\u201cI said, That\u2019s impossible.\u00a0 That world has been dead forever.\u00a0 You must be mistaken.\u201d\u00a0 Bertram McKenzie shook his head and I could see there were tears in his eyes, \u201cNo the stars don\u2019t lie.\u00a0 We are one thousand years in the future and that is Earth or what\u2019s left of it.\u00a0 And the rest of the solar system has also been impacted.\u00a0 Mercury is completely gone.\u00a0 Venus is worse than Earth and even Mars has lost its atmosphere completely.\u00a0 The only thing I can think of is that a massive disruption of the Sun\u2019s fusion process occurred in the last thousand years; something like a nova.\u00a0 And the Earth as we knew it was destroyed utterly.\u201d\u00a0 I asked him exactly when did it happen and he said, \u201cWithout searching for the event it\u2019s impossible to know.\u00a0 It could have happened just a few years after our present day in the twenty first century or it could have been almost a thousand years in the future, right before when we are now.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then I asked him the question I had been thinking about most, \u201cBertram did we cause this?\u201d\u00a0 And he shook his head violently, \u201cNo!\u00a0 No, no, no.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t do this.\u00a0 This is just a coincidence.\u00a0 How could the tiny energy I used to transport us cause this stellar event.\u00a0 It\u2019s not possible!\u201d\u00a0 But I was pretty sure there was fear in his voice and panic.<\/p>\n
I was as frightened and panicked as McKenzie but I could see we had to get back to our time as quickly as possible and try to get ourselves re-grounded with reality.\u00a0 I told him, \u201cAlright none of this is anything we can act on here and now.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The boys did some calculations and set up the drive within a few minutes and we made another run.\u00a0 This time it was our Earth.\u00a0 Alive and blue and beautiful.\u00a0 I think there must have been tears in everyone\u2019s eyes.\u00a0 We were back about the time we left the LHS 1140 system to come back to Earth.\u00a0 We had decided that two sets of \u201cus\u201d in the same time period even fifty light years apart might be asking for trouble.\u00a0 We brought the craft in for a landing and I sent everyone home for the day.\u00a0 And I went home that night and got pretty thoroughly drunk.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I tried to think of who I should tell this awful thing to.\u00a0 In a 1950s science fiction movie there would be a convenient convention of physicists with someone resembling Albert Einstein to break the news to.\u00a0 All we had was tech billionaires and all they would be interested in was how to short the market at the perfect moment.<\/p>\n
So instead, I decided to tell the President of the United States and let him figure out how to let the world know they were doomed.\u00a0 Or maybe not let them know.\u00a0 After all, maybe we should have some smart men think about this for a few days and then break the news in a way that won\u2019t stampede civilization off a cliff any sooner than it already was.<\/p>\n
I got on the phone to the White House and I set up an appointment with the President and his science advisor.\u00a0 And I got a few of the wise men from the voyage to put together a dog and pony show to give some proof to my story.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a normal experience.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think either man actually believed me.\u00a0 But the President told me not to breath a word of this to the press or anyone else until the NSA had a chance to think up a way to break it to the public.<\/p>\n
On the flight back to Texas I got a text from McKenzie.\u00a0 He said he needed to talk to me so I told him to meet me at my home at midnight.\u00a0 He was there when I arrived and he looked like hell.\u00a0 He said, \u201cI think we did spark the nova.\u00a0 When we caused the surge in the field that threw us back into the distant past it must have disrupted the time-space environment of the solar system and triggered the solar activity that destroyed Earth.\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cWell, it\u2019s too late to do anything about that now.\u00a0 What we have to do is figure out how to save humanity from this disaster.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good idea to be taking the blame for all of this.\u00a0 That\u2019s probably the fastest way to commit suicide I can think of.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he shook his head and said, \u201cBut there is a way to fix this.\u00a0 We take the ship and travel through both time and space and meet up with our ship while it\u2019s in the LHS 1140 system and tell them how to adjust their program to avoid the surge.\u00a0 Then the disruption will be prevented and everything will be back to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
I think I looked at him as if he had three heads and said, \u201cDo you know how insane that sounds?\u00a0 How can we change the past?\u201d\u00a0 But he just shook his head and said, \u201cIt\u2019s the only way!\u201d<\/p>\n
I told him to take the week off and we\u2019d talk about this crazy idea when we\u2019d both had a chance to get some rest.\u00a0 I went to bed and when I got up in the morning there was a message from the field saying that McKenzie had refueled the ship and taken off.\u00a0 At about the same time there was a message from Bertram it read, \u201cDevon, I performed the mission.\u00a0 Meeting myself was a frightening but interesting experience.\u00a0 I convinced them to change the program and afterward I took a time trip, about fifty million years into the future and the big beautiful blue earth was still there.\u00a0 So, all\u2019s right with the world.<\/p>\n
But I realized that this technology is much too dangerous for humans to fool around with.\u00a0 So, I\u2019m not coming back and I\u2019ve taken all the key documents you would need to duplicate my invention.\u00a0 I\u2019m going home.\u00a0 Goodbye.<\/p>\n
Bertram McKenzie\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s almost the end of the story.\u00a0 He never came back.\u00a0 But he said he was going home.\u00a0 So, I had a contractor do a metal detector search of the area where the McKenzie family has lived in Maine for the last two hundred years and sure enough, they found a lot of those precious metals buried out in a field in Maine.\u00a0 There was a rock with an inscription carved into it, \u201cHEY DEVON.\u00a0 THERE\u2019S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n
At that point Devon stopped talking and just stared out at the wall behind me.\u00a0 I said, \u201cWell, it sounds like it all worked out for the best.\u201d\u00a0 His eyes snapped back on my face and he said, \u201cSure, sure.\u00a0 You\u2019re right, everything\u2019s great.\u00a0 I guess I\u2019m just tired.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as I sat there, I thought of something, \u201cDevon, if McKenzie met up with his earlier self and yours in the LHS-1140 system and they came back on time where are they now?\u201d\u00a0 He looked at me and nodded his head, \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019ve been thinking about.\u00a0 I think the program fix he gave them destroyed their ship inside that system.\u00a0 We\u2019ll probably never know but I kind of think in some sense I may be a ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was preoccupied so I said my farewells and left.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I believe the story, but I think he does.\u00a0 I think I feel sorry for the richest man in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI said, That\u2019s impossible.\u00a0 That world has been dead forever.\u00a0 You must be mistaken.\u201d\u00a0 Bertram McKenzie shook his head and I could see there were<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2510,1289,1263,4],"tags":[1290,265],"class_list":["post-33214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-my-fiction","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n