Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series)

by John Schettler

  As the characters begin to realize in Part II – The Dreamers, this technology would be the most powerful invention ever created by human hands and minds. It would allow the owners to shape the future by altering the past, and cement their power and influence in the continuum. But, like the secret of the atomic bomb, would it not eventually leak out and be acquired by forces opposing the society that first uses it? Time War is the inevitable result. Perhaps such a conflict would lead to massive alterations in the continuum as each side searches the past for Pushpoints they can use to their own advantage. As the opposing forces undertake missions, only those protected in the Deep Nexus created at the moment of the mission would be privy to the Outcomes and Consequences of their tampering. They would become a secret society—a knowing elite, who hold the reins of fate and destiny. No one else would realize how history has changed, and it is a disquieting feeling to think that we may be living in such an altered time line at this very moment! Time may be a difficult steed to tame, however. The controllers may end up changing things without intending it or even knowing how the time line was altered.

  The notion that history changes because of small and seemingly inconsequential events has been in my head for many years. While the great figures of the past have been crowned with halos in the light of history, like the amber corona that seemed to surround Lawrence when Professor Nordhausen saw him in the desert, I think that events turn at the whim of little things. I have encountered many of these little ‘quirks of fate’ in the history over the years. One event comes to mind immediately.

  Just after the fall of France in WWII, the Germans were going to meet with the Spanish Minister to negotiate the possible alliance of Spain with the Axis. Such an event would have given Germany many fine posts to make their prosecution of the U-Boat wars in the Atlantic much easier. With the loss of Gibraltar, British sea power in the Mediterranean would have been severely hampered. Before the Allies even considered the Operation Torch landings in North Africa, they would have had to re-take Gibraltar. Any number of other consequences present themselves, but Spain never joined the Axis. The reason why, however, was hidden in the milieu of time that surrounded the planned meeting.

  The Spanish minister was traveling by train to meet with Ribentrop, Hitler and other German negotiators. It was raining and it so happens that the roof of his car had a nasty leak, a nuisance that so discomfited him that the minister was completely irate and out of sorts when he finally reached the meeting. His anger apparently carried over to the negotiations, and he was so adamant and testy that both Hitler and Ribentrop concluded that the Spanish could not be dealt with. Spain ended up joining the Allies instead. Was it a leaky roof in a train car that had turned the hinge of fate? I like to think that it did.

  In Meridian I make reference to several of these little incidents called “Pushpoints” in the lexicon of Paul Dorland’s time theory. Lawrence’s raid on the Yarmuk bridge was indeed foiled by a loose rifle strap that sent the gun clattering down the side of a cliff and gave the attackers away. Here is the actual passage as written in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence. They were just sneaking up to the abutment of the Yarmuk Bridge when…

  “We reached the naked abutment, and drew ourselves forward on our faces in the shadow of its rails till we could nearly touch the grey skeleton of underhung girders, and see the single sentry leaning against the other abutment, sixty yards across the gulf. Whilst we watched, he began to move slowly up and down, up and down, before his fire, without ever setting foot on the dizzy bridge. I lay staring at him fascinated, as if planless and helpless, while Fahad shuffled back by the abutment wall where it sprang clear of the hillside.

  This was no good, for I wanted to attack the girders themselves; so I crept away to bring the gelatine bearers. Before I reached them there was the loud clatter of a dropped rifle and a scrambling fall from up the bank. The sentry started and stared up at the noise. He saw, high up, in the zone of light with which the rising moon slowly made beautiful the gorge, the machine-gunners climbing down to a new position in the receding shadow. He challenged loudly, then lifted his rifle and fired, while yelling the guard out.

  Instantly all was complete confusion.”

  Similarly, the story about the disobedient platoon of Turkish soldiers and their chickens in the Sinai is also a documented incident. In Meridian the Pushpoint was hiding in the exploder box Lawrence planted by the small bush to ignite his charges. The inadvertent stumble of the Arab who went forward to see what had happened to Nordhausen caused the box to fail.

  Finding these seemingly insignificant triggers in time can prove a daunting task. This is why historians, and time researchers, will be the chief strategists of any future Time War. They must find that loose cartwheel, errant bit of twine or some other pebble in the shoe of the great movers and shakers of historical events. The question of whether time will resist such changes, and demonstrate a certain resilience in spite of human tampering, is open. For example, as Paul Dorland realized at the outset, it might be very easy to delay the departure of the Virginia Colony fleet from Plymouth and, by so doing, prevent the fleet from being scattered in the storm. There would have been no shipwreck on Bermuda, and no Bermuda Pamphlets. But would this have meant that Shakespeare never writes the Tempest? Would the inspiration for the play come to him in some other way?

  As a last brief note I wanted to recount the incident at Kilometer 172 as written by T.E. Lawrence himself. In my story, I began by using my “poetic license” to change the event so that the second train was the one blown up in the world Nordhausen and Dorland live in. Their labors aimed at sparing the second train and seeking the destruction of train three instead. (This is, as you will see, the actual history of that event, as recounted below in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence.)

