TIME TRAVEL STORIES

INTRODUCTION

      The following stories were a writing study for me.   The goal of this study was to: (1) write concise, yet complete, very short stories; and (2) encompass ALL the sundry TimeTravel variants covered in the Science Fiction realm.   I think I accomplished goal one, but goal two proved to be a huge task.   Still these stories are a good read.   Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them.
 

=1= A PLEASANT DAY IN THE SWAMPS

      The brontosaurus ambled along keeping a wary eye out for tyrannosauruses.   The fronds around here were succulent, green and tasty.   It looked to be a pleasant day in the swamps.

      A hundred million years later Reib closed the inspection panel.   Everything checked out.   Reib was sure his time machine would work now.   The only thing that bothered him was why someone hadn't done this sooner.   It was so obvious, so simple.   No matter.   Someone was going to do it now.   Reib had simply to pull back on the lever and he would be the first human being to see a living dinosaur.

      There was a flash of light and the loud crackle of electricity as Reib's machine popped into existance on the swampy shore.   Startled the brontosaurus pivoted about to meet the potential threat.   For Reib there wasn't time to reverse the lever before the dinosaur's giant foot crushed him and his machine. It was just another pleasant day in the swamps.
 

=2= ANY DIFFERENCE

      Murph was angry.   His time jumper was badly out of synch.   For two days now he had been trying to get back home, leaping up and down across time.   With just a few more leaps he would have the jumper retuned.   Then he was going home.

      Phasing in once again he kept his hand hovering over the switch.   There was no telling what he might have leaped into.   Night.   Good, maybe no one would notice his frontier buckskins this time.   The last thing he wanted was to alter the time line, even accidentally.

      Twentieth Century architecture.   With any luck he wouldn't have to ask what the date was this time.   Yes, there, a news stand, in front of that building. Just creep up in shadows, read the date, and get out of here.   `The Washington Post, May 21, 1972.' Excellent.   He was getting closer to home.   Now to just slip down this alley and disappear into the time stream.   He had more than a few choice words saved up for those boys at the jumper rental shop.

      The two men sat at the lobby desk, drinking coffee, listening to the ball game rebroadcast.   It was just another long boring night doing a long boring job. Nothing ever happened, probably nothing ever would.

      "Jack, did you see that guy out front?"

      "Yea, so what?"

      "Something suspicious about him.   I think he went around the side.   Maybe I should do a look see."

      "Come on, Frank.   It was probably just a drunk."

      "Then it won't make ANY DIFFERENCE if I take a look around.   Will it, Jack?"

      "Okay, suit yourself.   Call me if you find anything."

      Taking up his radio and flashlight, Frank left the hotel security station checking all the outside doors as he circled the building.   That the suspicious man had disappeared was fine with Frank, as long as the `bum' hadn't gotten into the hotel somehow.

      But this wasn't to be Frank's night, "Jack, this is Frank.   I've found a door taped open back here.   You better call the police.   I think we have a break in at the Watergate."
 

=3= THAT'S REALITY

      ... and this too shall come to pass ...
 
 

=4= A MAN WITH NO PAST

      The blast punched a hole down through four sublevels of the New York skyscraper.   Smoke, darkness and confusion enveloped the entire building.   For a day and most of a night firemen worked tiredly to empty the upper floors of stranded office workers.   It wasn't until the next day that rescuers found the man lying on the basement floor at the edge of the blast zone.   The man's suit looked like it had aged two hundred years, so did he.   To the FBI the man was a mystery, a left over piece of the investigation.   He had no ID, no fingerprints on file, no distinctive clothing labels and no memory.   He was a man with no past.   To investigators the memory loss looked suspiciously convenient.   The physicians found signs of trauma, but no systemic damage.   Was total amnesia possible? Yes/No/Maybe - it depended on who you asked.   After six months the FBI decided the man was not one of the bad guys.   They attributed the blast to an explosive laden rental truck parked there by religious terrorists.   They gave the man a name, an ID, and even arranged a job at General Electric's New York office.   They were, if truth be known, a little embarrassed by his existence.

