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Futures 5: Anne
September 14, 2014
“Hello?” said Anne, opening the door. An older gentleman stood on the mat.
“Hello. Anne Gardiner?” he said. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“What about?” Anne responded, suspicious.
“My name is Alberto Gonzalez, and I’m a relative of your husband’s.”
Anne looked more closely at him. Indeed, he looked a lot like her Al. More precisely, he looked as she imagined Al might look in forty years.
“My husband is not at home right now.”
“Not important. My business is with you.”
“Please come in.”
“Thank you,” he said, and entered.
She waved him to a seat, and asked, “Will you have something to drink?”
“I mustn’t eat or drink right now. You will see why in a minute.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Dr Gardiner,” he answered, “I have some very strange things to tell you. I am afraid you will find them difficult to believe, but I will offer evidence.”
“To be honest, I might be better at that than most people you know.”
“Indeed. I know that you and Dr Gonzalez learned some remarkable things two years ago that are still not fully explained. I can help with some of those.”
“In fact, one of my colleagues from that time contacted me to tell me you’d be visiting. If not for that, I probably wouldn’t be listening to you now.”
“Yes. I spoke to Night yesterday and asked It to smooth my path.”
“What?” Anne said. “You know about Night?”
“Yes. I know about Night, and have a diamond anvil cell transceiver to speak to It.”
“How did you get that? I though only Al and I knew about Night and had transceivers.”
“Before I answer. I’m going to offer you some of that evidence I promised.”
He pulled a small package out of his pocket. “This is a saliva collection kit for genotyping. I’m going to collect a sample, right in front of you, so you know for sure the sample I hand you came from me. Excuse me—this is not a dignified process.”
He opened the kit, spat copiously into a plastic tube, added solution from another tube, capped it, and handed the sample to her.
“I’m going to give you another of these kits. Collect a sample from your husband in the same way—there are instructions in the kit. Bring the two samples to any reliable genotyping service and ask for a comparison.”
He handed Anne a card. “When you have confirmed my relationship with Dr Gonzalez, please contact me, so that the three of us can get together and talk about your daughter.”
“My daughter?” she said, her hand flying to her mouth.
“Yes, Dr Gardiner, you are pregnant. You might pick up a test kit and confirm it.”
#
She did, and she was. She and Al collected Al’s saliva sample. They gave both samples to a molecular biologist friend of Al’s.
September 21, 2014
Old Al, as Anne was coming to think of him, showed up at their home.
“I’d like to make this a four-person meeting, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Can we bring Night in, too?”
“OK with me,” said Al.
“Me, too,” said Anne. “Did you bring your transceiver?”
“I did, but I’d prefer that we use one of yours. Thus you will know I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you.”
“Fair enough,” said Anne. She put her transceiver in front of her and turned it on.
Night’s voice spoke, “¿Que pasa, Anna?” Night had come a long way. After two years of full Internet access It knew more, and had Its own distinctive voice and accent, modeled after a recording of Borges It had found.
“Night, I am here with Al and an older gentleman whose name is also Alberto Gonzalez. He promises to explain some things to us. He asked us to include you.”
“Indeed, Mr Gonzalez spoke with me a week ago.”
Al asked, “How old are you, Mr Gonzalez?”
Old Al answered, “This body is 70 years old, Dr Gonzalez.”
“Explain to me how it, this 70-year-old body of yours, is genetically identical to mine.”
Anne said, “Aha! I’ve been thinking about that.”
“There’s only one explanation that makes sense,” Night said.
“Time travel,” Anne said. “Mr Gonzalez here is not just related to you, Al. He is you. You from the future.”
Night added, “That atom bomb explosion in Oregon in 1940 that we were all so puzzled by. The atom bomb was invented in 1945. Someone must have brought one from the future to 1940 and set it off in the forest.”
“And Al, that forest service ranger you met—”
“—Molly—” interjected Old Al.
“—told you that the bomb had been set off to attract our attention.”
“Which would mean,” Night said, “if we believe this Molly, that someone with access to atom bombs and a time machine is interested in us. We move in exalted circles!”
Old Al said, “Well, I thought I was going to explain things to you. We’re doing it the other way, though?”
