A Voice in the Night

THE LAW OF GRAVITY ISN’T WORKING ON RAINBOW BRIDGE

“I’m sorry to cut you short, Mr. Secretary, but we have breaking news at Niagara Falls, where the river seems to be spilling over its banks. Mark Espy, from WKBW-TV, Channel Seven, our affiliate in Buffalo, is on the scene. Mark, what’s happening?”

“Hello, Paula. I’m standing just off the Robert Moses Parkway, along the Niagara River, above the Falls. As you can see, the river is up on the highway and rising fast. Nobody seems to know why it’s flooding. But if it continues at this pace, those homes back there are going to get seriously wet.”

“I understand there was a helicopter rescue a few minutes ago?”

“Yes, Paula. A couple of motorists ran off the road. The police got them out okay. The river usually moves pretty quickly through this area, but as you can see it doesn’t seem to have any flow at all today. It’s almost as if it’s backing up.

“We’ve spoken with Buffalo Weather Central and they’re just starting to get some high water. That’s strange because if there’s going to be flooding at Niagara Falls, they should get it first.”

“Any idea how high it’s likely to get, Mark?”

“Nobody knows. They can’t make an estimate until they can figure out what’s causing it.”

“Your shoes must be getting wet. Maybe you’d better get out of there yourself.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. This is Mark Espy, on the north bank of the Niagara.”

“Whit Morrison reporting from downtown. Paula, we’re less than a block from City Hall, looking west along Pine Avenue toward the river. Something absolutely terrifying is happening here. Those are not manikins across the street. They’re real people. I saw two of them go over to try to help the driver in the pickup. As soon as they got beyond the curb over there they froze. Just like you see them. Same thing happened to the dog. You ever see a dog look like that before? And the driver’s just sitting there. You’ll notice a few more people down the block, but nothing moving anywhere along Pine Avenue all the way to the Niagara. Wait. Look at that.”

“What is that, Whit?”

“Believe it or not, it’s a newspaper.”

“It looks as if it’s just hanging in the air.”

“I think it is. A tall guy to my right, he was off-camera, rolled it up and threw it. And it seems to have locked in place. I mean, you can see it hanging there, right, Paula? Nine feet up?”

“I can see it. This must be a hoax.”

“If it is it’s a good one. Look at that woman. How can she stand like that with one foot in the air? She’s in mid-stride. Been like that for at least a couple minutes. Let’s talk to the guy who threw the paper. Sir, what’s your name, please?”

“I’m, uhh, Robert Thomas. I’m from the Falls area. On the Canadian side.”

“Mr. Thomas, how long has it been like this? Do you know?”

“Am I on television?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ve only been here for a few minutes. I’m parked over there. In the middle of the block. I don’t know how I’m going to get my car. The pickup turned right here onto Pine and then it just stopped. The driver never moved. Then those two guys went to see what was happening, and they stopped. And then the woman. And the dog. I’ve never seen anything like that dog. You ever see a dog standing absolutely still?”

(Sound of approaching sirens.) “Thank you, Mr. Thomas.”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to get to my car.”

“Paula, there’s a rescue vehicle coming. Or a police car. Can’t tell which. Okay, here it comes now. It’s police. People are getting out of the way, making room. There’s someone trying to flag them down.

“They’re stopping in the middle of the intersection.” (Crowd noises. Shouts.) “They don’t know what to make of it either.” (Crowd noises lessen.) “I don’t think they want to listen. Oh, Paula, look. It’s happening to them too.”

“This is Sherry Weinberg at City Hall. The mayor’s out of town, but a press conference has been scheduled and is already behind time. This place is chaotic. People running in every direction. We’re hearing that they’re going to evacuate the southern section of the city, from Niagara Falls Boulevard to the river. Meanwhile, people and cars are stopping dead on the streets. Nobody has an explanation for any of this, but we can hear sirens all over the city. We’re getting reports of similar conditions on the Canadian side. Wait a minute. There’s Matt Stockton, one of the mayor’s aides. Matt, can you tell us what’s going on out there?”

“At the moment, Sherry, I don’t know any more than you do. We’ll have an official reaction shortly. Excuse me. Have to go.”

“Paula, I’ve been in this business a long time and I’ve never covered anything remotely like this. People not moving. Invisible barriers that nobody can cross. Wait, there’s a door opening from the sanctum sanctorum, and, yes, I guess we’re about to get our statement.

