Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine

by Jw Schnarr

  “I won’t help you unless you let me speak to her,” repeated Saul.

  “I’m not toying with you. We really can’t put you in touch with her. There are things you can ask for. We can’t let you out into the world because you’d be in too much danger but we can make your life better. We can bring you whatever you want: vids, books, that’s the sort of thing you can ask for.”

  Saul was quiet, determined to be uncooperative. Caitlin did not push him further. She just left the pile of papers with him. Before going she said, “You might as well.”

  XVII

  Friendship was a surprise. Caitlin returned a few times every day to try and persuade Saul to cooperate. They always chatted and she told him about the world. As much as he struggled against her, he could not help but laugh at her acerbic sense of humour. Talking to her made him feel comfortable.

  Saul’s diet expanded as his stomach adjusted to food other than ration packs. Caitlin introduced him to honey, avocado, fried fish, toffee and cheese. One Thursday she brought him groundnuts and showed him how to crack the shells and pluck out the juicy cores. “You’re wasting your effort,” he confessed. “I was never good at temporal physics. Besides inventions are more than just intelligence. There’s also random luck. Newton getting hit on the head by an apple, Alexander Fleming leaving out an unwashed culture and returning a few weeks later to discover Penicillin. Who knows what serendipity led to the future Saul Baron to develop a time machine? Even if I have his exact brain chemistry, I will never be in the exact same circumstances.”

  “You may be right.”

  “Then why don’t you let me go?”

  “There’s a chance that it’s your unavoidable fate to build a time machine. Even if it’s not, enough people believe you can build one. As long as we have you, other countries will always be afraid we have a secret time machine hidden away somewhere. Don’t fool yourself anyway; life in the outside world would not be easy for you. Between the factions that would want to deify you and the ones that would want to murder you, you would never have any peace. That’s one thing we’ve given you.”

  “If you won’t let me leave, can you at least bring some people here? It’s extremely lonely.”

  “That can be arranged,” replied Caitlin. “If you take a look at those schematics and tell us your ideas.”

  The bargain was struck. Saul looked through America’s temporal research notes and in return, he was moved to a military base where he was allowed to interact with the families of the personnel. It was not so different from how his life had been underground. He accepted it and tried to find contentment.

  XVIII

  “Happy Birthday,” Caitlin said to him, entering his room with a communion link. She plugged the link to the screen in the corner of Saul’s room and it illuminated. “Your conversation will be monitored and if you talk about where we are keeping you or mention anything to do with temporal science this will never happen again.”

  Saul only understood when Gabrielle’s face blinked onto the screen.

  “Saul,” she said. Seeing her made him quake with longing. She looked different yet the same. Her hair was now curled into ringlets her lips were dyed red. She was in a white cotton dress and a silver necklace fell over her chest. Her eyes were gleaming with tears. “I was so worried about you.”

  “It’s so good to see you,” he replied, trying to control the tremor in his voice.

  “I can’t believe all the stuff I’ve heard about you,” she continued. “They say you saved the world.”

  “Can we not talk about that?”

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’m not allowed to leave but they treat me well.”

  “That’s so unfair. My uncle’s been showing me all the things I missed out on in the last four months. I’ve seen waterfalls, mountains, and I went on a space cruise orbit of the earth last week.”

  So much for the Austrian government keeping her under lock and key. Caitlin had lied to him but Saul could not muster any anger. He was just so happy to be speaking to Gabrielle. He let her words wash over him. Her delight suffused him. When she asked questions he responded briefly. He knew their conversation would end soon and he just wanted to listen to her for as long as possible.

  “Ricky’s doing great as well,” she said and Saul was jolted out of the dream. “He’s made a deal with some lab which want to develop his camera that photographs the past. I don’t get to see him much but when we do it’s really great. We’re getting to discover the world together. There’s a tender side of him which has just opened up since we came to the surface. Underground so much was expected of him, I think he always had to keep his guard up. The best thing about…”

  Once she started talking about Ricky, she did not stop. Saul was the one who ended the conversation.

  XIX

  From within the high security prison where she was serving a life sentence, Angelica asked to be put in contact with Saul or Ricky daily. “The lives of every person on the planet are at stake,” she pleaded. She tried to persuade with scientific facts. “Look at the meteorological and physical records since the day Saul Baron appeared at the UN summit. The number of hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters increased dramatically. It’s a chain of increasing entropy which begins at the moment where Saul Baron changed history and if he does not go back in time the paradox will push that entropy to a critical peak.”

  “There are other, less fatalistic explanations for all those things,” replied the prison psychologist. Talking with Angelica frustrated him because her fervour would accept no other possibilities.

  One day she got on her knees and begged. “All I ask is just a few minutes. Let me speak with them for a few minutes and I’ll never ask again. Please.” The words bled out of her, crimson with desperation.

