PRIZE WINNING SHORT STORY. This was my entry to the Prescot Arts Festival Writing Competition, 2014. I won the runner's up prize.
In Prescot's abandoned Clock Museum, two scientists complete a forbidden experiment – with unforeseen consequences.
© 25 March 2014
JOURNEY"Where more appropriate to prove this experiment than Prescot's old Clock Museum?" Brown said. In the darkened room a strange machine stood where, before the museum's closure, grandfather clocks once ticked and tocked. They had made a reassuring sound, marking every second of time's passage from past to present to future.
Dr. Michael Brown, a professor at Liverpool University's physics department, had proved to his own satisfaction that Einstein was wrong. Time was not purely linear but, like a river that flowed from source to sea, it also swirled and eddied at times. Little backflows that could be manipulated to travel backwards in time – although never to the future.
Despite his colleagues' ridicule, he'd researched his theories and eventually built small, experimental machines. He'd sent animals, rats and once a cat, back in time; however, they had never come forward again so his concepts remained unproved. Disappointed, and unable to use the university's resources, he'd blown his life savings on building a full-size working model.
However, a few people had belief in his hypotheses and Beacham, a manager at Knowsley council, had permitted him to use the abandoned Clock Museum to build his Machine. To Brown, it made the perfect location, the building having stood on the same site for over two hundred years, so there was no danger of the Time Machine emerging into an obstacle, killing its operator.
Opposite him, his friend Beacham settled into the seat and grasped the controls of the Time Machine. It was an odd-looking assembly of valves, brass tubes and dials attached to bars of rock crystal; all controlled by a laptop. The two men had been working on their contraption for a year now.
"You'll be careful?" Brown asked. "Remember, you're only going back to observe not interact. We talked about the butterfly effect; how one tiny interference in the past could magnify, causing huge or even disastrous changes to the present."
The younger man nodded. "I'll be careful, Mike. After all, I'm only going back two hundred years or so. And it's Prescot after all, not London or Paris. I mean, I'll take a few discreet snaps of Prescot's clock makers to prove the machine works and then come back..."
"Forward, you mean," Brown grinned. He was happy, looking forward to the acclaim he'd receive. A Nobel Prize would be merely the start.
Beacham thought for a second. "You're right. Forwards in time. Do you realise with this baby we'll revolutionise scientific thinking." He patted the laptop.
"Well, be careful. Don't be seen. Especially don't let the locals see you with that digital camera."
"Cautious. That's my middle name." Beacham was eager to go. The excitement of going back in time almost overwhelmed him; he had enough butterflies in his stomach to cause any number of butterfly effects. For this trip, he was dressed like a Regency dandy. Beau Brummell himself would approve.
Brown moved forward and studied the laptop's display, making some adjustments. "I'm giving you one hour. That's enough to buy a newspaper, take some pics, prove you've been there."
Patting his pockets for Georgian coins, Beacham nodded. "Don't worry, prof. I'll be careful."
But Beacham wanted more than a mere hour's trip to a provincial town. Unknown to his friend he had packed a few 'extras' into his coat pockets. A copy of 'Pride and Prejudice' and he'd let one of the ancestors he'd traced claim the credit, not Jane Austen. Also, a detailed military history of the Napoleonic Wars – what would the French pay for that? And in his head, the concept of paperclips and the bread slicer. Easy things to manufacture. His family would be millionaires. Multimillionaires. So he'd be rich when he returned to the present.
After all, if this wasn't a madman's folly; if he was really going back in time, then he'd make the most of this chance. He knew Brown too well. As the brains, the professor would claim all the scientific glory, leaving him to be content with the role of sidekick.
"Are you ready?" Brown asked, stepping away from the Machine, not wanting to be sucked into any vortex. Glancing outside, he noticed the spire of St Mary's parish church against the night sky, a reassuring symbol of continuity.
"Ready, steady go," Beacham said, pressing the enter key on the laptop.
There was nothing left to say. "Good luck, Beacham."
Solidity waned and a shimmer became a blur as the machine left the present and hurtled back in time. From the watcher's point of view, it returned a split second later in the same blur as its departure.
"Bon soir, Beauchamp," Brun said. Lapsing into the English vernacular with which he was more comfortable, "you were careful not to make any changes?"
Beauchamp swung down from his seat and took off his beret. He shrugged. "Oui, monsieur. I only stayed for un heure and did as you requested." He didn't mention that he'd reset the controls and stayed back for over a year, experiencing everything late Georgian England had to offer.
Taking out the camera containing photographs of Prescot's watchmakers, he placed it on the counter. While his friend eagerly examined its screen, Beauchamp looked around the small museum now dedicated to the Duke of Wellington's exile to the nearby town of St Helens following Napoleon's successful invasion in 1805. The Iron Duke's copy of 'Pride and Prejudice' signed by the author herself, Emily Beauchamp, was one of the exhibits.
"Bon. I was worried about you making inadvertent changes." To the man once known as Brown, in French now called Brun, altered history was now the correct history. He knew no other.
Locking up the museum, they crossed Rue d'Église, passing the catholic church of St Marie before entering Le Sol inn for a celebratory cognac.
THE END.