The Last Loop
Alexis Speaks:
I looked out of the grimy bus window as my students were all silently interacting with their ipods and phones. It was an odd silence- this preoccupation of teens in their virtual world. As a teacher I was glad for the quiet as it allowed me to watch the passing fields and farms whilst I let my mind wander aimlessly. I, however, am not a normal teacher for I am a secret writer. I like to pen pieces, not for money, but not exactly for fun either. I write in the dark of night because I must give voice to the ambling of my mind. I must hear that part of me that exists outside of the mundane reality of waking up, working, television watching and sleeping.
When I am not caught up in the daily grind I allow my mind to envision worlds that were, are, and have never been. I was in this high of a state of imaginative creativity when something truly remarkable happened- I heard a voice. I looked around to find the source. I quickly established that no person on that bus was speaking to me. This voice existed only within the confines of my mind and yet it was not mine.
Domenic Speaks:
Hello. Lady. Hello…Oh I see you are looking around Teacher Lady, well I will assume you can hear me. This is my last loop so you are going to listen to my story Lady. You don’t know it but I am sitting right next to you on this bus. I did my research and you are my best shot to change the future.
I am a sci-fi fan, my favourite tale is "The Time Machine." Since I was a small boy I was fascinated with the idea of time and it being the last frontier. I believed that man could manipulate this most elusive of forces. During the day I research magnetic polerisation but at night, when everyone has left the University, I use the lab to work on time itself.
It was a great moment when I managed to create an actual Field of Dimensional Variation. I could explain it to you but frankly the mechanics of it are beyond a mere High school English teacher. Why, it would be like trying to explain a banana milkshake to an ant. All the ant really needs to know is that a milkshake is sweet it does not need to understand how the milkshake came to be. And baby, my Field of Dimensional Variation or FDV, as I called it, was totally sweet!
It was not a large field, it was only roughly three meters in diameter. I used much of the information retrieved from The Philadelphia Experiment, an experiment that went very wrong during the later days of World War Two. I realised that they accidentally created a FDV through the use of electromagnetic coils.
The experiment was based on an aspect of The Unified Field Theroy, a term coined by Albert Einstein. The Unified Field Theory aims to describe mathematically and physically the interrelated nature of the forces that comprise electromagnetic radiation and gravity. I managed to create a single theory that has successfully expressed these relationships in viable mathematical or physical terms by working out the mathematical formula for the composition of time itself.
In the Philidelphia Experiment the S.S Eldridge not only became invisible, but she physically vanished from the area in a flash of blue light and teleported to Norfolk, Virginia, over 320 km away. The S.S. Eldridge sat for some time in full view of men aboard the ship SS Andrew Furuseth, whereupon the S.S.Eldridge vanished from their sight, and then reappeared in Philadelphia at the site it had originally occupied. The warship traveled back in time for about ten seconds. I mean it all been hushed up but since I do some work for the Australian Navy, I know some people who know some people- if you know what I mean.
It took a long time but I was able to replicate that experiment in my lab. The secret is that you are not supposed to turn an FDV off at least not while any person is in the field. It is also most important that the field is on prior to the subject entering. During The Philidelphia Expiment they built the FDV around the subjects the loop went crazy as it interacted with objects prior to stablisation.
This is why it went so badly for the scientists who performed that particular experiment. Of course it went worse for the sailors subjected to the FDV. They ended up with their molecules fused with the metal of the ship.The stupid scientist turned off the FDV while people were inside the field- what did they think would happen? Those scientist were complete dumb asses!
English Teacher, WAKE UP! Obviously, I am talking to a great scientific mind when I am talking to you. I am sure that if I was working out the political dimensions of Macbeth you could follow it and manage to stay awake. I swear it is like talking to a lump of wood. Fine then- I will give you the paint by numbers version of this story.
To continue, I decided to do an animal trial in the Field of Dimensional Variation. Don’t pull that face. I know that liberal types like you Teacher, hate animal testing but this was a stinking rat. Yeah, I can see it on your face- you don’t care about a rat. You animal rights people are such hypocrites. Damn, I digressed again. I can’t afford to do that. There is not enough time, huh that is funny not enough time, when irony strikes it can be a real bitch.
