How ironic, I thought. So I turned out to be a hero after all, only no one would ever know of it. I resumed my pacing. Suddenly my feet felt cold. I looked down. I was standing barefoot on the cold cement floor; my shoes and socks had vanished from my feet!
Mystified, I wondered how that had happened. I had put on my shoes and socks before I had started pacing my cell. I was sure of that. I had not removed them. I was equally sure of that. Still, there was no denying the fact that they were no longer on my feet. On the off chance that I had absent-mindedly removed them, I searched under the bed. Nor were they on the bed.
I wondered for a minute if my cell was haunted. Then the absurdity of the idea struck me. Here was I, an educated man, a scientist, behaving like a superstitious peasant.
Moreover, as I thought about it, there was not just one explained event, but a pattern. My sword had vanished in 1870 Paris, so too had my wristwatch and now my shoes and socks in 1941 Honolulu.
Suddenly, I recalled something! “Kupinski!” I said aloud. “It has to be connected to Kupinski’s laws of time travel!” The disappearances, I realized, were all related.
Kupinski was an obscure Russian physicist who had been on the faculty of the University of Ekaterinburg in western Siberia in the late 1890s. I had first learned about him during a trip I had made to Russia several years earlier.
My decision to go on the guided tour had been made when I unexpectedly completed all the tasks assigned to me by Dr. Bolton some two weeks before the start of the fall term. Leaving my office at Guggenheim Hall, I had noticed a flyer posted outside the department office advertising a seven-day, all-inclusive trip to St. Petersburg and Moscow sponsored by the National Physics Society. The price was low enough to be almost affordable, and best of all, it would permit me to return before my classes resumed.
Calling the number listed on the poster, I was told that a last-minute cancellation had fortuitously created a vacancy in the group which I could take advantage of if I acted immediately. My interest was fanned at what appeared to be a bargain. I willingly agreed to pay for the trip via my credit card, ignoring the casual aside from the tour operator that I naturally would be charged an extra fee for occupying a hotel room by myself.
My time in Russia was reasonably pleasant. The other members of the tour group were all married couples in their late sixties or older, active and retired professors of physics and their spouses. They were polite to me, although I was excluded from all of the private sightseeing and dining that supplemented the group’s organized activities.
Still the sightseeing, particularly the art treasures in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and Moscow’s Red Square at night, was so memorable as to make me feel as though the vacation was worthwhile.
The highlight of the trip was the gourmet banquet at one of Moscow’s best restaurants followed by an evening at the Bolshoi Ballet on the last day before our return flight to the United States. The day had started pleasantly enough, with a visit to the Kremlin. After a pedestrian lunch at our tourist style hotel, the tour bus had taken the group to the far side of the Moskva River to enjoy the view of Moscow.
From the embankment above the river on which the bus was parked, we could see the towers of the Kremlin on the other side of the river. Behind us, were the red brick towers of the University of Moscow, built in the characteristic “Stalinist” style of architecture.
The members of the group had dismounted from the bus and were variously engaged in taking photographs of Moscow or in bargaining with venders selling souvenirs of Moscow. I was still naïve enough to believe that bringing back from Russia gifts for Dr. Bolton and the other members of the department might aide me to acquire tenure. I began negotiating with an elderly man for miniature wooden dolls bearing the likeness of the Russian president.
Tanya, the tour guide, came up to me. “Mr. Snodgrass,” she said, “we have a problem.”
She was an excellent guide, fluent in English and extremely knowledgeable about the museums and historic spots we had visited. She had gone out of her way to assist the other members of the group, including helping them to bargain with street vendors and to hire taxis for any private trips my companions might wish to use for private trips. My own opinion of her was less favorable, probably because I was the only professor in our group whom she addressed as “Mr.” Rather than as “Professor.”
I tried not to let my annoyance show as another member of our group took advantage of the distraction to purchase the dolls.