Al answered, “But if you are future me, how is this a surprise to you? Don’t you remember this meeting?”
“Not in detail, Dr Gonzalez. I am 70 years old. For me 46 years have passed since this conversation.”
“Oh, call me Al, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yes, of course. You can all call me Tío.”
Night asked, “Am I right, then? You’re backed by some organization?”
“Of course. It’s a cabinet-level government department called the Department of Temporal Affairs.”
“And they set off a bomb in the mountains of Oregon in 1940 to attract our attention?”
“Yup, we did that. Got some help from Los Alamos.”
“You’re an employee of this Department, Tío?” asked Anne.
“I will be. It doesn’t exist yet.”
“What’s your job title?”
“I’m head of the Engineering Division.”
Al whistled. “And what do y’all do? Send agents back to kill baby Hitler, and stuff like that?” he asked.
Anne said, “Al, you know that doesn’t work. According to science fiction, you can’t predict the results, and are just as likely to make things worse as better. Butterfly effect, and all that…”
“Yeah, but that’s fiction,” Al replied.
“Al is mostly right. That’s the kind of thing we do. We call it temporal engineering. But Anne is also right. Changing the future by changing the past is hard. Results are unpredictable. We usually fail. Almost always, in fact. We try over and over until we get an acceptable result.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Night asked. “Do you plan to send us back to kill baby Hitler?”
“Not exactly. You’re thinking along the right lines, though,” Tío answered. “Think about it. What would the highest priority of a temporal engineer in 2014 be?”
“Ah!” Al almost shouted. “There is no time travel yet. Someone has to invent it!”
“Exactly,” Tío answered. “I am here to engineer the invention of time-travel.”
“But you know how it works, Tío!” said Al. “Can’t you just tell us?”
“That,” Tío said, “is what we call a causal loop or bootstrap paradox. Theory shows it doesn’t work. Bootstraps are unstable and unravel.”
“So, it’s our job to find the inventor?” Night asked.
“We already know who she is. Actually, she’s here right now.”
“She?” Al’s eyes turned to Anne.
Anne said, “Don’t look at me! I’m a historian, not a physicist.”
Al’s eyes widened. “Our child?” he asked.
Tío pointed a finger at him. “Bingo,” he said.
#
“I have a lot to ask of you all. Night, your part will come later. Anne and Al, we’re on a tight timeline. We need your daughter to be 18 years old in 2025.”
“Not possible. She’s due in June, 2015. She’ll be ten in 2025,” Anne said.
“Ah, but time travel.” Said Al.
“Right,” said Tío. “Al, how’d you like to be a temporal engineer?”
“Sounds exciting!” answered Al. “How long will it take?”
Tío answered, “There are two answers to that question. You’ll experience it as a six year program. But I’ll take you out of this time for the training. From Anne’s point of view you’ll only be gone a few days.”
“And when he comes back six years older?” Anne asked. “No one’s gonna notice that?”
“Al will return in the same 24-year-old body you know now, but with six additional years of memories.”
“What will I do with those memories and new abilities?” Al asked.
“We’ll ask you, Al, to raise your daughter to the age of 18 from 1907 to 1925.”
Anne looked confused, “Why do you say Al will raise her? I’ll be there with him!”
“I’m sorry, Anne,” said Tío. “Yours is the greatest sacrifice. We want you to return to 2014 after giving birth and spend your next 11 years preparing for your daughter’s return in 2025.”
“You want me to miss my daughter’s childhood?” she asked, aghast.
June 21, 1907
Anne had given birth to her daughter Elliotte two weeks ago, here at their home in early twentieth-century Elmwood. She was assisted by an obstetrics team who had time-traveled back to 1907 with the best of 2052 medical technology. The birth had gone well.
2052 had also, horrifyingly, supplied a corpse that looked just like Anne, giving out that she had died of postpartum hemorrhage. It was now buried in the Elmwood graveyard, with a headstone identifying it as the body of Anne Gardiner, 1882-1907.
Since the birth, Anne had been hiding in the house, spending time with Al and her new daughter.
