Tag: time travel

“You’re not going to understand this for a while but I need to tell you this,” the older man with his arm over the younger man’s shoulders said, “Time isn’t what you think it is. There’s no neat folding of time. It bunches and gathers around the machine.”

“What machine?” the young man asked.

“The machine we built. Will build? Are building? It’s all happening at once but you’re going to have to live through the bulk of it. Come on I’ll show you to where you’ll be working.” The old man began walking with the young man.

“This is research station Gamma, isn’t it? I was supposed to be working here alone.” The young man had been greeted by the older man when he exited the shuttle. As they walked through the station he noticed a few other men walking around. Most were walking away from them but he got a glimpse of a familiar face. A cousin or brother he never had. The old man had surprised him when the shuttle airlock opened. For a second, he had it was his father.

“Yeah yeah. Gamma Station. There’s been a slight change of plans. You’ll still be working alone for most of the year before we bring you into the collective.”

“What is the collective?”

“We’re kind of a think tank for extra-temporal problems.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll figure it out.” The older man opened a door to an empty lab. “Well, here we are. This your lab for the next year. No one will bother you but if you need any materials you can request them through the computer.”

“Ok. Hey, what’s your name?”

“Names aren’t that useful around here. You can call me Thirty-four.” He tapped a patch on his shoulder that displayed the same number. Thirty-four closed the door before he could respond and walked away. Another man, a few years older than the young man, a five on his shoulder, stood nearby in a doorway. He joined Thirty-four walking.

“Got the newcomer all settled in?” Five asked.

“You remember how it was,” Thirty-four said.

“Probably better than you do,” he paused to study the older man’s face, “How much longer do you have here?”

“It’s my last year. What about you?” the older man asked.

“I’m five years in,” Five said tapping his shoulder, “Should be?”

“There’s only ever been thirty-four of me. When the machine explodes and the rest of you reset, I won’t be here anymore. We think that means I’ll be out of the time folds. Or I’ll be dead.” Five was silent. “This is when you walk off in thought.” Five glanced at the older man and turned down a hallway.

Thirty-four continued down the hallway to a door flanked by two men. One with a nine on his shoulder and one with a ten on his shoulder.

“How’s our guy doing?” he asked

“A little banged up but alive,” Nine said.

“He’s a little agitated,” Ten said. He frowned and looked down.

Thirty-four motioned to Ten and walked a few feet away. “We have free will.”

“I know. It’s just I said the same thing Ten said when I was Nine and–”

Thirty-four interrupted, “And when you are Thirty-four you will say what I’m saying now of your own free will.” Ten nodded, his brow still knotted. “When we’re done here you can take the rest of the day off.”

They walked back to Nine and Thirty-four opened the door. Inside a young man sat on a bed. His hair was longer and he sported a beard but he was the same young man Thirty-four had just talked to.

“Hi, how are you doing?”

The young man stood up and approached thirty-four. “Why can’t I leave?” he demanded.

“There are things you need to understand before I can let you loose on the station. What is the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

“I was running a test of the machine. The power started to spike and … that’s it.”

“The machine suffered a catastrophic overload. It exploded. Did you recognize the men keeping you in this room?”

“They look like … Are they clones or synths?”

“They are you. I’m you. We are all one person caught in the folds of bunched up space-time. Do you understand now?”

“No, that’s not possible. Time doesn’t work that way.”

“Do you remember what I told you when you arrived?”

“No. Something about time folding?”

“Time isn’t what you think it is. There’s no neat folding of time. It bunches and gathers around the machine. I just told you this a few minutes ago.”

“You told me that when I arrived a year ago.”

Thirty-four moved to the intercom on the wall. He typed in a passcode and room number. The speaker crackled and a familiar voice came out of it. The young man’s voice.

“Hello, is someone there?”

“Yes, this is Thirty-four. I forgot to mention you can use the intercom to contact me. Just press function nine two zero and I’ll get on the line.”

“Ok … Thank you.” The intercom went silent.

“I remember that. I remember you left me alone and then the intercom started beeping. And … Was that a recording?”

“No. It was live. I could call him back if you want.”

“I’ve been here for a year.”

“The machine did something we don’t really have the words to describe to time. Some thirty odd years are bunched up in this station all happening concurrently. The only way out it to live through it. We call each other by the number of years we’ve been here. You’ll be Two.”

