History Shattered

Electromagnetic Field: The magnetic influence of electric currents and magnetic materials. It is, at any given point, specified by both a direction and a magnitude and as such is classified as a vector field. Magnetic fields are produced by moving electric charges and the intrinsic magnetic moments of elementary particles associated with a fundamental quantum property, their spin. In special relativity, electric and magnetic fields are two interrelated aspects of a single object, called the electromagnetic tensor, the split of this tensor into electric and magnetic fields depends on the relative velocity of the observer and charge. In quantum physics, the electromagnetic field is quantized and electromagnetic interactions result from the exchange of photons. In modern physics, the electromagnetic field is understood not to be a classical field, but rather a quantum field. It is represented not as a vector of three numbers at each point, but as a vector of three quantum operators at each point. The Standard Model of Particle Physics incorporates quantum electrodynamics. – Wikipedia (definition of electromagnetic field)

Monica stared at the image of her lover, suddenly twenty-four years her junior on the giant projection screen. Tyler had yet to see her as the video feed from the meeting room was from a camera in one corner pointed toward the center of the large space. Monica couldn’t help her reaction.

“Tyler, what happened to you?”

Tyler heard her voice, but as he searched the image coming from the monitor in front of him, he couldn’t find her. His voice was anguished as he attempted to respond not merely to the image of his suddenly older colleagues, but also to the apprehension he heard in Monica’s voice.

“What’s wrong, Monica? I haven’t seen myself. Has the plague or the time travel done something to me?”

“You…, you’re so young. How old are you, Tyler? Do you know?”

“I assume I’m thirty-four. That’s how old I was yesterday when we did the test. How old do I look?”

Jasmine picked up the conversation. “And by yesterday, you mean July 17, 2018, right?”

“That’s right. What’s today’s date?”

Jasmine paused as she looked over to a disbelieving Monica for guidance on how or even if she should respond to Tyler’s question. Before Monica could nod her head to indicate that it would be alright to answer Tyler’s question, he repeated it more stridently.

“I said what’s today’s date, goddamn it!”

“It’s April 10th of the year 2043. Tyler, you should be in your late fifties like you were yesterday morning.”

“What in the fuck are you talking about? Yesterday was July 17th. Are you trying to tell me that somehow twenty-five years have just vanished?”

“Well…, from where I’m standing, rather than having them vanish, it looks like you’ve somehow reclaimed ‘em.”

“OK, somebody better start talking quick. This is bullshit! Where’s Monica? I need to talk directly to Monica…”

Monica walked to the center of the meeting room and turned to face the camera sending the images back to Station 28. “I’m right here, Tyler. You’re very sick. You need to calm down. We all need to try to figure this out together. Right now, all we have are lots of questions with almost no answers.”

Tyler looked at the image of his lover, still lovely, still slender, but clearly a generation older than she had been in their bed yesterday morning. He closed his eyes, his head collapsing into his hands and then onto the surface of the console. He began to weep. Clearly, he must be losing his mind. The alternative explanation had always seemed highly improbable. How had he allowed himself to believe that he had actually time travelled? His earlier diagnosis that he was delusional had been the correct one. Monica’s voice called him back to the present.

“Tyler, we are leaning toward accepting the notion that a wormhole was created inside Station 28. Due to its unique position at the exact far end of the accelerator, it was simultaneously bombarded by two massive energy waves produced by the particle collision. Also, we are theorizing that due to the special shielding around 28, designed to serve as a safeguard against pathogens escaping, it somehow served as a containment vessel for the energy, which allowed for the creation of the wormhole. That’s one theory we’ve come up with so far…, that you actually got trapped inside Station 28 with a wormhole. Your arguments regarding your time travel experiences have been fairly compelling. We just haven’t been able to prove them as of yet. That’s why we’re all together here in the meeting room. Most of the folks in the room are just now learning about what your last day or so has been like.”

“OK…, so what does that mean for me?”

