Chapter 14: Home?

Did I actually say ‘engage,’ just before passing out?

Returning to consciousness, I found there was none of the confusion of the other jumps: no blaring claxons, no spinning emergency lighting, and definitely no head injury. It was more like waking from a dream. Had it all been a dream? But then I was wearing this helmet, and I raised the visor to see more clearly. I had to smile to myself. I hadn’t fallen, and I didn’t have a head injury as I had before. That was all a plus.

I heard someone call out. “Stations, report!” Peeved, I thought, wasn’t that my job to order that? I should have counted myself lucky I hadn’t hurt my head, for even if I had things were moving smoothly with or without me.

Adam monitoring my responses may have noticed my annoyance and started giving a private rundown of everything that was happening. Adam was reporting directly to me with that voice in my head that it was indeed certain, within a hundred places past the decimal point, that we were home. Privately I asked just how far it could check, and he said he was limited at just under a terabyte of places past the decimal, so there was still the possibility that this was not home.

When dealing with infinite numbers, a terabyte past the decimal point could still be a wide margin. A hundred almost seemed like a crap shoot.

The same yet possibly still different in ways that might not be noticed, or worse, were noticed!

“Ok,” I asked Adam, “where are we most vulnerable if this not our timeline?”

“Any abnormality might just be chalked up to faulty memory between individuals. Certain things cannot change; differences might be in some people having been born and some not. Any real differences would be in memories of the past. I am running a deeper comparison check to be sure if there might be other areas as well. That will take time, as there are many points/paths that need verifying.”

‘The real problem might be,’ I thought to myself, ‘just what could we do about it if it wasn’t?’ We are here now, another jump would be no guarantee we would be any better off. I spoke to Adam, “Adam, continue to look for differences and inform me of any important differences.”

Well, now that we were here, I could put out the good word, without mentioning that caveat. Also, I would be looking for my first love. Without grandfather’s interference, I was sure it wouldn’t take long.

I would be consulting with the little man about what we have learned of our jumps, and if they were stable enough to use again. I would tell him of my thoughts of using it to go further back in time again. In the meanwhile, I’ll have to have a study made of what would be needed or required to send a fully self-contained city back in time more than say ten thousand years, permanently. There really was no recorded history going back even five thousand years. Can we say stone age at the least?

It was thought that mankind, as we saw ourselves first, appeared forty-five-thousand years ago or so archaeologists thought. It was, at best, a guess as far as I thought. Anything to do with the history going that far back was at best guesswork. Our own family history which had been carefully recorded over time had gone back thousands of years before it had been wiped out with the plagues. How far back, at this point, it was useless to speculate.

Additional studies of the genetically modified would be ongoing as well. I wanted a way to identify them without the need for DNA testing. It was too time-consuming, and you needed a sample to test. If they got word of that, I might not ever get another test done. I felt ... No! I knew they would be a problem, no matter where or when we went.

I recalled our problems on our first jump landing in 1937, of the many shortcomings and commodities that were not available. True they had been more an inconvenience than any real hardship, but a longer jump would make that problem even worse. Anything we didn’t take back with us, or couldn’t fabricate would be lost to us for however long it took to recreate it. I asked my wives and some of the students at the schools to help me amend this problem.

They suggested a visit to the commissary/PX was in order. I had been there before and had thought I had already worked that out. I hadn’t really scratched the surface of the problem. I was led over to the women’s beauty aid section, I should say for a man who had never seen one before it was ... Did women really need all this to look presentable? There must have been thousands, if not tens of thousands of products!

Shampoos and toothpaste, to say the least, dozens if not more of each type. I hadn’t even seen the tip of the iceberg. Then we all went to Houston, Texas, to one of the larger malls. I had never been to one before, as I had people that would do that for me. So, it came as a shock just how many shops and items there were for sale. It was one thing to know about business management, another to see the ground level details up close. The women and kids gave me an eyeful of what I had taken for granted. I had lived in a bubble within a bubble within a bubble. All this was new to me, and I wondered just how much was essential, and how much was just for looks and choice.

