by Dan Gutman
Julia, Isabel, Luke, and David arrived early, not realizing that you’re supposed to show up “fashionably late” for these types of events. They were dressed in their nicest clothes, which was no problem for Julia. She always looked for an excuse to dress up. The boys looked awkward in their suits, which they’d worn for every wedding, funeral, bar mitzvah, and confirmation they had been forced to attend. David’s suit was at least one size too small, as he had grown several inches in the last year.
The kids stood on the grass taking pictures and gawking as the limousines pulled up and local Boston bigwigs and celebrities got out. The kids had never seen so many rich people in one place. Some of them actually did wear black ties. There were news trucks too, with on-camera reporters and cameramen getting ready to go live. The place was swarming with TV, radio, and print media.
“This place is awesome,” David said as he pulled open the front door and walked into the rotunda. Naturally, the walls were covered with historic photos, some of them blown up to huge proportions.
“I can’t believe she pulled this off,” said Julia.
“Hey, she pulled off the Board,” David said. “Starting a museum is a piece of cake compared to that.”
Many of the framed photographs on the walls were famous ones the kids had seen in Miss Z’s office. An astronaut standing on the moon. The mushroom cloud created by the first atomic bomb. The Berlin Wall coming down. The Hindenburg exploding. American soldiers charging the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
The pictures were arranged chronologically, starting with some of the first fuzzy black-and-white photos taken back in the 1800s and going all the way into the twenty-first century. People crowded around the pictures to get a closer look. Some of them took pictures of the pictures. Waiters and waitresses strolled around with trays full of hors d’oeuvres. Luke and David in particular were all over them. Free food!
After a few minutes, the crowd parted and Mrs. Vader pushed Miss Z’s wheelchair into the rotunda. A hush fell over the room, and then thunderous applause rolled through the crowd as people realized who she was. Miss Z was smiling. She looked radiant in a red dress.
“Speech! Speech!” somebody hollered.
Miss Z was handed a microphone. She began to speak, haltingly at first, and then with gathering confidence.
“Thank you all for coming this evening. As many of you know, photography has been my lifelong passion. As a child, I had a darkroom in my basement, where I would spend hours developing and printing my own pictures. Those were some of the happiest days of my life.
“Back then, of course, photography was an expensive hobby. You actually had to pay to buy a roll of film. Remember film? Then you had to pay to have that film developed, and wait like a week for your pictures to be printed. Remember that? You had to be careful taking every shot, because every photograph cost money. Remember those days, old timers?”
Some people in the crowd nodded.
“Imagine that,” somebody shouted, “a camera that did nothing but take pictures!”
“No text! No email! No Google!” hollered somebody else. “How did we survive?”
“Those were the good old days!” somebody else cracked.
“Well, I say these are the good old days,” continued Miss Z. “Today, each of you has a camera in your pocket. I see some of you pointing them at me right now. Today you can snap a hundred pictures and blast them all over the internet instantly. It doesn’t cost you a cent. You young people probably take that for granted. To me, it’s simply amazing.”
Miss Z was starting to feel comfortable with her words, and she continued.
“The other day I heard a young person use an expression that was new to me: ‘Pictures or it didn’t happen.’ That’s exactly right. If we don’t see a photograph of an event, it’s almost like that event never took place. Photographs make things real to us. Who was it that said a picture is worth a thousand words? It’s true! One photo can sum up an event instantly. It doesn’t matter what language you speak. And that moment will never be repeated, but it can be captured and saved. That’s an incredibly powerful thing. Oh, I didn’t mean to ramble on like this. I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be cutting a ribbon, right?”
A couple of guys brought out a thick red ribbon. They stretched it out in front of Miss Z. Somebody else brought a big pair of fake scissors and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said, “for helping to make the Museum of Historic Photography a reality. Please enjoy this place, support it, and bring your children with you the next time you visit. Photography is a great way to teach kids about history. And it will be your children, of course, who will determine history in the future. I now declare the Museum of Historic Photography to be officially . . . open!”
With that, Miss Z cut the ribbon. There was a big round of applause.
David, Luke, Isabel, and Julia walked through all the galleries of the museum. Some of the photos and videos the kids recognized immediately. Barack Obama being sworn in as president. Several other American presidents taking the oath of office. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. For others, they had to read the plaque on the wall next to the photo to understand what it was about. Harry Truman gleefully holding up a newspaper with the headline DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. The lone protester standing in front of a line of tanks at Tiananmen Square in China.
Off to the sides of the main exhibit area were smaller galleries devoted to historic photos of war, sports, poverty, crime, triumph, tragedy, heroes, and villains. Judging by the reaction of the people in attendance, the museum was a triumph.
It took about an hour for the Flashback Four to make their way through the entire museum. At the end, just before the little gift shop, they came to the final gallery. There was a black curtain in front of it and a sign that said, THE FUTURE (AND PAST) OF PHOTOGRAPHY. The kids pulled aside the curtain to see a photo on the wall. It was the picture of the Titanic.
