"I see," said Charlie. "Listen I need to ask—"
"They had goons," she said, too excited to notice Charlie's desperate state.
"Goons, Cossack goons, yes, but—"
"Machine-goons."
"Oh, guns, right."
"And a helicopter, and gold bullion, and diamonds. And they insisted I coom with them. They said if I didn'a coom, they'd kill me, and if I did, they'd give me a million euros. As if money's wurth anything now!"
"Mrs. MacGuffin..." Charlie wasn't the least bit interested in her adventure, however exciting. He needed to know what had happened to Alex. Mrs. MacGuffin, however, was inebriated with adrenaline and misinterpreted Charlie's anxiety as interest. Charlie realized he'd have to let her speak.
"He said his name was Sergey and that he was going to go back to New York, 1930, right after the market collapse. He would take his gold with him and use it to buy up all the blue chip company stock he knew would survive the depression. He wanted to go live his laf even richer than he was now. So I did as he demanded, I took him to the front of the line. He then held a goon to me head and made me enter the date while he watched. He told me he would shoot me dead if I didn'a do it. What a most unpleasant gentleman!"
"But he's gone now?"
"Oh aye, he is. Just lak he said, gone back to New York, 1930..." Mrs. MacGuffin then smiled mischievously and added, "B.C." Mrs. MacGuffin began to chuckle. "My only regret is not getting to see the look on his face when he got there! Oh dear, he's long dead 'n' dust now, I s'pose. God rest his soul."
"Mrs. MacGuffin!" Charlie pleaded.
Mrs. MacGuffin saw, for the first time, the pained look on Charlie's face. "What is it dear? Why aren't you and yur lad safely in the past?"
Charlie explained what had happened.
"Oh dear," said Mrs. MacGuffin. She then smiled and began to chuckle once more.
"I don't see what's remotely funny about—"
She touched his hand sympathetically. "I'm sorry dear, I don't mean to laugh but, well, you said he jumped through the gate without entering any date or location?"
"Yes, exactly. The display was blank."
"Well, that's because it resets after each joomp. Rupert made it that way for safety's sake."
"Resets? To when... and where?"
"Well, to here... and now, of course."
"You mean Alex is here?" cried Charlie.
"And now," Mrs. MacGuffin assured him.
* * *
It took about twenty minutes for them to find Alex. Here, it turned out, meant a farmer's field about a kilometre away. The latitudinal and longitudinal settings of the gate were only precise to within a few thousand meters. Alex had walked back to the gate where he'd learned that Charlie had not gone through at all. He had been searching for Charlie ever since. People in line had tried to be helpful, but had instead sent him on various wild goose chases. When Charlie finally found Alex, the boy was cold, exhausted and his boots were caked in sheep manure. Otherwise, he was fine. The man and boy fell into each other, both in tears. Charlie hugged Alex desperately, saying again and again how sorry he was. Alex apologized for being stupid and insensitive to Charlie's loss.
"There will be plenty of time fur words later," Mrs. MacGuffin pointed out. "It's all in the past now." She enjoyed the puns that time travel allowed for speech. She liked to refer to them as a 'tense situation'. Charlie and Alex nodded.
Mrs. MacGuffin led them once more into the tower. There was mounting anxiety for those in line and word of numerous scuffles and confrontations further back in the queue. It would be a good while before the world actually ended, but already the fighting had begun. "I still don't get why you don't go through" said Alex.
"Things are going to get ugly here," Charlie agreed.
Mrs. MacGuffin nodded. "Aye," she said. "It won't be all the band playin' while the ship goes down, I ken tha'. Still, I figure, while I'm here I can at least help to keep folk in line. They ken I can shoot it all down. It'll still get nasty towards end, but 'til then... I guess it's all I can do to make up for what Rupert did. It's all his fault tha' knows. You canna give a bomb to a baby and blame the child for what happens next."
Moments later they stood at the platform. A convent of nuns from nearby Neighbrook stepped aside to let them through. The nuns were in a state of religious confusion and were happy to let them pass while they continued to debate whether entering the gate was a form of blasphemy. "What would Jesus do?" asked one sister. Another nun suggested they go back to 0 A.D. and find out.
Mrs. MacGuffin entered the time of their choosing, Jan 1, 1920. The idea was to benefit from the relative comfort of the twentieth century, while giving Alex time to live. They would use their knowledge of the future to avoid the pitfalls of the Great Depression, but not try to change anything that might lead to problems. As it turned out, their plan would work out well. Under an assumed identity, Charlie would eventually find work with US Government intelligence. He would excel there with his 'forward thinking' and go on to become a founding member of the OSS during World War II. His career would later culminate with him as a director with the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. He would legally adopt Alex as his son. Alex would grow up and become a successful science fiction writer. He would write stories of a far off future he knew would never be. Alex would later marry and have two children. It would be a family secret that would be passed down, that each successive generation must make its way to Scotland, should it live to a certain date. Eventually, one winter day, both Alex and Charlie would trudge through deep snow and biting Michigan cold to watch a small convoy of military vehicles drive by. They were unable to intervene, but both wanted to bear witness. Charlie would be in his seventies then, and Alex would have to help him through the deep drifts. But before and after all of that, both of them held hands and stood on the precipice. Charlie steeled himself. He knew what he was doing. He knew where Lisa was going when she drove off that morning with their daughter. Most of all, he knew that Alex was right. He had to let go of Faith, except as the memory she was. There was no going back, even with a time machine. That, he decided, was the real paradox, accepting something he knew to be true on faith. He gripped the boy's hand and nodded. The two then stepped from the steel platform, fell through the glowing ring and were gone, forever and never.
