Life was once so virtual that it
became possible as part of the natural order of things. I was just the one who happened to do
it. Cogito, ergo sum, ergo ire in
tempus. Now, just keeping the device
functional, just keeping it secret and staying alive is, shall we say, more
than a challenge to the imagination.
I should describe the device. It could look like anything really, of
course. I freely admit that my
expression of it bears a great debt to the science fiction of the 1930s that
once were but are no more, currently.
There’s a word: “currently.” It signifies a pointer. There can be many pointers. But I was describing the machine. It looks like a rounded aluminum rocket ship
with wings resting on its side on tricycle pads. It has a “Flash Gordon” serial style
hatch. Yes, I know you have no idea what
that means as Flash Gordon has never existed fictionally or historically. The wings aren’t wings as of course it
certainly doesn’t fly. They’re solar
arrays and devilishly difficult to maintain.
There is also a second device,
rectangular, also aluminum, about the size of a suitcase, designed to hold
inanimate objects. It goes nowhere. It merely holds its contents in a state of
perpetual temporal elevation and then returns the contents to a preset time,
recursively if so programmed. Ironic
really that the only way to keep something from changing is to keep it
perpetually moving. Moving through the
multiple dimensions of time that is.
Disastrously, I learned that lesson the hard way.
My first experience was with
Shakespeare. I’m told that when I was an
infant, my father used to come into my nursery as I was going to sleep and read
to me from the plays. Imagine someone
reading Titus Andronicus to an infant. The
only thing I recall is the image of a tall black shape framed by the light
coming through the door. Yet I loved
Shakespeare, even as a child. It was a
natural if foolish and ambitious choice.
For the sequel it’s important you
understand what London was like when I began. Though it was a reckless, dangerous age it was
a clean white city with whimsical skyscrapers just beginning to complicate its
skyline. They weren’t yet destroying
it. Wren’s St. Paul’s was a white platonic
vision promising balance and reason. I
rented a large loft in Southwark where I spent months preparing, more months
than it had taken to build the device in the first place. I obtained inoculations from the National
Health Service for a fictitious holiday in the Caucasus. I had authentic clothes made by a theatre artist. I learned to move naturally in them, no small
accomplishment. I took two classes in
original pronunciation. I read history
at a level of detail I’d never read it before.
As far as possible I knew what happened every day in October of 1611. My curious pursuits aroused not the least
suspicion. I told everyone I was an
aspiring actor, which in a way I was, and in that city at that time, pursuit of
that profession was no more than common place.
On October 14 I rented an automobile
with a large trailer into which I loaded the device cleverly disassembled, with
the more curious components boxed. Then
I drove north to an abandoned Rover automobile factory east of Oxford. I recall that traffic was surprisingly smooth
and light that morning. In a magnificent,
ruined hall filled with the massive rusting artifacts of an obsolete assembly
line, beneath a matrix of clouded and broken windows, I re-assembled the
device, changed clothes, packed everything neatly into the car and trailer,
locked both even though I would be back within moments, and stepped into the
device. Within, I seated myself, buckled
the probably superfluous seat belt and shoulder harness, turned on the power
supplies, allowed them to come to full efficiency for a few minutes, booted the
camera and video systems that would capture everything going on inside and
outside the device, booted the probably superfluous environmental system and
waited while it completed its self-diagnostics.
I was ready to go.
And I was terrified, in spite of the
numerous experiments I’d conducted. Did I mention that the second traveler was my
cat Byrd and the first a Monarch butterfly?
I was merely the third, but frightened still. I had scrutinized Byrd after his voyage and
detected no change what-so-ever in his behavior, but who knows what phantoms
reside in the feline brain.
I have no idea how I found the
courage. But I started the computer
controlled sequence that delicately elevated the device into the super-temporasphere,
as I think of Time’s second dimension. (Yes,
it has two, and technically the device performs a rotation in 5-dimensional
Space-Time to use Minkowski’s construction.)
On the screens, the rusting, dusty, moldy factory was first imbued in a
gentle and creamy light then faded away completely to a perfect gray. The patter of the rain on the high roof fell
silent. There was only the slight hum of
the temporal elevation system and in a few moments it began to settle as the
shutdown procedures were executed one by one.
Now there was the sound of
birds. The screens showed me that I was
in the shadow of a copse at the edge of a fallow field. I was rather closer to the trees than my
review of the survey records had suggested I would be. I switched the environmental control system
and took my first breaths of the air outside.
