V
There was certainly no question that something paranormal was afoot. Jack Sparrow doffed his hat and inclined his head toward the time traveler, smiling uncertainly. The dark clouds overhead had already begun to subside, and persistent beams of sunlight illuminated the face of the mysterious man before him, as well as the broad, expansive deck of The Landlord's Daughter.
He could hear a terrifying noise below his feet, as if a mysterious submarine monster were gnawing at the lower quarters of the ship. Even the strange metal planks of the deck had begun to quiver, and Jack ran to the port side to see how grave the situation had become in the few minutes it had taken him to orient himself.
He staggered back from the edge of the ship, having just realized her great height over the surface of the ocean. The Landlord's Daughter was enormous, without sails, and encased by an alarming abundance of iron. The construction of this ship must have cost the blacksmiths' guild one hundred years of labor, stripped the nation of all of its metals, and bankrupted entire governments in the colonies. He felt dwarfed by her streamlined enormity and he was baffled by this futuristic engineering. Needless to say, he was equally puzzled by the time traveler's apparent lack of concern with regard to the deafening noise below their feet.
"Do you hear that?" he asked, gesturing wildly toward the shivering metal planks underfoot. "Sounds bad, don't you think?"
The time traveler bore his teeth, which were small and handsome, and his lips stretched into a languid, surprisingly gentle smile. "Those, Mr. Sparrow, are the steam engines. As I mentioned only a few minutes ago, this is the future. This is the future of England and the future of the entire world, and you, sir, are going to play an integral role in its furtherance."
"Just a minute," said Jack. He raised one finger high in the air and sauntered toward the time traveler, narrowing his heavy-lidded gaze. "You say I'm going to play an integral what in the what? You see, I'm asking this only because I distinctly recall…nothing."
"This is the future, Jack Sparrow—"
Jack cleared his throat conspicuously. "Captain…"
"—and you have the good fortune to bear witness to it. In this sense, sir, you owe me a great debt, which you will repay in time."
"Well, now that you say so, these negotiations feel a little—let's say—one-sided. So I suggest we remedy the situation by returning to the past, presently, to the Pearl, specifically, to discuss the future, preemptively. Temporally-speaking, this strikes me as the most sensible solution, since discussing the future in the future with someone from the past is a little quixotic. That's to say…it's not the most logical chronological method."
The time traveler once again bore his square, white teeth, and Jack marveled at their symmetry. Most remarkable of all, however, was that he appeared to have all of them consecutively, and all of them just the same color and size. He was so enthralled by the sight of this unusual set of teeth that he only nodded distractedly as the time traveler proceeded to regale him with a series of scientific facts, the lot of which suggested that he, Jack, was in fact an anomaly in space and time, and that, as such, his very existence was fragile and vulnerable, balanced precariously along the hypothetical isthmus linking being and nonbeing, matter and non-matter.
"Do as I say, Mr. Sparrow, and you will continue to exist. Disobey me and—"
"—and burst into filthy black pirate-flames—sure, sure; you've got me. It's a deal."
In the so-called silence between them—the roar of the steam engines notwithstanding—Jack sighed in resignation to the tenuousness of his circumstances. Essentially, he had been kidnapped. In a laudable and characteristic burst of optimism, however, he concluded that this was actually substantially better than being mutinied. He hoped that at the appropriate time, he might request that Pythagoras resituate him on the universal time-line at a point in which he was in control of the Pearl, sailing in nice weather, with the hull heavily-laden with cases and cases of rum.
"First," said Pythagoras, "before the detonations, Mr. Sparrow, allow me to give you a tour of the ship."
Jack said that he was much obliged (indeed, he was), and followed the time traveler below deck. The paranormal was not unfamiliar to Jack, but the future presented an entirely different matter, where the paranormal had suddenly been replaced with the mechanical. He saw the piles of coal, the shirtless men with shovels feeding the hungry, tireless engines; he listened to an explanation of the mechanics, his mind balking at the strangeness and magnitude of the innovation surrounding him.
"Wonders which, in your century, Mr. Sparrow, were considered magical, are, in this century, technological. The earth is a great and versatile machine, abundant in resources and limitless in power; it is only in this century that man has begun to learn to access her potential. This is not merely the Industrial Revolution, Mr. Sparrow; this is the prelude to a new Renaissance." The time traveler's sparing gestures had escalated in accordance with the grandiosity of his speech; his arms spread out before him, swooping and dropping in great, extravagant motions. "You recall an England much humbler than this England—an England with scattered colonies, religious fanatics, a feeble and unstable monarchy…This England, Mr. Sparrow, is an empire as vast as the earth herself. Imagine how quickly she will grow, abetted by greater and stronger machines. The 2oth century will see a world united, a single alliance of all humankind, and we will be English-speaking and more formidable, more majestic and more capable than ever."
Jack nodded, nonplussed. The time traveler calmed himself and began to explain Jack's role in the acquisition of this utopian Anglophone future.
"Right now, unfortunately, global development is inconsistent. Colonialism has done a great deal to advance global infrastructure, but progress is hindered by"—he smirked—"certain cultural curiosities, which express themselves negatively at the most inopportune moments in history. These revolutions you haven't heard of yet—impracticable insurgences, local resistances, absurd instances of nationalism—these hindrances will eclipse our glorious goal, which is the reunification of humankind under one single governance, with one single language and one common culture. They are mere distractions, born of the inequalities I am seeking to correct. Imagine humankind in its most primitive state: fragile, but unified, members of the same tribe, with everything in common and everything to gain. Now imagine my vision for humanity: one people, united, just as they began. Imagine if we could eliminate the inequalities imposed by the millennia of our subordination to nature—imposed by geography—we can correct for this! Nature is a machine and we are her operators, Jack—you and I, we are the captains of this vessel."
"You don't say."
"You must show me the way, Jack. You are the only one who knows how to take me there. You've taken me before, and now I have seen the fourth dimension and I am able to exist in it with the same dexterity as in the three with which every being is innately familiar."
"To which dimension, Mr. Pythagoras, might you be referring?"
"Well to time of course! All tangible things have extension in four directions—three in space and a fourth in time—and while we may perceive and manipulate the spatial dimensions, we cannot yet manipulate the temporal. You will be the one to introduce me to it."
"How strange," said Jack, "when it seems that it was you who brought me to the future—without my consent—and are now asking that I acquaint you with it?"
"Not me as I am now, Jack; rather, me as I was. I will set everything in motion; in fact, I am already doing so as we speak. You need only do what the situation calls for, and together we will experience history as we are experiencing the present, and the future will be as evident to us as the past."
Jack scratched his chin thoughtfully. He nodded to disguise the unfortunate fact that he was still confused. He worried that Pythagoras had overestimated his capacity for navigating the paranormal. He had gone to the end of the world and back, but never once had he encountered the fourth dimension. Navigating it would be only as challenging as finding it in the first place.
"Now, as for the explosions, we'd best make ourselves scarce," advised Pythagoras. He seized Jack in his arms and summoned yet another vortex of flashing light and swirling cumulonimbus clouds. Below his feet, he watched as four massive explosions decimated The Landlord's Daughter. Small, panicked specks—the crew, he realized—raced back and forth across the deck, which had begun to split into three distinct sections. He watched as her fantastic iron hull convulsed and steadied, and then began to sink into the depths of the Bermuda Triangle.