Take a Lemon

Allie was just getting ready to go out when Vicky called her, but she was happy to help out. She called her brother Eric, who called Vicky back and agreed to meet us at the Grill. Fifteen minutes later, the three of us were chatting over sodas and ice cream sundaes.

“Thanks again for coming out to meet with us,” I told him after we were all settled.

He laughed. “I had expected to be alone tonight. Spending it with two lovely ladies is a definite improvement.”

Vicky simpered at the compliment, while I forced a smile and tried to figure out how I should have reacted. Forcing the problem out of my mind, I asked, “Did Allie explain what we wanted?”

“Well, she was in a hurry, but she said something about trying to find a research paper?”

“Sort of. We want to find any papers that might have been written by the guy who did the time travel experiment.”

“Oh. This is Strangers in the Mirror business? Allie didn’t say.”

“Is that a problem?” Vicky asked, concerned.

Eric looked thoughtful. “Well… I understand that Allie and some others have looked, but didn’t find anything.”

“That’s because they were looking for papers written by somebody named, ‘Davis’,” I explained. “I think that’s too limiting. I think we need to expand the search.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Well, that’s where you come in. I haven’t learned how to do that kind of research, and I wouldn’t know a relevant paper if I saw it. I figure that’s the kind of stuff that you, as a senior in the department, would know.”

He seemed amused. “And how do you propose to the limit the search?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have any idea how many physics papers are published every year? You’re not suggesting that I read every one ever written, are you?”

“I guess I assumed that you could look for papers on certain topic.”

“Ah, but what topics? Trust me, if anybody had ever submitted a serious paper proposing time travel, he would have been laughed out of the field. And if the reviewers were impressed, the news would have shot through every physics department in the world. Most of us are science fiction readers, after all. I think I can safely say, without doing any research at all, that no papers on time travel have been submitted to any reputable journal.”

I sat back in my chair. I had been so sure that my idea was going to work. “So you’re saying that this is a waste of time?”

“No, I’m not saying that at all. I just want you to realize the magnitude of what you’re asking. We have to have some way to narrow down the possibilities, or it really would be a waste of time.”

“Oh. So how should we proceed?”

“Well, the first place to start would be with any papers published by the department over the past, say, five years. We can probably get them from the department library; I think they maintain reprints of all the professors’ articles. That will take some time to go through. The problem is you are assuming that there has to have been a cover-up, right?

“Right, because otherwise there’s no way to find them.”

“I agree. But in that case, they would probably have pulled his articles from the library, as well.”

“Oh.”

“And there’s a problem with the whole idea of a cover-up in the first place. Professors generally teach courses and have grad students doing research for them, and those grad students tend to teach or run labs or otherwise interact with the undergraduates. It’s simply not that easy to make a professor disappear and not have anybody notice. Even if they got all the professors and all the grad students to go along with a conspiracy, what about all the other students? I’d think I would have noticed.”

I was stricken. “But… you just said that this wasn’t a waste of time.”

“Well, actually I simply said that I wasn’t saying that it was a waste of time. It might well be; I don’t know. Maybe there is a way to make a prof disappear without anybody noticing. I don’t know.”

“As long as we’re raising objections,” I said morosely, “a junior I know in the department says that time travel is impossible, anyway.”

He nodded. “Could be. As far as I know, there’s nothing in any theory we know of that would have a problem if time travel is possible, and nothing that would have a problem if it’s impossible. So I wouldn’t rule it out completely, but it does point up the basic problem in trying to guess what papers would lead to time travel.”

“You keep saying this isn’t a waste of time, but every point you make seems to push it further into the ‘impossible’ category,” I pointed out.

He didn’t answer immediately, but stood up. I thought I might have offended him, but all he said was, “You’ve finished your ice cream. Would you like another? My treat.”

Caught off guard, I could only reply, “No thanks, I have to–” I stopped myself in time, as the next words about to leave my mouth seemed to be, “watch my figure.” I’m pretty sure I’d heard Vicky – or maybe it was Jackie – say that in the past. My subconscious must have decided that that was the proper female response to the offer. I would really have to try not to get distracted, but how exactly do you stay on your guard all the time? “… Sure,” I forced myself to say.

He returned shortly with two fresh sundaes, and I saw Vicky, who had refused the offer, eyeing mine, so I offered her a share. While the two of us were digging in, Eric continued his thought.

“OK, so this isn’t going to be easy, but there are some things we can do. First, I need to know absolutely everything you girls remember about the experiment. I’ll ask Allie for her take as well, and I presume you can get answers from some of the other subjects. So… who’s going to go first?”

