Written in Time

by Jerry Ahern

  “Of course. Jack and Ellen have gone back in history I don’t know how many times, because the last time, they found a partially destroyed wall outlet in the wreckage of their house, which means that they had gone to the past before. This could be a time loop that never ends. Think about that for a while, Clarence, and see if you don’t get yourself the gigantic headache that attacked Cleveland.”

  “‘Those who don’t learn the lessons of history . . .’” Peggy began.

  “Perhaps that’s why they and we are doomed to relive it. We failed to learn history’s lessons or some crap like that. At any event, I’m not going to play God. My wife tells me that my ego is big enough already. No. If you go back, Clarence, you might bring about great good, you might bring about great evil, and you might break the cycle of the time loop. God knows and He isn’t telling me.

  “If you want my help,” Alan said flatly, “you’ve got it to the limit of Horizon Enterprises’ resources, and those have virtually no limit at all. We make more than a number of not-so-small countries, Clarence. I don’t have the notoriety, because I don’t want it, but I’m one of the two dozen or so wealthiest men in the world. Take all the time that you want and let me know, or tell me now. Whatever. Even though your mother was Ellen’s adopted sister, I still consider us blood, which in fact, if not in hemoglobin, we are. So you name it and it’s yours. I don’t envy you the decision. And, it might not work, anyway.”

  Clarence looked at Peggy sitting beside him. She wore a pale blue sweater set and a dark blue straight skirt. Her hair was up. She wore makeup, which she rarely did. She was really way too pretty a girl, but he asked her anyway, “Would you go with me? I mean, marry me first?”

  “Yes. Twice.” And she reached out and took his hand and rested it over her thigh.

  Clarence looked at his newfound relative and benefactor. “Let’s try and book two passages into the past, Alan. What do you say?”

  “I’ll have my best people on it by tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, let me buy you guys the finest dinner in Chicago. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to join you, but I’ll see you guys tomorrow right here at eight a.m. I’ll send a car around. Consider the dinner an engagement present. You guys are staying at the airport Hilton. Let’s say a driver will pick you up in the lobby at quarter to seven, traffic and all. Now, let’s schedule that dinner, shall we?”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Peggy led the way, driving the Naile family Suburban, Clarence beside her in the passenger seat, his eyes on the side view mirror. There was no road, only the flat plain of desert. Trucks and more trucks, eighteen-wheelers all, two and three abreast, roared after them along the barren terrain, enormous clouds of dust in their wake. Some of the trucks bore oversized load banners, huge yellow generators mounted on their flatbed trailers.

  Overhead flew helicopters, three of them, the lead machine bearing Alan, the other two packed with scientists and engineers.

  The Suburban itself pulled a box trailer, both the trailer and the Suburban packed with additional items Clarence thought might prove of use to his aunt, uncle and cousins, as well as some few of his own belongings and Peggy’s things.

  There were myriad questions, all of them either too complicated to answer or their answers subject to mere chance.

  If the time-travel mechanism could be repeated, what if he and Peggy were thrust into some other time, before or after his family had reached Atlas, Nevada? Millions of years before, Nevada had been prehistoric woodlands, and before that submerged below an inland sea and before that even more savage jungle.

  What if there were other time loops, or the series of time loops through which his family had traveled were somehow interwoven, and he and Peggy fell into a loop where Clarence had never existed? Would he automatically cease to exist because he had never been born? And, what, then, would become of Peggy? Rather than marrying him in the presence of his family, would she, too, cease to exist, because he had never brought her into the past? Would she somehow remain in the objective future? Or would she be doomed to survive alone in the past without him?

  Could any of his fears be possible? How could Alan’s scientists duplicate the effect of Jane’s and Peggy’s experiment that day when the very nature of ball lightning, perhaps critical to the time-travel soup, was not even understood, could not be explained?

