TIME MACHINE.
CHAPTER I. Who Are you?
Welcome to England 1895; Sept 12th (A Thursday)
Professor Wells, also known as 'The Time Traveler,' was well known in the scientific community. He had no less than seven PhD's in various fields including math, physics, chemistry, civic engineering, microbiology, and English Literature, and natural history (paleontology).
His sudden disappearance however Is also well known. He had a plethora of patents including ones for chairs, electronic devices, mechanical ingenuity of all kinds etc. More than a few of these patterns were indeed extremely profitable. However it should be noted that despite his wealth professor Wells lived below his means.
Professor Wells also kept a considerable amount of prestigious correspondences with the greatest scientific minds of the time. Included among these was none other than Nikola Tesla himself, Dr. Livingston, Sigmund Freud, as well as a notable historian by the name of Jack Kilroy.
What professor Wells did not know was that Jack Kilroy was in fact also a time traveler.
Today on this Thursday the 12th of September in the year of our Lord 1895; Professor Wells had assembled these great minds. Also among them; curiously, was a young patent clerk from Germany that no one had even heard of. Also interestingly enough Jack Kilroy seemed quite interested in the young patent clerk and the two of them were lost in conversation quite a bit and they seem to become fast friends.
In the after-dinner Professor Wells was an extremely gregarious talker; and he also had a flare for the dramatic and seemingly grandiose. What's more Professor Wells seemed to enjoy discussing paradoxes of all kinds; as did many of his other contemporaries especially Nikola Tesla.
Well Professor Wells was well known for having these gatherings they were generally very impromptu and informal. However this evening there was an air of seriousness about him; like something very important Indeed was going to be discussed. Jack Kilroy in particular seemed to be rather excited and was doing a very poor job of pretending to contain that excitement.
Typically these dinners had the finest of foods and tonight was no exception. However there was significantly less alcohol served tonight. The exception of course being a few bottles of very fine wine.
But tonight was going to be a huge exception. For tonight Professor Wells was going to discuss his latest invention; the Time Machine.
As pensive as Professor Wells seemed to be about whatever he wanted to discuss this evening; he also was hesitant. It wasn't until Jack Kilroy prompted him that he began to speak, "I say, good professor Wells; what is it that you have been up to?" he asked.
"I'm glad that you inquired Mr. Kilroy; I have been working on a device;" he passed for a moment, "that is based on mathematical and scientific models that are experimental as the device itself," explained Professor Wells.
"That's extremely vague," said Nikola Tesla.
"Oh what's all this nonsense?" asked Dr. Livingston. "Tell us professor; what profound idea do you have, that has brought us all here tonight?"
"I have; through both experimentation and deduction stumbled across some scientific realities that defy our current understanding of scientific norms," explained professor Wells.
"You're going to have to be more specific," said Mr. Kilroy. "Otherwise they're going to start thinking that you're just spotting a bunch of foppish nonsense," he warned. This was a curious thing to say because Jack was obviously very into what Professor Wells had to say tonight.
"Well before anyone goes around accusing me of being a fraud; I would like to point out that I have a working model and experimental proof of it all. I'm not a charlatan," said professor Wells. "I have come across the most promising departure and experiment; that has ever been made. It will simply revolutionized life. Heaven knows what life will be like when I've carried the thing through," set Professor Wells.
Everyone here seemed very skeptical; Jack Kilroy was very concerned. The young patent clerk was noticeably so excited that it seems like he might explode. With that; professor Wells took us into the sitting room and began to explain his experiments and his invention.
"As long as it's not the fountain of youth or the Holy Grail," expanded Sigmund Freud.
"No doubt it's one of his famous paradox's that he's always putting to us," said Tesla.
Professor Wells waited until we were all seated and struck up his pipe; a fine tobacco to be sure by the smell of it. Then he began to expound on what he had discovered. "The first premise that we must come to is that time is itself a spatial anomaly and just like up down right left forward and backward we can move about in time," started Professor Wells.
