by Anthology
“Even though you’ve never seen me before, as I said, I know all about you. I want to tell you about three men that you need to stay away from when—and if, he thought—you meet them later on in your life.” As much as Jack wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what the first guy would do, but he described him clearly, and also where and when she might meet him, and described him in an ominous-enough tone that he was sure she got the point. He also told her about the two potential husbands, giving her their names and where she might meet them. “And never, ever give up on your dream of going to college.” Her eyes widened, and he kept going, hoping that his words would imprint on her, and somehow stay with her through the years. “You can do it, even though it will be difficult at times. But I know you can succeed, and become a nurse, just like you’ve always dreamed of doing.”
Lana’s mouth hung open, and Jack smiled, as he was sure that she might not have even thought about what she wanted to do at this age. “If you take anything away with you after this, know that out there somewhere is a man who always believes in you, no matter where you are, or what you are doing. Most of all, be true to yourself, and don’t let anyone tell you how you should think or what you should do, unless you agree with them. Only you can possibly ever know what’s best for yourself. Understand?”
Lana nodded, just as the screen door creaked open. An iron-haired, stern-faced woman appeared in the doorway. “Lana, you come in this house right now!”
The girl turned to go, but looked back at Jack one last time.
“Remember what I said, Lana, and trust in yourself. You can do it!”
She lifted her hand in a shy wave, and then ran up the steps to where the woman waited, her hand on her hip. “What have I told you about talking to strangers?” she scolded as she ushered the girl inside, giving Jack an icy glare as she closed the door.
Well, at least she’s teaching her that much right away, I suppose. The encounter had gone faster than Jack had expected, and he actually had a little time left to himself. Time to do what—walk around this world that had no idea of what lay ahead of it—Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, Iran, the Sino-Chinese War, and a world brought to the brink of destruction less than seventy-five years from now? Is that any kind of world to leave to one’s children?
He turned and began walking down the street, back to his starting point. But by doing this, have I truly made any kind of difference at all? I don’t even know if she will take my words to heart and change the path she is on—she might just chalk it up to the ramblings of a strange old man who accosted her outside her house one summer afternoon.
The sound of a window opening behind him made Jack turn his head to look behind him. The window of the lone upstairs dormer in the Tavermeier home, which he could have sworn had been closed, was now open, its curtains fluttering softly in the breeze. And there, framed in the window, was Lana, waving good-bye.
Jack raised his hand and waved back, a faint smile ghosting across his mouth. Then again, maybe she will be better off. He continued on down the street. He had lost track of how many minutes he had left in this time, but figured that the return hole would be appearing very soon. Which begs the next question: am I going back?
In all their research at the military redoubt deep in Cheyenne Mountain, they had never been able to answer the age-old questions of time-travel paradox. Jack knew that if he did go back, he would face a swift trial for unauthorized use of military equipment during a time of war, and most likely be accused of treason and anything else the government could cook up.
Perhaps I will be able to stay here, he thought, even as the logical part of his mind figured that would be impossible, especially if Irena’s theory was correct, and that the laws of the universe tended toward order. As a man displaced out of the time he should be in, that left a whole lot of unknowns that possibly might come crashing down on him. I could end up disappearing for good, vanishing from the universe forever. I could explode in a burst of complete cellular disintegration. I could—just end up staying here, trapped forever in the past.
A spark of white light across the street caught his attention, and Jack walked toward it, knowing that the return timehole was opening, growing to form a rift in the continuum that would enable him to enter it, if he desired. On its edge, he hesitated for a moment, taking one last look around, particularly at the house halfway down the block. He thought of the little girl who lived there . . . and what she might accomplish in the hopefully new future that stretched out before her.
Goodbye, Mom.
“I hope you both realize the jeopardy that your colleague has placed us in with this hazardous and incredibly foolish stunt,” the general said. “Yes, we were certainly hoping that this program could be used to change the past, to divert the timeline of crucial events so that our world wouldn’t be nearly destroyed in the War against China. In time, we had hoped to send people back to accomplish certain—missions—to ensure that the war never happens in the first place. But now, thanks to Doctor Hollister’s egocentric little jaunt, all of that is possibly in very real danger.”
David’s jaw dropped, mirroring Irena’s shocked expression. “Sir, have you even given a thought to what you’re saying? The consequences of trying to alter the time continuum could be disastrous, even catastrophic. We don’t know if it is even possible to do what you’re suggesting.”
“Well, I guess we’re about to find out,” the general said. “Just by going back in time, Doctor Hollister has already altered events, even it he does nothing, correct?”
“Yes, the very fact that he is there could potentially alter time, and change the future. However, as we’ve already said, we won’t know about it, since the reality we exist in is occurring right now, already around us, created every second.”
“But does that mean he will shift that time stream over to another, different path?”
“I think we’re about to find out,” David said, waving them over to the monitor that showed the time displacement chamber, now containing a blinding white glow that was spreading to every corner of the room. “The return cycle is starting.”
