The problem with time-travel…
The problem with time-travel, Alwyn mused as he
sat gently rocking his great great grandfather, was that contrary to popular belief and in contradiction to most of the known laws of nature (at least the ones reported in the popular science pages of Sunday supplements), it was entirely feasible. The baby on his lap burped, and gently deposited a thin stream of warm milk up his sleeve. Sighing, Alwyn transferred him to the other arm, and began a delicate mopping-up operation with a mauve silk pocket-handkerchief.
It had all started one fine spring morning, as
many of such tales do. Alwyn had been working on his latest invention, a strange device that was supposed to cut down the time needed to cook a Christmas pudding by at least a half.
Alwyn was one of those pencil-behind-each-ear
absentminded professors who were always at a loss when it came to finding something to write a note to the milkman with. Yes, he had a long straggly white beard, which he was indeed fond of stroking. And the obligatory cat, a black one.
His lab was full of strange bits of this and
that, and pieces of the other, all strung together by miles of rainbow wire. Somewhere at the heart of the mess was half an old television with three of the valves ripped out. A number of radios, bits from long-defunct computers and the starter coils from an antiquated Robin Reliant that now sat gathering dust outside the potting shed mingled in a fond embrace sealed by blobs of solder and bits of Blutack. In one of the more remote corners of the lab, a small half- eaten cheese and pickle sandwich was wired up to the entrails of a toaster. What the mould colony rapidly estab- lishing a complex civilization on the sandwich felt about this, History does not say.
At the focus of all this attention was a small
open-sided box, more of a cage in actual fact, constructed of a criss-crossing assembly of copper rods. And inside the box, resplendent amidst the chaos on a gleaming white Wedge- wood plate, was a small black sticky Christmas pudding with a tired sprig of holly gamely trying to spread its leaves in a decorative way on its top.
Alwyn made his way over to one side of the lab,
where a huge switch of the pull-this-to-create-Frankenstein variety sprouted out of the side of a metal cabinet, resting innocuously in the OFF position.
He switched it, as one usually does with
switches…
A crackle of electricity that spiked his hair and
a nasty ozoney smell later, Alwyn picked himself up off the dusty floor and dashed over to the other side of the lab. The cage was still there, its bars glowing red-hot. But the plate and its contents had vanished.
This was a slight set-back. Alwyn, even in his
dazed state, could appreciate the fact that no cook, no matter how pressed for time, would be happy to vapourise their Christmas pudding in the name of Science. Not unless they were dieting, anyway.
Sighing as he contemplated a lean supper, he went
to turn off the machine. There was a sudden explosion of displaced air, and the merry shattering sound that only hor- ribly expensive china can make. Shards of Wedgewood flew around the lab, one just clipping his ear.
Alwyn felt his ear gingerly. Despite hurting
enough to make him feel faint, it had suffered only a minor scratch. Distractedly licking the blood from his fingers, his racing mind analyzing the metallic taste, he wandered over to the smoking remains of his gutted equipment.
Inside the cage was a tiny pile of white dust,
surmounted by a wrinkled, shrivelled brown holly leaf that had given up all pretence of being decorative. He reached out slowly to touch the leaf and withdrew his hand hastily, sucking his fingers. The leaf was so cold it had burnt him. As if to repay him for the terrible experience it had obvi- ously undergone, the leaf crumbled in a tiny tinkle of fal- ling crystals.
The days and nights were punctuated by the loud
sounds of furious inventing. His equipment melted down so often that he hardly bothered with clearing it up any more, merely bolting the next machine onto the smoking remains of its predecessor. At last, Alwyn reached two conclusions, one of them obvious, and the other revolutionary in the extreme.
Firstly, whatever happened to be at the focus of
his machine when it was switched on vanished. This was the easy observation, and was hardly likely to win him any Nobel prizes. Secondly, when the machine was turned off again, it reappeared. And lastly, he found out where they went, or more precisely when: back in time. (Now, smart readers will notice that makes three conclusions, but I just didn't want to spoil the surprise earlier. Not so astute readers, please count again…)
Why? A good question that Alwyn asked himself
repeatedly. The problem with questions, even the best, is that they demand answers, and this one was certainly clamouring for one. But in that respect at least, Alwyn was stumped: he knew what was happening, but not why it was hap- pening. But he didn't care too much, he was too busy missing meals, losing pencils and running the local supermarket out of Christmas puddings. And they didn't care, because it saved them having to put them away until the winter. So everyone was happy, as people should be in stories.
Finally, after a week in which nothing had blown
up, burnt down or emitted nasty smells, he decided to try the ultimate test: he would go back through time. This, he had already decided, was impossible. If he was to go back in time, it would set off all sorts of paradoxes… and para- doxes are impossible.
Following such lines of reasoning, he stood in
the middle of a cage, now much larger than the original, and flicked THE switch, fully confident that nothing would hap- pen… and fell gently half a foot onto the banks of a river.
He looked blearily around, wondering if some
strange trick of the light could make a small, dingy lab look like a wide, lively looking river. In the distance, two brown and white tricks of the light were happily chewing the cud and wondering if it would rain later.
He watched the play of the sun on the water as it
glinted happily off little ripples, casting dappled shadows onto the red and grey fish swimming happily up the river. He dipped his hand into the cool water and drew it out, wet.
The idea was beginning to dawn on him that maybe
this wasn't a trick of the light, but that it was all somehow real. Either that, or he was hallucinating after the lab had blown up around him, and he'd been hit on the head by some inclement piece of nondescript machinery. Seeing as he could never hope to notice the difference, anyway, he decided to treat everything as real…
...Including the beautiful girl who had just
emerged from behind a nearby willow tree, clad in a flowing white dress that offset her pale complexion and golden hair.
"Hello, stranger," she said shyly, mirroring that
classic line that has so oft been abused in cheap and tacky novels. "Where do you hie from?"
"Hi! Er, hie?" Alwyn stuttered, somewhat put off
at the sight of her. He wasn't used to things that didn't have bundles of wires disappearing into them.
To cut a long, and potentially tedious story
shorter, her name was Elaine, and through some mystical pro- cess entirely hidden to the writer, she had become smitten with the stranger, standing there in confusion dressed in those strange clothes. And later, as they lay together in the shadow of a tree, the earth did move for them most beau- tifully, as one might expect in such an implausible tale.
Eighteen thirty six was the year he arrived in, a
sunny June sixth morning. Eleven months later, Alwyn and la belle Elaine were gifted with the birth of a beautiful son. Alwyn had long since resigned himself to the fact that he couldn't go back, and his lovely bride had never asked where he was from, thus neatly avoiding any potentially awkward explanations. They gave to their son the name Peter Doning- ton. Peter, because that was a name they liked, and Doning- ton because that happened to be Alwyn's family name, even if I had neglected to mention it earlier.
It was three weeks later when the rogue thought
struck him, tormenting him. There was something he felt he really had to remember. Something about a Peter Donington. Then it hit him: his great great grandfather's name was/would be Peter! And so this brings us rather neatly back to the beginning of this tale, and explains paradoxically why the portrait of the aforementioned ancestor that hung in his parent's living room was the spitting image of Alwyn himself.
But they both lived happily ever after anyway, so
everything was alright.
Copyright Edwin Hayward 14 May, 1992
Address any comments, criticisms etc to:
eph@ukc.ac.uk