CHAPTER 3
COSMIC PINBALL
“LOOK, THERE’S OUR PICTURE!” LUKE WHISPERED as he elbowed David in the ribs. “We shot that!”
“I didn’t think she was going to put it in the museum,” whispered Isabel.
“Why not?” asked Julia. “That’s why she sent us on the mission to shoot it.”
A white card on the wall next to the picture simply said “Titanic, 1912” and identified the photographer as “Flashback Four.” A few other people gathered around to peer at the photo. Very quickly, there was a buzz of conversation.
“I didn’t know anybody took a picture of the Titanic as it was sinking.”
“There must have been somebody in a lifeboat with a camera.”
“Is this photo for real?”
“What does Flashback Four mean?”
Around the corner from the Titanic photo was just one more photo in the gallery—the one the kids had shot of Mount Vesuvius as it was erupting. Again, the photo credit read “Flashback Four.” A larger crowd of people were gathered around the Vesuvius photo. One man was holding a magnifying glass up to it. Here, too, people were buzzing.
“Is this some kind of a joke?”
“Pompeii? Didn’t that happen, like, thousands of years ago?”
“Photography didn’t even exist in those days.”
“This picture is photoshopped,” insisted the man holding the magnifying glass. “It’s a fake.”
“Maybe Miss Zandergoth is trying to show us that even a photograph can’t be completely trusted as authentic,” a woman commented. “She’s saying that photos can be manipulated. Pictures can lie. Don’t you see? It’s a social comment.”
“It’s bull is what it is,” somebody else said.
“If a photo has been manipulated, it’s not a real photo.”
“I feel like we got ripped off,” a tall man said, “and we didn’t even pay to get in.”
“Do fake photos belong in a museum that claims to be about historical photography?” one newsca
ster said into a camera. “We’ll find out in our special report at eleven o’clock.”
“If you ask me, this whole museum is a fraud.”
The discussion was getting heated. The kids were tempted to say something in Miss Z’s defense, but fortunately they didn’t have to. At that moment, Mrs. Vader rolled Miss Z into the gallery. They were immediately surrounded by people peppering Miss Z with questions and reporters sticking microphones and cameras in her face. The kids moved closer so they could hear. The ribbon-cutting ceremony had turned into a spontaneous press conference. . . .
Reporters: Miss Zandergoth! Miss Zandergoth!
Mrs. Vader: Please. Back away. Miss Zandergoth is tired. It has been a long day.
Miss Z: No, it’s okay. I see I’ve provoked some degree of controversy here.
Reporter: What’s the deal with the Titanic photo and that one of Mount Vesuvius erupting?
Reporter: Why would you put fake photos in a museum of historical photography?
Reporter: Yeah, what are you trying to pull?
Miss Z: I’d be happy to answer your questions, if you’d just stop asking them for a moment. Just give me a chance.
Reporter: Is this a real museum, or Ripley’s Believe It or Not!?
Miss Z: I understand your concern, and I’ll try to explain. We snap a photo, and we capture that instant in time. Forever. It becomes ours. With that photo, we bring the past to us. It could be a hundred years in the past, or five minutes in the past. Either way, we get to step inside that memory and experience it as if we were—
Reporter: Will you admit that those two photos are fakes? Yes or no?
All eyes turned to Miss Z. The Flashback Four leaned forward to hear how she was going to handle the question.
Miss Z [after pausing for a moment]: They’re not fakes. Every photo in this museum is real. The photos have not been manipulated in any way.
There was an audible gasp.
Maybe she told the truth because she was dying and there was nothing to lose. Or maybe she just wasn’t very good at lying. In any case, Miss Z had made the conscious decision to include the Titanic photo and the Vesuvius photo in her museum, and to tell the truth about them. She didn’t seem to have anticipated the negative reaction. But now the cat was out of the bag.
“Maybe we should get out of here,” whispered Isabel to the others. “We could get in trouble.”
“No way,” Julia whispered back. “This I gotta see.”
“A photo brings a moment of time into our consciousness,” Miss Z tried to explain. “So photography is a form of time travel, when you think about it. Taking a picture allows us to travel through time.”
“Are you saying you figured out a way to travel through time and take pictures of events from the past?” asked one of the reporters.
All the reporters had been waiting to ask that question. It was followed by nervous laughter.
“Well . . . yes,” said Miss Z.
There was another audible gasp.
“Oh my God!” Isabel whispered in Julia’s ear. “She actually admitted it!”
“This is one of those times when telling the truth is not the right way to go,” whispered Julia.
“What if she tells the truth about us?” asked Isabel.
“We’re going to be in big trouble,” Luke whispered. “I never even showed the permission forms to my mom and dad.”
“Neither did I,” whispered the others.
Mrs. Vader tried to pull the wheelchair away, explaining that Miss Z had to go, but Miss Z was having none of it. She wanted to talk. More members of the press and a few onlookers had gathered around. They were hanging on her every word.
