Friday, October 13, 2017

Friday Fiction for October 13th, 2017


The return of Friday Fiction is starting out slow so far, so I’m hosting again this week. Hopefully, we’ll get more participants soon, as a number of friends expressed an interest in it. As was the case last week, if you would like to participate, add your link to the Linkytool below.

This week brings Part 2 of the Historian Project, and how the system works. If you’re coming to this story for the first time, you’ll probably want to click over to Part 1 first. For those returning, the quick recap is that Dr. Manziel, the new President of the University, has visited Professor Kallas’ Historian Witness 101 class and challenged the attrition rate of the Historian Program. Kallas, in explaining why the program continues despite a high drop-out rate, has invited Manziel to experience the Historian Project first-hand, and as this part opens, they are now in the system.



The Historian Project, Part 2

By Rick Higginson



Manziel spun around. “This is the control center? There’s nothing here.”

            “We have everything we need for this journey.”

            “All right. I’ll play along. Where are we going on this ‘journey’?”

            “To start, that is up to you. Tell me, Dr. Manziel, is there something you have lost that you would like to know what happened to it?”

            He thought a moment. “My grandfather, shortly before he died, gave me his grandfather’s pocket watch. I lost it maybe two months later, and have always wondered where it went.”

            “Tell me when and where you last remember having it.”

            He closed his eyes and scratched his head. “Oh, man, that was, like, twenty three years ago. My grandfather died during my first year in college, and the last I remember having the watch was when I came home for Winter Break that year.”

            “So, let’s start with December twentieth, twenty-three years ago. System, calculate and lock date, with local time of twelve noon.”

            A voice sounded in the room. “Target confirmed and locked.”

            “Where was your home at that time?”

            Manziel chuckled. “Funny how I’ve forgotten more important things, but I still remember that address. 7129 West Lincoln Ave, Cantor, New York.”

            “System, calculate and lock location.”

            “Target confirmed and locked.”

            “Initiate placement.”

            The room shimmered for perhaps a second, and was replaced by a street scene. They stood on the sidewalk in front of a modest two story house. A blanket of snow covered the area, and the overcast sky threatened to add more to the winter scene.

            Manziel’s eyes went wide. “Holy – that’s my parents’ house! And, geez, it’s cold! I’ve never experienced a simulator with this much detail.”

            “Let’s go inside, shall we?”

            “So, do we prompt the system to move?”

            Kallas took a step forward. “No, we walk.” He reached the door, and waited for Manziel.

            Dr. Manziel stepped onto the porch, and tried to open the door. His hand passed through the knob as if it wasn’t there.

            “One of the aspects of the Historian System is that we cannot touch anything. The feel of the ground beneath our feet is merely illusory for the sake of natural movement, but to enter, the door is just as solid as the doorknob seemed.” He walked through the closed door to the entryway, and waited for Manziel to follow.

            “That’s – got to be the weirdest sensation I’ve experienced in a long time.” He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Man, I’ve missed this place.”

            “Now, where in this house did you last see the watch?”

            “In my bedroom, upstairs.” He walked confidently through the living room to the stairway, and then up to the top floor. He turned right at the top of the stairs towards the room at the end of the hall.

            The bathroom door opened, and a woman walked out, wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around her wet hair.

            Kallas watched her pass. “I would say you either are not home right now, or else your family has a very relaxed attitude concerning familial nudity.”

            Manziel sputtered. “That wasn’t funny. Depicting my mother naked like that is a rather sick idea of a joke.”

            “That was your mother? Dr. Manziel, I promise you, I have no control over what we shall see, hear, and otherwise experience while we are here. For whatever reason, on this date twenty-three years ago, your mother did not bother to cover up walking from the bathroom back to what I assume is her bedroom.”

            “How could the simulator know that happened? It couldn’t have read it from my mind through the neural interface, because I didn’t see it happen back then.”

            “We are not in a simulation. This is your parents’ home, twenty-three years ago. Much like Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas Past, we are visiting here like ghosts, unseen and incapable of interfacing with the world around us, but we are here.

            “You’re saying this system is a time machine? That’s not possible.”

