(This is the English translation of my short story ‘Jezelf Tegenkomen‘. I translated it to be able to publish on CritiqueCircle, which has resulted in very constrcutive feedback, allowing me to rewrite the story. That being said – your feedback is welcome too!)

 

The attempt had been successful, he had returned where he’d started. The door reappeared, clearly visible, its steel handle looking almost ordinary, like from an old-school steel archive cabinet. He extended his hand to grab it. It was cold to his touch and felt charged, emitting an electric sensation that travelled up his forearm. The door opened, soundlessly, extended outward, pivoted on unseen hinges and sunk into the exterior of the device, leaving no trace.

Perhaps it would have been smarter to travel back in time, he told himself, instead of forward. The future is so full of uncertainty! What’s more, since the machine appeared to move back and forth only in time and not in space, he could have landed right on top of another – no, the same – time machine! Also, had that happened, he would’ve seen himself, he could have seen things that would have influenced his earlier decisions and would therefore have created a new timeline… No, he decided, while the future was a risk for sure, going back would’ve caused much more of a problem. He would have impacted his own future, and that of countless others. Whatever he would have done, he would have created a new timeline as soon as he would have arrived in his own past. His decision too travel forward, into the unwritten future, exactly three-hundred-and-fifty-six days, had been the right one.

Though his plan sounded smart, what did he know of time travel? He’d had less than a full day to study the machine, and having enjoyed his science classes in school and having read his share of scifi as an adolescent didn’t make one an expert. It hadn’t really been a surprise that his first jump had caused all sorts of issues. Within a minute of arriving, he had heard the hiss and crackle of a comms radio and the shouting of men outside his lab. They had started pounding on the lab’s steel door, soon after he’d heard the cold scream of a chainsaw, no doubt to start cutting through the door. How he couldn’t fathom, but clearly, someone had been expecting him.

He had no idea who these people were and what they wanted with him. What had been clear was that he had needed to get out there as quickly as possible. He had only had a few panicky seconds to recalibrate and set the temporal destination in the machine’s computer to bring about another jump, back in time. He had hit the down-button on the panel that controlled the year of arrival just once, stepping back quickly to avoid touching anything else. The machine had powered up, humming with invisible activity, and after a moment of fearful waiting, the green light had shown and he’d pushed the last button, taking him home.

The machine’s humm continued for a few seconds before it disappeared, leaving no indication that anything had actually happened. The sudden lack of noise made the silence almost palpable, like a physical presence. It was the perfect amplifier for Avram’s nerves. He felt his heart beating in his chest. He discovered he was breathing fast and shallow, in sheer panic. It brought about a deja-vu, one of those immersive and overwhelming memories one gets from a specific scent or sound. For a moment he was a boy again, enthusiastically sharing his ideas and plans with his friends and receiving laughter and derision in return. He heard them clearly in his head, calling him a freak and a loser, that he would never accomplish anything.

He shook off the feeling as his attention was unconsciously drawn elsewhere.

“Was it really this quiet in my lab when I left?”, his mind was asking him.

He pushed himself to remember what it had sounded like before he had switched the machine on the first time.

“The fan was running, I’m sure, but now it wasn’t. Something else… hadn’t there been a plane overhead? It would have been gone by now, but still…”

He walked from the machine room into the outer lab. It looked the same, everything where it should be. It seemed slightly darker than he remembered it being earlier. It had been a beautiful day, he had noticed in the morning as he came in. Hadn’t he shut the blinds, to keep out the glare? What’s more, the window he was now looking through, unhindered, had a view of the driveway, where he had parked his old Jeep that same morning. But somehow, it was no longer there…

Avram’s nerves got the better of him once more. Had something gone wrong with his trip back, despite his care? His fear of failing at whatever he tried came back with a vengeance. With a pounding heart and sweaty hands he looked around the lab again. There, above that workbench, was his day calendar. One of those that you rip a page off every morning to always know what day it was.

Tuesday, it said.

His stomach turned and he felt his knees weaken. Tuesday had been when he had found his time machine, out in the desert, and had brought it here in the back of his Jeep. He hadn’t used the machine until Wednesday, the day after. He had returned a day early!

Very clearly, something had gone horribly wrong. He would found out what it was later, right now he had a different problem. He had travelled to the past, while that was exactly what he had tried to avoid. Even though it was only one day, it could still cause terrible issues. The other Avram could be coming back with his find any minute!

