Chapter Twenty-One: Vunderkind

**Kind of narcissistic, isn’t it, having to introduce myself?**

Mastermind: Vunderkind

Domain: A.g(r)eek

________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

THE BEAST OF TIMES PAST

A S A R I

New Nigeria, 3023

“Why do I have to use pen and paper?” I grumbled. “My MindEtcher is still new. How did you even find paper in the first place?”

Irabor smiled. His eyes always crinkled whenever he smiled, like he was about to tell you an old tale he heard around the campfire as a little boy. But I knew Irabor wasn’t a cheery old man. True, he was 265 years old, but that was equivalent to middle age in the year 3023.

No, Irabor wasn’t old. Or cheery.

Irabor was a criminal, wanted in all countries of the World.

He was currently hiding in my basement in New Nigeria, and he was forcing me to write his memoirs with pen and paper, which I thought of as rather odd. The last known commercial production of paper was in the 2190s, and since then, it had been relegated to the same museum as parchment and papyri. Now we used MindEtchers, devices which tapped into our minds and wrote out the things we ‘thought’ out to them.

‘Asari’, he smiled at me, “indulge me, Asari. I am an old-fashioned man.”

I sighed, wiped the sweat off my brow and poised my pen over the yellowed paper. It was hot in the basement, and Irabor wasn’t in the least bit bothered by it.

“The World Police. They will catch up with you, you know that? They might not have now, but soon.”

Irabor nodded sagely. “I know.”

“So why do you not run? My basement is not safe for you.”

“Listen, Asari, and write. I will have no need to trouble you further.

“Write on the paper, Asari. Write about the demon, that beast that I seek to cage. The monster I intend to destroy.

“Write about Albert Einstein, killer of all that was good.”

Irabor’s story begins here.

S T A N

(April 18, 1955: Early Morning)

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY: the hospital where Albert Einstein Died

(This is a historical account of the hours before AND AFTER the death of the famous scientist, Albert Einstein)

Stan stared through the window, and saw New Jersey in all its sleepy glory. He chewed at the tip of his favorite smoking pipe, but he was too distracted to notice the grating sounds he was making.

He was so close to victory, yet he was so tense. Any slight change could botch things for him. With the death of Einstein, he would be victorious – or he would be lost forever.

Victor walked briskly in and stood at attention, even though Stan had his back turned to him.

“Stan. Einstein is dead.”

Stan didn’t turn around. He took a deep breath, let it out calmly and replied, “And the nurse by his side? Did he say anything to her?”

“He spoke in German, Stan.”

“Did he say anything to her? She is German, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Stan. She did.”

“What did he say to her? Never mind. Bring her in.”

Victor departed to return with a subdued nurse.

“Well?” Stan asked, without even turning around still.

“He…he was incoherent, sir. He was blabbing before he died!”

Stan swirled around and glared at her. “What did he say? Tell me!”

“It made no sense, sir. Don’t be offended. He was delirious.”

Stan picked a glass mantelpiece from the table, and threw it with such force that it shattered on the wall behind the nurse. The pieces ricocheted off the wall and cut her at numerous places across her neck. She fell to her knees, covering her face and whimpering miserably. Victor stared ahead, impassive.

“I will ask again,” Stan breathed. “What did he – “

“Aber, Sie bloggen Leser! Wie kann man erwarten, dass ich die letzten Worte von Einstein wissen? Dies ist, warum sie es nennen, fiction, Bruder!!” she shrieked.

“What?” Stan asked, incredulous.

“That’s what he said! I swear!”

“Can you translate what it means? Do you understand what he said?”

The frightened nurse, BroomHilda stuttered “y-yessir.

Stan smiled.

He had won.

D R.  I R A B O R  A N D  P R O F E S S O R  S I L A S

Princeton, New Jersey 3023

Dr. Irabor sat in front of Professor Silas, sipping rehydrated coffee and discussing very dangerous matters.

“I can’t see a point here, Irabor,” Silas said through clenched lips. “What you are saying here is a crime across all countries of the world.”

“I know it is a crime, but you have to agree that I do pose some very valid arguments.”

Professor Silas sighed and picked up his MindEtcher. Dr. Irabor winced. He hated those things.

“I will force myself to listen to you again,” Professor Silas said resignedly.

