by MK Alexander
“Go right,” the inspector said unexpectedly.
“Why?”
“I should like to see South Point. I’ve heard much about this breach.”
I was only slightly impressed by his local knowledge but veered to the right nonetheless.
“They say that sometime in the future we’ll be an island.”
“Hmm?”
“The breach… someday it will cut us off from the mainland, and Sand City will become an island.”
“You could do worse, I suppose.”
I started to wonder if Fynn was even listening. We pulled into the parking area. There was only one other car, a beat up Subaru wagon, plastered with bumper stickers, and with a rusty old bike rack that was empty. It wasn’t likely that anyone would be riding today, or here… I guess somebody could access the bike path a couple of miles north. I pulled up to the far end of the lot, closest to the shore and shut off the engine.
“Don’t get me wrong, Inspector Fynn, but I’ve been thinking. You don’t seem too broken up by the fact that your wife is dead.”
He gave me a grimace. “I assure you, it hurts rather deeply. But I must remain above this feeling for the moment. I must have a clear head to solve this crime, or fix it, as you might say. I console myself by knowing that this is a temporary state of affairs. I will see my wife and daughter again. This particular present will be rectified and I shall never return to it.”
“Never return? What does that mean?”
“Ah, this is my first rule of travel. There are many places in my past to which I never return. They are painful places and this will be one of them.”
“The first rule of travel?”
“Yes. I have five hard and fast rules. The first being, don’t go back to terrible places.” The inspector undid his seatbelt. “There are rules of travel… and, how do you call them? Modes of travel…”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
“By no means… There are only two modes of travel, both somewhat beyond my control. The rules of travel are my own personal guidelines.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Time traveling.”
“Since I was a child.”
“That’s not much of an answer.”
“A very long time,” he said. “So long a time, you would not believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
The inspector said nothing but hauled himself from the car onto the parking lot. I did the same and we made our way over a small gap in the dunes out onto the broad flat beach. The surf was churning wildly, waves crashed against the shore with their inscrutable rhythm. The clouds were low, rolling off to the east along the horizon. I didn’t see a soul anywhere on either side of us. The inspector sat down quite suddenly on a huge piece of driftwood. That startled me. I looked down at him.
“I can’t abide walking on the beach with shoes,” he said to my unasked question. “Cold or not, one must feel the sand between one’s toes.”
He was right of course, and I sat as well to take off my shoes and socks. The sand, a bit chilly at first, in no time felt fine, almost soothing. “Italian?” I asked and smiled.
“No, English, or made in China perhaps. I’ve forgotten…” He returned my smile and set off south towards the breach, probably about a mile’s walk. He set a surprisingly fast pace and came perilously close to the surf that relentlessly reached across the shore. We walked along the cold wet sand. I supposed that the ocean would still be freezing. I stopped to let a foamy wave touch my hand. It was bone chilling as it disappeared into nothing. I jogged a few steps to catch up with Fynn.
“The way I see it, we have two big topics of discussion. One: this new murder— and how I’m supposed to help you with it... And two: all this stuff about time travel.”
“That’s quite an agenda for our little jaunt. Where would you like to begin?”
I was flustered by his reply. “Let’s start with Lorraine.”
“Very well.”
“How can she be your wife?”
“I met her in the past, we fell in love and we were married. She is from your fair little town.”
“She’s from Sand City?”
“Yes. And there is a chance that Arantez may have known her.”
“A chance?”
“I seem to recall he was around back then as a very young man.” Fynn smiled slightly. “He doesn’t seem to remember me though…”
“Remember you? Back when?”
“In the nineteen seventies.”
“Oh…” I said, still confused. “Wait a second… is he a suspect?”
“No longer.”
“No longer?” I repeated, surprised.
“I have investigated his movements quite thoroughly and I’ve determined he is exactly who he says he is.”
I laughed at this. “Hang on… Is Durbin a suspect? Am I a suspect?”
“You’ve both been eliminated from my list.”
“What?” Words failed me again.
The inspector chuckled. “Both of you are far too young, and neither of you seem to have the ability to travel in time.”
“Are you saying the killer is also a time traveler?”
“That would appear to be the case.”
“This is a vendetta against you? A revenge thing?”
“Yes, I believe it is.”
“So… who?”
“It’s difficult to say. Someone with a cane perhaps?”
I stopped in my tracks but the inspector kept walking. “Okay, maybe I picked a bad place to start. I’m just getting more confused,” I called out and quickened my pace. “Suppose you tell me your story instead.”
“It’s a very long one,” the inspector said and turned to me. “Where would you have me begin?”
“You mentioned your childhood…”
He glanced at me quizzically.
“You said you’ve been doing this a long time, since you were a child.”
“Ah yes, this is so.”
“Why not start there?”
