The history-altering potential of time-
travel stories has significant pros and
cons. On the one hand, if it is possible
to re-write history, then free will does
exist after all, and traumatic events such
as the Anglo-Irish War and the Irish
Civil War are not inevitable. On the
other hand, if you succeed in changing
anything, the universe will more than
likely ruin your life and tie your brain
in knots. The final Mad Scientist of
this collection learns this the hard way,
in Tarlach Ó hUid’s wry treatment of
nationalist wish-fulfilment fantasies.
This story was originally published in Irish
as ‘An Cianadóir’; this translation is by
the editor.
I AM GOING OUT OF MY MIND, and that is a fortunate thing, for the madness I have endured of late is far, far worse. That thing called the ‘Chronotron’ is the source of this mental anguish. I cannot help but think back to that difficult question; it will drive me into a red rage, and I am powerless to stop it. Only one thing will banish these thoughts, and that is the advance of insanity; I’ve tried all else and failed. If I had a needle or a keen blade or a piece of glass in my possession, I would open my veins and let the life pour out of me onto the floor; in this place, there is no stake, post, spike or spar that would allow me to hang myself. I tried to strangle myself with my own two hands, but it was no use. It goes without saying that as I was fervently constricting my throat, to the point where my tongue and eyes were bulging out, I fainted and could not accomplish the deed! And if I spent an entire day trying to bash my brains out against a wall, that would do nothing but knock me into a stupor, because this entire cell – the walls, floor, ceiling and all – is lined with rubber, just as the Chronotron was on the inside.
I knew, of course, that Professor Ó Néill had been trying for ten years to create a contraption that could travel through Time as an aeroplane travels through the Air or a trawler travels through Water. Well, I didn’t believe he would do it. What’s over and done with can’t be revisited, and we have no choice but to wait for what has yet to come – that was my attitude to the whole thing. And although I knew that there was nobody in Ireland more renowned for their grasp of science and philosophy than Professor Ó Néill, I couldn’t see anything in it other than silly daydreaming. Though I had little interest in the Professor’s work, we spent many a meal in each other’s company, as next-door neighbours often do. Thus, it wasn’t any great surprise when he asked me to come around for dinner one November evening in 1985. I took him up on that invitation, and my God, woe is me forever more that I went!
The Professor didn’t say much until the coffee was on the table. I could tell, from the way that he was glancing at his watch between every second sentence, that his mind was very much preoccupied. The time came, however, and he lit a cigarette and looked into my eyes.
‘Seosamh,’ he said, ‘I am about to tell you a secret, and bind you to it. Seosamh, my friend, I have completed the Chronotron!’
I laughed apprehensively, worried that he might realise my lack of faith in his invention.
‘Well, I hope you knock some enjoyment out of it!’ I said, sort of tamely.
He peered at me from under his bushy eyebrows.
‘You have a quiet life at the moment, don’t you?’ he asked, as though that question was somehow relevant to this business of the Chronotron.
‘Och, terribly! There’s no describing how unchanging it is.’
‘And you have a desire for adventure and wonder?’
‘You can say that again! But as you know, since I got that limp while hunting lions in Africa—’
‘I know, I know,’ he said, impatiently, ‘I remember you telling that story before. But here, I will lay the whole lot out, ready to hand. Would you be willing to risk death on a wondrous adventure?’
‘I’d step through the gates of Hell itself for some novelty!’ I said, eagerly.
The Professor leaped forward out of the chair, his expression keen.
‘Come with me into the Chronotron!’ he said.
I was in two minds about what answer I should give to this kind of peculiar invitation, but I had to hold in my laughter, for fear I would hurt his feelings.
‘What are the dangers of travelling in – in a Chronotron?’
‘There are plenty of dangers. For example, if it loses its steering, it could take us back millions of years, to the beginning of the world, and we’d be roasted alive! Joking aside, the slightest mishap could leave us stranded in the Middle Ages, and wouldn’t that be enough of a disaster?’
I stared at him doubtfully, but it was clear that he was deadly serious.
‘And – and you’ve travelled through Time?’
He grinned.
‘Well, I’ve travelled to the future, but then, who isn’t able to do that? But to go back! You don’t believe it? Think about it. Time is like a kind of music; it’s only a mathematical mode imagined by humanity. Do you understand me?’