            “We have not broken the technology yet to transfer a physical body back in time, but what we have developed is a system that is capable of capturing and decoding the, for lack of a better term, reverberations of time past. As the Ghost said to Scrooge, ‘these are but shadows of the things that have been.’ Like reviewing the video from a security camera, we can see and examine past events, with the added element of being able to move freely through the scene, seeing it from any angle we wish.”

            “No, I still cannot believe it’s possible.”

            “That is why we are here, watching for your lost item, Dr. Manziel.  When you see what happened to the watch, you can then verify for yourself that what we see here is actually history. You need to know that what I am telling you is true, so that you completely understand the real value of this program.” He walked to the door at the end of the hall. “This is your room, correct? Unless, of course, you wish to follow your mother and make sure she gets dressed.”

            “You’re a bit twisted for even suggesting that, you know that?”

            “Your mother’s state of undress, and anything else she may or may not do while we are here, is merely information to me, of the same weight as the fact these walls are painted a pale green. One of the goals of the Historian Program is to train students how to remain completely objective in their observations of history. It is our aim to witness and record events, without adding a bias of approval or disapproval. Whether I agree with what someone has done does not change what they did, and we have more than enough historical accounts prejudiced by the opinions of the recorders.” He passed through the closed door into the room.

            The bed was neatly made, and while the room appeared decorated for a young adult male, the desktop was bare, and the room lacked any form of clutter that might suggest it had been recently occupied.

            Manziel entered the room and took it in. His eyes locked on the poster of a long out-of-vogue singer. “I’d forgotten all about her. I had a serious crush on her during my Senior year in High School.”

            “Judging from the state of this room, I would guess you have not arrived home yet for your break.”

            “So, what do we do now? Try a new target date?”

            “No, we remain here and watch for your arrival.”

            “That could be hours, or maybe days. I don’t remember exactly when I got home that year.”

            “System, fast-forward at thirty ex.”

            “We can do that?”

            “Of course. Since the system is essentially playing back events it has recorded from the historical reverberations, we can move forward or backward at whim. This is valuable in that it enables us to search for the exact moment we need, but we can also back up, move to a different location, and witness the same event from another perspective. We should now be passing an hour’s worth of history in two minutes. That’s fast enough that the waiting is not tedious, but still slow enough to spot the moment when you arrive.” He stood by the window, staring out at the street.

            Manziel wandered the room, remaining quiet for a while. He finally stopped in front of the poster, examining it. “Looking at her now, I can’t imagine why I was so infatuated with her.” He turned towards the window. “So, if this technology is so incredible, why haven’t I heard of it before?”

            Kallas kept his gaze directed outward. “The Historian Project isn’t strictly a secret, but we also don’t want it widely known. If the general populace knew we had this capability, it could cause problems, not the least of which would be an overwhelming increase in the requests for our service. We would have people wanting us to help them find lost pets, or trying to use as a private investigator to spy on a cheating spouse, or just wanting to use the system for a nostalgic trip down memory lane.”

            “Would that last be such a terrible thing?”

            He released a staccato laugh. “I already told you that history is brutal. It’s not just brutal in the violence that was done; it’s also brutal in its honesty. What has happened, has happened regardless of whether one approves or disapproves. Think about it, Dr. Manziel. You accused me of a sick prank because your mother walked naked from one room to another, so what would your reaction have been if we had instead found her intimately involved with someone you did not know? If we take someone to a special family gathering in the past, what if they find it different than their memory prefers it? What if, in our ability to move freely through the past and the scene, they overhear something that ruins that memory for them?”

            “What if they find that some disappointment to them had a good reason behind it, and it improves their memory?”

            “One of the first things we stress in the Historian Program curriculum is that people are human. As such, they are also unpredictable in their reactions. Even if I pose a hypothetical scenario to someone, and ask how they would react, it doesn’t mean they will actually react that way if faced with that scenario in reality. No, Dr. Manziel, most people are better left with their imperfect memories, than risking how they might react if they revisited the scene later in life.” He nodded towards the driveway. “If you drove a red compact car, then I believe you have arrived.”
to be continued...

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