Time Travel Omnibus, page 891
The inside front cover showed what looked like newspaper headlines, cartoons, and clippings printed on the inside front cover. She ran her fingers over two of the headlines: “Negligence Doubled the Death List” and “ ‘Let Us Die!’ Cry Women at Morgue.” One of the cartoons, titled “Death’s Cruel Harvest,” showed the figure of Death holding a scythe and standing next to a field of fallen flowers with the heads of children. Another, “Death and Greed Partners,” showed a little girl lying on a table. On her left, a man in a coat and top hat counted his money, while on her right, a figure of Death, skull plainly visible and scythe in one hand, caressed the child’s forehead.
Adele felt cold and confused. What in the world was this?
She turned a few pages in and found a printed notice: “Copyright 2003 by EDWARD T. O’DONNELL.” The year made no sense to her. How could she be holding a book from almost one hundred years in the future? And who was this O’Donnell, an Irishman by the sound of his name, to write a book about a tragedy that befell a German community?
A small piece of paper fell out of the book and onto the table. Adele picked it up and examined it. It bore one line: “http://www.general-slocum.com.” She had no idea what it meant; “http” was clearly not a word, although she presumed she knew what the “general-slocum” part referred to.
It must be a joke, she thought. A cruel, elaborate hoax. But the book looked fine, much better than any other book she had ever seen. She started looking through the pages, faster and faster, trying to make sense of it all, when she heard the door open behind her. She quickly closed the book, placed it on the table, and stood up.
Schmidt saw her as soon as he entered. “Miss Weber! What are you doing in my room?”
Emotions of rage and embarrassment fought with each other, and rage won out.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing back here so early?”
“I had forgotten something in my room.”
“Really? What exactly?”
He sighed. “I don’t care for your tone, Miss Weber, nor do I care for your invasion of my privacy. I have to get back to work.”
“Where? At the New York World?”
“Yes. Now please leave my room.” He walked towards her, his eyes darting around.
Adele raised her hand in front of her, palm out. “You don’t work at the New York World, Mr. Schmidt.”
Schmidt stopped a few feet away. “How—what makes you say that?”
“I went looking for you there. They never heard of you. Nor had any other paper.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Oh, nothing at all. It’s not like I had found this yet.” She picked up Ship Ablaze.
Schmidt sprang towards her. “Give that back to me. It’s autographed.”
“What?”
“I mean it’s mine. Hand it over.”
Adele pulled the book close to her body, and Schmidt hesitated. “Not without an explanation,” she said. She waved the book around. “What is this?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”
“Oh, really? It seems to be a book from the year 2003. Are you sure that it’s not my concern that the current year is only 1904?”
“I—I don’t know what to say.”
“ ‘Die Wahrheit wird euch frei machen,’ ” Adele said.
“Pardon?”
“John, chapter eight, verse thirty-two. ‘The truth shall make you free.’ Tell me the truth.”
“Um. The truth.” He sighed. “I guess I ought to. That book is in fact from the year 2003. It’s the definitive work on the General Slocum tragedy.”
“The General Slocum tragedy,” she repeated.
“Yeah. There were other books written before and after, but this one is still considered the most comprehensive.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. That is, I think I understand, but I don’t want to.”
“A normal reaction.”
“Will you tell me what’s going on? Who are you?” She brandished the book even higher. “How is this possible?”
Schmidt crossed his arms. “Miss Weber, let me ask you something. Have you ever heard of an English writer, a man by the name of Herbert George Wells?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, one of the books he’s written—at least, I think he’s written it by now—has to do with the concept of time travel.”
Adele searched her mind, and finally came up with a title. “The Time Machine.”
Schmidt nodded. “Yes. The Time Machine. A man builds a machine that allows him to travel into the past and the future. I stand before you as the final achievement of that dream. In the future, we have figured out how to visit the past.” He paused. “Do you believe me?”
“It seems an impossible fantasy,” Adele said. “And yet—the book—”
“The Time Machine?” Schmidt asked.
Adele glared at him. “No. Your book. The one I’m holding. Ship Ablaze.”
“Oh.” Schmidt’s eyes moved to look at the book. “That one.”
“Yes. This one. I can’t fathom how or why you might have arranged to have that book printed. The only conclusion I can come to is that the book is really from the twenty-first century.” She paused. “Which means that you really have come here from the future.”
He sighed, a world-weary sigh that seemed out of place in a man so young. “I’m not supposed to reveal that, but sometimes it’s so hard to hide the truth.” He walked over to his bed and sat down upon it. “I hope you won’t betray my confidence.”
“So tell me about this. Have you come back to stop this horrible tragedy? Is that why you’re here?”
Schmidt paled, and he didn’t reply.
“What is it?” Adele asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that I’m not here to stop the tragedy. I can’t stop it. No one can. That’s not how time travel works. There are restrictions.”
“Then tell me how time travel works. Perhaps I can figure out a way to get around the restrictions.”