      Five years later the man, John Roberts, still walked with a limp and still couldn't remember, but now he had a past - all be it, a short one.   He had progressed from Technician Grade V to Researcher Grade IV.   He was liked and respected by coworkers at G.E.   He had a three bedroom mortgage in the suburbs, two salt-rusted cars, several credit cards, a plump wife, two kids of hers, one kid of theirs, two cats and a dog.   On Tuesday nights he played bridge and Saturday nights he drank beer.   He in was deep in the middle class American dream.

      The only oddity about him was his hobby.   His hobby was in the basement, an electromechanical monstrosity which ate equal shares of time, electricity and computer chips.   Over the years this hobby grew in size and complexity.   John wasn't really sure what he was trying to create, the project seem to be growing out of some vague idea in the back of his head - a memory lost or idea unborn.

      Fifty years John Roberts had died and his widow now lived with a daughter. John Sands, a grandson, stood looking at the machine, it was a puzzle.   Grandad had never explained his hobby to anyone.   If pressed grandad would say it was a time machine because of all the time it took to build it.   The family felt that John's three years at M.I.T.   made him best qualified to deal with grandad's machine.   But what was it and what was John to do with it? He sat down at looked to be a control chair, randomly flipping switches and dials, watching how the gauges reacted, listening to the electronic hum.   Suddenly, without warning, the hum became a whine.   John had a sick feeling in his stomach, his vision blurred and the room began to spin.   There was a flash of light and then blackness.   When John awoke he was lying on a concrete floor of some parking structure.   The air was like an oven reeking of ozone.   He got up, dizzy, hot, confused, aching. Reaching out he sought to steady himself on a truck fender, only to be shocked by a crackle of static electricity shooting from his outstretched fingers to the steel truck panels.   He staggered back, uncertain of where he was, how he got there.   The pounding in his head dominated all his thoughts.   He stumbled across the concrete floor, seeking help.   He was almost to a stair well when the blast washed over the car behind him, throwing him up against the wall.   He lay there unconscious for almost a full day before firemen found him lying at the edge of the blast zone.
 

=5= SNATCH TEAM

      Sam popped into existence, displaced air resounded loudly against the walls and back.   He knew of transfer surge, but still flinched at the sonic boom and the following wave of heated air.   With leveled stunner he pirouetted a full three-sixty, dropping to a crouch in shadows of the floor.   So far - so good, but the clock was running.   Ripping off his chest pack, he unfolded the tangle of wands and antennae atop the black box within.   A buzzer sounded inside his head. Sam punched the box on and rolled to the side.   Julie, the team second, appeared. The box quenched the transfer surge, shifting through the visible spectrum and beyond as it absorbed the tremendous energies released.   Three more times the box cycled absorbing the energies of three more arrivals.

      Elapsed time: fifty-four seconds subjective.   Given five minutes per transmission, they were roughly twenty-four minutes out of phase with Home Time. They could return sooner if necessary, but it put less wear and tear on the field folders if they waited out the phase lag.   The optimal snatch window this time was twenty-two minutes long.   Waiting out an extra two minutes beyond the optimal point would be up to the team leader - Sam.

      Cracking open a steel fire door, Julie studied her arm intently.   Half cyborged, much of the team's equipment had been built into her body including countermeasures and defensive armaments.   Signaling an 'all clear' she led the team up the stairwell at a three-step run.   Two flights up she again cracked a door.   Somewhere across town a silent alarm flashed red on a console.   It hardly mattered though for no one was present there to notice that light or any of the other flashing lights.   The security office was two days empty, no one present to note the alarms initiated when buildings collapsed or caught fire.   After the San Andres cut loose only the dead, insane and greedy remained in the L.A. basin. The main shock had been an amazing 9.7 on the Richter scale.   After shocks varied from slight 3.0's to destructive 8.5's.   In this neighborhood only the museum still stood - an obvious target for the looter gang even now battering down the front door with a ten pound sledge.

