The Clockwork Universe

Story #2: Backwards, part 2

May 1st, 1851: Hyde Park, London

To whoever is reading this: this is a firsthand account of the destruction of Time Warfare in the year 1851 by the backwarder Eliza Barnett

Wonder. That is the feeling that fills me as I step into the grand atrium of the Crystal Palace.  There is a collective intake of breath from the people around me as they gaze upon the myriad marvels of science, industry, music and art.

Being a backwarder, I have seen these inventions and more in my past, yet I cannot help but feel like I have stepped into a new age of discovery and technology.  My childhood was spent in the early nineteen hundreds, a time of automobiles and telephones and crafts that let people fly, so it is strange and rather endearing to see these Victorians exclaim over simple machines like hydraulic presses and cotton spinners. They do not know that this is not even a fraction of what humankind achieves in later years.

Be that as it may, the Great Exhibition is a triumph of its time. I wish I could spend more time here, but when I wake up tomorrow it will be April 30th, and the Exhibition will not be open yet.

I have very little time. Within this emporium of fabulous inventions and relics from the far reaches of the British Empire, there is unimaginable evil hiding. Monsieur Remy Vanaugh is here, touring the Exhibition. In later years, he will develop a weapon, the likes of which have never been seen before. It is a small metal device that steals Time from people. If a person touches it without some form of protection, all the Time they have is transferred to the device. 

This device is the reason the Clockmaker Guild built me a clock that ticked backwards, all the way back in 1917, the year of my birth. World War I had started in earnest then, and the Austrians, aided by Vanaugh's son, had started the frightening Time Warfare: using the weapon to steal Time from enemy soldiers and giving it to their own. Being a backwarder, I would try to stop it, by killing the man whose brainchild it was. 

My partner, a backwarder boy born on the same day as I, had been dead a decade now, so I was the only one.

My entire life had been a countdown to 1851. Starting a family had never been an option: either the child would be a forwarder and after its birth I would never see it again (because it would move forward and I would move backward) or I could choose to make its clock tick backward, but I would not make any child undergo the pain of being backwarder.

So I focused only on Vanaugh, and learning as much as I could about the Great Exhibition, for nearly seventy years. Today is the culmination of everything I have done, everything I lost when my parents gave me to the Guild. It was a big sacrifice, but they believed in stopping the Time Warfare once and for all, and the only way to do that was to send someone permanently back in time to fix it. Who better than their own daughter?

I strike into the machinery exhibit, my heart beating. I see the lean figure of Vanaugh bending over to inspect a particularly well-crafted clock.

My short, needle-thin darts are cleverly positioned under my finger-nails. I knew that I would be well into my sixties when I finally reached 1851, so I trained in a mode of assassination that required zero physical exertion: poison. 

I move closer to the exhibit, pretending to be interested in the clock.

One flick of a finger is all it takes. The needle embeds itself Vanaugh's neck. Thinking it is a pesky mosquito perhaps, he flicks the needle away, but it is too late. There is a lethal home-brewed poison coursing through his veins. An hour, he will start to feel ill, in two, he will be dead.

I feel light and dizzy suddenly. It is done. The mission of my life-accomplished. In a daze, I turn away and walk out of the Crystal Palace. I do not want to stay in the Great Exhibition anymore.

In my room, I take a sleeping pill so I can contact the Clockmakers Guild and the other Backwarders and find out if I was successful: if  Time Warfare was prevented in 1917.

That's right. We meet in a place that transcends time and place: in dreams. It's how I spoke to my parents, how Nerada, my backwarder caretaker, gave the Guild reports about my progress. 

Brother Mendel of the Guild appears. I am standing in a grassy field underneath the stars, waiting for him. The moment of truth.

"The world is indebted to you, Miss Barnett," Brother Mendel says, a wide grin on his face. He is wearing the garb of the 2000s, tight blue pants (called jeans, I think) and a ridiculously loose checkered shirt. He is young, and I am happy that he will grow up in a world without Time Warfare.

 "You prevented the deaths of nearly one million people. The World War still happened, but there was no Time Warfare this time around. Your killing of Vanaugh has had ripple effects throughout Time, and we are still figuring out what they are, but it is nothing too serious so far."

"I am pleased to hear that," I say, then walk  out of the dream. Tomorrow, perhaps, the whole Guild will meet in another dream and congratulate me again, but for now, I am just a tired old woman in need of some sleep.

*******

James folded letter and tucked it into his pocket. He had read it every single day for the past twenty five years, and every day it had given him strength to move on with his curious, lonely life.

And now, he was off to kill the Fuhrer.