Anyway I got this rat, his name was Garry- strange name for a rat, I know. I placed him in the Field of Dimensional Variation. Garry disappeared and a moment later reappeared. Garry was not quite as, shall we say, as solid as he was prior to the experiment. I was astonished, I never expected a loss of solidity. I did an autopsy on the rat and I found out a couple of things.
First of all, there was the digestion rate of the contents of his stomach. Garry was on a controlled diet, I fed him Cornflakes only fifteen minutes prior to the experiment. The rate of his digestion suggested that he had eaten them roughly four hours prior rather than fifteen minutes.
The other weird discovery was that Garry disappeared from the closed circuit television tape approximately four hours prior to the time that had I taken him out and placed him in the field. He simply faded from view at the four hour mark. I knew that the rat was there before putting him in the FDV, yet according to the tape he was not. Reality for this Time Scape altered and Garry disappeared from it. I guess this would prevent paradoxes occurring. For those particular four hours, Garry did not exist in my world, or rather, in my Time Scape- at least not in any discernible context.
There was only one conclusion- the FDV had sent Garry through time. He travelled to roughly four hours prior to my current time. This was exciting to me but my conclusions were all hypothetical and a matter of supposition. Still I was thrilled. If Garry had travelled through time it meant that time was fluid. It could be manipulated.
Secondly my experiment had a range of applications. Even just understanding how time works would be a dramatic step forward. It did not take me long to realise that the reason Garry was gone for four hours in my Time Scape was because that was when the FDV was activated. I did not know, at that stage, where Garry had disappeared to. Clearly, however, he was not in this temporal space.
I had achieved time travel but it was not like science fiction envisioned it. You see I discovered that you can only travel along the same Time Scape as the field itself. It was not possible with an FDV to send someone back in time to see if Shakespeare picked his nose or if Winston Churchill was secretly gay. This is because Shakespeare and Churchill existed in the time prior to the initiation of the field.
I started to plan how to refine my theory and test it. There was months of paper work in front of me, hundreds of experiments. It would be a decade or so before a man would step into the field. I am no nutty professor or Richard Bannister of The Incredible Hulk fame, I understood the process that lay before and I respected the need for due diligence. What I did not know was something was going to happen that would force me to step into the field only five days later.
Teacher, look into the sky, see that spot over that mountain. Soon there will be two twin lights that will enter that spot. It is that spot where twin asteroids first appear. N.A.S.A will investigate and determine that the Asteroids will avoid Earth. They are going to be right about that. The asteroids will not plummet into Earth but what these space rocks will do is nudge the Moon.
The dramatic change in Earth's gravitational field will result in massive tidal waves. I know that very soon, the entire Gold Coast will be an underwater city.
I see I have your attention now Teacher- you are taking these kids to The Gold Coast for an Eisteddfod aren’t you. Wait- there it is. I can see from your face that your sense of logic has clicked in and the sceptical self is now in control. You are wondering, am I a figment of your imagination? I see that nothing that is happening to you right now makes sense. You are trying to shut me out to see if you can. I can sense the resistance in your mind. It is okay Teacher- I know it is near on impossible for you to act on my words with so little evidence. I know even I would not believe me.
Let me continue, the asteroids will nudge the moon and the upset to gravitational fields will be immediate. A super king high tide will begin and instead of rising slowly like a normal tide it will move with rapidity. It will kill with stunning speed. There will be no warning, one minute people will be lining up at Starbucks and the next minute they will be under water. It will be not only a sudden killer, the tidal wave will be a strangely quiet destroyer. The screams of the victims will make more noise than the wave itself. How do I know all this because these events of your future have happened in my past.
I have seen mothers lose hold of their child’s hand and scream as the child sinks below the enormous black wave. I have seen humans hold on to the floating corpse of another to try to stay alive. Their sad efforts were to no avail.
You see, a Tsunami roars and abates where as a tidal wave lasts for a very long time. The other aspect that hampered people's ability to battle the wave was the changes in gravity also made it hard for the humans to move their muscles against the massively increased resistance. Trying to move was like running up a sand hill. Humans fatigued quickly and submitted to the mighty waters. I have not done my research but I estimate that the only Australians who are left are those that lived in land past the Great Dividing Range. This means that the majority of the Australians who will survive this unstoppable force are those who live in the mountain city of Toowoomba. Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Hobart are, in all likely hood, destroyed.