      On the second floor Sam's team were methodically piling paintings and sculptures onto an induction float cart they had assembled.   Julie kept vigil and flagged the art work preselected by Home Time researchers.   Augmented chip memory gave her access to the entire museum inventory, along with all pertinent event information leading into and beyond the snatch team's time window.   This snatch looked like a cake walk.

      Suddenly Julie's arm strobed blue and Sam's head buzzed.   With hurried hand signals Sam directed the team to defensive positions around the room.   Playing her arm like a musician, Julie took the room from dim gray to total black, even infrared body emissions faded into obscurity.   Six intruders entered the room.   It bothered Sam that they behaved more like commandos than looters.   It bothered him even more that the looters were several minutes ahead of schedule.   But there was no time left to puzzle it out, only time to let instincts and training run their course.   From five corners blue beams of energy struck out in a cross hatch of stun fields.   When the lights came up six bodies lay sprawled across the floor. Sam was about to signal success when he recognized the bodies not to be looters, but a second snatch team from Home Time.   There would hell to pay for this: hell to pay that a snatch team had intruded upon another team's window; hell to pay that Sam's team had attacked them; and hell to pay when Sam's team used their cargo allotment to bring home their stunned compatriots.   True to their training no one said a word as they unloaded the cart to make space for six unconscious bodies.   No one said a word as they hurried down the stairs before the real looters finished off the door, before the next quake collapsed this building.   No one said a word until they reached Home Time.   There would time to talk then.
 

=6= TIME CHANGES

      Dawn's light crept in through Reggie's window.   A creature of habit Reggie reached across the double bed to hug Shirley 'good morning', falling off the bed unto the hard floor.   There was no double bed.   There was no Shirley.

      "Schist! He's done it again.   This guy just doesn't know when to quit."

      The 'he' was Jack, an old friend from Reggie's university days.   Jack and Reggie had met as dorm mates.   From the start they became best friends who for three years shared everything from wardrobes to class notes to girls.   That was until they met Shirley in the fall of their fourth year.   After Shirley appeared the twosome became a threesome and they found even more things to share - intimate things, bedroom things.   Though he preferred heterosexual twosomes, Reggie had no real problem with this bisexual triangle.   After all Shirley, happily polygamous and totally kinked, liked it that way and he liked Shirley. And Jack - a once devote heterosexual.   Well, Jack fell head over heels in love with Reggie and, as in so many love triangles, grew jealous of Shirley.   The situation deteriorated until Reggie and Shirley felt compelled to leave Jack for a commune across town.   Reggie regretted loosing Jack as a friend, but was quite happy to still have Shirley.

      The commune afforded Shirley ample opportunity to fully explore her sexuality.   At the end of six months she declared herself monogamous and moved into his room.   After graduation Reggie and Shirley signed a pre-birth contract, took an option on a high rise co-op, and started their careers.   Caught up in each other the two forgot about Jack.

      It was two years after graduation when the changes began.   Jack had taken a job with 'Time Changes, Inc.' as a system analyst.   After hours Jack designed time changes for himself.   Jack saw time changes as an expedient, though morally questionable, way to recover his lost love from that hateful woman.   Besides he got them at cost as a job perk.

      Reggie started appraising the damage.   The face in the mirror was his.   His ID had same name, though he now lived in a different city with a different job.   At least there was no spouse or kids this time.   Last time around had been a bit messy to undo.   No one, Jack included, had been happy about that change.   Dialing Shirley's code Reggie got a pizza shop.   A code change spoke of a pretty deep change.   Jack was definitely getting better.   Reggie hoped Jack's employer appreciated that.   Reggie knew he didn't.   So what happened to Shirley? Reggie hoped for the best and considered the worst.   No, Jack wouldn't go that far.

      This change duel had been going on between Jack and Reggie for some twenty-five odd years now.   Back and forth they went seeking small, but specific changes in the fabric of time.   Like two chest masters they sought position and gain in this hard played game of life.   The moves had been so numerous that Reggie had almost forgotten the original issue.

