The Resident (part nineteen)

Chapter Three

Tithonians

But because slipping into the groove is not a kind of decomposition, where atoms are snatched and assembled into a facsimile of a person, who can’t tell the difference, between the self he believes himself to be, and the self he has been. Time travel is more a literal going from one place to another. We don’t know how an atom comes into being, how the smaller parts than an atom come into being, what fills the spaces between subatomic particles…no, we haven’t learned, even in our own millennium…

We don’t know if multiple universes are real, are stacked or spiraled; if thousands of nearly identical us are available for transporting when a gap opens, if the whole thing is circular and somehow perpetual… But a Teconieshe sent to 1890, who returns to base in 1970, and goes again to 1945, will coexist with the first Teconieshe. The two can meet each other. Without tragedy. Each Tithonian has training; each will know not to ‘keep company’ with the other. Or with any new Teconieshes that turn up.

Now…I simplify. I don’t want to create an odd picture, of someone’s knocking at a kitchen door offering treats. The first time machine was a tunnel, short, between functional ends. These were globes about the size of a microwave oven, one each in adjacent rooms. The globes produced ‘needles’, so-called; tiny beams, trillions of them. The conducting scientist would begin with an object, modified to make it unique. Both scientists knew the activities recorded would take place a few days ahead. Or perhaps not take place, but the intention and understanding would exist, sit on the books, as a historical act. On a Thursday, you might send your object via the tunnel. On a Tuesday, your colleague—whose job was to check every day—would cool the globe, open the hatch, and extract any object found. On a Wednesday, a third member of the team would enter both labs, at times you and your colleague were scheduled absent, log the tunnel’s contents, the room’s, make photographs and notes. On a Friday, you would all convene. Your team would now have two of the objects, the Tuesday one and the Thursday one.

The feeling would be like writing in your diary, today, ‘I’m buying socks tomorrow’, then opening your drawer next morning to discover new socks inside. Magical and weird, until done enough to grasp the ordinariness of it.

Understand, the Tuesday-Friday schedule is for your guidance only. Early travels were completed over unpredictable periods. Foodstuffs were in fact used, to be consumed, blood and urine samples taken, breath analysis, et cetera. We would not send a rat, not a dog or cat, not any poor creature, barring the amoebic. Animals, post-cataclysm, are recognized as precious to human life, and our laws allow no experimental uses, no entertainment uses, rare exceptions for labor, eating only of eggs and milk, obtained humanely. And so the first being to travel was a scientist.

He was James Wissary. A popular name in our millennium, yes. He was not a Tithonian; the immortality program was well underway, but Dr. Wissary was what we call a Generational. The Generationals have ordinary genes and live in company with their cohorts, to age sixty-five on average. James Alpha created James Beta. Dr. Wissary traveled a third time, and created James Gamma.

32

Dark Paneling

The Resident (part twenty)

(2022, Stephanie Foster)