Twelve researchers have a working time machine, and it will be used to research exactly when humanity arrived on this planet. Off they go into the distant past, with time paradoxes just waiting to happen.
…a Crack of Lightning,
or,
The Zen Solipsist Muses Upon His Own Genesis
Dr. Wagner, from the Physics Department, invited me to a private briefing. “You’ll not want to miss it,” he said. So at six o’clock, I walked into the Physics Building and up to the third floor. There was a university security officer at the door, and he checked my ID against a list he was holding. Odd.
As a member of the Philosophy Department, I don’t hear much about events in the hard science departments, but I do try to be our liaison to the university-wide faculty functions, so I seem to get the strange requests. This, however, was the first time I had been invited to a secured meeting.
At any rate, Dr. Wagner took the podium, looking at our assemblage of twelve people, most of whom I recognized.
He started with a bang, telling us that they had had a breakthrough in their time travel research. He said they were putting together an interdepartmental expedition to discover the origins of life.
Dr. Silverman, of the Sociology Department, asked about the security officer. Dr. Wagner replied that the mission was to be a secret until we returned. Then, he said, we would all co-author the papers describing our findings (although the actual time travel machine was for the Physics Department alone, but that seemed fair).
The time machine, he said, could hold twelve people.
Then he introduced Dr. Hawkins, of the Aerospace Sciences Department, who described the space suits they’d be providing, to keep us from contaminating the environment.
Dr. Lofton, the chemist, asked when we’d be leaving.
Laughing, Dr. Wagner replied that first we had to get everyone to agree to the expedition, and that, since it was a time machine, it didn’t really matter when we left. But he did understand our eagerness to get started.
I spoke up, and asked about the diversity of people in the room.
Dr. Wagner reminded me that exploring the formations of life—while normally confined only to the Biology Department (and I did see Dr. Shenker sitting on the other side of the room) and occasionally the Medical School (and yes, there was Dr. Schenker)—was a huge and momentous undertaking, and he wanted to make sure every department was represented. “Science never knows where breakthroughs will arise, nor who will make them,” he said.
We all signed promises of our secrecy, the meeting broke up into small discussion groups.
#
After several familiarization meetings, Dr. Wagner pronounced both the equipment and the members of the expedition ready, and set our departure time.
Kind of odd, a departure time, when in fact we’d be entering the Physics Building and, assuming all went as planned, simply leaving it again a few hours later. Of course, we’d experience far more than those few hours, as we traveled back in time to document the earliest stages of life on Earth.
Dr. Berg, the English Professor, had asked what would happen if we discovered that the Panspermia or LGM theory was correct. She got a good laugh, but Dr. Wagner then reminded us that this was a voyage of exploration and discovery. He simply didn’t know, but he expected that even if there were little green men, we’d be able to avoid being seen by them. As for Panspermia, well, we’d see what there was to see. The time machine itself, he emphasized, and our space suits (Dr. Hawkins called them environment suits) would not be a source of contamination.
At the appointed time, we gathered in the basement of the Physics Building, dressed in our environment suits, and boarded the time machine.
We experienced only a minimum of turbulence as we traveled four billion years back in time.
After looking at the stars and running some calculations on her computer, Dr. Milford, the astronomer, pronounced that we had indeed arrived on Earth about four billion years earlier than we had left, and a cheer went up. Even such staid academics as we can get excited, and knowing that we were the first people to travel through time was definitely an exciting thought.
After a thorough visual inspection, and as much analysis as they could do through the skin of the time machine, Drs. Shenker and Schenker declared that they could find no sign of life yet.
Dr. Donald, the geologist from the Earth Sciences Department, announced that, as best he could tell, the ground upon which the time machine was sitting was very young rock, and indeed, as soon as he said that, we all felt a ground tremor.
“Nothing to worry about,” Dr. Donald said. “This is the heavy bombardment phase of Earth’s formation: meteor impacts and such, but the odds of being hit are still vanishingly small.”
“And the time machine does have sufficient self-defense capabilities to detect an incoming threat, set off the automatic retrieval program, and take us out of harm’s way,” Dr. Wagner’s assistant added.
After these pronouncements of our safety, we took a little trip outside; to become the first people to walk the face of Earth.
“Remember,” Dr. Lofton reminded us, “no samples. We have no idea which piece of material may be critically important to the formation of life and history.”