I am sorry, I have upset you Teacher Lady. Well, as bad as you’re feeling, you are going to feel a great deal worse when it happens. At least you alone have a chance to change your destiny and the fate of these students. I don’t know what the world will look like after the tidal wave, but it will be your world- not mine. Now let me return to the day life changed forever.
I saw it coming because I was in a high rise building. Before the water reached my floor I stepped into the FDV. The field was horrid, it is like you are being stretched and twisted. Every organ in your body revolts and turns traitor on you. You are sure that your death is imminent and frankly if I wasn’t a young man, I doubt I would have survived it.
There was one idea that pulled me through the horrid experience- it was that I was right. FDV was a field where time was bent and twisted. I too, like Garry, went back in time. The time I went back to was the second I turned on the FDV. This was of course five days prior to the time I stepped in. Unlike Garry however, the FDV was not switched on once I had travelled through the five days. The wave destroyed any chance I could have had to escape the loop when it laid waste to the FDV generator. If I tried to move past that moment I would end up fused with the objects in my lab or drowning due to the wave.
Once I reach the moment of time when I first stepped into the FDV- straight after the wave strikes, I need to reenter the loop and go back to five days prior. I am time traveling through the same five days, repeatedly.
It is a Merry-Go- Round of time. It is a bit like that movie, you know the one from the Eighties- Groundhog Day. Actually that is another irony, the film that understood time travel best was not a science fiction at all but a comedy. I mean, the point of my journey is not that I am supposed to fall in love with a hot chick. I wish it was that simple. The truth is that there is no grand plan behind my journey, I am simply on it. If it is to have meaning I have to put it there.
So you might ask yourself, Teacher, what it is like to be a Time Traveller? First of all you arrive at the origin point of five days in the past. You exist but you don’t exist in the time space of others around you. They cannot perceive you in the traditional sense. You are heard within the space of their mind. You however cannot be registered aurally, visually and worst of all they cannot touch you. You are little more than a thought in the mind of others.
The other me, the Domenic who previously existed in this time space, is no longer here. I disappeared from this time scape. I only exist in this future form. This is exciting too, that one can only occupy a time space in a singular corporal form. In effect I have not only created time travel but also I have discovered a way to disappear.
The first time I travelled in the loop my preoccupation was trying to prevent the horrific outcome where everyone drowns. I went first to the Mayor of Gold Coast and begged, pleaded and screamed at the poor man to evacuate The Gold Coast. It was to no avail. In my first loop I was really loud and obnoxious in his mind and telling him such terrible stuff that the bloke made it to day five. The Mayor saw the wave, put a gun against his head and blew his brains out. He also stayed drunk in the attempt to shut me out of his head. I was screaming through his alcoholic haze most of the time.
Shortly after I reached the end of the five days and looped back. I was in the same place in my lab that I arrived in the first loop. Only this time I was less solid then I was on my first time travel trip. I was in a manner of speaking, fading. My molecules were disbanding and I was less real. I realised that I was not going to spend the rest of eternity going through this same five day loop.
This too is different from "Groundhog Day" as Bill Murray was eternally stuck in his loop- I am not. This looping is going to a finite experience. Judging on the rate of discombobulation I estimated that I have a maximum of four loops before I will cease to exist.
I knew there was no point going back to torture the Mayor again so I went to the media. You of course know Jean Simmons, the respected Channel Seven reporter. Before I spoke to her, I did check in on the Mayor and it appeared as though my previous incursion into his life was no longer an issue. This too was intriguing. Apparently whatever I do on a previous loop has no impact on my current loop.
Anyhow back to my reporter, she was much more receptive to the voice in her mind than the Mayor. It took three days of that loop to convince her that my story was true. To be honest she was a sexy smart lady, I was a little keen on her. She listened intently to all I had to say but she did not immediately believe it. She had the mind of a true sceptic, she was not going to do anything until she was convinced that I was real.
She investigated me. Jean found that I had disappeared from the face of the planet at the exact moment that I had told her that I would have vanished. She even checked on the closed circuit television and saw how at the precise moment after I turn on the FDV I disappeared from the tape.
She was totally convinced and went on television to warn people about what was going to happen and urged them to evacuate. It created quite the television moment when she was dragged kicking and screaming from the camera by burly security guards.