It was merely fresher than what I had been breathing. I stood without any dizziness, and went
outside.
There was no one to be seen, not
even a small farm house. I concealed the
device by setting the automated temporal elevation function to return 24 hours
in the future. Then I picked up my
leather bag containing 2 additional shirts, a pair of hose and a bar of Castile
soap and walked through the copse, crossed two fields and approached the
coachman’s inn at the side of the London-Coventry road.
I was an exceptional event, but I’d
expected it to be. My clothes, rapier
and dagger indicated that I was a gentleman of some means. The insignia on my leather pouch revealed
that I was in the service of the Swedish court.
You’re not so strange if you announce yourself as strange to begin
with. I had my explanation prepared.
I was greeted by an affable ostler
in a leather vest who put his index and middle fingers to his brow in a modest
act of obeisance. He was obviously confused (but not suspicious) that I had no
horse or carriage. Though he didn’t ask
I explained that our carriage had stopped to allow those of us who had need to
relieve ourselves at the roadside. In my
modesty I’d decided to walk the short distance to a stand of trees and, to my
surprise, had been abandoned.
Fortunately, I’d thought to take my traveling pouch with me. Remarkably, this explanation was received not
with skepticism but approbation.
“They’ve done it before sir!
They’ve done it before!”
And so began five rather pleasant
days in a coach’s way station in early Jacobean England. The things that I expected to be most
difficult to deal with, the hygiene, the smells, most importantly the danger of
being discovered turned out to be more than minor. Everyone seemed quite comfortable with my
decision to wait for a colleague who would be coming north in a few days’ time
and with whom I would be traveling on.
Each afternoon I slipped out for a walk and reset the device to return
again 24 hours later.
I enjoyed evenings by far the
most. The inn was lit only by candles
but there were a number of them and the soft gentility of their illumination
was a luxurious thing. What did we do?
We conversed, we sang songs, we told stories. I told rather less than the rest but had
prepared myself with some curious tales from extant German and yes, Swedish
texts that were contemporary. We even
did a few extemporized, silly plays in which I was almost always the gull. Surprisingly, it was all very Shakespearean
and I soon felt that if I never saw the man those few days alone would have
more than merited the effort.
Then, on the sixth day, which was
warm and sunny in spite of the season, as I was returning from my “walk,” I
noticed a new, fine black palfrey, expensively furnished, tied to the post by
the stable. Inside, was a single new
traveler, dressed in elegant black hose and breeches and a black velvet
doublet. I saw him first from behind so
that there was no way I could have recognized him. Yet I knew it was him. Did I know it was him? I knew it was him.
“Pray, let me introduce you to our
other traveler,” Robin Highsmith, the innkeeper said.
William Shakespeare turned around.
“Master Alexsej Johansen, allow me
to present that most famous of writers for the stage, Master William
Shakespeare.”
He was shorter than I expected and slighter. He was, after all, at the peak of his
professional career, newly inscribed as a gentleman in the rolls of the
heraldic college and had achieved considerable financial success as well. Naively, I had expected that to be reflected
in his frame.
He was pleased to meet me and
expressed an interest in conversing later about my homeland to which I know I
responded with too much enthusiasm. Then
he left to see his room. As he was
climbing the stairs behind the innkeeper, he was seized with a fit of coughing
which he covered with a worn lace handkerchief.
Before he stowed it away again in his cuff I noted the pink stains. I knew that Tuberculosis was endemic in late
medieval and Renaissance Europe and I knew he had but 3 years longer to live
yet I was surprised.
He was popular at dinner. My place as most curious guest had been
supplanted by a celebrity and I found myself shunted to one of the few small
tables against a far wall. The center
table at which Shakespeare sat, at the head of course, was a constant
roar. Everyone had a story to tell him
it seemed, and he listened with affable and perspicacious intent. He, himself, spoke little. I conceived of the possibility I should never
gain the chance to speak to him privately to put forth my proposition. I imagined returning to the device, bringing
an unobtrusive camera back and photographing him, my only token of the
visit. Then I imagined terrible things,
the camera discovered, my subsequent torture and trial as a necromancer.
The
complaining of raised voices brought me back.
He should not leave so soon.
Several wanted to bestow a breakfast on him. Shakespeare graciously refused. He must leave early, and retire to
sleep. Those at the table were like
children told they must go to bed without supper. Yet, they toasted him, he toasted them back
saying “they were a faire company yet he would still to bed, though he must
have a few words with the Swedish traveler first.”