  “I could not hear the train coming, but trusted, and knelt ready for perhaps half an hour, when the suspense became intolerable, and I signaled to know what was up. They sent down to say it was coming very slowly, and was an enormously long train. Our appetites stiffened. The longer it was the more would be the loot. Then came word that it had stopped. It moved again.

  Finally, near one o'clock, I heard it panting. The locomotive was evidently defective (all these wood-fired trains were bad), and the heavy load on the up-gradient was proving too much for its capacity. I crouched behind my bush, while it crawled slowly into view past the south cutting, and along the bank above my head towards the culvert. The first ten trucks were open trucks, crowded with troops. However once again it was too late to choose, so when the engine was squarely over the mine I pushed down the handle of the exploder. Nothing happened. I sawed it up and down four times.

  Still nothing happened; and I realized that it had gone out of order, and that I was kneeling on a naked bank, with a Turkish troop train crawling past fifty yards away. The bush, which had seemed a foot high, shrank smaller than a fig-leaf; and I felt myself the most distinct object in the country-side. Behind me was an open valley for two hundred yards to the cover where my Arabs were waiting and wondering what I was at. It was impossible to make a bolt for it, or the Turks would step off the train and finish us. If I sat still, there might be just a hope of my being ignored as a casual Bedouin.

  So there I sat, counting for sheer life, while eighteen open trucks, three box-wagons, and three officers' coaches dragged by. The engine panted slower and slower, and I thought every moment that it would break down. The troops took no great notice of me, but the officers were interested, and came out to the little platforms at the ends of their carriages, pointing and staring. I waved back at them, grinning nervously, and feeling an improbable shepherd in my Meccan dress, with its twisted golden circlet about my head.”

  This was the train commanded by my Turkish Colonel, and the train that almost carried Paul Dorland into the heart of the moment at Kilometer 172. So, as the history reads today, it was indeed a little quirk of fate that saved train number two. Lawrence fixed his
exploder box, waited for the third train, and blew that one up instead. While the characters never really find out how their tampering worked its magic on the time line, I can let you all in on a little secret. Masaui was on train two, and he was meant to die in the raid. In fact, the Colonel was just about to tick off his name on a list for some uncomfortable scrutiny that would end up in his being posted to the forward train cars—the most undesirable place on the train when considering the prospect of ambush. Paul’s capture interrupted the Colonel, and Masaui stayed where he was, on train car number seven. When the train was spared he went on to lead an insignificant life, surviving the war and leaving behind three children—two boys and a girl.

  Years later that girl caught the eye of the man who was to father the novel’s unseen villain Ra’id Husan al Din. This man was so taken with the beauty of the girl that he married her—instead of the woman who gave birth to our villain. And so, dear readers, the dastardly terrorist, who’s name meant “Sword of the Faith,” was never born. I thought it only fitting to let Time give us one small jab in the ribs with the minor earthquake that happened on the island instead of the catastrophic Palma Event. The West was spared to live out the time line we find ourselves in now.

  According to Dr. Simon Day, however, the western flank of the volcano on Palma is indeed weakening and is destined to collapse into the sea one day. When that might happen is anybody’s guess, but it is only a matter of time. As groups like Al Qaeda, the Foundation, escalate their attacks to a grand scale, dire warnings are appearing on the Internet, and infusing all mainstream media in our current time line. One has only to scroll through the news channels or browse the Internet to find them. Beyond the ‘newsworthy’ saturation coverage of sniper attacks, car bombs, attacks on oil tankers, embassies and army barracks, we get even more ominous chatter. At the heart of the Islamic threat is a real insistence that they are enacting the divine will of Allah—a retribution against those who do not embrace that faith.

  As an example, I found a proclamation that was eerily in sync with my story posted on the net. The terrorist statement read by the BBC announcer in the scene where Mr. Graves reveals the plot by Husan al Din was pulled right from the flotsam and jetsam of an Internet newsgroup. It was a warning sent to the “alt.prophecies.nostradamus” newsgroup, and it was quoted verbatim in my story.

  “We are patient, forgiving. We are seekers only of peace, but as Allah chooses, then the command is given for the seas to rise and pound the shore. We are but an instrument, to that power. As the oceans are made up of an uncountable number of individual drops of serene waters, when Allah commands, those drops come together to form the most powerful force on earth, the ocean of Believers, who's waves of faith become the hammer upon which justice is delivered to all followers of Satan.”

  This mentality, using religion as a shield to justify one’s acts of cruelty and murder, is all too common to the mindset of any radical group. It is hardly unique to the Islamic radicals. Let us not forget the numerous Crusades sanctioned by Catholic Popes, and the slaughter of innocents in those campaigns, where Muslim women and children were literally boiled and eaten by some of the starving warriors of the Christian faith. It seems that every major religion has used this “sinners in the hands of an angry God” motif at one time or another to justify inhuman deeds. In my story, the clash of cultures and world views between Islam and the West are simply the latest iteration of that old demon called “Holy War” by some men and “Just War” by others.