"Oh that's gotta be a lot of bullshit," chuckled Sigmund Freud. "Why on earth Professor would you spout such nonsense?"
"Because I'm fucking funny," he responded to Sigmund Freud as he glared at him.
"let us listen carefully to Professor Wells," suggested Jack Kilroy. "He is well thought of in the scientific community is he not? Just look at the company he keeps," pointed out Jack.
"And I remind you that I have a working model and can prove it experimentally," reminded Professor Wells.
"OK let's have this experiment then," conceded Sigmund Freud.
Jack Kilroy interjected, "Perhaps we should have the argument first though; if the experiment is not truly understood we might mistake it for something else."
This statement got the attention of two people in the room in particular. First it seriously got the attention of Nikola Tesla. 'I wonder what Jack knows that he's not sharing' Tesla thought to himself.
The young patent clerk was thinking along similar lines. And Professor Wells himself realized that Jack Kilroy had many trinkets that he had gathered from around the world that were somewhat fanciful. Although Professor Wells hadn't put together just wear these trinkets at all come from; or why that was relevant to time travel.
"listen very carefully," started Professor Wells, "for I'm going to have to contradict one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. Geometry for instance; as they teach to you in school; I have to reveal is based on a misconception."
"Holy shit;" said Jack Kilroy. "Come on Wells just come out and hit us with something enormous; don't start with something small to understand we're all pretty smart here we can take it." Kilroy had a flare for the sarcastic and he was showing it off. However, Jack Kilroy was very good at his humor. While it seemed that he had made a joke at professor Wells expense; it had also reset the tone in the room perfectly for people to listen to what Professor Wells actually had to say.
"I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable proof and evidence for it. I am confident that you will soon admit as much. let's take a mathematical line; a line with a thickness that is essentially infinitely small; it has no real existence; that is commonly accepted geometry and mathematics is it not?" as Professor Wells.
"I think we can all accept that well enough," said Sigmund Freud.
Professor Wells continued, "Also because having only length breath and thickness; can a cube have no real existence."
"You've lost me their professor," confessed Dr. Livingston. "Any solid thing has existence."
"Of course a solid body does exist all real things actually exist," admitted professor Wells, "but if the cube has an existence that is infinitely small then it still does not exist."
This seriously got the attention of Tesla and the patent clerk; indeed all of the intellectuals there now gave Professor Wells their undivided attention, and started taking him a bit more seriously.
"Thus, any real body must exist in four dimensions; not just three; it must have length, breath, and depth as well as duration. Unfortunately our minds and our way of thinking at least in this age are not designed to perceive time the fourth dimension as something that is flexible and we perceive it only is going in one direction at a constant rate. And as such it can be understandable that even the scientific minds gathered here may view time as something different than the other three dimensions," extorted professor Wells.
Jack Kilroy smiled like he had just won the lottery. Nobody was really certain why. Also a note; the young patent clerk had a curious look on his face similar to a young teenage boy who suddenly discovered that girls are pretty; but in a scientific way.
"Well that clears things up," said Sigmund Freud sarcastically; while smoking a cigar.
"Oh don't be so dramatic Sigmund," scolded Nikola Tesla.
Wells continued and he delivered his next statement with abandon like he was determined to get it all out before anyone could cut him off. "Now, it is very remarkable indeed that this is so extensively overlooked," continued professor Wells with a slight grin. "Really what this means is that the fourth dimension is only another way of looking at time. There is no difference between time and any of the other three dimensions of space except the difference between time and any of the three dimensions is that our consciousness is constantly moving along the dimension of time. Many people have gotten so used to that idea that they refused to think about time is something that you can move along freely as you would any other dimension."
"I have never thought that way," exclaimed the provincial mayor; who by the way had no idea what we were talking about, but he didn't want to sound like he wasn't completely being left behind intellectually.