And so I found myself sitting across
a small table facing William Shakespeare.
My thoughts were wild. In spite
of the irony of the evening’s incidents it suddenly felt fore-ordained. I wondered if destiny was in fact real. Had I been destined to time travel? Was there some kind of quantum super time in
which both destiny and Space-Time itself resided? Were there more than five dimensions?
“You are then in service to Arne
Erikson the Swedish ambassador? In what
capacity?” he asked.
“My state is gentle. But I serve only as a translator and minor
advisor to his small council.”
I detected the slightest tightening
of lips. Had he already surmised that I
was lying? If so, there was little time
to lose.
“Master Shakespeare, I have a
proposition to put to you.”
“Do you?” He looked suddenly sad. It was the expression of a man who has
accomplished his heart’s desire and found it wanting. I recalled Oscar Wilde’s aphorism. “So many do.”
Shakespeare finished.
“It is not financial or poetical.”
This revived his interest somewhat but
I could still see his wariness. “And
what would that be?”
“I swear by my hope to see God in
the face, that I mean you only great good.
I would ask you to walk across a field and then take a journey of but a
moment.” I could see the beginning of alarm in his eyes. “And then return perfectly safe in goods and
person.”
He watched me steadily.
“I swear I am not mad.” Then I had the presence of mind, God knows
where it came from, to quote Hamlet, “My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep
time, and makes as healthful music: it is not madness that I have utter'd:
bring me to the test.”
This elicited a slow, musing
chuckle. “You are a surprising
gentleman, Master Johansen. And to where
would this journey of a moment take us?”
“Another world, of course.”
He shook his head. “I think not.” He pushed back his chair and stood. He was leaving. I had failed.
My mind, racing once more, grasped for anything that might alter the
direction of our encounter.
“We are such stuff as dreams are
made on and our little lives are rounded with a sleep.” As I spoke the words I sensed I had done
something, strained the fabric of the continuum of creation. For me, everything in the room had the
slightest creamy shimmer and I was nauseous with déjà vu. I had created a time cycle. The first utterance of those words no longer
had a beginning and an end. They now
were first conceived in the future but came from a past that I had as suddenly
destroyed, replacing it with one which was flawed and broken.
“You then are a poet?” Shakespeare said. I could see that he was shaken as well and knew
not why.
“No.
Those words are not mine. They
are yours.”
“I have never said them. Never written them.” His right hand began a gesture, almost as a
reflex. He was going to make the sign of
the cross, but stopped himself.
“I am no demon, I assure you,” I
said hurriedly, realizing the great gulf of the Enlightenment that separated
us, yet which he himself had prefigured in his portrayal of human nature.
“You are not from Sweden, are you?”
“No, verily.”
Those at the long table roared at
some joke and clanked their pewter cups.
“Then, I will come with you,”
Shakespeare said. “ Though hell itself should gape.”
That night I slept little, if at
all. I expected the door to my little
room to be thrust open at any second by a crowd of sheriffs who would then drag
me off to an inquisitor. Yet it did not
happen and so the next afternoon I found myself walking back across the field,
side by side, with William Shakespeare to the place in the shadow of the trees
whence the device would return.
There was a sporadic, teasing wind
that reminded me of something. It took
some time but I realized that it was a scene in Meryon Park from Antonioni’s
film “Blow-Up,” in which plain and ordinary situations were not at all what
they seemed, but actually prefigured violence, a murder which the hero would
subsequently discover in his photographic darkroom with the wind blowing quietly
on the soundtrack once more.
We passed into the shadow of the
copse, the wind still teasing. I noted
that Shakespeare’s right arm now rested across his chest and his hand gripped
the hilt of his rapier. He walked
slowly, warily, looking no doubt for accomplices. I carried a rapier myself but hadn’t the
faintest idea of how to use one, my only fencing experience being with a plastic
sword when I was six. I had no doubt
that he could spit me in a moment. So
the weapon at his hip frightened me and I was careful to walk somewhat off thus
to show no sign of threat. Fortunately,
there was no one else amidst the elm and oak trees who could be mistaken for an
accomplice who meant harm.
We emerged back into the sunlight
near the place where the device would appear.
And now we weren’t alone.