Schmidt smiled. “How might you explain the workings of a telephone to someone in 1804?”
Adele raised a finger. “Do not patronize me, Mr. Schmidt. Perhaps I wouldn’t be able to understand the science or technology behind time travel. But I do understand possibilities. If I knew that a ladder had a rotten rung, and that if someone who climbed it would break the rung and fall, I would be remiss if I didn’t try to save them. Why can’t you do the same?”
“Miss Weber, let me try to use your ladder analogy to make it clear. Imagine time as a sort of ladder. History happens when you climb the rungs. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Now imagine what would happen if at a particular rung, I discovered that by fiddling with it I could cause a whole second ladder to emerge. So that I can create a choice of which ladder I climb.”
“That’s an odd image, but I’ll accept it.”
“It gets odder. Now imagine that I have some sort of switch on that rung. With the switch in its original position, I can climb up the original ladder. But if I flip the switch, the new ladder appears and the old one vanishes. And thus I can only climb the second ladder.”
“Okay.”
“But here’s my point, Miss Weber. I already came down the first ladder. If I’m forced to climb the second ladder, I have no idea where I’ll end up.”
Adele pondered the image for a moment. “Let me see if I grasp your point clearly. You are saying that if you were to prevent this disaster, you would create a change in your own history.”
“That’s correct.”
“I still do not see what is so wrong with that.”
Schmidt sighed. “If I were to change the past, that would also force a change upon the future. And I come from the future, Miss Weber.”
“I still don’t see your objection.”
“Let me summarize it by what is called the Grandfather Paradox. What would happen to me if I came back in time and killed my own grandfather while he was still a baby in his crib?”
“Ah,” Adele said, with sudden understanding. “You would cease to exist. But then you wouldn’t exist to kill your grandfather, so he should live.”
Schmidt nodded. “Precisely. And if he lives, then I would be born, allowing me to go back in time and kill him. A paradox.”
“So if you were to stop this horrible disaster, the future you came from would cease to exist, and by extension, so would you.”
“Exactly. Again, a paradox.”
“Well, how is this paradox resolved?”
He gave Adele a firm look. “By not changing the past.”
“But then what happens to free will? Are you not here now, and able to make decisions?”
“Well, yes. But my decisions are not ones that will disrupt the future, so no problem emerges.”
Adele shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Schmidt, I can’t accept that. If history is as fragile as you claim, then doesn’t your presence here already disrupt the future?”
Schmidt bit his lip in thought. “Well, yes and no. Some changes are more important, more vital, than others. There’s a Law of Conservation of Reality that sometimes kicks in.”
“A Law of Conservation of Reality?”
Schmidt stared into the distance for a moment, then said, “Let me give you an example out of history that has already happened. Suppose you went back in time and killed Napoleon in his crib. What do you think would happen?”
Adele laughed. “Many things.”
“Name one.”
She shrugged. “The French would never have had their empire.”
He nodded. “So you say. And yet, why was it Napoleon who was responsible for the empire? Weren’t there other forces, other things, at play in history? Might not someone else have stepped in and taken on Napoleon’s role?”
Adele thought for a moment, then said, “I am not much of a historian, Mr. Schmidt. I suppose it’s possible, but these questions rarely come to my mind.”
“Forgive me, Miss Weber. I am not trying to make you feel ignorant. Rather, I am trying to point out that while parts of history are fragile, other parts are much more resilient. If I were to kill Napoleon, the Law might cause some other Frenchman to form a similar empire, and by 1904 the broad outline of history would be back on track.”
“So why not attempt to save my community? Isn’t history resilient enough for that?”
He sighed. “History might be resilient enough, but I’m not.”
“What do you mean?”
“That Law of Conservation of Reality I mentioned before? Sometimes the Law kicks in by killing the time traveler, so changes don’t happen that have to be corrected. If I were to try to change history, history might try to kill me to prevent it.”
She sniffed. “That seems to me a selfish reason not to help. Do not forget that my father gave his life to rescue others.”
“And you lived to regret it, did you not? Or so you said at Coney Island.”
Adele glared at him. “That was different.”
Schmidt shrugged. “Perhaps. Miss Weber, please understand. From my point of view, all this—” he waved an arm around “—is already past. My presence here doesn’t change it, as my own place is in your future. As far as I am concerned, the General Slocum tragedy is already a part of history.”
Adele tapped her foot in annoyance. “So what’s the point of your being here, Mr. Schmidt? If you’re not planning to save my community, my friends, my family—me—then why are you here?”
Schmidt wrung his hands. “To save something. A remnant of memory. Have you heard of Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor?”
“Of course. Who hasn’t?”
“Sorry. I’m still adjusting to what people might know in 1904. If you’ve heard of Edison, then you’ve probably heard of the motion picture.”
She rolled her eyes. “Motion pictures such as The Life of an American Fireman or The Great Train Robbery?”
Schmidt looked puzzled. “I’ve heard of the second, but not the first.”
“I saw both last year at the Kinetoscope Parlor.”