  “You know what Alan will eventually do, if the experiments are successful and he can get us back through time,” Peggy said, her voice raised over the roaring of the trucks, the whirring of the helicopter blades. “You’ve told me yourself that Jack and Ellen always preached that enlightened self-interest was the most moral reason for action of any sort.”

  “And?”

  “And, if Alan’s scientists can send us back successfully, what reason is there to suppose that Alan won’t send equipment and fuel along the same time loop? In theory, if that could be worked out, reversing the process by means of which we would travel back would allow people to travel forward.”

  “A time machine?”

  “Not a bit,” Peggy told him. “Just a portal, a doorway. I don’t think anyone envisions what we’re hoping to do here as building some sort of time machine. All we’re doing is duplicating a natural phenomenon which we don’t understand and don’t even have sufficient data to rationally theorize about. If it works, all we’d have would be a two-way corridor, ninety-six years apart. Just think of the implications. I’m not saying that Alan is unscrupulous but, if anyone who were should gain control of the pro-cess—assuming that we succeed—the entire twentieth century could be molded to that person’s will and benefit.

  “History would be changed irrevocably,” Peggy declared, “everything unraveling. Think of the original event like a small pull in a sweater, which leaves the tiniest tuft of yarn visible above the surface. If you ignore that pull, it will slowly, inexorably, alter the sweater with time. If you tuck the pull back in, the sweater may wind up not being damaged any more at all. If you start to tug on the pull and keep tugging on it, the sweater starts unraveling. The hole that was that time rift would become larger and larger until nothing can be done to save the sweater and everything has come undone. I’m not getting cold feet, Clarence. I’m with you forever, wherever that takes us. But I wanted you to know what we might be doing.”

  “Remember what you said I’ve told you about Jack and Ellen and enlightened self-interest? Well, Jack and I would always argue, because I’m a fatalist. If we have the means to go back in time,” Clarence told her, lighting a cigarette as he spoke, “and we choose to go back in time, that means that, in the greater scheme of things, we were supposed to go back in time and nothing we do will change the outcome.” And he forced a laugh. “If the way of duplicating the original event presents itself, we’re fated to go back, and what will happen will happen anyway.”

  Clarence told himself that he believed his words completely; if he didn’t, at least they sounded good.

  “Think of it this way, Peggy. I know you’ve felt guilty over the prospect of leaving me, ever since you agreed to go with Clarence. But you shouldn’t.”

  “But I love you so, Jane. It’s like thinking about leaving your mother and knowing that you’ll never see her again.”

  Jane stood up, walked around to Peggy’s side of the smallish table and folded her arms around the girl, cradling her head against her breasts. “And you’ve been like a daughter to me; you are the daughter I’ve never had. I love you with all my heart, dear.”

  Jane heard muted sobs. Peggy’s arms encircled her waist, hugging her.

  “Think about the possibilities, Peggy. If history really can be changed, and the present changed because of that, think what an honors graduate of one of the world’s top medical schools could do to alleviate suffering and advance the cause of medicine in the fight against disease.”

  “But that would be intentionally changing history, Jane,” Peggy insisted, looking up at her. Peggy’s eyes were rimmed with tears.

&n
bsp; Jane leaned over and kissed the girl on the top of the head, then took a handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to Peggy. “Blow your nose?”

  “Mmm,” Peggy nodded, sniffed, taking the handkerchief. the sound of her blowing her nose something more like Jane would have associated with a child than an adult.

  Jane’s health was, after so many years, beginning to fail her, in simple but persistent ways. She got out of breath more easily, controlled her breathing less easily. She would feel tired for no reason or melancholy for no reason, either. At times, she would be giddy with happiness, at other times wanting to cry.

  The cause of her sadness sat before her, sniffling into the handkerchief, forcing an embarrassed smile. Jane would truly miss Peggy Greer, friend and confidant, and truly the daughter she had never had.

  What happiness Jane felt was derived from the astonishingly rapid progress that had been made with her experimental program. After all these years, all it had required to validate her hypothesis was the aid of some of the finest electrical engineers, particle physicists and meteorologists in the United States, plus the expenditure of more millions of dollars than she could bring herself to imagine.