A young, pretty, freckled girl,
maybe twelve or thirteen and wearing a kirtle and apron and hat, was herding a
gaggle of geese across the field.
To my amazement Shakespeare spoke my
thought, “What is she doing here?”
Why would a young girl be herding a
gaggle of geese in a fallow field? The
situation was just slightly strange.
Someone passing in the distance might make nothing of it.
Every few steps of so, the girl
threw the geese a handful of seeds or grain for which they would then hunt the
stubbled grass whilst honking and clamoring.
In another situation it would be merely silly and strange.
I found it sinister. What had brought her here? She continued to perambulate, leading her
rapt and noisy charges. She appeared to
be perfectly innocent. Shakespeare
looked at me, puzzled. Was this some
part of what I wanted to show him.
I shrugged and shook my head. All the while my mind was racing. Why was she here? How could I get her to go away? Would she eventually go away on her own? She noticed us, gave us the slightest curtsy
and what seemed to me then like an ambiguous Mona Lisa smile.
Why was she here, today at this
time? The field, the trees even Shakespeare
and the girl had the creamy shimmer that I’d noticed the night before when I
had quoted “The Tempest” out of time.
So the girl was there because Time
wanted her there or as some sort of natural compensation. Time indeed flowed like a river, constantly searching
for a lower point, searching for a path of stable equilibria and, when that
path was disrupted, it compensated to come back on course. In that instant I imagined Time as a mother,
dressed perhaps as the girl was, but older, stern, cruel and inscrutable. Wanting to go her own way.
She was nudging me back from my
plan. I didn’t know exactly when the
device would arrive. I hadn’t dared
carry an accurate clock in case I was searched.
So we were well early.
I made a decision and decided to
speak my thought to Shakespeare. “It
seems we may have additional, unplanned company upon our journey.”
I saw his hand tighten on the hilt
of his sword. “Perhaps, Master Johansen,
it is time you tell me more about this journey you intend?”
Events were beginning to spin out of
control. And at the same moment, as if
on a whim, the girl waved at us, turned and walked away. It felt like one of those signal moments you
sometimes have when doing science or mathematics, when the universe allows you
to glimpse a secret. It was just a young
girl waving and walking away.
Yet, I knew then it was something
that would haunt me even though there was absolutely nothing really puzzling
about it. It was just a young girl
waving and walking away.
Shakespeare arched an eyebrow,
obviously meaning what now?
But I’d already heard the steady,
mechanical hum within the sound of the wind.
A few yards from us, the device faded into view. The streamlined silver shape was resplendent
in the October sunshine.
This time Shakespeare did finish
crossing himself as he stared at it. “Oh
angels protect us!” Then he whipped his
head to look at me, eyes wide. He drew
the rapier. “Is this what you meant me
to see?”
“It is merely our conveyance and no
danger, I swear.” I held my right hand
up, as if taking an oath. Then I turned
away and walked over to the device. He
was either coming or he wasn’t. I
touched the touch screen next to the hatch, entered the security code and the
hatch slid open. I went inside, and
looked back around, crouching a little because the device is too low for one of
my height to stand upright.
Shakespeare still stood, the rapier
still drawn and pointed absentmindedly at me.
But it was evident that he’d probably forgotten he was even holding it.
“Well, are you coming?” I asked.
I was certain he wouldn’t. What had ever made me think he would?
And at that moment, his face
changed. It wasn’t that he suddenly
gained a look of stoic determination, but rather one of unquenchable
curiosity. He sheathed the weapon and
taking my hand for the first time, stepped up into the device. I had learned at that moment one of the great
secrets of his creativity.
“You are just a man,” he said,
glancing at my hand. Perhaps it was a
question. Perhaps it was a discovery.
“Ego homo sum. I am just a man.”
The factory was just as I’d left it
moments before. The rain still pitted
against the roof and the high glass windows.
Shakespeare wanted to know where we were, what the massive rusting
machines about us were. I explained that
we had changed time and that we were in the same physical place.
“And to what time hast thou brought
me?”
“My own. Four hundred years in the future.”
“And how long will we remain?”
“Only as long as you like. I will take you back now, if you so desire.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
“I would see some little of this
world, first.”
“I thought you would.”
“But why have you brought me here?”
“A little patience.”
He nearly changed his mind once we
were on the M40. Traffic was heavy but
we still moved very fast. He found
passing lories particularly unnerving.
But then I do, too, sometimes.
Music helped. BBC Radio 4 was playing Vaughn-Williams
“Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.”
