CHAPTER TWENTY
It was almost midday before Mitchell stirred from the covers. He had no idea of the time, nor even the day anymore. His confusion wasn’t last night’s dream, rather the entire past week. Life seemed a lot more complicated. Julianna remained of course, always on his mind. Mitch reached for his phone to see if another email arrived. No luck. He would need to wait until the scarf deemed it time to make another connection.
Remembering it was Saturday, Mitch recalled Albert would be coming over so dressed and drove to the shops to buy Peanut some food; and some scotch for himself.
Mitch seldom sat on his front porch through fear of having to engage with the neighbours. He liked to keep things simple, to himself, and getting involved with other people and their problems was a burden. Today though the sun was inviting and he broke that rule. With his laptop balanced between his knees, he tapped away trying to learn more about what Owen Hargreaves said of the caduceus configuration. He wasn’t long into the research when Albert’s now recognisable click was heard coming down the path. Peanut sensed his approach and started barking before he was seen. Mitch closed the screen to welcome his friend who had faultlessly found Mitchell’s house in his darkness.
“Albert!” Mitch exclaimed when crossing the road to his front door.
“Mitchell my friend, how have you been? I have some wonderful news I want to share with you.”
“You’re not the only one. Come on in,” he replied hugging Albert like he did his father before his untimely death.
Peanut leapt on Albert and Mitch poured drinks without asking. As was now their custom, the pair settled into lounge chairs on the back veranda.
“Cheers my young time traveller,” Albert opened before beginning to tell of his visit to the library. But Mitch cut him short. Albert needed updating with events of the past seven days.
“You wouldn’t know this, but yesterday I had a very interesting meeting with the professor of electrical engineering at my old university,” Mitchell started to explain. “After leaving your house the other night I went down to the plate and took this picture.” Mitch grabbed his phone to show Albert the image of the Tensor Coil then quickly realised it was a useless gesture. Instead, he explained how he found the coil and recited the conversation almost verbatim with professor Hargreaves, describing the coil very carefully so a blind person could fully visualise it. He made even further effort to simplify the detailed explanation given by the professor. About electromagnetic fields, toroidal loops and resonance points. Mitch told Albert about the experiments of Dr Smith and their relevance to the possibility of time travel.
“Albert, if any of this has even the slightest element of truth, it could explain the portal and how we travel back in time.”
“Fuck me,” Albert offered taking Mitch completely by surprise, laughing at the unaccustomed outburst.
“Fuck me Albert. Where did that come from?” he said between laughter. “Am I that bad an influence on you?”
“I served thirteen years in the Royal Australian Navy and saw combat on two tours of duty. I’ve been around longer than you my friend so ‘fuck me’ is appropriate. And, if you don’t like it…fuck you.” The two men laughed like never before. Clearly the plate was advancing their friendship to another level. When they calmed from the hilarity, Albert asked the next question quite seriously.
“Do you believe this professor Mitchell?”
“I don’t know Albert. The plate’s illogical, but when linked with the ‘Pseudo Science’ Hargreaves described, it’s starting to make some sense. Shit, we have both been there and be damned if I can explain it any better…what do you think?” Mitchell returned.
Albert finished his attempted story about visiting the library and of the newspaper articles he’d found. The first about the dateline of the telephone cables explained the inability to journey to 1956, but the second headline about the rouge worker made no sense until now.
“Mitchell, if the telephone cables weren’t completed until 1961, that would explain why I can’t go back to my mother in 1956. The plate wasn’t there! The coil you found wasn’t there. That adds to our theory of the plate being the portal between times, and only functional when it existed.”
No argument from Mitchell. It made perfect sense in an otherwise completely inexplicable situation. He didn’t go to the kitchen to get another drink; he’d had found it easier to leave the bottle on the table between them. Getting up would only break the thought process anyway. He poured another two healthy shots over the diminishing ice and decided to ask Albert something. Something he’d tried to raise weeks ago.
“Albert. You want to use this thing as much as I did,” Mitch said realising he hadn’t told Albert of his two trips thus far. But continued, “why did you really go to the library. What haven’t you told me yet?”
When Albert first deployed to Vietnam in 1967 he was stationed on the HMAS Hobart. The crew would often get periods of shore furlough allowing many nights in local bars forgetting the horrors witnessed in service. The periods were brief but regular, and nearly always spent in Saigon. Civilian establishments were sequestered during the war and the Hobart’s crew spent most of those nights in the hotel Khách San Rex, more affectionately known to the men as The Rex. There, Albert met Kym Ho.
