Tinkering
Short story
Tinkering. The thought of the word made him sneer, even though there was no one around to hear it. Then he was immediately displeased with himself for the contemptuous feelings. He had never been a contemptuous man. Such is the effect of continuous failure.
By now the routine was automatic: Test. Encounter an inexplicable, unforeseen problem. Many sleepless nights later, solve the problem. Test. Encounter an inexplicable, unforeseen problem. Be ridiculed by peers. Repeat. But some men aren't deterred by failure. The insult spurs greater determination.
He was the only one who was still attached to the research. After a moment of excitement, his peers had disregarded the event as a fluke. He knew it was more than a fluke. It was a clue. It was his clue -- when the particle accelerator in Geneva registered, just for a fraction of a millisecond, a few peculiar atoms. Atoms that were too old. Atoms that, he hypothesized, had to have come from the future.
But the collider spit out strange readings all the time. The data was incredibly hard to interpret, often misleading, and usually irrelevant. It had yet to turn out anything other than high minded theories. But these peculiar atoms confirmed what he believed to be the ultimate purpose of the machine. Confirmed that at the very least, his hypothesis might be possible.
That was ten years ago. Time and effort had taken its toll, not just on his mind but on his body. He had begun to wither. It was as if in order to continue powering the incredible mechanisms of his brain he was draining every muscle, every fiber from the rest of his body and devoting it to discovery of solutions. It was a race, to see if he contained enough energy within him to solve the problem, or if he would instead expire prematurely.
He opened the door to the lab, following his meticulous routine. The light switches in the same order. The computer. A quick survey of the cabinet of supplies. Erase the white board. Start over from scratch, from the first equation. It was the only way to find new solutions and to make sure everything would be perfect. Do it over and over.
That was part of the challenge of time travel. It isn't like inventing flight, there's no way to do a safe test on soft ground. When you are pushing an object through time there is no soft ground. Tonight the object was an acorn he'd picked up on his walk from his neglected apartment just outside the campus. Of course it was smarter to test on a more simple, more pure object, but he would eventually have to test it on something organic, why not tonight? He wasn't expecting much from tonight's test anyway. He'd been dissecting the same problem for months, and was at the point where he was attempting almost random solutions to the math.
The test chamber was 5 feet in both dimensions. Outside the plexiglass, on all 6 sides, were large flat grey plates. When he turned on the machine they appeared to do nothing. No hum, no light, nothing. But what they did do was send invisible particles to the center point of the test chamber in whatever interval, strength, or frequency he programmed into the computer. The most common result was nothing. The least common, most exciting, and equally useless result was when the object, usually a steel ball bearing, melted.
After about two and a half hours, down from the four it used to take him to redo his equations, he was back at his latest problem. Nothing discovered on the way there. He plugged in the number he'd been thinking about -- half superstition, half educated guess -- and started the process. The computer’s processor and heat fans whirred to life audibly, but the rest of the machines in the room stood silent. He pulled the acorn from his pocket as he walked across to the test chamber. The rough texture was alien to his fingertips, which were used to the smoothness of a ball bearing. He clicked open the small metal safety latch, opened the side panel, and placed the acorn in the sling. The sling was hanging from the top of the enclosure and ensured that the test object was in the direct center of the panels. He secured the latch, donned his entirely unnecessary safety goggles, returned to the computer and initiated the machine.
The acorn was no longer in the sling. He blinked several times to confirm what he thought he saw. The enclosure looked exactly as it did before he placed the acorn inside. There was no smoke -- or any indication the machine had been activated. He confirmed that the program had shut down before walking slowly, cautiously, towards the test chamber. A few paces away he stopped and leaned forward, looking for some indication of what had happened. Still no acorn. Still no indication. He moved closer still, and after a moment of silent trepidation, opened the test chamber. Almost begrudgingly he touched the sling where the acorn was and then sharply pulled his hand back, chastising and then forgiving himself for checking for an invisible acorn. Out of habit he closed and locked the chamber and went back to the computer, sat down, and pulled up the data recorded by the instruments housed behind each panel. They recorded everything: infrared light, temperature, vibration, etc. Looking through the figures was disheartening and exciting at the same time. Every sensor that could detect an acorn, detected an acorn -- all the way up until the moment when he had initialized the machine. And then they detected nothing. No ramp down of signals or indication of energy. The data confirmed exactly what he had seen with his own eyes and nothing more. One moment there was an acorn. The next moment there was not.
His will suddenly broke. He walked quickly over to the test chamber, placed the dry erase marker from his pocket in the sling and then immediately walked back to the computer and initialized without thinking.
Nothing. The dry erase marker was unaffected, at least to his casual observation. With safety and protocol pushed to the back of his mind, he pulled the marker from the chamber and held it up for inspection. No change. He tossed it aside. It was the exact same settings. Why a different result? The machine didn't recharge, it had uniformpower output every time.
He ran outside, becoming increasingly frantic as his subconscious registered the proximity of a solution. He scooped up a handful of acorns and pine needles, not realizing that he had locked himself out. After a half hour outside, waiting for night security to come unlock the doors, he was admitted back into his lab still clutching his handful of acorns and pine needles like precious jewels. He reached in and careful piled his stash into the center of the sling, filling it. As he walked back an acorn or two fell to the bottom of the chamber. Uncaring, he initialized the machine, staring intently across the room. He held his eyes wide to avoid blinking. He gasped out loud as the handful disappeared. The data read the same. Things in the chamber, then nothing. Where did it go? There was no sign that it was destroyed... It simply wasn't there. Where did it go where did it go where did it go? How could he find out? He knew two new things: organic things disappeared, no matter where they were in the box. But a camera isn’t organic. Sensors aren’t organic. He wouldn't be able to send anything through that could actually transmit data back from… He hadn't the slightest idea where from.
He removed his lab coat and glasses, then pausing, put them back on and buttoned the jacket to the top button. He rolled his eyes at the mock safety of his jacket and plastic glasses as he opened the hatch and crawled in between the plates. He worked himself around, pulling his legs across him, before realizing that he couldn't start the program from the test chamber. He crawled out, spilling on to the floor and then walking quickly to the computer. Pushing all of his doubts to the back of his mind he set the timer on the program. One minute. Glancing at his watch quickly, he hit enter.
Quickly, back across the room, crawl in. Pause. Lock the hatch? Yes, lock the hatch. Never mind, it can't be locked from the inside and if the purpose of the hatch is to protect the scientist who is outside of the chamber… How much time left? Forty seconds. Longer than he thought. Purpose of the experiment? To find out where the things were going. Where could they be going? Anywhere, he supposed, any answer he thought up would be a complete guess. Better not to think about it, just see for yourself... What if he couldn't see, wherever he was going? What if it was dark? He didn't have a flashlight, or his cellphone, which was sitting on the counter next to the computer. Fifteen seconds. He had not thought this through. No, he didn't care. This was the answer, this was more than ten years of searching, testing, and failing. Now a final answer. A solution. No -- this was incredibly foolish, why not share this information first, test more, gather more data somehow before risking…
His brain, exercised over the years at the expense of his body, was incredibly clever, or he would have not been able to process what he saw.
It registered the intense heat of the unfiltered sun, the swirl of dust and gas that just had to be the gestation of a young Earth, and a handful of acorns and pine needles before he uttered a silent and final cry of joy.