The Timegate: Part Two

Click here for the first installment of The Timegate

Before I start part two of the Timegate I would like to thank the people who already read part one and enjoyed it. To meet your expectations I ended up doing a lot of thinking about Timegate theory and I think you’ll enjoy the brain disaster that is heading your way. At least it was a brain disaster for me; maybe it will be easier having someone else explain what I’ve already partially thought out. Without further ado:

Whir… Click… I was stepping out of the timegate. At first I thought I would feel my particles slow down, or perceive my movements in slow motion. I even had the strange notion of seeing the entire world progress in fast forward, but instead the second I stepped into the blackness I stepped out of the timegate to bump into a lady who spilled a cup of something I’m not familiar with all over me. She didn’t apologize; she didn’t even bother looking at me. The lady indifferently walked by me punched numbers into the timegate and stepped through.

The Japanese girl who had stepped through the timegate simultaneously with me giggled while I looked at my soaked formal shirt in disbelief. She pulled a couple of napkins out of her purse and handed them to me a bit awkwardly.

“Thanks,” I mumbled than started wiping off my shirt with the napkins.

“No problem,” She smiled back. All four of us were herded out of the way to avoid the line of people marching towards the timegate. I finally managed to survey the room and order cheap pharmacy found to my surprise that it was the exact same place we had come from only strangely different. There were no longer loose wires hanging from the ceilings, or tools strewn about in every direction. Instead there was just a long line of people. The right wall had been completely removed to allow for the influx and from what I could tell they all had the same expression buy cheap cipro of indifference. Most of them wore robes like the old man who had brought us through the timegate. The robes were colored differently, but this made little difference as everyone made their way to the timegate.

After we had cleared the initial entrance the girl who had handed me the napkin started up a conversation again, “You must be Gideon? I know Heur already,” than after a pause “I think everyone knows Heur.”

I extend the hand that wasn’t wiping my shirt “He’s like that, I’m Gideon, nice to meet you…”

“Kagami,” she took my hand and shook it, “You must be fairly new to the pro…” she caught herself, “You must have been fairly new to the project.”

“I only arrived a couple of weeks ago…” than I caught myself, “A couple of weeks ago a few hundred years ago. What about you?” I returned her question.

“A few years,” she said with misty eyes as if remembering “I was hired to help with the prototype of the proton freezer.”

I immediately stopped talking. The mathematics and physics behind the proton freezer are incredible. For anyone to be able to have come up with it at all is beyond my comprehension. I memorized the theory to get accepted at this post, but to invent it would require a much more intimate knowledge. Basically, the girl I was talking to could be classified as a world class genius. With the timegate suddenly coming to life I had almost forgotten how unintelligent I was compared to the average people working on the timegate project.

“Stop that.” Kagami cut off my thought process.

“Stop what?” I replied, startled.

“Everyone stops talking when I say that, it was a lucky guess alright.”

Yeah right I thought. There was no way someone could come up with that accidentally. Still she had succeeded in making me slightly more comfortable. I would have continued talking to her, because she was quite pretty, but we were cut off by the old man turning around to meet all of our gazes.

“I must part ways with you here. This is my place in line. I must go back thirty years and give a lecture on time theory.” He said without the slightest hint of guilt.

Heur who had been talking to the blonde girl, who must have been Aravis, suddenly burst out in disbelief “What do you mean part ways. You can’t just bring us here and leave us buddy…”

The old man put up his hand to silence Heur “The person coming to take you where you are supposed to be is already here.”

“Thank you Professor Lopkin,” Said a woman behind us. We all turned to see a fair skinned woman with bushy brown hair and black rimmed glasses behind us. “If you’ll follow me you have been requested by Professor Posit.”

Seeing as we had nothing better to do we followed her without question. We walked out into the sunshine of an incredible city. The timegate had originally been constructed in the middle of the Nevada desert, but my eyes were now taking in tall skyscrapers and large conveyor belts carrying people in every direction. purchase cheap pharm Most of the people I saw were headed towards the timegate, but some merely passed by as they were carried along. I couldn’t quite place it at first what was so different about these people, but then it hit me: None one looked at anyone else. They all looked straight ahead or at a watch. Then the second strange thing about these people hit me: Every single person was wearing a watch. As I contemplated these strange people I noticed there was one man who wasn’t in line to use the timegate and he was not on a conveyor belt. He slouched in a rather ragged pair of black robes leaning up against a building with a sign that said “WE ARE ALL ALREADY DEAD” in capital letters. He was quite the spectacle compared to everyone else. He was the only person who looked like he didn’t have somewhere to be. Upon seeing the four of us he stood up and followed.

He approached the woman leading us and started up a conversation as if they were long time acquaintances, “Hello Deloris.”

The woman went from her happy, uninvolved state to wariness and repulsion almost instantaneously “What do you want.” She spit the words as if she was talking to something vile.

