The Accidental Time Machine

3

It turned out to be more than an all-nighter. He had to sneak into fourteen different labs and storerooms before he had all the parts in his bag. In some places, he left IOU notes; in some, he assumed people wouldn’t miss the odd resistor or thermocouple.

A thin gray winter dawn was threading through the window when he gathered all the parts together at his bench. He hadn’t been able to quite match everything precisely— all the electronic and optical components had the right characteristics, but they weren’t all from the same manufacturers as before, which shouldn’t make any difference. But then the machine shouldn’t disappear, either.

He had a pine plank instead of the furniture-quality oak he’d scrounged. Surely that wouldn’t make any difference, the neutral platform. He trimmed it with a table saw to just the right dimensions, then he found the cardboard template he’d used as a guide and drilled holes in the board to position the various components. Then he took it to the chemical hood and spray painted it with two coats of glossy black enamel. It was fast-drying, supposedly, but he set a timer for a half hour and stretched out on the bench for a nap, his more or less dry boots folded for a pillow.

Waking up not too refreshed, he took the rest of the Ritalin and heated up half a 1000-ml. beaker of water for coffee. While it was coming to a boil, he set out all of the components in order next to the drilled and painted plank and then got together the tools and materials he’d need to put it all together.

This last step was the most satisfying, but also one prone to spectacularly stupid error, because of familiarity and fatigue. He got a big mug of coffee and stared at the neat array as the drug came on slowly, waking him up. He assembled the calibrator mentally, writing down the steps in sequence on a yellow pad. He studied the list for a few minutes, then rolled his sleeves up neatly and got to work.

It was a mind-set he remembered from childhood, spending hours in the meticulous construction of airplane and spaceship models, excitement holding fatigue at bay. Now, as then, after he’d soldered the last join and firmly tightened the last tiny screw, he felt a little letdown, the fatigue hovering.

He slid the fuel cell into place and tightened the contacts. Push the RESET button or not?

Had to try it. He set his watch to the stopwatch function and pressed both buttons simultaneously.

Nothing happened. Or, rather, the calibrator emitted one photon per chronon, as designed. Dr. Marsh could have this one.

A heavy lassitude flowed into him. He stretched out on the lab bench again. The thought of his soft bed at home was seductive, but the subway wouldn’t start till seven, Sunday. He checked his watch, but it was still set on stopwatch, earnestly adding up the seconds. He left it that way.

Three hours and seven seconds later, he unfolded, groaning, and sat up. It was after nine, good.

He left the calibrator on the shelf and went out to face the Cambridge winter. It was overcast and bitter, in the teens or single digits. No new snow, but plenty of old. He could hear a snowblower somewhere on campus, but it obviously hadn’t made it to the Green Building. He crashed through the snow, more than knee-deep, toward the Red Line. The smell of Sunday morning coffee at Starbucks lured him in.

He put enough sugar and cream in the coffee to call it breakfast, and thought about the next stage of the experiment. The machine would be away for three days and eight hours. There would be the cell camera recording the machine’s surroundings, and he’d leave his watch in there to record the passage of time—or buy an even cheaper one that he wouldn’t mind losing.

A guinea pig. See whether something alive would be affected by the suspension of time, or whatever was going on.

An actual lab animal would be pretty complicated: cage and water and all. He thought about catching a cockroach, but actually he hadn’t seen any of them since Kara made him bring the bug man in.

Something that would survive for three days without maintenance. Something he could buy cheap or borrow …

A turtle. When he’d gone to the Burlington Mall with Kara to get new pillows, she’d dragged him into the pet store. They had a terrarium full of the little rascals.

They wouldn’t be open on Sunday, though. He toyed with the idea of breaking in, risking months in jail for a two-dollar turtle. No. It wasn’t MIT. The security guards would take one look at him, a shaggy drug-addled young male dressed like a street person, and shoot to kill.

The Starbucks had a phone book, though, a much-abused sheaf of dirty yellow paper, and he found the number and punched it up on his cell.

“Go to hell,” a woman’s voice said. He checked the number and no, he hadn’t called Kara by mistake. “Pardon me?”

“Oh! I’m sorry!” She laughed. “I thought you were my boyfriend. Who else would call on a Sunday morning?”

“I just … well, I wondered if you were open on a Sunday morning.”

“Huh-uh. I got to come in and feed and water and clean up after my babies. They don’t know it’s six feet deep out there.”

“It’s your store? You run it?”

“Yeah. Try to hire someone who’ll do this. Who has a higher IQ than the animals.”

“What if I wanted to buy something?”

There was a pause. “You suddenly need a pet on Sunday morning?”

“Not a pet, exactly.” Go with the semitruth. “I’m an MIT researcher. We need a small turtle for … for a metabolic experiment.”

“Well … you’re down at MIT now?”

“At the Starbucks, actually, right on the Red Line at Kendall Square. I could get up there in less than an hour.”

“Lots of luck.” She laughed again, a pleasant sound. “Tell you what. I’ll give you exactly an hour. Then I cover up my babies and leave.”

“I’m on my way.” He paused just long enough to put a lid on his coffee, and ran down the stairs to the platform.

