27
Thursday, April 26, 1792 – 3:47 p.m.
Fairhurst Castle, England
Ailsa began to scream as she was drug by her feet backwards through the short tunnel. Digging her fingers into the floor of the tunnel, Ailsa attempted to slow her captor down and perhaps break free. It was no use. Whoever was pulling her was much stronger than she was and getting away was going to be nearly impossible. Ailsa felt her feet leave the end of the tunnel as she was pulled completely out and dropped on the floor feet first with her face against the wall. Two rough hands grabbed hers and pinned them behind her back. The unusual sound of something metallic clicking got her attention as her hands were locked into place. She was then turned around and a voice behind her simply said, “Move!”
Ailsa began to walk as that someone behind her guided her. A bright light shone over her shoulder and lit the way ahead. The light was not from the flickering of some torch or candle. Ailsa guessed her captor must be the man she had been watching in the lab. Retracing her earlier path, Ailsa was guided back down the hallway turning left and walking all the way to the end where upon turning left again she found herself back in the lab. One of her hands was released and brought around in front of her. Dangling from her wrist was a strange metallic object, some kind of device that encircled her wrist and locked into place. Before she could look at her captor’s face, she was pushed forward toward a large, empty lab table in the corner of the room opposite the tunnel she’d just left. Forced to sit down on the floor next to the table, the other end of the binding on her wrist was locked onto a table leg with the quick snap of her captor’s hands. Looking up, she saw the lab man standing over her.
“Let me go!” Ailsa demanded.
The man stood looking at her without saying a word.
“I said, let me go! I just want to go home. I don’t care what you’re doing here, I just want to leave.”
The man continued to stare.
“Who are you? What do you want? What is all this stuff for anyway?” Ailsa tried turning the tables on him by engaging him in some conversation, in something that would give her an indication of why she was being held prisoner. He stood, staring.
“Why do you want me? I’m not your enemy. Just let me go and I’ll never come back.”
“Liar.”
“What?” Ailsa said. “Liar? Why do you say that?”
“I’ve watched you many times outside. You’re not one to give up and forget what you’ve seen here. You’re too headstrong.”
“You have my word. I’ll leave and that’s it.”
“No. I can’t do that.” He turned and walked over to another table and began fiddling with some instruments and other items that were laying there. “I can’t take any chances on having my experiment exposed. I’ve worked too long and too hard only to have something happen to it now.”
“What’s all this for anyway?” Ailsa asked, hoping to befriend this man and gain his trust. “What kind of experiment are you doing?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s an experiment I’ve been working on for over a year. Let’s just say that it’s going to make me a lot of money. That’s all I care about. After that, I can do what I want and go where I want and no one can stop me.”
“You hope no one does.”
“No, I know no one will. Did you see a bubble earlier?”
“Yes. It was in that corner.” Ailsa pointed with her free hand toward the corner where she’d seen this man leave the in the bubble earlier that day.
“Well, that’s my escape. You see, I can travel through time with that. I designed and built it myself. I can go anywhere I want at any time. That’s the beauty of it all. I get my money and disappear to another time and place. No one ever sees me again.”
“God will.”
“What?” The man’s muscles tightened on his arms and his countenance turned cold. “Don’t talk to me about God! I don’t believe in him. I believe in myself, in my accomplishments, in what I can do.”
“But God does exist. Look at all the proof around you. Moreover, he does know what you’re doing. You won’t get away with this.”
“Well, believe what you want. I think I will.” Turning back around, he went back to work. After a few minutes of silence he said, “Ailsa isn’t it?”
“How did you know that?”
“I told you I’ve been watching you. I had to make sure I wasn’t seen, so I’m always on the alert as to where you or anyone else in your home is.”
“How long have you been doing this, this stuff here under my home?”
“Over a year. I had to transport all my equipment here and then get set up. After that, I began venturing outside on occasion and that’s when I would sometimes see you or someone else. I would have been fine had you not stuck your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
“It’s not my fault. It’s yours.”
“What!” He whirled around to face Ailsa. “What do you mean it’s my fault?”
“You’re the one who was careless and left the drain cover loose. I stepped on it this morning and it moved. When I went back to check later I could tell that someone had removed it. If you had put it back on tight, your secret would still be a secret.”
His face tightened. “You didn’t have to go snooping.”
“Why not? It’s my house and I like a good adventure. Besides, I didn’t even know all of this existed, so I wanted to find out something new about my home.”
“Well, you did, didn’t you?”
Ailsa just gave him a dirty look. “What’s your name?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“It’s nice to know who captured me. It also makes for a more civil conversation.”
Staring at her for a minute, he finally said, “Mack.”
“Mack? That’s an unusual name. Do you have a surname?”
“Mack is good enough for you,” he said.
“Okay Mack. So when will you let me go?”
“When I’ve finished my experimentation, made my money and decided on where I’m going, then I’ll let you go.”
“That could be days, weeks. People will miss me. They’ll come searching. They’ll find you and discover what you’re up to. Then it will be all over for you.”
“Maybe,” Mack said, a smirk on his face. “Maybe they’ll look for a day or two. Then, they’ll probably just assume you fell of the cliff and into the sea. They’ll assume you were washed out with the tide. They won’t look that long.”
