Another Country

My take on time travel. This story started when I wondered what if there was no paradox in time travel. What if all of the complications and ramifications simply didn't exist? What if time travel was as consequence-free as air travel (yes, I know)? 1,100 words Writing time : 1/2 day Finished : 22nd January 2007 Download as Word file

It was probably the single most reckless and dangerous action in the history of man.

On the thirteenth of August 1812, in the port of Boston, Massachusetts, Theo Finlayson shot and killed his great-great-great-grandfather in the presence of multiple witnesses, and then, stepping back to allow his colleagues’ cameras to record the man’s dying moments, waited to see if the universe would end.

That it did not was a testimony to Finlayson’s own maverick mathematics and his own monumental arrogance and peerless ego. While his distant ancestor lay lifeless on the heaps of ooze- and now blood-soaked cordage, Theo Finlayson returned with his companions to the 21st century and in so doing created one of the most lucrative leisure industries in modern history.

For the Finlayson Conjecture suggested that the past was not only reachable by man through time-travel, but was not causally connected to the present in any way. Changing what had happened could never, Finlayson asserted, change the present. Moreover, the past would reset itself once the temporal intruder had left – return to the exact same moment as many times as you liked, it would always be the same and you would never meet yourself coming or going.

Finlayson proved his conjecture, to the satisfaction of his venture capitalists if not to the more studious satisfaction of his mathematical peers, on the thirteenth of August 1812 on a midnight Boston pier. In the present day the historical records were unchanged. The great-great-great-grandfather had lived to a then-remarkable seventy two years, siring eight children by two wives and dying of yellow fever in a hospital bed.

Finlayson, to prove his point, went back to Boston the next day and shot him again.

The past could indeed be visited, over and over again, but it would not – could not – alter the present. Finlayson, in an act that had his financiers initially rushing for the borders, presented the recorded evidence of his crime to the Boston district attorney’s office. He sat impassive as they watched him commit high-definition murder. Twice, on the same man. After several hours he walked out of the district attorney’s office as free as his conscience, confident that there existed no court in the land that would convict him of a crime that patently had never happened. Twice.

And so the world came to realise that Finlayson held the keys to the greatest amusement park the world had ever known – the limitless past – and that for the right price they could gain admission. In truth a temporary pass was all Finlayson could sell – a few hours at most until the temporal rubber-band snapped and whipped the holiday-makers back to the present day.

The past was indeed another world, and those who visited it certainly did things differently while they were there. With no consequences in the now to greet them on their return, men could act out their wildest and darkest fantasies. Just what effect would automatic weapons have on the battlefields of medieval Europe? Or feudal Japan? Or against the Mongol hordes? One could be an avenging angel, a terrible demon, a god amongst men.

And if it had no consequences, how could it be morally wrong?

A man returned to the morning of his day, and killed his loving wife for reasons he could not articulate, even to himself. He kissed her more tenderly than ever when he returned home later that same evening.

Another spent a lifetime’s wealth travelling again and again to the same moment in time, bundling his young family out of the house before the smoke and fire of twenty years ago took them all. Finlayson asked the man (after taking his fee) if he knew what he was doing was futile. Could he not spend his time and money going somewhere else? “Where else is there?”, the man replied, and went back to his fire. Months later, his fortune gone by installments, shotgun suicide. The smiling photograph that graced the obituary pages looked nothing like the pauper who had returned from his own past for the last time, his hollow eyes as grey and lifeless as the all-consuming smoke.

Some men paid their money, travelled and returned, never to speak of what they had done. Looking into their eyes, none would have dared ask.

Some men hunted the great beasts of the past, while others hunted the great men. The most exclusive club on the Eastern Coast for many years was of those select few who had out-drawn Henry McCarty; known to most as Billy the Kid. To Henry’s credit (and thus also that of the members of the club) there was a growing list of applicants who had fatally failed the only entry requirement.

Another group, who had paid the vast sums demanded by Finlayson in a rather different manner, let it be known that none of the theories behind the death of JFK were true, although more than that they would not say.

There were dangers, of course, most notably the fact that nothing but information could be brought back from the past. The material mass that had been sent was the material mass that would be returned, no more. Nor could any man choose which excess weight would be left behind. It quickly became known, after the return of a nearly headless and certainly lifeless customer, that it was unwise to consume more than one excreted while on one’s vacation.

Many times was Finlayson offered a king’s ransom to send a man back two thousand years to Jerusalem, or fourteen hundred years to Mecca. He refused, to the great anger of some and the overwhelming relief of many more. He privately scorned the latter’s unspoken gratitude, however. He did not refuse out of any sense of religious mystery, but because he could not stand the possibility of his own light being dimmed in comparison.

Over the years in which he became the richest man the world had ever seen, Theo Finlayson himself received several anonymous messages containing footage of his own deaths from those wealthy but eccentric customers who clearly thought the architect of all their fun would find it amusing. He did not find it amusing, or even troubling for that matter. Rather, he thought them only one step removed from a solemn act of worship. The best he kept to show at the Finlayson Foundation’s lavishly exclusive end of year parties, but there was one he kept to himself, and that he would sometimes spend hours watching over and over again. It was the one he was most proud of. It was the one he had made himself.

THE END

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