KIDNAPPING THROUGH THE STREAM OF TIME by Lars M. Culverine (c) 1998
CHAPTER 2. The Trip Back
The cloud of dust was still descending in the place where the crushed piece of ceiling vault hit the ground as I turned back to the boy and looked in his eyes with a speaking, extremely serious expression:
"You believe me now?" I asked. The boy nodded.
"I'm glad," I breathed out with a noticeable relief. "But, what now?" I spread my hands, gesticulating. "The history has changed. We have to do something with it!"
"Do what?" asked the boy.
"I don't know. I saved your life, that's true. But this will cause to change all the history, you see? You wouldn't lived by this time. Not even tomorrow. And everybody would have believed you were dead. And... the history should have continued according to it. But now... Now everything has changed. And everything is going to be changed, unless we would do anything with it. The only hope to preserve the history might be if everybody would think you had really died here on this place, you understand?"
The boy shivered: "Yes I do, but..." then he paled white: "What... what are you gonna do to me?" I laughed with relief: "Oh, no, I'm not going to do anything to you! We just have to think out something to make everybody sure that something terrible happened to you in here. I don't know what, well maybe something like as if we would let a lot of false spots removing the true ones at the same time..."
Michael's eyes highlighted in joy: "Wow, that's like in the crime story!"
"You're right," I nodded, smiling, "now we only need to find out what to do and how..."
I looked around the place... There! I couldn't believe my fortune...
I spotted a pair of fifty-gallon kegs labelled with: KEROSENE. Lucky boy, I smiled broadly. No matter if those kegs were full or empty, the idea was there.
"Well, I think I already know what to do," I stated, smiling, "please listen to me very carefully, Michael, ok?"
"Ok," the boy smiled.
"Um... so you are a full orphan, right?" Michael nodded.
"And you really have nobody to go to, no uncle, auntie, grandpa, no friends of your mommy, no sibblings, nobody?" The boy shook his head no.
"So if I would take you with me back to our times, will anybody stay here who will miss you?"
Michael's face and eyes flashed with joy and then burst in happiness: "You would... you would do? You would really like to take me with you?" And he stared at me with such an endless joy and with such a sincere hopeful plead in his eyes that I shivered.
I said: "Not that I would like to, now I even have to take you with me, because history would have almost likely changed if I wouldn't do that. This looks like the only solution possible. I have to take you with me."
The boy almost shrieked out with pleasure but I had to quieten him a bit: "Do you understand, what would this mean to you? If I take you with me then you will never, never and ever be able to return. You will have to leave everything, like your friends and all."
Michael stunned, surprised. But I continued.
"And when we come back into my times, everything is going to look different than you were used to. You will not recognize anyone. Most people you have known may not be alive, gosh, we will travel the seventy-one years into the future!"
"And could we get everything back anyhow? I mean completely?"
I doubted for a second. But then I realized what all would have happened if I did it that way: "I think we could, but... the way I would have to go back in time to before I first appeared in here. Then I would have to do lots of things to return everything back and this also means that I would have to look at you as you were being killed by the fallen ceiling vault and I wouldn't be allowed to help you!"
The boy kind of dragged his heels, uncertain, embarassed, he was thinking for a long while and finally he said: "I would die here if you wouldn't saved me so I wouldn't be here anyway. And if you let me go, then ev'rything changes and..."
He suddenly turned to me, startled: "If... if everything changes, could it happen that you'd be never born?"
"Yes, that's true." I nodded seriously.
"But you couldn't save me here then!" He exclaimed and I nodded again.
"And what would then happen to me? And to you? If you're gonna return now and let me leave..."
"...then my existence could dissolve on the way back. And maybe after I will disappear from here without you, it also could happen that you would have dissolved, too. This is called the time-space continuity corruption."
Michael popped his eyes: "What?!"
"Come and look," I incited the boy, "our time machine is equipped by lots of stuff that are able to compute such things."
I set the board computer to overcome to the changed stream of time simulation mode. I confirmed all those diagraphs along with the difficult calculation curves to advance to the final calculation that I have made in the lab.
"See?" I pointed to the monitor. "This is it!"
Michael tried desperately to read out and to understand the results of the tests that now were beaming on the screen but it was all much too difficult for him.
"The pur-su-ed ob-ject... it's like me?" he asked. I nodded.
"And the person non-be-lon-ging to ac-actual time-space... oh lordy, I can't even read it out! What does it mean?"
I smiled: "This means that if I take you with me, if I remove all spots of mine and of the time machine and if I add some new spots here for everybody to think that you died on the place, then nothing changes for anybody in your time and the history is likely to preserve."
The boy stared in awe and then he fell heavily onto the chair: "Wow! This is too much for me!"
"Do you understand it at least a bit? It's far too difficult even for an adult!"
Michael turned to me and blurted out: "Well... yes, maybe," and then he added, "hmmm, well I'd like to get outta the orphy anyway. And I'm sure I ain't get nothing but those new boots or clothes for my birthday."
I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. I would almost forgotten!
"Well yes, it's your birthday today, isn't it? It's the 16th of August! It requires some celebration ceremony, what do you say?"
The boy nodded cheerfully.
"And I've already got an excellent idea for your birthday present! I'm going to take you back with me and you will have a look into the future! We're going to celebrate it, you will prolongue your vacation for a life-time and you will see things you have never even dreamt about! Agreed?"