Dr. Irabor grinned. “All I ask. Historical accounts show us that there are holes in our history that shouldn’t be there. There are questions like, why do we no longer produce hair? Why are our females sterile? Why are we going extinct?”

“Darwinism, Irabor. Darwinism. Charles Darwin said this thousands of years ago. Our specie’s vigor is diminishing, and we are seeing the end of days. Another more dominant species would take over, and we would fade away.”

“Exactly. If we are waning, according to the laws of Natural Selection, and giving way to a better species, I ask you, Silas, where is the super species? Do you see any around? If the dominant species is to take over from us, they should already be here. I ask you: can you find any species more skilled at utilizing their environment that the homo sapiens?”

Professor Silas scratched his hairless head and raised his eyebrows – or they would have been raised, had he any eyebrows – and sighed again.

“So you think this is not the natural order of things. You think someone has tampered with the space-time continuum?”

“Yes! And I do not think, I know, Silas!” Irabor rummaged through the pockets of his suit and produced a slip of paper and placed it triumphantly on Silas’ desk.

Professor Silas took a peek at the document, flinched and asked “where the hell did you find that?”

Irabor laughed. “I stole it from WOTTS.”

“How did you steal from the World Time Travel Station? It’s impossible!”

“Not impossible, my friend. WOTTS is compromised. The aristocracy has compromised it. For the right price, your president can go back in time to see a girlfriend that died in 2804.”

Silas shook his head slowly. “Lies, Irabor. WOTTS is sworn to a set of codes of conduct!”

But Irabor was still talking. “Frankly, I couldn’t care less whether a president wants to have sex in the past, considering that our women today are sterile and asexual. It’s a cruel joke, don’t you think, that our women no longer need or want sex, but we are still left with hard dicks? Don’t you think it is funny that we are all gay? Hell no, Silas, whenever I put my cock in another man, I feel revolted, but what can I do?”

Professor Silas winced. He hated the sex chat. “We all hate having to sleep with men. But our women are, er, unavailable for that sort of thing.”

Irabor chuckled. “As I was saying. On that document, you will find five sections of history cordoned off from even the aristocrats.”

“What do you mean…cordoned off?”

“I mean sealed off. Even if you have access to time travel, Silas, you CANNOT get to those places. They are sealed off by a Time Cap.”

“How do you know all these? You’re breaking several laws.”

“I research. And I bribe. Like the aristocrats. Where I cannot bribe, I kill.”

“You WHAT?”

“Don’t worry, Silas. It can’t be proven. I leave no trail. And now, back to the five sections in history. The Two World Wars. The Death of Adolf Hitler. The Great Depression. Hiroshima. Finally, the invention of the Time Machine itself.

Of course, anything beyond 1800 is beyond the limits of time travel itself. So, I ask myself, why were these times sealed off?”

Silas asked sarcastically. “Yes, Irabor. Why?”

“Because some of these portions of history had already been tampered with. I met with Markos. Markos Ajamimogha. You know what he told me? He told me he and his colleagues went to the year 2082 to do nuclear testing in Zambia, wiping out the natives. That is why Zambia is a wasteland today. Needless to say, I killed him.”

Dr. Irabor paused to savor the shocked expression registering on Professor Silas’ face. “I have the solution, my friend. Our hairlessness. The women’s sterility. The fact that we are going extinct because there are no willing females to carry our seed.”

“Ah.” Silas smiled for the first time. “You want to go back in time and change the course of history. How brave and foolish. The core principle of Time Travel is this: Time implodes on itself. You will only destroy time further if you try to ‘help’ it. If you try to alter a single timestream, you may just end up destroying it totally.”

Irabor smiled. “This is where we are different. You are the physicist. You see time as a series of parallel lines that converge at the same time. For you, it is an infinite loop, with each line of action canceling out another. I, on the other hand, am a lowly historian. I can single out history, break it into sections, extract a nugget, and watch how it affects the rest of the future.

“What I’m saying is, I have found that one timeline that will change everything and make it good. I need to behead the beast that has caused us much sorrow. I have three hundred more years, tops, to live on this planet. I will not continue sticking my dick in a man’s asshole.”

Silas shook his head. “How do I even come in on this madness?”

Irabor smiled. “I know you are an aristocrat.”

Silas’ eyes widened. “What? Who told you – ?”