She was a housemaid, and on every visit saw her in the hallways, or more fortuitously cleaning his room. He was twenty-eight at the time and smitten the moment they’d met. During one of the breaks Albert plucked up the courage and asked Kym out for the afternoon. Most young Vietnamese girls took advantage of the foreign soldiers but Kym Ho was different. She enjoyed Albert’s companionship and their friendship quickly blossomed into a love affair. When away for lengthy periods, Albert realised his love of Kym wasn’t borne for the escape of combat, but from true feelings for her. Despite their cultural and age differences, he believed she was ‘the one’. They’d talked about marrying after the war and perhaps moving far away and starting a new life. It was a plan of hope and required only Albert’s tour to finish or the conflict to end. So they waited for whichever came first. Their last time together was three months before Albert’s accident, and of course, they’d never seen each other nor spoken again.
Mitchell wasn’t shocked by the story. He’d guessed as much and pleased Albert found the courage to tell him about Kym Ho.
“There’s not much in my life I regret Mitchell. I’ve played the cards dealt and tried to enjoy life for what it is. But Kym stayed with me all these years. In my perpetual darkness I see her face every day and remember what she meant to me. What we could’ve been.” Mitch realised it was the first time Albert spoke with more reverence of himself than of others.
“I would do anything to see her again…and the plate might make that a possibility,” Albert concluded taking a big slug of scotch to quash the painful memory.
Mitch wanted to help; he really did, but knew it unlikely having only ninety-nine minutes to make any significant change. It would be impossible to get to Saigon in that time. Kym Ho would have to come to them.
“Do you know if Kym is still alive Albert?”
“I know she is Mitchell. Just don’t ask me to explain how,” came the reply confusing Mitch further. “Though another question is less conclusive…is she wanting to see me?”
Mitch sat back in his chair and thought of Albert as a young man; younger than himself even now, and the love for this woman on the other side of the world he only saw during short breaks in his wartime life. Then of losing his sight and never being able to see her again. It was the universe at its’ malicious best. Given the situations of Sarah, Ethel, and Albert, Mitch couldn’t decide who’d been dealt the cruellest blow.
“Did you ever give up hope?” Mitchell asked.
“Have you given up on Juliana?” came the quick reply answering not only the question but posing another that would be answered in like.
“Well aren’t we a pair of old romantics. Cheers my friend…to Kym Ho and Juliana,” Mitchell mocked raising his unseen glass to Albert.
Taking their minds from the lost women they turned back to the plate. It was agreed the possible scientific explanation, the investigation into the telephone cables, and the fact both had made scores of trips to the past made everything real; if not explicable.
“Albert, I need to confess something,” Mitchell said almost ashamedly. He dispensed another glass then narrated the long tale of the Bartholomew’s. He then disclosed the mulberry scarf. Albert asked very few questions allowing Mitch to make the point he was endeavouring to share. He knew Mitchell wouldn’t be telling the stories if they weren’t relevant to their current discussion.
“The plate is a gift Albert. And under the right circumstances a very effective one. But I’ve learnt the hard way a person’s freewill can never be changed. Only situations. Once a decision is made, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
“But what if you made a mistake and missed your fate?” Albert asked.
“Then it wasn’t fate was it? It was just a mistake.”
Mitch was already formulating plans for another two trips. One would be very simple; the other required significant planning and a hell of a lot of luck.
≈
The garage originally built for a car never held Mitchell’s prized rattler. Instead, the space brimmed with old furniture, sporting equipment, and dozens of boxes containing vestiges of his past. Old habits die hard and Mitch wasn’t one to let go of anything of possible need in the future. No matter how long it sat idle.
Years ago he’d finally rid himself of university textbooks and assignments. But only after the collection of work-related documents overburdened the ever-decreasing space. He rummaged through those boxes now searching for the one hiding his work diaries. Silly to have preserved notes spanning a decade he knew, but he reasoned they would come in handy at some point. He never imagined needing them now more than ever.
Lying with Sarah on the beach a few days ago, Mitch learnt Christina’s accident happened on 18th September 2007. The exact time Sarah couldn’t recall, but given it was after school Mitch surmised 3:30 pm would be a good starting point. What was I doing on September 18th? Where the hell was I? In times past Mitch might have recalled immediately, but his memory faded and needed his diary to know for sure. The volume marked 2007 was a scratched, black leather A4 journal that was at the time the lifeblood of Mitchell’s working life. He scrawled every appointment, every meeting, and all manner of calculations within it. Often referring to them months later. 2007 was his last posting overseas, returning to Australia in April the following year. Knowing he was in Kuala Lumpur, Mitch needed more specifics. He flipped through the pages to find September eighteenth was a day filled with numerous meetings.
