Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  “Aunt Gracy, it’s Annie.”

  “Annie! Haven’t talked with you in a month. How are you getting along?”

  “I’m getting along okay. Taking some time away from school. I’m on vacation in Montana.”

  “Talked to your father last week. He told us you were up there, staying at a place called Grizzly Ranch. Instead of going into some wilderness, you could have come down here. We’d have sent the jet. We’ve got this big house and no one ever comes to visit.”

  “I needed to get away from everything, everybody. I needed to get away from anybody who knows me, and everything that reminds me.”

  “I guess I can understand that. Is it working?”

  “I . . .”

  “It’s not working.”

  “No! It’s okay, Aunt Gracy. It’s just that.”

  “It’s not working. I can hear it in your voice. Why else would you call us? Why don’t you come here?”

  “No. I’m fine. It’s okay here. This is nice. I’m just curious.”

  “Curious about what, Dear?”

  “I’m just wondering . . . Atlantic Horizons . . .”

  “What about it?”

  “When Broad Horizons dissolved . . .”

  “We formed Atlantic Horizons. You already know all that.”

  “Yes, but I’ve never read the by-laws. Is there anything in them that says that what Broad Horizons was doing . . .”

  “What do you mean, was doing?”

  “The time thing.”

  “Are you trying to ask if that was forbidden in the new by-laws?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I don’t think it was addressed because all of that was dismantled and disposed of. Why are you asking?”

  “Ah.”

  “What’s going on, Annie?”

  “Nothing. Stupid thoughts. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you again in a day or so when I can talk longer. Bye. Love you Aunt Gracy.”

  Gracy put the phone down and looked at her husband, who was now standing, staring at her, his sand wedge in one hand, the polishing cloth in the other. “Something’s up, Henry. Call Gary. Tell him to have the jet warmed up tomorrow morning. We’re going to Montana. Annie needs us.”

  She told him what Annie said. “May be nothing,” Henry said.

  “I’ve got a good sense about these things, Henry, and my good sense is telling me it’s a lot more than nothing.

  Annie sat for a long time with the phone in her lap wishing she hadn’t called Aunt Gracy. Of course Grandfather is doing this without the board’s knowledge. It’s quite obvious that it is his project, not one sanctioned by Atlantic Horizons. So what was she thinking to ask such questions of Aunt Gracy? Now she has probably opened a can of worms. Aunt Gracy may be old, but she’s sharp as a carbide tack, as Annie’s father often said. Nothing gets by her or Uncle Henry.

  But I’m not the one who opened the can of worms to begin with. Grandfather did that. I’m just the one who may have kicked the can over.

  Chapter 43

  June 14, 2007

  Annie considered calling Beth but she didn’t know what her best friend would be doing. As she thought more about that she realized she had no idea who her best friend even was anymore. It used to be that the four of them would get together to study, work on a project or paper, help one or the other solve a research problem, complain about a professor, or just hang out. They always seemed to click together.

  And then Tony joined the Marines. Although Beth and Mikhail were great, it became as though they were trying to stay balanced on a three-legged chair, always excited about Tony’s next return. When he did show up between this and that—hardly more than a few days at a time—it wasn’t the same. He was changing, becoming distant. Though he said he loved her it seemed to be at arms-length. Although Beth and Mikhail were trying to be supportive, they were also pulling away, leaving Annie dangling in the middle. She had become nothing more than a subset of her husband’s world, having been replaced by the Marines, and she felt like an outsider with Beth and Mikhail.

  Now she was about as outside as she could get. Her husband was dead and her best friend was no longer her best friend.

  Annie stared at the phone for a few more seconds and then powered it off.

  A door slammed, drawing her attention to Richard and Mary’s cabin. Richard had shut the trunk of his car and was going back into the cabin. Annie couldn’t recall if Mary had mentioned what they were planning for the day. She suddenly became tossed between retreating into her cabin and asking if she could go along on whatever it was they were doing. To be truthful she didn’t look forward to spending the entire day with only her thoughts to keep her company. However, she didn’t feel up to playing the third wheel either, though she knew Mary would love having her along. She had become like a daughter to them. But what she really wanted right now was someone she could talk to about what her grandfather wanted her to do. She certainly couldn’t talk to Mary or Richard about that. Maybe that was why she had called Aunt Gracy; an attempt to reach out to someone who wouldn’t think she had gone over the edge.

  Annie rose to her feet, looked once more over at the neighboring cabin and then went inside. Besides, she thought, I need to sleep. I’m in no condition to go anywhere with anyone.

  The third time Annie looked out her window—she had spent the previous five minutes pacing, unable to settle—Richard and Mary’s car was gone. “Decision made.”