"The crux of the matter is simply this, that space, as our mathematicians spoken of; has three dimensions, which one may call length, breath, and thickness; it is always to find reference to these planes each at right angles to themselves. But why not think of a fourth dimension in particular that is not at right angle to each other but construed in a different way a fourth dimension called time? A professor Simon Newcomb was expanding this to New York mathematical Society only a month or so ago. Let us take for example a flat surface which has only two dimensions; we can represent a third dimension on a two dimensional surface like a chalkboard; we do it all the time in the classroom," explained professor Wells.
"This is preposterous," stated the provincial mayor. "The vast majority of scientific minds believe that what you are expanding is absolute rubbish."
Kilroy interrupted, "Everyone here is aware of the Grand Canyon correct?"
"Of course," said the provincial mayor.
"How old is it?" asked Mr. Kilroy.
"Well, judging from the geology most scientists have concluded that it is hundreds of thousands or millions of years old," exclaimed Tesla.
"Indeed, according to geology," agreed Mr. Kilroy. "Now my next question is how old is the hole in the ground that we call the Grand Canyon?"
With that the room was silent, "It seems Mr. Kilroy; that you have made an excellent point. A great many of our scientific assumptions are made by people who can't tell the difference between a rock and the hole in the ground," added the young patent clerk.
"Well done Mr. Einstein," Jack said to the patent clerk.
The provincial mayor knew that he had to save face. He stroked his beard and said, "Oh yes I think I see it now."
"Well it should be noted that I have been studying and thinking deeply on this fourth dimension of time," confessed professor Wells. "Many of my results are very curious indeed; for example here is a portrait of a man at eight years old and another at 15 years old and another 17 and another 23 and so on. All these are evidently sections, as it were, three dimensional representations of his fourth dimensional being, which is fixed and an unalterable thing," conjectured professor Wells.
"Scientific people must therefore conclude that time is only a different kind of space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather report. This line I trace with my finger is the movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was very high and then it fell at night then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to hear. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions as I have shown it on the chalkboard. But certainly it traveled such a line and that line therefore we must conclude was along the time dimension."
"Well said Professor Wells; well said Indeed," complimented Jack Kilroy.
"Hold on now," said Dr. Livingston as he stared hard at a hole in the fire, "if time is really only a fourth dimension of space, why is it and why has it always been, regarded as something different? And to be perfectly honest why is it then that we cannot move about in time just as we move about the other dimensions of space?"
The provincial mayor decided to chime in again, "Yes there's the rub; for in that journey of man we can move forward and backward as well as right to left but up-and-down; now gravity limits us there."
"Not entirely," corrected Dr. Livingston. "There are hot air balloons."
Jack Kilroy was almost about to point out airplanes and submarines; but he had to think to himself had they been invented yet. The submarine had of course. The Confederacy used one in the American Civil War. But the airplane; when was that discovery exactly? Jack Kilroy looked into the palm of the hand briefly. He realized that wasn't going to happen until 1903.
"But before balloons," observed the provincial mayor, "people had no freedom and moving up and down unless of course they wanted to jump or fall off of a cliff. But still they could move up and down to some degree."
"Much easier down than up," noted Professor Tesla.
"Yes, but you can't get away from the present moment," objected the politician.
"Oh yes you can; my dear good sir. That is just where the whole world hasn't come to yet in terms of their understanding. We are always getting away from the present moment. Our very existence is real but has no dimensions unless they are passing in the time dimension with a uniform velocity from cradle to the grave."
'From cradle to the grave,' that is a great line thought the politician.
"But our difficulty is this," said Sigmund Freud, "we can move about an all three dimensions of space but we cannot move about in time."
"This may not be the case," objected the young patent clerk, "If you travel very close to the speed of light your perception of time and your experience of time might actually slow down and us you could travel into the future if you could speed along at that type of velocity," said the young Albert Einstein; who had just spoken a long run on sentence.
"Who invited this moron to our very intelligent discussion?" objected the mayor.
"I did," said professor Wells.
"And it was I who suggested that he be invited," exclaimed Jack Kilroy. "Young Mr. Einstein is quite a brilliant mind in progress," explained Jack.
