The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 2): Saving Time

by Samuel Ben White

  He looked around the kitchen and asked, "Do we have some tape and string handy?"

  With a puzzled look, she nodded and got a roll of kite string out of a drawer and some cellophane tape. She handed them to him then sat back down with rapt interest. Garison was always explaining intricate concepts with household items, but his explanations never ceased to amaze Heather. Most times, he was able to make the most complex theory understandable to even a child—which was why he was such a popular Sunday School teacher with both children and adults. Other times, he made even the simple complicated, but it was fun to watch.

  He cut off a length of string about two foot long and laid it across the table, pulling it as straight as it would stay. "Now," he began, "Let us say that this string is time. For our purposes, you will have to accept that it stretches for many miles in either direction: from creation to revelation, as it were.

  "Now, we take two pieces of tape, placing one on the string here to represent the year 1739—the year I landed in Mount Vernon, Virginia. The second piece of tape we place here, about a foot away. This represents March 14, 2005."

  "The day you went backward in time," Heather said, musing aloud more than anything. They had had similar discussions before, but he seemed to have something new in mind this time. For one thing, this was the first time he had used string.

  "Right," he nodded. He waved his hand over the space on the string between the two pieces of tape, "This part of the string represents the years between 1739 and 2005, right?

  "Now, you can see that the only thing connecting the two years are the years in between, right? And, 2005 cannot touch 1739, right? Not directly, I mean. They're related, but not touching."

  "Right on both," Heather replied, trying to guess what he was driving at. She often thought that Garison and Paul Harvey would have gotten along well together because neither revealed the outcome of their stories until the end. At least Paul ended his, though, she though. Garison hadn't always done that.

  "Unless," he hypothesized, "Something creates a loop." He drew the string into a loop so that the two pieces of tape joined. "Then the two touch."

  "You think your trip through time caused the time line to . . . buckle, and intersect with itself? And that's what we've been experiencing?"

  "Quite possibly. But, look at the string. See, up until the last few months, we assumed that the two times were briefly connected by my trip. We assumed that the time line then continued on after the loop just as this thread does here on the table top—much like a rollercoaster with a loop. It doesn't continue to loop—it moves on from that point. Follow me?"

  "And you're saying it doesn't?" Heather asked, "Or didn't?" After a moment of confusion, she asked, "What are you saying?"

  "I am saying it does, but with some problems. At the risk of overusing my string metaphor, I think it is possible that after the loop, the line has become frayed. My journey caused undue stress on the line. Perhaps it is less like a loop, and more like a knot."

  Heather stared at the string for quite a while before saying, "I think I see where you're coming from. At least, I understand the string illustration—or did until you got to the knot. It still doesn't explain to me why we keep seeing these windows in time, though."

  Garison swept the string off the table and said, "Forget the string, for now. But let us say that—after my trip through time—time ceased to be linear and became, instead, a jumble—as in the knot. The natural order of things—the order that kept 1739 from touching 2005—was destroyed and that caused the barriers between other times to begin to fall. It's like a domino effect. As one wall falls it knocks over another.

  "Like when someone is the first to break a rule," he explained, trying hastily to put what he was thinking into words before the articulation could leave his mind. "Let us say there is a rule to keep off the grass. That rule may have stood for years with no thought by anyone of transgressing that rule, but one day, Joe Smith does. Accidentally or intentionally, he walks across the grass—and someone sees him do it.

  "Then, a few other people break the rule, because they perceive that nothing happened to Joe Smith when he broke it. Then others and still others. Before you know it, it is like the rule never existed. From that point on, people walk on the grass all the time with no thought to what used to be a rule—maybe even one they obeyed themselves. It's a weak illustration, but I think it's close to adequate."

  "So . . . " Heather said, trying to make sure she knew where he was coming from, "You think the laws that govern time are somehow falling. Your trip through time caused a . . . a run in the pantyhose of time?" she asked dubiously.

  "Excellent metaphor!" he exclaimed. "See, I have always thought that time and space were a delicate fabric God weaved when he created the world—the universe. Each thread is vitally tied to every other thread. Somehow, though, I tore a hole in that fabric and it is spreading . . . like the run you mentioned."

  "But," Heather pointed out, ever the sane voice amidst Garison's conjectures, "We still don't know that these incidents are occurring anywhere but here. Nor do we have substantial proof that they are either slowing down or speeding up. A run in stockings gets worse until the stockings are useless. Do we know that is happening?"

  "True," he nodded, "But I am going to carry scars on my shoulder forever that attest to the possible dangers of this rift in time. And what could we do even if it were just localized? Buy up this whole valley and deny everyone entrance? Or figure out the time lapse between windows and tell everyone not to move when one opens up?"

  "What do you propose we do, then, Garison? Find some sort of cosmic fingernail polish to stop the run with?"

  He rested his chin in the palm of his hand as he stared out the kitchen window, half wondering whether he was seeing a 2000's forest or an 1800's forest—or some indeterminate year in between. Finally, he replied, "The first thing we are going to have to do is study the phenomena further. We must be sure whether our gun is loaded or unloaded. We need to study both the cause and the effects—as much as we can, of course.