  “What is it about the end of days,” said the prison psychologist to a colleague later that evening. “Every religious text has its own version be it called Ragnarok or the Rapture. As the first and second Millennia neared, prophets of doom said with total certainty ‘this is the end.’ War after war has raged and here we are, still thriving. Why do people still have this fascination with apocalypse?”

  “The end of days did come once,” the prison psychologist’s colleague reminded him. “But we were saved by Saul Baron. By his sacrifice we live.”

  “By his sacrifice we sacrifice,” the two men said in unison.

  XX

  Other paradoxologists who believed as Angelica did demanded that the US government stop hiding Saul Baron. Saul was moved three times in the year before Angelica’s predicted ‘end of days’. Caitlin told him that they had almost recaptured him two of the times.

  “Isn’t there a way of letting them know that if they captured me, I couldn’t build a time machine anyway.”

  “They believe Saul. Haven’t you realised by now that nothing can dissuade a person who believes.”

  XXI

  As for Ricky Montcalm, he had lost all interest in the time machine project. Angelica’s desperate pleas to him on the day the underground installation had fallen meant nothing to him.

  Ricky had become extremely wealthy by patenting and developing the ‘Montcalm method’ of taking photographs of past events. His initial sponsors were law enforcement agencies worldwide who utilized his technology to find out what happened at crime scenes before they arrived. The real money came when he developed smaller Montcalm cameras for general distribution. The camera was every voyeur’s dream. All a person had to do was go into a room where young women had been showering or a couple had been having sex and take a photograph. Paparazzi and pornographer’s all over the world rejoiced.

  XXII

  The day came. The doom cults had driven thousands into frenzies in the final days before October 12, 2082. Desperate requests demanded Saul Baron be sent back in time. This was not even an option. There was no time machine.

  The twelfth of October came like any other day. The sun rose, the wind blew
. All over the world celebrations began to commemorate Saul Baron’s sacrifice. The preparations had taken months.

  Saul watched the festivities through the filter of a vid-screen. They had not even let him loose on this of all days. He watched the processions and ceremonies alone. All but two of his guards had been given the day off. He watched as parades of young boys and girls flew on hovercrafts carrying banners with his face on it. Their tiny faces were elated and they chanted “Saul Baron! Saul Baron! Saul Baron!” Intricate conflagrations of fireworks crackled above. He wanted to scream with anger of throw something at the screen. Every song and cry of jubilee stung him.

  Concurrent to the exultant celebrations, churches of the Baronist faith held solemn ceremonies. Prayers were mumbled and congregations sat in meditative recognition of Saul Baron’s sacrifice. “If Saul Baron were here today,” declared Caleb Daniels, the president of the United States, in an impassioned speech to the nation. “He would be proud of the world we have made.”

  The sobs tore through Saul’s body without warning. His body shook in almost-convulsions as he saw the joy in the faces on the screen. The screen might as well have shown fictional images. That world had never been real to Saul. From his birth he had always been an exile from it. He had never done any of the things people took for granted and all because of his name. His stupid hosanna name.

  The weight of it had never hit him before; he had never let it. He had always forced himself to accept. This is how it is. This is how it must be. Nothing I can do or say could change a thing. Now, as he watched the world celebrate, the dam with which he had held back his resentment, anger and loneliness crumbled. He wailed without inhibition, open mouthed like a babe in a cradle. His throat split and his frame shook.

  If I had been born with a different name? If I had known my parents? If I had gone to a normal school? If I had only? These words were the language of his wails and the hungry silence devoured them. He lay on his bed like a broken toy, still staring at the screen. Looking at it tortured him but he could not tear his eyes away.

  The footage of Saul Baron’s appearance at the 2032 UN summit was played. The Secretary General was in the middle of a speech when he was interrupted by a lightening bright flash and a sharp crackle. The UN Security Guards whipped into action immediately, approaching the man who had materialized in the centre of the room with weapons drawn. He lifted a tiny mirror like object in the air and rotated it. The soldiers’ bodies were petrified in mid attack. “Do not be afraid,” he said. “I am from the future, and I have come from a time ravaged by war and suffering.”

  Saul had never watched the footage. He had always known he could ask Caitlin to bring it to him but he never had. He had never wanted to watch it even though if asked, he would not be able to say why. Now he knew the reason. When Saul heard people praising his name and saw their awe and reverence, on some level, in some tiny corner of his mind, he had always wondered if that potential for greatness lied untapped within him. They all believed it so completely. Maybe they are right, he sometimes fantasized. Maybe there is a secret font of genius hidden within me that could be liberated at any random moment?

  As he watched the doppelganger of himself address the UN, he felt that unspoken dream die. This man was nothing like him. Their facial resemblance was the extent of it and even that was warped. The Saul Baron on the screen’s looked more handsome, more confident, and more real. He stood tall and his voice reverberated with sonorous music. He was a giant. A man to be worshiped. “You all have a responsibility to humanity that you scorn with your petty squabbles,” the Saul Baron on the screen accused the delegates. “The conflict that destroyed the future I come from had its beginnings in the decisions made here. You,” the Saul Baron from the future pointed at the King of Thailand. “Even though you have been begged and pressured to give the Mon people self determination, you have never even entertained the idea or tried to give them more equal footing. This oppressive decision and the slaughters you have condoned are tiny pebbles which will ripple and lead to global war. You,” now the Saul Baron from the future addressed the president of America.