“Well, let’s start with the most recent evidence. You just shared images with us you ostensibly took with your camera yesterday morning. Regardless of how outlandish that sounds on the surface, the images are clearly from inside this building and show many of us as we would’ve looked about twenty-five years ago. We just now got our first look at you since the test and since the energy field inside 28 dissolved, and your appearance would most definitely seem to match the timeframe of those photos. It would seem to eliminate any ability we might have otherwise had to argue that you’re either making this up or had somehow falsified the photo images.”

“I got it, Mon…, you’re attempting to convince yourselves that I’m lying about what has happened to me. Let me save you the trouble. I can’t prove I’m not delusional, but I swear on your grandmother Doris’s grave that I’m not lying. So, let me repeat my question…, what does this mean for me?”

“Well, one element of proof would be for you to test yourself to see if you have been infected with the bacteria that causes bubonic plague. If you are infected, then that would go another giant step toward corroborating your story about travelling to fourteenth century Crimea. Do you have the ability to test for that in 28’s lab?”

“Yeah, I’d just need to draw a blood sample. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. Given the symptoms I’ve got, I’m 99 percent convinced I was exposed. My biggest fear is that the antibiotics weren’t administered in time. They’re supposed to be taken within twenty-four hours of exposure, and I was in Caffa longer than that. I just hope the distortion in time that seems to exist between the few hours which passed here versus the day and a half which passed there is working in my favor. Based on how everything else seems to be going, I doubt I’m that lucky.”

“Then it sounds like the sooner you can do it, the better. Can you do that, now? We’ll leave the comm link open so you can hear what we’re talking about here, OK?”

“You’re still the boss, or at least I assume you are.”

“Before you go do that, do you have any other hard evidence you can share with us?”

“Well…, I’d prefer to tell you privately.”

“Tyler, we don’t have time for that. What is it?”

“I took some photos of you yesterday…, private photos…”

“OK, I get it. Can you send them to my e-mail address? Those probably don’t need to be shared with the group.”

“Well, from the looks of you, you’ve still got an amazing body…”

There were a few snickers from around the room as Monica could feel her face reddening. One of her male colleagues made a comment about Tyler’s sense of humor apparently being unaffected.

“You can stop there, Tyler. Just send me the pics.”

“OK, Boss.”

He got up slowly from the console and slowly shuffled off in the direction of one of the station’s labs. His labored breathing was punctuated by a hacking cough. Despite his attempt to appear strong and the ongoing presence of his sense of humor, Tyler was a very sick man.

Monica turned to face Pat. “We need to appoint a team to become the documenters of our apparently conflicting histories. To the extent Tyler can map out his history beyond what he’s already told us, we need to create his timeline. I want to track major political events, major population events, social, scientific, economic…”

From somewhere within Station 28 Tyler’s voice spoke through the room’s speakers. “Don’t forget religious.”

“Right…, thanks. Religious events, wars, revolutions…, basically anything that would qualify as a historical milestone. We need to try to be as accurate as possible in ascribing dates to everything we can. Once we get our dueling histories side-by-side, we’ll at least be able to make some kind of initial assessment on how Tyler might’ve impacted history with his trip back in time.”

Pat nodded his head as he spoke. “You realize how crazy this all sounds, right?”

Tyler’s voice reentered the conversation. “It sounds crazy to me even though I’m the guy it happened to. Pat, you’re right to be as skeptical as you want to be. Just be open-minded enough to acknowledge the creation of a wormhole and the possibilities it suggests if that’s where the physics lead you. I’m probably the worst scientist here this could’ve happened to in terms of understanding any of the physics implications, but that can’t be changed. And I know none of you have said it yet, but…”

Tyler paused and coughed again before continuing. “We need to face the very real possibility that I may be dying from the plague. If that’s the case, then you need to identify everything you want from me in terms of information and try to get it as quickly as you possibly can.”

“You’re gonna be just fine, buddy.”

“I hope you’re right, but we really can’t afford to take that chance, Pat. After the blood test, I’m gonna try and eat something and then just lie back down. Anything I can do to save strength for answering questions seems like the best course of action.”

“That’s probably the right call.”

“I’ll let you guys know when I’ve got test results.”