Within an hour Jean was taken to an Emergency Mental Unit where the resident shrink was the last person to hear her pleas. He was still listening to her ranting when the water came. Actually I was glad to see, before the loop ended, that the twit was drowned in his own office. It gave me some pleasure that at least Jean got to see him die before she herself was taken.
In the third loop I gave up trying to save everyone in The Gold Coast and instead went to my mother, Shirley Lester. I then made another discovery. When you talk to someone who knows you they can’t distinguish your current voice from their memories of you. It seems as though the brain takes the new input of your voice and places it in a frame of reference that the subject can comprehend.
In this case my mother was plagued by memories of me but she could not hear a single word I was saying to her. I tried everyone else I knew but it was to no avail. Not a single one of them could hear my message they just kept remembering incidences from their lives that involved me. I wasted a whole loop on that one.
So here I am on my final loop. I cannot save the Gold Coast. I cannot save my loved ones. I cannot save myself. I am fading fast and I have so little solid mass I cannot even see myself well any more. I do not have one more loop in me. This was my last idea on how to redeem something from this whole experience. I came to you. You left Toowoomba to take these students on their Eisteddfod and this trip will be their last unless I can find a way to communicate with you.
I have never wanted anything more than to save you and these kids. Somehow the power of saving all of you will make up for the tremendous losses that are about to be suffered. If I can use FDV to cheat a terrifying fate, even just a little, everything would be worth it. Who knows maybe one of these kids is an Albert Einstein, although looking at their slack jawed faces- I somehow doubt it.
Teacher Lady, I am begging you to hear my words and do something. I need you to take a chance on the unbelievable. Your only chance at survival is to do something on a hunch, on a chance.
Consider this, if I am real you will save lives and have a future. If on the other hand I am nothing more than a moment of fancy and you act- if you are wrong, then you will end up looking silly. Let this be the logic that guides you.
If somehow my desperation speaks of my integrity in this, you will do what it takes to turn this bus around and save yourself and these children. Now I must go, this is my final loop and before it ends I want to spend some time with my mother and enjoy her memories of our shared time together.
Good bye Lady Teacher and good luck.
Alexis Speaks
Suddenly there was silence. The voice was gone, I looked around and nobody else had stirred on the bus. I surprised to see that I had been so lost in my musings that night had fallen and the bus trip was nearly over. My hand reached out and swept over the empty seat next to me. Was this whole thing a work of my own imagination, just the fevered workings of a creative drive let loose due to my meandering?
I was just about to shake the whole incident off and pretend that the moment never happened when I looked out of the bus window. I saw the dark sapphire towers of the Gold Coast shining in the moonlight, bedecked in their neon splendour. I was shaken to my core when I spotted that in the sky was two bright lights. I knew what they were- they were the asteroids that Domenic spoke of.
My sight was captivated by them. Grudgingly I dragged my eyes from the sparkling lights in the urban sky and looked at the silver moon. It looked strangely massive perched over the city. It already looked closer than usual. According to Domenic, this would be the Moon that would massacre millions.
There was a solid stone of destiny lying in my stomach. I looked at the car lights snaking their way into the nexus of the city. Every single one of the drivers was going to die.
“Miss, will we be at the Eisteddfod soon?” I stared at the young sixteen year old face who was peering at me through the gloom of the bus interior. A petrifying image came to my mind, the girl's face illuminated by the glow of a massive moon beneath the surface of an ebony consuming tide. Her face appeared in my mind as bloated and blue- frozen in the moment and floating in a tide of corpses. Her eyes staring lifelessly, pallid and errie into my own. My eyes closed tight trying to shut out the horrific vision from my mind's eye.
“No Sammi, we are going back to Toowoomba.” The kids were shocked by my announcement. I told them that I had received a call from home and that one of my children was sick and that I needed to return to Toowoomba, post haste. They accepted this white lie without question. I told the bus driver to turn around.