‘I understand that understanding is hard,’ said I. ‘But time has to exist. Night follows day, winter follows autumn; people get older, they lose their vigour, and they die.’
‘That’s all true, but that’s only change, and there’s no use in talking about that or wrestling with it. Come back a couple of years with me tonight, and you’ll get some proof that will shut you up!’
I don’t know what sense there was in doing so, but I said I would go. It’s true that I was hungry for adventure, and that I had a craving for weird and wonderful things, but the fact was that I did not believe for one minute that there was anything in the ‘Chronotron’ …
The Professor led me through his laboratory and into a sort of garage, where a young man was tinkering with a thing that looked sort of like a new-fangled car, but of a strange make.
‘Behold the Chronotron!’ the Professor said, proudly.
He introduced me to the youngfella. ‘This is Colonel Michael Mac Reachtain,’ he said. ‘The Colonel is my engineer, and a hell of an engineer he is, too – there’s none better than him in the whole Air Force. The government loaned him to me.’
A moment or two later, I had an opportunity to approach the Colonel alone.
‘I want to ask you something,’ I said. ‘Do you think that Professor Ó Néill … that he’s right in the head?’
He let out a hearty laugh.
‘That’s a very broad question! They say that genius and madness are close to one another. But you can be sure there’s genius in him anyway, whatever about the madness.’
‘You don’t mean to tell me that this Chronotron works!’
‘Did he not tell you that we’ve already tried it out? Well, we did, and let me tell you, friend, it was astonishing! Back to 1641 we went, to watch Phelim O’Neill’s army advancing on Drogheda – and a tattered, bedraggled army it was, too!’
I was left speechless, and the Colonel went back to messing about with the Chronotron, a tyre pump in his hand. The Professor returned to us moments later.
‘Is it in some sort of working order, Colonel?’
‘Ready for departure,’ the other man said.
‘Well then, unless you’re feeling anxious, Seosamh, we’ll take it out.’
It was a quiet night, and the light of the Moon shone down on Loch Neagh. We embarked.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to sit on the floor,’ the Professor said. ‘We’re going to be packed in like herring in a barrel. Colonel, 1920!’
The Colonel started fiddling with levers, buttons and the throttle. I heard a low humming that only lasted for the blink of an eye, a shock went through me, and I felt the Chronotron pulsing beneath me, as if it were alive. I looked out the porthole. There was no starlight to be seen anymore; there was nothing to see but pitch darkness. The pulsing stopped, and my eyes were suddenly blinded by sunlight streaming in through the porthole.
‘We’re in 1921, Professor,’ said the Colonel. ‘I couldn’t get any closer to it.’
The Professor spoke with an impatient tone. ‘It’s close enough,’ he said.
I let out a croak of astonishment. ‘We’re in the same place that we were before, but now it’s day! I can see Loch Neagh over yonder!’
‘Yes,’ said the Professor. ‘Loch Neagh, on a summer’s day in 1921. London, Colonel!’
The Colonel pushed another button, and the Chronotron rose from the ground with the speed of a bullet. It took me by surprise and laid me flat on my back.
‘The Chronotron isn’t exactly how I’d like it to be,’ the Professor said, levelly, ‘but it will improve once it is able to move through Space and Time in the same go. As it stands, it will take us ten minutes to reach London. I should explain to you why I’m going there. Here’s a question for you, Seosamh – in your opinion, which event from Irish history is most to blame for the hideous state of the country today?’
I thought about it for a second.
‘The Coming of the Normans,’ I said, ‘or the Famine, maybe, or the legacy of the Civil War.’
‘Exactly! Now, I’m not confident enough in the Chronotron to go all the way back to the time of the Normans, and I don’t yet know how I would go about erasing the Famine, but I think I can save Ireland from the Civil War.’
‘You’re blathering, man! There’s no—’
He grabbed me by the shoulders, and there was a strange glow in his eyes.
‘It isn’t blathering at all. Imagine it, Seosamh – if it were possible to wipe London off the face of the Earth in 1920, along with the British government, the monarchy, the docks and the armouries. The IRA would win the day. We have the means to do it – with an atomic bomb! Isn’t it a striking image? Hiroshima in ’45, and the capital city of England twenty years before that!’
I knew then that I was dealing with the worst kind of maniac, and that he would do exactly as he said. Overcome with horror, I tried to calm him down.