      Reggie considered his options.   He could pay for a time change - an expensive option which had already drained his assets several times over.   He could sue Jack for damages - a time consuming and equally costly answer.   He could murder Jack - not a good choice unless one liked prison.   He could go on with this future as it now existed, but that left Jack with the initiative.   He could not and would not give in to Jack - never, never, never.   Well obviously it was going to be another time change.

      The nature of time change was such that the alternate lives became dream like memories, sometimes crystal clear, but more generally blurry afterimages. Twenty-five years was a long time, too long.   Then it struck him.   The image in the mirror was not of a man nearing fifty years of age, but of a mere boy sixteen to seventeen years old.   Jack had jumped them backwards.   Jack's employers had paid dearly for this time change.   Looking at the calendar he realized that tomorrow would be his first day at the university.   Jack had not only lost his employment advantage, but had reset the game back to square-one.

      Like any good game master Reggie sat down to plan his moves.   First he took pen and paper in hand jotting down everything he remembered and half-remembered. He knew that within weeks of back jumping he would forget most of his previous futures.   Drained of memories he then stored the sheets in his childhood treasures' box hidden in the closet corner.

      Done with his writings Reggie put his agile mind to the question of why Jack had Jack had jumped them back to this particular day, it seemed counter productive.   Then another revelation struck him.   Jack hadn't back jumped them, it was Jack's employers.   Reggie could almost see the inter office memo suggesting the use of back jumps to eliminate certain compulsive and obsessive behaviors from the work force, the never ending quest for increased productivity stumbling onward.   Inspired Reggie lastly wrote a note to himself about tomorrow.

      "Dear Reggie - Remember - Today you will meet Jack, your new room mate. Unless you want to spend a lifetime of time changes I strongly suggest you kick Jack in the groin and immediately ask for a new room mate.   When you finally meet a pert little blond named Shirley, make sure Jack isn't anywhere in the picture. Good Luck to you and Shirley - Reggie."
 

=7= A PLEASANT DAY IN THE SWAMPS - take ii

      In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth, he created man and beast and everything else.   Then he went on holiday.

      Many billions of years later Reib closed the inspection panel.   Everything checked out.   Reib was sure his time machine would work now.   The only thing that bothered him was why someone hadn't done this sooner.   It was so obvious, so simple.   No matter.   Someone was going to do it now.   Reib had simply to pull back on the lever and he would be the first human being to see a living dinosaur.

      There was a flash of light and the loud crackle of electricity as Reib's machine popped into existance.   But it wasn't a swamp, it was a Las Vegas suite in The Palace.   Reib had been there on holiday just last year.   Before him sat a old man with a long tangled beard and brown rangy hair, wearing long flowing robes.   Reib, totally confused, climbed out of his machine, stood stuttering.

      "Ah, ee, ah.   Who are you?"

      "GOD, stupid."

      "God?"

      "YES -- GOD.   Got it?"

      "Yeah, okay, God.   Um.   Why do you look like Charleton Heston?"

      "Believe me, Reib, this Heston bit wasn't my idea."

      "Who's idea was it?"

      "Yours ... well yours and John Huston's."

      "John Huston?"

      "Gee's, you remember Heston, but not Huston.   Times like this make me wonder what ever I saw in you guys.   Get with the program, Reib."

      "Program? I'm confused."

      "So what else is new.   Look, just attribute my appearance to Hollywood hipe and leave it that.   Okay?"

      "Okay by me.   What's Hollywood?"

      "Early 20th century flat screen movie capital."

      "Oh, flat screens.   I've seen a lot of those."

      "As if it didn't show.   But look Reib, we've got more important fish to fry here than some Hollywood celebrity."

      "Fish?"

      "Water species, went extinct in the 21st century.   If you don't stop asking questions we're never going to get anywhere.   Understand?"

      "Yeah, okay.   I understand.   No questions."

      The seconds went by.   God sat gazing out the window, holding his staff out before him, his hair and robes flowing back before some none existent wind.   Reib nervously shuffled his feet, scratched his nose, tried hard not to stare.

      Finally God broke the silence.   "Don't you have a question for me?"

      "Yeah, but you told me not ask questions."