“They sent over only fifteen tickets for the performance tonight. I tried to get more but the Bolshoi is all sold out. To avoid discomfiting the married couples in our group I gave them the tickets. I’m afraid there is no ticket for you.”
“What do you mean? I asked. “There are only fifteen of us in the group and they sent fifteen tickets.”
“Yes,” she said, “That’s true. Unfortunately, the tour group operator requires me to accompany the group on all official outings.”
I started to protest vigorously, but she left me standing as she agreed to help another member of our group with her bargaining. I moved to catch up with her, but felt a tug at my sleeve. It was the vendor with whom I had earlier been bargaining. He had procured more wooden dolls and now offered to sell me then at a slightly lower price.
As I paid him and took the bag containing the dolls, I heard a sound and looked up. The driver of our tour bus was blowing his horn, the signal for us to return quickly. I tried to run to the bus, but was delayed by several other groups of tourists. My desperate cries for the bus to wait were futile. The last members of my tour group entered the bus, the doors closed, and the bus drove off, leaving me behind.
I noticed other tourist buses still parked on the embankment and thought of asking one of their tour guides if they could give me a lift back to my hotel. I realized, however, that most of the tour groups were lodged in hotels closer to the center of Moscow than mine was and that I would be not much better off there than here. I decided that the best thing to do was to go into the University of Moscow and see if I could find some English-speaking person who could help me summon a taxi that would take me back to my hotel.
Entering the university building, I was struck by the unusual nature of the décor. Richly-colored tiles lined the walls. As I stared up at the interior of the center tower, someone spoke to me in Russian. I turned and found I had been accosted by a uniformed guard.
My very limited knowledge of Russian was inadequate for me to understand what he was saying to me, but I gathered he was asking for my identification or passport. I had none; my passport had been taken by our tour guide when we registered at the hotel and never returned.
Inspired, I said “professor… library.” On the third repetition, he understood and escorted me to the university library. My hope that I would find there an English-speaking librarian proved correct, a distinguished looking, elderly woman listened to the guard’s comments and agreed to take charge of me.
The guard left, relieved that I was no longer his responsibility. The librarian smiled at me. “Can I help you, Professor?” she asked. Her English sounded as though she had learned it in Oxford.
When I informed her of my problem, she explained to me the intricacies of taking the Moscow subway and wrote down precise directions for me to find the nearest station and then get back to my hotel.
“It is on the metro line,” she said, “There is no need for you to go to the expense of taking a taxi.”
I expressed my thanks and asked if there was some way I could repay her kindness. “There, is Professor,” she answered. “My English is becoming rusty from lack of use. I would be grateful if you could converse with me for a few minutes longer so that I may have the practice.”
I gave her my name and learned hers was Markova. She was extremely proud of her English grandmother, apparently an important British Communist, and informed me she had once had the opportunity to visit Britain and meet some of her English relatives.
The time was getting late and I was starting to say goodbye when she asked me what areas of physics I was interested in. I mentioned the subject of my dissertation and the courses I was scheduled to teach in the fall semester. Without thinking, I added that I was fascinated by the idea of time travel. Normally, I would not have done so, because of my fear of being ridiculed.
To amazement, she was knowledgeable about the scanty scientific literature on the subject. After mentioning some of the authors in the field, she asked, “Have you ever heard of Professor Kupinski’s research?”
“No, Madame,” I answered, “Who is Kupinski?”
“Let me show you,” she declared. She gave me no opportunity to argue. Grabbing my arm, she led me behind the library counter and down into the farthest reaches of the library stacks.
Peering closely at a pile of boxes and folders, she found the container she was looking for and instructed me to put it on a nearby table. The box was heavy and indescribably dusty. Surely nothing of any value, I thought, could be found amidst such confusion and litter. Opening the box, she began to search the bundles of documents inside.
“Madame,” I said, trying to disengage myself as politely as possible, “Please don’t trouble yourself. I don’t read Russian.”