Tyler’s fingers were trembling as he attempted to find a vein from which to draw blood. After three attempts, he gave up and stuck himself in the finger. He milked the puncture until he had a sufficient sample to perform the blood test. The test itself confirmed what he already knew. The presence of the yersinia pestis bacteria had now been conclusively established. Tyler had the plague. The first portion of the two-part question had now been answered. Yes, he had contracted the bubonic plague. The scarier part of the question…, ‘Had he administered antibiotics in time to arrest its progression?’ was still unanswerable. Tyler realized that in all of his studies, including those specifically about the plague, he had never focused on the recovery process. He had always kind of assumed that recovering was a positive enough answer that it didn’t really matter how long it took or how miserable the recovering patient was during the process. Suddenly, that topic had become quite personal and the answer much more relevant.

He shuffled back to the station’s small kitchen and pulled out one of the military MRE’s that were stuffed somewhat haphazardly in the cabinets. He had made jokes about how unappetizing the whole concept of ‘Meals Ready to Eat’ sounded, and now he was being forced to rely on them for sustenance. Evidently, today was going to be a day filled with introspection and regret. He had removed his headset as he had performed the blood test on himself and attempted to eat. He now returned to his makeshift bed on Station 28’s bathroom floor and put the headset back on. Monica was finishing a statement. When he was certain she had finished, he began speaking into his mike.

“Hey, guys?”

“We’re here, Tyler.”

“I can confirm the presence of the plague bacteria in my bloodstream. I’ve definitely been exposed.”

“I don’t suppose the test showed if we caught it in time?”

“We’re not that lucky. But I imagine we’ll know that answer in less than two days. The plague can kill in less than a week, and that timeframe might be even shorter with the introduction of the Bird Flu into the equation, so I could be dead in just a couple of days. On the other hand, even if we caught the plague in time, my immune system could be so compromised that I can’t fight off the flu, in which case I could still die, but it might take longer. Now, before you guys accuse me of being a pessimist, those are just medical facts I’m stating. I’m an epidemiologist. This is what I do. We need to be dispassionate in our approach to this. We’re scientists, for God’s sake. We need to focus on the totality of the problem. Work the process.”

“But we’re also colleagues…,”

Pat glanced in Monica’s direction before adding, “…or more.”

“OK, let’s get busy. I put together a top ten list of sorts. It covers politics, science, a little religion, basically, some of the major milestones I can remember from history over the past seven hundred years. I’ve already given you a few of them, but we can fill in around those markers. I want to get the same from you. It sounds like I’m the only advocate for my version of history, so the better understanding I can get about your version of history, the more intelligently we can approach this dilemma. I don’t want to waste time on redundancies if it can be avoided. We need to be efficient with our time.”

“That sounds reasonable. It would seem to make sense for us to color in what we think we know before we start debating the relative merits of the competing versions of history.”

“OK, we’re sending our history team to the comm console in Station 3. Just don’t kill yourself exchanging info with them. And I mean that both literally and figuratively, pal.”

“I hear ya, Pat. I’m already lying down, and I’ve already attempted to eat and took my meds. I’m as close to comatose as I can be without actually lapsing into one, which of course we can’t rule out.”

“Jokes…, always with the jokes. Just focus on talking history and getting well. There’ll be plenty of time to joke about this in the future.”

“Is that your future or mine?”

“OK, Tyler…, I surrender. I’ll talk to you later. That would be both of our laters.”