“The last one I killed. Maven Smith. In Canada. He gave me the list of Aristocrats. You are number 15. You have traveled to the Amazons in 1904 – just for relaxation and to enjoy the extinct flora and fauna – and repeatedly to 2013 to have sex with a young maiden. Foolish luxuries, but at least you don’t get to fuck men like I have to.”

Silas was visibly shaken. “So what? Are you going to kill me now?” As he said this, his hand crept slowly underneath his desk where a button lay hidden.

“I would prefer not to, Silas. I know you have a time machine stashed in your house. All I want is your willing optical triggering of the device, and I can go back in time, kill my beast, and hop back.”

“NO. I am bound by the code.”

“Ah. Thought so.” Irabor shot him square on his chest. Professor Silas jerked, pressed hard against the button, and crumpled on his desk.

The Klaxon filled the entire building at once.

Dr. Irabor quickly flicked out his knife, pried out both of Professor Silas’ eyes, dropped them in a jar of formaldehyde, stashed the jar under his suit and hurried out of the office.

A S A R I

“You killed him!” I shrieked, dropping my pen.

Irabor smiled. “You don’t have to pretend to be shocked. I’ve killed 76 people so far, and it is all in the news.”

I shook my head, but deep down I was in sweats. Was he going to kill me too?

“You see, Asari, I am a very detailed man. I needed a time machine for my next move, and only Silas could give me as easily as I would have liked. The other aristocrats were too heavily guarded for my liking.

“By the way, you are beautiful. I like the way you wince when I tell you these things.”

I winced again, then checked myself. True, I was gay, but Irabor wasn’t my type. I just didn’t have a thing for intercontinental serial killers.

“Do you know what the history books say?”

“I think that is a rhetorical question. I’m a doctor.” I replied as evenly as I could.

He laughed, eyes crinkling again. “The history books. After Stan heard the words of Einstein, he realized that Time Travel worked on the principle of Matter. I’m sure you are familiar with the one:

”Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be converted from one from to another.”

I nodded stiffly.

“Well. There’s something else. Light, the one from the sun, has a slight time lag. In essence, when you see me, you are basically seeing me from the past – a few microseconds from the past. Stan and Victor, both American scholars and military personnel, put two and two together, and created the time machine.

“The principles then are still the same of today’s time machine. The human body is converted into energy…light energy, and this light energy is retrogressively driven until it gets to its equivalent state in a particular time and then it is switched back to consolidated matter – back to the original human.”

I blinked. “isn’t…isn’t it dangerous?”

“It is. If you aren’t wearing the suit. The Time Jump Suit. The suit is a spandex-like material that ‘contains’ the energy and ensures that you are safely reconsolidated.

“But…” I looked around my basement, and stared at the time machine Irabor had brought here from Professor Silas’ house. “there is no suit.”

Irabor smiled wanly and ignored my question.

He revved up the machine, and it made a low hum. On the LED display, I saw the message Clearance Requested. He retrieved Professor’s Silas eyes from the jar and held it up to the machine. The machine beeped and got into ready mode.

Punching a series of keys, he selected April 18, 1955. 00:00 HRS.

He stepped on the platform and in a flash of light, he was gone.

P R I N C E T O N,  N E W  J E R S E Y

00:00 HRS, April 18^th, 1955.

I R A B O R

Here I stood, in the same room as Albert Einstein. He was sleeping. It felt amazing knowing he had only a few hours left to live.

I pulled out my knife and walked calmly to him. He would be my 77^th and final kill. I would finally slaughter the beast that ruined history.

He stirred as I placed my hand on his chest and called, “BroomHilda?”

I laughed. “BroomHilda is not here, old man. It is just you and me.”

I lifted my knife, poised to slit his wrinkled throat, when I heard him whisper: “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination“. Then – “Stan, this secret is going to the grave with me.”

I froze. I knew that phrase. Infinite diversity in Infinite Combination. The IDIC principle. The good of the many surpasses the good of the one. The same principle I abided by, which was why I was going to kill Einstein – to save the many. By killing him – the one.

I looked around. I saw an empty bottle beside his bed. I picked it up and read the labeling. Delirion.

Delirion. One of the most potent drugs from their time. It had the inexplicable effect of forcing whoever was on a dose of it to confess his most closely guarded secret before death.

Albert Einstein had been powerless against Delirion, and that was why he revealed what he did to the German nurse.

BroomHilda.