“Shit, this is not going to be easy,” he cursed. The diary notes seaming with no discernible standout.
Allowing for a time difference two hours behind Sydney and calculating daylight savings wouldn’t apply until late October, he reckoned anywhere between midday and one o’clock Kuala Lumpur time would be a safe window. As his eyes slid down the diary’s hourly increments, he found hand written notes of a site meeting with the architect of the building he was working on at midday. That was followed by a luncheon with one of his local suppliers at 1:00 pm. Mitch grabbed the diary and retuned its colleagues to their rightful place before going upstairs to study the book in more detail. He needed to remember what happened that day.
How many site meetings had he had over the years? How many lunches with corrupt suppliers greasing their palms did he endure? Nothing stood out.
Mitch had to think carefully and read the entries again. Closing his eyes, he visualised that warm and muggy day in KL. It was muggy and toward the end of the monsoon season. Late September typically saw little rain, but in 2007 a storm cell brewing north in the gulf of Thailand made its way south much later than predicted. With little to no warning the storm hit the city violently and Mitchell’s meeting with the architect was cancelled when the entire work site was closed down at the last minute. Mitch was forced to wait in his office while the storm cleared before going to lunch as planned.
Perfect. He’d found it quite easily in the end, thankful he and Albert didn’t drink too much earlier in the afternoon.
Mitchell decided to change three lives in the morning and went to bed early so they wouldn’t be messed up for a second time.
≈
He rose rested from a dreamless night and prepared for the easiest trip yet. Christina’s school was almost twenty kilometres from his home, which by car would take less than thirty minutes to reach. Even with ‘school’ traffic he’d have plenty of time and decided a ‘pre-trip’ to book a taxi wasn’t necessary. He could walk to the local shops where the taxis often waited and simply jump a cab at the waiting rank. The return home needn’t be organised.
It was going to be the easiest trip.
At the plate Mitch sat in his Kuala Lumpur office waiting out the storm then stepped off into spring sunshine. He walked hurriedly to the shopping centre and found two waiting taxis. Just as expected. He jumped into the first and asked the driver to take him to Christina’s school. He had his phone but kept it well hidden - the model wouldn’t have been a thought in the designer’s mind in 2007 – and checked the time.
2:15 pm. Plenty of time to stop a reckless driver.
Mitch relaxed watching the world go slowly by his window. Drifting without care, not in a hurry, just observing for a change. But the world was passing too slowly. The cab had remained stationery too long for a set of lights and Mitch turned to see a traffic jam ahead and asked the driver what was happening.
“There’s been an accident on the bridge blocking all eastbound traffic,” came the reply in broken English. The driver had an array of GPS and two-way radios telling him such and Mitch could do nothing but patiently wait to crawl through the carnage.
A few years ago, as the population grew, the four-lane bridge was constructed over the river dissecting Mitchells’ suburb with Sarah’s. It was however out-dated the day it opened. It never adequately catered for the heavy movement of cars, particularly during morning and afternoon peaks, and today’s accident only made things worse.
Mitch checked his phone again to see the time ticking by.
2:40 pm. He only had fifty minutes left.
The taxi crept only three hundred metres in the next twenty minutes and Mitchell grew increasingly agitated the longer they spent going nowhere. He asked the driver for any update, and the near indecipherable reply told him nothing was happening in a hurry.
3:00 pm. They weren’t even on the bridge yet.
Mitch had to make a decision. He could stay in the taxi and hope for the best; but in thirty minutes the driver would only have a story to tell his wife over dinner. The tale of a vanishing passenger and forfeiture of his last fare for the day. Even if the traffic cleared and they got a free run to the school, the bottleneck of parents fighting their way to the school gates would make the task less probable. He decided to abandon the trip.
It was unfair to leave the driver sitting in a traffic snarl with no way of exiting. But even more not to pay him for services rendered.
“Sorry mate, I have to go. What’s the meter at?” Mitchell asked. It read $45 so he handed the disgruntled driver $100 before leaping out of the passenger door.
“Damn,” Mitch yelled to himself. What was supposed to be the easiest trip yet had turned into a nightmare. He walked in no particular direction thinking how to rework the journey and waited for the blue light to take him home.