The Navigators (5 page)

Chapter Eight

“W
hat would you do if you could go back in time, to any place, any era? Where would you go? Who would you see?”

Tempers had run hot. I put my question out there, then got up and put a pot on the stove for tea. It would give us some time to cool down while we waited for Findlay. And we needed to cool down.

They had all taken various seats around the machine.

“A time machine.” Melissa gazed up at the ceiling. “It’s so crazy.”

Barry leaned forward. “Why?”

“Well, prior to yesterday, did you even think time travel was possible?”

“Of course it's possible,” said Roger. “How do you think Bill Gates knew to create Microsoft?”

“I think we have to be careful.” Barry rubbed his chin. “If you go back in time and cause an interruption of what we know happened, like if you were to kill someone like Napoleon or Hitler, you set in motion a chain of events that causes unpredictability.” He glanced at Roger. “You know? Like if you went back in time and accidentally killed your own grandfather before the birth of your father, then you would never have been born.”

Roger smiled. “Okay, so we don't kill our grandfathers. I think we can all agree on that.”

“You're missing the point.” Barry stood. “Killing somebody would be a large event. But the ripple effect might be the same for minor events.”

Melissa propped herself up on one elbow. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, we can't interact at all.” Barry walked around the couch, appearing lost in thought. “We need to be observers. Just because you don't think you changed the outcome of a situation, you can't say for sure. You won't know what turns out to be a major issue later.” He chuckled. “If the gun misfires on the guy who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, you don't get World War I, and therefore you don't get World War II.”

Roger leaned back into the couch. “Maybe you get something much worse. The Nazis might have had time to invent the nuclear bomb before they started their conquest of Europe.”

“Right.” Barry nodded. “Things end up much worse. A world of slavery under Nazi rule.”

I sighed. “You guys are always so cheery in the morning.”

“So,” Barry turned back to the group, “no interaction. Observation only.”

“I'd still like to kill Hitler,” Roger said.

Barry shifted course. “Okay, but you
can't
. I'm not having my grandfather not meet my grandmother and me not exist all because you have hero issues. I have a date Friday. You're not messing that up.”

A chuckle went up from the group.

“It's complicated.” Melissa played with her hair, brushing the ends over her lips and chin. “I mean, your big date aside of course, why do we have to assume things would turn out badly?”

I threw in my two cents. “It could be like a faulty loop formula on a computer.”

“Maybe,” Barry nodded. “Only time probably won't just freeze things up until we figure out the correct formula inputs. Instead, we just get a wacky outcome later, something that none of us could have predicted.”

Roger folded his arms. “It could be benign.”

“Or it could be tragic.”

“I gotta tell you, that seems a little dramatic, Barry.” Roger stretched his large frame before going into the kitchen. “Why does everything have to turn to crap just because we make a simple mistake like bumping into our mother?”

“Or accidentally bumping off our own grandfather?” I didn’t want tempers flaring back up.

Barry looked at Roger. “It doesn't. It might be completely benign and safe." He rubbed his chin again. "But, since we can't predict that with any certainty, it makes more sense to proceed with caution and not interact.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Roger opened the fridge and pulled out a soda. “The bastard Hitler gets to live.”

“And Barry gets his big date on Friday,” I said. “Everybody’s happy.”

An air of unresolved questions hung in the air. “So, what would you do?” I moved back to the living room and observed my teammates as they stared at the large metal oval.

“What do you mean?” Melissa sat up and tucked a leg under herself.

I shrugged. “Money, right? With a time machine you could go back in time and buy a bunch of stocks and bonds. Ones that you know would do well. You could make millions.”

“I don’t know…” Melissa took a deep breath. “If this thing can do what Barry thinks it can do, it could be really important." She glanced around at the rest of us. "What about doing something significant with it? Something that might be meaningful to the whole world, like witnessing the birth of Christ? The beginning of a religion…”

“That’s not bad.” Roger moved to a chair. “For Christianity, you’d have to go at the end, though, you know? At the crucifixion. To see the religion begin.”

Melissa spoke quietly, apparently taken by what she’d just said. “You could meet Jesus. Ask Him why God let something terrible happen...”

“The main element of Christian religions is the resurrection of Christ a couple of days after the crucifixion.” Barry paced around the room. “The crucifixion is mostly just how they killed him.”

Melissa pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, coming back to the larger conversation. “I don’t think I’d want to see anything so brutal.”

“That’s for sure.” Barry circled the machine. “The Romans, they didn’t mess around. That’s some ugly stuff, the way they treated people. But it might be the only way to know. That, or one of the miracles.”

“Caesar.” Roger took a sip of his soda. He leaned against the counter and eyed the machine. “What about the death of Julius Caesar? That was pretty historically significant.”

“You could go play detective and see who really killed him,” I said.

Roger chuckled. “Although, that was a pretty brutal ending, too.”

“What about the start of time?” Barry squatted in front of the machine and glanced up at us. “Go back to day one, minute one, second one.”

“What would the date of that be?” Roger asked. “Zero, zero, zero?”

“Although, you'd have to be quick." Barry chuckled as he ran his fingers along the bronze frame. "Or kaboom -
you'd
be a zero zero zero." He grinned, not taking his eyes off the machine. "There’s something to be said for Tomàs’ idea. Figure out the best stocks, buy them, and make some money. But we can’t interact.”

Roger took another gulp of his soda. “Well... you get some money, go back and buy a bunch of cheap stocks that you know become valuable, come back and sell them for a pile of cash, and then go back and do it all over again. It wouldn’t take more than a couple of trips to be rolling in it.”