He had had no choice. Einstein would have let the secret of the time machine go down to the grave with him if he could. I looked at the wheezing old man on the bed again, and my beast wasn’t looking nearly as venomous and all fangs as I would have hoped.

I knew I couldn’t possibly kill him.

I instantly knew what to do.

Einstein still didn’t know I was in the room. I tiptoed out and bumped into BroomHilda, the German nurse. She was holding a tray of drugs, and I could see that one of them was Delirion.

“Who…?” she asked, confused.

Wasting no time, I bashed the side of her head with the handle of my knife, and she fainted.

I quickly carried her away.

S T A N

(April 18, 1955: Early Morning)

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY: the hospital where Albert Einstein Died

(This is a historical account of the hours AFTER the death of the famous scientist, Albert Einstein, in the time stream altered by Dr. Irabor)

“What the hell did you say????”  Stan was livid.

Victor was shaking. He had never seen Stan so pissed. The nurse beside him was crying in fright.

“I had no idea why you – I am sorry!” Victor said.

“Sorry??!” Stan flipped the table lamp over. “Sorry!? Victor, the man is dead!  Dead, with the one thing we need to finally complete our plan! Why do you think we had him drugged with Delirion? Why do you think I asked for a German nurse by his bedside?”

Nurse Catherine whimpered. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew that Stan was scaring her.

She wondered where BroomHilda was.

D r.  I r a b o r

It wasn’t until after three that afternoon that I stopped fucking BroomHilda. Only then did I release her to go be with her family.

It felt good as fuck.

My timepiece was still on my wrist. One button, and I would be back in the future. The corrected future, with straight, hairy men and horny women. It felt good. The thought did.

I left the hotel room, and walked down the cobbled streets. Looking about me, I saw women everywhere. One of them gave me the eye, and I felt a slight tug in my pants again. My lust was coming on again.

I looked at my timepiece again.

Professor Silas had asked me if I was sure this – the killing of Einstein – would resolve everything. I had said yes. 

But I lied.

I hadn’t bothered with the suit – the Time Jump suit – because I knew I was going to make the trip only once. Just once. There was no return trip. And I asked Asari to write the journal simply because I wanted one person in the future to remember me, at least.

How does time work? Now that I have prevented the invention of the time machine, would Asari suddenly have eyebrows and become straight? Would the future have horny women? Would Professor Silas still be alive, since essentially, I killed him while we were discussing time machines (which no longer exist since I have corrected the past)? If I am here right now, where am I in the future? If I have prevented Victor and Stan from making the time machine, then it means the time machine doesn’t exist in my future, therefore I cannot go back there, right?

But then again, if the time machine doesn’t exist anymore in my future, how did I get here to stop the invention of the time machine in the first place?

The Grandfather paradox was happening all over again. All I needed to do to test it was push the button on my timepiece and watch it drag me back to the future – my present.

Go on, Irabor. Push the damn button. Push it. 

“Excuse me sir. I am new in town. Do you know a good place to eat?” A freckled lady with soft lips asked me.

I looked at her, then back at the timepiece.

Come on, Irabor. Just one press, and you will be back in the future.

I blinked at the lady. She had blonde hair. Like BroomHilda.

“I happen to be hungry too. Let us go hunting together”, I found myself saying through suddenly parched lips.

She smiled warmly and took my arm. She didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t have eyebrows.

The timepiece lay smashed underneath a random vehicle.

………………………………………………..

RESOURCES

The Grandfather Paradox: The grandfather paradox is a proposed paradox of time travel first described by the science fiction writer René Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent (Future Times Three).[1] The paradox is described as following: the time traveller went back in time to the time when his grandfather had not married yet. At that time, the time traveller kills his grandfather, and therefore, the time traveller is never born when he was meant to be. ——— Source: Wikipedia

“A lingering gall-bladder infection sent him to the hospital. Blood began to escape from his aorta, the main artery. Shortly after midnight he muttered a few sentences in German. The night nurse could not understand, and the last words of the modern world’s greatest scientist were lost. At 1:15 a.m. Albert Einstein, 76, died in his sleep.” (“Death of a Genius)

———– Yahoo! Answers

And for the German, thanks goes to http://www.google.com/translate (I know no word of German. You can stop famzing now.)

The more curious of you will translate that German word back to English, I know… Sigh. Hasn’t Kemmie told you? Curiosity terminated the feline!