      "Ask the question, stupid.   I haven't got all century.   Check out time is 11: 30."

      "Che . . . Um . . . Ah.   What I am I doing here?"

      "All right! About time.   Well it's like this, Reib.   As you know I'm God, and being God, I am of course, omniscient."

      "Omniscient?"

      "All knowing, all seeing, all powerfull.   Got it?"

      "Got it."

      "Okay, Reib.   What that means is I laid down the history and future of the entire universe some - well, lets call it - some billion billion years ago. Close enough for God work.   Got it?"

      "Got it."

      "You could laugh at my jokes, you know."

      "Which jokes?"

      "Humanity, why do I bother? Don't answer that.   At any rate, I put a lot of work into laying down the time track.   Do you realize how much effort it takes to preplan the lives of every living thing for all time?"

      "No."

      "Why doesn't that surprise me? Don't answer that.   So there it is, all planned out to the last minutiae.   And here comes you idiot time travellers in your idiotic time machines.   Everyone of you is a potential disaster to the plan.   I can't have you guys running around loose in time.   I JUST WON'T HAVE IT!"

      With that God swept the back of his left hand across Reib's face, hurtling him backwards across the room.   Reib stumbled back and back, trying to catch his balance.   He reached the window wall, but there was no glass to stop him.   And he fell.   And he fell.   And he fell.   And he fell.

      Then he woke up.   He was lying on the floor of his workshop.   There was a knot on the back of his head, an aching bruise across one cheek and he was alive.

      "What a nightmare! It was so real.   An experience like that could make a believer out someone."

      Reib levered himself up off the floor.   Across the shop his time machine was a smoking ruin.   A twisted, melted pile of metal and plastic.   Totally beyond hope of restoration.

      "Oh, god!"

      "THAT'S GOD WITH A CAPITAL G, REIB! Get it straight, will ya? God."

      "Oh, God!"

      "Right."
 

AUTHOR'S NOTES

      Time Story #1 - Time Travel stories have always intrigued me, not that I think time travel is possible or probable.   I mean, if time travel is possible why haven't seen any Time Travellers? Perhaps like vacuums, nature abhors time travel.   Maybe Reib's fate was just a fluke, maybe it wasn't.

      Time Story #2 - If Time Travel is possible, then one must assume they are either too crafty or too obvious for us to detect.   Perhaps like subatomic particles we need to look for the shadows they cast in passing.   So just why did that guard notice a taped door the night of the Watergate Burglary? A night which eventually lead to President Nixon's resignation.   Would Murph had left a shadow upon history if he had been police blues instead of buckskins? One can only wonder.

      Time Story #3 - The most common form of time travel is of course the day by day existence we all live.   Second followed second, minute followed by minute, hour followed hour - time travelling on in a boringly straight linear flow. Seven words don't make a very exciting story, but they sure say it all - clearly and concisely.   But then again perhaps this paragraph shall too come to pass, too.

      Time Story #4 - Paradoxes and Loops are the nuts and bolts of Time Travel.   In the Grandfather paradox, one of many possible paradoxes, the question is asked what becomes of the Time Traveler who kills his own grandfather? It ranks right up there with 'I am a liar.   I am lying.' as a logic puzzle.   The problem posed in this story is not the obvious 'Can a man be his own grandfather?', but rather lies within the loop.   If you fit a loop on a straight line of time, you have a circle with endpoint potential, or do you? Did John ever exist on the linear line of time or does his existence lie entirely within the loop? This is no small issue - for if John exists only within the loop, who built the first time machine that initiated the loop? Needless to say a loop can do serious damage to a causality based linear time flow.

      Time Story #5 - Avoiding a paradox is an important aspect of time travel stories, but so is the retrieval of lost historical artifacts.   The snatch team from the future knows the past, knows who and how of taking things, and knows how to avoid paradoxes.   Or do they? Sam's team has a cut and dry snatch.   They merely jump in between earthquakes and ahead of the looters to snatch some lost art.   Surely nothing could go wrong on such a simple snatch.   Nothing at all.   Well almost nothing.