* * *
Two years later, the Earth was gone. The Sun was also gone, as were all of the planets. In its place was chaos. The chaos was of varying diameter. On average, it was over six billion kilometres across now. It could also be described as forty 'astronomical units' but, given that au was defined as the mean distance from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun, that could only be seen as anachronistic now. Because of the exponential growth of the chaos, it had swallowed the rest of the solar system in about the same time in took to swallow the Earth and moon alone. Of course, owing to the enormity of the ever expanding cosmos, it would still be a very long time before everything was gone. In distant galaxies, civilizations would rise and fall, oblivious of the dissolving doom. Voyager II was gone. That left Voyager I as the lone relic of humanity, dutifully beaming back reports to a planet that was no longer there. In and of itself, this was not a great tragedy as, ever since leaving the solar system, these reports had effectively read "more of the same..."
In mere minutes, the chaos would expand enough to absorb Voyager I as well and, thereby, erase the last vestige of mankind from existence. Seconds before that happened, however, an event occurred of mind boggling improbability. It was something so astronomically unlikely that it could only have happened for a reason. This apparent portent, however, was then confounded by its own complete and utter irrelevance. After four decades drifting through space, Voyager I was struck by a piece of space debris. This was not a stray meteor nor part of a comet. The debris was a deceased hamster named Doris. Doris, now frozen solid at 4° Kelvin, exploded into ice crystals upon impact. This random event destroyed Voyager I's central pro
cessor and effectively killed the tiny probe. A moment later, the inexorable chaos spread and both the Voyager I spacecraft and the pulverized hamster were gone.
Fin.
Appendix A: the 5.5 Epiphanies
Ed Platzberg created the Pō Light religion, more or less by accident. This wasn't the first time a religion was created inadvertently. Jesus had no intention of creating Christianity and that worked out fairly well. Or rather it did, until St. Paul ruined it all by intentionally creating the Church. Intentionally created religions include Scientology and Apostolic Socialism. The former was created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard in what, one can only assume, was one of the greatest practical jokes of all time. So great, in fact, that it is still going on today. The latter was created by Jim Jones, who showed us that, when life brings you lemons, make Kool-Aid. So, all in all, accidental religions would seem to be the way to go. If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and, presumably, bad intentions aren't exactly the asphalt of salvation, that leaves unintended consequences as the only building material left.
Ed Edward Platzberg was named for his father, Ed, and his grandfather, Edward. His family, however, called him 'Ted' in reference to a beloved great aunt of the same name. To everyone else, he was simply 'Ed' or, sometimes, 'Eep!'. Ed was a moderately successful tie salesman living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He had worked for the Breakneck Tie Co., based in Cincinnati, Ohio, for over twelve years, selling ties of every stripe, colour and occasional polka dot. Ed was proud of his job. "Pants separate people from the animals," he used to say, "but ties separate people from people who aren't wearing ties."
One day, while sitting in a sales and marketing meeting, Ed learned an interesting fact. He learned that his home town of Winnipeg was the most important test market in North America. It owed this distinction to the fact of its being completely average. To a marketer, this meant that if a product made it in Winnipeg the odds were pretty good that it would make it in other cities as well. This was the reason Winnipeg got Chicken McNuggets, Cherry Pepsi and adult onset diabetes before they became popular elsewhere. Of course, plenty of people know this, but Ed learned something else that day, something very specific to himself. He learned that he too was completely average, even by Winnipeg standards. He was average looking, he was of average height and weight, he was the average age and wore average clothes and read average books. His income was average and he had average kids. His wife was also average and they lived in the single most average part of the city, in an average house. Whatever it was, Ed was the average of it. Mathematically this could also be described as the 'mean', but he didn't like to think of himself as a mean person. Ed realized then, with his average intelligence, that he was conceptually the center of the universe, provided the center was defined as the average. An idea then occurred to him. This idea was that he was 'extraordinarily ordinary'. Something else then occurred to him, that all of this inherent mediocrity was okay. Ed decided to share his idea online. Ed had two-hundred and eight Twitter followers, the average number for a Twitter user at the time. When he began to post his ideas he never expected them to resonate so much with the average Twitter follower, but they did. He certainly never expected those followers to then retweet his thoughts to an average of two-hundred and eight more followers each, but they did that as well. Suddenly, there were tens of thousands of average people who had finally found what they were looking for, someone to acknowledge that they weren't special or chosen, but that this was okay. To his followers, not having to live up to the notion that they were somehow preordained for something wasn't depressing, it was liberating. They then turned to Ed and asked him to be their leader. Ed told them "no", that he wasn't special enough to lead them but, if they liked, they could go in the same direction he was going, provided they didn't talk too much or ask a lot of questions. So they did, and that was when something extraordinary happened—a new religion was born.
