We followed him through the hall and gathered together in the room where Elizabeth’s father had originally kept his telescope and we had looked together at Mars.
"Now, Urquhart, I'm sure you know where the Andromeda galaxy is. Perhaps you can show it to us through the telescope."
I opened a window and quickly found the great square of Pegasus above the horizon. I turned the telescope towards it, then a little left searching for the faint glow of the galaxy. The sky was clear yet I couldn't see it. I checked the lens cap wasn’t on as I had happened on one or two occasions to the delight of my students at college and the embarrassment to myself.
I tried again. Points of starlight drifted across my view but I still could not find Andromeda.
I looked at the sky again with my own eyes just to confirm there were no clouds. The sky was crystal clear and black. There was no galaxy. This was worrying. I could usually see it as a faint smudge even with the naked eye.
"Where's it gone?" I said to no one in particular which was rather a stupid question.
"Oh, I'm sure it still there, Urquhart," said Marco, "But as you know the light from Andromeda takes a two and a half million years to get here.”
I thought I began to see what he was driving at.
“You mean the light from it is no longer reaching us? Has it exploded? I would have thought a galaxy that close going nova would light up the sky. Or has it somehow just imploded into itself and vanished?”
“You're on the wrong track. Keep thinking, Urquhart.”
As I tried to think whilst ignoring the urge to punch his goading face, Elizabeth said, “Are you saying, Mr Batalia, that the past now only stretches back to a certain time?”
“Well done, Mrs Urquhart. You have it.”
I knew I shouldn’t have taught her all that stuff on Relativity. I whispered into her ear. “You know my next wife is going to be kept in the kitchen making cakes and having babies.”
To which she whispered back, “You only have to ask your present wife and you may find she could become quite competent in those skills as well.”
I filed away that offer away very carefully for future use.
Elizabeth had got to the nub of it. I now realised what he meant by the end of time.
The real question now was, how far in the past could we now see? I looked out the window and my fears were confirmed. Even the Milky Way had vanished!
"Yes, Urquhart. The fourth dimension seems to have become finite!"
I asked the only question, "Do you think it's getting shorter?"
"I don't know. I phoned Jodrell Bank, but got no answer. And before you look, there's nothing on the Internet about it."
"Which means everyone in authority knows."
"Or no one knows they exist."
Elizabeth said, "Yes, I see what you mean. Perhaps in this time line we are in the Milky Way has never existed or the light from it has not, or cannot, reach us."
"Quite possible. Either way it means we're on our own."
"What do you mean 'we', Marco?" I said.
Before he could reply, Jill said, "I'm lost here. What's the milky way? Sounds more like an industrial dairy farm to me than a group of stars."
"You know," said Marco, "The band of stars which makes up our galaxy."
"What are you talking about? Show me," said Jill, looking distinctly un-nerved.
"I can't. It's not there."
"So you're telling me,” she said with some annoyance in her voice, “there's a thing out there called the Milky Way in the sky which you can't see. What are you playing at, Marco?"
Then getting no reply she turned to the rest of us. “Does anybody know what he's talking about?"
------------
E.
A cold clammy streak ran down my back. I realised that the world in which we now were since emerging from the white cliffs was more different to our previous world than I had thought. In this Jill's world the Universe was a smaller place. I had to protect my friend.
"Jill, you should know Mr Batalia is always playing with us. You should not take him too seriously."
"What are you talking about, Miss Bicester?" said Mr Batalia in his usual brusque manner.
"It is Mrs Urquhart." I reminded him.
"Yea. Whatever," he replied rather rudely then turning to Jill said, "Basically, Miss Urquhart, you're in a time line where most of your universe is missing. But I expect you don't know that."
I was about to come to Jill's defence when I was pleased to see she could manage on her own.
She said, "Yes, I do, Marco. I know I exist in many time lines, as do we all. For example, in one line Elizabeth is pregnant. In another I've never seen a computer. In this world I've never seen this Milky Way, whatever it is. The thing is, Marco, how many Marcos do you think you are?"
Mr Batalia looked quite shocked.
"There's only one of me!"
"You wish. I bet there's hundreds of Marcos running around and trying to change time to their advantage. But as far as I can tell they all keep failing."
I loved the way Jill is able to cut to the quick with such ease. Sometime I have wished I could abandon the baggage of my society to allow me to speak more plainly when required but apparently James assures me I can manage it quite successfully when the need arises.
Having silenced Mr Batalia, Jill continued. "But enough of you. This all looks too serious. I need to get Sean and tell him what's going on."
I said, "Are you sure that's a good idea? It's a lot to take in."
"He's from Kerry, remember. He thinks he's been surrounded by the fairy folk all his life."
