The Navigators

by Dan Alatorre

  “I think we can all agree that Findlay won’t be talking to anybody else about our little project again. Will you Findlay?”

  He couldn’t talk yet, but he could move his head. And from the floor, Findlay bobbed his coconut up and down eagerly.

  “So we go ahead as planned,” Barry said. “Findlay, once he can breathe again, will tell us how the thing is powered, and then he will quietly walk away, forgetting he ever heard of our little project. Right Findlay?”

  Findlay’s gaze drifted up, eyes agape.

  “Otherwise, Roger here is going to stop being so nice about all these transgressions you’ve been making. They trusted me. I trusted you. Get it? Didn’t we agree to keep this thing quiet?”

  “Barry,” Melissa began. He ignored her, staring down at Findlay. Too much was at stake.

  “Mmmmph,” was all Findlay could muster.

  Roger growled. “That sounds like a ‘yes.’ Is it a ‘yes,’ Findlay?”

  Findlay nodded.

  “Okay,” Roger said. “Then there’s just one more thing. How is it powered?”

  Findlay gasped long enough to get out a few words. “Self-contained system.”

  “Try it again in non-computer speak, Findlay.”

  “It’s self-contained.” He rose to his knees. “Coopersmith… thinks it’s a magnetic system in a vacuum, with storage cells, but I disagree.” He took a deep breath, pausing to rub his belly. “Whoever built it took into consideration that it might use a lot of energy getting to where it’s going, but that there might not be an abundance of fuel available for it when it was time to return home.”

  Roger narrowed his eyes. “So-”

  “So it was made with a self-contained, self-limiting system, like the way they reuse oxygen and water on the space shuttle or the space station.”

  “So it re-uses its fuel?” Roger asked. “How?”

  “No fuel is consumed with 100% efficiency. Like on the space station, you drink water, but it’s recaptured, so you’d drink reclaimed piss if they could filter it back down to just H2O. So they do. They filter it and remove the piss. Am I going slow enough, you damned fucking cro-magnon?”

  “Don’t start with me, asshole.”

  “They burn the fuel and refilter it, cleaning out the unusable particles and retaining what can be salvaged. If you start with an efficient system, you’re halfway home. The rest is mechanical engineering.”

  Melissa observed the framework of the machine. “But how do they know when to… fill up the tank?”

  Findlay gestured to the metal piping that gave the machine it’s oval shape. “Reserve tanks. They’re probably distributed throughout the frame, like Lindbergh did with The Spirit of St. Louis. He hollowed out the wings and made them fuel tanks. His whole plane was a big flying gas tank.”

  Barry nodded. “As long as you have to have the space for a support frame, fill it with something you need anyway. Brilliant.”

  “And economical,” I said. “If you use existing space in a new way, you could allow for more than enough fuel for what you need.”

  “Still,” Melissa placed her hands on her hips. “When do you know you have enough to get back home before you leave?”

  “Self-contained or self-governing systems would have that measured.” Findlay swallowed, holding his gut. “When you set the trip up, it calculates the energy needed. If there isn’t enough, it won’t start.”

  “I love it.” Roger laughed. “GM should’ve thought of that. I’ve run out of gas twice in my car!”

  Barry shook his head. “Gotta turn the motor off while you’re getting it on with your date in the back seat.”

  Roger smiled and flipped him the bird.

  Sitting back down in the machine, Barry gazed at the dials and knobs. The rest of us gathered around. He let his hands drift over the dials, then looked up. “Roger, please show our guest out, would you?”

  “With pleasure.” Roger grabbed Findlay’s arm and forced him toward the door. “So long, fuck face.”

  “You guys are making a big mistake!”

  Roger opened the front door and pushed Findlay out. “Sue me.”

  When the door slammed shut, Roger turned to us. After a long pause, he spoke. “Okay, gang. When do we go for a ride in our new toy?”

  “Go for a ride?” Melissa shook her head. “We can’t just hop in and try it out! We don’t know what this thing is capable of. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “We need to test it.” Barry rubbed his chin, his eyes glued to the dials and knobs. He looked at me. “Well?”

