The Chair and the Wardrobe

THE CHAIR AND THE WARDROBE

MY NAME IS CLOVERFIELD. Professor Jeremy Cloverfield. And I’m going to tell you the most unlikely romantic tale science had ever told.

When I was young (which was not so long ago), I was allowed the opportunity to touch my students’ lives and they did the same in return. But two of them did not only touch it. They seized it, shook it and almost drained it.

I survived those years. But there is no escape. Even now.

Jacques, a real intelligent boy who has been entrusted to me for his tutelage, came rushing one summer afternoon pleading me to permit him tour the city with two interesting strangers.

“No way, boy. Absolutely. My bank account is not enough for ransom money,” I answered firmly, raising my eyeglasses on the bridge of my nose while reading the thick book, Anatomy of a Human.

“But—I had already promised them! You should meet them, Professor! They are so fascinating. They answered all my curious queries that no book had ever done. And their debates—ah, their debates! Those opposing propositions they threw at each other. All well-proven. All theoretically plausible. If worse comes to worst, leave me then to my parents. They will do something.”

My left brow wrinkled.

“Ah, your parents! Your good-for-nothing parents, my dear Jacques! Going overseas and escaping parenting. Leaving an active boy to a limping old man,” I replied in mock humor.

“I don’t think they’re bad, Professor,” Jacques grabbed my hand and ushered me beside the opened window. “There. Now, look. Just young students. No, I presume young geniuses.”

Struggling at my weak vision, I stared at the distance. Yes, young students who appeared like they are arguing. That calm reception of the other’s idea. That cool rejection of the other’s hypothesis. I had seen all of these before. I strained my eyes for a clearer view. Please, I thought, don’t play fake images on me now. I lowered my eyeglasses and felt a cold finger ran down my spine.

Of course they had already happened. I know better.

“Half an hour, Jacques. No more. Afterwards, please invite our guests for a tea. I would really want to meet them.”

***

“Oh?” a familiar voice broke easily through confused silence. “Your theories are all too well—all too well on the white board, Sir.” She twirled her pen between her fingers and her distinctive curious frown curved her fair features. “But that equation feels a bit lacking.”

“Merci. I am more impressed that you only find a bit lacking. Then that would mean you had unexpectedly caught up with the majority of what I am saying here,” his cool unperturbed response vibrated in the air of ignorant stillness.

“Prego,” she chuckled. “Majority? That was rather a humble appraisal of you when I am most glad to have reached the end where your whole talk is going from the moment you took your first point. If you would excuse me for being straightforward, the entire thing is possible so I would have the mind to tell you that you should have done better in streamlining your report. I mean who would want to be always reminded that one plus one is two. Well, I agree that temporal and spatial boundaries are capable to be transgressed.”

“Ilo siento,” Pierre feigned sincerity. “The time paradox is a spectral hypothesis, señorita. It was in 1905 that the world first heard of the special theory of relativity. Frames of reference moving at constant velocity with each other. Possible implications in time dilation effect. Now that’s right. Yes. Yes. Put motion and gravity in the equation. Discrepancies of nanoseconds had been proven. A year or a hundred does not matter. What always remain is—it can be done, anytime.”

“Excellente.” she raised an eyebrow and casually studied her fingernails. “Well now, regarding that equation—a real complex one being the function of motion and gravity. It holds true, theoretically, but in reality, practically speaking, I doubt. That marginal error is far too high and risky. It can be reduced to achieve the optimum of that function. Transpose the f^-1 to a third-degree quantity equation. Go for the inverse variable for the range of your fifth coefficient in the subset of the interlocking quantity. Yes. That’s more accurate.”

“Oh, yes. How could I forget such demanding precision that attempted to quantify the behavior of quarks for every given particles of hadrons but still had to temporarily suspend the project for the alleged unaccounted deterrent tendencies of the particles?” he wittingly responded with a well-veiled caustic humor.

“Ah that,” she purred. “A setback with nothing to lose is more pleasing to deal with than an outright fresco with every hypothesis defied by the experiment. So what happened with that fermionic condensate at above absolute zero?”

“Funny to regard it as a fresco when—”

The bell rang. I sighed. Finally. An hour had passed and all we did is to swivel our heads to each one of them. I watched their classmates leave in pale faces, the nerves in their skulls finally relieved from the thousand miles per second run. The room which seemed to have also held its breath during the usual baffling battle of intellect had been emptied save from the most troublesome pair in my class: Pierre and Eclaire—a pair of intolerable geniuses. I always wonder if it is possible to have two contradictory thoughts true at the same time because that’s what they do and in the end, you find it difficult not to believe both of them.

Well, brats are brats. Genius or not.

“Working on the grandfather paradox and you haven’t finished your composition. Too confident, are we?” Eclaire scoffed.

“We have each of our time. Manage yours and I’ll take care of mine,” scowled Pierre. “You know, your equation earlier is something only a lousy physicist would make. Now, could you get that face out of here and go play your shoddy song on your noisy violin?”

As part of its Annual Cultural Festival, the school will conduct the Grand Music Tournament for all instruments next week. I don’t think it is necessary to fill you in who dominated the stage last year.

“A shoddy piece to defeat a shoddier piece. The honor is mine,” she answered gruffly and put a hand on her waist. “Well then, I am paying you now my advance apology if I should drag your sorry skin before the audience next week.” Her purported calmness was defied by the flare of barbaric contempt in her eyes.

I know where this is going. And I do not like it.

“For heaven’s sake, you two!” I tried to intervene, knowing for sure of my invisibility before them. “With those brains, there is no way your inexhaustible vocabularies miss the word harmony.”

“Surely not,” Eclaire said to the thin air. “It’s only non-applicable for this dim-witted ogre.”