I couldn't fault what she said. When you are with Jill's husband, Sean, strange things happen. The west coast of Ireland where he is from is a magical place. I remember James and I had been looking for a time portal at Dunbeg Fort near Dingle. We had become lost and called on a cottage for guidance. When we asked the occupant if she knew its location she crossed herself and said she knew the place but we should be careful as it was occupied by the Sidhe. But that is another story. I did not want Jill going off on her own and suggested, "I would rather you stayed here than go out there on your own. Tell him you are at Hamgreen without transport and need assistance. But don't mention what we found until he gets here. I am sure on hearing your predicament that he will be here in a thrice."
"No, Elizabeth. If he comes here and sees a severed head poking out that door, with his Irish background he's going to think Cuchulainn and his horde are inside and he won't stop running till he gets to Dingle. And besides," she said, looking at James, "I don't want to find myself stuck in another time tub.”
I could see that the event at Loch Ness with James was never going to go away no matter what time line we were in. However, I was still trying to understand how the past was vanishing. Was it just a dimension or did it include what we remembered? I asked everyone if they would indulge me in a little test.
They nodded.
I said, "How far back can you remember in history? Can anyone remember when the Romans left Britain?"
"Who are the Romans?" James said.
They all looked at him in disbelief.
"No, I'm only kidding. Around 400 AD I think."
"That is not funny, James. Now be serious. What about dinosaurs? They were millions of years ago."
James said, "Yep. Remember them. So if I get your drift it looks like our brains are not affected."
"So," I said rather cautiously for my grasp of this subject was very tenuous, "What’s the effect of this edge of time?"
Marco said, "For some reason it has become finite in length. It is acting like a spatial dimension. For all I know it's getting shorter. There was a time when we could see the Milky Way. Now it's gone."
"But was that in this world or the previous world you were in?" I said.
Mr Batalia hesitated for a moment deep in thought then said, "You know I can't recall. It may be just this world we are in.”
"You mean w
e can only go so far into the future and into the past and the distance between those points is getting shorter."
"Yes. That's the way I see it," said Marco.
"And eventually those two points could meet and time will vanish," said James.
I said, "Does that mean we cease to exist?"
"Not necessarily. We may exist in some state." He replied.
Marco said, "I don’t even know whether it’s just concentrated here on Earth or the whole Universe is experiencing it. By that I mean no matter where you stand in the Universe you are surrounded by a contracting sphere of time."
We all thought for a moment then James said, "Looks like we have no idea. But it's quite possible it could be getting shorter in length."
"But what is causing it? Is it us with our time travelling?" I said. For I feared sometimes that we were actually the cause of all the problems we encountered.
"I don't know!" said Mr Batalia getting quite frustrated with our questions.
James replied, "OK, let's assume that it is contracting. Then we need to know how long we have before it is reduced to nothing, so to speak."
"And how will we do that?" said Mr Batalia.
After a moment’s thought I realised there was only one option.
"There is only one way.” I said, feeling rather fearful, “We use the time machine to see how far we can travel to the future and the past."
Mr Batalia said, "Isn't that a bit dangerous? What happens when you reach one of those end points? You might vanish, cease to exist or get stuck there."
"Does anyone have a better plan?" I said, "As far as I know we are the only people in the world with a device that can investigate this phenomenon."
James looked at me and said, "Well, I'm up for it if you are, Elizabeth."
I must be careful in future when making an argument not to find I become responsible for implementing the consequences of its conclusion.
---------------------
Chapter 7
J.
I must make a note to allow a small time gap between what enters my head and what comes out of my mouth. It was agreed unanimously that we were just the right people to carry out this expedition though I cannot quite remember now what the arguments were. Marco, to be fair, did volunteer, possibly because he preferred our company to Jill's.
After a little hesitation we agreed he could come, mainly because of his expertise on time engineering.
Carrying the bags that Jill had brought us, we toured the outside of the house again to retrieve the conical device which was still sitting in the court yard in 1873,. This time I had a chance to get a better idea of the interior. The walls which I had not really noticed before were a deep red and glistened, possibly a product of the exotic metals used in their construction. In the centre sat the familiar blue globe of Earth and the orange one of Mars and around each was a rotating circular brass band with a steel pointer. I went over to the Earth globe and confirmed its pointer was over the rough location of Hamgreen. For more accurate spatial positioning on the planets' surfaces beside each globe were four brass Vernier scales. I had not seen these instruments since childhood metalwork lessons where we would use Vernier callipers to measure more accurately the diameters of rods and plates. I never understood metalwork and consistently came bottom of the class - a fact which I haven’t got around to mentioning to my brainbox of a wife yet
To the left, framed against the wall, were the time dials. An illuminated blue plaque beneath them displayed the current date and time. 20:00 14:10:000001873. And next to it was a similar screen in green displaying zero. Its purpose, according to Marco, was to display the time yet to elapse before arriving at the point in the past or future as set on the time dials.
So the plan was to explore the limits of time. However, the first question was: should we go to the future or past? The second was: how far do we go? And, oh yes, the third, more importantly, what do we do when we get there?
We decided to address the second first, the first second and the third when we got there. Because that's the way adventurers make decisions.