He didn’t believe London was London,
which made perfect sense. I should say Westminster
as I made a point of crossing the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge so that he could
see the Abbey, one of the few buildings that remain of his London. Traffic was horrific now and you’ll remember
I was pulling a trailer.
“Who are all these people? Why do they dress so foolishly? Of what station in life are they?”
“They come from all over the
world. All stations. And yes, we do dress foolishly.”
“Is there a king still?”
“Yes, though we are ruled by the
House of Commons.”
“That explains much.”
To people on the street and the few
in the car park we were modestly curious at most. I was certain most took us for actors, who
for some, curious reason, had remained in costume after a performance. We took the grinding, industrial elevator,
another device which impressed my guest and which he thought might be another
kind of time machine at first, to the loft without incident. Inside, I told him we were alone and he
should make himself comfortable.
He composed himself on the one sofa
with which I had furnished the spacious room and he leaned back. This brought on another bout of coughing so
that he had to sit up again. Indeed, he
coughed quite often and had become quite expert at hiding and suppressing
it. I wondered how long he’d lived with
it. I retrieved a can of sparkling water
from the small refrigerator and opened it for him. “It’s only water.”
“Only water?” He drank.
“It’s very cold,” he said surprised.
I realized that almost everything was surprising. Maybe he would be able to make nothing of his
time here. Maybe no one could.
“Truly. You are ill,” I observed.
“What of that? I am no longer a young man. I have the face ache, too, often enough. Per chance do you have something stronger?”
I did: Guiness.
“So this I like. There is some sense in this. Maybe I am not amongst the damned.”
“I would like to tell you what I
propose. Your sickness is serious.”
“I know that well enough.” He stood up and began wandering about,
exploring his environment, not so differently from the way a cat would.
“But it can be treated, cured in
fact. This evening we will take a small
supper then tomorrow we will visit a physician.
In the evening we will attend a play and then I shall return you to the
field at the very time we left. But
first, I must provide you with some clothes.
I would have done so before but I had no sense of your size of course.”
All the time we were speaking, he
continued his perambulations. “You have
so many devices,” he observed. They were
all turned off. In spite of first
appearances I was trying to introduce him to this age in a careful and sensible
fashion.
“Does everyone have so many
devices?” he asked whilst I was measuring his chest and arms with a tape
measure.
“Assuredly. Most people in Europe, Asia and the Americas. That is to say, the New World.”
“The Americas?”
“Perhaps we should leave history to
breakfast.”
When I had his size, I retrieved my
mobile phone and turned it on. It made
the usual assortment of sounds indicating missed calls, new text messages and
emails.
Shakespeare only stared. From my contacts I selected the shop I had
prepared for the event and placed the call with the usual touch. "Hi Sally. I have my cousin’s measurements…”
When I finished I could see that
look of alarm that I was beginning to recognize. I think he was considering again the real
possibility that his curiosity had brought him into the company of a devil who
had carried him off to hell and was now toying with him. “That spirit is not in this room,” he said in
an accusing voice.
I had decided that being casual and
matter-of-fact was the best way to deal with these predicaments, the occurrence
of which was unpredictable.
“Most assuredly not. She is a tailor’s assistant. The shop is on the other side of the
river. In Mayfair. This device, it’s called a “Smart Phone,”
allows me to talk to be people in remote locations.”
“Mayfair?” The name was foreign.
“Do you know Brook Field on the
Banks of the Tyburn River?”
“Yes.”
“That is now called Mayfair. There have been clothing shops there for
centuries now. Actually, we passed close
by whilst we were driving.”
He considered me, the room, the
object I was holding to my ear. I
carefully took it down.
“How
remote?”
“Anywhere
in the world, really.”
He nodded slowly. It didn’t feel like a successful
conversation. I had planned to introduce
him to television but decided not to.
He finish his beer in silence and
declined when I offered him another. He
spent some time looking out one of the windows at the street below. It wasn’t much of view: just a street and the banal back of one of
the minor buildings of the King’s College School of Medicine. From time to time his hand still came to rest
on the hilt of his rapier and it occurred to me that I would have to convince
him to leave it behind if and when we went out later.
After some time he said, “Of what
faith are you?”
Of all the conversations I hoped or
expected to have, this was not one of them.
I doubted it would go well.
