Ben studied the man. They were both the same height, similar build, and had similar facial features. If observing a younger version of oneself was strange, observing an older version was even weirder. Ben knew what he looked like a year ago, but to see himself as an old man was a trip.
"I go bald?" Ben asked, running his fingers through his hair.
"I'm afraid so," the man said with a chuckle.
"Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?" Ben asked.
"You know, Ben, you don't give yourself enough credit sometimes. We're a lot smarter than you think. Forty years ago I stood where you are standing now, and I asked the same question. I'll tell you what the future us told me, but not here. Let's go back to your hotel, I believe you have an extra bed for me."
The three of them entered the vehicle with Vanessa taking the back seat to allow the two Bens to talk. During the short ride back to the hotel room, older Ben began to fill in the missing details of this grand mystery.
"You have it mostly figured out already, Ben. You figured out you travelled back in time, bought the lottery ticket, and met with Velena. But as of this moment, you have no idea what to do next, right?"
"No clue."
"You've probably read some notes about your life having a purpose. You inherit a house, discover a secret manuscript, and learn about the lost connection you have with Charles Gringer, but what does it all mean, you wonder?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm wondering. Please tell me you have the answers?"
"Yes, I will tell you everything, including who those two thugs are who were chasing after you."
"Please, I'm dying to know."
"Don't say that," older Ben said. "If you die now, you'll kill us both."
"Sorry, figure of speech."
"The two goons are from the future. They're called guardians."
"Guardians?"
"It's a long story, but they are essentially time cops."
"What do they want with me?"
"They want to prevent you from changing the world."
"I change the world?" Ben asked.
"Yes, and in a big way. You see, so far all these events have happened to you, but the truth is, your purpose is to serve Kyle."
"Kyle?" Ben said. "What does he have to do with any of this?"
"Everything. What you do from this moment forward is integral to helping him invent time travel. The money you leave for Kyle, which he will discover a year from now, will enable him to build a lab and employ some of the most brilliant minds around the world. Together, they will embark on a journey to do what no one else has been able to do. After nearly fifty years of toil and sacrifice, he and his team eventually develop a working prototype of a time machine - that little gizmo in your pocket. To test it, he needed a volunteer. Any guesses as to who he chose?"
"You... me... I mean, us?"
"Yes, exactly."
"You have no idea how many questions I have had throughout this past year. After you came into my apartment and saved my life, things became really strange."
"Indeed," the man said. "And yes, I do have an idea."
"Is there no time travel etiquette? I mean, couldn't you have left me a note or something?"
"I did leave a note."
"Don't give up, your life has a purpose and then some abstract numbers - that's the best you could come up with?"
"Hey, it worked, didn't it?"
Pulling up to the hotel, the three of them left the vehicle and entered through the lobby of the small hotel. The receptionist was now even more perplexed as to why an old man was accompanying a young couple into their hotel room at 4:00 a.m.
As soon as they stepped into the elevator, Ben asked. "So what do we do now?"
"We go to Calgary, reunite with your estranged grandfather, and... oh by the way, wait until you see this guy, he looks exactly like me."
"What happens to Charles Gringer?"
"He cashes the lottery ticket and splits it with you as per our agreement. He forms a new identity and vows to live the rest of his days as Elliot Hershel."
"Who's Elliot Hershel?"
"He's nobody, I just made him up," the man said, holding up a fake passport and ID.
"So in exchange for the ten-million dollars, he agrees to give me his house?"
"Wouldn't you do the same?" the older man asked. "Who could possibly refuse an offer like that?"
Now in the suite, the older Ben walked across the room to a desk in the corner and wrote the following note on the hotel stationary:
DON'T GIVE UP, YOUR LIFE HAS A PURPOSE - 40 35 55 81 11
"I have a question," Vanessa said, looking puzzled.
"Shoot."
"If these numbers come from you, and they were given to you by some future you, then where did they originate from?"
"I'm not sure I follow," younger Ben said.
"Think about it; there must be an original Ben who didn't have all this stuff happen to him, and then somehow travelled back in time to set this whole thing in motion."
"Huh?"
"I was struggling with this earlier, but needed time to wrap my head around it. Earlier we met with Velena and you informed her of your plan about her giving you a note on the bus. You then instructed her on what to write, which included her phone number."
"Yeah, so?"
"But you only knew her phone number because it was given to you a year prior. So in effect, you told yourself what her phone number was, and that doesn't make sense. Unless, of course, there was an original Ben - a Ben Prime, if you will - who was told the number by someone other than himself."
"An original Ben?"
"This so-called Ben Prime would have had a much different life than you. He did not inherit a house, did not find a secret manuscript, and did not win the lottery. And if he didn't win the lottery, he could not have funded Kyle's lab, and therefore, without the lab, there's no time travel. But if there's no time travel in the original Ben's life, how then does he travel back in time and orchestrate everything."
"You put all this together from a phone number?" Ben asked.
"It took some time to sort out in my head, but I think it makes sense to me now. Someone must have told the original Ben what Velena's phone number was. Once it was told to the original Ben, then forever after he could tell it to his younger self."
"She's right, you know," the older Ben said. "I can see why you are with her. Vanessa, you have made a very astute observation, articulating the apparent paradox eloquently."
"And another thing," Vanessa added. "I thought time travel is logically impossible due to the 'you' paradox?"
"The 'you' paradox?" older Ben repeated. "Don't you mean the grandfather paradox?"
"Slow down," young Ben said. "I'm not hip to all these paradoxes, what are you two talking about?"
"Allow me to explain, if I may," the older Ben offered. "The grandfather paradox states that a person cannot travel back in time because in doing so they could theoretically kill their grandfather as a child. If the time traveller's grandfather is killed as a child before he could have a son, then the time traveller would not be born. But if the time traveller is not born, how could he go back in time and kill his grandfather? So it would seem that one could both kill and not kill their grandfather... hence the paradox. But your beautiful and equally brilliant girlfriend has pointed out the redundancy of the paradox. In order to have the paradox, one does not need to go back in time to kill their grandfather, they just have to go back in time and kill themselves."
"Is this what they teach you in science classes?" Ben asked.
"No, of course not, I learned about this in philosophy."
"So how do we make sense of this?" Ben asked. "Through this hypothesis, time travel seems impossible, yet we know it to be true. By the way, please don't kill me to prove the hypothesis wrong."
"It's still not well understood, but some philosophers have postulated a multiple-universe hypothesis as a way around the grandfather paradox. So instead of time being linear, like travelling up and down a river, it would take you to an alternate universe where everything is the same. What happens to your relatives on that universe has no bearing on what happens to you. So you would not be killing your grandfather, or yourself, but rather some copy of your grandfather."
"Makes sense," Ben said.
"Think of time travel as sending a file in an email. When you attach a file, you are not sending the original file, you're sending a copy. The sender still keeps the original. So forty years from now, I step into a time machine, but it doesn't seem to work. I step out and live my life, but a copy of me actually does travel back in time to an alternate universe, where reality is the same."
"So you're a copy?" Ben asked.
"There's no way to know for sure, but that hypothesis seems to make the most sense."
"So people will continue to work on developing their time machine and never get confirmation that it actually works?"
"Unless they get confirmation."
"What do you mean?"
"If someone from the future suddenly shows up on their doorstep one day and tells them it will work."