Einstein's Secret

by Irving Belateche

  At this point in the article, I was convinced that the reporter was pursuing a dead end. He was far from uncovering the murder at the Weldon estate, so I started to read at a faster clip, hoping to strike gold in the next section of the article.

  But while I was rushing through a description of the Hopkins professor’s area of expertise, and how it connected to Einstein, I saw that this professor had a research partner, a Professor Marcus.

  At UVA.

  My heart started pumping faster. Surely this wasn’t a coincidence. This was the clue. I had to get to a public computer terminal as fast as possible and look up Professor Marcus. First, I forced myself to read through the rest of the article, just to verify that there were no other coincidences. There weren’t.

  Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in front of a computer terminal in the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. I looked up Professor Marcus and found that he’d been a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at UVA in the fifties and sixties.

  I found one of his journal articles, and it linked to his bio. I scanned through his bio until I found exactly what I was sure I was supposed to find. My pulse quickened and my breathing stopped. Synchronicity, history, whatever you wanted to call it—it had reached out to me again.

  Professor Marcus had written “Out of Time,” a short story about time travel. The story had been published in Galaxy, a popular science-fiction magazine from the fifties. I looked up Galaxy on Wikipedia and found that it had published the stories of Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and many other well-known science-fiction writers. That was why Marcus had listed this credit in his bio. It was a feather in his cap.

  Then I started to search for the story itself. With a title like “Out of Time,” it had to contain the clue I needed to fix everything. The original Galaxy magazine wasn’t online though, and although the story’s title was listed on various science-fiction websites, none had a copy of it.

  After searching for another thirty minutes, I sat back and stared blankly at the computer screen. The only way I was going to find a copy of that story was by digging up a hard copy of that issue of Galaxy.

  So where could I track it down? A yard sale?

  Yes. The biggest yard sale in the world.

  eBay.

  But how was a man with no home address, traveling through time, going to buy a magazine from eBay?

  I supposed it was possible. But it would involve a P.O. box number, a money order, PayPal, and waiting for it to arrive. By that time history would have changed, and I wouldn’t recognize a clue if it came from Einstein himself.

  For some reason I checked eBay anyway, and found the magazine. Then my eyes fell on the seller’s name, and my pulse went into overdrive, taking my heart along for the ride.

  Eddie’s Emporium.

  Eddie had a copy of that issue of Galaxy.

  So it looked like I was going to be visiting him after all.

  Of course, if I could get to that magazine without interacting with him, that would be the best course of action. The magazine was probably in his house or his carrel. If it was in his house, I had a chance of getting it. But if it was in his carrel, it’d be a lot tougher. I’d have to get both the combination to the trap door and the keys to his carrel.

  I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm my racing heart. Time travel was messy, but the synchronicity brought a kind of order to it, even if that order was unexplainable.

  I’d gone from one issue of Fame, to another issue of Fame, to an issue of Galaxy, as if the same note were being played again and again on different instruments. I’d gone from one Eddie, to another, and was now headed to a third. I’d gone from a memory of my dad in a movie theater to actually seeing my dad in a drive-in. I’d gone from a hospital in Rockville to another in Charlottesville, and, although I didn’t know it then, I was headed to another.

  *

  I crossed Jefferson Park Avenue, then made my way across campus to the Corner. From there, I hopped on a bus that ran by Eddie’s place. I had considered a cab, but thought I should conserve the cash I had on hand.

  Staring out the bus window at the students and townsfolk moving in and out of shops, it hit me once again just how far I was from fixing anything. No one out there knew that Einstein had made a deathbed confession, and with every passing minute, any remaining trace of that event was disappearing.

  The bus took me to within a half a dozen blocks of Eddie’s house, and I walked the rest of the way. I approached his rundown rental and spotted two cars out front. One of them was Eddie’s. So the choice was now upon me.

  I could wait until Eddie left the house and try to break in, or I could step up to the door and interact with him. It turned out that the choice wasn’t that hard. As I’d realized on the bus, I couldn’t wait on anything. That short story could disappear, as could my memory of it, as quickly as Van Doran had gunned down Einstein. The fastest way to that story was for Eddie to lead me to it.

  I walked up the path to Eddie’s front door, rang the doorbell, and braced myself for meeting a third Eddie. This time, I didn’t plan to fill him in on anything. If this Eddie didn’t know anything about time travel, he wasn’t going to hear it from me. I’d talk to him about his fifties memorabilia and work the Galaxy magazine into the conversation. Let him be suspicious. Just as I’d withheld information from Laura, I’d do the same with him.

  The door opened to reveal Eddie, and as I soon as I saw him, I realized how hard my task was going to be. How was I going to hide my intentions from a guy who was sharper than I was?

  “Hey, I’m a friend of Alex’s,” I said, and extended my hand.

  He shook it. “Oh, right. We met at the memorial.”

  Great. Now I was going to have to play the same game I’d played with Laura, trying to keep my foot out of my mouth because I had no idea what the other me had told him.

