So it's day four of my stay at Southern Virginia University for Orson Scott Card's Writing Class and Extended boot camp, and yesterday was the day I had to take an idea I'd had and turn it into a 2500 word story. Here it is. And yeah, I was fairly excited while I was writing it, but now that it's done? Who knows. It may be brilliant, it may be crap. It's ridiculous that I don't know.
Without further adieu, here is my story. Read it or don't, comment or don't. But I promised some people it would be up today, before realizing I had something on my hands that I wasn't even sure was good anymore.
The Second Past
By Adam Holwerda
Brian Brewer had been sure he’d never finish it. So sure, in fact, that when he finally did he didn’t know what to do with himself. He circled the time machine over and over again, squinting at its thousands of parts, looking for places where any sort of fiddling could be done. But none could. This was it, the product of the last project he’d taken on as a man of science. Complete to every specification he’d come up with seventeen years before, when he’d been the most promising student in the graduate program of theoretical physics at Berkeley. That is, until he’d come up with the design for what he believed would be the only working time machine the world would ever see.
The dean hadn’t looked kindly on his insanity then, and no doubt still believed he’d done the right thing in repealing Brian’s scholarship. That particular incident didn’t bother him anymore; he knew genius was often overlooked, and he knew he was right. So he’d gone home to Virginia, to the house his parents had left him, and began construction on the time machine in the same basement where his first desire to change the past had been put into motion. Every day for seventeen years he added to it, fairly sure he’d never really finish, fairly sure he’d be tempted to destroy it if he ever did.
But now it was complete, and no such temptation surfaced. It was perfect, really, and every time he circled it he realized the construction of it was the only constant in his recent life; it was the only thing that kept him sane, not the the thing that had driven him there as his former dean had thought. No, he didn’t want to destroy it. He could change history with it. He could go back and save the man who’d met his end on the branch of the grand willow Brian had since cut down.
He picked up the phone and dialed his old friend from Berkeley, a fellow physicist and perhaps the only person who’d ever believed in Brian’s project, Gary Hooper. After Brian’s scholarship had been repealed, Gary had gone to the dean to try and get him reinstated, to no effect. “Sorry Brian,” he’d said later, “Administration just doesn’t want to listen to anyone who actually knows anything, and especially not black people smarter than they are.” Most of the other physicists had resented the simple fact of Gary’s presence based on his race and his intelligence, but not Brian. The two had become best of friends almost immediately, and kept corresponding even after Brian’s move back to Virginia. It was nine A.M. in Berkeley, California, but Brian was fairly sure his friend was awake. Gary answered on the third ring, and Brian found he’d been right. While raspy, his old friend’s voice didn’t sound as if it belonged to someone who’d just rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
“Gary? It’s Brian Brewer. Is there any way I can get you to fly out here sometime in the next few days?”
“Brian! Nice to hear from you! How are things? You still building that time machine in your basement?”
“No, not anymore. That’s the thing; it’s finished. And I thought you’d want to come see.” There was a silence then, and Brian imagined his old friend’s eyebrows crinkling together, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as his mouth fell slowly open.
“You finished? I can’t believe it. You’re serious right? Not pulling my leg or anything, are you?” Brian knew Gary didn’t believe him yet. Why should he? Brian barely believed it himself. Still, if he was going to do anything with the time machine, try to make it work, he’d want Gary there.
He’d
need Gary there.
“Gary, I promise you. I never thought I’d make it this far. But now that I’m here, I’m starting to think about testing it, and I want-”
“Testing it?! Are you crazy? The model you designed was a working time propulsion machine, but it was only good for one use! It ceases to exist once it’s done its job, and there’s no coming back. No second trial. You’ll only get one shot, unless you’ve found another way. Have you?”
“No, Gary, it’s the same model. It’s the only possible model. But I’m going to use it. Testing was the wrong word. I’m going to go back in time. And when I do, and the time machine ceases to exist, I want a witness. I want proof. I won’t be in this time anymore, and so I’m going to need you to break the news. I want you to clear my name in the academic field. I’m not insane, and I never was. That’s not how I want to be remembered.”
