“You don’t know me and you won’t believe what I’m going to say. Not at first anyway.”
“Run it past me,” I said, “and we’ll find out.”
It was early January and I had answered the door to find an earnest teenager on the step. The prototypical teenager it appeared. Baseball cap turned back to front as per regulations, Billabong tee-shirt, Levi jeans, and, on his feet, Nike trainers. The clothes, though, were faded with a strange mustiness about them. He wore them almost self-conciously. He was carrying a large duffle bag and behind him on the path was what I took to be a microwave oven.
“I’m a descendent of yours from the twenty second century,” he began. “I’m studying history, the period around the millenium in particular. My parents thought that I should get some first-hand experience. So here I am.”
He was right. I would take a lot of convincing on that one. He’s been watching too much T.V. I thought.
“And I suppose this is your time machine.” I pointed to the ‘microwave’.
“No. This is it. This what keeps me here as long as I’m wearing it.” He showed me the thick black plastic band on his left wrist. It looked for all the world like the Sinclair blind-faced watch of thirty odd years ago. He could see my disbelief.
“I suppose you were expecting a big cabinet with flashing lights and digital readouts. Oh! And electrical discharges and the smell of ozone. The reality is disappointing, eh? Here! Look at this.” From his shirt pocket he drew what appeared to be a thin sheet of clear plastic folded into four. He smoothed it out on the table whereupon it lit up to reveal itself to be some sort of display device and memory bank.
“My father said that this might convince you.”
How the information was entered and how he called it up I do not know but there displayed was a geneological tree with a high-lighted path leading from myself to someone named Steven. Obviously himself. This claimed future I had no way of checking but the present-day information was correct although that didn’t prove anything. It was not the tree that convinced me so much as the thing itself. But it still took me some time to adjust to the idea of a real time traveller.
I was to learn later that the wrist band was in fact also a watch although not as we would understand one. Having once being given the exact local time, Steven would always be aware of the precise time thereafter. This was an ability that he would need to hide.
Time travel, he told me that day, was expensive and could only occur in the one direction. Time, it seems, leaves in its wake a well-marked path, much as a snail does. Such travel had become illegal for private citizens since the slightest alteration of the past inevitably brought consequences that multiplied with time. They had experienced far too many sudden and cataclysmic changes in the world’s fabric.
The sporting almanacs of their time still listed the winners of major sports events from the mid nineteen hundreds onward. The opportunity to used hindsight turned foresight for their own advantage, to make a few bets, was a temptation that some time travellers had been unable to resist. They had lived the high life while in the past and, with the same hindsight/foresight, had made long-term investments that accrued until their own time. Their gains had made instant losers of others. So time travel was banned.
However, as in our own time, anything was available at the right price and Steven’s family were well-to-do. I suspected right away that the idea had probably been Steven’s: That he had nagged until his parents had given in, just as students of foreign languages today insist it necessary that they go with school-sponsored trips to other countries. Some things do not change.
I found later that I was right. Qualifying for future training in his hoped-for profession required of Steven some evidence of solid scholarship. For once, money would not be enough. There was a review committee to face and Steven had spent the entire year just bumming around, enjoying himself, and neglecting his studies.
This was a last-ditch effort to retrieve the situation. He had left his own time on the eve of the oral review the idea being that he could spend a year at the beginning of the twenty first century and return moments after he left with first-hand knowledge, a year older and, hopefully, with a little more maturity. He would then make sure of a good night’s sleep before the examination. In his own time, his absense would appear as no more than a momentary flicker. No-one would ever know.
He explained to me that he knew it was a cheek to come without asking but it was his hope that, as relatives with sons about his age, my wife and I would board him for the coming school year and that he could attend with our two boys.
Could he do this wihout sending destructive ripples forward through time? I put it to him that he would have to keep a very low profile but his parents had already drilled him at length on this: had him make solemn promises that nothing in this time would be changed. In particular he had been warned to be particularly careful in his relations with the opposite sex. A child conceived that would not otherwise have been conceived would bring drastic rearrangements in its train.
The thing on the path that I had taken to be a microwave turned out to be a Panasonic Duplicator. We might be relatives of sorts but they did not expect my wife and me to support their son for a year. In their time, the duplicator was a standard household appliance. Place any item within its enclosure and it produced another. That explained his clothes. Preserved and displayed as historical garments, they had been borrowed and reproduced accurately even down to the fading and mustiness.