“Roger that, Pat.”

~~~~o~~~~

The history team was headed by Jasmine, but beyond her, it was composed of scientists Tyler did not know. He found it both amusing and mildly disconcerting that he was dialoguing about the havoc he had just wrought on the history of the world with people who were now prominent players in a reality he knew little about but which he had caused to come into being.

He also found himself wondering what these scientists must think of him. To them he was some stranger who had suddenly been inserted into their landscape with a deadly disease and an outrageous tale about travelling to The Dark Ages and back. Or was he a stranger? Sure, they were strangers to him, but he reminded himself that a much older version of Tyler had been working alongside all of these strangers. They knew him…, his intellect, his sense of humor and his work. It was just his thirty-four year old appearance that was strange to them. Everything about the past two days bordered on the absurd.

He was introduced to the History Team, as they were referring to themselves. There were two husbands and wives, Mario and Barbara from Minnesota, Chris, who was originally from New York, and his wife Chandler, who turned out to be female and from Texas. They were all joining Jasmine in this undertaking.

“Tyler, do you feel like talking first? I feel like we kinda need to push you when you have the energy and then allow you to mostly listen when you start to run out of steam.”

“Steam…, the invention of the steam engine…, that shoulda made my list of significant scientific accomplishments.”

“Does that mean you want to talk?”

“No…, I think I want to hear your thoughts about what I’ve already shared and listen to how your history’s different than mine.”

“OK, then let me just fire back at the stuff you already threw out one at a time, and let’s expand the dialogue about each subject to the extent we need to. Let’s start with The Black Death.”

“Not my favorite topic given my current medical situation, but OK…, go for it.”

“The Black Death killed an estimated three hundred to three hundred fifty million people in Europe. That number represented between ninety and ninety-five percent of the continent’s population. It was further estimated that it killed over thirty percent of the entire population of the planet. Europe’s population did not return to pre-plague levels until the mid-1700’s, roughly four hundred years after the pandemic.”

“OK, stop there for a minute. Let me frame this. In my version of history, the estimates are far less exact. Like 75 to 200 million deaths representing between 30 and 60 percent of Europe’s population and less than twenty percent of the global pop. Also, European pop levels recovered in about a century and a half, but then that’s really just a math function. Holy shit…, if you start figuring out the impact on future generations, that numerical difference gets into the billions pretty quickly.”

“Tyler, it probably does, but let’s not go there yet. That kind of discussion needs to be part of the next phase of this analysis. Right now let’s just focus on the known. That’ll be tricky enough. Like the Renaissance.”

“What’s the tricky part there? Was it delayed by a century or two?”

“There is no period in our history which is referred to as the Renaissance. It sounds like the period you refer to as The Dark Ages was a bridge period between the Renaissance and the fall of the Roman Empire. It also sounded like your history dealt mainly with what was going on in Europe. You’ve gotta realize that pretty much nothing was going on in Europe for a few hundred years post-plague.”

“That was a golden era for art, architecture, science, invention. Are you telling me all that has been lost?”

“Tyler, focus! I’m not telling you anything like that. If we’re having this conversation, it means that scientific advancement has apparently arrived at the same spot in the road, give or take twenty-five years, over a seven century time horizon. That sounds like nickels and dimes in the grand scheme of things. For the sake of getting through this process, please turn off the sentimental part of your brain and try to be clinical. Can you do that for us?”

“You’re right, Jasmine. I’ll try.”

“Good, then let’s talk about the Civil War. My notes from earlier say that it supposedly occurred in the 1860’s and was a battle between the north and south in the US over slavery and the agricultural economy of the southern US. Do I have that right?”

“Yeah, that’s essentially spot on.”

“And in your history the slaves were blacks who had been brought to this country from Africa. Do I have that part right as well?”

“You do.”

“Tyler, we didn’t have a civil war, and while slavery was a part of the agrarian economy in the southern US for much of the nineteenth century, the slaves were whites.”

“Bullshit! How is that possible?”

“Well, the survivors of the plague in Europe, many of whom were serfs from the feudal culture which was in place, migrated to Africa to survive. Many of them were forced into slavery, which wasn’t particularly different than the system they had previously found themselves under in Europe. Eventually, as the US was colonized, slaves were brought here from Africa. It’s just that in our history, they’re white, and in yours, they’re black. Frankly, it sounds to me like our version is far more plausible.”

“While I can see your point, I also can’t picture anything like that happening when Europe was essentially the origin of enlightenment and knowledge and world exploration…, and pretty much almost everything I associate with mankind’s advancement as a species.”

“Welcome to a brave new world, Tyler.”

“Yeah, you can say that again!”

“Welcome to a brave new world, Tyler.”

“Hey, Jasmine, watch it. No matter how things might’ve changed, I’m still the comedian around here.”