My Troubles With Time

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My Troubles With Time Page 2

by Benson Grayson


  This was only the first of the ever-growing list of duties I assumed at Dr Bolton’s request. Each time I told myself that if I did so, it would assist me in being awarded tenure. But the months and years went on, without any progress in reaching my goal.

  As solace for the friendship and recognition I lacked, I resumed my studies into the possibility of time travel. My work was particularly difficult. I feared to discuss it with anyone lest I become the subject of ridicule and quite possibly be dismissed from the faculty.

  Several times, I almost gave up the project. Surely, I thought, if time travel was theoretically possible, there should be some reference to it in reputable scientific journals. Only a brief vacation trip to Moscow, when I learned that a Russian physicist had worked out mathematical formulas dealing with aspects of time travel, encouraged me to renew my efforts with renewed vigor.

  Working on the powerful university computer during the midnight hours, when no one was around who could observe me, it took a little over two years for me to formulate and test the mathematical equations that would support my theory. My results left me convinced that at least in theory time travel was feasible.

  Discarding all thought of discussing my work with anyone, I turned to construction of the device. In the makeshift laboratory/workshop I had fitted out in the garage behind my house, I constructed a relatively crude machine, using the chassis of a tiny two-person car manufactured in Yugoslavia. It was made of plastic, which reduced the motor power needed to operate the helicopter type rotor blades that moved the device horizontally and vertically.

  The most difficult part of the project was to obtain sufficiently strong batteries to power the machine’s movement through time. Here, the research I did for my dissertation came in useful. Using metals that other researchers had overlooked, I developed hydrogen-titanium batteries powerful enough for my purpose.

  My work done, I next turned to selecting a location for what I hoped would be my first successful trip through time. After some reflection, I decided to try to travel back thirty-six years into the past to view my parents’ marriage.

  My choice was based solely on curiosity about my father rather than on any love or affection I had for either parent. Of my father I knew virtually nothing. A traveling salesman, he had deserted my mother a few weeks after my birth to run away with an actress.

  I learned the story of his disappearance when I overheard her relate it to the ladies with whom she played bridge every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. He had kissed my mother goodbye one Monday morning and left for the railroad station with his suitcase in his hand as he did at the start of every week. The first inkling she had that something was amiss was when he telephoned that Friday night from Chicago to tell her he did not intend to ever return home.

  My father’s desertion was clearly well planned. It developed he had taken with him the wedding pictures and all other photographs showing his likeness. From childhood on I had wondered what he looked like and whether I resembled him in any way.

  I rather hoped I did, since I thoroughly disliked my mother. I cannot say that she was actually cruel or physically abused me. She was just totally indifferent.

  To the best of my memory, never once during my childhood did even smile at me, let alone do anything nice. My meals, which she prepared for me with an exasperated air, were barely sufficient and totally tasteless.

  At least once during every bridge game I would overhear her remarking to her friends what a hardship she endured taking care of me and how lacking in any virtue I was. When she spoke directly to me, which occurred rarely, she left me in no doubt that she held me responsible for my father’s desertion.

  It was not as though we lived in circumstances of actual want. She did not work, although my father sent her no funds. A small inheritance from her parents made it possible for her to rent the furnished top floor of a not-too-old frame house in a middle class neighborhood in the small Indiana town in which we lived.

  My mother’s appearance fitted her treatment of me. In my mind I see her as a tall thin woman resembling the wicked witch in the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” To be fair, I have to say that she was extremely intelligent. Her principal passtime, when she was not playing bridge, was reading works on Roman history written in the original Latin.

  The last time I saw my mother was when at the age of seven I was delivered by her to the county orphanage. She informed the woman at the desk that I had no father and that she was moving and lacked sufficient funds to care for me. Ignoring the protests of the woman and nodding curtly to me, she had walked rapidly out of the orphanage. I never saw nor heard from her again.

  I must admit that as my mother left, I felt elated rather than sad. My conclusions on this occasion, remarkably mature considering my age, were that I would be much happier living at the orphanage than with her.

  It was only later that I changed my mind. After the other boys at the orphanage subjected me to hazing and ridicule, I concluded that as mean-spirited as my mother had been, life at the orphanage was even worse. At least, my mother had not referred to me mockingly as “Nerdly,” a corruption derived from the last syllable of my Christian name. It was bad enough when the other children at the orphanage delighted in taunting me with it. To add to my torture, the epithet was picked up and used by the staff.

  If the time machine worked, I saw no difficulty in traveling back in time to attend my parents’ wedding. From an old wedding invitation I had found in a desk when my mother once asked me to bring her a pencil, I knew the time, date and location of the wedding ceremony.

  For this, my maiden attempt at time travel, I took few of the precautions I should have. Not thinking of all the things that might go wrong, I moved the time machine out on to my patio, carefully set the control dials, strapped myself into the seat, a pressed the starter.

  The motor made an ungodly sound, the machine shuddered, and for a few seconds I thought that it had failed to work. Then I realized that I was several hundred feet above the surface of the earth, traveling slowly in an eastward direction.