      Time Story #6 - One way to avoid paradoxes and loops in time stories is to view time not as a predestined linear flow, but more like a multi-branched network of pathways.   Which pathway time follows depends on what happens at the junctures.   An infinite number of junctures makes for an infinite number of pathways.   (This is not popular with the predestiny minded religious crowd).   In this model of time there are no passive time travellers skipping blithely through the past, only active time changers redirecting the flow of time down new pathways - creating new histories and new futures with each change.   The skill of the changer will determine not only whether the change will work, but whether the change will be delicate or drastic.   Side thought: can you imagine the government regulating an industry that can time change legislators out of existence?

      Time Story #7 - I suppose picking on a dolt like Reib is a bit of a cheap shot, but people like Reib invite cheap shots.   Of course maybe I'm picking on the reader.   Now I don't want to point any fingers, but for all you dullards out there the message is: 'Nature Abhors a Vacuum - particularly Time Vacuums'.   Of course maybe I'm just a sacrilegious dolt taking cheap shots at Religion and god .   . . Um ah, I mean God.

      THE FOLLOWING STORIES HAVE YET TO BE CREATED

      Time Story #8 - The philosophical keystones of science are that the universe is orderly and can be understood.   Time paradoxes are science nightmares come to life.   Pulling the carpet out from beneath causality can do serious damage both order and understanding.   Interestingly enough, paradoxes are also the dividing line between practitioner and theoretician, between astronomer and cosmologist, between dogmatic believer and creative genius.   SO WRITE A STORY, CARL!

      Time Story #9 - Truth be known we are all time travelers moving forward in time day by day by day.   This is hardly a innovative idea though, so let's say you could jump forward days, weeks, months, or even years - then you have a story.   Say a space ship travelling at four tenths the speed of light or a cyrogenics sleeper sanpling a few weeks out of every decade across the millenium; or even an immortal hiding among the masses.   All are interesting story lines.   SO WRITE A STORY, CARL!

      Time Story #10 - Then again if you can't time travel in person, maybe seeing the past through someone else's eyes is the next best thing.   So either you jump back into some mind in the past, or some mind from the past shares your body. You'd be surprised how many Shirley Maclain's there are out there who are convinced this is possible.   SO WRITE A STORY, CARL!

      Time Story #11 - Maybe Time Travel has a self-correcting aspect that dampens out disturbances in the time line - like two sound waves canceling each other out (destructive interference).   If this is true then it doesn't matter for no one in the future will notice a momentary disturbance.   Even if you see a Time Traveler today, who will believe you tomorrow, will you, will he? Who's reality are we dealing with here anyway? SO WRITE A STORY, CARL!

      Time Story #12 - The snatch team (of story #5) stealing out the future from the past is small potatoes compared to a thief stealing out the past from the future.   (Semantics is everything in time travel stories.) People from the future have the advantage of knowing their past and thus can avoid paradoxes, but a person from the past has no idea what kind of changes he brings upon himself or the future.   I think H.G.   Wells had this mind when he had his time traveler go far, far, far into the future.   A future it seems that was beyond memory.   SO WRITE A STORY, CARL!

      Of course none of these stories are original.   But can anything be said to be original? It is not the story form or content that is important here, but rather the telling.   What I've attempted here is to paint a series of stories.   Each story reflecting one aspect of Time Travel.   Each story told as concisely as possible.   Some of these stories, #3 in particular, are probably a little too concise and far from original, but hard to resist nevertheless.   All of the stories require a certain baseline knowledge of things and events portrayed here.   What is a brontosaurus, the Watergate, or MIT; and what do they mean to these stories.   Explaining each of these words, and others, to the reader would add paragraphs to each story.   The clarity of conciseness would be lost in fuzz of verbiage.

Carl A. Smith
Fall, `90
Expanded and edited
Winter, '93

Last Words

If you have any thoughts about this story - good, bad or indifferent - please don't hesitate sharing them with me.   I value your thoughts and your words might well make me a better writer.   Thanks

Carl A Smith
Spring `98

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