Time Travel Omnibus, page 1068
“Careful,” I whispered, and held back. In fact, I reached behind and felt for the cold, steel door.
Constance took four or five furtive steps toward the tomb and then just stood there. Finally, as if on impulse, she stuck out her right hand and touched its rough, gray shell. I let out something like a laugh. She let her fingertips linger there for a time. All I could do was stare, wide-eyed.
“What’s it feel like?” I finally gasped.
After a few seconds, she pulled back her hand.
“There’s, there’s something inside,” she said. “I—I can feel it; something alive in there.”
Constance turned to me, and in the darkness I could see a look of distress and wonder in her eyes. At last, she was able to move, and suddenly walked past me.
“C’mon,” she said.
I scrambled out of there right on her heels. The door creaked as she closed it shut with a thud and fastened the bolt. Then, she quickly secured the lock.
Upstairs, a few minutes later, Constance tried to explain what she had felt. A presence, a being. A soul. “I could feel it breathing,” she whispered. “It’s thoughts.”
“I want to touch it,” I pleaded.
“No,” she said, “Daddy’s right. We must keep away from it. It was right for them, grandpa and Dad, to keep it locked up from us. Safe.”
I shrugged, not really wanting to sneak down there again and touch that dreadful stone thing.
Never again did I dare try to do it.
Father woke me from this memory with the raspy statement:
“He kept a journal.” When I looked up, he added: “The time traveler.”
He explained that a small safe had been cut into the rough concrete wall behind the stone vessel. In it was the time traveler’s journal, written on something called a stylus, a magical gadget which recorded sound waves—speech, and then played whatever was said in printed words on a dull screen made up of a kind of crystal sand. Another command preserved the words for posterity.
The stylus responded to direction by speech. You told it what to do. “Just say, ‘Next entry’,” father said, and sucked some air into his lungs—he was clearly growing tired now—“and it takes you there.”
“Voice recognition software,” I told him. “We have that. In our computers.”
“The stylus,” father continued, his voice a dry rasp, “contains a record of the time traveler’s experiences each time he has awakened.”
Father made me write down the combination to the safe containing the stylus on a piece of paper. Then, as I was stuffing it into my shirt pocket, he said, “Don’t you need the combination to the lock on the door?”
I frowned, not quite sure what he meant.
“Or did Constance give it to you?”
I could never remember it after the afternoon we snuck down there. Nor did I care to know.
“You know about that?”
“She told me,” he said, “the time I caught her down there.”
I suspected immediately that there was more to that story and that it had something to do with Connie’s mysterious disappearance.
“After that,” he said, “I got a new lock.”
He gave me the combination and then his eyes closed. I gave a start but soon realized that he wasn’t dead but only sleeping. His breathing, however, was barely perceptible.
I went out and asked the nurse to check him. I was worried that perhaps he had slipped into a coma. She hurried back to his room with me and started to check him over. At one point, she opened his eyes and shined a small penlight in them. He squirmed momentarily, groaned.
“He’s alright,” she said. “Sleeping.”
“Do you think it would be alright for me to leave him for the night?” I asked. “Get a good night’s sleep?”
She gave me a kind smile and said that was a good idea. There was nothing I could do here. You never knew with a stroke victim. They could last a day or a year or ten. Of course, if anything happened, she’d call. I gave her my number and left.
An hour later, the nurse called to tell me that my father had passed away in his sleep.
II
The Stylus
The next morning, I woke early and went down to Costanza’s Funeral Home to make arrangements for my father’s burial. I decided against a viewing, since I knew of no living friends or relatives. I selected a modest casket, ordered a large basket of flowers, and placed a short obituary. His priest, Father Tobias, from the local Greek Orthodox cathedral, agreed to do the funeral mass even though the old man hadn’t been to church in years.
It was almost eleven by the time I emerged from the stuffy funeral home into a low, dull November sun. The leaves had long fallen from the trees and were scuttled about by the wind. I craved apples at that time of year and had to stop at a local grocery to buy a half dozen on my way out to my father’s house, the old homestead, built ninety years ago by my grandfather, out in the middle of nowhere.
After pulling into the long gravel driveway and coming to a stop in front of the sprawling, silent white-frame house, I remained in the car for a time trying to get my mind around the idea of a human being living in suspended animation within the stone tomb. It was unsettling to realize that for a hundred years, the stone sarcophagus had been the driving force in the lives of my father and his father and, I supposed, before that his father’s father, and apparently, a long line of fathers before them. How far back into the family history it went (my father had said ten thousand years!), I had no idea. And, now, that legacy had fallen onto my lap. If, of course, all of it was true and not some delusion of eccentric men.
Feeling the weight of those long years, and the long night before, I got out of the car with a yawn and entered the old house like a somnambulist. The last time I had been there, only last week just before I left for San Antonio (how long ago that now seemed), father had been very much alive. He had been walking up the stairs from the basement, after spending some time in the secret room, no doubt, tending to that damned stone coffin. During that visit, he had dropped another odd hint of something we had to talk about soon, something that I needed to know. But for some reason, he never got around to it then, and instead waited until the last moments of his life last night to tell me.