He hurried back to the machine. He hastily shut the door, looked at the settings panels and froze for a minute, his fingers stopping inches away from the buttons. Finally, the importance of staying clear-headed, to not make another mistake, won out against his nerves. He analyzed the consequences of his earlier mistake and what options were available to him now. At this point, there were two of him, and there were two time machines. The other he could come back any minute and see him here in his lab.

Ok, that means he should leave. But where to go? To ‘when’? Going further back would solve nothing, even risk creating additional doppelgängers. Forward was really the only option. How far ahead? A week? A month? He decided to really throw the dice and set the machine to jump ahead three hundred years into the future. It sounded like a safe bet, and it would give him the opportunity to do some thinking without risking walking into another trap. Surely, nobody would be looking for him three centuries from now!

He sighed and relaxed a little. His arms felt like lead. His body was so tired, exhausted from the panic that had set in earlier. He had to really push himself to take those last steps, to press that final button, to escape. A droning started, the machine shook, then silence.

This time, something had clearly happened. Daylight now fell through the small window in the machine’s door. Looking out, he saw that he was now no longer inside the lab, but was standing outside on an abandoned parking lot. The time machine had shot forward three centuries, but was still in the same place as where the lab had once stood. It made him wonder what his lab had looked like directly after he had left. Probably like the machine had never been there in the first place. That would be correct or course, as only later that afternoon he would arrive with the machine in the back of the truck and with a lot of effort install it in his lab and connect it. But wouldn’t there be traces? A scorch mark on the floor? An ozone or ammonia smell? Something different? Did the fact that when he had installed the machine the day before he hadn’t seen anything odd or different mean that it hadn’t happened, or that it had and it had left no trace? Or had it happened in a different timeline, created by his arrival a day earlier than planned, where he did leave traces, and not in the original timeline?

His knowledge of physics wasn’t any help here but the many sci-fi novels he’d read as a boy told him the second scenario was much more likely. The problem remained that there were now two of him. To him, this felt like he was committing some sort of cosmic crime. He knew the world wouldn’t end if he ended up meeting himself, he found those ideas ludicrous, non-scientific, but he had more of a moral prejudice. This was something that you just had to avoid doing. Was there a way to merge the two separate Avrams? Probably not. Did that mean that he needed to…? No, he wasn’t going to go down that rabbit hole now.

The other problem was that he was now stuck on a deserted parking lot, three centuries into the future, not knowing where or when to go from here. He felt like a fugitive, a runaway. He was no longer in control, and that had not been how the day had started.

“Think!”, he chided himself. “I found the machine on Tuesday, on the next day I jumped a year, then somehow got back on Tuesday, to proceed from there to now. Therefore, I haven’t been back to lab since leaving that Wednesday. That’s it! If I come back then, there should be only one of me.”

Avram took his time, preparing everything in detail, making sure he wasn’t going to have his arrival overlapping with his departure in some way. Not making another error, like forgetting about leap years. He added another two hours just to be sure, and set the machine’s controls. He got the green light, hit the last button, leaned back, exhaled, and let the machine do its work.

Again this unnatural silence. Again the feeling that nothing had happened. Again, that nagging feeling of being a young boy, playing with grown-up things, expecting to get into trouble. He shook the feeling by forcing himself to focus on the here and now. Did he hear a voice? It was faint, muffled by the thick foor, but undeniably a male voice, a radio creaking. Shouting, something jogging the door handle.

“He’s here”, he heard, the voice closer than before now.

A man, dressed fully in black, was staring straight at him from within the lab, eyeing him intently through the machine’s small window. Another creak of the radio and a beep, indicating that line was open to receive a response. A tinny voice provided an inaudible answer. Avram focused all his energy on the voice, trying to hear what was being said.

A single word was intelligible here and there. “…Door…”, “…essential…”, “…machine…”

Then a second sentence, again garbled and unintelligible. The man at the door spoke once more.

“We’re almost through, what are your orders?”

Ironically, the answer was very clear this time. Avram felt a chill. The reply had been short and unmistakeable.

“Terminate,” the voice had said.