I turned to them, “Just how much of this is essential? How much can be dropped without it making too much of an impact on your lives?” Then I explained my plan to go back in time five to ten thousand years. Looking back around, I couldn’t possibly bring it all this back with us.

The look I got was of dumbfoundedness, slowly one of them said “You want to do what?” as if I was out of my mind, and maybe I was.

Recovering, I led them to an electronics shop with a TV showing the news, typically, mostly bad news. Then I walked them outside and asked them to look out over the horizon and asked them what they saw? Maybe it was just me, but smog pollution was something they had grown up with and may not have really noticed. Then I asked how would you like a glass of tap water? “What? Not bottled?” they asked before it dawned on them, that no one would knowingly drink tap water.

I looked at each, in turn, explaining, “It is only going to get worse, not better. Have you all forgotten how much cleaner the air was, in 1937 and even more so in 1836?” I let that sink in, “We are making this world slowly unfit to live on, and damn few people are even willing to take notice let alone do something about it.” I waved my had at everything around us, including the Mall, All this is the cause of you not having clean water to drink or air to breathe.” I didn’t go into detail about my part in all this, I realized now that I too had been part of the problem.

‘We have been conditioned to want to buy these things almost from birth, stuff we don’t really need, things we think we need, things that in the end are just cluttering up our lives and living space.” I went on, “I ask you again just how much of this is essential? How much could be dropped without it making much of an impact on your lives and choices?”

Well, now I had them thinking.

“Give it some thought, go back to your homes and take stock of what you have there and why. Then I want your honest answers about ‘needs’ versus ‘wants.’ What you can live without and maybe what can be recreated in a new time.” I knew there would be pains with that. As there been a lifetime of conditioning to want what wasn’t needed.

“Look I am not saying we can’t have pizza or any number of things we have come to enjoy. But come on! Look! Do you need that, or that, or that? Two to three hundred colors of nail polish? Almost as many hair colorings. An entire aisle of toothpaste, mouthwash, and deodorant products.

Give me a list of things we can take back with us that we can also make. We will have some manufacturing for some of these things, just not for all of them. I added that for many of those products the changes between them were mostly cosmetic and straightforward repackaging. I picked up a few samples of toothpaste, and handed them to them, look and see who made these, and then look up their parent companies, if any of them would look at the fine print, they might see the same handful of companies made all of those products — may be coming out of the same factory. For all, they knew they could be the same formula with just different perfume and packaging to make them seem different. Notice they are all the same size and weight; in many cases, even the basic packaging is the same.

Then the question came, “Just when do you plan to make this trip back in time?” A fair enough question. “Not for some time,” I replied truthfully. “The first time had been an accident, and none of you had been given a choice about it. This next time you will be. Anyone who doesn’t want to come can stay here.”

I went on, “I can’t promise it will be easy, it may well turn out as the biggest mistake of our lives. But I want to give it a try. All I see here with me staying is a planet slowly dying and becoming uninhabitable because of what we are doing. I don’t want that for my children, and I don’t want it for you or yours, but each of you will be given that choice. It will not be forced upon you.”

“Now can you help me here, if not for yourselves then for those that will come with me?”

I would be asking everyone these same questions: what would be needed, what would not, and what might be in the middle that would be ‘nice to have.’ And still, fit inside the suitcase.

Adam gave me a preliminary model of what might be needed population wise. A hundred to two hundred thousand to keep the minimal sustainable human gene pool healthy. And meet manufacturing needs. By that, I meant everything from growing food, to make it fit for the dinner table and those things that make life enjoyable, as well looking to the future when we will be reaching for the stars.

There was mention of naturally occurring mutations as being necessary, and while science tried to keep such alive, most often they were not viable and died early. Those that did survive were watched for positive and negative traits. In some 30 to 45 thousand years there hadn’t seemed to be any mutations that radically changed the species; or if there had been, the mutation either hid or had been wiped out, before it could take hold.

There had been isolated recorded cases of individuals throughout history that might have fit the designation of mutant, individuals clearly ahead of their time.