After pausing on the landing for a time, I took a deep breath before heading down the narrow cellar stairs. I had to duck under the dark, wet ceiling as I blindly negotiated the path to the door of the secret chamber. Lifting the lock into the palm of my hand, I paused for another long moment before, finally, twirling the numbers of the combination. After the lock fell open, after yet another breath, I pulled open the heavy metal door. It squeaked like it had that afternoon all those long years ago when Connie and I had secretly invaded the room.
It took some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Finally, the outline of the stone tomb came into focus. It was a brooding presence, and I gasped and had to step back a moment. It was every bit as big and dark and wet and ugly as I had remembered it the last time I had seen it as a twelve year old boy.
After a time, I roused courage to approach it. Up close, I was struck that it no longer seemed inanimate, a mere rock. Rather I sensed something technical about it, machine-like.
Finally, I reached out the forefinger of my right hand and touched the rough, wet surface of the tomb. And, like Connie, I felt life within it. Or something.
“Wow!” I whispered. In that moment, I realized that my father and grandfather had not been mere crackpots caring for a lifeless, worthless rock.
After perhaps a minute, I pulled my hand away. I reached up for the string of the light fixture dangling down from a rafter and gave a tug. Surprisingly the old bulb still worked, flooding the room with a pale yellow light. I looked at the concrete wall behind the tomb and saw the outline of a small, corroded square. It was, of course, the safe father had mentioned.
I squeezed into the narrow space between the tomb and the wall. At the safe, I pulled out the sheet on which I had scribbled the combination and twirled the numbers on the dial father had made me write down. The small, rusty metal door squeaked open. Inside, I saw a small rectangular device, the stylus.
After removing it, I turned it over in my hands, and was reminded of the old toy, an Etch-e-Sketch. It was about the same size, with gray stone borders inscribed with odd runes instead of red plastic, around a dull, gray screen.
“Last entry,” I told it, trying to remember how father said it worked.
Solid black words formed in the sand: squiggles in a language I could not read. I frowned for some time at the incomprehensible text on the screen. After a moment, I commanded: “English.”
The sand rearranged like fluid and the words changed from the unknown markings to English:
I have awakened into Year 10,645 Standard, which the current inhabitants have designated, AD 1931. It seems like an interim time between great turmoil. Only 14 years ago, a great War ended. It involved the major powers at great loss of life due to technological advances since I last awoke. But the end of that War does not seem to have resolved the political discord preceding it. And to make matters worse, the economy of the world is in depression.
Nikilas brought his son, Kosta, the next caretaker, down with him to meet me. The boy is pleasant and bright, and follows me around like a puppy.
Once I was awake and alert, Nikilas brought me upstairs and introduced me to his wife, Maria, as a friend from the old country (which was somewhat true). She is a simple but competent woman who smiled continuously at me and did not dare question her husband’s bringing me into their home. She went back to her chores somewhere else in the house and left us to talk in the kitchen.
I spent the next hours learning about the long trip across the Great Ocean to America during the Sleep, and how much the world had changed since my last awakening. And how it has changed! Much technological advancement has occurred, more than in any other epoch since Atlantis was doomed.
My frown deepened as I continued the odd narrative. Atlantis? I had always regarded reports of that ancient, mythical land with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity. Ultimately, I doubted that such an advanced civilization had ever existed except as the fancy of the philosopher, Plato, and countless other authors down the ages whose reports and hypotheses had been spawned by his major work on the subject known as Timeas.
The stylus went on to detail the time traveler’s experiences in the single week of his “awakening” from April 24 to May 1, 1931. For the most part, he spent them in the safety of the old house, listening to my grandfather’s report of the events of the last seventy-three years. He also spent much time reading historical texts and a pile of newspapers which grandfather dutifully brought him.
Early one morning three days after his awakening, the time traveler ventured with my grandfather and father in grandfather’s brand new Ford Model A Roadster for the then, somewhat arduous hour long trip down old, narrow Route 219 which meandered through Colden and Boston Hills to the bustling downtown streets of Buffalo.
Upon approaching the city, the time traveler gawked upwards at the tall brick buildings which the invention of the elevator had spawned. He was equally intrigued by grandfather’s roadster, and other cars of the era—the outdated though numerous Model Ts, and the more “modern” Chryslers, Chevy’s, Plymouths, and Cadillacs—clogging the streets of Buffalo with constant beeping horns, and filling the air with exhaust. He commented that they resembled the land transports of Atlantis in some respects, except that the Atlantean vehicles were fueled by the sun and hence, ran silently and without fumes.
This burst of technology in the seventy-three years since his last slumber, highlighted not only by the skyscrapers and automobiles which had come into existence since 1858, but the many other inventions—radio, movies, and the electric lights which made even the nighttime streets blaze with brightness and life, pleased the time traveler.
Mankind is once again on the verge of magic, was his odd comment.