  In Meridian, it becomes “Time War” when the mission to the Hejaz in 1917 stands as the first use of time travel technology to alter or render null the willful and catastrophic act of a terrorist group. While the primary team members labored to keep the outcome secret, the long years stretching into the future will give ample opportunity for later generations to discover what actually happened. Suppose some dissenting group in that time objects, and uses the resurrected technology of the Arch to try and change the Meridian again?

  Sequels In the Meridian Series

  This idea of “Time War” is developed further in future volumes of the Meridian series. The first sequel, entitled “Nexus Point,” focuses on Paul Dorland as he makes an unusual discovery in Wadi Rumm, the marvelous valley where the movie Lawrence of Arabia was filmed near Akaba. Paul stumbles into something that reveals this Time War is now actually underway, and the milieu of the Crusades has become a particularly fertile battleground for two shadowy groups from the future who seek to bend the lines of fate in their favor. A second volume, “Touchstone,” is written from the perspective of Nordhausen. It will begin with another of the Professor’s secret little “capers,” a trip to old London about the time of the Sherlock Holmes milieu. When he visits the British Museum to see the now famous “Rosetta Stone” he discovers that the stone has been chipped and damaged. The portion of the vast black basalt that once held the Egyptian hieroglyphics is gone! As a consequence, no one ever made the connection this touchstone is famous for, and the Egyptian hieroglyphs remain a mystery ...except to Nordhausen. He returns to the present at Berkeley Labs and discovers that he, and he alone, can read and understand the cryptic Egyptian hieroglyphs.

  Beset with remorse, Nordhausen confesses his caper to Paul. He is afraid that he’s done something to change the Time Meridian, but cannot imagine what. When someone tampers with the memorial site protecting Kelly’s place in this Meridian, however, Paul becomes suspicious. It could only have been accomplished by an unseen adversary from the future. In the words of Nordhausen’s favorite literary sleuth Sherlock Holmes, “something is afoot!” Now the professor, Paul and the other team members must labor to discover who has tampered with the time line, and why.

  Lots of fun ahead for Meridian fans!

  Please visit www.dharma6.com or www.writingshop.ws for information on the sequel to this novel, and other work by the author.

  John Schettler

  Acknowledgements

  T

  hanks to the poets, thinkers, historical figures and writers for their pointed words of wisdom used in the quotations that lead the major sections of this story. Their words are all properly attributed in the references or in the narrative if spoken by any of the characters in the novel for added emphasis.

  Gracious thanks to T.E. Lawrence, not only for the courage of his exploits in the desert, but also for the integrity of his heart, and the marvelous accounting he wrote for us three times in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Lawrence was one of the first believers in “self published” books. He started his own little publishing concern to build his ‘seven pillared worthy house,’ and put the story in book form for future generations. Indeed, my eyes were shining when I first read that wonderful book.

  Thanks also to Richard Gylgayton for his tireless editorial wisdom, and the segment of poetry quoted by Maeve from Kelly’s book at the memorial service that ends this novel. Kelly’s character was actually inspired by Richard, my long time friend and writing associate, and yes, he has published a book of poetry! You can read the entire poem, along with all of Richard’s other fine poetry in his recently released volume entitled “Full Canvas.” Available on amazon.com.

  TIME GLOSSARY

  From Dorland’s Theory

  CLARITY – Clear or good understanding of a temporal locus, pattern, event, Outcome or Consequence.

  CONSEQUENCE – An undesired result achieved by a temporal Transformation – Usually referring to the negative (ie) Sometimes certain Consequences must be accepted in order to achieve a desired Outcome.

  CONVOLUTION – The relative difficulty or complexity of a given temporal event or condition.

  DEEP NEXUS – Sometimes called a “Void” – A crucial, significant Nexus Point where radical alteration of the time line is possible.

  DENSITY – A relative term describing factor counts in temporal events.

  FACTOR – An element contributing to convolution in temporal events.

  FINALITY – A catastrophic Grand Imper
ative (like the Cuthulu asteroid strike that led to the eradication of the dinosaurs and other life.)

  FREE RADICAL – A dangerous, erratic variable in the course of temporal events – usually only existing within a Deep Nexus.

  GREAT VOID – An interminable shadow or Penumbra cast by a Grand Imperative.

  HAZE – Obscurity in the understanding of a temporal situation or event.

  IMPERATIVE – An event in time which must happen – Usually a natural event. A Grand Imperative is a natural event of special significance. Some Grand Imperatives can become a Finality.

  INEVITABILITY – A progression of events that is inexorable and unalterable.

  INITIATOR – A person directly responsible for a new time Meridian (Like Mohammed, or Christ). A Prime Mover of great significance.

  LEVER – A secondary contributor to movement in a series of events.

  MERIDIAN – An established line of temporal events on the continuum.

  NEXUS POINT – A point of connection, intersection or branching of one or more Meridians in the time continuum.

  NODE – A specific point on a time Meridian.

  OUTCOME – A desired result achieved by a temporal Transformation – Usually referring to the positive.