  The time dial showed that I had in fact traveled thirty-six years into the past. The map coordinates indicated that the time machine was nearing the southern Indiana town in which my parents had been married. Using the control lever, I carefully descended to the earth in a cornfield several hundred yards from the church in which my parent’s wedding took place.

  There was no indication outside the church that a wedding was in process inside. I entered quietly, thinking perhaps that I was at the wrong church. Then I realized that a wedding ceremony was already under way. Seating myself quietly in a back pew I recognized the bride as my mother.

  She looked exactly as I remembered her, her appearance in no way made more attractive by the fact that she was supposedly experiencing the happiest day of her life. Her face wore the same annoyed expression she habitually wore. I wondered why my father had chosen to marry her.

  My father, I found different from what I had imagined. He was a short, thin man with a crooked smile. I had always wondered if my appearance was similar to that of my absent father. I stared at him and found not the least similarity between us.

  I was not disappointed. I felt certain based on his appearance that I would have disliked him as much as I did my mother. Dispelling any thought of finding a pretext to speak to them, I waited until the end of the ceremony and then hurried from the church.

  Feeling no joy at what I had witnessed, I hastened back to the cornfield in which I had left my time machine. I was shocked to find that its presence had been detected.

  A farm tractor stood idling a few feet from the device. The driver, an older man garbed in overalls, had descended from the tractor and was staring at the time machine with obvious curiosity.

  I cursed myself for being so stupid as to fail to conceal the time machine. If observed by anyone, it was bound to attract unwanted attention.

  I had neglected to install a lock on the door or on the controls. The c
ontrol levers as well as the motor were reasonably sturdy. Nonetheless, anyone who found the machine and tried to learn its purpose might well damage it irretrievably, leaving me trapped thirty-six years in the past.

  “I’m sorry to have left my car in your field.” I said, as I hurried up. “The motor overheated, so I thought I’d best let it cool down.”

  The farmer turned to me, a suspicious look on his face. “I’ve never seen a car like that before,” he said. “Is that some foreign type?”

  “Yes, it’s made in Yugoslavia.”

  “Yugo where?”

  “Yugoslavia. It’s in Europe.”

  He nodded. “Are those wings on it?” he asked, pointing to the rotors.

  I thought for a minute, then decided that wings on a car would be so unusual that he might mention it to too someone else.

  “No,” I answered. It’s a new type of antenna for the radio my company is having me test on my car.”

  As I spoke, I quickly climbed into the time machine. To my relief, the motor started immediately as I pressed the starter button.

  “How come?” he asked, as I prepared to set the time dial to return home, “Your car didn’t leave any tire prints on my field?”

  His question made me realize that I didn’t dare set the time dials on the time machine while I was within his sight. If I and my machine suddenly disappeared before his eyes, he certainly would mention the incident to any number of people.

  “It’s made of a light plastic,” I said, as I drove off, using only the back rotor to propel it, “It doesn’t leave any prints if the ground is hard.”

  Safely out of his vision, I stopped my forward motion and carefully looked around me to insure no one else was around. I then set the time dial to return home. Unlike my departure from home, when I had been so foolish as set out in the early afternoon, when one of the neighbors might have observed me, I timed my return home to occur several hours after nightfall.

  Chapter II

  That night, seated at home in my living room and with the time machine safely locked in the garage, I reviewed the day’s events. Finally seeing my father face to face, so to speak, had left me somehow depressed. Not even the fact that I had successfully tested my machine, traveling backward in time, gave me comfort. Without proof, it would be foolish of me to reveal the fact; no one would believe me.

  With great effort, I forced myself to think cheerful thoughts. Looking in the hall mirror, as I passed by, I decided that however nondescript I looked, my appearance was still better than that of either of my parents.

  To counter my depression, I began reviewing in my mind possible future trips I might make in time. The time machine’s motor was not powerful enough for me to take a witness with me, even if I could persuade anyone to make the trip. Going into the future would be unlikely to furnish me with the type of proof I needed to document my time travel. By default, my next travel through time would again be to the past.

  Military history had always fascinated me. Why not, I thought, use my time machine to travel back to July l863 and witness the battle of Gettysburg. Checking the time machine’s energy gauge, I felt confident that my two titanium hydrogen batteries had more than enough power remaining for the trip.

  Unlike my first voyage into time, my second was carefully planned. Now that I had successfully tested the time machine, my primary objective was to obtain hard physical proof to document the fact that I had traveled into the past. I could then submit a paper on my research to the National Physics Society and obtain recognition of my feat. In my optimism, I assumed that when I was recognized as the father of time travel, the university would immediately award me tenure and that I would be installed among the luminaries of my profession. Clearly, the inventor of the world’s only working time machine deserved nothing less.

  As proof that I had actually traveled back to l863, I decided to obtain a photograph showing me with a grouping of officers assigned to one of the Union Army units that took part in the battle of Gettysburg.

