yesterdays war

by gerald hall

  James went back inside of the cabin and began to look through the papers that lay in the corner of the room. He found several documents for a claim filed by the prospector that had been filed with the state along with maps of the area. The most interesting thing that James found was a thick personal journal. It was quickly apparent that the prospector had been writing entries about his life into the journal for at least ten years.

  James read through the prospector’s handwritten journal with great sadness. Here was the only son of poor parents who had been trying to find his fortune. Now, Harold Cavill was nothing more than a sunbaked bag of bones, freshly buried in a grave near the mine that he had tried to eke a living out of. James learned a great deal about Harold from reading his journal though. Harold’s parents had died when Harold was a teenager, leaving him with little more than the clothes on his back.

  It was with great sadness that James went back out after finishing with Harold’s journal and began to dig a grave for the dead prospector. Even so, James knew that he couldn’t afford to abandon this site. He would have to find a way to assume ownership of the claim and all that it had buried under the ground there.

  Once James had buried the remains of the dead prospector, he took a hand pick and chiseled the prospector’s name on a large rock that James had placed over the top of the grave. James gathered all of the maps and tools from the cabin and placed them in the back of his truck along with the old rifle that he had taken from Harold’s corpse. James reburied the robot and most of material that he had brought back in time with him nearby for safe keeping.

  Finally, James said a short prayer for Harold Cavill before getting in the truck and driving south towards Perth.

  It took four days of driving before James arrived on the outskirts of Perth. He was amazed to see just how small the city of Perth was at that time. In James’ own time, Perth was a large metropolis with a population of over two million people. Of course, that was before the world destroyed itself. Back in 1918, Perth only had perhaps sixty thousand people living there. But there were a lot more opportunities for James to obtain resources and perhaps even more importantly, information during this visit to this coastal city.

  The first thing that James needed to do was to find lodging and a place to get cleaned up. He had spent more than two weeks out in the Outback without a bath or having done a real change of clothing. There were several sets of clothes among the things that James had brought back with him through the temporal portal, but most of the clothes were unsuitable for hard physical labor. So James had kept them packed away.

  James drove his truck down one of the unpaved streets until he found what appeared to be a well-kept two-story wooden frame lodging house with a sign up front that read ‘Land’s End’. The sign also promised running water and hot baths, both of whom James found very appealing at the time. He pulled up in the truck, stopped, parked in front of the building and then walked in.

  James saw a young blond-haired man standing at the front desk as the time traveler walked inside.

  “Hello, young man. Could you please tell me if you have any rooms available for rent?” James politely asked.

  “Yes, Sir. I have two rooms available. How long would your stay be?”

  “At least two weeks.”

  “Very good, Sir. How would you like to pay for the room?”

  “Is silver coin acceptable?”

  “Of course, Sir.”

  James then pulled out a couple of small silver coins from a pouch in his pocket. The pouch he carried only had a few diamonds and a couple hundred Pounds Sterling worth of silver and gold coins. He had carefully hidden the rest of the precious stones and coins elsewhere to avoid the appearance of being overly wealthy. James didn’t want to become the target of thieves, especially not in this time. The appearance of the big Webley revolver in the holster on his hip would still be a powerful reminder to most criminals that he would not be an easy target in any event.

  “What is your name, Sir?” The clerk asked as he prepared to write in the register after pulling a key from the counter below him.

  James remembered the name carved on the stone near the abandoned mine. The poor soul had come so close to reaching the mother lode before he died. Now, someone from the future was attempting to save humanity with the buried wealth that dead miner failed to reach.

  “My name is Harold Cavill. Thank you for your assistance.” The time traveler then replied before reaching out for the key to his room. James Stevenson had now assumed the identity of that dead miner and become Harold Cavill as far as the rest of the world would know. The old James Stevenson had ceased to exist now. That man belonged to the future, not the world that Harold Cavill had been born into.

  Walking up the stairs to his room, the time traveler was alone in his thoughts. He thought about the terrible future that he had left behind as well as the uncertain future that lay ahead of him. No matter how much information that he had, James Stevenson not only had to become another man, this Harold Cavill, he had to make his way in a world that he barely understood outside of what history books and Wikipedia had said.

  Sitting in that small rented room, Harold spent days thinking about how he could possibly achieve his goal of changing history and preventing the war that ended humanity. Even with his mind occupied with the idea of how he might be able to change history to somehow save humanity, Harold felt so all alone in that room, much like the original Harold Cavill must have felt out there dying in the Outback. He had left everyone and everything that he had ever known behind in a devastated world.

