Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine (22 page)

“
Very funny,” said Figwort. “Good. But listen carefully, Oswald, and behold—behold the fruit of my labour, ha-ha!—for within this orange lie the seeds of our salvation. Perfect communication. Just think: if you ask me for a mandarin then I know
precisely
what you mean. I know what you want and even why you want it; whether you intend to eat the orange or just throw it at my head; whether you asked out of politeness, hunger or curiosity—these things are just nuances of thought-flavour, and with the thought helmets we can taste them all. You could even ask me in Javanese, though I don’t speak it and have no desire to. There’s no need. Not anymore. Through use of the
Pithwort Thought Helmet
there will be no more misunderstanding. Isn’t it extraordinary?”

Oswald pulled back her lips and grinned at him. She picked up the bowl of cornflakes and drained the last of the milk.

“
Hmm,” Figwort frowned, tapping at his teeth with one finger like a novice would a piano. “Given your new-found understanding, I find this lazzi act to be in poor taste, Oswald. The least you could do is acknowledge the success of my endeavours.”

Caught in a display of poor etiquette, the orangutan peered out guiltily from behind the raised bowl, head bowed, her chins bunched. Figwort gazed sternly into those dark orbs and suddenly saw reflected there the spark of inspiration.

“
Ah-ha!” the Professor ignited, slapping his palm on the table. Oswald dropped the bowl. “It was you. I’m sure of it.”

Blinking wildly, Professor Figwort flapped off to the Flavian Amphitheatre, where indeed he confirmed the clue that had sheltered for so long beneath a leafy branch of his subconsciousness: several pears were missing from the sleeping Emperor’s fruit platter.

“
You
can
understand me, can’t you?” Figwort demanded as he popped back into absolute time. Oswald looked abashed. “Then I think I should tell you that I left a bowl full of pears on this table exactly one week ago. They disappeared, and I know it was you who took them…”—Figwort gave Oswald a shrewd look— “…but now I’m not sure exactly
when
you took them. Do you think you might like to travel through time, Oswald? It’s quite easy, once you understand how time works—how the timescape of the mind moves through absolute time cocooned in a bubble of linear time…”

Oswald regarded him with mouth closed and jaw dropped, her eyes searching the room. Then she blinked rapidly and disappeared, returning a few moments later with her mouth full of juicy pear, her beautiful eyes raised innocently to the heavens.

Professor Figwort smiled at her affectionately. “Oswald,” he said, “this is perhaps the single most important scientific discovery ever made. We’re going to change the world.”

Oswald nodded her head sagely and kept chewing. Time would tell.

Professor Figwort made the last of his great discoveries that night, a gun to his head as the universe sang and understanding exploded into his mind. Lightning struck. Life flashed. Figwort frowned indignantly.

“
You’re me from the future,” he protested. “But this is most peculiar. I’ve only ever remembered meeting myself retrospectively,
after
I’ve travelled back and met me. To experience it first-person, before I’ve become the second person. It doesn’t make sense.”

“
But I’m not you from the future,” the voice whispered. “I’m a part of you as you stand tonight, in absolute time. I am the product of misgivings that would have made you wise only in hindsight. But now that you wear the Pithwort Thought Helmet…”—Figwort instinctively ducked beneath hand and elbow, shielding his invention— “…you possess perfect clarity of thought. You may give voice to your reservations and heed the dire warnings of your subconscious mind. I am your new-found foresight, Professor; now understand
this
: I must stop you from making this terrible mistake.”

Figwort extended his middle finger and tapped it staccato against the workbench. “There is no mistake. This is mankind’s salvation. And besides…”—he gestured to encompass the scrawled notes and prototype skullcaps; his life’s work— “…what’s done is done and cannot be
undone
. I’ve tried it before. You can’t
change
anything.”

