John Schettler - Meridian

As the characters begin to realize in Part II – The Dreamers , this technology would be the most powerful invention ever created by human hands and minds. It would allow the owners to shape the future by altering the past, and cement their power and influence in the continuum. But, like the secret of the atomic bomb, would it not eventually leak out and be acquired by forces opposing the society that first uses it? Time War is the inevitable result. Perhaps such a conflict would lead to massive alterations in the continuum as each side searches the past for Pushpoints they can use to their own advantage. As the opposing forces undertake missions, only those protected in the Deep Nexus created at the moment of the mission would be privy to the Outcomes and Consequences of their tampering. They would become a secret society—a knowing elite, who hold the reins of fate and destiny. No one else would realize how history has changed, and it is a disquieting feeling to think that we may be living in such an altered time line at this very moment! Time may be a difficult steed to tame, however. The controllers may end up changing things without intending it or even knowing how the time line was altered.

The notion that history changes because of small and seemingly inconsequential events has been in my head for many years. While the great figures of the past have been crowned with halos in the light of history, like the amber corona that seemed to surround Lawrence when Professor Nordhausen saw him in the desert, I think that events turn at the whim of little things. I have encountered many of these little ‘quirks of fate’ in the history over the years. One event comes to mind immediately.

Just after the fall of France in WWII, the Germans were going to meet with the Spanish Minister to negotiate the possible alliance of Spain with the Axis. Such an event would have given Germany many fine posts to make their prosecution of the U-Boat wars in the Atlantic much easier. With the loss of Gibraltar, British sea power in the Mediterranean would have been severely hampered. Before the Allies even considered the Operation Torch landings in North Africa, they would have had to re-take Gibraltar. Any number of other consequences present themselves, but Spain never joined the Axis. The reason why, however, was hidden in the milieu of time that surrounded the planned meeting.

The Spanish minister was traveling by train to meet with Ribentrop, Hitler and other German negotiators. It was raining and it so happens that the roof of his car had a nasty leak, a nuisance that so discomfited him that the minister was completely irate and out of sorts when he finally reached the meeting. His anger apparently carried over to the negotiations, and he was so adamant and testy that both Hitler and Ribentrop concluded that the Spanish could not be dealt with. Spain ended up joining the Allies instead. Was it a leaky roof in a train car that had turned the hinge of fate? I like to think that it did.

In Meridian I make reference to several of these little incidents called “Pushpoints” in the lexicon of Paul Dorland’s time theory. Lawrence’s raid on the Yarmuk bridge was indeed foiled by a loose rifle strap that sent the gun clattering down the side of a cliff and gave the attackers away. Here is the actual passage as written in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom , by T.E. Lawrence. They were just sneaking up to the abutment of the Yarmuk Bridge when…

“We reached the naked abutment, and drew ourselves forward on our faces in the shadow of its rails till we could nearly touch the grey skeleton of underhung girders, and see the single sentry leaning against the other abutment, sixty yards across the gulf. Whilst we watched, he began to move slowly up and down, up and down, before his fire, without ever setting foot on the dizzy bridge. I lay staring at him fascinated, as if planless and helpless, while Fahad shuffled back by the abutment wall where it sprang clear of the hillside.

This was no good, for I wanted to attack the girders themselves; so I crept away to bring the gelatine bearers. Before I reached them there was the loud clatter of a dropped rifle and a scrambling fall from up the bank. The sentry started and stared up at the noise. He saw, high up, in the zone of light with which the rising moon slowly made beautiful the gorge, the machine-gunners climbing down to a new position in the receding shadow. He challenged loudly, then lifted his rifle and fired, while yelling the guard out.

Instantly all was complete confusion.”

Similarly, the story about the disobedient platoon of Turkish soldiers and their chickens in the Sinai is also a documented incident. In Meridian the Pushpoint was hiding in the exploder box Lawrence planted by the small bush to ignite his charges. The inadvertent stumble of the Arab who went forward to see what had happened to Nordhausen caused the box to fail.

Finding these seemingly insignificant triggers in time can prove a daunting task. This is why historians, and time researchers, will be the chief strategists of any future Time War. They must find that loose cartwheel, errant bit of twine or some other pebble in the shoe of the great movers and shakers of historical events. The question of whether time will resist such changes, and demonstrate a certain resilience in spite of human tampering, is open. For example, as Paul Dorland realized at the outset, it might be very easy to delay the departure of the Virginia Colony fleet from Plymouth and, by so doing, prevent the fleet from being scattered in the storm. There would have been no shipwreck on Bermuda, and no Bermuda Pamphlets. But would this have meant that Shakespeare never writes the Tempest? Would the inspiration for the play come to him in some other way?

As a last brief note I wanted to recount the incident at Kilometer 172 as written by T.E. Lawrence himself. In my story, I began by using my “poetic license” to change the event so that the second train was the one blown up in the world Nordhausen and Dorland live in. Their labors aimed at sparing the second train and seeking the destruction of train three instead. (This is, as you will see, the actual history of that event, as recounted below in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom , by T.E. Lawrence.)

“I could not hear the train coming, but trusted, and knelt ready for perhaps half an hour, when the suspense became intolerable, and I signaled to know what was up. They sent down to say it was coming very slowly, and was an enormously long train. Our appetites stiffened. The longer it was the more would be the loot. Then came word that it had stopped. It moved again.

Finally, near one o’clock, I heard it panting. The locomotive was evidently defective (all these wood-fired trains were bad), and the heavy load on the up-gradient was proving too much for its capacity. I crouched behind my bush, while it crawled slowly into view past the south cutting, and along the bank above my head towards the culvert. The first ten trucks were open trucks, crowded with troops. However once again it was too late to choose, so when the engine was squarely over the mine I pushed down the handle of the exploder. Nothing happened. I sawed it up and down four times.

Still nothing happened; and I realized that it had gone out of order, and that I was kneeling on a naked bank, with a Turkish troop train crawling past fifty yards away. The bush, which had seemed a foot high, shrank smaller than a fig-leaf; and I felt myself the most distinct object in the country-side. Behind me was an open valley for two hundred yards to the cover where my Arabs were waiting and wondering what I was at. It was impossible to make a bolt for it, or the Turks would step off the train and finish us. If I sat still, there might be just a hope of my being ignored as a casual Bedouin.