"Well perhaps we should ask the young patent clerk what it feels like to be the smartest man in the room?" objected the provincial mayor.
"Oh you would have to ask Professor Tesla that question," rebuttled the young patent clerk with great sincerity and admiration of Tesla.
Everyone there attempted to hold in their laughter. Unfortunately Jack Kilroy was unable to do so and he burst out laughing like it was the funniest damn thing he had ever heard. Unfortunately for the mayor he seemed to take insult to this. He said so and then excuse himself from the dinner.
"My dear young Albert," said Nikola Tesla, "you are indeed the smartest man in the room."
"Why do you say that?" asked the young Albert Einstein. "Although I do greatly appreciate the compliment."
"Because my dear young patent clerk you figured out a way to get rid of the bloody mayor," said Doctor Livingston.
With that everyone paused to grab a couple more glasses of wine so they could recover from the laughter. And with that we returned to the sitting room and a professor Wells continued.
"Moving along the dimension of Time by means of a special vehicle is the crux of my great discovery. Let me give you an example; if I recall an incident very vividly in my memory I jump back to the instant. In a sense I become absent minded or daydreaming as you might say I jump back in time for just a moment. Of course we have no means of staying there for any length of time-"
-"Duration, interjected Jack Kilroy."
Everyone paused to look at Jack's insightful suggestion.
"Indeed excellent clarification Jack," complemented professor Wells. More than a person can live forever. However it is true that we can use a device to travel up and down in space like a balloon; thus why wouldn't we be able to create a device or machine that will allow us to travel through time?" conjectured professor Wells.
"This, is what a lot of people with college degrees; who obtained them just by showing up to class, would call a bunch of bullshit," observed Jack Kilroy.
"Indeed," agreed professor Wells. "But who is to say that it's actually against reason? At one time it was against reason to say that the world was round and not flat."
"That's absolutely preposterous," expanded Dr. Livingston.
Jack Kilroy spoke up in defense of professor Wells. "Suppose that we don't know all that we think we do know," said Jack. "Allow me to give you an example. How is it possible that a ship sales against the wind?"
"Oh that's simple," said Dr. Livingston; who was himself an avid sailor. "The whole process is called tacking."
"Oh I'm quite aware of what the process is called," said Mr. Kilroy. "But that wasn't my question, how is it possible that the wind blows in one direction and the sailboat goes in another?"
"An excellent example," said Professor Tesla.
"And likewise just as a boat can travel against the wind, professor Wells evidently thinks it's possible to create a vehicle that can travel in time," exclaimed the young patent clerk.
"I'm not so easily convinced," exclaimed Sigmund Freud. "It would be simply too easy for a time traveler to give an account of the battle of Hastings."
"Or perhaps even the battle of Britain," said Jack Kilroy; quite deliberately. Of course the reader will know that the battle of Britain hadn't happened yet; indeed no one there except Jack Kilroy had even heard of the battle of Britain. However the fact that no one understood Jack's reference was not unnoticed. Professor Tesla and the young patent clerk definitely noticed and looked and made eye contact with Jack Kilroy. Professor Wells; was also lost in thought at this.
"But if you could travel through time you could create a tremendous amount of damage," observed Professor Tesla.
"Indeed you could," confessed professor Wells. "Jack and I were talking about just such an idea the other day. We came to the conclusion that anything that is very dangerous can also be very useful and the reverse is also true; anything that is very useful can always be construed to be very dangerous."
The patent clerk squinted his eyes in deep thought.
"Indeed," said Sigmund Freud rather sarcastically. "What's the stop someone from going back in time and meeting Jesus?"
"The very presumption that question must make is that Jesus is the son of God; therefore going back in time is something that wouldn't screw anything up; because Jesus would be able to fix it," conjectured Jack Kilroy.
"Of all the theoretical bullshit," exclaimed Sigmund. Then he paused, "OK after thinking about it; I admit Jack you have an excellent point."
