Chapter 23

George sighed and went on, “And this screen that I am looking at; it is not a cathode ray tube that TV sets use; it couldn’t be. It is something else again, but I have no idea of the physics involved. On top of that, how do you make transistors at the microscopic level without a special factory with a protective clean atmosphere where you are making them, and make them at that minute scale, if the transistors are specks the size of dust particles? How do you handle such minuscule transistors? You would have to make them as a sheet of thousands, all at once! How do you maintain quality control?

The whole set of complications gets bigger and bigger as I think about it, so I envisage decades of technical improvement ahead; decades in design, manufacture, and even the specilised factories to be able to make them. I would make a tentative guess at fifty to a hundred years from now.”

I marvelled at his perspicacity.

“George, you are not too far off, for when I saw a telephone directory in the laboratory, it was for the year 2026, so over 60 years from now. It wasn’t that thick, so it looks like telephones are still not common in houses, even then.”

He frowned at my conclusion. “Or, Bob, telephones are becoming phased out, replaced by machines like this!” In a flash he next pounced on my revelation of a year, questioning, “You were in 2026? How did you do that?”

“I don’t know, really? By that, I mean that I don’t know how I did it technically, just that I used a mechanism that transported me there. I have no idea of how it works; none at all.”

“So what does 2026 look like? Flying cars, spaceships, robots on the streets?”

“None of that; well, not so you’d notice. Definitely no flying cars – probably too dangerous with no roads to hem them in safely, but helicopters seem to be standard military equipment, certainly they are noisy enough!

There are no spaceships, as far as I could tell, but I was mostly inside the laboratory or in buildings elsewhere, so I could only catch glimpses of life outwith my viewpoint. Walking robots are definitely out, but robots really are everywhere, or so it appears; tiny robots inside equipment like this camera device for instance.

Large walking robots are essentially mechanical machines, whereas by 2026 most robots are small electronic marvels able to do marvellous things without you seeing anything about their innards. TV sets are mostly tiny screens that have various functions: displaying films and programmes, showing text and pictures from what used to be books, and according to this little machine, having entire libraries able to be read on your screen! Some of it is in the machine, but some is supposed to be loaded from satellites or whatever; I am not clear about how that is done.”

“Good God! So what have you actually seen in 2026? New clothes fashions?”

“Not so you’d notice, again. As usual, most folk stick to their familiar style of clothes for decades. Oddities such as elongated pointy footwear never took hold beyond the wealthy in the 15th century. Even the necktie took forever to adapt from the cravat worn by Louis XIV in 1646 that started a craze that spread around Europe.”

“Hey! I didn’t know that,” said George in surprise.

“One of the unusual facts I have picked up in my reading, George. These fashions seldom spread among the common people and we are mostly common people today. I enjoy noting these bizarre facts, whether fashion or technology. Anyway, I did not particularly notice unusual clothing during my short visits. Dresses may switch between long and short, and trousers between tight and loose, but not significantly changed on the whole.

Technology and fashion may move rapidly, but people generally don’t, except in their transportation. Even some scientists when the steam train was invented thought moving faster than a horse can run would put dangerous stresses on the human frame.”

“Oh. Pity, I am disappointed by that. The world may change, but people don’t, much, is that it?”

“Exactly. The presumed barbarians of thousands of years ago were probably exactly like us, but didn’t possess our technical advantages using metals to make better tools, and even more recent inventions like complex machines.

Stone age people built marvellous structures using their talent with stone-working. If it was possible with stone, they did it; simple as that. Many of their stone applications were originally a transfer from wood-working techniques such as mortise and tenon joints that I learned during my school woodwork class, but the ancients also devised ways to use the right type of stone for specific tasks such as cutting and polishing. At a time when almost everything was done by human or animal muscle, and the working population was plentiful, the time it took to do a task was not important. Our modern need to do things quickly didn’t exist back then.

My history teacher was keen on the cleverness of the ancient Egyptians. Ancients could lift huge blocks of stone using the principles of the lever adapted to strong wooden cranes, and if the stone block was immense, you just used more cranes; not easy, for you have to balance them exactly for a lift, but do-able, certainly.