“I wasn’t planning to get into this today,” she explained, “but since you’re all so interested, the answer is yes, the photos are real. And yes, I have developed a time-traveling device.”
“Why?” somebody shouted.
“Ever since H. G. Wells wrote The Time Machine back in 1895, people have dreamed of traveling back in time,” Miss Z said. “It took over a century, but now we can do it. Now we can go back and capture images of things that were never photographed in the past. We can find out what happened to Amelia Earhart. Now we can get a shot of General Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee signing the agreement to end the Civil War. And now we can get photographs of things that took place before photography was invented—Washington crossing the Delaware. Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. The Founding Fathers signing of the Declaration of Independence. Think of it! We can go back to prehistoric times and snap a photo of a dinosaur! The possibilities are endless!”
“Are you putting us on?” one of the reporters asked. “What is this, some kind of prank TV stunt?”
“Have you had yourself examined?” asked another one. “Is there any dementia in your family?”
The crowd was turning ugly. You could feel it.
“Please, listen to me,” said Miss Z. “History is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing. Finally, we can fill in those missing pieces. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Come on,” said one of the guys with a video camera. “Time travel is impossible. Everybody knows that. It’s just a science-fiction fantasy.”
Miss Z chuckled quietly.
“You know,” she said, “before the Wright Brothers got their airplane off the ground in 1903, all the experts said human flight was a science-fiction fantasy. They said it couldn’t be done. But these two ordinary bicycle mechanics figured it out. And just sixty-six years later, we figured out how to send a man to the moon and bring him back safely. That seemed like science fiction before we did it. Who knows what we’ll figure out in the future?”
“Going to the moon is a little different from going back in time, don’t you think?” the guy with the video camera asked.
“Is it?” said Miss Z. “Going to the moon seems a lot harder to me. “I remember reading that all the experts insisted it was impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. Like it was some kind of magical barrier that couldn’t be crossed. But then, in 1954, a guy named Roger Bannister did it for the first time. Before I built what I call the Board, everyone thought time travel was an impossibility. But it’s not, and these photos are the proof.”
“Proof that you can photoshop anything,” somebody mumbled.
“So how does this Board of yours work?” a reporter asked, a slight snicker in her voice.
“It’s not easy to explain simply,” Miss Z replied, “but I’ll try. Einstein said nobody can travel faster than the speed of light. But he also proved that gravity could bend beams of light. So if a person can move at the speed of light on a bent light beam, certain paradoxes become possible. Space-time can warp, grow, or be collapsed. And when that happens, time is deformed too. Time is warped by the gravity of a black hole, and black holes are tunnels through the universe. If you fell into one, you would appear at another place and time. Space and time can deform enough to carry you anywhere at any speed. It’s sort of like playing cosmic pinball.”
“You gotta be kidding me,” a reporter said, trying to write it all down.
“With all due respect, ma’am,” said another reporter, “I think you may be off your rocker.”
“They should lock her up and throw away the key,” said somebody else.
“You’re certainly entitled to your opinion,” Miss Z said, unfazed.
“Well, if this Board of yours is so magical,” a man with a microphone asked, “why don’t you show it to us?”
“Yeah, prove it,” somebody said. “Let’s see it.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that,” Miss Z replied. “It took many years to develop this technology. It’s proprietary. If it fell into the wrong hands . . .”
“Then why should we believe you?” somebody asked.
“I really don’t care if you believe me or not,” Miss Z replied.
“That’s it. I’m outta here,” one of the reporters said as she pack
ed up her camera gear.
“They oughta shut this museum down right now,” said another reporter.
Sadly, the story was no longer about this spectacular new museum that had opened up on the Boston waterfront. It had become a story about a nutty lady with too much money who decided to blow it all on a crazy time-travel machine before she died.
Miss Z shook her head. She had worked so hard and so long to develop the technology of the Board. She had been so careful to prepare for the missions—getting the appropriate clothes for the Flashback Four, teaching them about the language, customs, and history of the time periods they would be visiting. She thought she had covered all the bases. But something always seemed to go wrong. It was almost as if time didn’t want to be tampered with.
One by one, the media left the museum to reshoot their video segments and write their stories for the next day’s newspapers. Just one reporter, a short man with a beard, stayed behind. He had a pad and pen in his hands.
“So lemme get this straight before I file my story,” he said, leaning over to Miss Z. “You’re saying you actually traveled back in time and took those photos of Pompeii and the Titanic?”
“No, I did not say that,” said Miss Z. “Now you’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Well, who took the photos?” he asked. “It says Flashback Four on the wall. Who is this Flashback Four?”
Isabel took a step forward. She had already opened her mouth to speak when Luke clapped his hand over it tightly.
“No!” he whispered in her ear. “If anybody finds out we were part of this, we’ll be in big trouble.”
Miss Z scanned the people who were still hanging around, until her gaze found Julia, Isabel, David, and Luke. She paused before speaking.
“I’m sorry, but I cannot reveal the identity of the Flashback Four at this time,” she said. “That is also proprietary information.”