She ignored me and continued her activity. I was about to repeat myself when she stopped and gave me a triumphant look. “Here you are Professor Snodgrass,” she said, “The Kupinski papers. Don’t worry about reading them,” she added, “He wrote primarily in English to conceal his findings from anyone who might come upon them. Apparently, few people were conversant in English in Ekaterinburg.”
She handed me a package of papers neatly tied up with a black ribbon. I shook the package to remove the dust and started to untie the ribbon.
“Please be extremely careful with them!” She cautioned. “The paper is very old and is disintegrating.”
“How long have they been here?” I asked. “They look very old.”
“Professor Kupinski wrote them in 1896 and 1897,” she said. “They were shipped here sometime after the Russo-Japanese War when a fire damaged the library at the University of Ekaterinburg. I was asked to catalogue them as one of my first tasks after joining the staff of the Moscow University Library.”
“It doesn’t look as though anyone has looked at them in many years,” I stated, blowing away some of the accumulated dust.
“No one has looked at them after me,” she said. “And I didn’t go through all of them. I stopped when I realized that some of the pages were disintegrating when I touched them.”
As delicately as I could, I removed the ribbon and started to read. The papers were written in ink in handwriting that would have served as an example of fine penmanship. I strained to decipher the writing. The ink had faded and parts of some pages had already disintegrated.
I immediately realized the papers were priceless. Kupinski had come up with many of the same mathematical formulas I had. As far as I could determine he had never attempted to actually build a time machine, probably due to the less developed technology that existed in the late 1890s. This explained, I thought, those few errors I found in his calculations.
The last few pages were the most fascinating and also the most tantalizing. His theoretical work had extended into areas I had not pursued. His conclusions in this area were detailed in a section labeled “Kupinski’s Five Laws of Time Travel.”
Unfortunately, this section was also that part of the papers in the worst condition. Several pages were completely missing, other pages had portions rendered illegible by fire damage. I might have gotten more from them, but Madame Markova warned me that the library was about to close and we would have to leave.
In the few minutes that I had, I hurriedly scribbled down those of the formulas that I could decipher. Then, most reluctantly, I watched her rewrap the Kupinski papers and return them to their storage box.
“Why don’t you return tomorrow, Professor?” she asked as she escorted me to the exit. The building had already been locked for the night and it was only at her request that the guard permitted me to leave.
“Thank you, Madame Markova,” I said. “I wish I could. Unfortunately, I must leave Moscow early tomorrow to return home.”
Thanking her again, I said goodbye and headed off to find the metro. My head was so full of magnitude of material in the Kupinski papers that I failed to observe where I was going and found myself hopelessly lost.
Eventually, after innumerable conversations with passers-by I encountered on the streets, from whom I tried to obtain directions, I found the metro.
After two ill-fated metro rides that took me where I did not wish to go, and one exorbitantly-priced taxi ride, I managed ultimately to return to my hotel in time to encounter the members of my tour group returning from their night at the ballet.
During the flight back home to the United States and on numerous occasions since then, I studied the notes I had made concerning Kupinski’s five laws of time travel and tried unsuccessfully to decipher them. Of the fifth law I had not the slightest knowledge; the pages relating to it had been missing from the papers. Now, in my cell, I removed from my wallet a copy I had made of my notes and looked at them.
Considering once again at Kupinski’s first law, it seemed to me that the legible pages of his narrative that I had been able to copy contained the phrase “objects displaced in time.” If I could decipher the mathematical formulas that accompanied the narrative, I would understand how and why my sword, wristwatch and shoes and socks had all vanished.
Re-reading my notes with the benefit of the disappearing articles, I felt as though I was on the brink of understanding Kupinski’s calculations. Alas, I ran out of time! The door of my cell opened and a somber group of individuals entered.
The first through the door was Chaplain Porter, carrying an open Bible with him. He was followed by two marine guards. A marine sergeant brought up the rear.