It’s so good to see you,” he replied, trying to control the tremor in his voice.

“
I can’t believe all the stuff I’ve heard about you,” she continued. “They say you saved the world.”

“
Can we not talk about that?”

“
How are you doing?”

“
I’m not allowed to leave but they treat me well.”

“
That’s so unfair. My uncle’s been showing me all the things I missed out on in the last four months. I’ve seen waterfalls, mountains, and I went on a space cruise orbit of the earth last week.”

So much for the Austrian government keeping her under lock and key. Caitlin had lied to him but Saul could not muster any anger. He was just so happy to be speaking to Gabrielle. He let her words wash over him. Her delight suffused him. When she asked questions he responded briefly. He knew their conversation would end soon and he just wanted to listen to her for as long as possible.

“
Ricky’s doing great as well,” she said and Saul was jolted out of the dream. “He’s made a deal with some lab which want to develop his camera that photographs the past. I don’t get to see him much but when we do it’s really great. We’re getting to discover the world together. There’s a tender side of him which has just opened up since we came to the surface. Underground so much was expected of him, I think he always had to keep his guard up. The best thing about…”

Once she started talking about Ricky, she did not stop. Saul was the one who ended the conversation.

XIX

From within the high security prison where she was serving a life sentence, Angelica asked to be put in contact with Saul or Ricky daily. “The lives of every person on the planet are at stake,” she pleaded. She tried to persuade with scientific facts. “Look at the meteorological and physical records since the day Saul Baron appeared at the UN summit. The number of hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters increased dramatically. It’s a chain of increasing entropy which begins at the moment where Saul Baron changed history and if he does not go back in time the paradox will push that entropy to a critical peak.”

“
There are other, less fatalistic explanations for all those things,” replied the prison psychologist. Talking with Angelica frustrated him because her fervour would accept no other possibilities.

One day she got on her knees and begged. “All I ask is just a few minutes. Let me speak with them for a few minutes and I’ll never ask again. Please.” The words bled out of her, crimson with desperation.

“
What is it about the end of days,” said the prison psychologist to a colleague later that evening. “Every religious text has its own version be it called
Ragnarok
or the Rapture. As the first and second Millennia neared, prophets of doom said with total certainty ‘this is the end.’ War after war has raged and here we are, still thriving. Why do people still have this fascination with apocalypse?”

“
The end of days did come once,” the prison psychologist’s colleague reminded him. “But we were saved by Saul Baron. By his sacrifice we live.”

“
By his sacrifice we sacrifice,” the two men said in unison.

XX

Other paradoxologists who believed as Angelica did demanded that the US government stop hiding Saul Baron. Saul was moved three times in the year before Angelica’s predicted ‘end of days’. Caitlin told him that they had almost recaptured him two of the times.

“
Isn’t there a way of letting them know that if they captured me, I couldn’t build a time machine anyway.”

“
They believe Saul. Haven’t you realised by now that nothing can dissuade a person who believes.”

XXI

As for Ricky Montcalm, he had lost all interest in the time machine project. Angelica’s desperate pleas to him on the day the underground installation had fallen meant nothing to him.

Ricky had become extremely wealthy by patenting and developing the ‘Montcalm method’ of taking photographs of past events. His initial sponsors were law enforcement agencies worldwide who utilized his technology to find out what happened at crime scenes before they arrived. The real money came when he developed smaller Montcalm cameras for general distribution. The camera was every voyeur’s dream. All a person had to do was go into a room where young women had been showering or a couple had been having sex and take a photograph. Paparazzi and pornographer’s all over the world rejoiced.