The bus took off toward the safety of the inland city of Toowoomba leaving The Gold Coast to its fate. I used the clues Domenic gave me and found his mother’s phone number with Google. I rang her and told her what Domenic had said. I don’t know if she believed me but I like to think that the last moments of Domenic’s final loop was watching over his mother’s escape. I wrote a message in the condensation on the bus window. The message read “Thank you Domenic”
BY A. SIms
HOME
I looked out of the grimy bus window as my students were all silently interacting with their ipods and phones. It was an odd silence- this preoccupation of teens in their virtual world. As a teacher I was glad for the quiet as it allowed me to watch the passing fields and farms whilst I let my mind wander aimlessly. I, however, am not a normal teacher for I am a secret writer. I like to pen pieces, not for money, but not exactly for fun either. I write in the dark of night because I must give voice to the ambling of my mind. I must hear that part of me that exists outside of the mundane reality of waking up, working, television watching and sleeping.
When I am not caught up in the daily grind I allow my mind to envision worlds that were, are, and have never been. I was in this high of a state of imaginative creativity when something truly remarkable happened- I heard a voice. I looked around to find the source. I quickly established that no person on that bus was speaking to me. This voice existed only within the confines of my mind and yet it was not mine.
Domenic Speaks:
Hello. Lady. Hello…Oh I see you are looking around Teacher Lady, well I will assume you can hear me. This is my last loop so you are going to listen to my story Lady. You don’t know it but I am sitting right next to you on this bus. I did my research and you are my best shot to change the future.
I am a sci-fi fan, my favourite tale is "The Time Machine." Since I was a small boy I was fascinated with the idea of time and it being the last frontier. I believed that man could manipulate this most elusive of forces. During the day I research magnetic polerisation but at night, when everyone has left the University, I use the lab to work on time itself.
It was a great moment when I managed to create an actual Field of Dimensional Variation. I could explain it to you but frankly the mechanics of it are beyond a mere High school English teacher. Why, it would be like trying to explain a banana milkshake to an ant. All the ant really needs to know is that a milkshake is sweet it does not need to understand how the milkshake came to be. And baby, my Field of Dimensional Variation or FDV, as I called it, was totally sweet!
It was not a large field, it was only roughly three meters in diameter. I used much of the information retrieved from The Philadelphia Experiment, an experiment that went very wrong during the later days of World War Two. I realised that they accidentally created a FDV through the use of electromagnetic coils.
The experiment was based on an aspect of The Unified Field Theroy, a term coined by Albert Einstein. The Unified Field Theory aims to describe mathematically and physically the interrelated nature of the forces that comprise electromagnetic radiation and gravity. I managed to create a single theory that has successfully expressed these relationships in viable mathematical or physical terms by working out the mathematical formula for the composition of time itself.
In the Philidelphia Experiment the S.S Eldridge not only became invisible, but she physically vanished from the area in a flash of blue light and teleported to Norfolk, Virginia, over 320 km away. The S.S. Eldridge sat for some time in full view of men aboard the ship SS Andrew Furuseth, whereupon the S.S.Eldridge vanished from their sight, and then reappeared in Philadelphia at the site it had originally occupied. The warship traveled back in time for about ten seconds. I mean it all been hushed up but since I do some work for the Australian Navy, I know some people who know some people- if you know what I mean.
It took a long time but I was able to replicate that experiment in my lab. The secret is that you are not supposed to turn an FDV off at least not while any person is in the field. It is also most important that the field is on prior to the subject entering. During The Philidelphia Expiment they built the FDV around the subjects the loop went crazy as it interacted with objects prior to stablisation.
This is why it went so badly for the scientists who performed that particular experiment. Of course it went worse for the sailors subjected to the FDV. They ended up with their molecules fused with the metal of the ship.The stupid scientist turned off the FDV while people were inside the field- what did they think would happen? Those scientist were complete dumb asses!
English Teacher, WAKE UP! Obviously, I am talking to a great scientific mind when I am talking to you. I am sure that if I was working out the political dimensions of Macbeth you could follow it and manage to stay awake. I swear it is like talking to a lump of wood. Fine then- I will give you the paint by numbers version of this story.
To continue, I decided to do an animal trial in the Field of Dimensional Variation. Don’t pull that face. I know that liberal types like you Teacher, hate animal testing but this was a stinking rat. Yeah, I can see it on your face- you don’t care about a rat. You animal rights people are such hypocrites. Damn, I digressed again. I can’t afford to do that. There is not enough time, huh that is funny not enough time, when irony strikes it can be a real bitch.
