PREVENTION
Every time we are faced with a choice, and we are faced with them every minute of every day, we make a decision and follow its coarse into the future. But what of the abandoned options? Are they like unopened doors? Do alternative futures lie beyond them? How far would we wander from the coarse we have steered were we to go back and, just once, open Door A instead of Door B?
His name was Edward John Oxford, and he was born in the year 2162. He was a physicist, engineer, historian, and philosopher. At the age of thirty, he invented the fish-scale battery, a flake of material no bigger than a fingernail, which soaked up solar energy on one side and stored it in vast amounts on the other. The battery transformed technology and technology transformed the world.
A journalist asked, 'How does it feel to single-handedly change history?'
'I haven't changed history,' he replied. 'History is the past.'
He chuckled, as if enjoying a private joke, for though he was a genius, he was also an eccentric and obsessive, and the past was his primary fixation; specifically, the year 1840, which was when his ancestor, also named Edward Oxford, had fired two pistols at Queen Victoria.
Both shots had missed, and the original Oxford had been acquitted on grounds of insanity and committed to Bedlam. Years later, he was released and emigrated to Australia, where he met and married the granddaughter of a couple he'd known back in London, prior to his crime. History didn't record her name, just that she was far younger than he, which wasn't unusual for the period. They began a family whose descendants wound through the generations to the Edward John Oxford of 2162.
The fish-scale battery couldn't change the past. It was, however, an element of a far grander project that could, for its inventor had created it to power time-travel technology.
Edward John Oxford had a plan: he was going to visit 1840 to clean the stain from his family name.
There were, of course, numerous technical challenges, the relationship between time and space being the most awkward of them. He solved this by 'tethering' his device to gravitational constants: the Earth's core and distant galaxies whose position remained comparatively static. This enabled him to select an exit point in the past relative to his terrestrial position in the present; and if that exit point was already occupied by something, his device was programmed to shift him to a safe place nearby.
It was an essential function, but it caused an immense drain on his batteries, so, retaining it as an emergency measure, he found another way to minimise his chances of materialising inside a solid object.
There can be no doubt that the insanity of his ancestor had resurfaced in the inventor, for his solution was bizarre to say the least. Oxford wove his miniaturised time-travel technology into a suit, the boots of which he mounted on two-foot-high spring-loaded stilts. With these, he could leap twenty feet into the air, vanish from his current time, and appear in the past twenty feet above the ground in nothing more solid than air molecules.
It was crazy, but it usually worked, and when it didn't, the programming took over and moved him out of danger.
There was also a psychological issue. Oxford knew that in travelling to the Victorian age he was risking severe disorientation. He therefore included in his suit a system whereby Victorian reality would be, from his perspective, overlaid with his own twenty-second-century reality. His helmet would alter the way his brain interpreted sensory data, so that when he looked at a hansom cab, he would see and hear a modern taxi; when he observed Victorian people, he would see citizens of his own time; and towering over the skyline of 1840, he would see the skyscrapers of the 2200s. Also, because the sense of smell is most intimately connected with memory, he ensured that his would be completely nullified.
He knew that moments after his arrival in the past, he'd have to remove his suit and face Victorian London without the filter. This would only be for a short period though, and, once he'd completed his mission, he'd quickly don the suit and crank up the illusion. He hoped that he could thus avoid culture shock.
On his fortieth birthday, Edward John Oxford completed his preparations.
He dressed in mock Victorian clothing, then pulled his time suit on over the top. It was a white one-piece garment of fish-scale batteries, with a rubberised cloak hanging from the shoulders that he could wrap around himself to protect the suit when it wasn't charging.
He affixed the round, flat control unit to his chest and lowered the heavy helmet, which was large, black, and shiny, over his head. Intricate magnetic fields flooded through his skull. Information began to pass back and forth between his brain and the helmet's powerful processor.
Bouncing on the stilts, and with a top hat in his hand, he left his laboratory and tottered into the long garden beyond.
His wife came out of the kitchen-the house was at the other end of the garden-and walked over to him, wiping her hands on a towel.
'You're going now?' she asked. 'Supper is almost ready!'
'Yes,' he replied, 'but don't worry-even if I'm gone for years, I'll be back in five minutes!'
'You won't return an old man, I hope!' she grumbled, and ran a hand over her distended belly. 'This one will need an energetic young father!'
He laughed. 'Don't be silly. This won't take long.'
Bending, he kissed her on the nose.
It was nine in the evening, on February 15, 2202.
He instructed the suit to take him to five thirty on the afternoon of June 10, 1840; location: the upper corner of Green Park, London.
He looked at the sky.
'Am I really going to do this?' he asked himself.
In answer, he took three long strides, hit the ground with knees bent, then projected himself high into the air. His wife saw a bubble form around him and he vanished.
Edward Oxford literally jumped through time.
A moment of disorientation.
A short fall.
He thudded onto grass and bounced.
Glancing around he saw a rolling park surrounded by tall glass buildings with advertising flashing upon their sides. In the near distance was the ancient form of the Monarchy Museum, once known as Buckingham Palace, where the relics of England's defunct royal families were displayed.
A sonic boom echoed as a shuttle headed into orbit. People zipped overhead in their personal fliers.
Oxford ran into the wooded corner of the park, ducked into the trees, and pushed through the undergrowth until he felt safe from prying eyes. Then he stripped off the time suit and draped it over a low branch.
He reached up to his helmet, switched it off, and removed it.
A foul stench assaulted his nostrils: a mix of raw sewage, rotting fish, and burning fossil fuels.
He started to cough. The air was thick and gritty. It irritated his eyes and scraped his windpipe. He fell to his knees and clutched at his throat, gasping for oxygen. Then he remembered that he'd prepared for this and fumbled in his jacket pocket, pulling out a small instrument, which he applied to the side of his neck. He pressed the switch, it hissed, he felt a slight stinging sensation, and instantly he could breathe again.
Oxford put the instrument away and rested for a moment. His inability to catch his breath had been a perceptive disorder rather than a physical one. The helmet had protected him from the idea that the atmosphere was unbreathable; now a sedative was doing the job.
Unfamiliar sounds reached him from the nearby road. Horses' hooves, the rumble of wheels, the shouts of hawkers.
He stood and straightened his clothes, placed the top hat on his head, and made his way to the edge of the thicket. As he emerged from the trees, a transformed world assailed his senses, and he was immediately shaken by a profound uneasiness.
Only the grass was familiar.