  I did not believe that the difficulties involved in such an effort would be insurmountable. I knew from a trip to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington that the photographer Mathew Brady had been quite active in taking regimental photographs at Gettysburg. I had even seen several of them displayed at the Smithsonian and been impressed by their quality.

  For several months I spent my spare time in the university library reading magazines published in l863, noting which military units Brady had photographed at Gettysburg. With careful preparation and a little luck, I reasoned, it should be possible for me to travel to the proper time and place and include myself in a group photograph.

  Naturally, I expected my submission of the photograph to the National Physics Society as proof that I had traveled back to l863 to be met with arguments. The most likely was that the person depicted in the photo was not me but someone else who happened to resemble me. To refute this, I planned to ask the officers photographed with me to sign a paper with their name and rank and include my signature among them.

  My initial trip back in time had taught me the need of precautions to prevent any bystanders realizing that something unusual was going on. From a company which prided itself on making authentic-looking uniforms for Civil War buffs who participated in re-enactments of battles I obtained a Union officer’s uniform.

  After considering the matter, I decided to purchase the uniform of a colonel of Illinois volunteers. I reasoned that in the guise of colonel, I would have sufficient rank to insinuate myself as a visiting staff officer from the War Department. My purpose was to arrive at a divisional or corps headquarters in the Army of the Potomac and include myself in a photograph I knew Mathew Brady had taken at Gettysburg.

  The uniform was expensive, wiping out most of my modest savings. I used the remainder to purchase currency I could spend while back in l863, coins and bills that had been minted or printed prior to that year. To insure a favorable reception at the regimental headquarters I selected to visit for the photograph, I purchased whiskey and cigars to present to my temporary hosts. The cigars, I decided, would not be distinguished from those available in 1863. The modern whiskey bottle, of course, could not pass unnoticed in 1863. I carefully decanted into a bottle purchased at an antique store, whose proprietor assured me it was of the type widely used during the period.

  The university’s Christmas vacation seemed to be the most suitable time for me to make the trip. Being home alone during the holiday period always depressed me and I welcomed any opportunity to be away. I had no one with whom to celebrate Christmas, no one to give me a present and only the disagreeable Princess to buy anything for.

  It was not that time hung heavy on my hands during the Christmas break. Dr. Bolton would invariably find work for me to do. At first, he would ask me to come into the Physics Department daily to handle anything that might come up.

  I did not object to this as it allowed the other members of the department to travel to visit their relatives or to use the school break to take a vacation in warmer locations with their families.

  “You won’t mind handling this,” Dr. Bolton would tell me in his sonorous voice, “It will give you something to do over the holidays.”

  Meekly, I would nod in agreement, hoping that my amiability would speed my receipt of tenure.

  More irritating than handling whatever might come up during the holiday break for the Physics Department was Dr. Bolton’s pressing me to do personal work for him during his absence. It was not that I minded the work, even though it included such things as mowing his grass or painting his kitchen. What bothered me most was his habit of asking me to go through his draft articles to correct his mathematical errors. By this, he actually meant ghostwriting his reports. But tenure never seemed to get any closer nor did he ever display any vestige of gratitude for my efforts.

  Late on Sunday, the day before classes were to resume after the Christmas break, I completed writing the paper Dr. Bolton was to deliver at the Nat
ional Physics Society meeting in San Francisco. As usual, his notes were sketchy and his mathematical calculations faulty. After trying fruitlessly to correct his draft, I had been obliged to discard it and write the entire paper from scratch.

  My preparations for the voyage of the time machine were complete. I decided to undertake the trip at once in order to obtain a change in pace from the depressing Christmas week. The fact that my classes would start the next day was no problem. I planned to return from my trip a few minutes after the time I had started it, so that no one in the present would be aware of my absence.

  Of course, such a procedure would work for only a relatively brief period. My calculations indicated that a person traveling in time would age at the normal rate while engaged in time travel. It would be difficult for me to explain the sudden change in my apparent age if I returned to the present after many years in the past or future.

  In order to lessen the possibility of anyone viewing my takeoff, I decided to time my departure for after dusk. I ate an early dinner, then carefully put on my Civil War uniform.

  This proved to be more time consuming than I had anticipated, since it lacked zippers and had buttons in strange places. Then, to compound my difficulty, I found that Princess had deposited a copious quantity of hair on the dark blue uniform.

  The last bit of Princess’ fur removed, I inspected myself in the hall mirror. My reflection was hardly that of the dashing Union officer I hoped to see. The uniform coat and pants were a shade too large and the hat too small. To make matters worse, the dress sword I had purchased hung down almost to the floor. In all, I resembled a parody of a military man.

  The night air was cold as I stepped out of the house, carrying the cigars and whiskey with me. I locked the door behind me and headed toward the garage. The boots did not fit well and I tried hard to ignore the pain they were inflicting on my feet. Music and laughter from a holiday party next door wafted over the fence, but otherwise there was no sign that there was anyone in the vicinity who might observe my take off. Shivering, I clutched my uniform coat close to me in a futile attempt to keep out the cold.

 

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