“The woman taking her place at the lectern is Susan Edward. She’s one of the mayor’s staff assistants—.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s hard to know what to say at this point. I won’t pretend we know what’s going on. I’m told the law of gravity isn’t working any longer on Rainbow Bridge. What I can say is that all our resources are being brought to bear. We’re sealing off the southwestern section of the city, from Main Street to the river on the south, and from the intersection of Main and Lockport across to the river on the north. So far, we haven’t received any reports that anyone’s been injured. I wish we could tell you what’s happening, but at the moment we’re just asking everybody to stay calm. We do not know whether the affected area may spread, so we are strongly advising evacuation of everyone as far east as Hyde Park Boulevard and south of route 182. We also suggest people stay off the river. When we have more information we’ll pass it along. I can assure you we are fully engaged. Hold on a second, Wally. Yes, federal help is already on the way. No, we don’t know how many people are caught in the affected area. It includes most of the major hotels on this side, and the Casino and some hotels on the Canadian side. The affected area appears to be about a mile and a half across. It’s centered near the river between Niagara Street and Buffalo Avenue.

“As you know, the mayor’s in Los Angeles, but she’s getting ready to fly back now.

“Sorry, Wally, I’m not sure I have any answers. To be honest, at the moment I don’t know any more than you do.

“The liaison office will stay open and anything else we get will be made available as soon as we receive it. Thank you.” (Sounds of conversation, chairs scraping.)

“Sherry, am I correct in assuming the area we’re talking about includes the Falls?”

“Yes, it does, Paula. Both the American and Canadian sides. The water looks frozen in place.”

“Okay, we’ve put up a map so everyone can follow this. It includes the entire river front along the Falls area, which is to say the tourist area. Is that Rainbow Bridge?”

“Yes.”

“And what’s the ship?”

“The Maid of the Mist. It was headed downstream away from the Falls when the effect took hold. A few more minutes and she would have been clear.”

“So we’ve got a ship in trouble too. It’s not moving either. And the water’s not moving.”

“That seems to be the case, Paula.”

“How is that possible?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.”

“What did Ms. Edward mean when she said gravity’s not working on Rainbow Bridge?”

“Don’t know. Paula, I’ve been in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and the Gulf War—.”

“—And—?”

“I’ve never seen correspondents look so rattled.”

“Hello, Paula. (Voice somewhat difficult to make out over the roar of blades and engines.) This is Mark Espy in the WKBW newscopter. We’re approaching the Falls from the south. From up here the river looks pretty swollen. The water’s piling up about a mile above Goat Island and they’re getting substantial flooding on both sides.”

“Mark, we can’t see any kind of obstacle in the river.”

“Neither can I. But it’s as if there’s a wall down there. Look at it. Charlie, how about we go a little lower? He’s shaking his head no at me, Paula. We’re a little concerned about this bubble they’re talking about. They’re saying it’s a mile and a half across, more or less. But there’s no indication yet how high it goes.”

“Can you see Rainbow Bridge?”

“It’s off to the north. We’re about two miles from it. Okay, we’re headed there now. The city below is filled with police units. And it looks as if they’ve called out the National Guard. They’re putting a cordon around this entire section of the city. A lot of people are clearing out. Down in the affected area, it’s like a ghost city. Look at it. Nothing moving anywhere. No cars. No people. And my God look at the Falls!”

“They’re frozen. How cold is it there?”

“Forty degrees or so last night.”

“The river’s the same way. Inside the bubble it’s just not going anywhere.”

“Yes. The water’s not moving. It looks like crystal from up here. You can see lots of people down there, some standing along the overlook, others on the approaches, but nobody along there is moving. Everything’s dead still.” (Long pause.) “Here’s something else past Rainbow Bridge. It looks as if the river drops off again. Only a few feet. But it’s there. Curved slightly, all the way across. But there’s never been anything like that before in this part of the river. It reminds me of that movie, The Ten Commandments, when Moses raises his staff and the waters roll back. Except this has only rolled back a little bit.”

“Mark, might it be the edge of the bubble?”

“I think so. It’s at the right spot. Something else, too: The river beyond the drop-off is flowing normally. You aren’t looking at a hard surface.”

“Mark, it doesn’t look as if anybody’s moving on the bridge. There’s even a little boy with a balloon, and the balloon’s not even moving.”

“No.”

“What’s that just above the bridge?”

“I’m not sure. Let’s zoom in on it.”

“It’s a bird.”

