My Troubles With Time (2 page)

My life was so unpleasant that I frequently wondered why I went on. The only consolation I had, the only thing that gave me satisfaction, was my work on the time machine.

My fascination with the concept of traveling through time had begun when I was a child, reading science fiction magazines. I learned early that I had to conceal my interest in the subject. Just mentioning the possibility of time travel, I found, exposed me to even more derision than usual as a childish simpleton.

In college and graduate school, I delved into the few scientific works that were available on the subject. I took care to demonstrate my amusement with the concept to anyone who happened chanced to notice my interest.

Secretly, when no one was around, I would use the computers to develop and test mathematical formulas concerning the physics of time travel. My results led me to conclude that it was at least theoretically possible.

In a more hospitable environment, I would have chosen time travel as the subject of my doctoral dissertation. My adviser Professor Gunson, however, broke into vales of laughter when I tentatively suggested I was considering the theoretical concept of time travel as the topic for my dissertation.

Dr. Gunson, a thin little man with a perpetual scowl on his face, had been the only member of the Physics department willing to act as my advisor. Without his active support, I realized I stood no chance of over obtaining my Ph.D. degree. Feeling humiliated, I resolved never to mention the subject of time travel to him or to anyone else.

I was relieved when Dr. Gunson suggested that I choose as the subject of my doctoral my dissertation the physical properties of metals as they related to electric batteries. I quickly agreed to do so, naively thinking that he had my welfare at heart. Only later, did I learn that he was writing a book on the subject himself and saw in me nothing more than a source of unpaid labor.

For the next three years I slavishly carried out the research, working closely with Dr. Gunson. When the graduate students who had started after me had their dissertations approved and received their degrees, I timidly suggested to my advisor that it might be time for me to turn in my dissertation. Dr. Gunson reluctantly agreed on the condition that I continue working as his unpaid staff assistant after I received my doctoral degree.

A year later, he published his book, incorporating the findings of my dissertation without giving me any credit. I was disappointed, but hoped that at least he would now assist me in obtaining a proper teaching position.

I waited until we were working together in his lab. His book had received favorable comments in a leading physics journal and he seemed to be in a good mood. I congratulated him warmly. Choosing my words carefully, I added that it might now be time for me to move on to a teaching post at another university and that I would greatly welcome his advice and any assistance he could give me.

My words were followed by a loud silence. His face clouded over. When he spoke, his tone was icy.

“You may leave whenever you wish,” he said. “Just leave the key to the lab at my office”

Startled by the coldness in his voice, I tried to mollify him, adding that I would of course time my departure so that it would be of no inconvenience to him. However, he stalked out of the lab before I could speak.

My bridges inadvertently burned, I decided to get as far away from Dr. Gunson as I could. The lack of a strong recommendation from him was a serious handicap. Dozens of rejections had left me thoroughly depressed when, just two weeks before the start of the fall term, I received a telephone call from Standish offering me what was purported to be a tenure track appointment as an assistant professor of physics.

Without hesitation, I agreed to take the position, despite the fact that I had already signed another year’s lease for the dorm room I was still using. Foolishly thinking my life-long ill luck had changed for the better, I hurriedly packed my few belongings and traveled half way across the country to Miles Standish University.

Notwithstanding two flat tires and the need to install a new muffler in my decrepit car, I was still optimistic as I pulled up in front of the Standish campus and parked. My first meeting with Dr. Bolton quickly disillusioned me. In a cool tone he informed me that I had received the appointment only after two more promising candidates had turned it down. As there was no time to search for other candidates so close to the start of the new term, I could have the position.

The optimism I had enjoyed vanished. Still I had no choice. And it was a tenured track appointment. I swallowed my pride and expressed my pleasure, assuring him that his confidence in me was not misplaced. I raised no objection when he informed me I would teach four classes, one more than had been stipulated when I agreed to accept the position.

This was only the first of the ever-growing list of duties I assumed at Dr Bolton’s request. Each time I told myself that if I did so, it would assist me in being awarded tenure. But the months and years went on, without any progress in reaching my goal.

As solace for the friendship and recognition I lacked, I resumed my studies into the possibility of time travel. My work was particularly difficult. I feared to discuss it with anyone lest I become the subject of ridicule and quite possibly be dismissed from the faculty.

Several times, I almost gave up the project. Surely, I thought, if time travel was theoretically possible, there should be some reference to it in reputable scientific journals. Only a brief vacation trip to Moscow, when I learned that a Russian physicist had worked out mathematical formulas dealing with aspects of time travel, encouraged me to renew my efforts with renewed vigor.

Working on the powerful university computer during the midnight hours, when no one was around who could observe me, it took a little over two years for me to formulate and test the mathematical equations that would support my theory. My results left me convinced that at least in theory time travel was feasible.

Discarding all thought of discussing my work with anyone, I turned to construction of the device. In the makeshift laboratory/workshop I had fitted out in the garage behind my house, I constructed a relatively crude machine, using the chassis of a tiny two-person car manufactured in Yugoslavia. It was made of plastic, which reduced the motor power needed to operate the helicopter type rotor blades that moved the device horizontally and vertically.

The most difficult part of the project was to obtain sufficiently strong batteries to power the machine’s movement through time. Here, the research I did for my dissertation came in useful. Using metals that other researchers had overlooked, I developed hydrogen-titanium batteries powerful enough for my purpose.

My work done, I next turned to selecting a location for what I hoped would be my first successful trip through time. After some reflection, I decided to try to travel back thirty-six years into the past to view my parents’ marriage.

My choice was based solely on curiosity about my father rather than on any love or affection I had for either parent. Of my father I knew virtually nothing. A traveling salesman, he had deserted my mother a few weeks after my birth to run away with an actress.

