Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine (6 page)

“
Just use the key,” said Molly. “He’s probably cooking.”

Eric pulled a small brass key on a big steel ring from his pants pocket and slid aside a metal disc on the door, revealing a keyhole. With a twist and a jiggle the door clicked open and the four moved inside, pulling the wheelchair over the rubber threshold then closing the door behind them.

They moved down a narrow, featureless hallway and emerged into a wide, white-walled room with four camp beds draped in blankets set up along the right side. In the center of the room, a rectangular, plastic table dominated the eye surrounded by five chairs. Eric and Jenna moved Jason onto one of the beds and lay him down with a blanket pulled up to his neck. Molly headed across the room and through a door on the opposite side, calling out as she went.

“
Howard? It’s us, on time as usual. Howard, you back here?”

Jenna folded back the blanket that covered Jason and removed his boots. He was sleeping already, his face expressionless and pale. Molly re-appeared across the room, her face tight, and beckoned to Eric. He followed her, past a tiny kitchen which was quiet and clean. Past a collection of closed white doors and then a big red door marked
NO ENTRY
in bold black letters. At the end of the corridor, down a passage to the right, was a small room, door wide open, with a small sink and a single bed in it. On the bed lay the body of an elderly man dressed in a dark suit and wearing a green cook’s apron, his grey beard and moustache glaring white beneath the harsh ceiling light. His face was sunken, indicating he’d been dead a little while. On his chest his hands were clasped, a pair of spectacles clenched between his rigid fingers.

“
Oh, Howard,” said Eric, genuine sadness in his voice. “What the Hell will we do now?”

Next to him, Molly started to cry. He put his arm around her and realized that this was it. He was surprised at how much relief he felt.

The First Trip, Day 6

The city seemed deserted. Beyond that, it seemed dead. No lights shone in windows, no cross-walk signs flashed little green men. There were signs everywhere of massive looting. Some bodies lay in the streets, chewed on by stray dogs and cats. The four travelers made their way cautiously through the centre of Centralia looking for any sign of the great evacuation that was supposed to be happening tomorrow. They had expected crowds of people, noise and fear and excitement, but there was nothing. Eric was doing better but was still extremely weak and in dire need of medical attention. Jason suggested they make straight for the hospital. Deserted or not, they’d get Eric some medicine. They were just a couple of blocks away when they saw a bespectacled, bearded man in a dark suit standing outside a low building with no windows in it. As they approached, Eric stumbling along, holding onto the shoulders of his friend. The bearded man ran towards them with a look of genuine concern on his face. He helped them get Eric inside the windowless building, promising he had a full medical lab inside, and the travelers believed him; there was sincerity in his voice and a kindly tilt to his face.

Twenty minutes later, inside the building, Eric was in an actual med-lab being tended to by the bearded man, Jason assisting him with a slightly wary eye. He had introduced himself as Doctor Howard Rorke. The two girls sat at a table in the main room drinking freshly brewed coffee and soaking their ragged feet in tubs of hot, balmed water. It had taken them a while, overloaded with simple comforts, to realize that this was the first place they had seen in a week that actually had power.

Jason returned to the main room with Howard, letting the girls know that Eric was sleeping and would be just fine.

“
Thank you, Howard, truly!” said Molly. “But can I ask you a question? What happened? Where is everybody? Do you know what’s going on?”

Howard sat down at the table and beckoned Jason to join him.

“
It’s been a crazy week,” Howard answered. “And I know you’ve come a long, hard way to get here. Let me try and explain everything as quickly as I can. First, the evacuations ended on Tuesday, four days early.”

Everyone else around the table groaned.

“
I know, I know. There was trouble with the crowds, the whole city was a mess and they decided to launch all the ships early in case the people got to and damaged them. Those that didn’t get on heard a rumor about another
evac
happening down in Clarksville and everyone headed that way. It’s a lie, though; there are no more
evacs
anywhere.”

“
How do you know?” asked Jenna. “Do you work for the Government? And if so, why didn’t you get out when you could? And how do you have power?”

“
More
questions, Jenna,” said Eric sarcastically. “That wasn’t nearly enough in one go.”

“
No no, ask away, all of you. Yes, I work for a
particular
government agency. I wasn’t here on
evac
day; I just got back from a trip the night after. This building is one of very few in the country that still has power. It’s run from a quite massive self-sufficient generator in the back, and all the equipment in here survived that EMP blast or whatever it was last week because this entire building is
deliberately
insulated and protected against such possibilities.”

“
So what do we do now?” asked Jason, glumly. “Wait around and watch the world end, us with it?”

“
We could,” said Howard, smiling. “Or we could carry on living. Come, follow me!”

Confused and a little wary, the two girls quickly dried their feet and, along with Jason, followed Howard down the corridor past all the white doors to a red door with a large
NO ENTRY
sign on it. Howard typed a code into a keypad and opened the door, leading the others into a cool, dimly lit room. There was a large control console immediately ahead of them, then a transparent wall with a hatch in it, and on the other side a shiny, white room that appeared to be completely empty.

“
This is our life-saver!” Howard proclaimed with a grin, raising his arms into the air.

“
Welcome to
Project Boomerang!
”

For the next couple of hours Howard explained his work.
Project Boomerang
was a time travel experiment, headed by Howard, which had achieved some great success. They had managed to travel only backwards in time and the traveling worked on a
pre-existing displacement
principle. What this meant, Howard explained, was that the traveler could only jump to a time and place where they had previously existed. The traveling version of the person would take the place in the world of the old version, with all the knowledge they had gained since that time kept intact. That is, until the boomerang effect kicked in and the traveler was pulled back to the present, whereupon the original version of the person would resume back in the past.