“A gull, as a matter of fact. It’s maybe forty feet above the span. Wings spread in full flight.”

“But it’s just hanging there.”

“It doesn’t seem to be suspended from anything.”

“The law of gravity isn’t working on the bridge.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Something they said at the briefing.”

“Paula, the Robert Moses Power Plant on the Niagara has announced that water levels on the river have fallen so far that they’re going to have to reduce power. The Beck plant, on the Canadian side, is expected to follow suit. We all remember that this was where the great blackout of 1965 began. Meantime, the evacuation areas on both sides have been extended because of flooding fears. Professor Abraham Harding is a physicist at the University of Toronto. He joins us this afternoon from the university campus. Professor Harding, can you give us any idea at all what’s happening at Niagara Falls?”

“Yes, Leon. I believe I can. I have to confess that I’ve no idea why it’s happening, or how long it’ll last, but it’s quite obvious what is going on. A bubble has formed, about a mile and a half in diameter. And it looks as if it’s at least three-quarters of a mile high, although I’d suggest that aircraft give it a wider berth. It seems to be centered in southwestern Niagara Falls, and it includes parts of the city, the Falls itself, Goat Island, and a slice of the Canadian side. Inside that bubble, I would say that time has stopped.”

“Time has stopped? How do you mean? Could you explain that, Professor?”

“I don’t know how else to say it, Leon. If you went inside the bubble, your watch would not work, your neurons would not fire, and you would cease to function.”

“That hardly seems possible, Professor.”

“Yesterday, at this time, I’d have agreed with you. But there’s no other explanation for what we’re seeing.”

“None at all?”

“Well, I suppose it’s possible that time has remained normal inside the bubble and accelerated out here where we are. (Laughs.) But, seriously, yes, that is unquestionably what has happened. It’s a time warp.”

“That sounds like science fiction.”

“It does indeed. I wish it were so.”

“Professor, some of our viewers would argue that time doesn’t really exist, except as something humans invented and measure with clocks. So how can it stop?”

“Oh, time is quite real. Just as space is a great deal more than simply the distance between two objects. This morning, for whatever reason, within that bubble around the Falls, the flow of time shut down.”

“Is the condition likely to spread?”

“I have no way of knowing. We’re in uncharted territory here, Leon.”

“Is there a way to counter this thing?”

“I can’t imagine how you’d go about doing it.”

“I assume there’s no way to know how long it’ll last?”

“I’d like to think there’ll be a tendency to compensate, for conditions inside the bubble to realign themselves with the surrounding continuum. But as I say, at the moment it’s anyone’s guess.”

“Would you be willing to hazard any sort of explanation how it could have happened?”

“I can’t imagine, Leon. If I were a betting man, I’d say that we’ve just discovered that time, like light, like radiation of all kinds, is quantized.”

“Explain, please.”

“People talk a lot about time flowing, being like a river. But it might be that time moves in something like packets. Think of movie film with thousands of tiny images, each slightly different from the next. Then imagine that the projector jams. The movie gets stuck. Something like that seems to have happened here.”

“All right. Let’s try another tack. The police are estimating there are upward of forty thousand people trapped inside the bubble on both the U.S. and Canadian sides. And the Maid of the Mist is stuck out there as well. If time’s not moving, then we can assume everyone’s safe, right?”

“For the moment, they should be in the same condition they were in when the event began. When it ends, if it ends, they should be all right.”

“That’s encouraging news for the families to hear, Professor. Thank you. We’ll ask you to hang on while we take a break. And then we’ll be back with this developing story.”

“Sherry Weinberg is at the FEMA base on Lockport Road. What have you got, Sherry?”

“Paula, this is Anna LeFluer, of Buffalo. She’s a physicist at the Main Cycle Research Lab in Syracuse. And she has an interesting story. Dr. LeFleur?”

“Hello, Paula. We were able to listen while Professor Harding was talking. I just wanted to add that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. There’s evidence in the geological record of time warps. For example, during the Cretaceous—.”

“Hold on, Doctor. You’re saying this has happened before?”

“The evidence suggests it has. Three times that we can pinpoint. Maybe a fourth during the late Paleozoic.”

“Why haven’t we heard of this before now?”

“It’s not conclusive. And no one believed a time warp was actually possible. Until today. But if that’s what’s actually happening, it explains some puzzling findings.”

“How long will it last? The time warp?”

