Joe Haldeman: The Accidental Time Machine

There was a pause. “You suddenly need a pet on Sunday morning?”

“Not a pet, exactly.” Go with the semitruth. “I’m an MIT researcher. We need a small turtle for … for a metabolic experiment.”

“Well … you’re down at MIT now?”

“At the Starbucks, actually, right on the Red Line at Kendall Square. I could get up there in less than an hour.”

“Lots of luck.” She laughed again, a pleasant sound. “Tell you what. I’ll give you exactly an hour. Then I cover up my babies and leave.”

“I’m on my way.” He paused just long enough to put a lid on his coffee, and ran down the stairs to the platform.

And waited. The only thing to read was the sex and Personals section of the Phoenix . He studied the WOMEN DESIRING MEN section, and none of them had the hots for a broke ex-graduate student. Well, he could always run one himself: “Broke, shaggy ex-graduate student desires replacement for inexplicably beautiful girl. Will supply own turtle.” If the train would only come.

When it did come, of course, it was jammed full of people who would otherwise be driving or walking. A lot of church perfume, which was pleasant when he stepped into the car but overpowering thirty seconds later. The crowd was unusually tense and silent. Perhaps devout. Perhaps wondering why a loving God would do this to them on Sunday morning.

The T stop was on the wrong side of the mall, and he was five minutes late, so he ran. She was waiting in the door with her coat on. “Hey, slow down,” she called. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She was a small black woman with a broad smile, wearing tight purple jeans and a shirt that said KILL PLANTS AND EAT THEM. She handed him a white cardboard box with a bail, like a Chinese takeout, and a small jar of Baby Reptile Chow. “Fifteen bucks; three for the food. Can’t take plastic; register’s closed.”

He came up with two fives and two deuces and, checking three pockets, enough change. “Hey, you could owe it to me.”

“No, I’ll hit the ATM.” Impulsively: “Take you to lunch?”

She laughed. “Sweetheart, you don’t need lunch; you need some sleep. Give Herman some water and a piece of lettuce and go crash.”

“That’s his name?”

“I call them all Herman. Or Hermione. How long you been up?”

“I got a nap this morning. Sure? About lunch?”

“My boyfriend’s making pancakes. He found out I had breakfast with some turtle wrangler from MIT, he’d up and leave me. Love them pancakes.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

She went off in the opposite direction, toward the parking lot. He opened the box, and the turtle looked at him. Where was he supposed to get lettuce on a Sunday morning?

He hit the ATM, then found a convenience store that had yesterday’s Italian sub in the cooler. He stripped off the wilted lettuce for Herman and squirted mustard on the rest of the sub, and ate half of it down at the subway stop. He rewrapped the other half and left it on the edge of the trash bin. Some actual street person would find it and thank his lucky stars. Until he opened it. Ew-w, mustard.

He couldn’t think on the rattling subway, but did sort out some things on the walk home. He had to be methodical. This trial would be a little over three days. Then roughly a month, and then a year. Then fifteen years, during which time it would be nice if the whole world was waiting. And he was, incidentally, famous and tenured.

After only three more demonstrations. They’d better be compelling.

One thing he had to check with this trial was just how much stuff the machine would take with it. A coin was interesting, but a camera and a watch and a turtle would give actual data.

He would put the turtle in a metal container and set it where the coin had been. But he’d attach a bigger metal container, his desk trash can, to the machine by a conducting wire. Put something heavy in it.

He was assuming, since the metal coin was transported and the wooden base was not, that conductors of electricity went and nonconductors didn’t. But maybe it was because the coin was above the machine and the base was below. So check that out by putting something nonconductive on the top.

There was a note taped to the door, and for a wild moment he could hope it was from Kara. But it was just the landlord reminding him to shovel the walk. Now that would be a reason to travel into the future. Spring.

Herman had withdrawn into his shell, which was understandable. He had probably spent all his remembered life in a pet-store window. Then he was thrown into a cardboard prison and thrust into a backpack, to endure a long subway ride and then a swaying walk while the bitter cold slipped in. The turtle equivalent of being abducted by aliens.

Traveling through time would be nothing in comparison.

Matt put him in a big bowl with a jar lid of water and his wilted lettuce leaf, and set him under the desk lamp to warm.

He rummaged around the kitchen and found a metal loaf pan that could serve as Herman’s time-travel vehicle. It was kind of sticky; he washed it for Herman and posterity. Someday it would be in the MIT Museum.

Should he top it off with foil? That would make a Faraday cage out of it, a complete volume enclosed by conductors. But that hadn’t been necessary before. Anything sitting on metal connected to the outside of the machine ought to do it.

So the loaf pan went on top of the machine, with a bigger jar lid of water and five pellets of Baby Reptile Chow. He cut the cheap cell out of its blister pack. ONE HUNDRED HOURS OF CONTINUOUS OPERATION, it said. USE FOR SURVEILLANCE. Or voyeurism. Or to win a Nobel Prize. He turned it on and it worked. It went next to the loaf pan. Then the watch, sideways so metal was in contact with metal. A stub of pencil for the nonconductor—no, that looked too ad hoc. In the everything drawer he found a white plastic chess piece, a pawn.

Connecting the metal trash can was a slight problem. In the lab, he could just use alligator clips (continuing the reptile theme), but here he had to improvise. He used a computer power cord and lots of duct tape. The multimeter verified that they made a closed circuit. Something heavy to put in it? A gallon plastic jug; he filled it with water up to the rim. See how much evaporates.

Herman was drinking, his neck craned over the jar lid. Matt let him finish, then moved him to his new abode.

H Hour. He set the cheap cell camera on LOCK and placed it so that it looked at the clock radio. Then he set his own camera up to take his picture when he pushed the button.

“This is the sixth iteration,” he said to the camera. “We expect it to be gone for about three days and eight hours.” We being himself and Herman, he supposed.

He pushed the button at exactly noon. The machine faded nicely. The white pawn fell with a click to bounce off the wooden base.

Everything else had gone, including the heavy trash can.

He went into the kitchen and opened a beer quietly, aware that posterity was listening.

Matt spent all of Monday writing an account of the thing he had to call a time machine. He could change the name to something less fantastic before anybody else read it. The disappearing machine? Not much better.

He wouldn’t finish the paper, of course, until he had a live turtle and video footage. Or a dead one and blankness, whatever.

There wasn’t much to say about the physics involved, the disappearing or time-traveling mechanism, especially since reproducing the machine didn’t reproduce the effect. It had to be some accidental feature of its construction.

But he was understandably reluctant to take it apart. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t find anything conclusive, and when he put it back together, it might just be a photon calibrator again.