  But still the time traveler pondered the question of what he could do. Without the availability of nuclear weapons, the war that destroyed the world could never have happened, of course. But there were also the key players who caused the war as well. The vast majority of those were the descendants of the original Bolshevik Revolution. Something had to be done to put an end to the rise of Communism in both Russia and China. They were the powers whose aggression against their neighbors caused the nuclear exchange in the first place. It was hard to blame the Americans. The Americans knew that were going to be destroyed and could only think of vengeance when they launched their missiles at their nation’s executioners. But they had designed the damned Bomb in the first place.

  After much thought, Harold came to the realization that he could not do this all alone. He would need a loyal core of people who would follow him without question.

  The logical choice would be to enlist Australia’s aborigines to help. They had no power to speak of during this time in their own land. So, Harold could offer them a purpose by working for him. He could also offer them education, employment, housing even health care. Eventually, Harold believed that he could use all of this to eventually make the aborigines equal partners with the whites who controlled Australia.

  This was not going to be a simple task though. The Aborigines had been traditional nomadic hunter-gatherers for thousands of years. Harold would have to find ways to quickly transform them into factory workers, farmers, even engineers and soldiers.

  That would require a powerful motivation to get them to make such a fundamental change in the lifestyle that the Aborigines had lived for so long. Not even the English and other Europeans that had colonized Australia for over a century. Instead, the whites had often sought to exterminate the Aborigines or drive the natives from their own lands in order to possess it for themselves.

  But Harold needed to be very careful not to reveal that he had traveled back from the future for fear of ending his mission before it even really began.

  Or did he?

  Harold’s knowledge of the future could and would have to be the means to secure the cooperation of the Aborigines.

  The time traveler knew that he would have to find out information on significant events in the upcoming days. That would certainly establish his bonafides with one or more of the tribes.

  Harold looked up a reference to historical solar and lunar eclips
es in his portable computer for after April 1918. There was a major solar eclipse on May 29thin 1919. But unfortunately, it would not be visible in Australia. However, on May 18th1920, there would be a partial solar eclipse that would be visible in much of southern Australia. Harold had to find some way of using these astronomical events to show his knowledge of the future. There was one problem though. Scientists in the West were already able to predict these events through astronomical observations even in 1918. It would be all too easy for someone to claim that Harold had simply gotten his information from a contemporary astronomer.

  There had to be some other way to convincingly show the Aborigines that Harold had a unique knowledge of future events.

  So Harold then started to look in his computer database at the history of volcanic eruptions in the same timeframe. Then he came upon the massive eruption of Mount Kelut, a volcano located just east of the island of Java. The explosion would be certainly be of sufficient proximity and magnitude for it to be seen and felt by all of Western Australia.

  But even that would be some months ahead in the future. Harold decided that he would make good use of that time. Then he would present his proposal to the aborigines.

  Harold walked down to the front desk the next morning with his baggage in hand.

  “Are you going somewhere, Sir?” the desk clerk asked.

  “It is time for me to take my leave of this place. I have a lot of travelling to do right now.” Harold said.

  “Where do you wish to go to first, Mister Cavill?”

  “I think that I will start with Sydney first, then go to Hong Kong. But before any of this, I need to speak to some of our local aborigines.”

  “You might want to talk with that fellow over there. He is an elder in the local Anangu tribe. His name is William Akuna.”

  Harold walked up to the tall, slender Aborigine man.

  “Good morning, Sir. I understand that your name is William. I would like to speak to you about certain matters of importance.” Harold began.

  “We have already heard of you. You are the man with no name who appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the Outback. It was said that you came with a machine unlike anything that any of the other white men even have.”

  Harold was quite surprised that word of his first appearance had spread so quickly among the Aborigines. But he needed to proceed with his plans.

  ”Yes, this is all true. But it is also something that the other white men must not know about. I have a great deal to accomplish here in this land. I need your peoples’ assistance in making these things happen that will benefit all people, including your own. I have come a long way to be here and have a special knowledge of what is to come.”

  “What sort of special knowledge?” William asked.

  Harold proceeded to tell William about several future events including the times, locations and details that no one else could possibly know. Harold had carefully researched these future astronomical and geological events from his computer database beforehand.

  “I predict that all of these things will happen. But these are only a few of the secrets that I have brought with me from where I came. These special secrets, I will only share with you and your fellow aborigines. But I will need your help when I return from the other places that I must go to. When you see that I speak the truth of what I know, will you encourage your people to support me?”

  “If what you claim to know of happens, we will see. But we need to know your name. We trust no one who will not reveal their own name.”

  “That is fair. My name is Harold Cavill. When I return, I’m certain that I will have earned your trust by then, William.”

  At that point, Harold turned and walked towards his truck parked behind the lodging house. He then got in and drove to the Port of Perth. Trading in a few more of his precious diamonds, he bought passage to Sydney. From there, Harold would travel to more than a dozen destinations over the next year and a half before returning to Australia.