They applied human ingenuity to their problems, and came up with the solutions. It was simple in concept, but marvellous in achievement. You should never underestimate your remote ancestors, for they used scientific principles before that was even described. To them it was simple practicalities. My science teacher told us this when teaching us the principles of science.”

“Teacher? By that, do you mean schoolteacher; not lecturer? Have you not been to university?”

“No, sorry. I skipped that bit of my education; didn’t see the point of it, for my purposes, once I had wealth behind me. It didn’t stop me from learning, though. My learning is not structured like a university course; thus the oddities in my general knowledge.”

“Doesn’t sound like you missed much. You must be well read.”

“I am that. I frequent the public library – they are very helpful - and I buy well-researched books that particularly intrigue me, to keep for future reference. Early man and early civilisations have long been an interest of mine, and I have noted the important facts that most people seem to have ignored by their automatic assumption that in the past, people were ignorant barbarians. That assumption is not true, and never was.”

“Oh? Anything stands out in your memory?”

“Well, one reference work I use at the library, Joseph Needham’s “Science and Civilisation in China” is the most prominent work I know that gives me fantastic and well-sourced information. It runs to quite a few volumes, and I think more are planned. The Chinese were first to devise most of what we consider modern inventions, from gunpowder to the printing press. The Chinese, like the Germans, were fanatical about recording things of interest, so unusual inventions got mentioned in their ancient records, and it is only now that we have become aware of their earlier existence. Good ideas seem to get devised over and over, and it is only the lack of technological ability to exploit the ideas that often cause the idea to be lost instead of being developed.”

“Ah yes, I know that work; very authoritative, I agree; well researched as you remarked. You are home-learning yourself?”

“Yes. To put it into context, I am independently wealthy, so getting a degree for starting a career is entirely unnecessary to my mind. I am learning Scottish law on the job, amassing knowledge but without any intention of pursuing it professionally, and at the same time I am working as a property adviser for a group of estate agencies, earning a fee for every house tour I give that results in a sale. I learn all about properties: their construction, faults that occur through time, how well they are maintained and decorated, and so on. That knowledge helps me make sales, and so make me money.”

“Very well off, eh? I guessed you had some sort of family wealth in your background, based on what I have seen of your family and what Alice has told me of your activities. Apparently you are at the very least part owner of the estate agencies and of the Antiques Market, to say nothing of other assets that Sandy manages for you, Alice says. Did this extensive wealth have anything to do with your time-travelling, or did a relative pass it on?”

I looked at George and paused for a long moment as if unsure of what to say in answer. I ended up saying what made sense in general terms: “Sort of: yes and no: perhaps one, perhaps the other. I don’t really make sense about my wealth. The time travelling aspect came to me from a time travel inventor from the future, who was attempting to escape a criminal boss and settle in this era with his ‘acquired’ assets.”

I wrote these quote marks in the air, and went on, “Whether these assets were legally or illegally amassed, I cannot say, but to cut a long story short, I ended up with this house (prior to expanding it) and those valuable assets he had stashed within it, including a few expensive antiques that he had laid hands on, and box files stuffed with company share documents that he had purchased knowing the shares would do well in the years to come. So it is an inheritance, but not from any known family member. Perhaps he was a grandson of mine; who knows?

He himself apparently died unexpectedly at Kilmacolm (probably a stroke or heart attack; it was not far from the girls school that his body was found) and I effectively inherited everything he possessed in this time because he had got me to buy the house for him as he simply did not legally exist in this time period. I was to be his proxy without knowing it. I had to work out some of the details later, best as I could, but eventually it gradually made sense and explained the oddities of what had happened to me.”

“Good grief! The mind boggles. What was he thinking of? I am presuming it was a man, as you used that pronoun.”

“It certainly was not an alien, if that’s what you are getting at. No, he was a clever inventor who had been covertly financed by what I have deduced was a criminal gang leader, and the secret laboratory where he worked was built into the side of a disused railway tunnel in Greenock some time in the future – so it is not in existence yet.”

“That is odd to think about; the idea of a laboratory that will in future be hidden in Greenock but we won’t know about it until after it gets built!”

