Fiction Fragment Friday
First off I am not happy with this story. The beginning is strong and there are some great concepts, but it would need a serious rewrite effort to reach something I’m pleased with. An idea for a conversation grew into a full much darker story. I think it’s good to show these kind of weeks where I didn’t accomplish what I wanted with a story. I also think there is enough to this that it is worth putting out there in this form and perhaps sharing a rewrite in the weeks to come.
The smell of burning plastic assaulted my nose, and the smoke stung my eyes. Capacitors burst loudly, making me jump, which distracted me just long enough that I didn’t avoid the sparks burning my arm. Every alarm built into the system, both visual and auditory, was being triggered. “Come on, baby, just hold it together a few more moments,” I said through gritted teeth as I moved jumper cables to bypass the blown capacitors.
The world starting five feet away from me blurred like looking through the hot air over a fire. “It’s working. It’s actually working,” I yelled and started laughing. Everything went bright white with energy arcing all around me. I could smell my arm hair burning off in the onslaught, but it didn’t matter. As the surrounding light faded, the world came back into view. I might have to make repairs before I could return home, but I had really traveled thirty years into the future.
A slow clap came from the corner of my basement. “Bravo. Bravo.” A strange man stepped into the light wearing a brown jumpsuit. He looked closely at my time machine, examining every aspect. “Wow! I mean, I saw a documentary on this thing, but it just could not do justice to how big a piece of shit it really was, or I guess is.” The man spoke while walking around the machine and waving his arms in wild gestures. “Tenses am I right? Hard to keep track of um when you travel through time. When your future is in the past and all that.” He looked sideways at the blown capacitor bank. “Man, you actually traveled through time on that hunk of junk…. And it worked?”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t care for how he spoke about my life’s work. Even if it was smoking and needed a day’s worth of work before, I could risk turning it on again. “Who are you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m nobody. Not yet at least, but you.” He ran across the basement and held my head between his hands. “Oh you. James Henry Anderson, the first man to successfully travel through time.” He let me go and paced the basement.
“Are you saying in your time I’m famous?”
“Famous? You’re practically a household name. A damn hero to the masses. Well, the ones still alive anyway.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” All the humor in the man’s voice had faded. In its place was anger so deep it gave me pause.
“What does it mean? What does it mean?” He yelled with his head to the ceiling. “You spent all that time trying to figure out how to create your machine. Did you ever once stop to ask yourself how they would use it?”
“Who?”
“Terrorists, governments, the super wealthy. Take your pick, man. Paradox after paradox, as they all fought for money or power. Have you ever asked yourself how many times a paradox could overwrite the same moment in time? The answer is three. At three, it reaches critical mass and the whole universe collapses around us. Oh, it all stitches itself back together in some form, but heaven help you if you were near ground zero because you ain’t coming back.”
I stood there stunned, trying to wrap my head around the concepts. They did fit some of my theories, but I just couldn’t believe anyone would be so stupid do what he was describing. That was when I noticed the gun. He was holding it aimed right at me.
“There are no paradoxes here. I shoot you and I create one. Just one. Go back to my time as the only one who ever remembers that you discovered time travel.”
“Someone else will just discover it.”
“Maybe, but as long as it isn’t in my lifetime, I don’t really care.”
A woman stepped from the shadows behind him and brought a second gun to his head. “Drop it Xan. Don’t make me shoot you.”
“Jessie? Come on, Jess, you know this has to happen.”
“No, I don’t. All the future from this point on is in flux. You don’t have to kill him.”
“Yes, I do. It’s the only way.”
The sound of a gunshot filled the basement. I looked down, expecting to find a wound, but I wasn’t the one shot. Xan dropped to the ground with a large wound in his stomach. From behind my machine came an older version of myself with burn scars. He raised his gun and shot Jessie between the eyes. Then he turned to me. “Since they still came after me, I guess I failed again. What do you say, lad? Third times a charm?”
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