“It’s my job to take these kids to Posit…” He ignored the tone of her voice.

“I’ve been assigned that task already.” She said her voice full of venom. Deloris’s tone startled me. I had begun to think that everyone in this time had no emotional connection to anything.

The man matched her pace. I saw him glance at her watch before he continued “You have to be back through the gate in ten minutes. How do you think you’ll manage that?”

Her voice didn’t change and she spat back “I’ll hurry.”

“What if I hold you down?” He said with no tone in his voice. He didn’t sound threatening, but his words sounded like a threat to me. The four of us who had come through the gate all listened intently to their conversation.

Deloris’s limbs shook with anger but she managed to state in a smug manner “You never have…”

And before she could finish the ragged man cut in “… because I’ve never had to.”

She looked like she was about to reply and for a few seconds silence hung in the air. Her eyes flared with anger and she turned back in the direction of the timegate saying “Take them directly to Professor Posit. Don’t dawdle.”

She walked off towards the gate leaving the four of us with the strange man.

The man smiled a bit triumphantly then sized us up with a calculating glance.

Heur spoke “Are you taking us to this Potis, or Potit fellow?”

The man turned and started walking in the same direction we had been going “Of course, I’m not suicidal.”

Aravis chimed in “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m glad you asked.” He began and I could already tell he was going to say a lot. I was wondering whether or not I was glad she asked. “You’ve probably already heard from Lopkin the two laws of time travel.”

Kagami rattle off “Anything the time traveler does has already been done and it is impossible for any person to exist exactly as they are at any other point in time.” She really was a genius I thought to myself.

“That’s wrong,” The man said in a tone that lacked all doubt. I had a hard time not believing him.

“I don’t understand, that’s what Professor Lopkin said…” Kagami continued now completely unsure of herself. I got the distinct impression that this might be the first time she had been told she was wrong in her entire life.

“I’m sure he did…” the man continued, “but he’s absolutely wrong. At every moment in time you are presented with choices.” The man took an apple out of his robe and bit into it making a satisfying crunch. “I could have taken a bite of this apple, or I could have not.”

Kagami, apparently trying to prove that she wasn’t wrong, argued “Yes, but according to the first law you will always choose to take a bite of that apple.”

“That may be so, but consider this.” He stopped walking and turned full around to face us.

“Right now in the time you came from there are time travelers arriving with superior technology in order to wage a war. What was the reason Lopkin gave you for this?”

Aravis answered this time, “They go back because they’ve always gone back.”

Lopkin smiled at Aravis in a more than friendly way, “Right you are. People from this time are going back and teaching people from your time how to make superior weapons based on technologies we’ve invented. The thing you have to wonder is how did we invent the technologies?”

Heur looked puzzled and replied “Didn’t some engineers get together and develop it?”

The man was in his element. He had received the exact answer he wanted “What if I told you that the people who took the technology back to your time never discovered the technology at all? The time travelers who go back learned the science behind the principals from the ancestors of those who are going back to teach it. The plain truth of the matter is: There are no records of the technology ever being discovered at all.”

There was silence. No one had a response.

“That isn’t the only documented case. Think about it. If I were to go back in time twenty years and teach myself in a couple of days what it took me twenty years to prove what would happen? I would no longer need to research it so I never would.”

“According to Lopkin…” Kagami began “Wouldn’t that just mean you would always go back and provide that information.”

“Let’s say Lopkin is right,” The man continued, “and in twenty years that me who had been handed the documents returns in time again and presents his twenty year younger self with the same documents. This is all well and good, but what does the original instance of the me I taught do with the twenty extra years before he goes back. He no longer has to prove my theory since I’ve already proven it so he has twenty years to do other things.”

Aravis chimed in again in her bright cheerful tone “He’ll spend the twenty years proving the theory again because that’s what he did before and what he’ll always do.”

“Maybe, but there’s another option?” the man said thoughtfully begging with his eyes for someone to ask what.

I obliged “What’s the other option?”

The man continued smugly, “He doesn’t, he spends twenty years doing something else than returns in time and delivers the documents.”

“What difference does that make?” Heur asked. he seemed quite confused by the whole ordeal. Kagami on the other hand chewed on her thumbnail contemplating and Aravis was squinting to the point that I believed she was looking at the sun.

The man’s face lit up like acomplia a light bulb as he replied “It makes all of the difference in the world.”

End of Part Two

Don’t worry. I only chose to end here because it seemed like a good place to end. I hope you’re now wondering what all this psychobabble means. Now for my sales pitch:

What incredible difference will the ragged man’s revelations make? If the ragged man is so incredibly smart, why wasn’t his theory presented to our four travelers by Professor Lopkin? The answer to these two questions and the third law of time travel will be revealed in the next post of The Timegate.

Haha, I really suck at suspense, but hey online buy Ampicillin I tried. My hope is that you’re all enjoying these even though the story is thus far lacking action, but it won’t lack action forever.