I learned the story of his disappearance when I overheard her relate it to the ladies with whom she played bridge every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. He had kissed my mother goodbye one Monday morning and left for the railroad station with his suitcase in his hand as he did at the start of every week. The first inkling she had that something was amiss was when he telephoned that Friday night from Chicago to tell her he did not intend to ever return home.

My father’s desertion was clearly well planned. It developed he had taken with him the wedding pictures and all other photographs showing his likeness. From childhood on I had wondered what he looked like and whether I resembled him in any way.

I rather hoped I did, since I thoroughly disliked my mother. I cannot say that she was actually cruel or physically abused me. She was just totally indifferent.

To the best of my memory, never once during my childhood did even smile at me, let alone do anything nice. My meals, which she prepared for me with an exasperated air, were barely sufficient and totally tasteless.

At least once during every bridge game I would overhear her remarking to her friends what a hardship she endured taking care of me and how lacking in any virtue I was. When she spoke directly to me, which occurred rarely, she left me in no doubt that she held me responsible for my father’s desertion.

It was not as though we lived in circumstances of actual want. She did not work, although my father sent her no funds. A small inheritance from her parents made it possible for her to rent the furnished top floor of a not-too-old frame house in a middle class neighborhood in the small Indiana town in which we lived.

My mother’s appearance fitted her treatment of me. In my mind I see her as a tall thin woman resembling the wicked witch in the movie “The Wizard of Oz.” To be fair, I have to say that she was extremely intelligent. Her principal passtime, when she was not playing bridge, was reading works on Roman history written in the original Latin.

The last time I saw my mother was when at the age of seven I was delivered by her to the county orphanage. She informed the woman at the desk that I had no father and that she was moving and lacked sufficient funds to care for me. Ignoring the protests of the woman and nodding curtly to me, she had walked rapidly out of the orphanage. I never saw nor heard from her again.

I must admit that as my mother left, I felt elated rather than sad. My conclusions on this occasion, remarkably mature considering my age, were that I would be much happier living at the orphanage than with her.

It was only later that I changed my mind. After the other boys at the orphanage subjected me to hazing and ridicule, I concluded that as mean-spirited as my mother had been, life at the orphanage was even worse. At least, my mother had not referred to me mockingly as “Nerdly,” a corruption derived from the last syllable of my Christian name. It was bad enough when the other children at the orphanage delighted in taunting me with it. To add to my torture, the epithet was picked up and used by the staff.

If the time machine worked, I saw no difficulty in traveling back in time to attend my parents’ wedding. From an old wedding invitation I had found in a desk when my mother once asked me to bring her a pencil, I knew the time, date and location of the wedding ceremony.

For this, my maiden attempt at time travel, I took few of the precautions I should have. Not thinking of all the things that might go wrong, I moved the time machine out on to my patio, carefully set the control dials, strapped myself into the seat, a pressed the starter.

The motor made an ungodly sound, the machine shuddered, and for a few seconds I thought that it had failed to work. Then I realized that I was several hundred feet above the surface of the earth, traveling slowly in an eastward direction.

The time dial showed that I had in fact traveled thirty-six years into the past. The map coordinates indicated that the time machine was nearing the southern Indiana town in which my parents had been married. Using the control lever, I carefully descended to the earth in a cornfield several hundred yards from the church in which my parent’s wedding took place.

There was no indication outside the church that a wedding was in process inside. I entered quietly, thinking perhaps that I was at the wrong church. Then I realized that a wedding ceremony was already under way. Seating myself quietly in a back pew I recognized the bride as my mother.

She looked exactly as I remembered her, her appearance in no way made more attractive by the fact that she was supposedly experiencing the happiest day of her life. Her face wore the same annoyed expression she habitually wore. I wondered why my father had chosen to marry her.

My father, I found different from what I had imagined. He was a short, thin man with a crooked smile. I had always wondered if my appearance was similar to that of my absent father. I stared at him and found not the least similarity between us.

I was not disappointed. I felt certain based on his appearance that I would have disliked him as much as I did my mother. Dispelling any thought of finding a pretext to speak to them, I waited until the end of the ceremony and then hurried from the church.

Feeling no joy at what I had witnessed, I hastened back to the cornfield in which I had left my time machine. I was shocked to find that its presence had been detected.

A farm tractor stood idling a few feet from the device. The driver, an older man garbed in overalls, had descended from the tractor and was staring at the time machine with obvious curiosity.

I cursed myself for being so stupid as to fail to conceal the time machine. If observed by anyone, it was bound to attract unwanted attention.

I had neglected to install a lock on the door or on the controls. The control levers as well as the motor were reasonably sturdy. Nonetheless, anyone who found the machine and tried to learn its purpose might well damage it irretrievably, leaving me trapped thirty-six years in the past.

“I’m sorry to have left my car in your field.” I said, as I hurried up. “The motor overheated, so I thought I’d best let it cool down.”

The farmer turned to me, a suspicious look on his face. “I’ve never seen a car like that before,” he said. “Is that some foreign type?”

“Yes, it’s made in Yugoslavia.”

“Yugo where?”

“Yugoslavia. It’s in Europe.”

He nodded. “Are those wings on it?” he asked, pointing to the rotors.

I thought for a minute, then decided that wings on a car would be so unusual that he might mention it to too someone else.

“No,” I answered. It’s a new type of antenna for the radio my company is having me test on my car.”

As I spoke, I quickly climbed into the time machine. To my relief, the motor started immediately as I pressed the starter button.

“How come?” he asked, as I prepared to set the time dial to return home, “Your car didn’t leave any tire prints on my field?”