  "But," he added with an ominous tone, "We are going to have to be rather quick about it, just in case . . . "

  Looking up at the foreboding pause in his speech, she asked, "Because?"

  "Because we may not have much time. While we plan for the best, we must prepare for the worst. It is entirely possible that this effect I have caused is, indeed, an expanding phenomena. In that case, it may only be a matter of time before it expands out of control. We must prepare for the worst case scenario."

  "And what could that mean?" she asked warily. Mockingly adding a clinical tone to her voice, she added, "In practical terms, of course."

  "The complete destruction of time."

  "And with it space?"

  He nodded, "I would guess so."

  Forcing a laugh, she said, "That's not very practical."

  Heather came into his lab hours later to find him furiously working through some calculations on his computer. Had it been an abacus, she mused, it would have caught fire. As it was, she half worried he would short it out. He turned and smiled when she came in, then turned back to the computer with an extremely intent countenance. She offered, "If this is a bad time, I can come back later . . ."

  "No," he said, turning completely around to face her in his swivel chair. "I need a break and I can't imagine a better one than you. All this," gesturing at the computer and the pile of paper the printer had regurgitated, "Is beginning to run together on me. Thank the Lord it's a laser printer and not a dot matrix!"

  She kissed him, then sat down on the old loveseat across from him. She missed sitting in his lap, but previous attempts had gotten rather passionate and jostled his shoulder, quickly bringing a fiery end to his passion. Sarah had come out to the lab with Heather, but was so tired from a long day of play that she sat on the loveseat and looked like she might conk out at any moment. Garison laughed slightly when he saw her droopy eyelids, then asked Heather, "So, what's happening in
the outside world?"

  "Well," Heather told him, trying to sound nonchalant, "I don't know if this really happened or if it was just Sarah's imagination."

  "What?" Garison asked anxiously.

  "She came running into the kitchen while I was doing dishes and told me to come quick. I followed her back to the living room and she went up to one of the front windows and pointed outside, saying, 'Horses.' She says that word real well, you know. I looked, but there were none out there, of course.

  "So, at first I thought she was just pretending, but when I asked her about it, I don't think she was. I know that pretend and reality are sometimes almost interchangeable for a child her age, but I think she really saw horses out there in the front yard."

  "You didn't see them, though?" he asked, merely to clarify.

  Heather shook her head. "No, and I didn't hear them; but I didn't hear the indian attack either. I went out there in the yard and looked around but there are no horse tracks. If not for recent events, I would have just laughed it off as an awful good game of pretend for her age—but I don't think she was pretending."

  "I don't either," Garison replied. "You touched briefly on why I believe she actually saw horses. At her age, her skill at games of pretend and make believe is not very well developed, but it is beginning. I could be wrong, but I think for Sarah to have pretended there were horses in the yard, there would have had to be something in the yard to resemble horses—like a bush, or even a deer. Or that she would have had to see horses on TV recently. Does that make sense?"

  "Two year olds aren't very good at conjuring nothing from something," Heather agreed. "That's why it's important to give them things to stimulate their imagination. So, if we are to assume that Sarah really saw horses, then—" she hesitated to say the conclusion.

  "She saw horses from the past," Garison concluded. "You know, there were horses running on this land as recently as ten years ago. Old Man Avery leased this land from Leonard Combs and kept horses on it most of the year because there were lots of good places where the horses could take shelter from storms. Before that, there is no telling when the first herd of horses might have come through here. Wild mustangs inhabited these canyons for two hundred years or more before being crowded out by the miners and other white men. So, we can have no idea what time period she saw."

  Heather shrugged and looked at the pile of paper, deciding to change the subject a little. "So, found anything yet?"

  "Not a thing," he replied. "Not that we didn't already know, at any rate. And, like the video, I'm afraid I've seen this stuff so many times I might not notice something new if it slapped me in the face. What sort of thread does one use to sew up time?"

  Without an answer to what was, essentially, a rhetorical question, Heather asked, "Do you know what started it? This hole in time, I mean. It was probably your trip—we know that—but what was it about your trip?"

  He shook his head and told her, "I have been back and forth over all my calculations and am still convinced my journey should have just been one between dimensions. To this day I don't know how interdimensional travel was transmuted into time travel. The only thing I know for certain that went wrong was the power surge just when I took off. And I have no idea what caused that. Maybe a piece of fuzz somewhere in the machinery, but I thought I had it all sealed. Of course, now we'll never know."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "Garison, how do you plan on fixing the hole in time if you don't even know what caused it?"

  Garison shrugged and replied, "My machine caused it."

  "But how? You know how you complained because the professor once invented a cure on 'Gilligan's Island' even though he hadn't identified the disease? Aren't you trying to do the same thing?"

  Garison shrugged and tried to pull his coat over his sore shoulder without injuring himself. From much practice, he was able to do it with little difficulty. What was hard was then putting the sling on correctly over the coat. He had tried it with his arm inside the coat, but he didn't care for that.

  As he walked toward the door, Heather pleaded, "Don't go into town alone."

  "I'm just going for groceries."