  “Sorry about just dropping by uninvited, but I’m in town for a job interview, and Alex’s family wanted me to follow up on some stuff that was stored in the Caves.”

  He looked me up and down. He wasn’t buying it. “You’re wearing the same clothes.”

  Did he mean from the memorial service? I couldn’t have worn jeans and a T-shirt to the service.

  He started to roll up his left shirtsleeve, and as he did, I waited for him to say something. He didn’t.

  And I didn’t volunteer a word, either.

  He continued to roll his sleeve up, past his forearm and over his upper arm, where he exposed a small, thick, pink scar. It was ugly and jaggedly circular, and though it had healed, it still had a raw look.

  Though I’d never seen a bullet wound, I was sure that I was staring at one now, and it crossed my mind that I was facing the original Eddie.

  But that didn’t calculate—the scar looked too old for that. Though it wasn’t faded like an old scar, it wasn’t fresh enough to have been the result of a gunshot wound from just a few days ago.

  When I looked back up at Eddie, he gave me a smile and a nod of recognition. “I made it through a few minutes after you disappeared from the basement, then I passed out. When I came to, I had no idea where you were, but I was in bad shape.”

  I was facing the original Eddie. “Van Doran’s shot hit you.”

  “Don’t worry. That was nine months ago. I’m healthy as a horse now.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was lucky—that’s what happened. The shot went straight through. So as soon as I came to, I headed to the emergency room and they patched me up. But I had to stay in the hospital a couple of days to make sure there was no chance of an infection.”

  He backed away from the front door and waved me inside. I walked in, plopped down on the couch, and leaned back in wonder and confusion at this bizarre turn of events.

  Eddie sat down in an easy chair. “While I was in the hospital, I saw on the news that Alex had been killed in a hit-and-run. I figured it had to be related to us finding the time mac
hine—”

  “You figured right. I was with him… And it’s not a time machine. It’s a wormhole.”

  “You’ve been doing some investigating, huh?”

  “Investigating is kinda strong. More like stumbling around.”

  Eddie rolled down his sleeve. “I’ve been doing some stumbling around myself. When I got out of the hospital, I went back to my carrel and looked through all my stuff and found something really weird. Not what was there, but what wasn’t there. Something that should’ve been.”

  “The other you, the one that was already here, didn’t know anything about Einstein’s confession,” I said.

  “Yeah. Sounds like your stumbling around paid off. That me should’ve already been into all of this, but he wasn’t. So I decided to find him—me—and see what else had changed about him. But I couldn’t track him down.”

  “He was with me,” I said, and I had to give time, or history, or whatever it was, a hand. It had worked everything out perfectly. While this Eddie had been in the hospital, I’d already come and gone with the other Eddie.

  “I thought he’d been murdered,” Eddie said. “Since Alex had been killed and you’d disappeared and there was no ‘other me’ around, I thought I was the lone survivor. I kept thinking the police would report my death any day, and while I was waiting for that, I found that Einstein’s death was gone from history. That, instead of dying, he’d disappeared without a trace in nineteen fifty-five.”

  “That’s why you didn’t use the wormhole again.”

  “Yeah. I knew that our one trip through had already screwed everything up—big time. But I was planning to use it again. Still am. Once I figure out what’s going on.”

  “Eddie—Einstein didn’t disappear. Van Doran murdered him.”

  Eddie cocked his head and couldn’t help but smirk. “Is that part of some conspiracy theory?”

  “I wish it were, but I saw it myself. Van Doran murdered him right in front of me. He’s erasing Einstein’s secret, piece by piece, and the only way to keep it alive is to follow those trails. They’re our lifeline back.”

  “But they’re disappearing.”

  Einstein’s confession is the key. “I can’t be sure about this,” I said, “but I have a theory about why. And it explains why the version of you that was here wasn’t researching Einstein. But it’s going to sound like some bullshit New Age thing—”

  “Hey, don’t worry about that. I already believe in time travel.”

  I laid out my crazy theory. “I think history helps. Sure, Van Doran wipes out evidence that Einstein left a confession, but history comes along and helps. It makes everything consistent.”

  “And what about us?”

  “I’d like to think we’re the exception, but my guess is that there are no exceptions. Van Doran hasn’t wiped us out yet and neither has history.”

  “Yet…”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded magazine article. “Read this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A clue to fixing everything. I found it at Gray’s Cabin, through another former UVA grad student.”

  “Gray’s Cabin? You mean you know Laura Metcalf?”

  I nodded.

  “We were in the history department together,” Eddie said, “but how did you end up meeting her?”

  “We kind of went on a date the night before we drove up to see Clavin. But I’m talking about the Laura Metcalf that’s here now.” And apparently I’ve been on a date with this Laura, too. “She noticed one of those trails.”

  It took him a second to realize what that meant. “She got sucked into this.”

  “Because of you.”

  “I never said anything to her.”

  “She said you’d become a recluse and—”

  “I’d become a recluse so that she wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t the other Eddie.”

  “Well, that backfired. And now I think Van Doran might be trying to kill her, too.”

