Paradox

A letter to the past

The year is 2041 a.d. I'm 36 years old. My name is Geoffrey Lazarus, but my friends just call me Jeff. I work for the FTC. It is an acronym for the Foundation of Time Continuity. It's a government-controlled establishment, created to protect us all, from deranged lunatics who want to abuse the time machine in order to destroy the world.

Or to protect us from greedy bastards who think it a good idea to transport themselves back in time to the wild west with an Uzi or a bazooka, rob someone for gold, hide the gold and then head back to the present and collect the reward. I'm not kidding, there really is such a thing as a time machine. I'm not actually sure when it was invented, sometime around the millenium I suppose. It was discovered on the 3rd of February 2012.

Big newsflash! All around the world! The guy who invented it had kept it a secret for years, before anyone found out. He got locked up in an asylum, he was only 47 years old, but he looked more like 87 from all the time he had spent in different decades. All the time traveling had also made him insane, he kept rambling about aliens trying to gain world domination, and the world being made into a wasteland by some kind of genetic mutation, which eventually killed everything. When asked about how he invented the time machine he blamed that on aliens too. Said he got the necessary technology, when a UFO crashed in his backyard.

After the good man killed himself in his cell, there was a huge discussion about the dangers of time traveling. That's how the FTC got formed in the year 2015. My father was one of the founding members. It's sad how he was killed; he was burned at the stakes for witchcraft on one of his missions. Can't say I miss him though, I never really knew him. He was always working or busy with something. I was practically raised by my uncles. They say that my father hadn't always been like that, that my mother’s death had taken its toll on him. She died when I was born. Shot by a coincidence, while she was pregnant with me.

The doctors got me out, but they couldn't save my mother. I wish, I could remember her. My earliest childhood memory is a man watching at me, pointing some strange black object at me, probably one of my uncles. God, I wish, I knew who did it. Wish that I knew what lunatic killed my mom.

That's why I decided to become a cop when I was 20, so I could save the world from all the lunatics. How naive I was! I never liked being a cop, I worked there for 7 years, until one day my father recommended me to the FTC. They found my papers as a cop impressive, and decided to recruit me. Bam! Just like that! One day I'm an officer of the police force, and the next day I'm an agent for FTC. It's the best thing that ever happened to me, I love my job as a TA, that's short for time agent.

Homework

“Do you see?” Jeff asked his son.

“That is how you write a letter to the people in the past. As you can see, from the example I just wrote here.” They had sat together all day, talking about Thomas’ homework, or lack of same. The 13-year-old boy hesitantly opened his mouth. He was frustrated over his self-proclaimed incompetence, schoolwork wise.

“Yeah but dad, I can’t write stuff like that. Why do I have to?”

“You call that great writing?” His father asked hypothetically.

“That’s not even remotely great writing. The school program is not interested in great writing. It is programmed only to recognize, if you can express yourself in plain English. You wouldn’t have liked to be in school when I was a kid. We didn’t have those overrated computer animations. We had real teachers, and if they didn’t like what you wrote – Slam! – That was it. Unacceptable grades.” He hammered an illustrating fist in the table.

“Do you know, what happens to people who don’t make good grades? They grow up to become homeless. Now, will you promise me, that at least you’ll try?”

“Yeah, I’ll try.” Thomas sighed.

“That’s good. I have to go to work now. Will you be alright alone?”

“I’ll be fine. Just go.” But the door had already banged shut. And Thomas sat all alone in his obsolete, miserable hopelessness. He tried to concentrate on his paper, but after a while his playstation 3 tugged to greatly at his attention. The room filled with lasergun splatter and alien screams.

The graveyard shift

Jeff walked out the door, through the corridors of the apartment complex, and took the elevator up to the garage. Jeff thought about if ‘garage’ was the appropriate word for a rooftop installation. After the automobiles had taken flight, there wasn’t much need for small, confided, cellar-like places, which smelled like gasoline anymore. But still the word had survived as a term you use for the place you stash your vehicles.

“The-place-you-stash-your-vehicles” Jeff thought bitterly. Even though he preferred garage, Jeff had always hated people who use incorrect grammatics, and who use the wrong words for the wrong things. “I won’t have any slang in my house!” he had told Thomas several times. Jeff stepped out of the elevator, and out to a darkened sky, which seemed like it was going to erupt into thunder and lightning every minute now.

Don’t mess with me, it proclaimed to everyone who dared walk out without an umbrella. Jeff walked to the spot he had parked his car. He fumbled in his pockets, found what he was looking for and unlocked his car from several paces away with his remotecontrol. He looked at his watch. It was still half an hour before meeting time at the job. He would stop at the graveyard. The car launched into the air, and soon it was at its destination.

The hinges creaked as Jeff opened the large port. It was becoming late, yet there were neither stars nor a moon to be seen on the sky. You rarely saw them anymore, the cities had become to bright. Overshining the billions of years old rulers of the sky, that had been the guidance of human for millennia. It began to rain. He walked up past the crucifixes, the tombstones and the many monuments of people long gone, until he reached a familiar place. Lucella Lazarus 1963 – 2005 read the stone. A tear prickled down Jeff’s skin, not for his mother as a personality but for his lack of parentage.