“We can’t be sure, Sherry. We think the most recent one had a duration somewhere between thirty and seventy thousand years.”

“Thirty thousand years?” (Another long pause.) “Professor Harding, are you still there?”

“I’m here, Anna.”

“You know each other?”

“Slightly. I know what Dr. LaFleur is referring to. It’s not my field but I wouldn’t be surprised if what she’s saying turns out to be accurate.”

“Do you think this could last thirty thousand years?”

“It’s possible. Anna, have you any sense of the geographical size of the earlier events?”

“I’d prefer to look at the research before getting into specifics.”

“There might be a correlation that would help us measure what we’re looking at.”

“Okay. Thank you both.”

“Paula.”

“Yes, Whit.”

“This is Roger Brockner. He’s from the Waycross Research Institute in Rochester.”

“Whit, I’m not saying it’s true, you understand.”

“I understand that, Mr. Brockner.”

“I mean, I’ve never believed it. It’s just that now I’m not so sure.”

“Please just tell the viewers what you told me.”

“Well. Ummm. They’re saying the center of the bubble is about a block north of Niagara Street, just off Whirlpool. That’s where she lives.”

“Where who lives?”

“Maggie Bennett. She’s been trying to build a time machine for as long as I’ve known her.”

“You think she succeeded?”

“Maggie’s a genius. She’s said for years it could be done, there was a way to do it and she was going to make it happen.”

“And you think she did it?”

“I think she got close but something went wrong. And look, I know how this sounds. But how crazy is it out there today?”

“Have you ever seen the time machine, Mr. Brockner?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve never seen it work?”

“No. Of course not. Listen, I’m not one of those UFO morons. I never took it seriously. But now I’m not so sure.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brockner. Paula, this is Ura Kabele. Ura’s house is inside the bubble. Along with her kids. Ura, what do you think is happening here?”

“It’s a divine warning. And I think we better pay attention.”

“Thank you. And that’s it from FEMA. Back to you, Paula.”

“Thanks, Whit. Stay safe. I don’t know what to make of all this. But we have a map up now. The shaded area is the affected section. Those of our viewers familiar with the area will see that several of the major hotels are inside.

“We’ve been informed that one of them, the Days Inn, is hosting a science fiction convention. It’s called—I think I have this right—Eeriecon. And considering what’s been happening, it’s certainly got the right name. Yes, Leon, what do you have?”

“Paula, we’ve got our first reports of brownouts. The power plants have begun cutting back. Large areas of eastern Canada and New York state are already being affected. The Power Commission has issued a statement warning that it could get worse.”

“Okay, we’re going back to the Falls.” (Sound of helicopter engines and blades.) “Mark Espy is in the newscopter near Rainbow Bridge. Mark, what have you got?”

“Leon, the gull is moving!”

“The one that’s been stationary above the bridge all day? It doesn’t look to me as if it’s going anywhere.”

“Watch its wings.”

“I think you’re right, Mark. They’re moving. But in ultra-slow motion.”

“So’s the river. Look! The water’s flowing again.”

“You couldn’t prove it by me.”

“That’s the slowest gull I’ve ever seen.”

“Everything is slow. But look, the little boy’s balloon is moving too. And we’re getting a shot of the Falls now. You’re right. The water’s beginning to flow again. But look at it, Mark. It looks like syrup.”

“No, it did for a moment. But I think it’s alright now. Paula, are you getting this? The Maid of the Mist is underway again. Maybe it’s over.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“We’re going to try to get a bit closer. If everything looks okay, we’ll set down at the bridge ramp. See how everybody is.”

“That’s probably not a good idea.”

“We’ll be careful. Any indication at all of—.” (Helicopter sounds cease.)

“Mark, are you there? Mark?”

“We’re good, Paula.”

“Whit, what’s going on?”

“I’m on Pine Avenue, Paula, near Main. The people across the street are moving again. It looks as if things are getting back to normal.”

“Wonderful. Do they seem okay? The people?”

“They seem fine. The police officers are all right, the driver of the pickup is out of the vehicle now, I guess wondering what happened. There are smiles all around and backslapping, and somebody got some coffee somewhere and he’s carrying it over. Here’s a woman who got caught. Excuse me, ma’m, can we talk for a minute?”

“Of course. What happened?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you. You were in there for more than seven hours.”

“What do you mean, ‘in there’? In where?”

“Ma’m, you haven’t moved since about eight this morning.”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, young man. It’s only a little after eight.”