She opened the door to their bedroom and saw something extraordinary. Al was standing by the bed. Then, he seemed to blur and stretch out away from the bed into a sort of extended version of himself, as if numerous Al’s were all there blurred in a row back-to-front. The blur disappeared, leaving behind a single Al where the end of the blur most distant from the bed had been.
“Al, what did I just see?”
“I just forked, Anne. I am not exactly the man I was ten minutes ago. Do you remember what Tío told us about temporal engineering?”
“That you try over and over until you get the right result?”
“Yes, this is how we do it.”
“But what does that do to Elliotte?”
“She only experiences one fork. You, too. Each fork is a fresh start for everyone except me.”
“And for you?”
“I bear the memories of each attempt. I get better each time. I know our daughter now better than any parent has ever known a child.”
“Do I really need to leave?”
“It is much better so, Anne. This is a hard time to be a woman. Especially a woman such as you, a scholar. You’d go crazy in Elmwood. Women are not admitted to most universities in 1907. Women will not even have the right to vote until 1920!”
“I could work on that.”
“You could. In fact, you would. You would change history. I am not guessing about this. We’ve tried it.”
“And then what?”
“And then Elle grows up to be a strong independent woman like her mother, and not to be the physicist who invents time travel.”
“And if time travel is never invented, how did I come here from from the 21st century with my 21st century ideas?”
“Yes. That’s the problem. It’s unstable, and it will come apart.”
“But how can you raise Elle alone? It must be a hard thing for a single man to do.”
“Not so much as you might think. You’re a historian.”
Anne replied, “Right. Many women died in childbirth in these times. So, a lot of fathers raised children alone. There must be support for single fathers.”
“Yes. For instance, there are recipes for making baby milk from cow milk and other things. Besides, I brought supplies with me from 2014. I’m not looking forward to dealing with cloth diapers, though. You wouldn’t enjoy it, either—trust me on this.”
“All right, then.”
Anne stepped to the time gate. She spoke to it, “Authenticate.”
The door answered, “Anne Gardiner. Authenticated by voice and facial recognition. Target?”
“Dallas, Texas, seven October 2014,” she answered, and stepped through.
June 6, 2026
Anne said, “They’re here.”
Al looked up from tuning his guitar. “Yeah. I can hear Molly cursing their car.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Not a thing. It’s a machine, and like every machine ever made it doesn’t always do exactly what she wants. Molly loves it, actually. She also loves to use words like ‘damn’ and ‘hell.’ In Elmwood such words could not be pronounced by females, or even in the presence of females.”
Anne opened the door.
“Happy almost-birthday!” she said.
Al said, “Happy birthday eve!”
Exactly 101 years ago Elle and Molly had spent their last evening as 17-year-olds together, a Saturday night. Elle had wished to leave Elmwood. That wish had come true. Molly had wished to go with Elle. That wish, too, had come true.
Tonight was their last as 18-year-olds. They’d been living in Dallas one year. Identities had been crafted for them by government specialists whose job it was to produce false documents. Their dates of birth on those documents were June 7, 2007.
They had quickly gotten used to washing machines and microwave ovens. iPhones and facebook took a bit longer. They even shared ownership of the car, a used Honda Civic. Molly had her license—Elle was still working on hers. They rented a one bedroom apartment together. Both of them were delighted to be shocked that their living arrangements scandalized no one.
They would move to Austin in fall. Elle would study physics at the University of Texas. Molly hoped to join the Austin music scene.
Tonight was once again Saturday night.
Al began to sing,
“Won’t you dance with her Molly?
It’s Saturday night.”
Elle stepped into Molly’s arms, and they danced.
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Afterword
The cover image is a phase portrait of
The portrait is rotated 15° clockwise.
A phase portrait is a visualization of a complex function introduced by Elias Wegert in Visual Complex Functions: An Introduction with Phase Portraits.
The giant web of time traveling here is fascinating!
Great writing, and I’m looking forward to reading the next part of the story!
A mother missing her daughter's entire childhood so that daughter can grow up to invent time travel — and the greatest sacrifice in the story is framed as an act of love rather than loss. The ending with Al singing as they dance is a quiet payoff that works really well. Nicely done.