My Troubles With Time (3 page)

His question made me realize that I didn’t dare set the time dials on the time machine while I was within his sight. If I and my machine suddenly disappeared before his eyes, he certainly would mention the incident to any number of people.

“It’s made of a light plastic,” I said, as I drove off, using only the back rotor to propel it, “It doesn’t leave any prints if the ground is hard.”

Safely out of his vision, I stopped my forward motion and carefully looked around me to insure no one else was around. I then set the time dial to return home. Unlike my departure from home, when I had been so foolish as set out in the early afternoon, when one of the neighbors might have observed me, I timed my return home to occur several hours after nightfall.

T
hat night, seated at home in my living room and with the time machine safely locked in the garage, I reviewed the day’s events. Finally seeing my father face to face, so to speak, had left me somehow depressed. Not even the fact that I had successfully tested my machine, traveling backward in time, gave me comfort. Without proof, it would be foolish of me to reveal the fact; no one would believe me.

With great effort, I forced myself to think cheerful thoughts. Looking in the hall mirror, as I passed by, I decided that however nondescript I looked, my appearance was still better than that of either of my parents.

To counter my depression, I began reviewing in my mind possible future trips I might make in time. The time machine’s motor was not powerful enough for me to take a witness with me, even if I could persuade anyone to make the trip. Going into the future would be unlikely to furnish me with the type of proof I needed to document my time travel. By default, my next travel through time would again be to the past.

Military history had always fascinated me. Why not, I thought, use my time machine to travel back to July l863 and witness the battle of Gettysburg. Checking the time machine’s energy gauge, I felt confident that my two titanium hydrogen batteries had more than enough power remaining for the trip.

Unlike my first voyage into time, my second was carefully planned. Now that I had successfully tested the time machine, my primary objective was to obtain hard physical proof to document the fact that I had traveled into the past. I could then submit a paper on my research to the National Physics Society and obtain recognition of my feat. In my optimism, I assumed that when I was recognized as the father of time travel, the university would immediately award me tenure and that I would be installed among the luminaries of my profession. Clearly, the inventor of the world’s only working time machine deserved nothing less.

As proof that I had actually traveled back to l863, I decided to obtain a photograph showing me with a grouping of officers assigned to one of the Union Army units that took part in the battle of Gettysburg.

I did not believe that the difficulties involved in such an effort would be insurmountable. I knew from a trip to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington that the photographer Mathew Brady had been quite active in taking regimental photographs at Gettysburg. I had even seen several of them displayed at the Smithsonian and been impressed by their quality.

For several months I spent my spare time in the university library reading magazines published in l863, noting which military units Brady had photographed at Gettysburg. With careful preparation and a little luck, I reasoned, it should be possible for me to travel to the proper time and place and include myself in a group photograph.

Naturally, I expected my submission of the photograph to the National Physics Society as proof that I had traveled back to l863 to be met with arguments. The most likely was that the person depicted in the photo was not me but someone else who happened to resemble me. To refute this, I planned to ask the officers photographed with me to sign a paper with their name and rank and include my signature among them.

My initial trip back in time had taught me the need of precautions to prevent any bystanders realizing that something unusual was going on. From a company which prided itself on making authentic-looking uniforms for Civil War buffs who participated in re-enactments of battles I obtained a Union officer’s uniform.

After considering the matter, I decided to purchase the uniform of a colonel of Illinois volunteers. I reasoned that in the guise of colonel, I would have sufficient rank to insinuate myself as a visiting staff officer from the War Department. My purpose was to arrive at a divisional or corps headquarters in the Army of the Potomac and include myself in a photograph I knew Mathew Brady had taken at Gettysburg.

The uniform was expensive, wiping out most of my modest savings. I used the remainder to purchase currency I could spend while back in l863, coins and bills that had been minted or printed prior to that year. To insure a favorable reception at the regimental headquarters I selected to visit for the photograph, I purchased whiskey and cigars to present to my temporary hosts. The cigars, I decided, would not be distinguished from those available in 1863. The modern whiskey bottle, of course, could not pass unnoticed in 1863. I carefully decanted into a bottle purchased at an antique store, whose proprietor assured me it was of the type widely used during the period.

The university’s Christmas vacation seemed to be the most suitable time for me to make the trip. Being home alone during the holiday period always depressed me and I welcomed any opportunity to be away. I had no one with whom to celebrate Christmas, no one to give me a present and only the disagreeable Princess to buy anything for.

It was not that time hung heavy on my hands during the Christmas break. Dr. Bolton would invariably find work for me to do. At first, he would ask me to come into the Physics Department daily to handle anything that might come up.

I did not object to this as it allowed the other members of the department to travel to visit their relatives or to use the school break to take a vacation in warmer locations with their families.

“You won’t mind handling this,” Dr. Bolton would tell me in his sonorous voice, “It will give you something to do over the holidays.”

Meekly, I would nod in agreement, hoping that my amiability would speed my receipt of tenure.

More irritating than handling whatever might come up during the holiday break for the Physics Department was Dr. Bolton’s pressing me to do personal work for him during his absence. It was not that I minded the work, even though it included such things as mowing his grass or painting his kitchen. What bothered me most was his habit of asking me to go through his draft articles to correct his mathematical errors. By this, he actually meant ghostwriting his reports. But tenure never seemed to get any closer nor did he ever display any vestige of gratitude for my efforts.

Late on Sunday, the day before classes were to resume after the Christmas break, I completed writing the paper Dr. Bolton was to deliver at the National Physics Society meeting in San Francisco. As usual, his notes were sketchy and his mathematical calculations faulty. After trying fruitlessly to correct his draft, I had been obliged to discard it and write the entire paper from scratch.