"Professor Wells said he had a working prototype," said Jack Kilroy. "Perhaps we should go see it."
"Indeed I believe that we should go see this experiment," agreed Sigmund. "Though I believe for the record that this is all humbug."
At that moment Professor Wells looked around the room at everyone and smiled like he was a five-year-old who knew a secret. He then left the room to go get something from his laboratory.
"I wonder what he's got?" said the young patent clerk.
"No doubt some cheap parlor trick," said Dr. Livingston.
"At that point Jack Kilroy decided to give an account of a painting that he had in his collection that looked exactly like it was done by van Gogh; a painting of the Grand Canyon."
When Professor Wells returned he brought with him a small device sitting on a plaque. The base was approximately 6 inches square and on it was one of the most magnificent clockwork devices any of us had ever seen. The whole thing sat in a very robust chassis that seemed to protect it from damage; or was at least intended to.
Professor Wells placed the device on a clear table and gave us a few moments to admire it. While we did this Professor Wells was careful to make certain that the room was very well lit.
It was almost inconceivable that any type of trick; no matter how cleverly construed, could've been played on the men sitting in this room. Professor Wells looked at all of us, "Well?" he asked.
"This magnificent little clockwork device is a prototype and a working model. This is my proof of concept for a larger Time Machine that will allow me to travel through time. There was something peculiar about this device; something that looked magnificent and yet did not completely conform to Euclidean geometry.
"See here," said Professor Wells. "There are two levers on the device; one sets the device moving forward in time; and the other sets it moving backwards in time," professor Wells explained. "It took the better part of three years to build it, along with a tremendous amount of funds, sweat, blood and tears; and more than a few naughty words," recounted Professor Wells.
"Would you care to do the honors," professor Wells asked Sigmund Freud?
Sigmund; who couldn't possibly pass up a challenge like that, did Indeed place his finger on one of the levers and moved it. And then the machine disappeared.
Everyone there was absolutely certain that there was no trickery of any kind. There was a brief moving of the breeze and all of the lamps jumped and flicked their light slightly. The machine then became incandescent itself and disappeared.
Everyone on silent for several minutes. Finally Jack Kilroy spoke up and said, "Well; I'll be a monkey's uncle."
Sigmund Freud eventually recovered from his shock, and looked underneath the table. Keep in mind; there wasn't anything covering the table such as a tablecloth and we could see underneath it the whole time, "I'm just checking," said Sigmund Freud. He then got up and let a cigar.
"You can't be serious?" said Dr. Livingston. "Good Lord; God Almighty, you were serious about this the whole time," he extorted.
Meanwhile Sigmund Freud who had lit his cigar to show that he was calm and not dumbfounded; realized that he had ignited an uncut cigar. "Have you made any progress on the actual Time Machine itself?" asked Sigmund Freud.
"See for yourself," replied Professor Wells.
"I have a serious question to ask you professor," said Jack Kilroy, "do you intend to travel into the future or the past?"
"Honestly I don't know for certain; however since my theories are apparently correct I would like to expound that it is my assumption that traveling backwards in time is much more difficult than traveling forward. Simply put; the difficulty of moving backwards through time is that you are in the way," set Professor Wells. "But truthfully I haven't made up my mind."
Everyone there had to take a few moments just to breathe and think. Professor Wells had indeed left everyone thinking that this was an actual possibility. "I need to sleep upon this," confessed Dr. Livingston.
"If it's not too much trouble professor Wells; could we see the Time Machine?" ask Jacked Kilroy. Everyone looked at each other like they were all 12 year-old boys and one of them asked the others if they would like to see a dead squirrel.
Professor Wells relented; and then he delightfully let us into his workshop in the next room. There was the most magnificent machine any of us had ever seen. The men that gazed upon this engineering marvel where among the most educated and intelligent people who had ever lived. None of them had any shortage of adjectives in their vocabulary; and yet the words to describe what they looked at seemed to escape them. Fitting.
NEXT Chapter 2: Midlife Crisis