The Grandfather Effect

The Grandfather Effect

  By

  Michael C. Madden

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  * * * * *

  Michael C. Madden

  Other works by Michael C. Madden

  The Quicksilver Chronicles

  ***The Quicksilver: Book One of, The Quicksilver Chronicles***

  (Honourable Mention, 2013 San Francisco Book Festival, Young Adult)

  ***The Silence of Triton: Book Two of, The Quicksilver Chronicles***

  ***Wynter’s Storm: Book Three of, The Quicksilver Chronicles***

  (Release date pending)

  The Bellegion Rift Series

  ***Manhattan Dying - The Bellegion Rift, Volume I***

  ***Fleeing the Rift - The Bellegion Rift, Volume II***

  ***Dragons and Trains - The Bellegion Rift, Volume III***

  Short Stories

  ***The Tide is Turning***

  ***The Value of Their Deaths***

  ***Son of a TPI Veteran***

  ***The Village and the Giant***

  ***The Grandfather Effect***

  /

  The Grandfather Effect

  Copyright 2013 by Michael C. Madden

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  The Grandfather Effect

  I step back and wipe sweat from my brow, smiling as I draw a slow, deep breath. I admire the smooth, silver walls of my invention which sits on my garage floor with tools, rolls of used wire and dissected electrical goods scattered everywhere. It looks a little like a silver port-a-potty, the type you might see in a construction yard. I chuckle at the comparison, for this machine is about as far from being a place to discard human waste as anything could be.

  This is the invention that will stand out above all others like a blossoming rose in a lawn of brown weeds. Years of hard work and wells of money will come back in spades. It seems like a life time ago that I started this project and years since my wife left me. Sally had insisted that I was wasting my time on a dream that will never come to fruition. I will never forget the day she took the kids and left.

  I square my shoulders and feel a feather of excitement tickle at my belly. Now is the time to test the machine, now is the time to find out once and for all if all of the blood, sweat and tears has been worth it. My nerves are rising, my hands are trembling and I can feel old fears returning, old nightmares of failure and regret pushing to the surface of my mind. I close my eyes and take a deep, shuddering breath.

  Stepping up to my machine, my eyes search the smooth, clean surface of the thing, as if I might find some sign of failure carved into it. With trembling hands I open the door, step inside. It is cramped inside, but comfortable enough for one. Working the controls, I set the machine for eighty million BC...and throw the switch.

  The electric motors start and the machine shudders slightly as it goes through the sequences I have so carefully programmed into it. Seconds pass... long, dragging, intolerable seconds and now... now the machine is silent. Was that it? Did it work?

  I put my hand on the door latch, I am about to open it, about to discover once and for all if my machine works... but I freeze. A wave of smothering anxiety is crushing in on me, causing me pause. What if I am wrong about all this? What if my machine doesn’t work? What if my wife was right?

  No, don’t think, just act. This is the instant my dreams will be realised and I will greet it with a hedonistic smirk. Shoulders wide, chin thrust forward, I open the door and step outside...

  Sunlight bathes my face like warm, cleansing water and washes away all of my doubts and fears. I am standing on the bank of a river; there is a huge forest behind me made of trees and ferns like none I have ever seen. The air is clean, fresh. It is a smells wonderful, like rain on a hot road. My head swims a little; I think this is a side effect of the high levels of oxygen in the air.

  A deep, rumbling growl makes my bones shudder. I turn to see a dinosaur standing on the riverbank, my heart compresses at the sight of the animal. It looks like a triceratops. The creature is huge, almost the size of an elephant. Sunlight glistens off the tips of its three horns as its small eyes lock with mine. For a moment I am frozen in place, too stunned even to breathe. The triceratops stomps at the hard dirt on the riverbank with one hoof, like a bull about to charge and I suddenly remember how to move.

  I run back into the machine, slam the door and set the controls for present day. I can hear the pounding of heavy hooves outside, the machine is shaking and rattling as if in the path of a steaming train. My hands fumble with dials and switches, my heart thumps like a pneumatic pump... I throw the switch.

  The machine whirls and shudders, I move back from the door, certain that three massive horns will punch through at any moment... but now all is silent. I throw open the door, ready to greet whatever dread might face me, but I am back in my cluttered garage once again, safe and triumphant. Triumph, after years of failure, is the sweetest triumph of all.

  My laughing grows to a gut twisting howl and then swings to a delicious kind of relieved, weeping. I wipe tears from my cheeks and force my mind to focus. There is much work yet to be done. Now that I know the machine works, it is time for the next part of my plan. I realise I can do almost anything with this machine. Making money could be as easy as travelling back to last week and entering the winning lotto numbers, but that is a line I will never cross.

  A man has standards and mine are high. I will never stoop to cheep tricks or dishonesty for coin. Not on the back of so much hard work. Any money I make from this invention will come via honest and respectable means. So I run inside, sit down at the computer in my office to draft the ad that I will post in tomorrow morning’s newspaper, the ad that will make me rich.