The young man sat down heavily on the bed. “I did this.”

Thirty-four sat beside him and put an arm around his shoulder. “We all did this but we’re going to get out of it together.”

Previous Parts

Codex Cipher – The Arrival
Codex Cipher – The Departure

—

Stephanie and Marcus sat in the hut they had constructed and improved over the last couple of months. It was a far cry from a modern house but it kept the rain off them and the heat of the fire in at night. Stephanie was sitting on a pile of grass mats typing on her phone.

“What are you typing?” Marcus asked.

“I’m recreating the time distortion field formula,” Stephanie said.

“Why?”

“We built a time machine by accident which should be impossible. The other option is that our understanding of the time distortion field is incomplete. I’m hoping to figure out how the machine transported us through time.”

“And then what? We can’t fix the machine or build a new one. We don’t even have enough power to run it if we could.”

She stopped typing on her phone and let her hand fall to her lap. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just wanted to do something.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bum you out.”

“No you’re right we’re stuck here. It’s not like we could Doc Brown the plans to someone in the future.”

“Does mail even exist yet?”

“Who knows?” The lapsed into silence. Stephanie sat looking at the stack of storage boxes they had pulled from the wreckage of their arrival. They had been incredibly lucky those boxes had been stored under the counter and not the Christmas declarations or The Professor’s tax returns. Besides the camping gear box, there had been a box with gardening tools and a garden starter kit. Another had contained a couple of quilts, fabric pieces, and a sewing kit. A third had been full of odds and ends that had proved useful.

Also, the part of living room bookcase, that had made the trip, had contained useful books about simple tools, farming, hunting, building simple structures, etc. Stephanie got up and started looking over the piles of books. Out of almost seventy books, only fifteen were ‘useless’ fiction. The rest were either about the time period they had found themselves or had knowledge to help them survive. She couldn’t have planned for a better selection of books to accidentally take back in time. Or could she?

“How did these books get here?”

“What?” Marcus asked.

“These books. Why were they all on the same shelves?”

“I don’t know. The professor probably just put them on the shelf. She was always buying new books and rearranging everything.”

“Yeah, we got really ‘lucky’. We couldn’t have built this hut with the Primitive Technology book. Without the gardening books, we’d still be eating protein bars.”

“Lucky us.”

“No, we didn’t just get lucky. Where are the books about physics or space or computer programming? Where are the other history books?”

“Probably just on a different shelf.”

“Yes exactly. Why weren’t they on the same shelf with these history books? Why don’t we have books about the Industrial Revolution or cave paintings or Victorian England?”

“What are you saying?”

“I think the books we ‘accidentally’ brought back in time were selected for us.”

“Selected by who? The professor?”

“No. Maybe. What if we could send a message forward in time? What would you say?”

“Don’t run tests on … on … what day did we leave? Doesn’t matter. I’d just say to be extra careful when running tests.”

“Would that cause a paradox? Or is this an alternate universe and paradoxes don’t apply? Either way, it doesn’t get us back to the future.”

“What would you say?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She looked around at the storage crates and books. A memory surfaced. “The professor came to us looking to fund our experiments. She set us up in her house. She stocked camping gear and protein bars and as many useful books she could on a bookcase we were going to take with us back in time.”

“Wait, you think the professor sent us back in time?”

“No, we built the machine but she had foreknowledge of our accident. We sent or will send her a message.”

“But how?”

—

Author’s Note: Primitive Technology is not a book but it is a YouTube channel run by an Australian man who shows how to build tools and buildings from scratch.

“Help! Someone help me! Please!” I held my future self, her blood flowing through my fingers. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was just another adventure. No one dies during an adventure, at least not one of us.
She blinked, coughed, and turned her head to focus on me. “Hey,” she whispered, “I saved you this time.”

“What?” I turned to Bob and shouted, “Do something! Save her!” Bob stared at me, at us, looking like a befuddled old man and not an alien master of time.

“I can’t. This is out of my hands,” he said.

“Why? Why can’t you do anything?” The body I held jerked and became very still.

“You’ve made this loop several times already. When we started this mess, I needed you to be in two places at once. So, I sent a future you back to the start. The first time you, past you, died. You, future you, couldn’t accept that so you went back again and sacrificed yourself for your past self. Again you couldn’t accept your own death and went back again. And again. And again.”