“You’re honestly going to do this? Why? Why do you have to do it? I’ve known you for an incredibly long time, Brian, and you’re not the kind of guy who believes in self-sacrifice for the sake of science. Especially when you’re the only expert in this particular field.”
“Everything I know is already available. It was in my dissertation. It’s public domain. I’m not going to be killed, Gary, just sent to an earlier time. To see if I can change something I’ve regretted all my life. I’ll tell you about it when you come. Will you come? Or choose to stay in California while the greatest scientific event in human history is taking place in my basement in Virginia?” Brian let his voice drop into the jovial tone he’d always used when persuading his old friend. It worked, and Brian smiled a little when he heard Gray trying to stifle a laugh.
“All right, Brewer. I’d be a dumb old ass to miss this, and I know it. I’ll be on a plane first thing tomorrow morning. Just make sure you take all the time you need to think about this. Don’t jump into anything.”
“Thank you, Gary. I’m going to miss you when I’m gone.”
“Yeah well, I’m not.” They both laughed, and Brian hung up the phone.
*
He was seven years old when he found the naked black man in the center of his basement, on the rough cement floor. He flicked on the lights, took the first three steps down the wooden stairway, and heard a noise. He stopped. And gasped silently as his eyes fell on the man and his father’s errand for a bottle of wine evaporated. Huddled up and sobbing like a newborn, the man’s body was slick with grease or sweat or some other moisture and Brian could not look away. From his position on the stair, all he could see was the man’s backside, and the man hadn’t seemed to have had any reaction to Brian’s turning on the light.
Could he approach the man, try to get his attention? Ask him to leave his house before his father realized Brian was taking too long getting the bottle of wine he’d asked for? Suppose the man was dangerous: a child stealer or murderer or a criminal of that sort? He certainly didn’t look it, but he had to be some kind of criminal, hadn’t he? He’d broken into Brian’s house and invaded his wine cellar. He’d ditched his clothes, so he might be mentally ill.
Brian, under other circumstances, would most likely have disregarded all these factors and gone to speak to the man.
If the man had been white.
Instead, he did something he would for the rest of his life regret. He went back up the stairs, and looked for his father.
*
Brian got no sleep that night. Gary was due to arrive sometime the next day, and so the decision had to be made. He was in a position any physicist or anthropologist would kill to be in, and he was going to use it to visit his known past. He imagined the reactions many would have: that he’d wasted his single most precious chance to observe and even validate history. That he’d wasted it to go back in time to try and change the outcome of an event, something most theoretical physicists had dismissed as impossible. Gary was of a similar position; when he arrived, Brian had to be prepared for the attack of logic. If, Gary would say, it were possible for you to return in time and change the outcome of an event, and you tried in such a way that would inevitably lead to success, the past would be changed such that the outcome you wanted to fix became an outcome you were satisfied with, and in fact you’d have no reason to go back in time to fix anything at all. And yet, if you didn’t go back in time, the past would never have changed. It was one of the great many paradoxes dealing with theoretical time travel, one Brian believed he had solved. If he was wrong, he’d find out tomorrow. His body was as tense as his mind, and there was no settling himself.
Finally he sat up. From his position on the bed he could see out his window, down into the back yard to the trunk of the grand willow he’d cut down. He remembered the tree that had been there, a massive thing, an overpowering presence with several long, thick limbs. One from which his father had hung a tire swing when Brian was a child. He remembered the view from his locked room as his father and two other men in long, white robes took down the tire swing and fitted the branch with a new rope. Remembered pounding on the window as he realized the man he’d found in the basement was having his head put into the loop. His father then kicked the block out from under the naked man’s shaking legs, and what Brian remembered most about that day was screaming as he realized the swinging man was mouthing his name and Brian had absolutely no power at all to help him.
Brian shivered. No, not anymore. He could help now. He could redeem himself, and save the man. Brian dressed again, at two in the morning, and walked down into the basement. There he would sit staring at the time machine until the early afternoon, when the doorbell rang.
*
“Is there any way I can possibly talk you out of this?” Gary, suitcase in hand, stood slumped on the porch, grinning. Brian put his arms around the man, hugging and at the same time pulling him into the house.
