Steam City Pirates: Pat O'Malley Steampunk Mysteries
Page 6
“That is why we must learn to operate this time machine. If we can develop a way to use it, then perhaps we can counter the inventions that they create. It is obvious from the German inventor they brought back from the future to create the Huff-and-Puff Machine that they know exactly the time and place where they can obtain such men. We, therefore, must learn how to do the same!” I took Becky’s arm to maneuver us around two men who were carrying boxes of produce into a market stall. “If these pirates are successful, we won’t be able to get much food or other supplies into our ports. New York is one of the largest shipping destinations in the world.”
Doctor Adler greeted us inside Emanu-El and led us directly into our new basement headquarters. “I’m having the delivery men place all your belongings upstairs in a store room. You can get McKenzie’s men to bring your personals down here once they arrive,” said the rabbi, opening the trap door that led down below.
While Becky walked around the room getting herself acquainted with the environs, Doctor Adler and I had a conversation. I told him about the mazikeen who said she was sent by a man called Inquisitor Manette, and she also called him their leader.
“Inquisitor? Obviously, I don’t like the sound of that title,” said Doctor Adler. “We Jews have not been favorably treated by such personages. In fact, the prayer we have that is sung is called the Kol Nidre, meaning ‘all vows.’ We sing it during our holiest day, Yom Kippur, and it allows those Jews who have been forced, under threats to their lives, to convert to other religions or even if they happened to make a religious vow other than to our one Supreme Being, then the Kol Nidre absolves them of such vows, so they can return to their Judaic brethren. Many thousands of our fellow Jews were therefore able to attend Christian or other church services to prevent the inquisitors from killing them. This prayer gave them a way to return to worship Yahweh in secret and not be considered obligated to Christianity in any way.”
“So these inquisitors were forcing you to believe in their religion, and your prayer allowed them to be forgiven and welcomed back into the fold. I can understand the need for such forgiveness,” I said. “Catholicism also allows for such forgiveness through the Act of Contrition and the Sacrament of Confession. Both of our religions are criticized by other religions for this, but we have our own logic,” I added.
“Indeed we do. One must believe the Creator is all-forgiving because the ways of Man are full of chaos and fear. I don’t know about this leader Manette, but his title certainly pulls no weight in my culture,” Doctor Adler said, sitting down in a chair next to the time machine.
“Do you know how many of these evil mazikeen we can expect to confront?” I asked, sitting in another chair to his left. Becky was listening to our conversation as she fingered the chemistry tools on the laboratory table.
“No, I am afraid the only such creature I have encountered is our Seth. We can query him when he arrives. Although I knew what he was, I was as unprepared as you are for the consequent repercussions,” said Doctor Adler.
Becky was now standing next to the time machine touching one of the metal columns. “What did you find out from Seth about this machine?”
“We discussed this at some length, and although his technical details were beyond my comprehension, I was able to ascertain the general theory behind this device. As I understand it, the device creates gamma and magnetic fields between the two columns. These fields, in turn, create circulating light beams which then warp or loop time. This approach can twist space that also causes time to be twisted, meaning one could theoretically walk through time as one walks through space,” Doctor Adler explained.
“Light! No wonder most of the great spiritual and mystical books refer to some kind of battle between the forces of light and dark. Do you suppose we are fighting the dark forces?” Becky’s voice had a mysterious lilt.
Doctor Adler smiled and pointed to the Hebrew letters spelling “Michael” on the wall over the time machine. “The apocryphal battle between the angels in heaven is a good example. Lucifer, which means ‘morning star or morning light,’ decided the Creator had made a bad decision when he created us. Our Father gave us the chance to become part of His heavenly perfection by living our lives filled with love for each other and for Yahweh. As Lucifer saw it, the Creator was giving us the same chance at immortality as Lucifer had, and this angel, because he was jealous, chose to rebel against the Creator in heaven. Michael, who accepted Yahweh’s plan, decided to fight Lucifer and his angels. According to the story, Lucifer and his minions were defeated by Michael and the Sons of Light. Lucifer’s punishment was to be condemned to haunt our world until the end of time. Lucifer and his followers were afraid of the light of the Creator’s truth, so they chose to dwell beneath the earth in the world of lies and darkness.”
“I don’t want to be a naysayer, Doctor, but we seem to be located in a rather dark and shady space ourselves,” I said.
“On Earth, we are all bringers of the light. Satan brings the light, but his is the light of knowledge without love. Without love, knowledge becomes a tool for selfish desires. With love, knowledge becomes a tool to reach paradise on Earth. This is what we Jews call the Coming of the Messiah,” said Doctor Adler. “Mitzvoth increase among the people, and evil and death are defeated, so that heaven will reign on Earth.”
“I see. We Catholics expect this Messiah to be the second visit paid by Jesus. Who cares? As long as we get the same result,” I said.
When Bessie and Seth arrived at noon, I wanted to immediately ask him about the mazikeen. He was in his usually high spirits, and he wore knee pants and a blue suit jacket with white shirtsleeves. His mother was wearing her black dress for public mourning of her husband, Arthur. Seth was still insisting his father would be returning to us because he was also half-angel and had merely “disappeared.”