  “So you’re blaming me for that?”

  That reminded me of what Alex had claimed. That all of this was Eddie’s fault. Was it? No, it was Alex’s fault. He was the one who’d led me to that yard sale all those years ago. Or had he? I wasn’t sure now. But I was sure that all roads seemed to go through Eddie. After all, here I was with him, once again.

  “Just read this,” I said.

  He read the article, and then I filled him in on the Professor Marcus connection and the short story in Galaxy magazine.

  “That seems like a stretch,” he said. “Even for me.”

  “Do you have the magazine?”

  “Yeah. I found it at a yard sale years ago, put it up in Eddie’s Emporium, but no one’s ever bought it.”

  “Well, now you know why. It’s been waiting for us.” And I hoped it still was and hadn’t been cleaned up by history.

  Eddie went into the bedroom to get it. After a few minutes, when he still hadn’t returned, I became convinced that it was gone.

  Finally he walked back into the living room, holding a magazine wrapped in a plastic sleeve. “It wasn’t where I’d stored it.” He offered it to me. “You read it first. It’s your find.”

  I took the magazine, slipped it out of the sleeve, and checked the table of contents. There it was: Out Of Time. I flipped to the story, started reading, and was hooked. The parallels to my life and my current dilemma left no doubt that I was headed in the right direction. The old history was asking me for help.

  In the story, John Peary, the main character, is hiking up the Jackson Trail in the Adirondacks, wondering what to do with his life. His life hadn’t quite gone the way he’d wanted.

  I wasn’t surprised to see “Jackson” turn up again, not to mention a guy whose life didn’t go the way he’d wanted.

  On the trail, John Peary passes a cave—and, curious, he decides to go inside. The cave turns out to be a portal that transports him directly into the tunnels of the New York City sewer system.

  I wasn’t surprised to see tunnels either.

  John moves through the tunnels, searching for a way out, then gets increasingly desperate, until he comes across a metal ladder built into a wall. He climbs it, and it leads him up into a subway station. He then exits into Manhattan and begins to explore the city.

  He discovers that he’s traveled ten years into the past. Since the story was written in the fifties, this means he travels back to the forties. He talks to various people, including a soldier who’s just come back from World War II. That soldier notices that there’s something odd about John, but can’t quite put his finger on it.

  He tells John, “You’re like the foreigners I saw when I was stationed overseas. They were like me, but completely different.”

  At the end of the day, after talking to a few more people, John heads back to that subway station, down into the sewers, and back to the future from whence he came.

  Three weeks later, just as he’s settled back into his hometown life and starts thinking about using the portal again, a large man approaches him.

  The man, who introduces himself as Ben, tells John he’s lost and can’t get back to his original life. In turns out that Ben has traveled through the portal so many times, he has no idea what his original life is anymore. He can’t keep anything straight in his mind and he needs help. He’s been trying to find a time traveler who’s only gone through the portal once.

  If that traveler can tell him exactly what’s changed, then Ben figures he can change things back, one change at a time, until he ends up back in his original life.

  Unfortunately, John says, “I haven’t noticed any changes in my life.” But that leads him to question himself: Were there changes? Changes he just hadn’t noticed? So he decides to go through the portal again, and this time pay closer attention to the changes when he comes back.

  Bad move.

  In the end, John ends up traveling through the portal so many times that he, too, can’t remember which life is his original life. And
during one of those trips, he runs into that soldier again. This time John tells him the story of the time-travel portal. It’s John’s desperate attempt to remember which life was his original life. The soldier doesn’t believe that there’s a time-travel portal, so John takes him to it.

  There, the soldier decides he wants to try it. John halfheartedly warns him, and as the soldier stands on the threshold, not sure whether to try it or not, we learn why John’s warning was so mild.

  John is planning to wait right there until the soldier returns, and then go back out to Manhattan with him and ask him what’s changed. Like Ben, John hopes that he can get back to his original life by figuring out how the changes work.

  Then, just as John admits to himself that his plan is exactly the same as Ben’s, and Ben’s didn’t work, the soldier goes through the portal.

  The story ends with John realizing that the soldier could have helped him. The key was that the soldier was able to recognize John as a foreigner, a time traveler, without having to travel through time.

  But it’s too late now.

  *

  As soon as I finished reading, Eddie asked me what I’d found.

  I handed it to him. “You read it before I tell you.”

  He started, and I ticked through the elements of the story, trying to figure out which applied and which didn’t. I suspected a couple of elements might apply, while others were nothing more than parts of a science-fiction story.

  I was disappointed that there wasn’t a direct link to Einstein’s confession. On the other hand, why should there be? So far, no clue had been direct. It was part of the messiness of time travel.

  When Eddie finished the story, he said, “It seems more like a warning than a clue. If you travel through time too much, you don’t know what your original life is anymore.”

  “It’s definitely a warning. And from what I’ve seen so far, a totally legitimate warning. But I’m sure there’s also a clue in there. Something that we’re supposed to do.”