“You impertinent little—”

Pierre raised his hand on the air as if to strike her; his fragile patience barely restraining it like a taut thread. She never flinched but met his glare with a steely gaze.

“Little what?” demanded Eclaire indignantly.

“Stop this, will you!” I endeavored to establish my authority, of course, in vain.

“Go on, Pierre! You’re just talks!” she goaded. He refused to move. “If you won’t, then I will.”

As if caught unguarded, she grasped him by the arm, hauled him in the air and threw him on the floor: a genuine aikido throw. That was no fluke. No one can contend against her in that field. I inwardly pray that Pierre will let the matter off. I have every instinct telling me he will respond with his judo. A grapevine reached me that some schools even bribed the headmaster just not to let him join the finals.

“Oh? So that’s it? The judges surely have the credentials, huh?” Pierre mumbled sarcastically while he raised himself with little difficulty.

“Look at my kindness and what I get in return!”

I coughed, summoning all determination inside me.

“If you don’t stop now,” I threatened. “No special favors from the laboratory.”

That got them. It’s my win.

***

I sighed before the door of the laboratory while I fumbled for the key in my chest pocket. There is no way to reconcile those two. When I already had the key in my fingers, I realized it was unnecessary. The lock had been picked. And I can narrow down the suspects in two.

This laboratory, dusty and damp as it may seem, can actually claim as the most powerful one in the world. Well, where will you find a laboratory housing two time machines at the same time?

“Good day, Professor,” greeted Eclaire. “I really think this is ready. I just need to test it.”

She was examining her invention: a wardrobe with a mirror, a deceptive design for her time machine. A set of buttons was inconspicuously hidden near the lock and handle. She said she wanted it to look as domestic as possible.

Believe me, she was not the only one who did.

After performing the necessary finishing touches, she smiled smugly then reclined on the cushioned chair opposite the wardrobe. A jolt of panic swelled in me.

“No! Get out of it! Don’t—”

The girl had playfully tapped her fingers on the chair’s armrest and accidentally hit the covered console. You would not believe how calmly she watched my delirium. Red streaks of light shot out from all over the chair, piercing through her. Her keen perception took over and did the analysis. In less than a second, she whispered which told me she already knew what is happening and what will happen. And whatever it is—is inevitable.

I was crouching on the floor, my hands squeezing my head for ideas. It is my student who was stolen by the blank thin air into nothingness. I was considering all possibilities when I heard the door slid off its metal frame.

“Hey, Professor. Hope you can lend me a hand into some adolescent problem I am running in. I have confessions to turn down and love letters to dispose,” the voice said. “And there are quite a number of them. As we know, I have that chair to deal with.”

It took me a while to recognize that voice. When I looked up, he was preening himself in front of the wardrobe mirror.

“Hmm? This looks a bit different that it did yesterday,” he raised an eyebrow and tried to open it. Unluckily for the boy, his grip slipped from the handle and instead touched the forbidden mechanism. When he inadvertently pressed the buttons, his hand leaning on the mirror was sucked in as if he had activated a dormant black hole. He was reserved and composed, displaying only the slightest surprise. He paid a quick assessment of the invention, measuring and examining everything in a glance.

“Hold on, Pierre! I’ll get you out of there!”

A smile twitched the side of his mouth as he was being dragged by the mirror.

“Give it up, Professor. This thing does not know how to terminate a command once it was given. Honestly, what a childish design she got,” he chuckled. Half of his body had been consumed. “Well then, Professor, I’ll temporarily take my leave and see the world beyond the looking-glass.”

And just like that, they vanished into another time and place with nothing to return them back.

***

Half an hour had passed and as promised, Jacques returned with his new unlikely friends. He had a lot of tales to tell which I had temporarily cut. I have guests to attend. When they finished their tea (which they did so after arguing and discussing about antioxidants, bacteria and biomes), I beckoned them to the basement after I sent Jacques upstairs to clean himself.

“I will not wonder if there are secret chambers, passage ways, vaults or catacombs from this point but this is how far you can take us,” the boy said curtly.

“For once I will agree.”

“You may be right about the chambers and passage ways but there is certainly no hidden grave yard here,” I said huskily, quite hurt. I know that I and my humble home are both getting old but I do not consider ourselves a ghost and a haunted house.

There, at the middle of the room stood something like a telephone booth. I pulled off the black covers grayish from dust. The thing was paneled with crystal glass. One side of it was embedded with buttons and a dial. That is what had perhaps interested them for they knew that instant what the machine has to offer. They inspected it closer. Curiosity overriding caution.

“My students developed it almost seven years ago.”

“Well,” started the girl, her index finger and thumb arched at her chin. “This one is better. The precision is remarkable but still—it is less than perfect.”

“Imperfect is the right term,” snickered the boy. “I guess the possibility of portability is still a long way off.”

“You better go,” I said hastily while their brains were engaged by the telephone booth. I pushed them inside, locked it, operated the necessary buttons and dialed the pattern. The last thing I need is two geniuses obtaining the knowledge of the future. For a brief moment, I saw the girl banging on the glass pane. I perceived from their faces that realization had finally dawned on them. I just hope they did not notice the more stunning future ahead of them which would change the course of their lives forever.

I punched the last key. Then they were gone.

Jacques came in his night shirt and pajamas. He seemed to be finding where did the guests go. It looks like I’ll have to develop a real credible excuse later on. Telling half the truth and keeping the other half is another choice.

“Ah, that machine!” he blurted excitedly and ran near the invention. He giggled as the overwhelming enthusiasm ran through him.

“ … Is the modified time machine Pierre and Eclaire developed seven years ago after the little glitch from their separate inventions of the same kind.”

“Mom and Dad said it is still far from being perfect. That was years ago.”

“They still think the same. Until now,” I grinned.