by Frederick Melancon
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I did it. And this isn’t some utterance of joy for being awarded this prize—which if it was just for the math, should’ve happened some time ago anyway—and it's not directed (with the pronoun "we") toward the parents who I should be thanking now—thanks Mom, and go to Hell, Dad—because that’s not accurate either. Nor is a "we" version of this statement directed at my colleagues and university. We all know how smart our coworkers are—so I won’t insult anyone with false platitudes. Sorry, Dr. Jacobs; I know you paid a lot for your seat here tonight. No, I’ll be honest with this audience, because in the end, I alone made the math a reality.
In
the past, the work in time travel has been extensive but littered with failed
attempts and inept explanations afterward.
Don’t forget, this is science.
It’s okay to be wrong, but not stupid.
So once I got the math right, creating the machine from the theoretical
computation was elementary.
After
all, with all that scientific potential, I wasn’t going to leave the fun up to
some engineers. Also, for those
wondering why I didn’t go back and get Einstein to introduce me at this podium
instead of that other guy, that’s clever and entirely missing the point. Dr. Jacobs has an empty seat next to him—why
don’t you go there now.
We
can’t go back in time, but with the creation of an anchor, the future can come
back to us. While that might seem
disappointing to most because you’re only getting a portion of time, its
implications are infinite. I'll put this in biological terms so that you can
understand. Imagine the cure for aging
already at our fingertips, or the understanding of a disease and its actual ramifications
gifted to us by a doctor who knows what they're talking about. Such an idea may seem farfetched, even part
of some movie, but while beyond your capacity to understand, my math, my truth,
allowed for a device to bridge time.
Where
is it? I heard that, Dr. Jacobs. Well, it’s not here for sure because that
device doesn’t need to see the light of day.
Anyway, it takes quite a bit of time rebuilding what I affectionately
called The Box.
That’s
right, the world doesn’t need a car, or a gate, or even a police telephone
booth. We did paint the exterior
blue. Really, spray-painted to be
accurate, and it was the grad student more than myself. I was never really a fan of any of that sci
fi make-believe. Also, after pointing
this out to the grad student, he mysteriously transferred out of my department.
And it worked—the blue box, not the grad student. At first, I wanted to go back for only a moment, just a few seconds. That would’ve been the first test. I’d initiate The Box, wait those few seconds, and then walk forward through the field it generated. Unfortunately, I never got to do it, because someone beat me to it.
I’d
like to say we thought about this possibility.
What if every idiot with a finger decided to turn the switch on The Box
and to show up to witness greatness? I
can’t blame them. Technically, the idea
of reliving my glory sounded completely worthwhile. The new grad student got it, and when I say
it, I mean both the point and the switch.
They were supposed to turn the device off, but there wasn’t a chance for
that. After the repurposed toggle
clicked into place, a man in a lab coat stood in the field. The first person to
time travel. I can’t tell you how much
the coat bothered me. After all, the lab
isn’t a hospital or a school. But,
apparently, pretending’s fun in the future.
I
didn't get a chance to tell the man what I thought about the coat because he
walked over and slapped me in the face.
Obviously, there was a scuffle, and I'd like to report that I handily
defeated my enemy. But I promised at the
beginning of this thing to be honest.
The funny part was that during the whole time the machine was left on,
no one else came through. It was as if
nothing important had happened at all.
Don’t
worry, it’s permanently off now. The
point here is that while I was heaving for breath and trying to clutch at the
extent of certain newly acquired bruises, nothing else happened. And how is it that holding pain never seems
to make it feel better for long? You
just have to ride those stimuli out, but I'm sure enough of us have been
through a bully induced beating to know that.
Where
was I? Oh, thank you Dr. Jacobs, I knew
you’d come in handy—the assailant as my colleague put it. He sat there on the floor.
Now,
some might think this person was some sort of time guardian or terrorist trying
to stop the end of the world or interrupt greatness, and in a way, that person
would be right about both. You see the
face. It was so familiar—familial, actually. It’s quite one thing to be
told you're nothing by your father. It’s
another to be told that by your son. So...I sent the boy back. Okay, he left after
saying what he came to say, and I destroyed that box...hence no one else here
but me.
Not
to worry, the onus of your mistakes won’t slide out of that field like it did
for me. Also, the math in the award
packet is wrong. So, it’s now impossible
to replicate, and being that I’ve received this award seems to suggest that
none of you understood it anyway.
So,
you're welcome for destroying The Box, messing up the mathematics, and saving us
all from looking our children in the face when they’re old enough to realize
the truth about us.
What
did you say Dr. Jacobs? Oh, what did my
unborn son say to me? Nothing
really. The man, who at certain angles
was a reflection of me, stared with his brows clenched, as the grad students say I look at them when they’ve asked a stupid question. He then said, “I loved you.” There was more he wanted to say. I could tell.
His lips trembled in the way mine do when I want to tell off a foolish
grad student, but unlike me, he was unable to get it out.
And
that was it. No one else came back. There could’ve been those terrorists wanting
revenge for a past wrong, or there could’ve been those doctors because I’m sure
people are still getting sick. No, just
a son that I never knew, trying to inflict a little of the hurt that was
inflicted on him.
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