I took time to answer. “I guess I would say I am a skeptic. There are many people who are of the Church
of England, or Catholic, or other protestant faiths. There are very many who follow Islam,
Buddhism. Though they disagree, most
people of faith, and there are billions, get along well together, especially in
England. There are some, though, who do
not, and religion is still a source of much sorrow in our time.”
“You have all these devices. You travel through time like the angels or
the devils, yet you are a skeptic?”
“I simply don’t know. I sometimes think those who profess certainty
are dishonest with themselves. Other
times I think it is a failure of my understanding.”
The clothes arrived. To my surprise they helped immeasurably. I had been careful to select a good wool suit
in black, a cotton shirt and shoes that fortunately fit well. He felt the hand of the wool and that seemed
surprisingly comforting to him. “They
are just clothes.”
“Yes. Good ones, too.”
The bathroom both surprised and
frightened him, like so much else. But
he soldiered on and soon enough was dressed.
I complimented him on his appearance which pleased him greatly.
“It has been an eventful day,
perhaps, you would prefer to stay in this evening? I can arrange for a dinner to be brought in.”
He was perfectly still for a
moment. “Sometimes, Master Johansen, I
think you are completely mad.”
“So do I.”
He laughed heartily then, for the
first time.
So we went to dinner, I chose a small restaurant specializing in
new versions of traditional English food that was within walking distance. When we first stepped out onto the street, he
took a deep breath and said, “The smells
of London are quite different. Mostly
better.”
Dinner was a success, which is to
say that it was uneventful and he thought the food and wine excellent. At one point, as he was finishing a large
lamb pasty served with grain mustard and rocket salad, he grew quiet and stared
out the window by which we’d been seated.
A couple of black cabs passed.
“I am considering how I should think
of this experience,” he said at last.
“How we think of things is all.”
“You know the principle of “Lex Parsimoniae”
of William of Occam?”
“Most assuredly.”
“That is how I think you should
think of this.”
“That a stranger has ferried me
forward in time 420 years, will show me the future for two days then ferry me
back once more.”
“Assuredly.” I held up my glass in a
toast.
The less said about the next morning
the better as it was spent navigating the National Health Service. To my great surprise and relief it turned out
that he was suffering from a kind of pernicious chronic bacterial bronchitis
which could be successfully treated with an injection of antibiotics followed
up by a few days of oral meds, (versus the months of treatment which
Tuberculosis would have required.) The
dental visit proved even more challenging but as I was willing to pay for
service above that provided for free under the NHS, we were able to have three
painful cavities treated and filled with unobtrusive, natural fillings.
“You are in surprisingly good
health,” I exclaimed as we were riding in a cab on our way back to the flat.
“I am frightfully tired,” he
answered rubbing his jaw. “And I feel no
better.”
But later that afternoon, he
did. And so we went out. This time, we walked north, to the
river. Amongst the things for which I
had to provide succinct explanations were:
commercial jets (one flew over just as we were reaching the south bank),
trains, (one was crossing Waterloo Bridge), the new St. Paul’s, power launches,
cameras, bicycles and jogging. We had
already discussed automobiles on our trip to the NHS. To my surprise after our delicate
conversation regarding religion he seemed to have adopted an attitude of
hyper-observation. He didn’t know what
to make of what he was seeing but he was fiercely determined to see it as
clearly and perfectly as possible.
We passed the massive, brooding Tate
Modern and then he saw it.
“Wherefore?” He stopped and stared at the hale white
recreation of the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames.
“To perform your plays, and those of
others, of course.”
Three pretty girls in black and
brightly patterned spandex with white headphones jogged past giggling.
“Thus did you bring me here? To see this?”
“Yes. And a play.
But dinner first.”
“To that I will agree. Lead on.
But one question. With all this,”
he gestured the great, utterly strange city, “Is this the best you can do?”
“Yours isn’t the only playhouse,” I
answered. “But it is a very good one. And there are other entertainments. Not bear-baiting.”
We ate at the Swan, the restaurant
adjacent to the theatre. We were early
enough that we were able to gain a table by a window which was open due to the unseasonably warm evening.
At one point during dinner, he put
down his wine glass and rubbed the surface of the rough-hewn table. “Verily, this is just the world, is it not?” He watched me with that same perspicacious
stare, searching to see if I would speak truly.
“Verily,” I answered.
“Wherefore?”
“Because you’ve made us what we
are,” I answered. “I wanted you to see…”
He looked at me, expecting a better explanation,
needing a better explanation.