It seemed an important duty of the caretaker to bring to the time traveler’s attention persons of renown in the period into which he had awakened—leading scientists, philosophers, politicians, kings, musicians, or entertainers. The time traveler would then determine whether it was worth the trouble and risk of meeting one or more of them. Though grandfather promptly fulfilled this duty and identified such persons—Albert Einstein being one of them, residing in Germany at the time—the time traveler decided, without explanation, against taking such a trip. However, the stylus recorded this note:
I would have liked to have met the base ball player, Babe Ruth. However, the trip to Washington, where his team, the New York Yankees, were playing part of that week, was much too onerous. Still, the game of base ball sounds wonderful in the news paper reports, and the godlike deference for this athlete, Ruth, was such that it reminded me of Pir’lian, the great ball player (though the game hardly resembles base ball in any way) on the fabled Atlantean fields of play.
After only a week, the time traveler announced that he was going back to sleep. I was reminded of my father’s sad report just last night of that event. At least, on that day in 1931, there had been the genuine hope of a second meeting. For my grandfather, however, the time traveler’s farewell would be permanent.
This man, and his family, have served me well for ten thousand years. Goodbye, old man, and Godspeed!
I spent the next hours at the kitchen table reading entry after entry forming in the gray liquid screen of the magical stylus. It was rare for the time traveler to spend more than a week or two in the time period in which he had awakened. To do otherwise, of course, would have resulted in the premature end to his mission. No matter how attached he became to his caretakers and the people of the era into which he had awakened, he had to keep in mind that his life had a finite span. Only when he emerged from the stone time machine, did he age.
I must constantly remind myself of my mission, my vow, he wrote in one of his entries following his introduction to a young woman who had ignited a romantic passion within him, to continue onward into the far reaches of time and watch humanity attain a high level of magic matching that which Great and Fair Atlantis attained ten thousand years ago.
Those rare times when the time traveler chose to remain more than a few days in a particular epoch was due either to his swooning over some woman with whom he had become romantically involved (although he always seemed able, eventually, to break free of that spell and return to the tomb to resume his mission); or, because he had decided to meet some personage in the epoch into which he had awakened.
In 1638, for instance, the caretaker—my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Leonides Zithriades, told the time traveler about a renowned scientist, Galileo, who had used a kind of eyeglass for looking deep into the heavens—the telescope; and, who had printed a treatise just seven years earlier, in 1631, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, claiming to prove that the earth revolved around the sun, just as Copernicus had claimed. The book had so enraged Pope Urban VIII that Galileo was summoned to Rome to stand trial for heresy. After many delays, the trial finally began on April 13, 1633, and was ultimately concluded when, in exchange for his life, Galileo confessed to heresy and was sentenced to house arrest for life at his villa in Arcetri near Florence.
It was in late September, 1638, after an arduous three weeks journey from Macedonia, when the time traveler finally arrived at Galileo’s villa. After two days of interesting conversation with the old, now blind astronomer, the visit was interrupted by the arrival of the English poet, John Milton. A subsequent entry in the stylus marveled that Milton had incorporated several of the time traveler’s suggestions into his epic poem, Paradise Lost, composed only some months after their chance meeting at Galileo’s villa.
One hundred seventy-six years before that, in 1491, the time traveler had also remained awake some weeks in order to seek out a famous artist of that time, Leonardo da Vinci, and a renowned sailor, Christopher Columbus.
Some five hours after trekking upstairs with the stylus and reading report after report of the time traveler’s fascinating awakenings, I could no longer keep my eyes open and was forced to take a break. My knees cracked as I rose from the kitchen table, and after stretching my back and taking a long, deep yawn, ventured back downstairs. Back in the secret chamber, I stared at the stone tomb for a time, wondering if it could really be possible that a time traveler from Atlantis with bronze colored skin, thick wavy hair, and deep blue eyes, was sleeping within it protected by an ancient gel which magically suspended the process of aging. Finally, I pulled myself away from the mystery and trudged upstairs. Finding that it was nearly sunset, I decided to spend the night. I went up to my old bedroom and took a forty minute nap before waking and resuming the time traveler’s stylus reports back down the ages of history. I did not go to sleep until midnight, just after a report on his awakening in the year 469 AD.
In the morning, I dutifully attended my father’s funeral. Father Tobias presided over the somber mass in an empty church. Afterwards, I followed the hearse in a lone car to the cemetery where father was put into the ground.
Over the next weeks, I spent every free moment at my father’s house, reading entry after entry in the time traveler’s stylus back down the long years even before the time of Christ. (To my chagrin, the time traveler had been asleep between 4 B.C. and 29 A.D., when Jesus supposedly lived). His descriptions of the times into which he awakened were pure windows into history.
By April Fool’s day, some five months after my father’s death, and only a month before the time traveler’s anticipated reawakening, I had read the stylus entries all the way back to 6743 B.C. Three times, the time traveler had remained awake for longer than a year, always for the benefit of a woman. With one of them, he had fathered a child, whose progeny might still exist among the descendents of mankind. And, yet, even then, he was compelled to return to the tomb to continue his one-way journey through time.