“Where would you,” Barry peered up at him, “get the money for the original investment?”

Roger shrugged. “Dude, to make millions? I’d sell everything I own.”

“It’s gonna take more than a couple of trips to get rich, then.” Barry chuckled. “If you sell everything you own, you’ll only be going back in time with, like, thirty bucks.”

We all laughed, even Roger. It was a good sign. Tempers had cooled.

“Okay, so maybe I’d have to make a few more trips than you, Barry. That’s fine. I’ll make a trip a day for a month, okay? Even if I only start with thirty bucks, if I double it every trip, within three weeks I’d be a millionaire.”

Barry sighed. “I guess you would at that. Seems kind of easy.” He knocked a few remaining pieces of dried mud off the machine. "I wonder how many trips you can take before it runs out of gas?"

“Easy? I don’t think so,” I said. “You have to take some currency that they used back then. You can’t show up in 1929 with dollar bills from now!”

“Yeah, good point.” Barry glanced at Roger. “Damned counterfeiter.”

Roger shrugged. “Guess I’ll be investing in gold, then. Like one of those guys on TV.”

“Gold bullion.” Barry sat back down at his desk. “Can’t use gold coins that are stamped with a modern year, either.”

“Well, whatever they said on them, gold is gold. It could have Mickey Mouse on it or the playmate of the month, anybody who knows it’s real gold would take it, hands down.”

“It’s tricky.” I went back to check the teapot. “There’s a lot to think about.”

“What about you, Peeky?” Melissa asked. “Where would you go?”

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“Oh, come on.” She twisted around to face me and put her arm over the back of the couch, resting her chin on it. Her big eyes looked up at me. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. It’s almost all I’ve thought about since Barry told us what it was.”

Sliding my hands into my pockets, I emerged from the kitchen to lean against one of the bar stools. I studied the floor for a moment. “I think it might be nice to go back in time, and...” I was surprised at how hard the words were to say out loud. “If my four-year-old daughter could meet her grandmother, back when she was alive. Back when she was young and healthy and full of life. Before the illnesses started dragging her down...” With each word, my voice became more strained. I glanced around at the others, reading their faces. All eyes were glued on me. “I have a picture of her on the boardwalk at the seaside. Back home, you know? It would be nice to see her like that again, so young and beautiful…” I swallowed hard. “That would be nice. I’d like my daughter to have met her then. To have had the chance to know her.”

The group was silent. The clock steadily ticked on the wall, making the only noise in the room.

“Oh, Peeky.” Melissa blinked back a tear.

“It’s okay.” I shrugged. “Life just… had other plans.”

Barry pursed his lips. “Sounds like it would be a nice trip, Peeky.”

I took a deep breath and glanced out the window at a moving truck that ambled along in front of apartment buildings and their green landscaping, so lush and perfect. Sometimes nothing here felt like home.

“Who’s first?” Roger asked.

Melissa eyed him. “Hmm?”

“Which one of us would get to take the first ride in our little time machine here?”

Barry sat up. “Me.”

“You?” Roger asked. “Why you?”

“Why not me?”

“Oh, I can think of a lot of reasons ‘why not you.’ For one thing, you let Findlay in on it. That alone probably rules you out just on general principle.”

Barry leaned back in his desk chair and folded his hands in his lap. “I’m sure you had someone else in mind. Huh? Like yourself, maybe?”

“Well, if you insist.” Roger stretched, patting his belly. “Besides, with my plan, we could at least finally have some funding for the department.”

“After you socked away a million or two for yourself first.” Melissa leaned forward. “Right, Roger?”

“Oh, of course.”

“Yeah, well, I think the person with the best idea should go first,” she said.

Barry drummed his thighs with his hands. “I wonder who you think has the best idea.”

“Hey,” Melissa laughed. “My idea was better than anything you guys came up with.” Then, realizing what she had just said, she peered at me. “Peeky, I didn’t mean…”

I waved her off. “I know.”

“She meant us, Peeky,” Roger said.

“We’ll draw straws.”

Barry rocked forward in his chair. “What?”

“To see who goes first,” I said. “We just draw straws. It’s more fair.”

The others probably liked the idea of using persuasive arguments to plead their cases. They also knew better than to think that anyone would be talked out of a chance at taking the first trip.

The teapot whistled.

“That’s the end of round one.” Barry joined me as I headed into the kitchen.

“It
is
more fair,” I whispered, reaching for some soda straws he had in a jar. They had accumulated just like the dozen or so ketchup packets in the fridge: too many late nights at the lab with a fast food dinner on the way home. I arranged the straws on the counter. “Why do you even have these? You never use straws.”

“They throw them in the bag.” Barry shrugged. “Seems wasteful to just throw them out. So I throw ‘em in that jar.”

“Where nobody uses them.”

“
You’re
about to use them.”

I pulled a scissors from the drawer and picked a few straws up, trimming one enough to make sure it was shorter than the others – and letting Barry see which color it was: red. Couldn't hurt to give an advantage to the right person.

“At least it will appear more fair,” I whispered. “Go on back out there.”

Barry nodded and went to join the others in the middle of the living room. After a moment, I collected the straws and put down the scissors. “Time to draw.”

Melissa turned. “What about Riff?”

I walked to the couch. “You all draw for yourselves.” I held up a fist of straws, the ends hidden. “Then, Melissa, you draw for Riff. Whatever straw is left will go to me.”

“Okay.” She and the others gathered around.

We stared at each other, wondering who should pick first.

“Uh, go ahead.” Barry nudged Roger with an elbow. It was a bold move to let anyone else go first, since Barry wanted to choose red.