  In a little over three months, the wave pattern of their first successful experiment on that day, nearly two years earlier when the helicopter had crashed, had been identically matched, amplified and boosted in power and field. An orange, a potted geranium, a frog, and then a rabbit had been caused to vanish—into time? How would they ever know without sending back a human being she had wondered.

  It was Alan who had suggested the obvious. He had a small sphere constructed, at its core a radioactive isotope with a well-established rate of decay. The reading of the isotope was taken; the sphere was whisked away—really through time?—and, in less than the blink of an eye, it reappeared exactly where they had placed it. Only it was partially covered with dirt and had to be dug free. The metal showed surface corrosion. When another reading of the isotope was taken, the numbers almost identically matched the theoretical prediction of decay for the passage of somewhere between ninety-four and ninety-eight years. Several more animals, another, different radioactive isotope—all were sent into the past. The recently euthanized body of a rabbit, secured within a stainless steel box, was transmitted into the past, the box reappearing in the next instant, the stainless-steel showing considerable surface corrosion. When the remains of the rabbit were subsequently examined, the veterinary pathologist declared that the animal appeared to have expired a century ago.

  Finally, it was time for a human experiment.

  One of Horizon’s scientific advisors had suggested recruiting the services of some terminally ill medical patient with mere days to live, offering a million-dollar financial estate to the person for the service to be rendered and equipping the volunteer with two items. One would be a hypodermic syringe with an especially lethal cocktail that would render him or her almost immediately unconscious, death ensuing within minutes. That was to be used at the volunteer’s election after he or she performed one vital function. A stainless-steel sphere would accompany the volunteer, the sphere fitted with a key to be turned right or left, toward the words yes or no, the key then to be withdrawn and discarded.

  When the sphere reappeared, if the position the key had been turned to indicated the selection yes, the volunteer would have signified that there were no perceived ill effects from the time transfer. If the key was not turned, whether removed or not, sound evidence would exist that the timetransfer process had killed the volunteer. The no option was merely to give the terminally ill volunteer peace of mind—if he or she were dead, actuating the key would be impossible—or indicate that what was perceived as fatal injury had been suffered during the time transfer.

  Jane had felt proud of both Alan and Clarence when they insisted, almost simultaneously, that such an experiment would be cruel in the extreme, regardless of how much money would inure to the terminally ill volunteer’s estate.

  After much consideration and debate, it was determined that, indeed, it was time for a human experiment—and the subjects would be Clarence and Peggy. They would, of course, have with them a stainless steel sphere, to be left behind before they ventured off through their new time. Inside it were to be stored immediate observations, remarks concerning perceived aftereffects or the lack thereof and any other information that they might think useful. The sphere would also contain, of course, a radioactive isotope with a precisely established rate of decay. If the experiment was successful and time-travel were achieved, the sphere would appear in almost the same instant that Clarence and Peggy and all of their gear vanished into the past.

  The idea of Peggy and young Clarence—Jane had become nearly as fond of him as had Peggy, but in a different way, of course—allowing themselves to be human guinea pigs at once frightened and repulsed Jane.

  An idea, which had been hauntingly formless, suddenly took shape, became perfectly clear.

  Jane would not share with Peggy or Clarence the nature of her epiphany but if Clarence was somehow right about Fate being inescapable, then this was why her body had been slowing, beginning to tell her that time was running out at last.

  She smiled at the thought. Rather than time running out on her, if Alan would see her logic, be her enabler, she would run out on time.

  The principal personnel who remained at the site all or most of the time had motor homes. Alan’s motor home was a palace on wheels.

  The vehicle was as large as a cross-country bus, yet had sleeker, more modern lines. There were four of what Jane Rogers had learned were called “bump-outs” adding extra roominess to the vehicle’s interior. Considering that Alan was only on-site for important meetings and actual experimental trials—which averaged about ten days out of every thirty—Jane secretly felt that the motor home was egregiously elaborate and, despite its tasteful decor, in the poorest taste.