Vicky and I looked at one another for a moment, and then she started. “I remember them saying something about what if you could examine something in the past and how it would be different if it happened differently. Um, I think they said that I would actually be able to see it and would need to tell them what I saw.”

“And how did they say that you would be able to see it?” Eric prompted her.

“Well, they had me lie down on this table – it looked something like the tables you lie on in the doctor’s office. They put like a helmet or something on my head. Then there was this noise from below me, and… I think they said it would take some time before anything happened and that I was supposed to come back and tell them about…” She shook her head. I think the thing made me a bit drowsy, ‘cause I’m having trouble remembering some of the details. I woke up changed a few weeks later. I tried to find the lab again because I was freaking out, but I couldn’t. That’s all I remember.”

Eric looked at me next.

“Well, I remember the table pretty much the way Vicky does, although I don’t really remember leaving. It’s like I must have been in a daze for a while afterwards. I think they told me to imagine being able to see how a small moment years ago could make a difference in today. Oh, any they asked me a bunch of questions about when I was born and where, how old my parents were, if we had moved since they got married. Stuff like that.”

“Oh, right,” Vicky said. “They asked me those things, too.”

“Obviously, they needed that kind of information to figure out where and when we were conceived, since that’s what they were going to change.”

“Makes sense. Do either of you remember them describing the apparatus they used? Did they use some kind of technical term? You keep saying, ‘they.’ How many people were in the lab?”

“There were three guys,” I said. “One was the grad student who met me at the entrance to the physics building and there were two more in the lab.”

“And they mentioned something about fielding,” Vicky put in.

“Fielding?” Eric asked.

“I think so. Or maybe it was shielding.” She looked at me for confirmation. “Wielding?”

“I think it was shielding,” I said. “One of them said something about enabling the shielding. Is this helping at all?”

“Well, not as much as I could hope,” he answered. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that they explained the theory.”

I shook my head. “I probably wouldn’t have understood it anyway,” I admitted. “I haven’t taken any physics since high school.”

“I didn’t even take any in high school,” Vicky added.

“All right,” Eric said. “I’m not really surprised. The whole experiment is just so weird. I’ve never heard of a physics experiment using volunteers like this. Can you describe the helmet? Was there something under the table?”

“That’s where the helmet was before they put it on my head,” I remembered. I guess there were some wires, but I couldn’t really see them, but they must have led to some kind of device to preserve our memories across the time change.” Then something else occurred to me. “That’s probably why our memories of leaving the experiment are blurred. It couldn’t have been captured.”

Eric sighed. “OK, this isn’t really an awful lot to go on. I’m going to talk it over with some of my classmates. Maybe we can come up with a better strategy than just reading everything in sight, because that’s just not going to be useful.”

“So you have no idea how long it would take to figure things out?” I asked him.

“Not based on what you’ve told me, no. But as long as I can find time, I’ll keep looking until graduation. It’ll give me an excuse to read lots of different physics articles, anyway.” He looked thoughtful. “Maybe we can make into some kind of a game, just to keep it interesting. Some articles can be pretty dry if they’re not your area of study.”

“Should we offer some kind of prize?” Vicky asked.

He laughed. “I don’t think thats necessary. I mean, we major in physics because we like physics. Now if you want to meet some physics majors, I could introduce you. We’re really nice guys. Um…” He looked at me. “Of course, if you’d like to go out to movie or something with me, that could be fun…”

“No thanks,” I said. His invitation didn’t seem as threatening as it might have; still, it was the first time a guy had actually asked me out, and I had expected to feel queasy at the prospect. I didn’t. I didn’t actually feel anything.

There was a brief moment of awkward silence, which Vicky broke. “Anyway, thanks for doing this.”

“Yeah, we really appreciate it,” I said.

“And thanks for the ice cream!” Vicky added.

“Yeah.”

He eyed us for a moment, as though he expected something more. “OK. Just see if you can get me any more information, OK? Um, can I walk you guys somewhere?”

“No thanks,” I said again. “We’re probably going to just hang out here for a while.”

“OK… I’ll be in touch, then. If I have any more questions, I’ll let you know.” And he left.

“Well?” Vicky asked after he was gone. “What do you think?”

“What a difference from Jay! I think he’s actually taking us seriously!”

“I know, right?”

“Even if he seemed a bit tentative, we’re actually doing something now! Finally! We need to do something to thank Allie. And maybe I can be a guy again. What do you think?”

“I hope so, Marsh. You know I do. So what do we do now?”

“Well, we need to go back to the Strangers and see if anybody remembers anything more; something that would help Eric narrow things down.”

I nodded. It might not be a great chance, but it was a chance. There had to be a trail we could follow. There just had to be.