Chapter 10

The next day as I walked back home from Anita's; my ex-girlfriend and now again my girlfriend, I suddenly felt how the hair on the back of my head suddenly stood up and a shiver ran down my spine. I didn't slow my pace but looked around to see what it was that had caused these age-old warning-signals to come to life. The street behind me was busy, and I couldn't see anything suspicious so I brushed it off as imagination. This continued for almost a week and than it stopped, and everything was as usual. This made me forget all about it after only a couple of days till one day when I came home and there was a man waiting for me on the street.

"Herr Sandin?" He asked in a heavy accent.

"Yes?"

"My name is Thorn. I have come to you in a very mmm... delicate mmm... matter."

"Yes?"

He looked around as if he wanted to make sure that no one could see or hear us. I mistook me.

"Is there somewhere where we can sit and talk? I'm rather tired. I've been on my feet the whole day."

"Of course, why don't you come in?"

"Thank you."

As we sat down, I didn't offer him anything to drink since I didn't know the nature of his visit.

"So?" I asked after a while.

"Oh, sorry. Yes. You know it leaves a trace. A wave, sort of."

"What?" I didn't have the faintest idea of what he was talking about.

"Your machine. It leaves an eerie wave in the present and past time-space. Not that it matters to it, but it could be... dangerous. The wrong person could find it and try to follow it and end up with you."

"Oh? Sorry I don't quit follow you, I mean I don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about."

"No, of course you don't. What do you say about a little walk with me? Just down the street."

He stood and looked expectantly at me. I thought about it for a second or two. He didn't look threatening or hostile in any way, but maybe it was better to walk down the street with him. That way I would get him out without any trouble.

We walked the short distance to the corner of my street without talking. He stopped when we came up to a gray van, and I looked at him.

"This is my machine."

"Yyees?"

"Of course, I have improved it a little over time. I started with a much... clumsier one. Now it is quite comfortable."

He opened the sliding door on the side and motioned for me to get in. Again I hesitated. He just smiled at me and stepped inside and motioned for me to sit in front of him.

"This is the control for space," he pointed at a panel, "and this for time," indicating another. "Tell you what, I'll leave you alone in here so you can look at the design and things. Feel free to make a little trip. I'll just wait here." He started to climb out of the van.

"Wait," I said. "How come I can see you if this is what you say it is?"

"What do you mean see me?" Thorn looked at me as if was doubting my sanity.

"Yes, see you. As far as I know you should be invisible if you have traveled in time."

"Invisible? No I've never been... Wait! Do you... Are you invisible when you travel?"

"I didn't say that," I didn't know what I was to believe about Thorn. Could I trust him?

"No. But, you implied... Never mind. You are doing the right thing about mistrusting me, but I can assure you that I have only the best intentions. Try my machine, take a trip and when you come back we'll talk."

I hesitated a little before I closed the door and sat there looking at the controls for a while. Then I reached out and switched the switch on the time-panel. I digital display light up and the number of the current year appeared. There were a small wheel and a couple of buttons beside it and when I turned it the digits changed. If I turned it to the left it counted down and when I turned it to the right it counted up. I pressed the first button, and numbers that I figured were the hour appeared, the next button displayed the minutes. I was impressed. This design was much better than my crude dashboard. I set the time to the one I was most used to, Nina's time.

I turned to the other panel and saw that it was designed almost exactly as the other, switch and a wheel. When I turned the wheel on this one instead of showing year, hour and minutes it showed geographic coordinates and the numbers they showed I guessed were the ones for the present location and since I didn't know any other than the coordinates for the equator I left it as it was.

I looked for something that could activate the machine and concluded that the bigger button between the different dashboards was the one so I pushed it. I felt a little surge as the Machine woke to life but before I had the time to feel the usual nausea everything went quiet. First, I thought that I had pressed the wrong button but when I looked at the year-display the digits had changed color, from green to red. I slid the door open and looked out. As far as I could see I hadn't moved a centimeter everything looked as it had just a moment ago. No. Not everything. Thorn wasn't there! I stepped out, and the first thing I noticed was that my street that there wasn't any coat of asphalt on it. And when I looked at my house, I saw that there was a tree that shouldn't be there. I had cut it down some years ago. I was back in the past. I looked down at myself, and I could see me! Thorn had solved the problem with invisibility. I just hoped that I could persuade him to show me how he done it.

I looked at the van were it stood. It looked a little inappropriate so I decided that I shouldn't linger here much longer.

Thorn stood at the same place as I had left him when I climbed out of the van.

"So?" He said. "Satisfied?"

"Yes. Would you care for a cup of coffee?" I asked as I started to walk back to my house.

When we finally sat with a cup of coffee in front of us and me burning with eagerness to get my questions answered Thorn turned to me and started to ask first.

"You said something about invisibility," he started.

"Yes. When I travel, I seem to travel along my own timeline. I get older or younger."

"Oh. That could be to some advantage," he murmured.