‘Don’t do it, Professor! It’s not right to oppose God’s will! What’s done is done. And think of the millions of innocent English—’
The Professor gave a wry smile. ‘Innocent English!’ he said, mockingly. ‘There’s no such thing!’
My mouth was dry, and my heart was turning over with fear and revulsion.
‘Does – does the Colonel know what we’re involving him in?’
‘I don’t think he’d care that much. He’s an engineer, and his expertise is limited to engines. He doesn’t have an imagination. He’s really only an engine himself.’
The Colonel stuck his head back. ‘London,’ he said, all relaxed.
The Professor scrambled up beside him and examined the measuring and telemetry instruments.
‘Another few degrees north, Colonel,’ he said, ‘to avoid the Thames.’
The Professor took a tiny little bomb out of the back, and a small trap-door opened in the floor of the Chronotron.
‘Now, Colonel, rise a couple of hundred feet, and as soon as this explodes – back to Ireland as fast as the wind!’
‘Ready?’ asked the Colonel a moment later.
‘Ready!’ said the Professor, and the little bomb dropped out of sight. The Professor pulled the trapdoor shut. I shut my eyes and covered my ears with my palms …
It seemed to me that I was waiting for ages before the piercing blast of the conflagration came. The Chronotron was tossed back and forth like a feather caught by the wind, but the Colonel managed to steady it somehow, and I felt it recover.
We must have been halfway home to Ireland before I found the courage to raise my head and open my eyes. The Colonel was bent forward and cursing anxiously under his breath. And the Professor? I was dumbfounded. There was no Professor at all there! Wherever he was, there wasn’t hide nor hair of him to be found on the Chronotron.
I grabbed hold of the Colonel’s arm.
‘Where did the Professor go?’
He pulled his head back, and he was saucer-eyed with astonishment.
‘He must have fallen out the trapdoor,’ I said, shaking with fear.
‘He didn’t fall, or anything like it, because he was on his knees beside me at the exact moment of the explosion. After that I was too busy trying to regain control of the ship to take much notice of him. But never mind that. Whatever that blast did to the thruster, we’re losing speed …’
I moved back and huddled against the wall. My head was spinning with the horrors and wonders of this adventure, and worries about the Professor. What terrible, mysterious thing had taken him? God, what could have taken him? And the whole time, there was a memory way back in the back of my mind, annoying me and tormenting me, a memory connected with that date in 1921, a memory that could possibly explain Professor Ó Néill’s absence. I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to find it …
The Chronotron was rocking back and forth alarmingly as the Colonel struggled to keep control of it. Then, in the depths of my memory, I saw a couple of lines I had read in some newspaper once:
‘This renowned scientist was born in London, England, in 1921…’
And then, I thought, I understood the whole thing. What had happened was – it would stop your heart to think of it – that the Professor’s mother had been killed in 1921 by the atomic bomb that the Professor himself had dropped on London! Thus – oh, how horrible to imagine it! – the Professor was never born!
The whole thing was like a nightmare, a dream that only a lunatic would have, a dream to make the sanest man go mad.
Suddenly, while my head was reeling from the tempest of horrific thoughts inside it, the Colonel let out an urgent shout:
‘Save yourself, man! It’s out of control! We’re falling into Loch Neagh!’
When I came to, I was lying on my belly, soaked through. A small crowd had gathered all around me.
‘Where’s the Colonel?’ I asked, half-gasping.
‘You’ll meet him soon,’ said one of them, sort of evasively.
‘And the Chronotron?’
They glanced knowingly at each other.
‘Stay calm, friend. I’m sure the doctor will be able to provide you with a Chronotron, or whatever you call it.’
And then they took me here and locked me in this cell, a place where there is nothing that I could hang myself with. Yes, they left me in here, teasing apart that question until my senses were deranged and I lost my reason. I have never been able to forget that question; no such deliverance has come to me. It is an unbelievable tangle, to be sure, for if it was true that the Professor’s mother was killed in the atomic explosion, he couldn’t have been born. Thus, he never built any Chronotron, and he never dropped any bomb.
But if that’s true, his mother was not killed in an atomic explosion in 1921, and thus, as the newspaper account had it, he was born, was brought home to Ireland, grew up, found respect and renown as a scientist, invented the Chronotron, invited me to dinner, took me back through the years, dropped the bomb on London, and killed his own mother! But if so …