Now only the boy realized what all he can accomplish and fulfill to himself. In a second he checked all pros and cons of it and he exclaimed in a high-pitched falsetto voice excited by enormous wave of joy: "Yes, yes!! I'm gonna go with you! I can, can I, please, tell me I can, please!" he pleaded.
"Of course you can," I quieted him, "but first we have to make everybody think you have stayed here dead. May I borrow your cap, please?"
After a short pause of hesitation he took off his worn-out cap and handed it to me with a huge question-mark engraved in his face. I turned it over, bottom up. This was exactly I was seeking out: a name-label and the fixed leaf with inventory code and address of the owner which wasn't anybody else than the Municipal Institute for the Children Care.
I grabbed it and slightly tore the nobody-know-how-many-times washed and now-just-scarcely-definable cloth in several places.
"Whatcha doin'?" Michael exclaimed, surprised.
"You will see," I said and pressed the torn-off hood in between the pile of ruins that was originally created by the fallen ceiling vault just a while before. Then I filled it partly up with some mess and garbage from around and rolled the two kegs as close as possible to the pile. Then I returned to the cabin where I opened the "trunk" under the seat in there and reached for the big rescue-kit.
Michael observed me rather curiously, still having not any slightest idea, what I was up to.
I pulled out the self-destruction remote-controlled set - consisting of more pieces of plastic and a CB-based remote controller - and a huge bottle of alternate fuel supply. I opened the valve and poured a generous amout of fuel into each of the kegs, adding a piece of plastic on them. After I have finished I checked whether any spot of mine has left there, I dusted my hands and returned into the cabin again, putting the empty bottle onto its place.
"Well, that's it," I declared. "See the kegs?"
"Uh-huh."
"Do you know what's a KEROSENE?" I asked.
The boy shook his head no. I explained: "It's a fuel for airplanes, you see? It a highly explosive stuff."
"What does that mean 'hi-ly ex-explosive?" the boy asked.
"That means that this kerosene goes boom very easily and very often," I answered in a slight smirk.
Little Michael giggled but I continued: "Don't laugh! It's a very dangerous liquid. But this is exactly what do we need it for. Now listen carefully: the label on the kegs reads: KEROSENE. This means that this kerosene MUST HAVE BEEN in there before. Now, the grey stuff that I've just sticked on the kegs, it's a plastic explosive - it's just something like dynamite. And what I'm holding now (I showed him the detonator) it's something like a time bomb, with this I can make the plastic go boom whenever I want to. And guess what happens when it goes boom?" I asked and turned to little Michael.
"Uh... I dunno," he answered.
"The explosion would cause all around to blow up and tear into small pieces. And when some people come over here, what would they find? A mess, pieces of kegs labelled KEROSENE, and -- which is very important -- YOUR cap laying nearby. What would they think then?"
Michael stayed embarassed for a moment but then his face cleared, his eyes widened and he blurted: "They would think that I went boom togetha' with the kegs, that nuffin' left o'me but the cap!"
"Yeah! Exactly!" I praized, "you're smart! And besides," I continued carefully, "it was YOU who helped me with thinking out the idea."
"Whuddya mean?"
"Well, do you think it is everything? Didn't we forget about something?"
"Like what 'bout?"
"Like to make them think what made the kegs go boom when you were here and why did you actually come over here?"
The boy shrugged, having no particular idea.
"Well, how about that MATCHES and the LIT CIGARETTE of yours?" I pointed to the pile of mess from the ceiling, under which the proofs of Michael's "misconduct" of smoking were now buried.
Michael's eyes widened, his face paled white again. He swallowed heavily: "You... you SAW me smokin' in here?"
I nodded, smiling broadly and added seriously: "Oh, it's ok, I won't tell anybody! And besides, soon there will be nobody to tell, anyway. But please, forget about smoking next time, will you?"
"Ok," the boy nodded and flagged his head, feeling obviously a bit guilty. Just like me, I had to admit, smiling. "That's it!" I said appreciatively and continued: "Bad things can often be helpful, though. Now we acquired a possible REASON: a little boy enters the abandoned factory to have a smoke and after he had thrown off the lit match or the cigarette or whatever else flammable this close to the kerosene kegs, it caused a mighty explosion that tore the surroundings into pieces including the boy."
The boy shivered a bit: "Huh, that's spooky! 'ts not good to listen how I could'a' died!"
Suddenly the boy was struck by another idea: "Um... and how're ya gonna make it to fire the pla-pla... stuff so that we weren't hurt when everything around goes boom?"
"Well, like I said, this is like a time-bomb. I can set it's clock to go boom some minutes after the time machine would transport us from here to our times."
"And what if som' pieces of this time-bomb and of that pla-stuff would've left here?"
"This won't happen because they're self-destructive. That means that every piece of it that would left after the explosion is to dissolve right there otherwise it could possibly corrupt the time-space continuity I told you about before."
"Why?"
"Because these are made in MY times and DO NOT belong to YOUR times, that's why."
"How come you know all this?"
"Well it's not me, it's all the machine here. It had helped me to compute all this," I pointed.
"Clever one," Michael praized.
"You're right. A very clever one. But now we have to fasten our seatbelts, because the machine will start to rotate very fast. We have to reach maximum speed to penetrate the time-space gate. Now just sit down here to feel comfortable, I'm going to help you with the belts now."
Michael sat down onto the next chair and I fastened his belt securely. As I was doing it, I almost shivered from excitement: 'It's about to turn out well! I'm sure it will! It must!' Then I fastened myself, restoring afterwards the pre-set time circuits for the return travel and turned on generators...