Metamorphosis

by Sesh Heri

  “That’s right,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Those Nathan Flowers, Houdini, and me, are all trans-temporally linked,” Dr. Flowers said. “We’re all riding the same time frequencies and nodes. That’s why on that Sunday before Houdini went down into the ocean he started having all those universe-switching events occur to him with those versions of Nathan Flowers and those duplicate hats. Same kind of thing happened to me on that Sunday too. We were caught in time waves being generated by the Bell out in the Pacific. I think I know who that ‘portly gentlemen’ was that Houdini first encountered that Sunday. He sounds like a man who used to make some of my suits in Chicago. I remember that my tailor was from Oakland, California. It’s very possible that for a few moments on that Sunday the Harry Houdini of this universe switched into my universe and encountered the man who used to make my suits, a man who was a parallel version of the Dr. Nathan Flowers in this universe.”

  “So you switched to another universe,” the blank-faced man said. “Did you ever get back to your home universe?”

  “No, unfortunately,” Dr. Flowers said. “I’ve passed through six other parallel universes trying to get back home. I arrived in this seventh universe on March 3rd, 1919. I was not in St. Louis, as I told your associates, but transported right here on this mountain, inside that pyramid out there, which was in ruins at the time. I didn’t understand why I transferred to this spot then, but I do now. This place was a space-time node for me, which I’ll explain in due course. I tried to get back to my home universe again, but here I found I couldn’t get out. I was locked in tight. When I found I couldn’t get out, it just turned my whole world upside down. I didn’t understand then that it had something to do with the fact that this was Houdini’s home universe, and I was so closely linked with him trans-temporally, it invalidated all the time frequencies I had been using. I traveled around a lot, trying to understand this universe. People kept telling me that I was Houdini or looked just like Houdini, so I began looking into him, and found out a whole lot about him. We never met. I didn’t want to meet him.”

  “Why not?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “I suspected it might create some kind of space-time lock on us,” Dr. Flowers said, “and I would never get out of this universe. When I first saw a picture of Houdini I went straight to work to find out who he was and where he had been in 1915, and it wasn’t long before I put two and two together. In 1928 I met with Nikola Tesla for the first time and I learned a lot more. Tesla agreed with my idea about why I was locked into this universe, but he couldn’t offer much help to me, and I think he didn’t really want to help me, either.”

  “Why?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “By then Tesla had become very wary of the dangers of time travel and dimensional travel,” Dr. Flowers said.

  “Was it because of NYMZA?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Yes,” Dr. Flowers replied, “as well as the Martians, the Germans, Majestic Seven, and, well, you name it. He didn’t believe man had the wisdom to properly use all these forces. All I wanted to do was just to get back home. Well, three years ago I got wind of some scrapbooks that Houdini had put together back in the 1920s. The rumor I heard was that the writer H.P. Lovecraft owned one of these scrapbooks. Lovecraft was already dead, and to make a very long story short, I finally gained possession of one of the scrapbooks.”

  “The one you had here in the cabin,” The blank-faced man said.

  “I thought you had taken a look at it,” Dr. Flowers said. “Yes, that’s it. That scrapbook belonged to Houdini, and then he gave it and another one to Lovecraft— actually gave it to Clifford Eddy Jr. first, and then Eddy gave them to Lovecraft.”

  “What was it all about?” The blank-faced man asked.’

  “Well,” Dr. Flowers said, “I’m sure you know about Houdini’s battle with the Spiritualists, his exposures of fake mediums. That was a major project for him. He poured a lot of money and time into it and built up a network of intelligence operatives all over the country and a file on the fake mediums and other people you wouldn’t believe. Well, you would believe it, but most people wouldn’t begin to grasp what he was doing. You saw those pictures of Houdini and Charmian that were in the scrapbook, I’m sure. They were taken in 1918— by whom I was never able to find out. They were sent to Houdini in 1925 along with an anonymous blackmail note ordering him not to continue his attack on the Spiritualists.”

  “What did Houdini do about it?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Nothing,” Dr. Flowers said. “They were only pictures of him and Charmian London in a park. They meant nothing. He felt that whoever sent them was merely fishing for information. He wasn’t going to play their game. He wasn’t going to stop going after the Spiritualists.”

