October 1998
The chronoflash faded only slowly in Dave's eyes, settling down to a dance of glowing pixels like a minor swarm of light. Of course, he knew it was no more than the momentary annihilation of a few stray atoms, the Universe settling its accounts, but that hadn't stopped it being painful and disorientating. But then, that's what it always felt like within the chronosphere; like you were being gripped by a googleplex of tiny machines, pulled in a trillion different directions, none of them in space. Dave knew this was a result of the constant quantum assessment of anything within the chronosphere, and expected the sensation to fade now that the test was complete and the continuum was repairing itself.
Of course, chronosphere was entirely the wrong word for this region at the lip of the helter-skelter's slide and the warped geometries within, but that had been the region's name on the original plans. From here he could sense the myriad small chronofluctuations of the fairground below, but in Time's terms they were little more than quantum 'hiccups' that an observer could erase by collapsing the probability wavefront. But seen from here, the eigenstate of the Universe was less clear cut, and the structures below were slightly smeared. All of the trailers were somehow fuzzy and overlapped images of themselves, making the observer feel a bit queasy.
The various stalls and stands of the carnival radiated out from the helter-skelter in a semi-circular fan. If Dave had craned out slightly and glanced down and left, he could have seen the Hall of Mirrors joined to the base of the helter-skelter, but it was never a good idea to reach beyond the lip of the chronosphere; you never knew what might grab you! Beyond the farthest reach of the left side of the fan was a cluster of greatly more smeared carnival rides. Each had been cannibalised in their past to provide parts for the time machine, but the chronofluctuations were greater, since he could have chosen different rides to obtain the same parts, in some cases, and so the quantum divergence here was greater. To the far right of the fan were the trailers that housed Dave, and the guests he expected, and they actually seemed pretty solid compared to the fuzziness all around. All trace of overlapping would disappear once Dave set foot outside of the machine's environment, and he set off down the stairs for the ground.
At the foot of the stairs, Dave still had to walk out through the Hall of Mirrors. If anything, this was more disturbing than being within the chronosphere. Although all physical discomfort ceased, an uneasiness of mind was very prevalent; the mirrors here did not merely distort images, but reflected strange possibilities. Rather than make a visitor tall and skinny, or short and fat, they might reveal reflections that were dressed differently, or show the person as a different gender, even a different racial type; and though Dave knew what lay behind the (quite normal) glass, he was as prone to being distressed by being smeared as any other user of the machine. The equipment behind the warped glass was what actually cut the user loose from consensus reality, and the subsequent feeling of being cast adrift brought with it a crushing loneliness and an ugly paranoia. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Dave felt greatly relieved when he rejoined the "real world".
Everything appeared sharp and in focus, the way it should, but more than that it was all somehow more solid, more there than it had looked from above. He turned right and walked across the face of the time machine, though it looked like nothing of the sort, and headed down the aisle that would take him back to his trailers. Dr Dave! Peculiar, certainly, but no more than a coincidence. As for Tashen's trailer, joined now like a Siamese twin to Dr Dave's, he'd chosen it only for the fact that it was in better repair than the others, including the ringmaster's, and because the picture of the aerialist was of a surprisingly beautiful woman, blonde and buxom, that was curiously appealing. Who she had been - who any of them had been - back when this was a functioning fairground, was of no interest to Dave. He'd never even tried to use the machine to visit the fair when it thrived.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a silent flash from behind Dave, momentarily casting an elongated shadow in front of him, and he was immediately aware that he had a visitor. Turning quickly, Dave saw himself, or someone very like himself, slipping down the last third of the spiral slide. He ran back.
Dave reached the bottom of the slide just as the visitor bumped onto the ground. It was him! A little older, and a lot greyer, but it was him. As the newcomer stood, brushing himself off, Dave saw he was also a bit fatter, and Dave was already large. He had no beard, unlike Dave himself, who kept a shaggy growth, and the older Dave's hair was considerably neater than Dave's own, notwithstanding the grey. They looked at each other quite silently for a stretched moment, until the arrival's face split in a grin.