“Take a look at your watch.”

“Looks fine to me. See? Ten after eight.”

“Sherry Weinberg, north of Rainbow Bridge. Paula, the WKBW newscopter is just hanging up there.”

“It’s not falling?”

“No. Fortunately not. In fact I can see the blades turning. Turning slowly, too slowly to keep the chopper aloft. But they are turning. Maybe one RPM. There’s something else happening. Can you see it?”

“It looks as if the river is getting smaller. And the Falls. I think we need to calibrate things.”

“No. That’s what it looks like to me, too. In fact, I think everything is shrinking. As if all of it, the Maid of the Mist, the river, the bridge, as if it’s all pulling away from us.”

“This is incredible, ladies and gentlemen. More land is appearing inside. The ship’s moving faster.”

“Yes.”

“And the cars. They’re roaring across the bridge and out onto the road and north on the highway. It looks as if the entire surrounding countryside is flowing into the bubble and shrinking. Incredible.”

“It’s an illusion of some kind.”

“Must be. It can’t really be happening.”

“The Maid of the Mist is moving faster, passing beneath the bridge, but more of the river has appeared, and it doesn’t look as if it’s gotten any closer to the edge of the bubble. What’s happening? Sherry, are you okay?”

“We’re fine. I know it looks as if the whole of northern Niagara Falls is inside now, but we haven’t moved.”

“The gull is gone.”

“So’s the newscopter.”

“Sherry.”

“Yes.”

“The river’s becoming a torrent.”

“The good news is that whatever was blocking the Niagara above Goat’s Island seems to have gone away. Here’s where the blockage occurred. And you can see the water’s moving through there now. Moving through the bubble. Maybe the flooding will stop.”

“More like roaring through the bubble. It’s coming out the other end like a firehose. Hey, it’s getting hard to see.”

“Everything’s getting blurry. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“We have Professor Abraham Harding with us. Professor Harding is speaking from the University of Toronto. Professor, have you been watching?”

“Oh, yes, Leon. No way I’d miss this.”

“Can you tell us what’s happening?”

“We talked earlier about the likelihood that time had stopped inside the bubble.”

“Yes.”

“I’m looking at the picture on your screen now. Everything’s blurred.”

“Yes. It’s impossible to see what’s going on in there. Are the people in danger?”

“I don’t know. I was glad to see that the few who got out earlier seemed okay.”

“Except for memory loss.”

“I don’t think that’s what it was.”

“But they couldn’t remember that they’d been trapped for almost eight hours.”

“Because it didn’t happen to them. When they came out, it was only seconds after they’d gone in.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it, Professor. What happens next?”

“It looks as if the temporal continuum is trying to compensate for the warp, the breakdown, whatever you want to call it. It obviously returned to the normal flow of time—.”

“But it hasn’t. We can’t even see into it now.”

“Well, it more or less snapped back. It had to accelerate. And it looks as if it kept accelerating.”

“You mean it moved past us?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. Right now, if we can say that, time is moving more quickly inside the bubble than it is in the normal world.”

“So it would be dangerous to enter the bubble?”

“I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Do you expect it to return to normal, Professor?”

“Leon, who knows? My instincts tell me that conditions will seek equilibrium. Which is to say yes, eventually it should back up and recalibrate itself with the outside world. But I really don’t know. Before it blurred, the land area inside the bubble seemed to be increasing. As if it was sucking everything around it inside. I don’t want to start a panic now, because we know that’s not what happened. But it is what it looked like. And the river seemed to get longer. It was shrinking to accommodate the new world it was constructing. It’s proceeding into the future. As it does so it needs to recreate its own space/time continuum. It needs a world in which to exist. So it recreated the world it had once been attached to. Does that make sense to you?”

“Professor, are you making this up?”

“Yes, of course. But it’s the most reasonable explanation for what’s happening.”

“This is Wolf Blitzer on Evening Edition. We know a lot of you are watching us on battery-powered sets. We’ve been staying all day with this very strange story out of Niagara Falls. More than forty people were rescued today on both sides of the river from the phenomenon they are now calling the time bubble. Aside from one heart attack, no casualties have been reported. But, more than forty thousand people are believed trapped inside the bubble, in hotels, in the Niagara Casino, on the Maid of the Mist, and along the streets and restaurants looking out over the Falls from both sides. One of many odd things about this story: None of the people who were brought out earlier had any recollection whatever of their experience. This is certainly the wildest story of this, or any other, age.

