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EDGAR HAD lunch ready by the time I returned to the workshop. It was one of his usual meatless meals—vegetable soup, tea and salad. I washed up and sat down to lunch.
“Did you have a nice run?” he asked.
“Yes.” I wanted to tell him about everything I’d seen that morning—the weird plants, the never-ending brook. I doubted that he’d ever ventured out as far as I had. But I knew that asking questions about these things would only cause him to withdraw, and that was painful to watch. So instead, I asked, “Are you going to lecture today?”
Edgar’s droopy eyes lit up. “You are a true student,” he said. “Today we’ll be discussing the bright white light that envelops the traveler while he is in transit.”
I raised my eyebrows. This sounded like it would be one of Edgar’s more interesting lectures. Usually he tutored me on the basics of time travel theory. Those lectures were typically very dry and involved complicated concepts that didn’t explain how to make any better use of the travel glasses.
After lunch, Edgar and I moved into the living room. He handed me a sheet of paper that outlined the topic of the day. At the top of the page he’d written: Lecture 18: The Blanching Effect. I kept track of how many days I stayed at the workshop by saving his outlines. I glanced over at the end table where I’d stacked the papers I’d collected. I couldn’t believe that it had already been more than two weeks.
I plopped down on the love seat and looked up at Edgar. He stood there, his frail frame accentuated by the backdrop of flickering lamps. He clasped his hands behind his back and cleared his throat.
“The earliest known travelers experienced the same blinding white light that the more modern travelers still experience today. Up until the invention of sunspecs, travelers either closed their eyes or covered them with their hands to alleviate the painful brilliance of what has become known as the Blanching Effect.
“The great time travel scientist and theorist, Dr. Robert Porter, studied the Blanching Effect for most of his working life. After many years of intense experimentation he concluded that the bright white light is not just an effect of time travel, but a place in and of itself.
“The colleagues of Dr. Porter’s day thought that this was a remarkable conclusion. However, a more skeptical group of scientists laughed at the idea. They questioned him most furiously. But where is this place? Have you spent much time there? They had a very good time laughing at his expense.
“For years after his initial conclusion, the best answer Dr. Porter could offer was that it had to be a transitional place, a common space existing somewhere between the traveler’s departure point and final destination. Unfortunately, Dr. Porter died before finding an answer that satisfied his critics. His eldest son believed in him and his work, though.”
I fidgeted in my seat. Edgar had a habit of turning even the most straightforward definition into a history lesson that took up the entire afternoon. I looked down at my lecture outline and sighed. We were still on the first couple of lines.
“And thus began Dr. Robert Porter, Jr.’s contributions to his father’s work. Dr. Porter, Jr. had grown up studying time travel under the direction and close supervision of his father. Hence, he was vastly familiar with his father’s work. The skeptics who had known his father—those who were still alive—scoffed at him for his efforts. They did not see what benefit there could possibly be from knowing more about the Blanching Effect. That was until Dr. Porter, Jr. proved that the bright white light is not just somewhere, but everywhere.”
Edgar paused. It was very dramatic. The gleam in Edgar’s eyes and his pure joy of sharing such an idea with me were the only things keeping me from rolling my eyes.
“Yes, everywhere,” he continued. “And everywhen. This, Dr. Porter, Jr. explained, was the reason why the traveling occurred instantaneously.”
I blinked. “Everywhen?”
“Yes, the bright white light encompasses all places and all times—the beginning, the end and everything in between, both temporally and spatially.”
“That’s interesting,” I admitted.
But it wasn’t useful. What really interested me was how to use the glasses rather than how they or time travel developed, the same way I’d been interested in learning how to use computers and Smartphones instead of building or programming them. The one time I’d directly asked Edgar how the glasses worked, he said that they were programmed to gather information and detect brain activity. Beyond that, the best answer I could get out of him was that “there are a lot of physics involved.”
By the time Edgar lectured me on the Blanching Effect, he’d repeated everything I’d already learned about using the travel glasses from Valcas—the search, the impact and the effects that the travel glasses had on the traveler’s eyes. Valcas seemed to have had a better understanding of what the travel glasses could actually do. Sometimes I wondered whether Edgar’s life’s work involved something else.
As Edgar droned on about doctors Robert Porter the Third and Fourth’s work—also not useful—something occurred to me. I waited until Edgar reached his next dramatic pause.
“Why didn’t Robert Porter, Sr. just travel to the future and find out the answers to the questions that his critics were asking him? He could have learned about the work his son did and told them about that.”
Edgar’s lips sagged into a frown. “That would be cheating.”
“How is that cheating? The people laughing at him could have traveled into the future and learned the same thing. They wasted a lot of time arguing about something they could have seen for themselves.”
“The past was meant to be observed rather than changed,” he replied.
“But I thought we were talking about going to the future.”
Edgar sat down in the easy chair. “Had Dr. Porter, Sr. or his colleagues traveled into the future, they would have returned very much changed. Anything heard or seen in the future would significantly impact the decisions they made when they returned to their present lives. This creates a high probability that they would change their futures.”
I stared at Edgar, completely lost. He smiled and stood up again.
“Calla, let’s try an exercise. Let’s assume that you used the travel glasses to travel to your future. Now imagine peeking in through the window into the home of your adult self.”
I closed my eyes and nodded, trying to picture myself as an adult with a few strands of gray hair and bags under my eyes.
“Let’s say that you see your adult self in the nursery, watching her children playing a game.”
I snickered, but nodded to let Edgar know that I was following along.
“There is a knock at the door. ‘I’ll bet that’s Father home from the market,’ you say to the little children. The present version of you looking in at the window is very curious to learn the identity of your future husband. You and grown-up Calla look over as the door opens.”
Edgar paused.
“The man that walks in is familiar. You’ve seen him before. He is older than you last saw him, but still very handsome. You recognize every feature of his face. He is...the most loathsome and terrifying person you know.”
My eyes snapped open. “Edgar!”
“Well, did you like what you found in your future?”
“No,” I admitted.
“So then what do you do when you go back to your present?”
“I would do everything I could to try to avoid Val...I mean, that person, so that I don’t end up marrying him.”
Edgar nodded. “By changing the past, you change the future not only for yourself but for others. Conversely, by visiting the future, you increase the likelihood of changing the past.”
I frowned.
“And that concludes today’s lecture.”
I reached over and placed the Blanching Effect outline on top of the stack of papers on the end table. Then I went outside for another long run.