"Looks like I'm right on the money," he said, darting discerning glances all around. "It's just the way I remembered it when I finished building it." This last comment ruffled Dave's feathers, but he didn't let it show. "Have you used it yet?"
"Just a test or two. Nothing extensive..." Dave had been aiming for a non-committal tone, but had finished with a hint of anger, since old Dave was mimicking him word for word.
"That's what I said when I, that is when the other me... Oh, fuck it; you're... we're intelligent. I know you know what I mean. I guess your mind is racing, just like mine was all those years ago..."
"Look, let's cut to the chase. I can guess where you're from, but why are you here?"
"You mean why am I now, don't you." Old Dave was still grinning jovially, but there was the beginning of a frown on his forehead. "I must say, I don't remember being this impatient... It's not like we don't have time... To be civilised, I mean."
"Yes, well I'm not you, so..."
"But you are, or rather, you will be. You can see that, can't you?" Old Dave stared intensely at his younger self, a little taken aback at the frostiness of his welcome. "Well, if you're in that much of a hurry, I suppose I'd best get straight to the point."
"Please do," said Dave in a voice that was somehow both hostile and bored.
"Well, the thing is, if I've timed this right, you're about to start letting people use the machine... experimenting with their destinies, so to speak. Now that you've completed your initial tests, that is, with the sandbags and suchlike. Last test tonight, wasn't it?"
"You know it was."
"Yes, yes, though I finished a little earlier as I recall, going by the positions of the stars. I was expecting to find you in my... your... our trailer. You do use the Dr Dave trailer..." Old Dave fell briefly silent at a glare from the younger man. "Hhhmm, right, anyway... The fact is, what you propose to do has awful consequences; nothing you could even be guessing right now, of course, not your fault you see, but disastrous consequences nonetheless."
"So... What? You want me not to use the machine, is that it?" A petulant tone had crept into Dave's voice.
"Not exactly. There's nothing to be done here now that the machine exists, now that it's to all intents and purposes operational. But we would like you to be more discerning in its use. Not quite so... undisciplined. You see?"
"If you're me, then you know that discipline isn't my strong point. That's why I'm here, after all, and not in some swanky lab. And just who the hell is we?" "Ah. Bit complicated that. Can we save it for later, when I've talked you out of letting civilians loose in time?" Old Dave's comment was received in silence, but he could feel the younger man's resentment. He was a little confused; he remembered being slightly more awestruck when this had happened to him. "I will convince you, you see; I mean, I did, that is..."
"Yes, yes. I know what you mean. After all..."
"...you're me!" laughed Old Dave. Then the laugh died in his throat as his younger self pulled a gun from out of nowhere with his left hand and pointed it in the older man's face.
"Except that I'm not, 'Dave'. You've made a terrible mistake."
"But I'm right handed," were his last words as the gun went off and his face turned to hamburger.
"I'm not." Dave put the gun away, all faint echoes of the gunshot faded. No one came, but then that was one of the advantages of a deserted and remote location. That being the reason that he'd chosen it. Or rather the reason his predecessor had.
"You see, Dave," he said while gripping the old man's ankles and dragging him to the Hall of Mirrors, "he did finish earlier in the evening. And he was in the trailer when I got here, ten minutes or so before you did."
Dave was now quite as jovial as his older self had been. Another test for the machine was quite alright by him, especially after the pleasure of getting to kill himself twice. This continuum's Dave had gone forward in time, as a corpse, to allow this Dave to stay in the here and now. Now the chronosphere would whisk this dead Dave back to whenever he came from, with no trace but another twinkle show to mark the transaction. The sweetest light show in the Universe!
And tomorrow, the first fool would arrive and the chaos would multiply.
Wanna take a ride...?
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