“The stretch of river affected by the event is about two and a half miles long. Here’s what it looks like now. You can’t see anything, just a white blur. It’s been like that for more than an hour. The river is still pouring into the bubble beyond Goat Island, but we can see nothing whatever coming out the far end. Professor Abraham Harding, who’s been with us all through this trying day, is standing by. Professor, why aren’t we getting any water out of the north end?”

“Wolf, from our perspective, time is moving very quickly inside the bubble. That’s why it’s blurred.”

“How quickly?”

“Maybe a year or two per minute. There’s really no way to know.”

“A year or two per minute?”

“It’s possible. Whatever the true rate is, from our point of view, it’s very fast. But we need to think about things from the interior point of view. From inside the bubble. What’s happening in there is that the Niagara is flowing in, up near Goat island, but instead of entering at, say, what is it, six million cubic feet of water every minute, it might be six million cubic feet every six thousand years. That’s not very much water. Which is why none of it makes it to the other end.”

“So what’s happened to the Maid of the Mist?”

“Well, I suspect it’s lying in an ancient and long dry river bed at the moment.”

“And what of the people?”

“In that continuum, they would long since have lived out their lives. If time is moving as quickly in there as I suspect, there’ve been a long line of fresh generations since any of the original people set foot on Rainbow Bridge, or registered in the local hotels.”

“Wolf, this is Bill Hemmer. It’s comforting to see a large silver moon overhead. Almost as if the normal world has returned. I’m standing on Niagara Street, just outside the bubble, just off Main. There’s a large crowd here. It’s gotten cold but they show no signs of going home. They’re carrying candles and praying and sometimes just watching.

“There are tears, and occasionally you can hear people sing. It’s a somber place. There are two cities called Niagara Falls, this one, and one in Canada, and I’m told this is going on tonight all over both. People have come in from Buffalo and Toronto, and all over New York and Ontario. We’re hearing that the president will be here tomorrow. And the prime minister. I suspect when they arrive, these folks will be waiting.”

“Paula, this is Sherry Weinberg. We’re getting water downstream again. It’s dribbling out of the bubble.”

“This is Bill Hemmer from the top floor of City Hall. Paula, I wish I could say we can see things in the bubble, but we can’t. Still, if it means anything, the haze, the blur, whatever you want to call it, has gradually gone from white to blue. Sky blue.”

“Bill, I think we can see movement in there.”

“I can see the casino tower! It’s there.”

“There’s the Bridge. I can’t see anything moving on it, but it’s there.”

“Paula, the Falls are becoming visible. Hey, do you believe this? Look at them! They’re running backward. The water’s falling up!”

“Paula, this is Mark Espy. We’re setting the chopper down now. These folks are moving like nothing happened, coming off and going on the bridge. We’ll try to interview some of them. We’re getting some cheers over in the parking lot behind the hotel. Maybe a little premature. But we can see again. There’s Goat Island—And the Days Inn. And the Maid of the Mist. It looks okay. Still headed downstream. And Paula, look! There’s the kid with the balloon.”

“Professor, why don’t these people remember any of this? You said time was running in there.”

“Well, yes. It ran forward. And then we must presume it ran backward. Their experiences, whatever they were, theirs and I suspect their descendants, didn’t happen. Not in this continuum.”

“This is Whit Morrison in downtown Niagara Falls with Maggie Bennett. Ms. Bennett, some people think your time machine caused all this. Do you have a time machine?”

“Yes, I have a time machine. Or at least I did until they hauled it away a few minutes ago.”

“Was it responsible for what happened here yesterday?”

“Ridiculous. It’s still in an experimental stage. It doesn’t work. Never has.”

“Then why did they seize it?”

“People are scared. I don’t blame them. But anybody thinks I can shut down the Niagara is a damned fool.”

“Sherry Weinberg reporting from the Days Inn, scene of the annual science fiction convention, Eeriecon. Sir, what can you tell us about the last twenty-four hours?”

“Ummm. What is this all about again?”

“There are some physicists saying you’ve probably traveled hundreds of years into the future. That’s pretty much an ideal weekend, isn’t it, for science fiction people? What can you tell us? What was the future like?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Really.”

“You’re talking about panels. And the masquerade. Yes, I suppose you could say we spent some time downstream.”

“Downstream?”

“In the future. It’s where we’re all headed.”

“So what did you see?”

“You got a few minutes?”