“You’re early, Gary. You weren’t supposed to be here for another few weeks!” Brian took a step back from his old friend and looked him up and down.
Gary put down the suitcase. “What’s the damage?”
“In all truth, you don’t look any different. That’s all you’ve changed in seventeen years?” Brian was surprised to find himself lying only a little. Gary really didn’t look much older than the last time he’d seen him.
“Sorry I can’t say the same thing for you, Brewer. You look terrible.” The two laughed, and an awkward silence followed. Brian knew what was coming next.
“Well,” he said.
“Have you thought it through? Are you bound and determined to do this?”
Brian sighed. Of course he was, and of course he’d need to convince Gary there was no convincing him.
“I’m going to do it, and I’m going to succeed. I’ll change the past. My past, but more importantly the past of someone else.”
Gary nodded.
“So you’re past persuading then. That’s fine. Can we see her? The time machine?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Brian said, smiling. “She’s really something.”
“I’ll bet.”
*
The time machine was a sphere about four feet in diameter, anchored to its position on the floor with a hollowed out base and many mechanical attachments. From it, tubes and wires seemed to jut every which way, some spiraling outward, others bending back to the source in a loop. One slice of the sphere’s surface was relatively smooth, with the exception of two large holes that were positioned across from each other on the same lattitude somewhat north of the sphere’s equator.
“She’s beautiful,” Gary said, more reverence in his voice than Brian had ever heard from the aging physicist. “You must know that I’m fairly sure you won’t succeed, right, Brian? You don’t succeed because you didn’t succeed. Nothing is different. And if you do, then you’ve changed it. So changing what you want to change won’t make any difference anyway.”
Brian sighed. Gary would never keep his mouth shut, not even if he knew he was fighting a losing battle. A lost battle.
“Causality is unproven, Gary. My goal has nothing to do with it. It may work the way you say, and so I don’t succeed. I never succeed. Nothing changes. Or it may be that until I actually go back in time and do what I need to do to make the past what I need it to be, nothing changes at all. It’ll be a different past. A second past. And the world will most likely be exactly how it is
now, except I will have done what I built the machine for.”
“Or you may end up rippling through time, your little change gradually affecting small things until they snowball and eventually human civilization collapses on itself. What good is your proof then? With no one to share it with?” Gary was just trying to frustrate him now, Brian knew it. His friend was genuinely against him.
“That won’t happen, Gary, and you know it. You think the only safe option is inaction, and yet you know I’m going to go through with it. I called you here to be my proof, to be witness to the greatest event in science. So why can’t you accept it?”
“Tell me what you’re going to change. At least do that much.”
Brian bit his lip. “When I was seven, I saw something bad happen to someone I didn’t know. I want to go back and help him. I’ve been wishing for that chance my entire life. I have the date set for that day.”
Gary closed his eyes, and nodded.
“There’s no stopping you. The time machine is going to be used. And while the safest option is inaction, there’s a safer option than yours. Observation. Use the machine, but don’t change anything. Stay out of the way.”
“I can’t do that, Gary. I have to try.” Brian’s friend would understand eventually, would give up trying to argue. Gary took a few steps up to the machine, and put a light hand on its surface. He sighed.
“If that’s what you really want,” Gary said. Brian nodded, noting his small victory.
“It is.”
“If that’s what you really want,” Gary said again, “I’m left with no choice. If you won’t observe, I will.” The black man plunged his hands into the two holes and Brian was standing alone in his basement.
The time machine was gone. Gary was gone.
“No,” he said to the empty room. He stood there a moment longer, and then the reality of it hit him and he fell to his knees. He’d killed his best friend. Not just as a child, but now as well.
There was no second past.
Brian closed his eyes, seeing as he did so a terrible image. Gary Hooper, his friend of more than twenty years, swinging naked on the end of the rope, mouth opening and closing as Brian’s father and the two robed men walked away.
Mouth opening and closing.
“Brian.”
What our critique sessions looked like - I'm at the opposite end of the table.
This was me ruining Jamie's picture.
Here's Orson Card squishing my head. I don't know, I guess it's some kind of tradition or something.
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