  “You’re right. We need a test.”

  “Who?” Roger asked.

  “Not who. What.”

  “What do you mean?” Melissa asked.

  “We need to conduct a simple test,” I said, “to see what the machine does, to see if we even understand how to control it. We have to do that before we try it ourselves.”

  Barry raised his eyes to meet mine. “What did you have in mind?”

  Chapter Ten

  “A video camera?”

  “Sure!” I said. “Think about it. This old video camera goes into the time machine, then it goes back in time five minutes and records what happens. We’ll just have to watch the video to see if it’s safe.”

  “I don’t know.” Barry frowned. “That doesn’t seem like it would work. Electronics don’t- ”

  “What would it record?” Roger sat down on a bar stool. “Us, staring at a machine that didn’t have the recorder in it yet?”

  Barry shrugged. “Einstein believed the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion.”

  “Although,” I wagged a finger, “he admitted it was a very convincing one.”

  Barry rubbed his forehead. “Let’s think about this. If you are sitting on a moving train, are you moving or sitting still? It's relative. You're doing both. Now-”

  “I have something to say.”

  Melissa had been sitting there, silent, ever since the incident between Roger and Findlay. Her face was drawn and serious, with a distant look in her eyes.

  She folded her hands in her lap, gazing downward. “I won’t sit by and see this descend into animalistic behavior. I won’t watch you guys treat our friends like crap.” She took a deep breath and let it out quickly. “I’ll walk.”

  Roger blinked. “You’re serious?” He wasn’t a rough guy, but Roger viewed things like punching Findlay similar to a body check on the basketball court—enough to get Findlay’s attention and send a message without seriously hurting him.

  Tears formed in Melissa’s eyes. She stared right at Roger. “I’m completely serious. I swear, if anything like that happens again, I’m done.”

  The words hung in the air, frozen. Her gaze moved to Barry and then to me. We had crossed a line.

  Roger leaned back and rested an elbow on the counter. “So walk, then. More trips for the rest of us.”

  A quiet sigh escaped Melissa’s lips as her shoulders slumped. She slowly got up and moved to the window.

  “Oh, come on, Missy.” Roger bounded off the bar stool. “I wasn’t serious.”

  She stared out the window, placing a hand on the frame, wiping at the base of her eyes with her finger.

  Barry cleared his throat. “Listen, Melissa. Findlay has a role in this thing, but…”

  “Don’t.” Her voice was a whisper. “Don’t try to justify what you did.”

  “What I did?”

  She sniffled, raising her voice and waving her hand. “You were just as bad, directing Roger to hit Findlay. He helped us. And you acted like some . . . some thug gang leader in a movie.” She ran a finger under her nose. “Just as bad.”

  Barry remained quiet. This wasn’t grade school playground stuff to her.

  She turned to face the room. “Promise me. Promise you will keep this . . . where it’s supposed to be.”

  Barry’s face turned red. The team was just getting off the ground and already there were fractures. It was ti
me to reassess and reset.

  He nodded. “Okay. I promise.”

  She asked no such thing from Roger.

  “Put a clock in it,” I said.

  Everybody looked at me.

  “To test the machine.” I went over and placed a hand on it. “We don’t use a video camera. We put a clock in it. That’s what the original tests used. The ones with the astronauts. They put an atomic clock in the space capsule that orbited Earth, and when they compared it to a twin clock that had stayed behind, it was off by a few seconds.”

  “Atomic clocks.” Barry slapped at his pockets. “Sorry. I seem to have left all my atomic clocks in my other pants.”

  I shook my head. “The original tests in the 1960’s needed atomic clocks and rockets to show that the astronauts were going back in time a little bit when they circled the Earth. We can use a regular clock if we’re going for five minutes. That’s enough of a difference to notice without an atomic clock.”

  Roger spoke up. “So what do we use instead of an atomic clock?”

  “A wind up clock,” Barry said. “Nothing with an electrical signal, just in case.”

  “What, like an egg timer?” Roger folded his arms.

