Daily Scifi Shorts, Sketches, & Starts

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

"Haven't you guessed?" Norris asked. "I'm a time traveler."
    "Ah. Time traveler," Soren repeated, his derision restrained only with great effort.
    "You don't believe me."
    Soren spun the photo around and looked at it, then looked up at Norris. "There is no doubt that this photograph was taken in 1971. It appeared in the Sun on Thursday, October 21, 1971." He leaned over the table and thumped it. "This really is you, isn't it?"
    "Yes, it is. That was taken this morning--from my point of view."
    Soren leaned back in his chair and there was a pause. "Look, I'm faced here with something I don't understand." He paused again, his fingers toying with the corner of the photo that lay between them. "I'm willing to consider, to accept, a lot. But time travel? The idea that you were captured in the photo in 1971 this morning and you're here having luc.nch with me now? Forty-four years later?"
    Norris looked like he understood; he nodded. "It's hard to explain," he said. "You want me to try?"
    "Sure," Soren said.
    Norris' affect suddenly changed. He seemed to go from nervous, somewhat bumbling and uncertain to fully in command of himself and the situation. He straightened up in the chair and, in a deft movement, removed the glasses he'd been wearing, the ones he was wearing in the photo, and laid them on the table next to it. "I don't really move in time any differently than you do," he began. "What I am able to do, what all of--" he paused, seeming to struggle for the word. "--my kind can do, is move between all the possible futures from any particular now moment."
    "Now moment?"
    "Yes, that's what we call the instant you're living in, the one you're trapped in. We're not trapped in it."
    "Really?"
    "Yes. Aren't you conscious of being trapped?"
    "No," Soren replied.
    Norris stared at him for a moment, eyebrows raised. "Well, anyway, I'm not restricted to your now moment. From my point of view, I can see the events that led to you being right here, right now, and the many that flow from it."
    "Many," Soren repeated.
    "Yes. Very many, as a matter of fact. The difference between the past and the future is choice. You have no choice about the past. You have complete choice about the future. Don't you?"
    Soren shrugged. "I guess so," he said.
    "Come now, Mr. Roshwald. Don't you believe in free will?"
    "Free will?"
    "The idea that you choose your own path, from moment to moment," he said. "That's really what it comes down to."
    "Yes, free will. I'm an educated man, Mr. Westerlake," Soren said, returning the formal address. "Although i understand that experts disagree, it certainly does appear that I have at least some small degree of free will."
    "Any degree of free will is absolute," Norris returned.
    "It seems to me that I have some free will but not absolute."
    "Your free will is absolute," Norris said.
    "No. I can't choose anything. I can't choose to get in my car, drive to Washington, and sleep in the White House."
    Norris was quiet for a moment. "No," he said. "That you cannot do. However, there are many futures in which you could sleep in the White House." Once again, he was silent for a moment.