I said to Marco. "We know the Milky Way has disappeared so that gives us an upper limit of about 30,000 years either way, presuming of course, we are sitting on the centre of the finite time line."
"I agree." He said, still looking a little uncomfortable from his decision to join us. "So let's take it in tranches. We'll try one-hundred-year steps and watch if the star field density changes."
Elizabeth said, "I understand your logic and concur but shall we go to the future or the past?"
Marco said, “Let's toss a coin."
She said, " I prefer a task whose success is not dependent on chance. Perhaps we should go forward to the year 2016 as it is a time we know exists."
We agreed this seemed a good idea, for no other reason that good ideas seemed in short supply and Marco set the dials for that date and the blue screen changed from zero to 143 years.
"OK, let's wind up the power." He said and went over to a console to the right of the globes and after pressing a big red button, grasped a large lever protruding from a slot and carefully pushed it up. There was a slight humming sound and the pointers on a dial next to the lever slowly turned clockwise until it reached a stop bar. The wall behind the globes lit up to display a 360-degree panorama of Elizabeth's house.
"Now to change time." He said.
He touched a second lever on the console and pushed it very slowly upwards. The green time display immediately began to drop and the seasons on the wall slowly changed. Winter, snow then the green leaves of spring. I expected to see a flicker from night and day but I couldn’t see it. After about ten seconds it had dropped a year and we were back in the autumn again. Seeing it was working Marco moved the lever further up and the countdown increased in speed. Within about a minute we had arrived in 2016.
I went up to the wall screen. Everything looked roughly the same and I could see plenty of stars. I said, " Looking at this all we can say is that the time line limit in the future is, er, at least 143 years. Up for a trip to the past everybody?"
------------------
E.
I was just about to agree for the voyage to the past when I had a thought. "Could you wait a minute - I think I have an idea on how to calculate where time ends."
They both stopped and looked at me. "How?" said James.
"I believe in your world, James, you know the distances to most of the stars. If we could obtain such information for a range of stars from say ten to three thousand light years we could look for those that are missing. That way we can find out roughly when time stops."
"Brilliant!” said James with more admiration for me than I was expecting. "I can use the net while we are in 2016 and get the distances of the brightest stars and nebulae."
James tapped away on his phone and tried to look up a range of stellar objects.
"Something’s wrong here. Half the stars are missing. Oh, of course, in this world they don’t exist as their light hasn't reached us yet. Luckily I should have an astro app from our world I can use, I hope."
James pressed some more buttons then said, "Ok, they’re all here. I've got a good range including the Orion Nebula, Sirius, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse and Rigel. Marco! Move us forward to the next clear night."
We then looked at the evening sky. My favourite constellation Orion the Hunter followed by his dog rose in the eastern sky. But as I regarded its beauty I noticed something was missing. It was the central star of his belt. James noticed it too and said, "That's a bit of luck. The nebula is about 1344 lightyears and the centre star, what's it called, ah yes, Alnilan - it's 1350 light years away. Therefore, the edge is about 1344 years ago! Well done!"
I said, "If I understand you then we can't go back further than, let me see, yes, about 530 AD."
“So anything happening around that time in history?” said Mr Batalia.
“As far as I can remember we were deep in the Dark Ages here and the Saxons
were taking over the country.” replied James.
I said to him, “May I borrow your phone?”
I had to prise it out of his hand.
“Now, where is the mine of information again, James?”
He reluctantly pointed to a little icon on the screen and I pressed it. A white box appeared. I typed in ‘530 AD’.
I was quite staggered by what I found.
“There is a record that Haley’s Comet appeared in 530 AD! I remember my father describing its appearance in 1835. He said there was much hysteria in the broadsheets about the end of the world but nothing came of it. Just a minute! Here is an article concerning reports in the fifth century from a person called Procopius. He says, gosh!
“ ‘In 537 AD… this year the most dread portent took place. The sun gave forth its light without brightness, during this whole year, and it seemed like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed. And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death.’
This is too much of a coincidence, James.”
He took back his phone and read the report, "Alright. We've got a reason for the boundary at this time if this chap Procopius is to be believed. But it's only a theory. I suggest if we're going to find the edge we take it carefully. So let's get back to 1873 and start."
We arrived back in 1873, and Mr Batalia set the time to 1740. I must admit part of me was looking forward to seeing how my home changed.
The display started decreasing. As I watch us arrive at the turn of the eighteenth century I noticed the trees getting smaller and younger. Then around 1780 the house seemed to shrink in size! I quickly realised I was watching its reconstruction in reverse.
Much of the house with its ashlar walls had disappeared and been replaced with timber frames with a single gable at the front. Only the entrance stone pillars and arched doorway of my home remained. I could now see the terracotta pantiled roof which had been hidden from view by the facade. Between the stonework and wooden joists, the wattle and daub was painted yellow. It looked very homely. When we stopped at 1740 to observe the stars again, it took some emotional resistance not to ask if I could meet my ancestors.
A House Out of Time Page 6