blinds open a crack. They were passing through a park now, she surmised from the glimpses of bare trees and brown grass she caught. The howling wind battered the trees, jostled the carriage and jingled the horse’s harness.
He began to speak, his voice tight and staccato. “You know how dear to my heart the millennium machine is, how much time and effort I’ve devoted to it. When your father stole the concept from me, it made me even more determined to solve the problems, to complete it, to claim it as mine. Well, you know I did, just three weeks ago, though I never admitted as much to you. I hinted that my invention would attract the wrong sort of people, that it was more of a curse than a help. That was because I’d discovered something wholly unexpected about my millennium machine.”
He paused to rasp his jaw, which was not as immaculately shaven as usual.
“You’re familiar with the basic concept of my machine. A ring of promethium magnets, properly arranged in the right position, produces a magnetic field which harnesses the energy of the aethersphere in the form of an endless supply of electro-magnetic current. Well, what if the process were reversed? What if an electro-magnetic current was passed through the ring of magnets? What would happen then?
“The aethersphere is a great unknown to us. It fills every corner of the universe, yet we can neither see it nor measure it. Still, many scientists have tried. Some mathematicians describe it as a multi-dimensional space, the so-called Riemannian manifold or hyperspace. In this hyperspace, time is just one of many dimensions, which means once you enter the hyperspace you can travel through time just as easily as we are now travelling through this park.”
He hesitated, and she sensed him gathering all his resolve to utter his next words.
“It’s not just a hypothesis, Minerva, because I myself have travelled through this hyperspace. I am not the Asher you called on yesterday.” He drew in a breath. “I am the Asher from the future. From eight months in the future, to be exact.”
In the ensuing silence the clip-clopping of the horse’s hooves drummed against the inside of Minerva’s skull. She felt her body swaying with the motion of the carriage, felt her fingers curling into the folds of her skirt, felt a shivering rage boil up from within her.
“You expect me to believe such folderol? Do I strike you as such an imbecile I’d swallow any codswallop you dream up? Stop the carriage. I won’t sit here a moment longer.”
She made to bang on the ceiling, but Asher grabbed her arm.
“Put aside your feminine outrage for one minute and utilize that keen logic of yours,” he retorted. “Think of everything about me ever since that day a fortnight ago when I stalked out of your house after you’d refused my marriage proposal. Think, Minerva. Are there not things that strike you as incongruous? Have I not behaved oddly at times, almost as if I am not the same man?”
“Behaving oddly is nothing new with you! You take pride in flouting conventions.”
“Oh, come now, Minerva. I know I am a vexatious man, but I’m never capricious. How did I behave towards you yesterday?”
“You know very well how you behaved.” She jerked her arm free and scowled at him. “You were cold and distant. You denied writing me all those letters—”
“Ah, because he didn’t write those letters, I did. Just as a fortnight ago he was the one who stormed out in righteous anger because you valued your independence, and I was the one who came rushing back minutes later begging forgiveness.”
A shocking possibility snagged in her thoughts and refused to be dislodged. Preposterous though it sounded, what if he was telling the truth? Hadn’t he been behaving strangely, out of character?
Fear and disbelief hitched her breath. She gulped once, twice. “That night in Manchester…you—you said, if need be, you would wait for me forever.”
The force in his eyes
He began to speak, his voice tight and staccato. “You know how dear to my heart the millennium machine is, how much time and effort I’ve devoted to it. When your father stole the concept from me, it made me even more determined to solve the problems, to complete it, to claim it as mine. Well, you know I did, just three weeks ago, though I never admitted as much to you. I hinted that my invention would attract the wrong sort of people, that it was more of a curse than a help. That was because I’d discovered something wholly unexpected about my millennium machine.”
He paused to rasp his jaw, which was not as immaculately shaven as usual.
“You’re familiar with the basic concept of my machine. A ring of promethium magnets, properly arranged in the right position, produces a magnetic field which harnesses the energy of the aethersphere in the form of an endless supply of electro-magnetic current. Well, what if the process were reversed? What if an electro-magnetic current was passed through the ring of magnets? What would happen then?
“The aethersphere is a great unknown to us. It fills every corner of the universe, yet we can neither see it nor measure it. Still, many scientists have tried. Some mathematicians describe it as a multi-dimensional space, the so-called Riemannian manifold or hyperspace. In this hyperspace, time is just one of many dimensions, which means once you enter the hyperspace you can travel through time just as easily as we are now travelling through this park.”
He hesitated, and she sensed him gathering all his resolve to utter his next words.
“It’s not just a hypothesis, Minerva, because I myself have travelled through this hyperspace. I am not the Asher you called on yesterday.” He drew in a breath. “I am the Asher from the future. From eight months in the future, to be exact.”
In the ensuing silence the clip-clopping of the horse’s hooves drummed against the inside of Minerva’s skull. She felt her body swaying with the motion of the carriage, felt her fingers curling into the folds of her skirt, felt a shivering rage boil up from within her.
“You expect me to believe such folderol? Do I strike you as such an imbecile I’d swallow any codswallop you dream up? Stop the carriage. I won’t sit here a moment longer.”
She made to bang on the ceiling, but Asher grabbed her arm.
“Put aside your feminine outrage for one minute and utilize that keen logic of yours,” he retorted. “Think of everything about me ever since that day a fortnight ago when I stalked out of your house after you’d refused my marriage proposal. Think, Minerva. Are there not things that strike you as incongruous? Have I not behaved oddly at times, almost as if I am not the same man?”
“Behaving oddly is nothing new with you! You take pride in flouting conventions.”
“Oh, come now, Minerva. I know I am a vexatious man, but I’m never capricious. How did I behave towards you yesterday?”
“You know very well how you behaved.” She jerked her arm free and scowled at him. “You were cold and distant. You denied writing me all those letters—”
“Ah, because he didn’t write those letters, I did. Just as a fortnight ago he was the one who stormed out in righteous anger because you valued your independence, and I was the one who came rushing back minutes later begging forgiveness.”
A shocking possibility snagged in her thoughts and refused to be dislodged. Preposterous though it sounded, what if he was telling the truth? Hadn’t he been behaving strangely, out of character?
Fear and disbelief hitched her breath. She gulped once, twice. “That night in Manchester…you—you said, if need be, you would wait for me forever.”
The force in his eyes
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