My preparations for the voyage of the time machine were complete. I decided to undertake the trip at once in order to obtain a change in pace from the depressing Christmas week. The fact that my classes would start the next day was no problem. I planned to return from my trip a few minutes after the time I had started it, so that no one in the present would be aware of my absence.

Of course, such a procedure would work for only a relatively brief period. My calculations indicated that a person traveling in time would age at the normal rate while engaged in time travel. It would be difficult for me to explain the sudden change in my apparent age if I returned to the present after many years in the past or future.

In order to lessen the possibility of anyone viewing my takeoff, I decided to time my departure for after dusk. I ate an early dinner, then carefully put on my Civil War uniform.

This proved to be more time consuming than I had anticipated, since it lacked zippers and had buttons in strange places. Then, to compound my difficulty, I found that Princess had deposited a copious quantity of hair on the dark blue uniform.

The last bit of Princess’ fur removed, I inspected myself in the hall mirror. My reflection was hardly that of the dashing Union officer I hoped to see. The uniform coat and pants were a shade too large and the hat too small. To make matters worse, the dress sword I had purchased hung down almost to the floor. In all, I resembled a parody of a military man.

The night air was cold as I stepped out of the house, carrying the cigars and whiskey with me. I locked the door behind me and headed toward the garage. The boots did not fit well and I tried hard to ignore the pain they were inflicting on my feet. Music and laughter from a holiday party next door wafted over the fence, but otherwise there was no sign that there was anyone in the vicinity who might observe my take off. Shivering, I clutched my uniform coat close to me in a futile attempt to keep out the cold.

It took me several tries to get the lock on the garage door to work, but eventually it swung open. Trying hard not to trip on my sword, I pushed the time machine out of the garage and locked the door behind me. Once again, I looked around to make certain I was unobserved. Then I climbed into the device, put the cigars and whiskey into the small storage compartment, and set the dials for July 1863.

As it had during my first trip, the time machine started immediately. I pulled the time control lever toward the past and the apparatus moved rapidly. The spinning dials indicated that I was traveling rapidly backward through the twentieth century and the later years of the nineteenth century.

To my surprise, as the machine reached l868, it began to shudder violently. I increased the power. Slowly I inched backward into l867, but the shuddering increased in violence and a heavy smell of burned rubber filled the apparatus. I glanced at the battery gauge and saw to my horror that my power supply was dangerously low, with barely enough remaining to power my return to the present.

I realized that my calculations indicating the feasibility of time travel had been in error. While the time machine had worked without a flaw going back the thirty-six years to my parents’ wedding, I had overlooked some factor that apparently precluded traveling back further in time than the late l860s, at least without a massive increase in my power supply.

There was no alternative but to immediately reverse course, if the batteries were not to be completely drained of power. Moving the control lever into neutral, I waited until my momentum had stopped and then slowly shifted the lever to move forward in time. The drain on the batteries eased but the violent shuddering continued. The time machine also began erratic movements laterally. I looked down and saw I was over a large expanse of water, probably the Atlantic Ocean.

The smell of burned rubber and the lateral movements indicated that one or more circuits probably burned out. My ability to control the time machine’s movement both chronologically and geographically was threatened. In its damaged state, the device could not be depended up to return me safely to the present. I would have to land the time machine somewhere and make the necessary repairs before I could complete my journey.

Frantically, I searched the water beneath me, hoping to find land. I breathed a prayer of thanks when I saw in the distance breakers crashing against a sandy shore. I was even more grateful when the lateral movements eased and I found I could steer the time machine to follow the coastline. My elation vanished, however, when I realized that I was flying north along the West Coast of Africa.

The machine’s clock indicated that it was August l869. What little I knew about conditions in Africa in 1869 left me very dubious that I would be able to obtain there the items I might need to repair the time machine. Even Cairo, which I thought might be the most advanced city on the continent, would be unlikely to have sufficiently sophisticated repair facilities. The small emergency kit I carried with me was enough to handle minor repairs, but anything major would require me to purchase or make needed parts.

Descending to within several hundred feet of the ground to reduce the use of power, I steered the machine northward along the coast at a slow speed. To my relief, I realized that I was passing over the Straits of Gibraltar and that Spain was now beneath me.

My first thought was to alight at Madrid and attempt to repair the damage there. As I weighed this possibility, the shuddering ceased and the time machine became more responsive to my controls. I looked at my power gauge and found that power consumption had returned to normal.

Under the changed circumstances, I decided to fly past Madrid and attempt to reach Paris. In l869, The Second Empire under Napoleon III was enjoying its last months as the center of European culture and civilization. The French capital was one of the largest and most sophisticated cities in the world. If I could not purchase or make whatever I might need to repair the time machine there, I would be unlikely in l869 to obtain it anywhere else.

I crossed the Pyrenees without difficulty and headed northward across France toward Paris. To my surprise the countryside was not as beautiful as I had expected. At length in the distance, I saw the spires of Paris.

It took me a few seconds to notice that something was wrong. Paris seemed to be surrounded by large numbers of troops. No sooner had I become aware of this when I and heard explosions around me and realized that the time machine was under fire from artillery pieces on the ground.

I ducked instinctively, although the artillery shells exploded some distance from the rapidly moving time machine. I could not understand why Paris was surrounded by troops and why they were firing at me. My first thought was that somehow I had blundered into the middle of military maneuvers.

Then I looked at the time machine’s clock and realized what had happened. Instead of August l869, the clock indicated that it was November l870. Apparently, a sudden burst of current from the batteries had propelled the machine more than a year further toward the present. France was in the middle of the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III had abdicated, and Paris was cut off and besieged by an invading German army.