  One by one he addressed every delegate in the room telling them how decisions they had made, nuclear programs they refused to disarm, aid they used to give, and tiny disagreements that they dismissed as irrelevant would culminate in genocide. Billions would die and the survivors were doomed. His words were a testimony filled with tragedy but motivated by hope. “You can change the future.”

  Saul watched the future avatar of himself. He hated him. He hated the man’s genius, his eloquence and the beautiful nobility of his sacrifice. Saul’s eyes were dry now but the desolation he felt was deeper than it had been when he was crying. He realised something with an icy certainty. If he died today, it would change nothing. No-one would even feel his passing for more than a split second. Not Caitlin, not Gabrielle. No one.

  He turned off the vid-screen. Even with the screen off he could still see the parades and fireworks lucidly. He could still see the face of Saul Baron—he could no longer think of it as his face. This is not my face. This is not my body. I am not Saul Baron. I never was.

  XXIII

  October 13 2082. The day after the day the world should have ended. Caitlin came to see Saul and immediately she could see the pain in his eyes. “I’m sorry. There was no way I could make them allow you out for the celebrations.”

  Saul laughed and the sound was strangled and manic. “All my life, I’ve been pushed around here and there and imprisoned in a thousand different ways because I am Saul Baron. Of course I could not leave.”

  Caitlin’s worry multiplied. She had seen the anguish that eclipsed Saul before, usually in soldiers who killed themselves a few days later. “Maybe I could arrange for you to be taken into Ohio. It’s the nearest city and if we disguise you…”

  Saul mumbled something and she asked him to repeat himself.”I have no regrets,” he said. “Everybody has regrets. Things they wish they could go back in time and undo. I don’t because my decisions haven’t made any difference at all. All I’ve done for years is look at equations and theories I can’t understand in exchange for nothing. I’m like a beast in a pen. You feed me, you let me sleep. That is all.”

  Caitlin suppressed the words which wanted to come from her lips. Her instinct was to speak the anaesthetizing lies she had told him every time he despaired. She just waited.

  Saul did not say anything for a long time. He just stared at her, his accusing gaze boring into her. At last, he spoke. “I’m tired of doing nothing Caitlin. I have no secret genius or any useful skills, but I thought about it and I do have one thing. My name. The world is still full of causes that need support. Surely if I could lend my name to them, if I could represent them and raise money for…” Even as he formulated the request he knew they would not let him go.

  Caitlin started to speak but Saul interrupted her. “Just leave me alone. Just go.”

  He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

  Caitlin obeyed his request.

  XXIV

  Guilt was always part of the job. That was a reality Caitlin had accepted long ago. There were times when she had been complicit in the gunning down of civilians: the broken corpses of dead children haunted her dreams. She had told a thousand lies for three different administrations and personally organised countless missions that made her nauseous. After a while the dead blended into each other and the guilt became blurry. In her nightmares the faces of the dead were indistinct.

  She saw the posters of alternate Saul Baron everywhere she looked that morning. That Saul Baron had come from a ravaged world that was dying. You would think that the expression in his face would be more worn away than the Saul Baron who she had left lying inert on a crocheted blanket.

  Saul Baron…

  “I do have one thing.” Saul had said. “My name.”

  XXV

  Caitlin returned to Saul’s room in the early evening.

  “Saul,” she s
aid. “You may be right.”

  XXVI

  Caleb Daniels was the 57th president of the United States. He was not an idealist. He had aspired to the office for one reason. Power.

  If asked, ‘What is power?’ ‘What do you want if for?’ or a number of other like minded questions he would not have had a clear answer. He just knew he wanted it. The universe’s sense of irony had therefore seen fit to give him what he desired but to ensure he was the least powerful president in decades. The Socialist party had the senate majority and he had only come into power through a coalition. His every decision had to be condoned by a bevy of other minds as consumed as he was by self interest.

  The last 4 years had been a flicker. As the new elections came closer Caleb knew he had no chance. All four of the other candidates who were still in the race were well ahead of him in every poll. He would just be a hiccup in the history books.

  Among his many appointments on November 2nd, 2082 was Caitlin Bartner, ex-deputy director of the AFA. She came into his office and said a single sentence. “How would you like to be re-elected?”

  XXVII

  “It’s a bit of a deal with the devil,” Caitlin explained to Saul. “He’s the worst of the candidates but he’s the one in power right now. Marcus Santiago would be a much better president but Caleb needs your help and has the influence to change your circumstances. All it will be is some photographs with him and a few public appearances saying you support him. For the political support of Saul Baron, he would agree to almost anything.”