Time Travel Institute (Cold Curtain)

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive

"People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't."—Octavia E. Butler

            After spending two weeks resting his brain on Chloe's couch because he was adamant about not moving back home, Benjamin worked at Wal-Mart, until he accidentally set the floor on fire while helping a woman smell a scented candle. He also got his old job at Wurst Eats back, carefully avoiding telling either place about the other, because he wanted to pay back Chloe for the medical bills.

Mrs. Watts' acid reflux became worse again for no apparent reason and so did her Crohns' disease, which the acid reflux did no favors for. She was a thirty-five-year-old shut-in. Every day, she taught Ella and Daisy, did three loads of laundry or cleaned one room, and asked Alexander if he was doing his homework.

Though high school, Alexander took every Advanced Placement test he could, and in the spring of 2148, he would take Calculus BC, Psychology, Statistics, and Studio Art: 3-D Design. Because he was technically done with high school, Mrs. Watts just made sure he was not spending all day in the barn inventing something. Over the summer of 2147, he took cryptography and technical writing, and in the regular school year, apologetics and the history of the English language, because he said it might be useful to know sometime and the skills would probably be useful at some point, and either way, "Do you want my brain to stop popping neurons from no English and history?" ("Honey, I can guarantee that your brain will not stop popping neurons. English and history make it pop more than other things, but if you do enough science, your brain will explode. Don't worry.") He took apologetics from the American Association of Lutheran Church's seminary. The rest he taught himself from books.

Alexander, Benjamin, and Mia would hang out and work on chemistry (Alexander had roped-in Benjamin) and work on the Time Travel Institute.

"I finished the defense thing about soldiers," Mia said in the spring. "And wrote a protest to it because I could."

"Awesome! Thanks!" Alexander and Benjamin said.

"You can't have it until school is over."

On the day school ended, Mia emailed it to Benjamin and Alexander, but they only posted the defense and said that Benjamin would be leaving for the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on June 8th.

June 1, 2148

"Seven days and I'll be in 1918!" Benjamin said as soon as Alexander opened the door to Herbert. "I've got the uniform now and everything!"

"Although now there is a naked American running around the French countryside," Alexander said.

"Who cares? He can get another uniform. Besides, I left his long-johns. All I have to do is finish forging the papers and go!"

June 5, 2148

"This is a really bad idea," Chloe said. "Of all the bad ideas you've had over the years, this is the worst, and that includes making soup for a church potluck from a jar of spaghetti sauce and a bottle of Tabasco sauce and not warning the old people. You need to go to college, work at Wal-Mart, and teach Claire to blow up the puffer fish in the aquarium."

"Who would go to college when you can go to any time in history?" Benjamin asked. "And we can blow up puffer fish any when I get back."

"Eli! Tell him."

"You should probably listen to your aunt," Eli said, reading a National Geographic. "She knows what she's talking about most of the time, and if she doesn't, she has good ideas. Just carries them out badly."

"Gee, thanks."

"I'm going to assume this is one of the times that she has a good idea and carries it out badly," Benjamin said.

June 8, 2148

Benjamin would leave that day, the day after his eighteenth birthday. He waited in Herbert for Alexander to finish setting up the portal, early in the morning before anybody was up because he said good-bye to them the night before and did not want to worry them again.

"Dude, even Uncle Joe says this is a bad idea," Alexander said. "He says he wouldn't fight in an army in another time period."

"He's in the Marines," Benjamin said.

"That's beside the point. He is about as close to an expert about this as we have. He says it's a bad idea."

"Just send me through."

"Okay. If you say so."

Once Benjamin was in 1918, Alexander would not be able to retrieve him until midnight, November 12, 1918, on the bank of L'Allier by the bridge. Either Benjamin could go and last until then or not go at all, but he decided to go.

September, 1918

Benjamin arrived in France behind a tree, a little before the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He would be part of Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment, U. S. First Division. He knew everything he could possibly cram into his brain about the First World War, all learned from books, especially primary sources. Theoretically, he could use an M1917 Enfield and a gas mask, but never practiced with one. He knew that each of the six ammunition pouches could carry two containers of five rounds, that the Americans never used gas attacks, but the Germans would, about the dung hills kept by the French in their front gardens as status symbols that the Doughboys would move away in an attempt to be helpful, and the time and dates of attacks.

He blended in decently until Company D marched in the dark to a quarry. All night, the Germans fired on them, but the rain made the ground so spongy that many shells sunk into it without exploding. Benjamin thought the mud would suck off his boots. The American artillery retaliated at 1:00 AM, and in the 1st Division's zone, 168 guns fired for four hours. He could nearly see as well as in daylight. It hardly scared him, and he still wanted to experience the combat for himself (like most of the other soldiers), but Benjamin stopped looking forward to it when the gas attacks came.

If Frederick Miller had not helped him with his gas mask, Benjamin would have been blinded then and there and probably live the rest of his life in the 20th century from not being able to reach the portal. It took him twenty-seven seconds to adjust the gas mask (he counted because he had eighteen or twenty seconds to put it on before serious injuries occurred). He could not see or breathe, and the combination of the gas and the nasty smell of the mask made him throw up in the mask. I should've listened to Chloe...he thought. The gas burned his hands and neck and tingled through the uniform.

Suddenly, he could not remember what kind it was—without remembering, he would not know how it would disburse. Chlorine made a gray-green, drifting, smelly cloud, and could be diluted in water or react with urine to make it completely harmless. Phosgene, a white or pale yellow cloud smelling like fresh mown hay, stayed close to the ground. It choked people to death and burned skin so it looked like frostbite. Mustard gas smelled like onion or mustard and settled in the ground with a texture like oily sherry and could remain active for days. It burned skin, caused internal and external bleeding, stripped mucous membranes from bronchial tubes, and made people vomit and their eyes sore. Sometimes a person took four or five weeks to die from it.

All that was great and easy to know in the middle of a library in the 22nd century, but the information completely vacated Benjamin's mind. Everything else scattered in the panic of trying to remember the types of gas and decided to stay gone.

Until the Armistice was announced, he lost all track of dates and times. five-year-old Ella shooting with a pink and yellow plastic water pistol at Pastor Conner riding a bicycle around the church parking lot on Rally Day could shoot better than Benjamin in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He never shot anybody but bayoneted a German his age. Benjamin just stood still, with the German slumping over the rifle. Oh no...Oh no...I did not...Oh shit...

(The photograph shows what Benjamin's uniform would have looked like.)