Perhaps Avram’s panic had never entirely left him. In a heartbeat, he was as focused and clear minded as before. He estimated having at most a full minute before the chainsaw which they would now surely apply to the door got through. Would the machine still work with a broken door? The risk was too great. He had to leave, now. He pounded on the year-button without looking at at he was choosing for his next destination as soon as the green light came on he almost broke the button as he rammed it, high on adrenaline. The machine shook, and emitted a low humming noise. A loud bang sounded from the lab, and Avram heard a scream of pain. More shouts now, both in surprise and anger, from outside the machine. A cold breeze seemed to appear in the confined space, and then silence.

The jump took longer than it had on earlier occasions. He suspected this meant that he was jumping very far into the future. He felt the rawness of his nerves now. He had experienced several panicky escapes in one day and it was taking its toll.

“I’m being hunted!”, he realized.

Avram had known instantly that the instruction to ‘terminate’ hadn’t been meant for the machine, but for himself. The soldiers that had been waiting for him one year ahead, were the same that had been there now, a year before. That could not have been a coincidence. What the hell was going on? Was he destined to become some criminal, and was the time police hunting him now for crimes he hadn’t yet committed? He laughed at his choice of the word ‘now’. Strange enough it had started to lose its meaning.

The machine shook again, the jump hadn’t finished. He felt a falling sensation, which stopped just after it had started. Then a jolt, and then nothing. Avram looked at the screens in front of him, but saw no indications, no messages, not even a single light blinking. Avram realized that he had not a clue as to how the machine actually worked or how to operate it properly. Was the machine exhausted by the massive jump he had just performed? Was it broken? Did it need to recharge? If so, for how long?

Avram decided to open the door and step outside. He found the machine standing quietly in a wide open meadow. The air fleet different, drier, charged with static electricity. The sun shone in a clear blue sky. As soon as his eyes had adapted to the brightness, he saw little black dots, regularly spaced in a geometric pattern, across the entire sky, as if there was a satellite every fifty kilometers. Perhaps this was true, weather systems, defense perhaps? Communications? It was strange, not knowing anything about this world. He was on the exact same spot as a minute ago, but uncounted centuries in the future. He was a traveller in a strange and unknown land. Somewhere he longed to get to know it, to walk around and discover. At least he was safe now. He couldn’t go back of course, but the soldiers that were out to destroy him were a thing of the past now – literally.

He had arrived in an empty grassy field, with a barn and a dirt road, a scene that could have easily come from the nineteen-fifties. It was unexpectedly quiet. Even in his own time it had never really been fully quiet. Now, after so many centuries of technological advances, he had expected a beehive, a cacophony of flying cars and talking machines, noise everywhere.

He saw a man, slowly coming towards him, a silhouette against the bright sun. It scared Avram. He turned and stared to run, away from the approaching stranger. A hundred meters or so away he saw two low shapes, hoping they were a sort of vehicle. He aimed for the nearest one. After crossing about half the distance, he could see that they were indeed vehicles and that one was floating about a hand’s breadth from the ground. When he was but a few steps away from it, an opening formed in its side. Without thinking or reducing speed, Avram dove in, head first.

The door closed itself – just like the time machine had done, leaving no trace of the door that he could see from the inside.

He had landed on a surprisingly comfortable coach, heart beating, full of adrenaline, still reeling from the narrow escapes, not yet down from his earlier panic. He turned on his back, looked up and then around, panting. The air in the vehicle felt cool. The was no sound here either, other than a faint hum that didn’t seem to come from one particular place but seemed to emanate from the entire car and that was more felt than heard.

To Avram’s dismay, the car patiently remained in place, floating above the ground. Avram pushed himself up, his arms shaking, faced forward, his belly pressed against the back of the front seat, watching where in a normal car the driver would sit. He found no steering wheel. The interior resembled a sitting room more than a method of transportation.

Perhaps it was a voice-controlled, Avram thought.

One by one, he called out the names of the major cities from his own time. Nothing happened.

He shouted “go!”, and again nothing happened.

He thought some more. He had nothing… He felt anger rising inside him. Anger at the stupid floating car, at himself for being powerless, anger at the world for treating him like this.

At his wits end, and rather cynically, he said “Might we perhaps leave now, please?”

With a jerk, the car sprang up, and started to rise into the still air.

Nervously, Avram scaned the area outside of the vehicle, furtively checking that he wasn’t being followed. He was so tense now that any fly, any bird would register as a threat.

On the interior side of the door, one of the screens had lit up. With his attention on the view outside, it took a few seconds for him to notice. He turned to see a shape, a growing area of light on a dark background. More detail started to appear, and bit by bit the contours of a face could be recognized. Once the face was fully visible, his heart almost stopped. He was looking into the tired looking eyes of his own face.