“
You cannot alter the past from a vantage point in its relative future, that’s true; but I am not from the future, Professor, and this is not my past. I am you, Phileas—I am you,
now
—and I give you the perspicacity to make that decision—not later, but
now
.” Figwort pursed his lips and dropped his jaw. The air warbled once again. “Absolute purity of communication, Professor—it is indeed the most precious of elixirs; but only insofar as it allows you to destroy that very gift. You wear the Pithwort Thought Helmet, Professor, so understand
this
: you must muddy the waters once more.”

“
Hogwash!” Figwort exclaimed. “Unadulterated pig swill. Misunderstandings have plagued the human race since time immemorial. Disagreements become arguments become fights become wars; friends fall out and loved ones turn on each other; but I hold here the
solution
.”—he scooped up the remaining skullcaps and screwed up his face— “Watch, I’ll prove it to you.”

So saying, Professor Figwort left his second thoughts behind and popped back in time. He reappeared several hours later, muddy and bedraggled and clasping both hands to his carapaced head. “
No!
No, it can’t be true.”

“
But it is,” the voice hissed, swooping like a bat from the belfry above. “The Pithwort Thought Helmet isolates your doubts and pins them down for you to behold. Taste them, Professor, and understand
this
: language is alive and it is the force that lies behind imagination. To purify is to sterilise. To sterilise is to kill. New thoughts cannot breathe in the vacuum of certainty. Doom, Phileas—with perfect communication comes doom.”

Figwort shook his head slowly. “I suppose with prolonged exposure…But that’s abusing the process. It’s like a drug addiction. There must be other, more viable applications. Miscommunication is the problem—I know it is—so how can perfect understanding
not
be the solution? Perhaps if use of my device were restricted to high-level talks—to issues of great importance. Yes, yes that would do it. Perfect communication is wasted on mundane matters, that’s all.”

“
But who would decide?” the voice whispered, insidious in its appeal to reason.

“
I would, of course. Someone with
understanding
…”—Figwort paused and looked, somewhat wildly, around the silent room— “Fine. I’ll show you.”

The professor vanished once more and returned after a deathly pause, a tear welling in his eye and spilling over, his sadness as pure as anything created in this timeless universe of ours.

“
I’m sorry,” Figwort mouthed. His lips moved in synch with the voice of foresight, now redundant. “I’m sorry.”

History will not record that Figwort burnt all his papers that night, or that he cauterised the open wound of time by destroying the thought helmets and flinging their mangled remains into the fiery abyss of Mount Vesuvius. Indeed, when the temporal thunderstorm finally cleared, it transpired that the good professor had left nothing to posterity beyond his early works and a short, hand-written note—an enigmatic postscript to his unwritten tragedy:

Sometimes it’s better
not
to know
.

History will not record it, but Professor Figwort made the last of his great discoveries during the course of that long, long night. Illuminated by phosphorescent strikes and drowning in a torrent of understanding, he leapt with abandon through the intellectual maelstrom, the world sheltering in ignorance (if not bliss) as he opened himself to a knowledge best forgotten.

The end came quickly for Phileas Figwort—or so it could be said, depending on where in time one places the beginning; for, to the last, Figwort remained the product of his own actions, consumed by history and caught up forever in a digestive cycle of obsessions.

Time contraceives and the end came quickly—but not before Professor Figwort made a few lengthy digressions.

Having jumped with no specific destination in mind, Figwort emerged just west of Ancient Babylon and several feet above the earth’s surface (as it was then situated in absolute time). He looked around and honked like an overweight goose as his trousered undercarriage dropped into the Euphrates River.

“
Hogwash,” he reiterated, and then clambered up onto the dry muddy banks. “Pig swill.”

It was a sweltering day in Mesopotamia, the sun lording itself overhead while rocky mountains baked off in the distance. A lone goat regarded the professor from the shade of a date palm. History shimmered.

Figwort set out in the direction of the nearby city, still muttering to himself, and soon came to a small dwelling made of mud bricks. Drawn by the sound of crying, he ducked inside, where he found a dark-skinned woman holding a struggling infant to her bare breast. The baby’s face was puckered like a stewed apple. The woman looked harrowed.