  Melissa finally came back to the conversation. “A train conductor’s watch. One of the old, antique ones, with the twisty spindle on top to wind it. They’re accurate as hell.”

  “Good idea.” I said. “But, where do we go find an antique train conductor’s watch?”

  Barry hooked his thumb at the living room wall. “Next door.”

  “Jonesy has one,” Melissa sighed. “I saw it at a party once and asked her about it. It was a beautiful piece. It belonged to her great-grandfather. That’s why I thought of it.”

  It was obvious Melissa was still mad. Her eyes were red from crying and her shoulders were still slumped down. Like the rest of us, she had been bouncing all over the place today. Ecstatic one moment, raging the next. Although she probably wasn’t ready to jump back in without agreement from everyone on how to proceed, the train was leaving the station. Like a politician, she got the agreements she could get for now and would try to get the rest later.

  “She keeps it on that table thing in the hall.” Barry stood up. “In, like, a display case.”

  Roger rocked back and forth on his feet, frowning. “I’m not getting this. If the test worked, how would we know?”

  I shrugged. “The time will be different, plain and simple.”

  “How long would it take?”

  “Well,” I thought about it. “We are not really going to see it. The clock can go back in time, say, five minutes, but it should be moving at the speed of light—so we won't see it happening. All we’ll see is the machine. Instantly, five minutes will have gone by for it, and we’ll just be watching the clock—and it will be five minutes slow.”

  “Fast,” Barry said. “It’ll be five minutes fast.”

  “No, slow.”

  “Fast, Peeky.”

  Roger folded his arms. “I’m confused.”

  Melissa was on her cell phone, calling next door. “Jonesy’s not home. I can pick the lock if you want. I know how.”

  “You can pick a lock?” My jaw dropped. That’s the kind of thing I’d have never expected to come out of the mouth of a girl like Melissa. “For real?”

  “When I was a kid, one of my dad’s clients showed him. He showed me. I can still do it. Wanna see? It’s really kind of neat.”

  “What kind of lawyer learns to pick locks?”

  “We don’t need to pick the lock,” Barry said. “I have a key”

  Melissa wrinkled an eyebrow. “Why do you have a key to Jonesy’s apartment?”

  Barry reached into the cookie jar on the counter and produced the key. “Because she is my friend.”

  “Mm hmm.” Melissa eyed him with a slight smile. Her humor seemed to be returning. That was a relief. “Okay. Let’s go get the watch.” She grabbed at the key in Barry’s hand.

  “Wait.” He pulled it away, holding it over his shoulder. “So, punching a geek is wrong, but breaking and entering is okay?”

  “Well, it’s not really breaking and entering...” Reaching across him again, Melissa’s long brown hair brushed across Barry’s chin. She slid Jonesy’s key from his fingers and held it up. “Because we have this.”

  “Better take her word for it, Barry.” I jumped up to follow them. “Her dad’s a lawyer.”

  “Good thing.” Barry got up. “We may need one before this is all over.”

  * * * * *

  The apartment of Denise Jones—“Jonesy”—was meticulous, a rare thing for a sociology major. A beautiful place for a college kid, it had decent furniture and nice paintings on the walls. I had a hard time believing students could afford such luxury–but then I remembered. Students couldn’t. Parents could.

  Roger scanned the room. “God, my mom’s house isn’t this clean.”

  The four of us crept into the doorway. I still felt a little like a burglar. Holding my breath, I tiptoed toward the living room.

  “Denise!” Barry yelled. I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “Jesus!” Melissa frowned at him as she placed her hand on her chest. “Will you quiet down!”

  “What?” Barry shrugged and walked in. “We aren’t doing anything wrong, remember? We have a key.”

  I stayed by the door, peering around the corner. “Where does she keep the watch?”

  “Over here.” Melissa strolled to the hallway. A portrait of Martin Luther King adorned the space over a short cabinet. Between some African-style clay pots, a glass case held Jonesy’s great-grandfather’s pocket watch.

  “I remember when she showed it to me.” Melissa picked it up. “She said it’s still extremely accurate.”