  There were armed guards with sentry dogs surrounding the work site, standing watch over equipment and personnel, but nothing, presumably, would impede her from knocking on Alan’s front door.

  Her watch showed the time to be a little after eleven in the evening, but there were lights on within his motor home. She hoped she was not disturbing him, but her thoughts had to be shared with Alan as quickly as possible.

  The door opened. There was a portable phone to Alan’s ear, and he was talking into it. He smiled, gestured her into the sanctum sanctorum. He picked up a bottle of wine, gestured with his shoulders and eyebrows, then nodded his head toward the bar.

  “Yes,” she almost verbalized. She could use a drink.

  Jane Rogers poured herself a small glass of single malt scotch, added water to it, then dragged her old bones onto one of the bar stools.

  The decor was art deco, chic, expensive, real wood, real marble, real crystal and real leather in abundance. Naile’s bedroom door was open (she’d accompanied Peggy and Clarence to dinner here when the experiments had only recently gotten underway). She hoped that the bedroom was unoccupied, but for all his brusqueness and cocksure attitude, Alan did not strike her as someone who would cheat on his wife. He had a strong sense of family, and she liked that.

  At last, Alan took the phone from his ear and pushed a button. “Hong Kong and Tokyo on that conference call. How can I help you, Jane? That scotch looks good; I’ll pour myself a glass and join you.” Jane Rogers started to speak, but didn’t get the chance. “I’ve been given reports that you haven’t seemed to be feeling so hot over the last few weeks. Everything okay? Sure hope so. I bet I know why you’re here. Let me guess.”

  Jane decided to let him guess. She couldn’t get a word in even if she tried. As he poured two fingers of scotch, then added a few ice cubes from the bar refrigerator’s dispenser, he told her, “You’re worried about Clarence and Dr. Greer taking their trip the day after tomorrow, aren’t you? And you’ve hit on a handy solution. Stop me if I’m wrong. You’ve been feeling a bit less than in top shape and you’ve decided tha
t if any life is to be risked traveling into the past, you’re the one to do it. Right? If it works, Clarence and Peggy could be there with you within an hour, because we can charge everything up and be ready to go again in half that time. And, if it doesn’t work, we’ll know because you’d leave a sphere behind like the one that one of my people suggested with that stupid idea about hiring some poor terminally ill schmuck to be a human guinea pig. Well, if you want to do it, I can’t talk you out of it. If it works, you’d be with Peggy and Clarence until the end of your days, which you probably figure isn’t too much longer. If it doesn’t, you would have saved their lives. Right? I know, I know that you’re wanting to do this out of love. If we try it, and it fails, Clarence will be mega-pissed with me. Knowing him, he might try to beat me to death. But, if that’s what you want. Want another drink?”

  Alan probably put it down to awe of his personage and that was why people were so reticent around him.

  Everything possible had been taken into account to compensate for almost two years having passed between the initial incident and the experiment to be undertaken this day.

  Vagaries in atmospheric electrical charge, potential effect of nearness to solar maximum, relative position of the Earth in its orbit and, of course, the weather.

  Ball lightning had, as expected, proven impossible to realistically duplicate, but somehow, Horizon’s physicists had worked their way around that, learning to generate an electrical field that was generated of such enormous proportions as to compensate for whatever effect the ball lightning might or might not have had. Firing the light array for as long as ten seconds was routine. All evidence indicated that the power created by the bank of enormous industrial generators was enough to send large objects back in time.

  Jane waited quietly, sitting in a chair beside the control truck. Rather than resting, and to avoid conversation with Peggy and Clarence, she had driven south on the day after her late-night one-sided conversation with Alan, driven to the small cemetery where the remains of her late husband were buried, gotten down on her knees to be nearer to him, lain atop his grave and whispered that she loved him and, if there were an afterlife, would join him sooner or later, perhaps much sooner.