Anyway I got this rat, his name was Garry- strange name for a rat, I know. I placed him in the Field of Dimensional Variation. Garry disappeared and a moment later reappeared. Garry was not quite as, shall we say, as solid as he was prior to the experiment. I was astonished, I never expected a loss of solidity. I did an autopsy on the rat and I found out a couple of things.
First of all, there was the digestion rate of the contents of his stomach. Garry was on a controlled diet, I fed him Cornflakes only fifteen minutes prior to the experiment. The rate of his digestion suggested that he had eaten them roughly four hours prior rather than fifteen minutes.
The other weird discovery was that Garry disappeared from the closed circuit television tape approximately four hours prior to the time that had I taken him out and placed him in the field. He simply faded from view at the four hour mark. I knew that the rat was there before putting him in the FDV, yet according to the tape he was not. Reality for this Time Scape altered and Garry disappeared from it. I guess this would prevent paradoxes occurring. For those particular four hours, Garry did not exist in my world, or rather, in my Time Scape- at least not in any discernible context.
There was only one conclusion- the FDV had sent Garry through time. He travelled to roughly four hours prior to my current time. This was exciting to me but my conclusions were all hypothetical and a matter of supposition. Still I was thrilled. If Garry had travelled through time it meant that time was fluid. It could be manipulated.
Secondly my experiment had a range of applications. Even just understanding how time works would be a dramatic step forward. It did not take me long to realise that the reason Garry was gone for four hours in my Time Scape was because that was when the FDV was activated. I did not know, at that stage, where Garry had disappeared to. Clearly, however, he was not in this temporal space.
I had achieved time travel but it was not like science fiction envisioned it. You see I discovered that you can only travel along the same Time Scape as the field itself. It was not possible with an FDV to send someone back in time to see if Shakespeare picked his nose or if Winston Churchill was secretly gay. This is because Shakespeare and Churchill existed in the time prior to the initiation of the field.
I started to plan how to refine my theory and test it. There was months of paper work in front of me, hundreds of experiments. It would be a decade or so before a man would step into the field. I am no nutty professor or Richard Bannister of The Incredible Hulk fame, I understood the process that lay before and I respected the need for due diligence. What I did not know was something was going to happen that would force me to step into the field only five days later.
Teacher, look into the sky, see that spot over that mountain. Soon there will be two twin lights that will enter that spot. It is that spot where twin asteroids first appear. N.A.S.A will investigate and determine that the Asteroids will avoid Earth. They are going to be right about that. The asteroids will not plummet into Earth but what these space rocks will do is nudge the Moon.
The dramatic change in Earth's gravitational field will result in massive tidal waves. I know that very soon, the entire Gold Coast will be an underwater city.
I see I have your attention now Teacher- you are taking these kids to The Gold Coast for an Eisteddfod aren’t you. Wait- there it is. I can see from your face that your sense of logic has clicked in and the sceptical self is now in control. You are wondering, am I a figment of your imagination? I see that nothing that is happening to you right now makes sense. You are trying to shut me out to see if you can. I can sense the resistance in your mind. It is okay Teacher- I know it is near on impossible for you to act on my words with so little evidence. I know even I would not believe me.
Let me continue, the asteroids will nudge the moon and the upset to gravitational fields will be immediate. A super king high tide will begin and instead of rising slowly like a normal tide it will move with rapidity. It will kill with stunning speed. There will be no warning, one minute people will be lining up at Starbucks and the next minute they will be under water. It will be not only a sudden killer, the tidal wave will be a strangely quiet destroyer. The screams of the victims will make more noise than the wave itself. How do I know all this because these events of your future have happened in my past.
I have seen mothers lose hold of their child’s hand and scream as the child sinks below the enormous black wave. I have seen humans hold on to the floating corpse of another to try to stay alive. Their sad efforts were to no avail.
You see, a Tsunami roars and abates where as a tidal wave lasts for a very long time. The other aspect that hampered people's ability to battle the wave was the changes in gravity also made it hard for the humans to move their muscles against the massively increased resistance. Trying to move was like running up a sand hill. Humans fatigued quickly and submitted to the mighty waters. I have not done my research but I estimate that the only Australians who are left are those that lived in land past the Great Dividing Range. This means that the majority of the Australians who will survive this unstoppable force are those who live in the mountain city of Toowoomba. Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Hobart are, in all likely hood, destroyed.