The inspector let off a deep sigh. “Alright, as you wish.” He folded his hands behind his back and set off again along the shore. “My first memories seem to date back to the fifth century…” The inspector paused and glanced at me for a reaction but I said nothing, deciding to just listen for now. “I lived with my family, my father, my mother and two brothers on the western road in the nation now called Hellas, somewhere between the island of Corfu and Delphi, on the mainland— but to say it was a road is an exaggeration... I was eight or nine, I suppose. My father owned what we would call a restaurant today. It was a way station, a kind of inn perhaps, or a campsite, right along the river on the north south road. Not much more than a stone hut with a thatched roof made of reeds. He would cook and serve a kind of trout— a rarity, that freshwater fish, and he’d make a few drachma from the enterprise. The world away from our little river glen was of course rather barren and arid. But here was an oasis, a wonderful place. Cool in the summer… and sheltered in the winter months. And the water, sparkling and beautiful. My task was to care for the fish in the pens.
“My father of course had fought against the Persians. He was a great hero. This little taverna was a family legacy. His father owned it, and his father before, all the way back to as far as anyone could remember. Apollo was the god of our household, though my mother favored Athena, as she was born and raised on the plains of Attica. My father met her just after the war and they were married despite their differences. And this was no small source of contention in our house as well. I dimly recall that my grandmother was involved in all of this… Yet, every year we would make the pilgrimage to the Theban Plains, to the east of us, to celebrate the defeat of the Persians that had occurred only fifteen years earlier.”
“Wait… fifth century, BC?” I asked.
“Ah, your history is quite good, I see,” he said, then continued with his unbelievable tale. “Yes, back to my
story: This river glen, this valley was truly an ancient place. Nearby, high up on the cliffs were many caves, a frightening yet enticing location for us brothers to visit. A place that contained the bones of people that lived before the Gods, even before the Titans, we imagined. My brothers and I would climb up there on any idle day and sift through the ancient fossils of animals, and perhaps some sort of men, which had been deposited there over the years. It was a long, hot and treacherous climb. More often than not, one of us would hobble home wounded or bruised, or cut to the bone. On one particular day however, we found a great length of rope… made of hemp, I suppose. Maybe left by a passing army or a militia. They often traveled the roads back then.”
Fynn glanced at me to see if I was still listening. I was, intently. This was an incredible, rambling yarn. I didn’t believe a word, but it was well told and fairly captivating. We walked on in silence for a few steps.
“So now armed with our newfound possession, my brothers and I were bent on having a bit of fun in that hot summer. We tied the length of rope to the highest branch of an old willow tree. Our aim was to swing out into the deep part of the river and drop in with a great splash. Being the youngest, I had to wait my turn; eventually it came: I felt myself swing, then drop to the water. But, in that very instant, something indescribable happened. Even at that tender age, I knew something was terribly wrong, and even beyond the searing pain. When I came up from the water, I could sense immediately that everything had changed. Firstly, I was quite a bit downstream from where I ought to have landed; a kilometer or more— no swing from any branch should have taken me so far…” Fynn paused, almost wistfully.
“My parents, my brothers, gone... not a sign of them no matter how much I searched. My house was gone too, or at least the building was unrecognizable to me. Soon enough, I came across a large group of soldiers encamped along the banks of my beloved paradise. And this army? Not a gang of friendly Hoplites... the sort I was well used to. No, these men wore a different sort of armor, and carried short broad swords, wrought from a new kind of iron. Moreover, they were chattering in a tongue I had never heard. They were certainly not Dorians. I thought at once we had been invaded by barbarians. What I did not understand at the time, was that some three hundred years had slipped by in a single instant. My classical age life had given way to the Roman Empire.”
I wasn’t sure if that was the end of his story, but Fynn took a breath and continued:
“I was captured by these Centurions and sold into slavery; shackled and shipped off to work the copper mines in Cyprus... for nearly twenty years, coming close to death many times. And there, I earned my new name, Tractus, which has stuck with me ever since.”
“Tractus?”
“A latin word.”
“Meaning?
“It’s difficult to translate exactly. And it’s definition has altered somewhat with time.”
“Three hundred years? You traveled that far?” I asked despite myself. “This seems very different than what you talked about in the restaurant.”
“How so?”
“You were talking about slipping back to a previous consciousness, like a memory. Now you’re talking about…well, physically teleporting to some future time.”
“Yes, exactly so. These are the two modes of travel. When I travel to the past, I re-visit a previous consciousness. When I travel to the future, a new version of myself is created.”
“A new version?”
“It’s as if my present self is suddenly thrust to some future time.”
“That’s a little confusing.”
“I dare say it is…” Fynn said with a smile. “Ah, but before I can properly explain any of this, you would need to understand a bit more about the nature of time itself.
“What, like a brief history of time?”
“No. Not like that at all.”
“What then?”
“Simply understand these things: Time equals motion through space. It does indeed flow forward; what happens in the past always changes the future… a future, I might add, that is always unfolding as it were. It is not a fixed place...”
“That’s it?” I asked, somehow expecting more.
“For now.”
“What about time travel, the two modes, you called them?”