  "I don't care. I don't even like having Sarah take a nap in a separate room from us anymore." At his questioning look, she put her hand on his arm and explained, "I don't like for any of us to be separated. Let's stay together. If another hole in time suddenly appears, I . . . " she hesitated, then told him tearfully, "I want us together."

  "If one goes we all go?"

  "At least we'd be together."

  Garison shrugged in reluctant agreement and said, "As soon as Sarah wakes up, let's head into town and get some groceries. We've got to get some milk and bread, anyway." He kissed her lightly and smiled, "Unlike the song says, we can't just live on love."

  She nodded and pulled him over to the couch. Ever since the night before last (coming home from Farmington), they had been reluctant to talk about what was on their minds. It was almost as if speaking of it out loud might make it worse.

  Heather finally asked, "What do you think will happen? I mean, let's say you can't repair this hole in time. String theories and panty hose and everything aside, what then?"

  He sat in silence for a while before replying, "I'm not sure, but I was awake most of the night thinking about it." He paused, then took her hands and faced her. Holding her hands—and Sarah's so long before—always gave him strength and comfort. He needed lots of both—lots more than Heather could provide, he was afraid. He continued, "Remember what we said about how something from the future could get left in the past—like my footprints and, apparently, some of my blood?"

  She nodded so he hypothesized, "What if we were right about that? What if it were possible for a person to get caught in one of the windows and not get out in time? We were just worried about Sarah, but what if it were someone else? Someone we don't even know.

  "Remember what happened the last time someone traveled backwards through time? I mean, on purpose? I saved a little boy from being run over by a wagon and rewrote the whole world. Dynasties rose and fell; millions lived and millions died because of my one simple act. That could happen again."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Let's say Joe Smith over here accidentally walks through one of these windows into the eighteen hundreds. Maybe he does something that makes the South win the war. Maybe someone goes back to the 1960s and does something good instead—like saving Martin Luther King Junior. That would be a good thing, but what might the consequences be? I did something good, remember? But it changed the world. If someone, or even some thing, travels through one of these windows—it could change everything."

  "Some thing?"

  "A deer, maybe. What if a deer from our time goes backwards and is suddenly killed by a hunter. But that hunter was supposed to have gone a lot longer without a kill and discover gold or meet a woman or something. Maybe he was supposed to be the grandfather of Teddy Roosevelt, but he didn't meet the girl so Teddy never comes along. Or what if a deer from the past goes through a window into the future? Maybe somebody who was supposed to have killed that deer and ate it dies of starvation. Still no more Teddy, maybe.

  "What I'm saying is that the wrong thing left in the past or taken out of the past could change the world. Maybe something already has."

  "Huh?"

  He chewed his bottom lip for a moment, then offered, "What if time has already been changed? What if the reality you and I know right now isn't the reality someone else knew? See, the problem is we don't know."

  Garison could tell he was losing Heather. She was the smartest woman he had ever met, but he was losing himself with his line of reasoning. He had ideas in his head he could just barely see, and couldn't begin to articulate. He finally said, "Let me start over, sort of. There are holes in time—windows, right?"

  "Right."

  "There aren't supposed to be, right?"

  "Right again."

  He paused to collect his thoughts, then sai
d, "But now there are and there aren't supposed to be." Suddenly his face lit up as if a bulb had gone off inside his head and he went over to the woodbox. He pulled out a stick of wood and asked, "This piece of wood doesn't just naturally burst into flame, right? I mean, that wood we have over there in the woodbox is pretty much dormant, right?"

  She thought it was rhetorical, then finally answered, "Right."

  "Right. Wood doesn't just naturally burst into flame. It needs an outside agent to be induced into flame. That can be lightning, gaseous build up, or a match.

  "It needs a lot more than that if it's you building the fire," she chided.

  "Stay with me," he returned, trying not to be distracted but wanting to laugh. "But what's the natural reaction of wood when you hold a flame to it?"

  "It catches on fire?"

  "Exactly!" he nodded triumphantly. When it became apparent that this hadn't cleared things up for Heather, Garison explained, "It's not natural for wood to just burst into flame, but wood's natural reaction to certain outside stimuli is to burst into flame. Maybe time is just like that. It's not natural for there to be holes in time. Time would never produce a hole on its own. But maybe time's natural reaction to some certain outside stimulus is to tear."

  Heather nodded as she finally saw what Garison had been driving at. She concluded for him, "So, let's take this a step further. You're saying that, just as wood's natural reaction—once it has caught fire—is to burn until consumed; time's natural reaction is to continue unraveling until it—what? Just disappears?"

  "Yeah."

  "If that's true, Garison, we're witnessing the beginning of the end of the world!" She said it without fear for the idea was so incredible as to allay fears. It was an idea one just couldn't fully deal with.

  "Exactly." Rubbing the backs of her hands, to comfort himself as much as her, he said, "We live in a world based on time. The change of seasons, birthdays, the rotation of this planet around the sun. We sometimes measure time by the length of a life. But what if there is no time? What if everyone who has ever lived is suddenly alive again—and suddenly dead again? All at the same—see, I can't even explain it without using the word 'time'."