  I write...

  Travelling Jack’s, Time Adjustment Services

  For hire, services of one real life, time traveller.

  Have you experienced bad luck lately? Had an accident or made a decision you wish you could take back? If so, I am the answer you’ve been looking for.

  What if you found a dollar on the ground that made you stop just moments before that car ran you down and broke both of your legs? What if someone reminded you to lock your front door on your way out and your favourite jewellery was never stolen?

  Well, with Travelling Jack’s, Time Adjustment Services, there will have been.

  For a small fee, Travelling Jack can go back in time and make it happen.

  Conditions apply; will not supply lottery numbers, sporting results or anything that might lead to ill gotten financial gains, and no... this is not a joke.

  I smile as I post the ad, because I know that hard earned esteem and righteous acknowledgment is finally coming my way. Soon the world will know what I have done. There is nothing to do now except to sit back and wait for the phone to ring.

  It has been a week now since I placed my ad and it is clear that something is wrong. I have kept the ad running everyday and although it has certainly had an effect, it has not been the one I had hoped for. The phone has not stopped ringing all week, but I have not had one call for a legitimate job that I am willing to do. Every time the phone rings it is a prank call, the media or a person asking me to do something I refuse to do.

  ‘Tell me who wins the football next week, Travelling Jack.’, ‘Make my boss miss the train yesterday so he can’t catch me drinking at work and sack me, Travellin
g Jack.’

  A man has principles and I will not set my machine to work on such fraudulent tasks. I cannot believe that from all of the dozens of calls I have received, not one has been from a person asking me to go back in time and do something that will save them from disaster or make their lives better through honest, respectable means. Is the world really this corrupt?

  I sit at my desk and look out at the ever growing throng of media on my front lawn. I ponder the puzzling outcome of my little business enterprise. I am aware that there is evil in the world, but I refuse to believe that everyone out there is corrupt. How is it that every response to my newspaper ad has been motivated by macabre desires? There has to be something else going on here, but what?

  I close the blinds so I do not have to look at the reporters outside. They are all determined to get a look at my time machine, but I am saving that for after I have completed a few successful jobs. Much better I think to stand before the world with a few satisfied customers at my side, testifying to the brilliance of Travelling Jack’s, Time Adjustment Services.

  I sigh, sit down at my desk and pick up today’s paper. There’s my ad, clear as day on page four, as it has been every day for the last week. An article across on page five grabs my attention. It is about the strange run of luck people in the city seem to have been having. It says that there has been an unusually low amount of accidents, crimes and violent attacks in the last week. Could this be no more than an unfortunate coincidence? Just when I need people to want saving from such things, accidents and bad luck seemed dry up?

  I frown and take off my reading glasses. If there is one thing my experience as a scientist has taught me, it is that there is no such thing as coincidence. Is it possible this run of good luck is somehow related to me and my time machine? I have only used the machine once a day since I got it working and that has only been to test that all systems are still working smoothly. I must concede also, that I test it once a day to make sure I have not imagined all of this.

  I lean back in my chair, my eyes slide thoughtlessly over the spines of books on the shelf on my wall. The title of one book catches my attention. It is the science fiction book, Future Times Three, by Rene Barjavel. It is a book about what might happen if a time travel was to go back in time and try to kill his or her grandfather, and therefore prevent oneself from ever being born.

  I stare at the book and jolt upright. A terrible realization has just hit me. What if what I am seeing is the effect of the infamous grandfather paradox suggested in Barjavel’s book? The grandfather paradox suggests that time travel to the past is impossible because of the paradoxes it might create. The most famous of which is the incredibly confusing and mind-bending scenario that would arise if one was to try to go back in time to kill one’s own grandfather.

  If you go back in time and shoot your grandfather, your own father and in turn you, are never borne. You never exist, so who goes back in time and kills your grandfather? No one does, so he is still alive and so are you. It is a paradox, a problem to which there is no possible solution, so such acts are therefore impossible. Or are they?

  What if no one was calling me and asking me for help because of the very simple reason that they have already called and I have already helped them? That would mean that whatever horrible event took place that caused them to ask for my help in the first place never actually happened because I had already gone back in time and prevented it.

  My jaw drops open as I come to the disappointing conclusion that I have completely outsmarted myself. I guess I need to find another way to make money out of my time machine. I lean back in my chair and wonder how much money one wins when awarded the Noble Prize.

  ###

  The End

  About the Author

  Born in Melbourne, Australia, Michael C Madden enjoyed a modest, but happy childhood growing up with his three brothers on the family’s struggling dairy farm in country Victoria.

  Michael has a deep passion for writing and Australian Military History. He runs his own Military Medal Business in Berwick, Victoria.

  Michael is a multi-award winning writer whose works include the award winning, Quicksilver Chronicles and many short stories, including the 2007, first prize winning, The Tide is Turning.

  Please feel free to contact Michael Here