  Still, she couldn’t get her mind to shut down. She needed to shift her focus onto something other than her grandfather’s project, something mundane and boring. She analyzed the covers of the two thick novels, decided on Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and then stretched out on her little sofa, feet up on one end, head up on the other, and opened to the first chapter. She expected she would be asleep in minutes.

  Annie didn’t stop reading until the end of Book 1. Twenty-eight chapters and she was wide awake, and still couldn’t decide if she wanted to read the entire thing. Anna Pavlovna Scherer’s reception was tedious and tiring. The characters—the high society of Petersburg—walked around as though they had sticks up their butts, often needing footmen to conduct them somewhere, pull out a chair or maybe wipe their butts. It was like these footmen were robots they kept in closets, slaves without names or without ears or eyes who were always near, invisible until needed. And what’s with little Princess Bolkonskaya, who started out full of life and health and then fainted because her husband, Prince Andrew, raised his voice to her? Give me a break! They doted on her because of her condition. She was pregnant. What’s the big deal? And little princess! A married, pregnant woman is not a little princess?

  Annie flipped to the end of the long novel and found two epilogues. She read them both and then reread the last three paragraphs of the second epilogue, the absolute end of the book.

  As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality- free will.

  As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth’s fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one’s own personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: “It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,” so also in history the new view says: “It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.”

  In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousnes
s of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious.

  In a way this made sense to Annie. In another way she didn’t understand it at all. She put the book aside and pulled her computer onto her lap, waited for it to wake up and then opened her journal.

  Mom,

  I just read something written by Tolstoy. “…by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.”

  What is Free Will?

  Is it the ability to do something without any external forces or constraints? If so, there is no such thing as free will. Just the definition of free will disproves its existence. If a child’s father says she cannot go to the mall and she goes anyway, it’s either to spite her father, a reaction to his order, or because she wants to be with her friends in which case she is being driven by them, or she has an inner desire to purchase something she has seen her friends have, or has seen on television, or has seen in an ad somewhere. In every case she is driven by an external force. Even if she thinks she does, she has no free will. But does she have freedom? Is there a difference between freedom and free will?

  If at eighteen she says to her father, “I want my freedom,” and walks out of his house, does she then have freedom? Isn’t freedom the ability to exercise free will? If free will cannot exist in the real world, can there ever be true freedom?

  When I told dad that I was going away for the summer was I exercising my free will? I think not. I was reacting to external events not under my control.

  Annie suddenly recalled her gag-me-with-a-spoon boring philosophy class in her first year at MIT, and a just as boring discussion on determinism.

  In a class I once took there was a talk about free will versus determinism. That’s the philosophy that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences, thus leading to the impossibility of free will.

  “Where are you going with this, Elizabeth Anne?” you’re probably asking.

  Annie smiled at her own use of her full proper name, certain that if her mother had lived she would have called her Elizabeth Anne, not Annie.

  Here is what I’m thinking, mother. There is no free will. Determinism is alive and well. Our actions now are determined by actions taken long before us, all the way back to the forming of the Milky Way and the trapping of chunks of rocks, dust and gases in orbits around a ball of gravitational fire. Everything that has happened since then were events which needed to take place before I could sit in this cabin in Montana and write in this journal. That means also that in order for me to be here right now I would have had to be depressed and despondent enough to want to take a summer off. In order for that to happen Tony must have to have died in Iraq. In order for that to happen an individual would have had to strap a bomb to himself after developing a belief that his death would further a greater cause. This could keep going until we are back to the forming of the ball of fire.

  But, to stay with what is currently relevant, in order for me to be here right now after being presented with Grandfather’s mission of stopping the planes from hitting the World Trade Center, the planes would have had to hit the World Trade Center. If they hadn’t, Tony wouldn’t have died because he probably wouldn’t have joined the Marines because we wouldn’t be at war, and I wouldn’t have had the need to take the summer off and go to Montana, which means Grandfather wouldn’t be here with his time machine, which means . . . what?

  If you hadn’t gotten into the time machine in 1987 and if dad hadn’t made the errors he made then you wouldn’t have traveled back to 1943 and I would have been born in 1987 and you would likely still be alive. Also, Broad Horizons wouldn’t have been created, and neither would have Atlantic Horizons, my God Parent society would not have been formed, none of us would have become wealthy, including Grandfather who then would not have been able to finance his current time-travel project, which means he couldn’t go back and stop 9/11.