“Not even then. It may not be exposed for a long time afterwards, being built surreptitiously. From what I have managed to put together in my mind, the work at the time would have appeared to be repair work to stop the buildings or road above falling into the tunnel. The construction must have appeared to the building firm to be installing strong box structures to reinforce the underpinnings of the surface edifices, though in reality the box structures were to become the rooms of the laboratory; such structures can work both ways depending on function. The electrical and water connections would be done by another firm who had no concern about what the underground unit was for. It would be just another job to them, putting electrics into a structure.”

“So you think it was built like a secret military war-room, with all who knew about it assuming it was for some other function and not the true objective?”

“That’s it. The legal owners of the rail tunnel were a national public body that had responsibility for all built railway structures, so as is normal with such bodies things were done without the top people knowing anything except that shoring up work was being engineered and that they fortunately weren’t having to pay for it. Big organisations don’t quibble at a freebie like that; they just let it happen and say nothing. They also would have no responsibility for work accidents during the construction, so another plus for them.

The laboratory by my reckoning seems to have been financed by a crime lord, for him to benefit from a resulting time machine, but the inventor guy escaped into the past once he succeeded in making it work, and he left the lab locked securely behind a brick wall. The entrance was disguised as part of the wall in a very long curved tunnel, so knowing where the door was positioned was nigh-on impossible in the darkness of what was nearly the longest tunnel in Greenock. I guess that he suspected he would be permanently disposed of, if and when the criminal got possession of a functioning time machine.”

“That would make sense to me,” George declared. “So he escaped but ended up dying unexpectedly? How did you get involved?”

“A long and convoluted story, my friend, not for the retelling at this time. Basically, I was dragooned into his house-buying plan to make it all legal; and through pure luck and his death, I ended up holding his perhaps ill-gotten gains that he had brought to this time for his future comfort. That was the basis of my and Sandy’s current wealth, though her manipulation of these assets through her business expertise, has grown our finances further over the past few years.”

“You must be very rich indeed, possibly a millionaire. Are you that wealthy a man?”

“I have no idea, and I don’t care. Seriously, wealth to me is having enough for my needs and family, and a bit more for leeway.

My true wealth, to my eyes, lies in my family: my wives and children, and our love for each other. Love is more valuable than possessions. We have a policy of not spending money for the sake of spending money, just because you have it available. It is never a good idea to splash money around, for it attracts human vultures.

We spend our money where it needs to be spent. My ladies occasionally demand that I get a new suit or a set of warm clothes, but otherwise I don’t buy new clothes and nothing flashy in that line. The same goes for cars; we buy suitable cars that we need for travel purposes, and that’s about it. You will have noticed we don’t have a fleet of Rolls-Royces outside! What would be the point?”

“So I presume you don’t hand out cash to anyone in need?”

“Now that is an awkward question, for it depends of what you mean by need. If someone simply asks for money without adequate justification, then I keep my hand in my pocket. If the local hospital is fund-raising for a new scanner machine to help patients, we give a large donation towards it, completely anonymously. If you are quietly making Naomi your second wife, then we might give Naomi a chunk of cash in her own name, so that she is independent of you and can leave if you don’t come up to expectations. You see my approach?”

“Ouch! Yes, I get it. Cases determine your actions. I approve; not that you need my approval. It is just my agreement with your methods.”

“Thank you, George. Your approbation is appreciated,” I conceded.

“Big words, my man. I like that. Your education has not suffered much from the lack of a university degree.”

“No, I do try to continue educating myself all the time. Working for a solicitor helps, as the law uses many long words to maintain a terminological exactitude.”

George chuckled.

“Good grief! Point taken, and you have steered me away from your time travelling machine, haven’t you?”

“Oh, you noticed? Take that as a guide to not asking unanswerable questions, George. Stick to questions that I can reasonably answer, and we will get somewhere.”

“Will do. My lips are sealed, except to thank you for Naomi. That girl is keen on sex, I have found; even more so than Alice. I am easily tired out. I find I am not as fit and well as I thought I was.”

“No need to thank me for anything, George. Naomi took to you almost at first sight, so all I did was point you in her direction, to complete the power circuit. Alice noticed Naomi’s interest in you, so you should thank her for encouraging it and welcoming her to your household. You don’t have any children at the moment?”