We tramped around a bit, oohed and aahed like tourists, and then Dr. Wagner called us back to ourselves. “We should be moving on uptime, since our goal is to discover the beginnings of life.”
We boarded the time machine, strapped in, and he set the controls.
“Three point five billion years ago,” Dr. Wagner announced when the machine wound down.
“Confirmed,” Dr. Milford said a bit later.
“No obvious life,” intoned Dr. Schenker.
“Although at this point, life should be confined to the smallest organisms living only in Earth’s oceans.”
And we trooped outside for a closer view of the nearest ocean, to see what there was to see.
“Hmm,” said Dr. Shenker, squinting into his portable microscope. “I don’t see anything.”
“Anyone interested in setting up a pool on when we’ll actually find the beginnings?” asked Dr. Bennett, the mathematician. “We should be bounding our final answer with jumps forward and back, so a range of ten million years for each entrant?”
We returned to the time machine, and Dr. Wagner set the controls for three billion years ago.
The ground rumbling seemed to have stopped, though what we saw out the windows seemed unchanged from our previous stops.
Again, we found no life.
“Two billion years ago,” Dr. Wagner announced, with a little trepidation in his voice.
Again, no obvious changes and no luck. We were all getting worried.
“Remember Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’,” Dr. Berg said with a little laugh. “Does anyone have a crushed butterfly on your boot?”
Nobody really found it funny, but we all lifted our feet to look.
One billion years ago, half a billion, a hundred million, and we were all sweating.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Have we run into the many universes theory? Are we on an alternate time line?”
“Not possible,” said Dr. Wagner. “The energy required to form an alternative time line or universe made that theory obsolete a while ago.”
“Then why don’t we try going back to the beginning. Perhaps we did something, or missed something, that we shouldn’t have.”
He was really sweating, and seemed willing to take almost any suggestion.
“Four billion years ago,” Dr. Wagner intoned with a voice of doom.
“We’re in the same place we landed the last time?” asked Dr. Silverman.
“Should be,” said Dr. Wagner.
“Why don’t we take a little walk around,” suggested Dr. Hawkins. “See if we can find anything we left that we shouldn’t have, or picked up something we shouldn’t have.”
So out we walked.
While everyone else was milling around the time machine, checking it out for stowaways, I wandered over to the arm of the nearby ocean.
It wasn’t the blue-green I remembered, but it was a large body of soupy looking water.
I looked over my shoulder, saw that I was blocked from view by a large rock, and made a decision.
I turned off my radio, took a deep breath, bit the inside of my cheek (and my eyes teared up at that), opened my helmet, and spat into the ocean. I slammed the helmet shut, hoping the filters would be able to handle the carbon dioxide overdose, and then cautiously breathed, trying to slow my pounding heart.
Dr. Wagner called us all back together, and I suggested we try another trip up a billion years. “We don’t know that anything we did last time caused problems, so we have no real way of knowing if we’ve negated that mistake.”
At this point, everyone was grasping for straws, and agreed enthusiastically.
“Three billion years ago,” Dr. Wagner said, with great fear in his voice.
Drs. Shenker and Schenker walked to the ocean with their testing apparatus.
“Life!” they screamed. “This ocean is teeming with microscopic life.”
“No samples!” a few of us called at them, but when we were all back in the time machine, we were beaming with relief.
“I’ve had enough of this long, strange trip,” Dr. Silverman said for us all. “Let’s go home.”
#
Our return was less than triumphal, but home we arrived, and apparently it was the home we all remembered.
We agreed that everyone needed time to reflect and sleep, and that we’d meet tomorrow to begin writing our papers. We shook hands all around, congratulated each other, and to our scattered homes went.
#
I’m tossing and turning. I can’t get to sleep. I can’t even close my eyes.
I’m sure all the others are sleeping well; it was a stress-filled day.
But my stress is only now increasing.
I keep mulling over my philosophical training. I never considered myself a deep thinker, but now I keep flip-flopping.
In the Zen tradition, have I achieved satori? Is life truly a koan? I am life, and life is me?
Or am I the Solipsist? Nothing exists but that which I know, and what I know is myself alone?
Or have I distilled Jesus’s teachings far more than they should have been? I am truly the Alpha, but am I the Omega?
Is the entire purpose of life to create me, that I might travel back in time to create life?
Can I ever open my eyes again, without dreading to see the words “Game Over” flashing in front of me?
END
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