  “Just put it back when we’re done with the test,” Roger said.

  We piled out the door, back to Barry’s.

  Melissa twisted the stem of the watch, winding it as she observed the big bronze time machine in Barry’s living room. “So now it’s like Findlay said? We just set the dials and let it rip?”

  Roger took the watch from her. “I guess we’ll have to find out.”

  “First, let’s set the dials,” Barry said.

  We all gathered around the machine. Melissa slid past the rest of us to sit on the metal seat. “Don’t anybody accidentally turn this on and send me back to the Flintstones.”

  Carefully, we reached in and started turning the knobs to where we thought they should be.

  “This is ‘days.’” Melissa twisted the bronze dial. “So let’s turn it to today…”

  “Years.” I said. “Wow. They’re hard to turn.”

  Melissa’s forehead wrinkled. “Mine wasn’t.”

  “It’s mechanical.” Barry stood up. “Think about it. It makes sense that turning a gear for 31 options is easier than turning one for a thousand.”

  “Ninety-nine million,” I grunted. “It doesn’t want to even budge.”

  Roger reached in and helped me turn the dial.

  “These must be for location.” Melissa pointed to a second set of dials.

  I counted the dials. “Latitude and longitude. Does anybody have a GPS?”

  “My phone does.” Roger nodded. “But I don’t know how to work it.”

  “My car has a removable one!” Melissa jumped up. “I’ll go get it. And check the seat. It’s loose.” Then she scampered off.

  Roger bent down and wiggled the seat. “It’s got a spring attachment. Maybe it’s a ‘dead man’ switch. So it won’t work unless there’s the weight of a driver on it.”

  “Like a riding lawn mower, right?” I asked.

  Barry shrugged. “Makes sense.”

  The dials for latitude and longitude were pretty self-explanatory after Findlay’s lecture. Within a few minutes, things were all set. A stack of text books added enough weight to engage the spring contact in the seat, and the old railroad conductor’s watch sat on top of them.

  I cou
ld only think of one last adjustment. “What time should we set it for?”

  “It’s almost 5:00 PM.” Roger checked the wall clock. “How about setting it for five o’clock, and launch at five after?”

  “Launch?” Barry winced. “It’s not a rocket.”

  Roger smiled. “You better hope not. You’ll lose your security deposit if we burn this place down.”

  “Over a test with a pocket watch as the pilot.” Melissa chuckled.

  Barry stopped for a moment. “I hate to break the news to all of you, but you’re thinking about this thing in the wrong way. It isn’t a rocket. We aren’t piloting it anywhere. You don’t hop in and go for a drive.” He paused to consider what would likely happen. “You set the dials and then sit back… I think it does the rest. At best, you just get to decide where you're going.”

  “So, we’re the navigators?” Melissa asked.

  “Navigators,” Barry repeated, giving it some thought. “Yeah, I guess so. That sounds a little passive, doesn’t it? Scary.”

  Roger glanced at the massive turbine wheel behind the seat. “How do we know if this thing is fueled up and ready to go?”

  “Good question,” I said. “If you were an advanced civilization, how would you let ancient people know the machine you sent them was ready to use?”

  “A green light?” Roger tapped the top of the frame. “Right up here.”

  “Well, maybe not a light,” I said, “but something. Some sort of indicator. Like a flag.”

  “Or a color, like litmus paper.” Melissa scanned the machine. “Or those little things you press on the battery in the package, to see that it’s good.”

  We all stared at her.

  “What?” she said. “It changes color.”

  Barry rubbed his chin. “Think mechanical.”

  “How about a float?” Roger leaned on the frame and peered at the dials. “That’s mechanical.”

  I looked at Roger. “What’s a float?”

  “Like in a lawnmower’s gas tank, Peeky.” He stood up. “The gas gauge is a floating mechanical indicator. You can just check it and see if it’s full or not, or how much it has in the tank.”

  “Or a thermometer.” Barry brushed aside some dirt from one of the frame pipes. The heavy rains during our drive back from the mine had washed so much mud off the machine, we hadn’t bothered to continue cleaning it.