“Seth, I have an important question for you, old boy,” I said, and he immediately left his fiddling with the time machine to walk over to me and give me his undivided attention.
“Yes, Detective, what is it you would like to know?” He searched my face with his eyes.
“We had a visit from a young woman before we came over here. She said she was also a mazikeen, and she had a rather large sword at my throat at the time she stated it, so I was listening quite carefully. She had also taken on the physical aspect of Miss Charming after having tied her up in the bedroom. She was attempting to find out information from me. One might also note that in her mazikeen identity all of her teeth were made of gold. Luckily, I was able to trick her so that I retrieved my pistol and had the upper hand,” I said.
Seth’s eyes were widening as I continued the story.
“She used her final abilities by disappearing and flying out the window,” I said. “How many of you are there? Should we expect more of her kind in the future?”
Seth furrowed his brow in concentration. “As a future scientist, Doctor Albert Einstein, once said, ‘Space and time are not separate entities but are different directions in a single object called space-time.’ Mazikeen also seem to be separate entities, but they are opposites serving on the same space-time continuum. Whenever one of our kind enters into the conflicts of mankind, and we take a side, then our other half becomes a part of the opposing side. A philosopher, Georg Friedrich Hegel, believed the only truth is in the whole and that whenever we oppose each other we can overcome our differences only through a process of synthesis, which keeps the best parts of both sides and leads to a more complete solution.”
“Seth is quite right. The Hegelian Dialectic is well known in German thought. Go on, my boy,” Doctor Adler said.
“The point is, when I chose to become part of your group, my dialectical opposite became part of this other group. In the world of the mazikeen, there can only be one other oppositional entity. However, for example, if my father were to return and decide to become part of our group, then his opposite side would immediately join with the opposing forces. Is that clear?” Seth asked.
“Correct. Although I must point out, Detective O’Malley, that even though you may look upon your adversaries as enemies, I must take a more Hegelian position and look upon them as the necessary antithesis on the road to wholeness,” said Seth, a bit too smugly.
“I beg your pardon, Prince Don Carlos. When your antithesis has a sword to your throat, it becomes quite difficult to see the bigger picture,” I said.
“There! You do understand the logic. The historical Don Carlos had his literary antithesis in Mister Schiller’s creation,” Seth said. He then turned around to face his mother. “Mother, may I send Detective O’Malley into the future?”
I was dumbstruck. I certainly wanted to know how we could use this machine to our advantage, but I never believed I would be the person chosen to see if it worked. “Seth, are you certain you know how this device works?” I asked, and my voice caught in my throat.
“Of course. Let me explain it to you the way the inventor explained it to the assembled scientists. You must imagine a spoon stirring inside a pot. The light is the spoon rotating around the inner rim of the pot. The space is the liquid being swirled by the spoon. As the space twists, it will coil the normally linear passage of time with it, spiraling the past, present and future together into one continuous loop. It is this twisting of space and time that will make time travel possible,” said Seth, as he included hand gestures with the presentation.
“So, it works because time-space is not flat but curved. Therefore, past, present and future are combined,” I said, trying to picture myself being twisted inside this kind of whirlpool.
“By trapping light inside a photonic crystal between the two accelerators, we can cause it to circulate. The energy of the circulating light will cause the space inside the circle to twist, causing a gravitational force. We shall be inserting polarized neutrons, which are neutrons that spin in only one direction, into the center of the circulating light. When we see the change in their spin we will know that space is being twisted inside the crystal. This is when you travel in the capsule, Mister O’Malley,” said Seth, smiling.
“How do you know how far ahead I will go in time? It seems rather dangerous. What if I should change something in the future that causes a disaster back here in 1868? Or, if I went into the past and killed my grandfather, what then? Would I not disappear?” My mind was working on the problem as I sat there.
“No, you see, the future physicists discovered that there are many universes, not just one. They are parallel and separate. Thus, with every decision we make on the time-space continuum, another version of us makes the opposite decision and splits off into another parallel universe. In fact, all decisions are theoretically possible because the numbers of parallel universes are infinite. The time traveler was born in the universe where he did not kill his grandfather,” Seth explained.
“You did not answer my question,” I said. “How do you control where I will be sent?”
“Oh yes! There is a time-space gauge that monitors the place on the light spectrum when a particular year took place. Thus, when your body reaches a point when the twisting light causes the exact gravity needed for that specific date and time, you pull the lever and you will be there. You shall not be here, of course,” he said, waving his hand. “But you can use your machine to send yourself back to this date and time whenever you believe you have seen enough.”
I had reached a time and place in my life that I really never wanted to reach. I could accept the supernatural reality of Seth Mergenthaler and his ability to prognosticate future crimes, and I could even face evil mazikeen or the perpetrators themselves, but when it came to the possibility of time travel, I was horrified deep within my psyche. My fear came from my Catholic upbringing and the idea that one cannot tinker with God’s creation the way it has been established.