“So, maybe they won’t. Still, do you want to take a chance on being discovered? Then your secret would really be exposed.”
“Ah. But that’s the beauty of my time machine. You see, all I have to do is travel back in time before they find me. In fact, I could do that with you. Travel back before today and make sure that the drain cover was tight. Then you’d never know any of this.”
“How can that be? Time travel. That’s impossible!”
“Well, it is in your time, but not mine. I invented the time machine. I call it the Bubble Chamber. No one in my era even knows I have it. But, as you can see, I did travel back to your time.”
“How do I know that this isn’t all just fake, a set-up? Maybe you really are experimenting, but not from the future. Maybe you’re just from another town nearby or maybe another country and these are machines that I haven’t seen in my area yet.”
“Good point. But,” Mack hesitated, “that can be solved.”
“How?”
“I can take you to another time. Show you something you already know about or have already done. Then you’d believe me.”
“I suppose I would. So where are we going?”
“Nowhere.”
“What! You just said you’d prove this to me.”
“I may have said I could, but I didn’t say I would. I don’t have to prove myself to you. Besides, I have work to do.” Walking to the other side of the lab, Mack continued working on his experiment.
“I’d really like to see my husband again,” Ailsa said after several minutes of quiet.
“What?”
“My husband. He died a couple years ago from smallpox. I’d like to see him again.”
“I’m sorry about your husband, but I can’t do that.”
“Why not? I thought you said you could travel anywhere.”
“I can. But there’s something called the space-time continuum. Simple stated, if you go jumping around in time, especially in areas where you or people you know exist, there is a real possibility of damaging the continuum and wreaking havoc on all events that would occur after that time.”
“What are you talking about? That makes no sense,” Ailsa said, a bit irritated.
Mack continued. “Let me give you an example. If you were to go back, see your husband, and then inadvertently saw yourself, that simple glitch in time could cause your life from that point on to be changed. You might, let’s say, interfere with yourself and your husband causing yourselves in the past to walk home by a different route than if you, from now, hadn’t interfered. Then, perhaps, because you’ve taken a different route home, you are hit by a horse and carriage and die. What would happen? Your current existence would no longer be possible because you wouldn’t have lived until now and at that moment in time in the past, you, the one who had traveled from the future, would suddenly disappear ceasing to exist. Why do you think I came to a point in time where I knew no one and where I could avoid any contact with the outside world?”
Ailsa sat thinking for a minute. “I see your point,” she said, “but still, that doesn’t prove you are who you say you are. This could still be a sham.”
“I understand your apprehension but you’ll just have to trust me on this one. I’m not here to hurt you in any way. I just need to keep you here until I’m done and then I’ll be gone.”
“So how long with I be here?” Ailsa asked readjusting her position on the floor.
“Well, again, because of time travel, I can do what I need to here, leave and come back at the same time although I might be gone for days or even years. To you, however, it would only be a few seconds, if that. Besides, I’m very close to finishing this project. It could very well be done by tomorrow. Then, all I’ll have to do is bring you back to this time today and drop you off. No one else will know any differently except you.”
Ailsa looked somewhat confused and was trying to comprehend everything Mack was explaining. Finally she asked, “Do I have to stay connected to this leg on the floor? It isn’t very comfortable.”
“Maybe I can move you somewhere else, but I can’t take the handcuffs off. I can’t take a chance of you leaving.”
“What about taking care of personal matters?”
“What kind of personal matters?”
“You know, personal stuff. Things that are taboo to talk about.”
“What, going to the bathroom or something?”
“What’s that?”
“Urinating, relieving yourself, something like that.”
Ailsa, blushing, turned her head away from Mack’s stare. “Um, yes, that kind of personal stuff.”
“I’ve got a small portable toilet you could use.”
“A what?”
“When you need it, I’ll show you.”
“I need it.”
“Oh, good grief.” Mack rolled his eyes and looked at Ailsa. Walking back over to her, he undid her handcuff and took her to the portable toilet. Explaining how it worked, he walked a few feet away and turned his back to give her some privacy. It took Ailsa a few minutes to relax enough to be able to go. Finally she finished her business and indicated that to Mack. Mack turned around and re-cuffed her arm. Leading her to a chair, he let Ailsa sit down next to another lab bench. He then handcuffed her to the leg of this bench and made sure there was nothing within her reach she could use to try to escape. Ailsa looked tired. Her brunette hair was disheveled and hung in strands over her face. Her green eyes glowed softly in the artificial light. They too looked tired.
Mack went back to working on his experiment. After another half an hour or so of quiet he said, “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back in a second.” He chuckled at his own joke. Ailsa didn’t say anything. She just sat and stared at him. Picking up his backpack and some other items, he placed them near the tunnel entrance. Then he clipped a small two-inch square box to his belt. On the front of it were some buttons, a keypad and a digital readout. Keying in the appropriate digits, Mack and his supplies were suddenly surrounded by the giant red sphere. Watching intently, Ailsa’s facial features reflected a rainbow of colors as Mack’s Bubble Chamber disappeared. The room was suddenly bathed in silence except for the few sounds of bubbling and hissing given off by the glass array which Mack had been so feverishly working with. Ailsa closed her eyes. She didn’t know what she was going to do.
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