“The Kinetoscope Parlor?”
“On Broadway between Twenty-Sixth and Twenty-Seventh Street? It’s been there since I was a child.”
“I see. Well, then, this may be easier to explain than I thought. I’ve come back in time to make a record of the tragedy.”
“You have your very own motion picture camera? You plan to preserve images of the disaster on film?”
“More than that,” he said. “Much more.” He stood up, walked over to his bureau, and opened the top drawer. From it he removed an odd-looking helmet with the word MEMVOX printed across the brow.
“Here,” he said, handing it over.
Adele placed the book on the table. She took the helmet and turned it around in her hands, studying it. Many small metal disks were affixed to the inside.
“What do I do with this?”
“Place it over your head.”
She laughed. “Are we about to engage in battle?”
He smiled. “Not unless you want to.”
She carefully placed the helmet onto her head so as not to disturb her hair.
“How does that feel?” Schmidt asked, his voice sounding thick through the helmet.
“Heavy.” She sniffed the air. “And it smells of oil.”
“That will only last for a moment.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small molded metal box, with knobs and buttons, which he held near her head.
“Miss Weber, are you ready?”
“For what?”
Schmidt chuckled. “I guess I’d call it an immersion into another world. It’s like watching a movie, but you experience it from the inside.”
Adele shrugged. “It sounds intriguing. I’m ready.”
Schmidt nodded. He pushed a button on the box—
—and suddenly the room vanished. Adele found herself strapped into a leather chair in a strange room. Dials and displays of numbers danced before her face. Directly ahead and to both sides, windows showed clear blue sky and clouds, with some sort of pavement underneath.
She felt a sudden jerk of movement, and a high-pitched whine filled her ears. The room she sat in started moving forward, faster and faster. The view through the window showed faraway buildings and trees, moving past her more and more quickly, faster than she had ever gone before—
—and then suddenly the room lifted into the air.
Adele realized now that she had to be in some sort of vehicle, a flying machine. She now noticed some sort of pole, probably a steering mechanism, sticking out of the floor.
“Will wonders never cease?” she said aloud, although as far as she could tell there was no one around to hear her.
Very carefully, she took hold of the pole and pulled it towards her. The flying machine began to climb at an even steeper angle, and she felt herself pushed slightly into her seat. She pushed the pole forward and let it go, and the flying machine seemed to settle into a horizontal position.
“Hm,” she said.
She sat and looked out the window as the flying machine took her on a journey, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending. The experience was rather similar to that of being on a roller coaster, she decided, although a lot smoother.
Until the end.
Looking out the front window, she saw huge buildings of glass and metal, towering over the ground below. The machine brought her closer and closer to the buildings, when suddenly, just when she thought she would die in a crash, the machine banked upwards. She felt herself being pushed into her seat as the vehicle climbed. The weight of her body increased, making it harder for her to breathe. She waited for relief, but the vehicle just continued to accelerate, almost straight upwards—
—when suddenly it stalled, and she found herself, and the machine, falling.
She screamed as intense fear filled her entire being. The air seemed to get thicker and hotter. The urge to get away, to flee, to survive, overwhelmed her, and she suddenly remembered that this was all unreal. She tore the helmet from her head—
—and found herself back in Mr. Schmidt’s chambers.
“Merciful God,” she croaked. Her heart beat so quickly she felt afraid it might burst out of her chest.
Schmidt immediately jumped to her side, and placed his hands upon her shoulders. Normally, she would have rejected the indignity, but she had no strength. “Miss Weber!” he said, his face a picture of concern. “Come, lie down upon the bed.”
Gently, she made her way from the chair to the bed, gripping Schmidt’s arm firmly so she wouldn’t fall onto the floor. The dizziness from the experience lingered. She collapsed onto the bed, breathing heavily, and she stifled an urge to vomit.
“Adele, I’m sorry. I truly am. I forgot how vivid virtual reality can be. I didn’t realize the effect that would have on you. I suppose it’s as removed from motion pictures as—as I am from 1904.”
“What—what in the name of our Lord was that?”
“It’s called—well, it doesn’t matter what it’s called. The point is that you were flying.”
She glared at him. “I know I was flying, you idiot. Or at least it felt like it. Was that real?”
He nodded. “Oh, yes. Quite real.”
“I still want to know what it was called.”
“The flying machine is called an airplane.”
“An airplane,” Adele repeated, as she got her breath back. “And it hasn’t been invented yet. That I know for a fact.”
Schmidt cleared his throat. “Actually, two brothers flew one just last December, if I remember my history.”
“Last December?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “Impossible. I would have known.”
Schmidt shrugged. “Well, it’s not as important as the device you just had on your head. It’s called a memory player.”
“A memory player,” she echoed.
“Yes. It can replay the memories of one person into another person’s mind.”
“So that was a memory? Of someone flying an airplane?”
“Well, not quite. That was more of a training scenario. If it had been a real memory, you wouldn’t have been able to interact with it.”