  In the course of this time, Harold was involved in a series of adventures as he worked to increase his wealth using the precious stones that he carried and more importantly, his knowledge of the future.

  But this was still a very lonely time for Harold in spite of all of the people that he met during this travels. All that he could think about was the people that he had left behind. His only choice now was to focus on the mission that he set for himself. He needed to prevent the war that destroyed humanity in 2040.

  Chapter Three: Port of Perth

  Perth, Australia

  December 19, 1919

  Harold Cavill stepped off of the ocean liner docked at the Perth port pier. He had already radioed ahead for half a dozen trucks to be waiting on him there at the pier. He had brought back several large crates of equipment that he had purchased during his stops in England and America.

  Harold also had arranged to have a significant amount of funds wired to a bank in Perth as well. After his business activities during the past year and a half, he could now afford to transport money in a far more conventional manner. Harold had constantly worried about someone stealing the millions of dollars of precious stones and metals that he had brought back from the future.

  It took months to get that wealth converted into currency during his travels and secured in banks for safekeeping. At the same time, Harold looked for opportunities to build upon that wealth. He already knew that he would need every penny if he were going to succeed in changing the future. With his knowledge of the future, Harold was able to increase his wealth by nearly an order of magnitude through a series of shrewd investments. Of course, no one but Harold knew exactly how wealthy he had become. Harold had scattered his funds over more than a dozen banks, some under false identities. But he had access to it all.

  Even before he had returned to Australia, he had hired several teams of people to prospect on land that he had purchased through agents. Harold already knew that they would find rich deposits of valuable minerals at these locations because of the information on his portable computer’s database. The immediate profits from the mining only added to Harold’s rapidly growing wealth.

  When Harold walked onto the pier, he was faintly surprised by who he saw there. Several aborigine men were already waiting on Harold when he stepped out onto the pier. Harold quickly saw that William Akuma was among the men waiting on him.

  “Hello, William. I’m very pleased to see you here. Who are your friends?” “They are men from my tribe and others. We are here because of what you revealed to me before you began your journey from here.”

  “What do you know of me?” Harold asked, the question directed not at William, but at the other aborigine men standing there with him.

  “We had heard of you already, Mister Cavill before William came to us. Many learned of you from the man who first met you in the Outback. Other tribes have recognized your knowledge of the future after they saw what you had described to William. Some of our people already have worked for you at some of your mines also. But what you are doing here is far more than merely having strong men digging holes in the ground, is it not?”

  “Excellent. I have a proposition for you and any others who are willing. I need many more good workers here. I’ll most certainly pay you fairly and treat you fairly if you work for me.”

  “We need to be far more than merely people for you to make money off of our sweat.”

  “This is very true. I will also certainly need far more than strong backs in my mines. I will need for your people to think and create while you work on farms to grow food for us and also in new factories. You will build things in those factories that will be used here and elsewhere. For that, I will need for you to be educated as the white men are. But it will also mean many changes in your way of life. ”

  “That will be difficult for some of our people. Many of your people have hunted us like animals. It will be difficult for trust to be made after that.”

  “I understand. But I am very differe
nt from those white men who hunted and killed your people. If you work for me, I will not only pay you fairly. I will also build a school where your children can be taught how to read, write and other skills. I will also ensure that you are properly housed, protected and cared for. Those of your people who work for me will be equals based on their work and their knowledge.”

  “Will the other white people not object to you doing this? They have laws that keep our children from going to their schools.”

  “This will not be one of their state schools. This will be my school. I will hire the teachers. All that I ask is that if you want your children to be educated there, that you come to work for me. The schools will also be available for all of your people, young and old, to be educated. This will be very important for all who wish to work for me.”

  “We already know that you are special because of the signs that you have shown us. But this is another sign that we did not expect. If you do as you have promised, we will do all that you ask.”

  “You can depend on me to fulfill my promises to you and your people, Sir.” Harold answered.

  “We have much to do then, Mister Cavill.”

  “Indeed, we do, my friend.” Harold agreed.

  The next day, William and more than twenty other aborigines showed up at the small office that Harold had rented in Derby. There wasn’t enough room for all of them to crowd inside, so Harold stepped outside to speak to them all together.

  “I am assuming that all of you here have come to work for me. I thank you for this. We have a great deal to do here.”

  “What do you need for us to do, Mister Cavill?” One of the men asked.

  “First, we need to build houses for all of you and your families to live in. You will need to learn the many skills necessary to do this. I have brought in carpenters, brick masons and other skilled tradesmen from elsewhere to begin the work and to teach all of you how to perform the same tasks. We will also teach your people how to read, write and do arithmetic. But after that, I will need for each one of you to bring in at least one hundred more of your men and their families to come work for me. You will be training each of them to do your jobs and more.