Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires
missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like
the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again.
And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you
get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you
feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't
insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward
in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth--minus the
replaced wires the guard mentioned--which probably wore out because of
the makeshift job you've just done.
But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are
all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and
that the date of the patent application is 1951.
It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the
future and bring it back to the past--your present--so that it can be
put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be
the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to
yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to
yourself....
Who invented what? And who built which?
Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little
kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed
history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to
be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one--after some of the
worst times in history for a few years. Your name eventually becomes as
common as Ampere, or Faraday, or any other spelled without a capital
letter.
But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer.
One day you come across an old poem--something about some folks
calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few
provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine
that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be
knocking on your own door, thirty years back--or right now, from your
view--and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.
But now....
Well, the drinks are finished. You're woozy enough to go along with me
without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there
came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left.
Let's go.
End of Project Gutenberg's ...And It Comes Out Here, by Lester del Rey
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account