Most religions had called these people prophets or oracles if they were deemed harmless. Blasphemers, magicians, witches or warlocks, demons, or worse to be put to death if they were thought to be a threat to the established order those religious leaders. Would we or I recognize such if such were to appear again? Thoughts of our enemy came to mind. I shook that off even if they were, they were seeking the destruction of humanity, and for all, I knew perhaps those individuals that might have provided that leap for our species.

I wasn’t going to make it a sterile world, devoid of excess; I wanted as much of this world, minus the bad parts, as I could get.

Housing would become an issue for that many people, there was nothing for it but to build up, and not out, the question was now just how high?

Earlier I have mentioned MVP or minimum viable population. There have been studies of just how low that number could be. The lower the number would mean additional inbreeding, and the resulting rise of recessive gene types setting back the race as a whole. Couldn’t have that, yet I couldn’t take back an unwieldy number, complete with recessive genes

It would be extremely strange to an outsider to see a forty to fifty story buildings going up here in the empty Midwest, where there were basically few people living and plenty of room to spread out. But it was the only way I could see about fitting 200 hundred thousand people within the confines of the compound. Clearly, a compromise had to be stuck.

I went about finding suitable plans to do it. Logistically I knew it was going to be a nightmare no matter what project I might conceive. There were times at night before the groundbreaking that I wondered if I was even doing the right thing.

Turned out that some of my fears were unfounded. My idea of having that different groups work together had worked out better than my wildest dreams.

It had started out slow, with each day it was snowballing. With practically unlimited power every area of research was making leaps and bounds. It had started with the molecular assembler, then food synthesizer, and then to what I am told is a replicator that works by rearranging subatomic particles.

What they were doing with it was creating nano-assemblers and disassemblers, that were being used to build even more of the machines. I was told it was moving along even better than any of them had dreamed.

Somehow that all became unimportant to me when my first love reappeared seemingly out of nowhere. I questioned it at first if it might be an inconsistency of the timeline. Grandfather had said she was nowhere to be found, then later I had found that he had run interference so I would not be able to find her.

Now she stood before me, and I was stunned with disbelieving of ever honestly finding her again. When she saw me, she was a little more than startled herself. “You’ve aged,” she stated with some shock. “Your grandfather said you would be different, but I thought it would be something else.” As she stared at me incomprehensibly, “How?”

I was about to introduce her to my other wives when I stopped short. Just how was I going to explain another wife let alone two, and my children by them. Even I didn’t fully understand how it had happened, other than it had, and my wives had accepted each other with a love and understanding that I had thought impossible before. Would there be room for one more?

She was still staring, as she brought out an envelope, “Your grandfather gave me this to give to you.” handing it to me. It was in my grandfather’s handwriting, addressed to me. With a note as to where and when. The letter within it was simple. I was to go back to my office, alone, and enter a code into the old keyboard at the desk. I asked Adam about it. Strangely he was silent about it.

The note, as well as the contents of the envelope, told me that something had been going on all along and that I had been deliberately left in the dark about it. The question was WHY?

I was as eager as I was hesitant to do so. The unknown is - well - the unknown. Grandfather had been my rock, the one person I thought I could always trust. I had to hold onto that. This was no time to let go of my trust in that rock, or in myself, for that matter. I was sure I would learn the details of my love’s disappearance, but then there would be more, just how much more I would find out. Would I learn all the answers? I highly doubted that.

Going down to his office, now my own, I had Adam secure the room, sitting behind the desk, pulling out the keyboard then entered the code:...

What I learned, stunned me. Answers, yes, the rest too unbelievable to give credence to. Had I not lived some of it I wouldn’t have believed any of it. I just sat there after it was all said, too shocked to do anything but try to take it all in. First off, none of this had been an accident. The timeline jumps none of it. Even those holdings I had been instructed to see, had been a part of it.

My first love had not disappeared without a trace, my grandfather had known where she was, all along. He had lied about that! I could almost hate him for that if it hadn’t been for the rest of what he said.

It had all started before I was born. The ‘little man,’ as I had come to call him, had come to my grandfather with an impossible tale. One that even now, seemed so. Yet it explained why he was nowhere to be found. It also explained Nicky and Wind Song. More about those two later.

Where to begin?