I suppose my fear was at the heart of why science and religion have been mortal enemies for so long. Whereas science held fast to the idea that change was good, religion wanted life to remain secure and predictable. If time travel were possible, so my thinking went, then it meant we could know God’s plan for us in advance. Where was the miraculous nature of being unsure of the future? How can my faith in a higher power mean anything when I can see the past and the future all laid out in front of my mortal eyes like a three-dimensional road map? There was something about time travel that sent my mind reeling in terror at the possibilities. I was so afraid that I knew I had to express it to my comrades.
“Have you traveled with this machine?” I asked Seth. Perhaps I could dissuade him from his need to recruit me by changing the subject.
“I’m sorry. I should have told you before, but mazikeen cannot travel through time. Because we are one-half spirit, the magnetic charge in our physical essence is not enough to blend with the space-time light. We do not have enough gravity to make a trip through time,” said Seth.
“Seth may be a genius, Mister O’Malley, but he behaves like a genius only to you,” said Bessie, his mother. “I must see the eight-year-old, and I don’t particularly want my only child to be confronting dangerous criminals,” she added.
“Mother, the mazikeen have been facing danger for thousands of years. As you are a daughter of Lilith, I would assume you would know,” Seth said.
“Please, let us keep family disagreements out of this discussion,” said Doctor Adler. “We must focus on confronting the possible dangers in our present. To do this, Mister O’Malley, we need to visit the future. You said this yourself. Why are you now so hesitant?”
I certainly did not want to admit my religious fear to Rabbi Adler, or to any of the others, for that matter. It was one proposition to believe in the intuitive meditation exercises that Becky taught me from her transcendental practices. It was quite another proposition to place myself inside this capsule that had yet to be tested. However, if we were to remain competitive with our adversaries, I needed to take the risk.
When Walter McKenzie and his men arrived, I was seated inside the time machine. I could feel my heart pounding inside my chest, and my mouth was like sandpaper. I could hear nothing but Seth’s voice, as he spoke into a device attached to the crystal capsule. He explained that it would be removed when I started up the machine.
I looked around and saw McKenzie pointing at me inside my tomb. His 315 pounds of Plug Ugliness was shaking like gelatin as he laughed. I would have some words with him if I ever returned from this alive. He had only one of his men with him, big Bill McGuire, the identical twin whose brother, Dan, was killed during our escapades with Jane the Grabber.
“Detective O’Malley? Can you hear me?” Seth asked, peering at me through the thick globe of the crystal.
I nodded.
“Do you see the lever on the left on the panel in front of you?”
I nodded again.
“That controls the spinning energy of the light which will cause the warping of space-time. You, of course, will be part of this journey. The gauge on the top tells you the year and the month. The second gauge tells you the day and the hour. The third gauge tells you the geographical location. You move the three levers to set the gauges as the polarized neutrons begin to be added.”
“Where in blazes am I going?” My voice sounded shaky to me, and I cleared my throat after speaking.
Seth turned around to face Doctor Adler. I could see his lips moving, but I could not hear what he was telling the rabbi. When he turned back around, his face was beaming, as if he had found a chocolate in Missus Schwartz’s bowl. “You can set it for Monday, April 16, 1870. That’s over two years into the future. The location will be Central Park, New York City. Doctor Adler said that the people in the park would not be too surprised by your appearance. There are many such magicians and experiments being done in the park, and they will assume you to be a person selling a new invention. Please act this w
ay if someone should ask you why you are there.”
“All right. That sounds logical. Can we do it now?” I was increasingly nervous at the prospect of sending my body through such an ordeal. Perhaps I would spiral into a new form of Irish stew, and they would clean me out of this module with a large spoon.
Both Becky and Bessie stood near the crystal and waved at me. Becky went so far as to place her red lips against the clear globe. I was not going to match her lips. I was too frightened.
I saw Seth nod his head, and I moved the first lever. I was momentarily blinded by the light pouring into my compartment. I could see nothing at first, and then, gradually, as I felt the vibrating of the crystal, I could see again. My body was not moving or spinning, but everything else was. Gradually, as the spinning of the waves of light and the polarized neutrons became more intense, I looked down at the gauges on top of the panel. They were slowly moving up, from February to March, from March to April, until the year 1868 was completed. I waited as the dates passed until I saw that the date on the gauges was Monday, April 16, 1870. I pulled down on the lever, and the spinning and vibration stopped. I looked down at my hands. They were still white and had the proper numbers of fingers. I did not feel damaged, and my heart rate was quick, but I was not breathing with difficulty.
As the spinning light was now over, I could look out of my capsule at the world beyond. It was green, and there was daylight, and the gauges pronounced my destination properly. I was in Central Park, New York City, on Monday, April 16, 1870. I could see some people coming up to me from different sections of the park. A few came over a small hill, several more walked up the path from the Grand Mall where concerts were held. They all stood around and gaped at my time machine. I decided to risk opening the side door and stepping out into the future I had never experienced.