Jack shielded his eyes enough to block most of the glare from the dazzling light that appeared in front of him. But he couldn’t help watching as other things began to appear in the incision between the two time periods.
He saw Lana going to school, then entering college as he had hoped, then graduating with her degree and going to medical school—
But then a different scene appeared, and he watched Lana under very different circumstances, pregnant and alone in what looked like a grimy third-story walk-up apartment building, with tears running down her face as she sat at a battered kitchen table—
What’s going on here? he wondered, just as another view of her appeared, this time in a corporate board-room. His mother, looking about forty years older, was dressed in a tailored pantsuit and presenting some kind of make-up line to the people seated in the room. Above her head was a company logo: Striver Cosmetics—
The scene changed again, and he saw Lana dressed in a black robe and with her right hand raised and her left hand on a Bible, taking some kind of oath of office—
As Jack watched, he saw hundreds, then thousands of alternate Lanas, each one following a new path to a varying conclusion. Some of the different versions of his mother were cut down by accidents or disease, some were the victims of crime or poverty, and many went on to accomplish careers, marry and raise a family, or, in some of the best cases, both. The images flowed over and around each other, like hundreds of thousands of different life paths that his mother could take, branching off from this moment—
—Including the same one she might have continued on after I spoke to her, Jack thought. Irena was right after all; it doesn’t matter whether any of us go back in time to try and change things; all that does is create a new, separate reality, in which that choice is played out, and all of the other, different decisions after that.
So if every choice creates a different line, then there are billions—no an infinite number—of alternate worlds being created every second of every day.
But what will happen to me now that I’ve stepped out of my timeline and changed things? I mean, I still exist, because somewhere in all of these infinite timelines, she met and married my father, and apparently still had at least one child—I think. So I will not disappear like a figment of so many fevered pulp writers’ imaginations. But would I still go back to that moment—would I still exist in that future?
Before he could even ponder the ramifications of answering his own question, Jack stepped into the glowing white rift and blinked out of existence from Oak Street in Duluth, Minnesota, in July, 1948.
“The universe moves toward order,” Irena whispered under her breath as the white light faded, revealing Jack standing in the middle of the displacement chamber, looking around with a satisfied expression on his face.
The general unsnapped the flap covering his pistol. “Guard! I want you to arrest that man—”
David limped forward. “Wait, general, consider what you are doing right now. Jack Hollister is the only human being to have successfully traveled through time—assuming that the man in there is indeed Jack. If you lock him up now, years, perhaps decades of research will be lost to us, and we would be no closer to seeing if your goal is even possible.”
The general glared at David, his hand hovering over his pistol, then motioned the guard back to his position. “You get everything out of him you can, and then he’s mine, understand?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
Jack opened his eyes to find himself in a vast forest, with a small, bustling town composed of dozens of clapboard building that ringed a large, frenetic port on the shore of Lake Superior.
The sound of whuffling horses and creaking wagon wheels made him turn to see a buckboard and team pull to a stop nearby. A man in a homespun shirt and well-worn canvas pants regarded him. “Wherever did you come from? I would have sworn this road was empty a moment ago.”
Jack regarded him with a frown. “That would be almost impossible to tell you, sir, so I’ll just say I come from a very, very far away place. Mind if I get a ride into town?”
“Ayuh, hop on up here. I can take you to the mill on the outskirts, then you’re on your own.”
Jack looked around with a smile. “That sounds just fine.”
The white glow faded, and Jack found himself back on Oak Street, everything around him unchanged. For a moment he thought about going back to see his mother, then he shook his head, turned around, and began walking down the street in the opposite direction.
Jack winked into existence in a thick forest, and stumbled around just long enough to attract the attention of a hungry cave bear that stalked, killed, and ate him in 1948 BC.
Jack . . .
OPENING THE DOOR
Arthur Machen
The newspaper reporter, from the nature of the case, has generally to deal with the commonplaces of life. He does his best to find something singular and arresting in the spectacle of the day’s doings; but, in spite of himself, he is generally forced to confess that whatever there may be beneath the surface, the surface itself is dull enough.
I must allow, however, that during my ten years or so in Fleet Street, I came across some tracks that were not devoid of oddity. There was that business of Campo Tosto, for example. That never got into the papers. Campo Tosto, I must explain, was a Belgian, settled for many years in England, who had left all his property to the man who looked after him.
My news editor was struck by something odd in the brief story that appeared in the morning paper, and sent me down to make inquiries. I left the train at Reigate; and there I found that Mr. Campo Tosto had lived at a place called Burnt Green—which is a translation of his name into English—and that he shot at trespassers with a bow and arrows. I was driven to his house, and saw through a glass door some of the property which he had bequeathed to his servant: fifteenth-century triptychs, dim and rich and golden; carved statues of the saints; great spiked altar candlesticks; storied censers in tarnished silver; and much more of old church treasure. The legatee, whose name was Turk, would not let me enter; but, as a treat, he took my newspaper from my pocket and read it upside down with great accuracy and facility. I wrote this very queer story, but Fleet Street would not suffer it. I believe it struck them as too strange a thing for their sober columns.