“It is simplicity itself... I jump to the future as you see me now, or I slip back to the past, to a previous consciousness. They are distinctly different experiences.” Fynn paused. “I would call this the concurrency of my existence.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“One is the consequence of the other. One is the vanguard, the other is a residue. I can travel to a new place entirely, or, to a previous me, if you will.” Fynn gave me a glance. There was nothing expectant about it. He didn’t seem to want validation or approval. I didn’t really understand what he was trying to say.
“Of course, in these early days, I was like a skipping stone… I had no control over where I traveled. Willy-nilly, randomly, I skimmed across the still waters of time.” Fynn paused. “In the beginning, I did not even realize what was occurring. I thought I was just moving from place to place.”
I was quiet for a few steps. I noticed the cold sand between my toes again. “Somehow though, you learned how to go back and forth? Through time I mean...”
“You are very astute, Patrick.” He smiled and put his hand on my shoulder. “And yes, I have a certain amount of control nowadays.”
“But you never went back there? To your childhood?”
“I never went back.”
“Is it one of those painful places you mentioned?”
“Not at all. I mostly have pleasant memories.”
“But you just said—”
“Ah, it would be cruel to give a young child a thousand years of memory and experience. Surely he would go mad. I am simply being kind to my younger self. Can you imagine traveling back to the mind of an eight year old with all the memories you’ve accumulated? It would overwhelm him. Drive him insane in all certainty. I would never do such a thing to any child, let alone the child who was me.”
“Okay... A question then… how does this all work? The time travel thing?”
“Libra Lapsus,” Fynn said.
“What does that mean?”
“Free Fall. The mechanics of it, the physics, the science of it. Duration and direction. Quite complicated.”
“This is just too incredible.”
“You don’t believe any of it, do you?” he asked and laughed heartily. “Nor would I, if I were you.”
“Um... it’s a very imaginative tale, chock full of details, and believable in some ways. But it proves nothing really. It’s just a story in the end.”
“I am deeply offended,” Fynn replied, and with a rather large grin.
“It is just a story then?”
“No, this is the truth.”
“How can you be thousands of years old?”
“I am rather well preserved, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry, I just can’t believe any of this.”
“There is much to understand, much to say… the nature of time, one’s awareness, the persistence of memory and the quantum of change. It will take more than one long walk to explain.” Fynn smiled at me pleasantly. “How can I say this simply? I live many hundreds of lives, more or less concurrently.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It would seem so, yet this best describes my existence.”
“How can you live more than one life?”
“This is most difficult to explain. I travel from one to the other. It is a shifting of my awareness. It is only the present, the flux of the now that matters.”
“Do you remember them all?”
“No… this is too much for one person to remember.”
The beach curved up ahead, angling sharply east, out into the ocean. We were approaching South Point. Fynn quickened his pace again but said nothing more for the moment. We walked up to th
e breach and stopped, the place where the Atlantic was rushing into the salt marsh. It never looked drastically different from day to day, but it seemed ominous. A swift current dug a widening trench to the west; the water was flowing quickly, streaming up against the sand. Week to week, it didn’t appear much different either, but month to month did make a difference, the channel was wider, deeper and inexorably closer to the dunes. Who could guess what years of this would do? Both of us just stood there watching the water rushing by. I resumed my pace and followed the breach up about thirty yards to its narrowest point. Fynn followed as well. There was still one place where you could leap across at low tide. On the other side you could continue south to Oldham. I jumped over easily. Fynn observed but declined to do the same.
“Okay, so say this story of yours is true,” I said from across the narrow channel. “It leaves me with a lot of unanswered questions.”
“Such as?”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“I’ve said enough for now. Perhaps we should go back?”
I jumped over the water again. We returned pretty much in silence. I’m not sure who was more embarrassed: Fynn, who had told such a preposterous story and now had regrets, or me, who had listened to the whole thing without interruption. That wasn’t necessarily a fair assessment though. Anytime I glanced over at the inspector, he showed no sign of embarrassment. In fact, he seemed totally at ease with himself. I know I have a knack with people. They seemed to trust me. They like to tell me their stories… That’s why I became a reporter. But no one had ever been this trusting; nor had anyone ever had such an outrageous tale to tell, or made such an outlandish claim. It was very strange. For whatever reason, Tractus Fynn had made himself an open book. He was completely vulnerable to any evil intent I might harbor. Lucky for him, I had none.
Inadvertently, we chased a small flock of gulls down the beach. Every time we got within a few yards of them, they would caw, and rise up into the air at about eye level. They’d ride the ocean breeze, veer to the left and land a few yards further up the shoreline to settle down and wait. The inspector and I would approach again and it was the same ritual; they’d rise, wing over to the north and up the beach again, directly in our path. I was almost annoyed by this behavior. Stupid birds. Why didn’t they just swoop up to an unused part of the beach, or fly down to our right and behind us? The plovers, or the other weird little terns, who spent their time digging in the sand for food were pretty much the same; only they didn’t fly; instead they scurried along on their tiny stick legs. I had no right to be annoyed, really. It was their beach more than ours.