I shrugged; I wished I had one. “Remember Occam’s Razor?” I said.
“Which play?” he asked.
“King Henry the Fourth, the first
part.”
“Not “Hamlet?”
“Time’s winged chariot,” I answered. I wanted to be first. I had to be first. Someone else might be building a machine even
as we watched a barge slowly navigating up the river, which of course made me
thing about time again. I thought being
first mattered.
I think he understood. He said, “I do not care much for your
metaphor.”
“It isn’t mine.”
“Yet, I still think little of it.”
We went to the play.
We settled into our seats on the
second row in the center of the lower gallery.
We were among the first. Soon we
were surrounded: a young professional
couple on our left who studied their mobile phones with intent, two pensioners
on our right in heavy fisherman’s sweaters and, in front of, us, two women with
three children.
“It’s quite different,” he remarked.
“It’s as accurate as it could
possibly be. They even used original
tools to construct it.”
“I meant no offense. And it is not just one thing, It’s many, many small, insignificant things
that continually remind me that it is not the place I knew.”
The floor section filled, mostly
with rowdy young people.
“That is the same,” he smiled and I
wondered if he made the observation for my benefit. Then as the play began, he leaned close and
said, “it isn’t necessary to study me for the entire performance.”
I made every effort not to do
so. I can say that for most of the first
half he wore a look almost of consternation.
That changed during the court scene betwixt Hal and his father, the
king, which was extremely well-performed to my mind. Shakespeare seemed satisfied. And he was
delighted with their interpretation of the Battle of Shrewsbury and Falstaff’s
famous deprecatory speech about honour.
Fog came in during the play and as
we walked back along the river in the clammy, drear, I was reminded of
Victorian London and had the odd sense that I was living in all times at once,
which made me laugh. Perhaps it should
have made me weep.
“You think it is one of my best
plays?” Shakespeare asked in a clinical tone.
“Yes.”
“Wherefore?”
“Structure. And the characters.”
“We haven’t done it in some time,
you know. It used to be very popular when
the old queen was alive. Do you know,
tis’ better than I had remembered? And I
remember every word.”
He was struck with a small fit of
coughing brought on no doubt partly by the clammy wet. He coughed into his handkerchief as usual.
He recovered and studied the
handkerchief. Then he showed it to me.
It was clean.
The next morning we returned to
Oxford. “I am not looking forward to
this,” he said as I helped him with his seat harness buckle in the automobile.
“Returning to your own time?”
“No.
This strangely-achieved coach ride to Oxford.”
Nevertheless, the drive passed
without incident. As we were
reassembling the device, he stopped for a moment and looked around the
abandoned factory and said, “You know, I
am fond of this place.”
The fallow field in the shelter of
the trees was empty, as it had been that first day. We shook hands and said farewell. I watched him walk away into the trees.
Meanwhile, my heart was
pounding. The experiment was finished. What would I find when I returned? At that point, anything was possible.
But the factory was unchanged. The array of windows still obscured a sunny,
autumnal day. I took a different and
faster route to Southwark but saw nothing unusual. Indeed the loft appeared to be exactly as I’d
left it.
That alone was perhaps the most
important thing. It meant that I still
existed. I hadn’t changed time to the
extent that I didn’t. Next, I sat down
at my desk and my computers and began surfing.
There were the same newspapers.
England was still England: we
hadn’t lost the second world war or anything like that. The first change I detected was that there
was a different Prime Minister and a different President of the United States,
though both were from the same parties.
Finally, I felt the adrenalin
decreasing. It was apparent that the
consequences of my interaction with the past were complex. It would take some time to understand
them. I made a fresh pot of coffee and
put a couple of digestives on a plate.
By late that afternoon, as sunset was beginning to color my few windows,
I was ready to examine Shakespeare and his works themselves.
Here is what I learned, bginning
with Shakespeare. He now lived another
11 years. In April of 1616, his greatest
work, the Ariel trilogy of plays, were performed. The plays represented a synthesis of the
highly subjective and immediate sensibility that had begun with “Hamlet” and
the affectionate, yet classical and objective perspective of “The Tempest,”
which was now a lost play, the existence of which was inferred by letters from
members of the company. The plots of all
three plays bore a strong debt to “Henry IV part 1” but were also startlingly
original. These were the plays that
everyone read in school now. The plays
were rightly categorized as part mystery, part history and even part science
fiction as they speculated on technology that wouldn’t appear for another 400
years.