“Why haven’t you stopped me?”

“I tried but you never want to listen to me.” He paused and stared at me. “But you’re listening now, aren’t you?”

“Is this how I’m going to die?” I asked looking at my dead body.”

“Of course not,” Bob scoffed.

“But don’t I have to go back to prevent a paradox?”

“Please, you looped back in time a few times and died. It’s not the end of the universe. Paradoxes don’t exist. Your little human mind can’t conceive of the actual structure of space and time that always exists at all points in time. Time travel is messy. It leaves behind odd traces and tracks through the loops. You are ouroboros. The snake that eats it’s own tail. Most people think the future is the head eating the tail of the past but the truth is the past eats the future. You don’t have to go back in time and do everything she did because she already did it.”

“Why did you let me try to save myself?”

“Because you have free will. Time is always happening at all points, from the beginning to the end, all of it is happening right now.”

“Do you remember me dying?”

“I see all of time. Of course, I remember you dying,” Bob said.

“Ten years from now, am I still with you?” I asked.

Bob looked through me to some point far away, “Yes.” He turned and spoke to his left, “Hush, I’m bridging two moments in time.”

“Ask me if should go back in time.”

“Yes, it’s your first loop. Should she keep looping?” Bob turned back to me, “You say no.”

“Why?” I asked.

“She’s asking why. … Ok, I’ll tell her. Because you lived. It’s a dead loop. The only way out is to let her go.”

“Tell her she’s a fat cow and I’ll see her in ten years to kick her ass.”

He smiled. “You’re a fat cow and she’s going to kick your ass in ten years. She’s laughing.” He closed his eyes and refocused on the present.

“Good. So, what do we do with her?” I gestured at the dead body.

“There are people who can take care of the body for us.”

“No, I want to do it. It’s the least I can do for her.”

“Ok, I’ll get the tarp and shovels,” he said walking off to the car.

<<Previous

---

Mrs. Judith Applesmith, professor of Old English studies, currently on sabbatical. checked her watch as the taxi pulled up in front of their house. “We’re early,” she said.

“How early,” Mrs. Barbara Applesmith, Judith’s wife, computer programmer, specialty cryptology, asked.

“Just a couple of minutes.” She leaned forward to speak to the driver, “Can we wait here a couple of minutes?”

“Sure, the meter’s still running,” the driver said.

“That’s fine we may not be staying anyway.” The driver nodded. She sat back in the seat and said quietly to Barbara, “Do you think it’ll make a noise?”

Barbara glanced out at their house, “Depends on whether it’s an exchange of matter or –” a thunderclap interrupted her.

The driver jumped in her seat and looked at the sky, “Weather report didn’t say anything about rain.”

“Ok so it’s a one way transport of matter through time,” Barbara said. They exited the cab and looked at their house from the sidewalk. “From the outside the damage doesn’t look that bad.”

“Dear, the garage is sagging,” Judith said.

“I was talking about the house. You can see part of a hole in the side but it’s not collapsed.”

“Yet. I’m going to look inside. Stay here and be ready to call for an ambulance if the house comes crashing down on me.” She gave Barbara a peak on the check, strode up to the front door and peeked inside. The ovid hole in the wall stretched almost the length of the living room. It curved up into the ceiling and down into the foundation. There was also a similar hole in the floor boards around a shallow divot in the foundation. In the ceiling a hole opened up a view into the upper floor. These holes, she knew, were not separate events but rather the end result of an egg shaped chunk of space being transported somewhere else, somewhen else, by the machine those two kids, twenty-somethings really but they looked so young to her, had built in her garage with her funding.

“Whoa, that’s weird looking. It’s like a negative space picture,” Barbara said looking over Judith’s shoulder.

“I thought I asked you to stay back.”

“And let you have all the fun? Not a chance. So, what do we do now?”

“I don’t like the look of the ceiling so we’ll stay in the apartment for now. I’ll call a contractor and see about getting some supports put in and a tarp over the garage. You can start emailing physicists and engineers the first page of notes about the machine. We’re off the book from here on out. It’s up to us to save the kids from the past. Somehow.”