You could say I had been set up even before I was born. Everything, none of it had been left to chance. More to the point, it couldn’t be left to chance. That is what had started it all in the first place. Different timelines and changing the future of any one of them is ... the little man had come to my grandfather telling him of a future that would end in disaster unless something was done to alter it, yet it had to be done with the least amount of change that would be effective.

I would have developed my power device, but it would have sent me, and the compound to god knew where, as I had never returned. He knew this how? Because he had come from that future. He had had all my notes and papers on what I had been working on, his mother had given them to him when she had lost heart of ever seeing the man she loved ever again. Yes, the little man had turned out to be my son! No wonder he wouldn’t tell me his name. I could barely fathom it; my son was the little OLD man?

He had been working from my papers to try to recreate the accident that caused my disappearance. He had been stymied, in that while the device would and did generate power, it hadn’t recreated the incident.

Enter Nicky and Wind Song. They had found him and knew what he had been working on. They said they had been looking for him for a very long time. How long they hadn’t said. They did say they knew of his father’s/my disappearance. They had monitored the incident. At the time they didn’t say how, just that they had.

They would help him find his father/me as it was necessary to them as well, again without giving details. They did end up telling him certain things, and they helped with the recreating of the incident. But there was much more, they eventually took him to what looked like some sort of capsule. It looked very much like an Airstream trailer (When I first saw it.). It wasn’t. What it was, was a sort of time travel device, well they said it had started out as an emergency landing pod but had been modified for this purpose. What I was to come to find out was that it had never made a time jump, it was more a time capsule-stasis chamber that had been set to open every thousand years. It never had the power to make a time jump, that is until I developed my power device and it was connected to it.

My son, the odd little man, didn’t know what to believe about this. For myself, I was having a hard time believing also, but I had lived some of it. I had to think this was true. Most everything that I was sent to see had its origins with them or information that came from them. Everything from the Nano’s to the shielding, and the device for Alzheimer’s disease or mind reading, or control. That particular device had been designed as a teaching aid. My grandfather had used it himself.

Ok, are you still following me?

He used it so he could use that capsule to find me. That hadn’t worked as expected. He had made any number of fruitless jumps before Nicky, and Wind Song saw what was happening to his mind. As it hadn’t affected them. More on that, later.

Not knowing how many more jumps he could survive before his mind was scrambled completely. They came up with a plan to go to my grandfather before I was born, and thus control the outcome of the incident so I would end up in a known time and location. Not just once but twice.

Grandfather had had a hard time believing it, but then he had been following a directive that had originated some two hundred years earlier, and now it started to make sense to him. But, what to do about it? It seemed like a Catch 22 situation.

The girls Nicky and Wind Song said I needed to be found and saved. They wouldn’t, at the time, tell why. It may have been that they didn’t know, themselves. Grandfather tried to give me all the details, but by then I was too stunned to follow most of it, and I just sat there as he went on blah-blah-blah. Too numb to do anything more.

A chime sounded, and Adam’s voice called, asking if I was alright, that bio scans showed an erratic pattern that was unknown to it. Nicky and Wind Song were inquiring about me, as I had been out of touch for many hours and hadn’t eaten. My wives held similar thoughts. Odd it would mention Nicky and Wind Song first, then my wives ... or was it?

I wasn’t sure I was ready to face the real world, as the one I had known all my life had been turned upside down.

I finally came out, and my first love, Julia, was there in front of my other wives and children, as I looked down, hiding behind her was a small child.

She said to me, “Jim, this our son, ‘Adam Abraham Wolfenstein’ I named him after your grandfather. Your grandfather seemed pleased.”

She then bent down to the boy’s level, and she whispered in his ear, “Adam this is your father.”

Who moved first I couldn’t say, but before I knew it, we were both in each other’s arms I was not sure which of us was weeping, then realized it was both of us? First Julia then all the others and the many children came together in one big hug as if we never wanted to be parted again. And I, for one, didn’t want it ever to end.

In the end, the tears stopped, and we moved apart, I clung to my son ‘Adam.’ He had so grown. So much of his life, I had missed, I didn’t want to lose another heartbeat of it.