I leaned back from the screen, took
a small bite of a cookie and sipped my coffee.
It was more than I’d dared hope.
Yet, I had a sense of melancholy, of unease that I recognized. It was the almost physical discomfort that
came from having a mathematical problem that I hadn’t yet solved. And now, for the first time, I could express it.
Minkowski’s great contribution to
Special Relativity was devising the metric to measure distance in four
dimensional Space-Time. I had realized
that Space-Time was actually five dimensional, that there were two time
dimensions and that there were time quanta.
Yet, I hadn’t found a way of measuring distance in that larger
dimensional space. In the greater sense,
even though I could change time, I didn’t know how close two versions or events
were. Had I changed Time a little, or a
lot?
More research. There was no Civil War in England: Cromwell and the King were reconciled and
though Parliament emerged as a much more formal and powerful institution, it
wasn’t as strong as it had been under the Protectorate. Still James II was the last Stuart and under
the Hanovers there was the American War for Independence. For a few moments it seemed Time had found
its way back to the same course it had flowed before. The image of a mighty river winding through
tall rock canyons came to mind. Also of
a goose girl in a field.
Then there was the 20th
Century: Though James Joyce was
published, his ideas were considered highly derivative of those that had first
emerged in Shakespeare’s Ariel plays.
Freud was nearly forgotten: Carl Jung’s
psychology and methods dominated scientific thinking about the mind.
I
found myself scanning through screens and pages of history, science, popular
culture trying to conceptualize what had changed.
The
wars and their outcomes seemed the same at first as I raced through them. Then, something caught my eye, the number of
Polish dead in World War II. Had it
always been that large? I turned my
study to the casualty figures. Those of
World War I were the same. But total of those
of World War II were almost double. In
all, 160 million people had died. The
United States had dropped nuclear weapons in Europe as well as Asia. In the world before one of my grandparents
had been a Spitfire pilot. It was
amazing I was still here at all.
I
knew it was time to do science. I should
never have embarked without solving the 5 dimensional metric problem in the
first place.
It
took three months to solve and verify empirically. Once again Byrd was pressed into service;
there was no need for I, myself, to travel, and, to be honest, fear was an
important aspect. All the time I was working, the Goose Girl’s enigmatic smile
in the field that day haunted me. What
if I had left Shakespeare behind that day.
How much would have changed?
Would there still have been an Ariel Trilogy?
With
the solution in hand I went to work to see if I could find a correction for the
dreadful consequences of my voyage. Yet,
even as I started, I sensed what the solution would be. Once again, it felt fore-ordained. So that when I determined what it was I must
do, the answer conveyed only despair. I
would have to engineer the death of Hitler in 1943.
Preparing
for 20th century Germany was infinitely more difficult than Jacobean
England had been. Even the complexities
of the language weren’t the half of it. The
device itself required interesting modifications so that it could be
transported securely to Berlin to one of the few places that would exist in both
Space-Time frames and also provide the necessary discrete concealment.
However,
before I left London, I took one of the few public tours of the disused Aldwych
tube station. In one of the darker
tunnels, I managed to hang back from the group long enough to remove a small
aluminum case from my backpack: the
other device. Within it was a physical
book: Shakespeare’s complete works,
including the Ariel Trilogy of course.
In moments I had set it perennially traveling in time, set to return
once each year for a period of minutes to this location.
Later in the afternoon, our tour
emerged into a rare sunny London day.
Two days later I departed for Berlin.
I will spare you the melodramatics of what happened that September day
in the Reichstag, when an unknown Swedish diplomat shot and killed Adolf
Hitler.
Nor will I reveal the clue I saw
that same day that revealed that I wasn’t alone in my efforts to rearrange
history.
In spite of my calculations, I was
not prepared for the desperate world to which I’ve returned. Ironically, my calculations were
correct. Once again the number of dead
in World War II was 80 million. But then
there was what came after.
That terrible fifth dimension. I have learned that Space-Time itself is
unstable. There is no such thing as a
local change. Quantum effects involving
that fifth dimension have universal consequences. Even so, in a ruined factory, outside what
was once Oxford, I work in secret to find a way to recover the terrible, yet
better, history that was. My only and insufficient
comfort is a non-existent book traveling perennially through time except for a
few minutes each November.
November
14, 2014
Thomas
Jensen
Copyright
2014 – All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment