Joe Haldeman - The Accidental Time Machine

“She’s on her way?” Matt said.

Jesse nodded, looking at the space where the ship had been. “I’ve never tried to go so far up. I assume the thing will keep working, but asymptotically.”

“She’ll get closer and closer, but never quite be there?”

“As she must have known. As long as she can still push the button, the show isn’t over. By definition.”

“Why did you help her?” Martha said. “And why are you helping us?”

“With her, it’s just courtesy. People, or nonpeople, get stuck in time. Other time travelers unstick them.

“With you, it’s not so altruistic. If you, Matthew, were to die before going back, this whole bundle of universes would disappear.”

“If I hadn’t discovered the time machine?”

“Well, you didn’t actually ‘discover’ anything, did you? You just used a component that was faulty in a dimension you can’t even sense. Like the family dog accidentally starting the car. Not to be impolite.

“We’ve sent you back before.” He rubbed his brow. “Words like ‘before’ and ‘after’ become inadequate. But we have sent you back to 2058 to bail yourself out, a large number of times. We know that because we’re still here. All of us are your descendants, in a way. If time travel hadn’t started in your time and place, we wouldn’t exist.”

“Even the, um …” He made a helpless gesture. “The aliens?”

Jesse said something in the whistling language. The one with the scales made his crab-claw noise and the other one’s face filled up with eyes. “They’re at least as human as you are.” Martha smiled at that.

“Sorry. Sorry.” The two strange ones bowed. “So do you have a time machine?”

“The six of us are a time machine.” He pulled out the virtual graviton generator. “You have to both be touching this, for calibration. It will send you back to where Matt first pushed the button.

“But there’s something like an uncertainty principle involved. We can send you back to the exact time or the exact place, but not both.”

“Time, then,” Matt said. “We can find our way back to Cambridge.”

“Well, no. Not if you appear a mile under the sea, or inside a mountain. I’d choose place, if I were you.

“You might be only a few seconds off, or you might be years. We have no control over that. Was your lab on the ground floor?”

“It was, yes.”

“If it weren’t, you’d appear on the bottom floor beneath it. If you’re in a future or a past where the lab doesn’t exist, you’ll appear at ground level where it was or will be.”

“What if I meet myself and say, ‘Don’t push that button’? ”

“It won’t happen. You can’t exist, as your former self, in this universe. When we’ve sent you back to 2058, your copy automatically showed up in a time when you were in transit, and left before you reappeared.”

Matthew rubbed his chin. “I can do anything I want? I could reinvent the time machine?”

Jesse paused. “We know that you haven’t. You could try; the dog could start the car again. But it wouldn’t be smart; you’d be well advised not to put yourself in the public eye. You’d look very suspicious if someone investigated your past. If you claimed to be a time traveler, you’d probably be locked up.”

“Even if we appear in the future?”

“Even so. You won’t have existed; there would be no Marsh Effect.”

“At least the bastard won’t win a Nobel Prize.”

“You never know.” He handed the gray box to Matt. “Are you ready?”

Matt looked at Martha. She managed a weak smile and nodded. She touched the box and he folded his other hand over hers. She did the same.

“Good luck,” Jesse said. The others murmured, whistled, and scraped similar sentiments.

There was no interlude of gray. One moment they were in the Antarctic waste, and the next, they were ankle deep in mud. It was a cool fall day. A few hundred yards away, workmen were toiling at the edge of the Charles River, building a seawall.

“Oh, my God,” Matt said. “MIT hasn’t been built yet.”

A policeman in a blue uniform walked toward them, swinging a billy club.

“The more things change,” he said, “the more they stay the same.”

The cop had a silly-looking tall bowler hat, a walrus moustache, and an amused expression. “And you’d be from the circus.”

“That’s right, Officer,” Matt improvised. “We’re truly lost. Could you direct us to Kendall Square?”

“You’re on the right track.” He pointed with his club. “Goin’ through this mud’s a bad idea, though. It gets deep. You go on back to the bridge, go right on Massachusetts Avenue there, and right again on the second street. It’s a longer walk but won’t take half the time.

“So you’re acrobats?”

“Tightrope walkers.” That was sort of how Matt felt.

“What are you doing on this side of the river? Is the circus coming to Cambridge?”

“No, no—we just got lost,” Matt said, Martha nodding emphatically.

The officer scowled in a comical way. “Well, you know you should put on some actual clothes.” He stared frankly at Martha and chuckled. “Miss, another policeman might arrest you for immodest dress. Allow me instead to express my gratitude.” He touched the bill of his hat with his billy club. “Just a word to the wise, you understand.”

He turned and walked away, whistling.

“That was close,” Matt whispered. He took Martha’s arm and steered her toward the bridge.

It looked brand-new, with forest green paint. In Matt’s time it had been an antique; Martha remembered it as being partly collapsed in the middle, from a bomb in the One Year War, with horse traffic taking turns each five minutes, in and out of Cambridge.

“Where are we going to get clothes without any money?”

“I’m not sure,” Matt said. “A church?” He knew the way to Trinity Church, but wasn’t sure whether it was Catholic or Protestant—just that it was old and beautiful. It took them about twenty minutes to walk there, disrupting traffic, attracting stares and the occasional rude comment, and meanwhile they made up what they hoped would be a reasonable story. They had come into town to audition for the circus, but while they were practicing, someone stole their luggage, along with his wallet and her purse. They didn’t need nice clothing; just something to cover them up.

Matt had been hoping for nuns, and was surprised to find that Trinity had a few, even though it was Episcopalian.

A calendar said 1898.

The nuns received their story with a grain of skepticism, but rummaged through the poor box and found worn but clean clothes that sort of fit, which they would loan them until they were gainfully employed. The nuns also gave them a loaf of fresh bread from their kitchen, which they gratefully took down to the water’s edge, where there were park benches looking out over the river. They were more or less across from where MIT would start growing in a decade or so.

“I like this dress,” Martha said, rubbing the fabric. It was a burnt orange long-sleeved affair that covered her from ankle to neck. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” He had faded patched blue jeans and a worn gray flannel shirt. “I’d rather see more of you, though. Seems funny.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Martha had packed two bottles of wine and two cups, which were made of some unbreakable polymer but looked like glass. They might have some trouble explaining a bottle of wine that cooled when you unscrewed the top, and stayed cold, not to mention the plastic containers of fish salad that did the same when you pinched a corner. So they didn’t invite anyone to join them.