"It could? Well. Yes. It has."

"It could for example prolong your life almost indefinitely."

"Yes. It could, but no one would be aware of you since you are invisible. And believe me, there are as many disadvantages to that fact as there are advantages."

"Yes... Let me see your blueprint, please."

I went and fetched them and placed them on the table in front of him. He looked carefully at them before he pushed them aside.

"Tell you what. I'll go and get mine and bring them here - tomorrow OK?"

"Sure. I'll be here at the same time as today."

"Ah, yes, you don't sleep here anymore, do you?"

"No. I spend the nights at my fiancée's and only work here."

"Good. I'll see you tomorrow then."

After he left, I sat and mulled over my blueprints trying to figure out what I had done wrong. Thorn's Machine must work on different principles, I thought because no matter how I looked at it, I couldn't see anything I could have done differently. I left it at that and went back to the other work I had to do, this was just as pleasant as the work on my invention, planning future investments.

I spend the evening and night with Anita, as usual, but my mind was elsewhere, looking forwards to the next day.

The next day arrived as it usually does, and I hurried back to my place and prepared coffee and made room on a big table were I rolled out my own blueprints so that the blueprints Thorn would bring could be placed alongside them.

At last, I heard the knock on the door and there was Thorn.

"Hello, well here I am," he said.

"Hi, yes there you are, come in, please. I have made some coffee, and I passed by the baker and bought some Danishs."

"Thank you. Maybe later. Just coffee now. My wives made me a hearty breakfast, as usual."

"Your wives?"

"Yes. Amazing isn't it? I'm not a very good-looking man, and still I have taken eight women as wife, or they have taken me as husband. Amazing," he smiled.

"Eight?!"

"Yes. Oh, I hope it doesn't offend you?"

"No. No. On the contrary. I'm relieved. I thought that I was being... greedy by my two women. As regulars," I added after a while.

"Oh, I'm glad. And your feelings are - repaid?"

"I think so. I know so."

"Good. If you ever want to marry them I know just the priest who can perform the wedding. To both of them at once!"

"I'll have that in mind as soon as I have proposed to them," I laughed.

He laughed with me but added: "I'm serious though. Now lets see where you've got it wrong and what I can do to alter my Machine to be more like your."

We bent over the blueprints and compared part by part but found nothing that stood out right away.

"No, I can't find anything," Thorn finally said. "Of course they aren't the same, but the differences are fewer than the similarities. I think we should start from the beginning. You build mine and I'll build yours and after that it is much easier to compare. You can keep my blueprints; they are copies anyway."

"Mine are the originals, but I could easily make copies of them till tomorrow."

"OK. Why don't you come to me, I'll give you my coordinates and... Oh I forgot; you don't move in the space. Let me see again. Maybe that is the problem. You have to move along your own time-axis... Yes that could be it. Try to install this part here and see what happens."

I looked closer at the portion that he was indicating. It looked simple enough. I had to byy a small computer though to handle the exact coordinates.

Thorn wrote down the coordinates for his home and after that we sat and talked for a while.

"No. I don't know about you, but I'm eager to start on this new project," Thorn stated and stood.

"Yeah, me too. I'll have to get starting if I'll be able to get all the parts today, before it's time to get Anita, my fiancée," I added.

"Is the other in this time too?"

"No, she's back when I was fifteen."

"Oh, I envy you to be able to go back and be these young ages again. There certainly were some girls you would have liked to... meet, back then."

"Mhm. See you soon," I said as he walked away and he just waved back.

I was able to get the list together in time to get to the stores before they closed and even dropped the stuff off at my place before I went and met Anita.

Anita noticed that I was preoccupied and asked whether something was wrong in any way. I told her that I had just started a new project and been thinking about some ideas I had about it. I was however, able to push the thoughts away and sat and talked with Anita while the TV was on and showing some silly sitcom.

We made love and fell asleep in each other's arms, as usual, and very soon the alarm sounded and I almost jumped out of the bed and after putting the coffee on I hit the shower and almost jumped up and down while Anita had her breakfast.

"Oh, don't jump around like that. Why don't you just go and start on your project," she laughed when she noticed my eagerness.

"Are you sure you don't mind?"

"No, no. Off you go."

I kissed her and almost ran all the way to my workshop.

To assemble the parts I had bought into a workable navigation-instrument was easy enough. Also, it was easy to get it installed getting the coordinates was another matter. I had to learn how to navigate.

As I walked towards the library, it hit me that now when I had given the blueprints of my own Machine away I could be in some danger to lose future discoveries. For one thing if Thorn could get his Machine to work the same way that mine worked, he, or anyone that he shared this with, would be able to sneak into my workshop even when I was there without me being able to detect them. I made a detour to a shop that sold various security items. I purchased some, now was the time to be grateful that my investments had grown faster than I could have wished for.

I found a couple of books in the library, went back and started to install the various security gadgets. That took the rest of the day and with the books under my arm I went to meet Anita. She looked intriguingly at them.