James Palmer - Shadows Through Time

“Captain Burton is sufficient, if you must address me at all. What sort of name is Nebogipfel?”

The man smiled, clapping his hands together. “I love the sound of nonsensical words, don’t you? So alliterative, so poetic. Are you familiar with the work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson? He writes under the nom de plume Lewis Carroll, an anagram of his real name. Wonderfully outlandish work. ‘Twas brillig, and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.’ Magnificent.”

Burton eyed the stranger, finding a hint of the familiar about him. He was shorter than Burton, wearing a dark, tailored suit and affecting a dark, neatly-trimmed black beard. But there was something about the eyes.

“Why did you bring me here? Why not have your Morlocks eat me and be done with it?”

His captor uttered dark laughter. “My dear Captain Burton, the answer should be obvious. I would much rather have you alive. You are too important to history. I brought you here to give you something.”

The other Time Traveler began to pace around Burton, the Morlocks giving him an ever widening berth as he did so. “Journeying through Time is a terrible gift. I want you to see it as I do, all the myriad strands of Time. I want you to see how they bend and fold, how easily they snap and break.”

“I already know how fragile Time is,” said Burton. “Now who are you? And why did you bring the Morlocks here?”

“The answer to your first question will take some time. The answer to your second question, however, is this: I think they should have their place in the sun again. They are our cousins. Humanity’s discarded.”

“But their time is not yet!” Burton declared. “Why must you meddle with the natural course of Time?”

Nebogipfel leered at the explorer. “Because I can.”

“You’re using Mycroft Holmes for that purpose, aren’t you?”

“He’s just the meddlesome sort for the job, isn’t he? The empire he will build and oversee will last untold centuries. I’ve already seen it. The last human army ever to do battle upon this beleaguered old Earth will march under his banner. And the machines, Burton! You’ve never seen such machines. Machines that can plumb the deepest ocean, dominate the sky and even break the bonds of this planet to explore the heavens.”

“Machines of war,” said Burton with a scowl.

“Man is a warlike species. I was once naive enough to think that would not always be the case. I found out better. As a wise man once told me, the greatest desire of a slave isn’t freedom, but a slave of his own. War, not hope, springs eternal in the human breast.”

A realization sunk in his chest like a stone. The wise man Nebogipfel spoke of was Burton himself, over a year ago in the belly of the Nautilus . “Bismillah! It is you. I was uncertain at first, but… Herbert? Is that really you?”

Nebogipfel gave a courtly bow. “At your service, Captain Burton. But more precisely, I was Herbert, until our lives diverged.”

“Diverged? How?”

Nebogipfel ran a hand through his short, dark beard. “When we traveled into the dim past aboard Nemo’s Nautilus , Herbert had trouble coping with the madness that surrounded him.

Burton nodded. “I remember. Poor fellow was almost catatonic for most of the journey.”

“Yes, well, being shown such antediluvian horrors will tend to warp one’s personality. It certainly did poor Herbert’s. That is when I first came into being, when the schism between us first occurred. Perhaps it was a way for Herbert’s mind to heal itself, to deal with everything that was happening. Whatever the cause, I was born, quietly at first. I felt trapped inside the mind of this amorphous other. I accessed Herbert’s memories and figured out what was happening. What Herbert found frightening about his situation, I found fascinating. What filled him with terror filled me with curiosity, and I saw before me the vast sweep of Time!

“Upon our return to the present, Herbert recovered most of his wits, but I remained, a silent passenger within his fractured psyche. After unloading his Time Machine, with the help of some of Captain Nemo’s swarthy sailors, and returning to his home in Kew Gardens, the man you call the Time Traveler hopped onto his contraption and went hurtling into the future, to the year 806,701, arriving at nearly the same moment he left on some errand before he was waylaid by the lovely Miss Marsh. I don’t have to tell you, Burton. The journey was exhilarating! It was then that I knew I must take control. But he was calm there. Happy. The happiest he had ever been, and I should know, for I was him, and he was me. It wasn’t until he returned and met up with your friends again, and you dragged him off on another ghastly adventure being chased by those repulsive shoggoths, that the stress that created me began to swell within Herbert’s mind and body once more.

“After that last horrid affair reached its conclusion, he fell into such a torpor as I have never seen. But through it I saw my escape. I tried moving him. Subtly at first; a finger, a toe. Until I had him upright. I could see through his eyes and talk through his mouth and, bidding his utterly perplexed housekeeper adieu, grabbed coat and hat and set off into the nighttime London streets, looking for a way out of my fleshy prison.”

“And what did you find?” Burton asked.

“Exactly what I sought. I am loathe to admit it now, but I first sought fleshly pleasures in the Cauldron, and it was there that I found my salvation. There was a big, brutish sort prowling the East End called Edward Hyde. One night, in a brothel, I heard him bragging about an elixir that had freed him of his every inhibition. I found this most curious, since this man had no inhibitions whatsoever as far as I could tell. He came and went as he pleased, drank to excess, and roughed up the girls when they refused his aggressive advances. So I cornered him as he was leaving the place, and asked him about this miracle elixir. He said a man called Dr. Henry Jekyll had invented it. Curious, and still not at all entirely sure if this disagreeable brute was telling me the truth, I offered to buy the bottle from him. I handed him a ten-pound note in return for what was left in the bottle, and made my way out of Whitechapel, returning to Kew Gardens with the dawn.

“Still unsure what was in the bottle, I did not drink it, instead getting out Herbert’s old chemistry set. Before he turned to the study of optics, you see, our Herbert was obsessed with chemistry. That knowledge was still inside him, and I could access it. I studied the elixir’s chemical makeup and was able to successfully reproduce it, in any quantity I wanted. Its efficacy wears off with time, you see. The next time Herbert sank into a malaise, I came to the fore and tested it. It tasted bloody awful, but it did the trick, allowing me full control of his body when he was unconscious, and suppressing him. It was as if our consciousnesses swapped places within Herbert’s brain.”

“Your personalities diverged fully,” Burton said, remembering what had happened to his friend Swinburne and the others when the beings from the far future swapped minds with them. “Bismillah.”

Nebogipfel smiled, nodding. “Indeed. More than that. The elixir alters my very appearance. This beard of mine grows in minutes! But it had a positive effect on our Herbert as well. Freed from his darker impulses, our dear Time Traveler was able to once more concentrate on his work. But at night, I came to the fore, and began asking questions of nature that Herbert wouldn’t dare give thought to. I studied Herbert’s work closely, learning how his Time Machine was constructed so that I might do the same, perhaps even improve upon his original design. I also began thinking about the full implications of what he had built.”