Jason put forward the opinion that this seemed a quite pointless exercise. Howard, a little insulted, responded that it was the first step towards full time travel, and a massive achievement. He also pointed out that the
boomerang effect
could be, effectively, switched off and travelers could remain in the past reliving their lives any way they wanted to. This, he said, is where their salvation lay.

At this point Eric appeared, groggy but well, and the group spent a while getting him up to speed on what had happened.

“
Tomorrow,” Eric said, “our world dies, for how long we don’t know. It may become hospitable again, it may not. We failed to make it onto the ark ships, so what do we do?”

“
Travel back to Tuesday and board the ships!” suggested Jenna.

“
A good idea in principle, but impossible. Remember what I said about pre-existing displacement? You’d all get sent back to where you were on
evac
day – still far, far out of the city. It wouldn’t help you.” Howard straightened his tie and looked at the floor. “Also, there was a problem with the transporter last month that still hasn’t been repaired. It is set at a travel distance of one week, and when I checked the machine upon my return from a certain excursion a few weeks ago I discovered that the – in layman’s terms – the timer had blown.”

Eric, his head clearing and with some strength coming back into his body, caught Howard’s attention with a raised hand, as if he was back in school.

“
So we can only go back one week, as it stands? Is it something you can fix quickly?”

Howard shook his head slowly. “I don’t have the very,
very
specific parts needed to fix the, er, the
timer
. If I had time to scour certain government and military properties around the city I could possibly find what I needed.”

“
But you don’t have time. None of us do!” cried Molly, frustration showing in her face.

“
I can
give
us time, though, if you four agree to it.” Howard smiled, looking each of them in the eye one by one. “I have a plan – and honestly, it’s about the only plan we have.”

With that, Howard led everyone back into the main living quarters and went off to the kitchen to cook a meal that, he promised, would
not
be their final one.

Over a wonderful hot dinner of beef stew, dumplings and corn bread, Howard laid out his vision to the group. The next morning he would use the Boomerang device to send them back in time the pre-determined and unchangeable distance of one week. They would be back in their rented cabin, the morning of the emergency broadcast, fully aware of what lay ahead and the journey they would need to undertake to reach Howard again. The Boomerang effect itself could still be turned off, so they wouldn’t have to worry about suddenly bouncing back to where they were now at some point. Howard would also send himself back that one week, and he promised he would not board the ark ships, as he could, but stay and try to help his new friends. In that week he would attempt to locate the parts he needed to fix the machine’s timing device. If he could fix the timer, he could keep working on the overall function of the traveling itself. They had been very close to being able to jump without relying on the pre-existing principle, which would mean not only further back in time, but also different locations not dependent on the traveler’s existing status at that point. With the machine operating properly and with these new tweaks to the science, all four of them could then jump back to the day the ships left and board them safely. He estimated six weeks of work at most.

Howard left the friends alone to discuss the idea and returned to the kitchen to wash dishes. After some heated discussion, the group finally, and somewhat inevitably, decided that it was their only viable chance at survival and another few weeks of trudging their way to Centralia wasn’t such a high price to pay for the chance at a full life.

“
We’ll know what to expect from now on!” said Jason. “Eric won’t get bitten, we know which short-cuts work and which don’t, we know not to look into the crashed cars, and we have an absolute destination and plan now!”

“
Also,” added Eric, “we’ll take some good supplies back with us. Rain gear, decent packed food, maybe a tent or sleeping bags if Howard has any around here somewhere. It’ll feel more like a camping trip…”

Molly nodded. “I don’t see we have a choice. Stay here tomorrow, and die, or try Howard’s plan and spend a few more weeks roughing it. Not even close really, is it?”

When Howard returned they told him their decision and he was delighted. He said that yes, they could take supplies, and he would furnish them with whatever rain-gear and camping equipment he could put his hands on before the next day. He also packed them a huge amount of food, split up into four separate containers. Eric and Jason helped him pull camp-beds from the vast supply room in the building and set them up against a wall in the living quarters with pillows and blankets. As everyone settled in for an attempt at a good night’s sleep, Eric took Howard to one side and quietly thanked him for his help, and for going through this with them instead of just leaving on the ships. Howard said it was the least he could do, as a decent human being, and told Eric to rest; he would wake them in the morning, early, with coffee and croissants, before sending them back.

As the four friends fell into a heavy sleep, Howard returned to the
Boomerang Project
room. Locking the door behind him, he sat at the console and brought the timer up on his display. It currently read
Minus 24 hours
; he manually changed it to
Minus 7 days
and locked in the setting.

“
I could never leave you,” he whispered, looking into the stark, white room, “my whole life is here, in you. And now I have some good, new friends who will visit me every weekend for as long as I want them to.”

by Victorya

Jameson was pushing his mother in her rocking chair. He sang her favorite song, his tired voice caressing each word in a mixture of boredom and frustration.

“
Tell me something about my father?” he asked.

“
He was a bastard,” she replied, not even looking up from the television. In her hand was the remote, and on the screen were commercials. She always muted the commercials and had Jameson sing.

“
But you named me after him,” he said.

“
Before I realized he was a bastard,” she said. Then, “Hush now honey,
COPS
is back on.”