The name of the religion, it is worth noting, was also an accident. One morning, Ed was posting a comment on Facebook about his breakfast cereal. His iPhone, however, auto-corrected the word "frosted mini wheats" as "Pō Light". No one knows why. Some say it was fate, while others say it was a bug in the text interpretation algorithm. Almost certainly it was one or other. Whatever the reason, the post went viral and, by the time Ed realized his mistake, the name had stuck. Several of his more enthusiastic followers had already tattooed it on various parts of their bodies.
Before compiling The Blog, the collection of internet postings that comprise the central tenets of the Pō Light faith, Ed wrote The 5.5 Epiphanies. The former is too long to be included here. The latter is not. The 5.5 Epiphanies were the foundation of the faith and have been compared to the Ten Commandments. This is a poor comparison. For one thing, there are only five and a half of them. Secondly, they're not commandments. They are more like vague suggestions of things you might like to do or think about, provided you're not too busy. Lastly, they weren't handed down from God, a burning bush or even an overheated houseplant. Ed freely admitted to having simply "made them up"—some, quite possibly, while drunk. Cynics have argued that this simply makes the Pō Light religion typical, rather than atypical. Calling a Pō Light typical, of course, is like calling a Lutheran dull. What follows here are those epiphanies, in their original text. Since their first posting, they have been copy-pasted by candlelight by monks in monasteries around the world. They have been shared, re-tweeted, liked and turned into animated gifs. They have also been machine translated, and retranslated into hundreds of different languages and, in some instances, into entirely new religions.
The 5.5 Epiphanies
1
We are not the chosen people. While there may be people chosen by God(s) who are better than the rest and postmarked for salvation, it's almost certainly not us. We have no reason to believe we're special, but that's okay. We were created this way. Recognizing this frees us up to look past ourselves to find the true religion and the true chosen people. If you don't see them nearby, try elsewhere, in the next room perhaps. In the meantime, be nice to people. There's a fifty-fifty chance they're better than you, and even if they're not, it's nice to be nice anyway.
2
We are all (increasingly) imperfect clones of our former selves.
3
There is at least one other force in the world besides Good and Evil, and that force is 'Jerry'. Jerry is my neighbour and he is this thing, so I've named it after him. Jerry, is not good or evil or even neutral. He's just, well, Jerry. Jerry is the umami of being. You can't quite put your finger on it, but you know what it's not. If evil is black, and good is white, then Jerry is chartreuse. When you meet someone like Jerry, you'll know what it is. Until then, it's like trying to explain what B-flat tastes like to a mollusk. It's quite possible that Good and Evil don't really exist, that they are constructs of the human mind. Jerry, on the other hand, is real. I've met him. He still has my weed whacker.
4
Numbers are meaningless, but they're better than nothing. Nothing, on the other hand, is better than anything. If we can't understand the meaning of words, how can we possibly understand the meaning of life? Once you know this, you'll really be onto something.
5
The only truly honest experiment is a triple-blind study. This is similar to a double-blind study in that both the subject and those conducting the experiment don't know what is going on. The difference is that, in a triple-blind study, no one looks at the results either. If you think this doesn't apply to you because you not a scientist, think again.
5.5
There is a truth in the world that can lead to real, lasting happiness and that is *
*It is said that Ed was writing this down on a cocktail napkin when his pen ran out of ink. By the time he had the waitress's attention and she gave him another pen, which also didn't work, and she had to go find another waitress and borrow her pen, Ed had forgotten what it was. Nevertheless, he kept it here in the hope that, s
omeday, it will come back to him. Somedays he thinks really hard about it but, so far, no dice.
Appendix B
This appendix was inflammatory and has been removed.
Appendix C: the President's Poetry
The book includes three examples of poetry written by the President of the United States. The Commander-in-Chief, however, was quite prolific, writing verse both short and long. The longest was his attempt to rewrite The Divine Comedy. He believed that Dante got it all wrong, at least in terms of who was in Hell and who was in Paradise. Hoping to appeal to a broader audience, he called his version The Divine Situation Comedy. Most critics agree that, on analysis, the President likely never read the original. He appeared to have based his interpretation on a video game, a dream sequence from an episode of Happy Days and his own assumptions. While that particular work is too long to be included here, a few shorter examples are not.
My Brother's Keeper
On the day, before tomorrow,
I met a man filled with sorrow
He said he'd lost his brother's twin,
I told him, he should look within.
He waved his arms and began to shout,
"I dare not let that person out!”
Time Peace
A man gave me a thing precise
A magical mechanical device
It was a golden watch and fob
To keep it going was my job
But then I found this thing he gave
Became my master, I, its slave
Though t'was my fingers task to wind
In its cold, metallic hands I'd find
Chaos Theory: A Feel Good Story About the End of the World Page 27