  “He was obsessed with the Spiritualists,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Not really,” Dr. Flowers said. “What happened was that he found that some of the Spiritualists had made contact with NYMZA.”

  “Like the old Aero Club did?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Same thing,” Dr. Flowers said. “Houdini saw that it was starting all over again. He got Eddy and Lovecraft to do some deep research for him. Out of this Houdini discovered a time equation and a way to apply it to determine if time was being tampered with. The time equation defined a complex cipher that could be used on anything to determine if time had been recently changed from its natural flow. It also defined important time nodes for an individual. Houdini used newspaper clippings about himself to apply the time code. It worked by first applying a skip code to a given text and then taking the letters singled out, assigning them a numerical value, and then using those numbers in the variables of his time equation. The equation could reveal if time had been changed, when it had been changed, and when the next time and place would be when time could be changed.”

  “And place?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Yes,” Dr. Flowers said. “That’s how when I had completely learned Houdini’s time equation, I understood why I had been teleported to this mountaintop in 1919.”

  “Why were you?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “Because the next time node when I could switch back to my home universe would be right now in 1943,” Dr. Flowers said. “But I didn’t understand that until recently while reading the Houdini journal. You see, Houdini’s time equation is embedded in his journal, he encoded it there deliberately. And when I decoded and applied it, I found that I am now in a window of opportunity that will allow me to switch back to my home universe.”

  “How was it that my plane crashed here so that you were able to gain possession of Houdini’s journal?” the blank-faced man asked.

  “It wasn’t a coincidence, I can tell you,” Dr. Flowers said. “It was all part of the trans-temporal link I have with Houdini. About six months ago I managed to partially decipher the codes in Houdini’s scrapbook, and part of the message I came up with spelled out ‘plane,’ ‘crash,’ ‘Key to Time,’ ‘Pike’s Peak’ and ‘January 19th, 1915.’ So I had been watching the skies, expecting something important to happen. And it did. It was what Djudhi on the lost continent of Mu would have called ‘Destiny.’ I think in some very deep way, you were drawn here to me, and I was drawn here, too, so that I could encounter you. We were both drawn here, right here to this place and this time.”

  “I can see why everyone wants the Houdini journal,” the blank-faced man said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Flowers said. “It has great potential power, but first one must decipher it.”

  Dr. Flowers had finished tying a necktie he had put around his neck. He slipped on a brand-new gray suit jacket. The blank-faced man could have sworn that standing before him was Harry Houdini, aged to 69 years, wearing a brand-new gray suit and polished black shoes.

  “Come on down with me to the pyramid,” Dr. Flowers said, and he turned, opened the door of the cabin, and went out. The blank-faced man rose from his chair and followed Dr. Flowers out the door.<
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  Dr. Flowers walked briskly down to the pyramid and the blank-faced man continued to follow him. They got to the pyramid and Dr. Flowers went through its opened door.

  When the blank-faced man followed Dr. Flowers through the door, he saw that the small transparent pyramid had been assembled in the middle of the room.

  “I thought my treatments were finished,” the blank-faced man said.

  “They are,” Dr. Flowers said, dropping to his knees, and crawling inside the small pyramid.

  The blank-faced man stepped forward, and asked, “What are you doing?”

  “No need to wait for your friends to arrive,” Dr. Flowers said. “Just close that red-handled switch over there on the control board for me, would you?”

  The blank-faced man went to the control board and looked down and saw the red-handled switch. He turned around to look at Dr. Flowers lying underneath the pyramid.

  “I haven’t thanked you for saving my life,” the blank-faced man said.

  “No need,” Dr. Flowers said. “That’s what I do. I’m a doctor. I save lives. No need for thanks. Anyway, you helped me a lot, too.”

  “Me?” the blank-faced man asked. “What did I do?”

  “You were my friend,” Dr. Flowers said.

  The blank-faced man kept looking at Dr. Flowers, but his hand went back to the control board, felt for the red-handled switch, and pushed the handle down until it clicked into place.

  In the instant of that clicking, Dr. Nathan Flowers, who was an exact physical duplicate of Harry Houdini in every way, blinked out of the universe.

  The Wonder of the Worlds Trilogy

  comes to its thrilling conclusion

  in

  ‘THE LOST PLEAID’