---

<<Previous

Stephanie woke up on her back under part of the roof that had collapsed. It had come to rest against the garage counter forming the hollow she found herself in. Water streamed down from the counter and she could hear rain tapping above. Her head ached, possibly from being hit by the roof, maybe from hitting the floor but, other than a few other minor aches, nothing seemed broken.
“Steph! Stephanie!” someone yelled.

“Marcus!” she called back, “I’m under here!”

“Where are you?” Marcus yelled. The piece of the roof over her sagged and shifted.

“Stop! You’re going to crush me!” she screamed.

“How do I get you out?”

“The end isn’t blocked I can just crawl out. Give me a minute.” She rolled over and began wiggling her way along the counter to the open air. A young bearded man, Marcus, appeared at the end and reached in to grab her. She offered her hands and he pulled her the last couple of feet out.

The house was gone. The street was gone. Hell, the entire city was gone. In its place was an empty field surrounded by trees. All that remained was the wreckage she had crawled out of. Part of the garage where they had been preforming their experiments and part of the living room that shared a wall with the garage. The separating wall stood off center on a piece of the foundation which looked about ten feet wide. As Stephanie walked around the chunk of house she could see it was longer in the other direction by several feet. The piece of roof she had woken up under had a rounded edge. So did the top of the wall and the edge of the remaining foundation.

“What happened? Where’s the rest of the house?”

“I don’t know,” Marcus said. He grabbed the edge of the collapsed roof and started pulling.

“What are you doing?”

“The Professor was storing her camping gear right about there,” he pointed through the roof, “She had a tent, sleeping bags, and uh camping stuff in a container.”

“Right ok.” Stephanie grabbed the edge beside him. “On three. One, two, three.” The two of them pulled it off the garage counter and let it fall on the floor. They carefully stepped up unto the wreckage. Marcus started prying the lids of the plastic containers the Professor had kept under their workspace. It had been her house and she had been funding them so there had been little they could do to dissuade her from keeping whatever odds and ends she stuff into a container under there. Now it would be very fortuitous for them as soon as Marcus found the right one.

Stephanie wandered over to The Machine. They hadn’t decided on a name yet and usually just called it The Machine. They had been running a test and then she had woken up under the wreckage. Had the test caused whatever this was to happen? She opened the front panel and gasped. The innards of the machine had been reduced to twisted melted plastic and metal garnished with scorched wires.

“Found it!” Marcus said while pulling a container from under the counter. From inside he pulled out a jumble of cloth and wire. He hopped off the wreckage, looked around before throwing the jumble of cloth and wire into the air. Free of any constraints the wires sprung outward expanding the cloth into a rectangular tent shape. Marcus walked around it fussing with a few bits that didn’t lay right and locking the struts in place. “Grab the box and let’s get out of the rain.”

Stephanie picked up the container with the rest of the camping gear and walked it into the tent.

A short while later they were both sitting in separate sleeping bags beach towels draped over their shoulders while their wet clothes slowly dried spread out in what little space there was in the tent. A solar powered lantern helped take some of the gloom out of the tent.

“What else is in the box?” Stephanie asked Marcus.

“Rope, tent spikes, flashlights, water bags, water purification tabs, you know just camping stuff. Have you got a signal?”

Stephanie picked up her phone that had been charging off the lantern and unlocked the screen. No service. She lifted it over her head and turned it back and forth, still no service.

“Nothing,” she said putting it back down. “Where do you think we are?”

“The countryside? Where else would we be?” he said.

“Ok I’m just going to say it: WHEN do you think we are?”

“That’s not possible.”

“The machine creates a time bubble-”

“Time distortion field effect,” Marcus corrected her.

“Whatever we call it, it changes how time moves.”

“We’ve only been able to generate distortion fields a few millimeters in diameter.”

“I looked at the machine and it’s been slagged like a huge amount of power went through it. A large enough power surge could have expanded the time distortion field.”

“Even if it did, that doesn’t make it a time machine.”

They were interrupted by someone shouting outside the tent. The specific words were unfamiliar but they recognized the cadence and sounds of the language.

“That sounds like Old English,” Stephanie said, “Which puts us somewhen between the fifth and eleventh centuries.”

“Ok, we invented a time machine.”

Author note: The title Codex Cipher will have more meaning in future parts.