Ouroborosaurus

The Time Piece

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He had done it.  He, Charles Manwell, suburban hermit and techno-goblinoid, had finally done it.  Years of working out of his parents’ garage, buying equipment on loans he wasn’t sure he could repay, specializing his knowledge of cutting-edge quantum physics and theoretical technology, led him to this moment.  All of his instruments were telling him that it would work.  A lifetime ago, a mere passing interest in his teens had blossomed into a specialization which, within a decade, had gone into obsession and beyond, resulting in a virtual abandonment of sanity.  Not for the first time he gazed lovingly on the small piece of equipment under glass, plugged into a system of computerized tools, both physical and wireless, that represented the lion’s share of his earthly possessions.  This was the third time he had run the simulation of this iteration of the device and all the tablets on all the stands in front of his swivel chair came up green.  On his digital whiteboard, he still had five other approaches that had yet to be attempted.  Something had told him however that this was going to be The One.  Under a very specific set of circumstances, it would work perfectly.  

He plucked the tablet from the stand on his desk and closed the window with the instrument read-outs.  He pulled up a different window, then closed that one and pulled up another.  He cycled through a few more, absent-mindedly.  This kept his hands busy while he grappled with the realization that it was finally time for the next phase.  There was nothing for it.  The combination of anticipation and foreboding, and possibly the energy drinks and caffeine pills charging his system, made him giddy.  This jittery feeling he tried to rein in.  He couldn’t be 100% certain that it would work, despite his inexplicable certainty that it would.  His previous brushes with failure and the resulting agony had done nothing to stem his confidence, but it did make him more wary.  That’s why this round of analysis had been so exhaustive.  He had made up his mind.  To hell with his caution, it was now or never.  He removed the glass covering, carefully unplugging the various wires from the device, and picked it up off its own stand.  He held it, feeling the familiar weight, and for a moment just looked at it before strapping it to his wrist.  The touch screen face of the watch lit up when he tapped it, greeting him with a display of controls.  After setting some parameters through the interface, he paused before pressing the virtual activation button.  Should he tell someone before-…?  

He had worked on this project largely solo.  There was some financial help from parents and witless institutions, but this device was his very own brainchild.  Every line of code, every specification of every piece of hardware, the custom designs, and every modification to even the few proprietary aspects.  Come to think of it, he had no one to celebrate with.  The last human interaction he had was a spat with his father over his energy consumption.  He had no income, so he was surviving by the goodwill of his parents and what amount of loan money still remained that wasn't invested in software or hardware.  He wasn’t contributing to anything but the size of the electric bill.  When had it all started?  He couldn’t remember a time when this project hadn’t dominated his thoughts.  Back when it had only been a passing interest, he would even then bring it up in conversation more than was absolutely necessary.  He had been young enough at the time such that people would write it off as a childhood fixation.  A phase.  It didn’t feel like a phase to him.  From there things went downhill as it consumed him like a midnight python swallowing a hapless sleeping child.  

Another thought pulled him from his reverie.  He realized he had been staring at the activation button for a while now.  A small thing like a button press would determine if he was a time traveler or not.  The destination time was obvious.  Now he had to press the button.  A quick jaunt through times not seen by humans and he would be back in this very moment and suddenly on a track to be set for life.  He quelled the blaze in his mind of all the marketing possibilities.  None of them would be useful if this test was a failure.  He let his index finger depress the touch screen interface and activate the correct sequences to alter his immediate space and hurdle him backwards through the eons.

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From his pulpit Henry looked into the dark room over the faces of the other paleontologists, obscured by the flood of the stage lights in Henry's eyes   He didn't need to see them to know they couldn’t determine how to react to his message.  The way this lecture was advertised, many of those in attendance had expected 3-D imaging, computerized prospective analysis, or any of the other advances in technology that allowed the metaphorical glimpse into the past that every paleontologist was chasing.  The trope was so rampant in its attempts to garner attention by professionals that it had fallen out of fashion, become so retro that it was popular again, and then spawned its own genre of stale references that broke out into pop culture.  

Over a year had passed since his team had discovered what looked like a fossilized smartwatch among the remains of the carnivorous theropod.  Henry, being so incensed by the mysterious contaminant, had spent enough time and effort logically ruling out the usual suspects.  The tech junk was exhaustively proven to be as old as anything else swallowed in the bones of the earth.  More-so, it had signs of having been eaten and partially digested.  The only avenue for the truth, now, was strictly unbelievable.  Was this evidence of a vastly superior race with technological progression convergent with our own?  As slides 27, 28, and bullet point 5 of the conclusion of his presentation would attest, the research suggested not.  So what then did it mean if this piece of fabricated metal was truly ancient despite its obvious modern fabrication?  The audience was waiting for the punchline, either that Elvis faked his own death to live among Bigfoots or that this was all definitive evidence that the mole-people were running the government after all.

Henry had almost cycled through his stack of cue cards, one of each having been devoted to these questions and their answers.  He broke the silence to add a comment not written on any of the hand-written 3” x 5” index cards.  “I remind everyone here that we are not theoretical physicists.  We are paleontologists.  The focus of this study should not be to determine the how, but rather to stick to the scope of our profession.” He gripped the podium with both hands and like a man confessing a crime said, “In my own opinion, this is blatant dig site contamination, though not by dig site personnel, the local population, or even the regular Brownian motion of human pollution.  I don't think the source matters.  The ship has sprung a leak, folks, and it's up to us to plug it and bail water.  Someone else can figure out the cause.” He took a moment to make a show of organizing his cue cards.  Really, he was trying to focus through the rising murmurs.  He tried to tell himself that it was the sound of his point sinking in and not discussion about his questionable mental state.  He decided it was time to wrap it up.  “This is, unfortunately for the paleontology community, the first recorded instance of time stream pollution.”