  However, according to Uncle James who talked considerably with Admiral Harris who took you to meet with Robert Oppenheimer, you believed that you were sent back in time, certainly not of your own free will, to ensure that history happened as it was written. If that is true, and we have no way of knowing otherwise, what does that mean for Grandfather? What does that mean for me? If you had gotten it into your mind to stop Robert Oppenheimer from developing the first atomic bomb, could you have, or did you in fact meet with him only for the sole purpose of convincing him that he was on the right track? Would he have gone off track if you hadn’t?

  Am I diverging uselessly or is there a purpose to my rambling? Is my rambling an expression of my free will or am I simply a puppet in this preordained universe?

  I ask again, what does this all mean for me, right now? What’s the next occurrence in this unbroken chain of prior occurrences? What more must occur before I decide whether to step into Grandfather’s time machine? If I do go back to fix things, can I, or would my only purpose be to ensure each event happens as it already has? This brings in another subject for a deep philosophical discussion. If I must go back to ensure things happen as they already have, that means that it’s preordained, that life is not random, that all prior occurrences are precursors to predetermined future occurrences, and . . . and this is a big and, they are dependent upon those future occurrences.

  Chapter 44

  June 14, 2007

  Annie awoke to a sleeping computer on her stomach. She put it aside as she sat up and then worked at getting the kinks out of her neck. She stood and stretched, shuffled to the door and opened it. The bright day blazed in at her and a note fell to her feet. She picked it up.

  Dinner at six. Our cabin.

  Mary

  Annie looked at her watch. It was 5:10. She felt like she’d rather go back to bed, but if she did she’d be up all night. She ran her tongue over her teeth and her fingers through her hair and then headed for the shower.

  She washed her hair and then just stood in the hot spray.

  What if I were to travel back?

  “Stop it, Annie! That thinking is stupid.”

  Suddenly she realized how much her own attitude about traveling back in time had changed. It was absolutely no when she walked into Professor Grae’s house what seemed like ages ago. Now she was actually catching herself thinking, what if?

  But what if I could talk to Tony . . .

  “No!” She slammed her open hand against the shower wall. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I don’t care if it’s preordained or not.”

  But what if…

  “Annie?”

  Her eyes popped open. “Patrick?” She turned off the water. “What are you doing in my house?”

  “Your door was open. Are you all right?”

  She peered through a clear strip on the edge of the frosted glass of the shower stall. Her bathroom door was also open, but after that she couldn’t see him. “I’m fine except for the part about some guy breaking into my house while I’m otherwise indisposed.”

  “I didn’t break in.”

  “And you’d better not be peering in my bathroom either.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.”

  “You’re a guy. Sure you would. Now close my bathroom door, please, so I can get out of here.”

  “No problem.”

  Annie stepped back and then tried to cover herself when she saw his dark shape, even though she was certain he could see no more than flesh tones. The door clicked closed. She opened the shower door and stepped out only to discover that she didn’t have a towel. The dirty towels were in the laundry bag by the front door. She had intended to go up to the lodge and do laundry today. Where had the day gone?

  She looked down at the pile of soiled clothes at her feet. No . . . way!

  “Patrick.
” After a few seconds of no response she called him again, louder. When she still didn’t get a response she cracked the door open and peeked out. Her cabin was empty, but the front door was still open. She started to step out and then noticed the edge of his flannel shirt. He was sitting on the porch step. “Patrick!”

  He jumped up and appeared in the doorway.

  “Close the door, please.”

  “Sure.”

  She considered her next thought for a second and then said, “But don’t leave.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” he said.

  When the door closed she ran to the bag of laundry, pulled the first dirty towel she saw and then rushed up to her loft bedroom.

  When Annie finally appeared on the porch with clean clothes and dry hair, Patrick was gone, though his truck was still parked next to her rental. She looked first up toward the lodge, but saw only Ruth puttering around the flowerbeds. She swung her gaze toward the path to the river and then pulled her focus closer, to Mary and Richard’s cabin. Their cabin was larger than hers, with a full porch wide enough to sport two rocking chairs. In one sat Richard, tall and statesmanlike; in the other sat Patrick, not as tall, but just as good looking. She suspected they were swapping British or Irish stories.

  For just a brief few seconds Annie’s stomach growled, or . . . she placed her hand there and knew immediately that it was not a hunger pain. She had felt this before, a number of times early on when she started having eyes for Tony, and then big time when he first spoke to her, and again when he proposed, and at their wedding. It was like a flutter of little butterflies. After he joined the Marines the butterflies gradually died away until the day the Marine officers showed up in her driveway. After that her stomach was full of lead weights. Only recently, very recently she only now realized, the lead weights had begun to dissolve.

  She pushed the butterflies back. She didn’t want them, didn’t deserve them.