And waited. The only thing to read was the sex and Personals section of the Phoenix. He studied the WOMEN DESIRING MEN section, and none of them had the hots for a broke ex-graduate student. Well, he could always run one himself: “Broke, shaggy ex-graduate student desires replacement for inexplicably beautiful girl. Will supply own turtle.” If the train would only come.

When it did come, of course, it was jammed full of people who would otherwise be driving or walking. A lot of church perfume, which was pleasant when he stepped into the car but overpowering thirty seconds later. The crowd was unusually tense and silent. Perhaps devout. Perhaps wondering why a loving God would do this to them on Sunday morning.

The T stop was on the wrong side of the mall, and he was five minutes late, so he ran. She was waiting in the door with her coat on. “Hey, slow down,” she called. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She was a small black woman with a broad smile, wearing tight purple jeans and a shirt that said KILL PLANTS AND EAT THEM. She handed him a white cardboard box with a bail, like a Chinese takeout, and a small jar of Baby Reptile Chow. “Fifteen bucks; three for the food. Can’t take plastic; register’s closed.”

He came up with two fives and two deuces and, checking three pockets, enough change. “Hey, you could owe it to me.”

“No, I’ll hit the ATM.” Impulsively: “Take you to lunch?”

She laughed. “Sweetheart, you don’t need lunch; you need some sleep. Give Herman some water and a piece of lettuce and go crash.”

“That’s his name?”

“I call them all Herman. Or Hermione. How long you been up?”

“I got a nap this morning. Sure? About lunch?”

“My boyfriend’s making pancakes. He found out I had breakfast with some turtle wrangler from MIT, he’d up and leave me. Love them pancakes.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

She went off in the opposite direction, toward the parking lot. He opened the box, and the turtle looked at him. Where was he supposed to get lettuce on a Sunday morning?

He hit the ATM, then found a convenience store that had yesterday’s Italian sub in the cooler. He stripped off the wilted lettuce for Herman and squirted mustard on the rest of the sub, and ate half of it down at the subway stop. He rewrapped the other half and left it on the edge of the trash bin. Some actual street person would find it and thank his lucky stars. Until he opened it. Ew-w, mustard.

He couldn’t think on the rattling subway, but did sort out some things on the walk home. He had to be methodical. This trial would be a little over three days. Then roughly a month, and then a year. Then fifteen years, during which time it would be nice if the whole world was waiting. And he was, incidentally, famous and tenured.

After only three more demonstrations. They’d better be compelling.

One thing he had to check with this trial was just how much stuff the machine would take with it. A coin was interesting, but a camera and a watch and a turtle would give actual data.

He would put the turtle in a metal container and set it where the coin had been. But he’d attach a bigger metal container, his desk trash can, to the machine by a conducting wire. Put something heavy in it.

He was assuming, since the metal coin was transported and the wooden base was not, that conductors of electricity went and nonconductors didn’t. But maybe it was because the coin was above the machine and the base was below. So check that out by putting something nonconductive on the top.

There was a note taped to the door, and for a wild moment he could hope it was from Kara. But it was just the landlord reminding him to shovel the walk. Now that would be a reason to travel into the future. Spring.

Herman had withdrawn into his shell, which was understandable. He had probably spent all his remembered life in a pet-store window. Then he was thrown into a cardboard prison and thrust into a backpack, to endure a long subway ride and then a swaying walk while the bitter cold slipped in. The turtle equivalent of being abducted by aliens.

Traveling through time would be nothing in comparison.

Matt put him in a big bowl with a jar lid of water and his wilted lettuce leaf, and set him under the desk lamp to warm.

He rummaged around the kitchen and found a metal loaf pan that could serve as Herman’s time-travel vehicle. It was kind of sticky; he washed it for Herman and posterity. Someday it would be in the MIT Museum.

Should he top it off with foil? That would make a Faraday cage out of it, a complete volume enclosed by conductors. But that hadn’t been necessary before. Anything sitting on metal connected to the outside of the machine ought to do it.

So the loaf pan went on top of the machine, with a bigger jar lid of water and five pellets of Baby Reptile Chow. He cut the cheap cell out of its blister pack. ONE HUNDRED HOURS OF CONTINUOUS OPERATION, it said. USE FOR SURVEILLANCE. Or voyeurism. Or to win a Nobel Prize. He turned it on and it worked. It went next to the loaf pan. Then the watch, sideways so metal was in contact with metal. A stub of pencil for the nonconductor—no, that looked too ad hoc. In the everything drawer he found a white plastic chess piece, a pawn.

Connecting the metal trash can was a slight problem. In the lab, he could just use alligator clips (continuing the reptile theme), but here he had to improvise. He used a computer power cord and lots of duct tape. The multimeter verified that they made a closed circuit. Something heavy to put in it? A gallon plastic jug; he filled it with water up to the rim. See how much evaporates.

Herman was drinking, his neck craned over the jar lid. Matt let him finish, then moved him to his new abode.

H Hour. He set the cheap cell camera on LOCK and placed it so that it looked at the clock radio. Then he set his own camera up to take his picture when he pushed the button.

“This is the sixth iteration,” he said to the camera. “We expect it to be gone for about three days and eight hours.” We being himself and Herman, he supposed.

He pushed the button at exactly noon. The machine faded nicely. The white pawn fell with a click to bounce off the wooden base.

Everything else had gone, including the heavy trash can.

He went into the kitchen and opened a beer quietly, aware that posterity was listening.