Of course matter cannot be created out of nothing. Everyone knows that. The basic materials being manipulated were somehow transmitted from stock piles elsewhere and charged to the owners credit account, in this case it would be an account in the future. As Steven explained, wealth by then was electronic credit. The use of credit tokens had ceased to be viable on the day that the duplicators appeared.
His parents idea had been that whatever meal we were eating could be duplicated for Steven. It would cost us nothing. Any clothes or other items that he needed could be provided by duplication. Again at their expense. It was seen as an advantage that we had boys about the same age.
Of course that could not be. Every time we used it we would be distorting the future in some way, they don’t seem to have thought of that, and the duplicator would hardly go unnoticed in a twenty- first century kitchen. When my wife came home, we locked it away, still in its protective shipping field, and the data-bank went with it. We would support Steven while he was with us. His data-bank here must be pen and paper.
It was fortunate that the boys were away for that week. My wife and I could keep the secret, the boys would have to be fed the same cover story as everybody else. They have big mouths. The story must be flawless. He would need a past that could not be checked and a logical reason for his sudden appearance.
So Steven became Stepheno a Bosnian refugee. His entire immediate family became dead or missing, an obscure village was invented and a distant relationship fabricated. Then we had second thoughts. Our real relatives would want the relationship explained in minute detail and see through it immediately. The story now became that we had been asked to foster Stephano for a short period.
Once the present day situation in the Balkans was explained to Steven, he had the wit to fall into the role and play it fully. The appropriate speech needed no acting. In nearly two centuries, standard English has changed markedly in both intonation and grammar. In his use of the language Steven gave the impression that English was his second language as our present English more or less was. Our boys accepted him for what he appeared to be. Or did they?
There was no problem getting him into school when it started. The lack of a previous school history was expected. An assessment was made. Some tests given. His responses were carefully judged. He must not be too smart but smart enough. Midstream. He would coast through the year being careful not to stand out. The ambience of our time would be his real study.
He was also somewhat self-effacing at home initially. Not for long though. He was here to live the life of a typical teen-ager. It was part of his cover. His music had to be loud with a bass thump that rattled windows, his clothes had to be left on the floor, he had to be lazy and unkempt. He also developed into a know-it-all but we already had two of those. And yet, with it all, he was very affectionate. I must admit that I was always hoping that he would let slip something that I could use to my advantage. No such luck, however.
One thing I will say for him, he never argued when it was his turn to wash the dishes. It was a novelty and remained so for all the time that he was with us. In a resourse-scarce world, more crowded than we can imagine,recycling had been taken to its ultimate degree. Even congealed gravy could yield recoverable materials not to be washed down the drain. The word ‘fresh’ must have taked on an entirely new meaning.
There is little to tell about the year that Steven was with us. He simply fitted in as part of the family and we grew very fond of him. It is true that we took in a lot more events than we normally would in a effort to help him with his studies. My wife and I even suffered the ‘Big Day Out’ in Auckland. That is definitely not our kind of music. The boys, though, thought it was wonderful. We took heaps more photos too.
Somehow, that year disappeared and all too soon Steven was leaving us. This in itself created a problem. It would not do for him simply to disappear. People would wonder about it. There would be questions asked and there were no believable answers that we could give. It became necessary for us to lay the groundwork well ahead: to raise expectation of his leaving and give a logical reason for his departure. This meant now taking the boys into the secret and schooling them so that our stories agreed. I have a feeling though that Steven had already told them a great deal.
There was a tearful leave-taking. There could be no promises of letter writing or phone calls. We would never know how he got on. Steven, whom we had come to love as our own, would be lost to us forever. Death was visiting our family. His death for us and our death for him because leaving was just as much of a wrench on his side. There were final goodbyes, he took off the wrist band and, in an instant, he was gone.The duplicator and data-bank vanished with him.
As a footnote, it appears that the duplicator was not as well locked away as we had imagined. Steven left us a gift. I now have a sock drawer full of hundred dollar notes. They not only look genuine, they are genuine and will pass any test. The problem is that they all have the same serial number so that it would take an idiot to pass over two at once. But if they were trickled individually into the money supply they would probably not be noticed until the first two with that serial number were withdrawn from service. I have promised myself that I will never use them but, at the same time, I cannot bring myself to burn them. So the temptation must still be there..