Time Machine by Walter Knight

Author:Walter Knight [Knight, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penumbra Publishing
Published: 2014-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

An elderly Albert Einstein was sitting comfortably in his living room, smoking a pipe, when the door chimes rang. A stranger in an odd military uniform stood in the doorway.

“I am from the future,” announced General Lopez, brushing by. “I’ve come a long way to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“It’s about time you got here,” admonished Einstein. “When I invented the special theory of relativity, I knew this day would come. It’s like the circle of life, except different. Yes, yes, tell me all about the future.”

“That easily you believe I’m from the future?” asked General Lopez incredulously. “You will go back to the future with me to help fight aliens?”

“I won’t help you make war.”

“Don’t be such a liberal,” replied General Lopez. “The galaxy is a dangerous place, not because of the evil in it, but because of those who won’t do anything about that evil.”

“Mankind requires a new manner of thinking if we are to survive,” argued Einstein. “Otherwise, we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

“Whatever. If you will not help fix my time machine, I can get Thomas Edison, but you’re supposed to be a genius, the smartest person ever.”

“I have no special talent,” commented Einstein modestly. “My advantage is I am passionately curious. The difference between stupidity and genius is genius has its limits.”

“You split the atom.”

“Is that all I’m remembered for? Get to the point, man! You want me to fix time because you mucked it up? Is that it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m an old man. What can I do? What’s in it for me?”

“I can restore your youth,” promised General Lopez. “I can take you across the stars, and much more. America has colonized planets and discovered alien civilizations. There’s a whole galaxy of nations out there.”

“America?”

“Who else could do it?”

“I had high hopes for the United Nations.”

“Ha! That would be the day,” scoffed General Lopez. “You immigrated to America to be free. Freedom nurtures the creativity to think outside the galaxy.”

“You mean outside the box?”

“Exactly.”

“I will not help you bomb aliens,” insisted Einstein passionately. “I won’t travel down that road again.”

“We just need your help calibrating the time machine. The paradoxes are beginning to pile up.”

“I’m not surprised. Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it. Fixing time will cost you big bucks.”

“Economic times are tough,” replied General Lopez, a wily negotiator. “America is about to go off a fiscal cliff, and all you care about is money?”

“I want a billion dollars in gold.”

“No way.”

“Once we accept our limits, we can go beyond them. I can help you. I usually do not think of the future, it comes soon enough. But, you can’t just bend the fabric of time without consequences. You didn’t think things through when you played with your time machine, and now you need me to save your ass.”

“America will pay a half billion in gold, and I feel I have egregiously cheated the taxpayers.”

“You have a deal, time traveler. I just got a new theory of eternity.

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