The face said “Hello Avram.”

He didn’t respond. He had no idea what to say. He mumbled a few words, not saying anything at all.

“I can see you’re surprised to see me here,” the face continued. “I bet you thought you’d escaped safely into the future, right?”

Avram sat staring at the screen, his mouth agape. The car was now at least a hundred meters up in the air, had stopped moving and was waiting for further instructions.

The other Avram continued. “Coming back from the desert, with the time machine in the back of the truck, when I got close to the house, I saw a flash of light coming from where the lab is. Isn’t that funny, eh?”

Avram felt his stomach clench, his mouth turned dry.

“Worse, when I came into the house I found the lab door half broken and there was this strong smell of vinegar!”

“Vinegar!..” Avram exclaimed, surprising himself with this involuntary remark.

“What was that? Yes, vinegar! I don’t know why, either! Anyway, clearly something had happened in the lab. It wasn’t difficult to conclude that the time machine must have had something to do with it, the one that was now still sitting outside in the back of the truck and which I had planned to install in the lab at about that time. Whether it was by accident or by design, the consequences where clear. There were now two of us. You knew that too – we’re the same after all. And I think you realise as much as I do that this is a situation that cannot be permitted to continue!”

This entire situation, this totally unreal conversation with himself, the raised finger, the smug tone like a teacher and the threatening undertone hit Avram like buckshot. It stirred up all his painful memories, it raised up all his fears, all of his shame and all of the guilt that he had ever felt – and suppressed. Overwhelmed, there was only one thing Avram wanted, to leave this place as soon as possible, to get away as far as possible from this unnatural apparition, this ghost, this copy of him that shouldn’t be.

In a moment of sudden insight, he shouted out for manual control. Obligingly, the vehicle turned part of the seat into a single chair, aimed forward, adding a steering wheel and a set of sliders and controls. He slipped into the seat, took the wheel and felt the car react. He slammed all sliders forward and the car shot away, up and ahead, at high speed. He piloted the craft away from a city he saw nearby and looked around for anything resembling a highway, searching for a way to escape.

The highway was easily found. It lay above him, like a white ribbon. It had no markings whatsoever, no signs, panels, lights or other indications for drivers. The dots he’d seen in the air and this car were obviously part of the same system, total traffic automation. He surprised himself again with his interest in the technology around him, even when facing mortal danger.

The moment he came near the highway, the vehicle’s automated systems took back control. A friendly sound followed by the steering wheel and the control panels being absorbed back into the car’s insides, the drivers seat turning back into the original comfy two-seater. Avram’s fear came back in full. It was a normal procedure surely, but having control wrested from his hands again felt like defeat, like surrender.

His clone’s face was still visible on one of the screens.

“I’m sorry, Avram. I’m taking over from here. That is probably best for both of us”.

The face looked sympathetic, almost sad. The car shook once more and left the highway. The other Avram’s face disappeared from the screen. Instead, a different screen appeared. It showed two dials, on what looked like a old-fashioned dashboard. One indicated the vehicle’s current height, which showed it to be around one kilometer now. The other showed the amount of fuel left, which was as good as none. He couldn’t avoid the cold truth any longer.

He had probably already known since his first run in with the soldiers, but hadn’t wanted to see it, hadn’t wanted to accept it. Now it was clear though: he was the one had originally made the mistake. He was the one that shouldn’t be, not the other one! He was the unnatural appearance, the ghost. He realized too that he – the other he that is – had been the one to send the soldiers after him. Apparently it was possible to see somewhere on the time machine’s dials where the machine had gone in previous jumps, and it had been easy to send out warnings for both dates.

But how? The machine that he had been using wasn’t the same machine as the one the other had? Unless one machine could exist in two separate timelines at once and therefore still be one and the same machine? That would explain how it worked, by being able to exist in two separate worlds. Interesting, but a little late for that knowledge to make much difference now.

He was falling now, car and all, down to a world that he would have loved to have discovered by himself. He saw meadows down there, cities, huge sparkling lakes dotted with boats, birds, it was all really very beautiful. More disappointed than angry or afraid, he accepted his fate. He realized that he would die being the oldest inhabitant on earth at that time by far. He found comfort here, knowing that he would have finally accomplished something unique in his life.