“
Don’t worry.” Figwort slipped a skullcap onto her head. “The Pithwort Thought Helmet will let you talk with your child. You will understand each other perfectly.” He placed the second skullcap like a lampshade over the baby’s head. “Do you hear? He’s in pain. Trapped wind, I suppose.”

The woman turned away, transferring the little boy to her shoulder and patting him soothingly on the back. With her free hand she pulled at the coarse fabric of her open tunic. “I thought he was hungry,” she murmured, eyes downcast.

Although her speech was foreign, Figwort tasted its essence and found that he understood the woman—not merely the surface meaning of her words but also her underlying embarrassment at having been looked upon in a state of immodesty.

“
Goodness me!” Figwort stumbled backwards. “Please excuse me—Ouch!”—he knocked his head on the low doorway— “I didn’t mean to—Oh dear.”

The woman lifted her eyes and tasted the thoughts that propelled Figwort’s clumsy back-pedalling. Abashment. Self-consciousness. The essence of beetroot. She smiled. “Your words are different, father…”—‘father’ conveying more the sense of ‘strange old man’— “…but your gift is welcome. Thank you.”

“
Goo-goo, gar-gar,” the child gurgled.

“
Er, yes, of course.” Figwort looked up at the glutted Mesopotamian sun. “I’ll, er, I’ll leave the thought helmets with you and come back in a year’s time.”

“
We will look forward to your arrival, venerable traveler…”—or rather, ‘old vagrant’— “…Don’t forget to knock.”

Figwort coughed and popped forward in time. He reappeared a year later atop a startled sheep, from which he promptly fell.

“
Is that you, father?”

“
Er, yes. I have returned. Um, I’ve just sat on one of your sheep.”

“
Then come inside, gentle shepherd…”—Figwort tasted the honorific and blushed— “…Sit down. Rest your feet. Nimrod and I have much to thank you for.”

Life, it seemed, was going well for the woman and her son. They lived in happiness and without argument, their innate love enhanced now by perfect understanding. Nimrod was a model child. His mother was proud. Figwort judged the thought helmets a success.

But when he visited them again five years later, the professor found—and indeed stepped in—unmistakable signs of trouble.

“
It’s Nimrod,” the woman sighed, wistful yet full of love. “I told him to look after the sheep and I thought he’d realise I just meant to watch over them. I was going to the Gateway, you see, so I’d taken this off…”—she pressed one finger to the Pithwort Thought Helmet, just above her temple— “And while I was gone he kept thinking about what I’d said, and he started to worry, poor boy, and in the end he brought all the sheep inside and he just kept them shut up here, waiting for me to come back. Six hours!”—she stared around in wonderment— “What a mess.”

Figwort frowned. Could it be that Nimrod was becoming dependent on the thought helmets, like a hermit crab in its shell? Surely not. And yet, jumping forward another five years, Figwort was not unsurprised to find that almost the entire flock had been lost. “There was a flood,” the woman told him, hardly batting an eyelid when the professor winked into existence by her side. “I was in town and Nimrod let the sheep loose to feed by the river, even though it had been raining. The waters came and washed them away. It was stupid.”

This berating was inwardly directed—the woman had soaked up all the blame, like an eggplant—and yet, could it be that self-indictment here concealed a more sinister truth? Who really was at fault for the loss of the sheep? Was the Pithwort Thought Helmet stupefying young Nimrod to the point where he was incapable of generating his own ideas? The boy had perfect understanding, yes, but had that robbed him of his independence? Was he merely an extension of his mother, or worse—just a badly-drawn copy? Figwort’s eyebrows huddled together, his lips twisting in distaste at the bitter thought.

“
He’s always asking me what to do,” the woman admitted, gazing over to where Nimrod stood scraping with a flat stone at the hooves of a prostrate goat. “It’s what he’s used to, I suppose. But when I’m not here he seems lost, uncertain. He understands what I tell him but I have to anticipate everything—every little thing—or else…” She shrugged. “But that’s as may be. He’s my boy. I love him.”