And then there was the affair of the J.H.V.S. Syndicate, which dealt with a Cabalistic cipher, and the phenomenon, called in the Old Testament, “the Glory of the Lord,” and the discovery of certain objects buried under the site of the Temple at Jerusalem; that story was left half told, and I never heard the ending of it. And I never understood the affair of the hoard of coins that a storm disclosed on the Suffolk coast near Aldeburgh. From the talk of the longshoremen, who were on the lookout amongst the dunes, it appeared that a great wave came in and washed away a slice of the sand cliff just beneath them. They saw glittering objects as the sea washed back, and retrieved what they could. I viewed the treasure—it was a collection of coins; the earliest of the twelfth century, the latest, pennies, three or four of them, of Edward VII, and a bronze medal of Charles Spurgeon. There are, of course, explanations of the puzzle; but there are difficulties in the way of accepting any one of them. It is very clear, for example, that the hoard was not gathered by a collector of coins; neither the twentieth-century pennies nor the medal of the great Baptist preacher would appeal to a numismatologist.
But perhaps the queerest story to which my newspaper connections introduced me was the affair of the Reverend Secretan Jones, the “Canonbuiy Clergyman,” as the headlines called him.
To begin with, it was a matter of sudden disappearance. I believe people of all sorts disappear by dozens in the course of every year, and nobody hears of them or their vanishings. Perhaps they turn up again, or perhaps they don’t; anyhow, they never get so much as a line in the papers, and there is an end of it. Take, for example, that unknown man in the burning car, who cost the amorous commercial traveller his life. In a certain sense, we all heard of him; but he must have disappeared from somewhere in space, and nobody knew that he had gone from his world. So it is often; but now and then there is some circumstance that draws attention to the fact that A. or B. was in his place on Monday and missing from it on Tuesday and Wednesday; and then inquiries are made and usually the lost man is found, alive or dead, and the explanation is often simple enough.
But as to the case of Secretan Jones. This gentleman, a cleric as I have said, but seldom, it appeared, exercising his sacred office, lived retired in a misty, 1830-40 square in the recesses of Canonbury. He was understood to be engaged in some kind of scholarly research, and was a well-known figure in the Reading Room of the British Museum, and looked anything between fifty and sixty. It seems probable that if he had been content with that achievement he might have disappeared as often as he pleased, and nobody would have troubled; but one night as he sat late over his books in the stillness of that retired quarter, a motor-lorry passed along a road not far from Tollit Square, breaking the silence with a heavy rumble and causing a tremor of the ground that penetrated into Secretan Jones’s study. A teacup and saucer on a side-table trembled slightly, and Secretan Jones’s attention was taken from his authorities and note-books.
This was in February or March of 1907, and the motor industry was still in its early stages. If you preferred a horse-bus, there were plenty left in the streets. Motor coaches were non-existent, hansom cabs still jogged and jingled on their cheerful way; and there were very few heavy motor-vans in use. But to Secretan Jones, disturbed by the rattle of his cup and saucer, a vision of the future, highly coloured, was vouchsafed, and he began to write to the papers. He saw the London streets almost as we know them to-day; streets where a horse-vehicle would be almost a matter to show one’s children for them to remember in their old age; streets in which a great procession of hug
e omnibuses carrying fifty, seventy, a hundred people was continually passing; streets in which vans and trailers loaded far beyond the capacity of any manageable team of horses would make the ground tremble without ceasing.
The retired scholar, with the happy activity which does sometimes, oddly enough, distinguish the fish out of water, went on and spared nothing. Newton saw the apple fall, and built up a mathematical universe; Jones heard the teacup rattle, and laid the universe of London in ruins. He pointed out that neither the roadways nor the houses beside them were constructed to withstand the weight and vibration of the coming traffic. He crumbled all the shops in Oxford Street and Piccadilly into dust; he cracked the dome of St. Paul’s, brought down Westminster Abbey, reduced the Law Courts to a fine powder. What was left was dealt with by fire, flood and pestilence. The prophetic
Jones demonstrated that the roads must collapse, involving the various services beneath them. Here, the water-mains and the main drainage would flood the streets; there, huge volumes of gas would escape, and electric wires fuse; the earth would be rent with explosions, and the myriad streets of London would go up in a great flame of fire. Nobody really believed that it would happen, but it made good reading, and Secretan Jones gave interviews, started discussions, and enjoyed himself thoroughly. Thus he became the “Canonbury Clergyman.” “Canonbury Clergyman says that Catastrophe is Inevitable”; “Doom of London pronounced by Canonbury Clergyman”; “Canonbury Clergyman’s Forecast: London a Carnival of Flood, Fire and Earthquake”—that sort of thing.
And thus Secretan Jones, though his main interests were liturgical, was able to secure a few newspaper paragraphs when he disappeared—rather more than a year after his great campaign in the Press, which was not quite forgotten, but not very clearly remembered.