I am sorry, I have upset you Teacher Lady. Well, as bad as you’re feeling, you are going to feel a great deal worse when it happens. At least you alone have a chance to change your destiny and the fate of these students. I don’t know what the world will look like after the tidal wave, but it will be your world- not mine. Now let me return to the day life changed forever.
I saw it coming because I was in a high rise building. Before the water reached my floor I stepped into the FDV. The field was horrid, it is like you are being stretched and twisted. Every organ in your body revolts and turns traitor on you. You are sure that your death is imminent and frankly if I wasn’t a young man, I doubt I would have survived it.
There was one idea that pulled me through the horrid experience- it was that I was right. FDV was a field where time was bent and twisted. I too, like Garry, went back in time. The time I went back to was the second I turned on the FDV. This was of course five days prior to the time I stepped in. Unlike Garry however, the FDV was not switched on once I had travelled through the five days. The wave destroyed any chance I could have had to escape the loop when it laid waste to the FDV generator. If I tried to move past that moment I would end up fused with the objects in my lab or drowning due to the wave.
Once I reach the moment of time when I first stepped into the FDV- straight after the wave strikes, I need to reenter the loop and go back to five days prior. I am time traveling through the same five days, repeatedly.
It is a Merry-Go- Round of time. It is a bit like that movie, you know the one from the Eighties- Groundhog Day. Actually that is another irony, the film that understood time travel best was not a science fiction at all but a comedy. I mean, the point of my journey is not that I am supposed to fall in love with a hot chick. I wish it was that simple. The truth is that there is no grand plan behind my journey, I am simply on it. If it is to have meaning I have to put it there.
So you might ask yourself, Teacher, what it is like to be a Time Traveller? First of all you arrive at the origin point of five days in the past. You exist but you don’t exist in the time space of others around you. They cannot perceive you in the traditional sense. You are heard within the space of their mind. You however cannot be registered aurally, visually and worst of all they cannot touch you. You are little more than a thought in the mind of others.
The other me, the Domenic who previously existed in this time space, is no longer here. I disappeared from this time scape. I only exist in this future form. This is exciting too, that one can only occupy a time space in a singular corporal form. In effect I have not only created time travel but also I have discovered a way to disappear.
The first time I travelled in the loop my preoccupation was trying to prevent the horrific outcome where everyone drowns. I went first to the Mayor of Gold Coast and begged, pleaded and screamed at the poor man to evacuate The Gold Coast. It was to no avail. In my first loop I was really loud and obnoxious in his mind and telling him such terrible stuff that the bloke made it to day five. The Mayor saw the wave, put a gun against his head and blew his brains out. He also stayed drunk in the attempt to shut me out of his head. I was screaming through his alcoholic haze most of the time.
Shortly after I reached the end of the five days and looped back. I was in the same place in my lab that I arrived in the first loop. Only this time I was less solid then I was on my first time travel trip. I was in a manner of speaking, fading. My molecules were disbanding and I was less real. I realised that I was not going to spend the rest of eternity going through this same five day loop.
This too is different from "Groundhog Day" as Bill Murray was eternally stuck in his loop- I am not. This looping is going to a finite experience. Judging on the rate of discombobulation I estimated that I have a maximum of four loops before I will cease to exist.
I knew there was no point going back to torture the Mayor again so I went to the media. You of course know Jean Simmons, the respected Channel Seven reporter. Before I spoke to her, I did check in on the Mayor and it appeared as though my previous incursion into his life was no longer an issue. This too was intriguing. Apparently whatever I do on a previous loop has no impact on my current loop.
Anyhow back to my reporter, she was much more receptive to the voice in her mind than the Mayor. It took three days of that loop to convince her that my story was true. To be honest she was a sexy smart lady, I was a little keen on her. She listened intently to all I had to say but she did not immediately believe it. She had the mind of a true sceptic, she was not going to do anything until she was convinced that I was real.
She investigated me. Jean found that I had disappeared from the face of the planet at the exact moment that I had told her that I would have vanished. She even checked on the closed circuit television and saw how at the precise moment after I turn on the FDV I disappeared from the tape.
She was totally convinced and went on television to warn people about what was going to happen and urged them to evacuate. It created quite the television moment when she was dragged kicking and screaming from the camera by burly security guards.
