The Toynbee Convector

Stiles touched another button and the machine lit up like a cavern of spider webs. It breathed in years and whispered forth remembrance. Ghosts were in its crystal veins. A great god spider had woven its tapestries in a single night. It was haunted and it was alive. Unseen tides came and went in its machinery. Suns burned and moons hid their seasons in it. Here, an autumn blew away in tatters; there, winters arrived in snows that drifted in spring blossoms to fall on summer fields.

The young man sat in the center of it all, unable to speak, gripping the armrests of the padded chair.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the old man gently. “I won’t send you on a journey.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Shumway.

The old man studied his face. “No, I can see you wouldn’t. You look like me one hundred years ago this day. Damn if you aren’t my honorary son.”

The young man shut his eyes at this, and the lids glistened as the ghosts in the machine sighed all about him and promised him tomorrows.

“Well, what do you think of my Toynbee Convector?” said the old man briskly, to break the spell.

He cut the power. The young man opened his eyes.

“The Toynbee Convector? What—”

“More mysteries, eh? The great Toynbee, that fine historian who said any group, any face, any world that did not run to seize the future and shape it was doomed to dust away in the grave, in the past.”

“Did he say that?”

“Or some such. He did. So, what better name for my machine, eh? Toynbee, wherever you are, here’s your future-seizing device!”

He grabbed the young man’s elbow and steered him out of the machine.

“Enough of that. It’s late. Almost time for the great arrival, eh? And the earth-shaking final announcement of that old time traveler Stiles! Jump!”

Back on the roof, they looked down on the gardens, which were now swarming with the famous and the near famous from across the world. The nearby roads were jammed; the skies were full of helicopters and hovering biplanes. The hang gliders had long since given up and now stood along the cliff rim like a mob of bright pterodactyls, wings folded, heads up, staring at the clouds, waiting.

“All this,” the old man murmured, “my God, for me.”

The young man checked his watch.

“Ten minutes to four and counting. Almost time for the great arrival. Sorry; that’s what I called it when I wrote you up a week ago for the News. That moment of arrival and departure, in the blink of an eye, when, by stepping across time, you changed the whole future of the world from night to day, dark to light. I’ve often wondered—”

“What?”

Shumway studied the sky. “When you went ahead in time, did no one see you arrive? Did anyone at all happen to look up, do you know, and see your device hover in the middle of the air, here and over Chicago a bit later, and then New York and Paris? No one?”

“Well,” said the inventor of the Toynbee Convector, “I don’t suppose anyone was expecting me! And if people saw, they surely did not know what in blazes they were looking at. I was careful, anyway, not to linger too long. I needed only time to photograph the rebuilt cities, the clean seas and rivers, the fresh, smog-free air, the unfortified nations, the saved and beloved whales. I moved quickly, photographed swiftly and ran back down the years home. Today, paradoxically, is different. Millions upon millions of mobs of eyes will be looking up with great expectations. They will glance, will they not, from the young fool burning in the sky to the old fool here, still glad for his triumph?”

“They will,” said Shumway. “Oh, indeed, they will!”

A cork popped. Shumway turned from surveying the crowds on the nearby fields and the crowds of circling objects in the sky to see that Stiles had just opened a bottle of champagne.

“Our own private toast and our own private celebration.”

They held their glasses up, waiting for the precise and proper moment to drink.

“Five minutes to four and counting. Why,” said the young reporter, “did no one else ever travel in time?”

“I put a stop to it myself,” said the old man, leaning over the roof, looking down at the crowds. “I realized how dangerous it was. I was reliable, of course, no danger. But, Lord, think of it—just anyone rolling about the bowling-alley time corridors ahead, knocking tenpins headlong, frightening natives, shocking citizens somewhere else, fiddling with Napoleon’s life line behind or restoring Hitler’s cousins ahead? No, no. And the government, of course, agreed—no, insisted—that we put the Toynbee Convector under sealed lock and key. Today, you were the first and the last to fingerprint its machinery. The guard has been heavy and constant, for tens of thousands of days, to prevent the machine’s being stolen. What time do you have?”

Shumway glanced at his watch and took in his breath.

“One minute and counting down—”

He counted, the old man counted. They raised their champagne glasses.

“Nine, eight, seven—”

The crowds below were immensely silent. The sky whispered with expectation. The TV cameras swung up to scan and search.

“Six, five—”

They clinked their glasses.

“Four, three, two—”

They drank.

“One!”

They drank their champagne with a laugh. They looked to the sky. The golden air above the La Jolla coast line waited. The moment for the great arrival was here.

“Now!” cried the young reporter, like a magician giving orders.

“Now!” said Stiles, gravely quiet.

Nothing.

Five seconds passed.

The sky stood empty.

Ten seconds passed.

The heavens waited.

Twenty seconds passed.

Nothing.

At last, Shumway turned to stare and wonder at the old man by his side.

Stiles looked at him, shrugged and said:

“I lied.”