His uncles had never had any time for him; they had enough in their own kids. So he had been shipped around from one household to another, with the change of schools and harassment by his cousins as a natural consequence. Why did she have to die? Wouldn’t life have been much easier with her to raise him?

Every single birthday he had been reminded of her. (Mostly because of the taunting of his cousins.) He had become a very bitter man, finding comfort in his sense of duty. If required he would die for his country and the FTC. He dried his tears, and looked at his watch. He would be late, and now he was soaked. Jeff hurried back to his car.

Elimination

Surely he had been late, but, lucky as he was, there was no immediate crisis to be taken care of. He hadn’t even been yelled at for being late. His superiors, the few that were, (Jeff was a very high ranking agent.) were not at work at this hour. In a place that has over fifty time machines at its disposal, time is merely a disciplinary matter.

Jeff unlocked the door to his office, hanged his coat to dry, sat by his desk and switched on the computer. He began searching for jobs. There were no big jobs; a few of the usual “return a stolen object to its rightful time”. Jeff smirked, apparently someone had stolen Napoleon’s hat and Caesar’s leafs, they were both extremely angry and wanted them back immediately. He continued the search, a very dull day, he searched past a vast number of boring jobs. But then something caught his eye.

“Elimination”. He secured it so nobody would snatch it from under his nose. He read the briefing. It was a “search and destroy” type of mission. FTC’s monitors had discovered a paradox in form of a human being. He was to kill the person, a middle aged woman who shouldn’t be alive, and head back to the present without being discovered or seen. He took the job…

FTC’s weapon stock was enormous! Everything you needed, from Stone Age throwing spears to plasma pistols. Jeff looked under the “20^th century”. He chose a 9 mm. Then he headed for a place even more secure, the weapon stock was protected with the newest of technology mind you, but it could never compare to the time travel launch area. He was eye-scanned, measured, DNA-tested, voice recognized and last he needed an ID-card with a 9-digit code to be allowed in. And even when he entered the complex there were guards, security cameras and robots everywhere all looking suspiciously at him. You couldn’t even cut cheese unnoticed in this area.

Jeff had reached the control room, and had given the “pilot” the coordinates to the right space in time. (or time in space, or location in space time or…) He stepped up to the platform. A high-tech kind of looking round boxing ring covered with gold plates, flickering lights and cables. “Are you ready?” the pilot asked over the speakers of the circular launch pad. Jeff gave him the thumbs up. A button was pressed. Jeff felt time as a never-ending cycle end. He was floating nowhere, he was neither young nor old, warm nor cold, he didn’t even exist for that matter. All events that have ever happened or are ever going to happen and a lot of other events, which you’re not likely to see, displayed themselves in front of his eyes, while time stood still. Nothing happened at all. After Jeff had been nowhere for billions of years he started to find it boring. Suddenly real life in the 20^th century blurred back to him, and he could no longer remember what had happened to him tomorrow.

A sunny day

The sun was shining, the birds were singing.

Jeff had arrived in an alley, scaring a large black cat out of it’s mind. He looked at his target-finder, a wristwatchish type of thing that James Bond would be proud to own. It showed him, that his target was nearby. The cat ran of howling and screaming, scaring other city animals out of their wits. Doves flew in all directions.

He started walking, calmly, no need to attract attention. He looked like every other law abiding citizen. He stopped outside a hot dog stand. Had he remembered to bring money? He bought a beef sandwich, chewing it as he walked. It was a beautiful day. One of those days that makes everybody happy, and brings out the best in people. Eep – eep. The alarm indicated, that he had found his target;

a woman standing by a fountain with her back towards him. He looked at his target-finder, to be sure. It was she all right. Around the fountain children were playing. He took aim. The soundwaves of the murderous deed rippled through the hot summer air. The woman fell dead. Children screamed, and ran in all directions.

Jeff realized, that the woman was pregnant. He went in for a closer look, to ensure that she was, in fact, dead as a doorknob. The blood in his veins froze. His heart skipped a beat. He recognized her immediately; he had seen her so many times before on the picture he always carried around in his wallet, the only picture of his mother.

What have I done?

The sounds of sirens. Two different kinds. Police and ambulance. Jeff ran to hide nearby, and stood still behind a tree.

What have I done?

The cars screeched to a halt, two men jumped out of the ambulance, a man and a woman out of the police car. ‘She will never make it.’ A paramedic said ‘But perhaps we can save the baby.’ The two officers started questioning witnesses. Nobody seemed to have seen where he went. He waited until they were all gone. Then he came out.

He knew what he had to do. He went for the nearest phone booth, looked in the book and tore a certain page out. He stole a car. He shortly reached the hospital and entered. After a while he found what he was looking for, he could never remember what it was called; the place where they store the babies in glass jars. No one was around. He opened the door, looked around. “Smith” read a nametag, “Brosowski” another, and at last “Lazarus” He walked across the room. And then in a magical moment ha made eyecontact.

Looking, watching, looking

I looked at the baby

Lying in the wrap

I looked at myself

And myself looked back

Then the revelation came to Jeff. It was never his mother that was the paradox. It was never her, who wasn’t meant to exist. It was he all along! Trembling he put his hand down his coat pocket and grabbed the gun. Slowly raising the long black object, pointing it at his younger self. The baby didn’t seem to care it just seemed amused. – A moment of hesitation –

What have we done?

Then he pulled the trigger.

Outside the birds sang.