Within an hour Jean was taken to an Emergency Mental Unit where the resident shrink was the last person to hear her pleas. He was still listening to her ranting when the water came. Actually I was glad to see, before the loop ended, that the twit was drowned in his own office. It gave me some pleasure that at least Jean got to see him die before she herself was taken.
In the third loop I gave up trying to save everyone in The Gold Coast and instead went to my mother, Shirley Lester. I then made another discovery. When you talk to someone who knows you they can’t distinguish your current voice from their memories of you. It seems as though the brain takes the new input of your voice and places it in a frame of reference that the subject can comprehend.
In this case my mother was plagued by memories of me but she could not hear a single word I was saying to her. I tried everyone else I knew but it was to no avail. Not a single one of them could hear my message they just kept remembering incidences from their lives that involved me. I wasted a whole loop on that one.
So here I am on my final loop. I cannot save the Gold Coast. I cannot save my loved ones. I cannot save myself. I am fading fast and I have so little solid mass I cannot even see myself well any more. I do not have one more loop in me. This was my last idea on how to redeem something from this whole experience. I came to you. You left Toowoomba to take these students on their Eisteddfod and this trip will be their last unless I can find a way to communicate with you.
I have never wanted anything more than to save you and these kids. Somehow the power of saving all of you will make up for the tremendous losses that are about to be suffered. If I can use FDV to cheat a terrifying fate, even just a little, everything would be worth it. Who knows maybe one of these kids is an Albert Einstein, although looking at their slack jawed faces- I somehow doubt it.
Teacher Lady, I am begging you to hear my words and do something. I need you to take a chance on the unbelievable. Your only chance at survival is to do something on a hunch, on a chance.
Consider this, if I am real you will save lives and have a future. If on the other hand I am nothing more than a moment of fancy and you act- if you are wrong, then you will end up looking silly. Let this be the logic that guides you.
If somehow my desperation speaks of my integrity in this, you will do what it takes to turn this bus around and save yourself and these children. Now I must go, this is my final loop and before it ends I want to spend some time with my mother and enjoy her memories of our shared time together.
Good bye Lady Teacher and good luck.
Alexis Speaks
Suddenly there was silence. The voice was gone, I looked around and nobody else had stirred on the bus. I surprised to see that I had been so lost in my musings that night had fallen and the bus trip was nearly over. My hand reached out and swept over the empty seat next to me. Was this whole thing a work of my own imagination, just the fevered workings of a creative drive let loose due to my meandering?
I was just about to shake the whole incident off and pretend that the moment never happened when I looked out of the bus window. I saw the dark sapphire towers of the Gold Coast shining in the moonlight, bedecked in their neon splendour. I was shaken to my core when I spotted that in the sky was two bright lights. I knew what they were- they were the asteroids that Domenic spoke of.
My sight was captivated by them. Grudgingly I dragged my eyes from the sparkling lights in the urban sky and looked at the silver moon. It looked strangely massive perched over the city. It already looked closer than usual. According to Domenic, this would be the Moon that would massacre millions.
There was a solid stone of destiny lying in my stomach. I looked at the car lights snaking their way into the nexus of the city. Every single one of the drivers was going to die.
“Miss, will we be at the Eisteddfod soon?” I stared at the young sixteen year old face who was peering at me through the gloom of the bus interior. A petrifying image came to my mind, the girl's face illuminated by the glow of a massive moon beneath the surface of an ebony consuming tide. Her face appeared in my mind as bloated and blue- frozen in the moment and floating in a tide of corpses. Her eyes staring lifelessly, pallid and errie into my own. My eyes closed tight trying to shut out the horrific vision from my mind's eye.
“No Sammi, we are going back to Toowoomba.” The kids were shocked by my announcement. I told them that I had received a call from home and that one of my children was sick and that I needed to return to Toowoomba, post haste. They accepted this white lie without question. I told the bus driver to turn around.
The bus took off toward the safety of the inland city of Toowoomba leaving The Gold Coast to its fate. I used the clues Domenic gave me and found his mother’s phone number with Google. I rang her and told her what Domenic had said. I don’t know if she believed me but I like to think that the last moments of Domenic’s final loop was watching over his mother’s escape. I wrote a message in the condensation on the bus window. The message read “Thank you Domenic”
BY A. SIms
HOME
Press here to stumble!