Once again.

I had considered skipping Christmas this year because it presents what has proved to be pretty much false hope. And yet we drag it out every year. And yet, there is certainly much beauty in its music and imagery. And yet, without it, events might have been even worse. Besides, without Christmas and its coincidental Santa Claus, would my parents have ever spent the princely sum of $24, if I remember correctly, to give me a chemistry set?

So, I am up before -6:30, well before sunrise, to listen to BBC World Service broadcast Eric Milner-White's Festival of Lessons and Carols. It is a singularly poignant celebration this year, the centennial of the end of the war to end wars. Milner-White had just been released from the Army. Small wars smoulder around the globe this morning as I sit in my cozy home amidst the firs, the stock market is teetering, the US is 'led' by an idiot who is casting aside all ties to sanity, and Russia, having survived communism, has a new Czar who seems to be seeking an empire.  I am reminded of the first Christmas of the Great War. The troops had been told that they would be home by Christmas. But they were not home, they were freezing in trenches trenches dug into northern France. The troops, not yet adjusted to total war, am insanity such as the world had never before seen, and certainly not expecting to spend nearly four more years in the mud and the blood, stopped shooting each other for a day, and sang carols, played a bit of football, smoke cigarettes together. Their commanders responded with court-marshals and threats of executions. There would be a small attempt at such a truce in 1915, but by 1916 the armies of Christian Europe had pretty much given up on the rule of the Prince of Peace.

Much of the current world turmoil, especially the immigration and Brexit turmoils in Great Britain, can be traced to events and decisions made during that war and the treaty negotiations that followed. None of these of course will be mentioned in Chapel of King's College this Christmas Eve. The words spoken and the songs sung will recognize strife and turmoil of course. But they will also remind us that such things are timeless, as of course are hope, and joy. That joy and hope remain timeless is perhaps the biggest failure of Christianity.

Having sung o come, o come,  Emmanuel for four weeks, making joyful noises about God with us, we will pack Emmanuel away for another year, the baby Jesus joining God in Heaven where he belongs so that we may get on with the affairs of Caesar. We will join with Herod in the continual slaughter of the innocents.

What is remarkable about the story of the birth of Jesus is that it is meek and lowly. Gods are supposed to strike people dead with lightning bolts, to make war with invincible hammers, to fly through the air in war chariots. God the son is the son of man. God the son is born to a poor woman in a country province of the empire. And his kingdom, if there is to be one, depends not on the work of gods but on the work of women and men who do not seek power.

Many times have I recited the boastful words of the creeds, 'he shall come again in great glory, and judge the quick and the dead.'. it being so wonderfully convenient that we have sent him into heaven to sit at the right hand of the father. But the truth is that I don't await his coming in glory, the second coming, because the first has been  such a fizzle. Great music, magnificent buildings, wonderful art, yes. But peace, not so much.

I am, however, a fool. I don't expect the first coming to take effect. But I hold onto a silly hope that it could be a possibility. So once again, I wake early on the morning of 24 December 'to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass . . . .'  Hope springs eternal in the human heart, because the human heart is a very slow learner.

On Swedes: difficulties of immigration

In the divided territory occupied by the United States these days, few issues seem to be so divisive as immigration. The Presidency is occupied by a minor reality tv  personality who has made his political career by stirring up fear, and it seems his greatest success has been increasing the fear of immigrants. Most of my friends tend to be in the  liberal-to-progressive faction, and they lean towards an open border policy. 'We come in peace. All men are brothers.' (Except of course one is not allowed to say 'All men are brothers' because it's sexist and fraternalistic.)

I am uncomfortable in both (all) of the factions. So far as I know I am fully human, with no Klingon ancestry, but I distrust emotions as a basis for political policies. Fear is, in my opinion, probably the most dangerous emotion, especially when it is misdirected by refusing to face our real fears and transferring them to some other object. But cheap 'love' sometimes can be as dangerous, in that it lets us lure those we like to think we love into very dangerous situations in which we can then do nothing, or easily choose to do nothing to help them.

There is no doubt that the United States have benefited from immigration. A quick search of sources will find a long list of liberal and libertarian arguments for the past benefits of immigrants to the United States. Most recent presidents and presidential candidates have made speeches containing the phrase 'we area a nation of immigrants.' That phrase is often followed by some statement like 'immigrants built our railroads, mined our coal, manned our factories, grew our wheat, . . . .' Not dwelling on the distinction between 'immigrants' and 'our' in such statements, I would point out that one of the most important parts of those claims is that they are in the past tense. There are certainly many immigrants making America great in the present time. One of the founders of Google is an immigrant. The CEO's of Microsoft and of Google are immigrants. The founder and CEO of Amazon is an immigrant. The founder of Tesla and Space X and whatever else he's doing this week is an immigrant. Even Steve Jobs biological father was an immigrant. And without H-1B visas, many critical contemporary American industries would be crippled, something which the current US regime seems to be trying to achieve.

But, there are very many folks who are seeking asylum or residency in the United States who do not have the skill set of Sundar Pichai, and who are certainly not entrepreneurs. They are the 'tired, .  . 
. poor, . . . huddled masses yearning to breathe free, . . . [the]  wretched refuse of . . . teeming shore, . . . the homeless, tempest-tossed.'  Unfortunately, these are just the sorts of people for whom jobs and opportunities are missing in contemporary America, where railroads are not being built, where mines are closing, where factories are closing, and where the current regime's trade policies are shutting down markets for wheat, even if there were still jobs in the wheat fields.

I began thinking about writing this essay as I overheard a discussion in a produce department about I had called rootabagas only to be corrected by another man that they were 'swedes'. i thought about Carl Sandburg and the America in which he was raised and in which he wrote, an America that still sent posters to European lands seeking immigrants, and America that would produce Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon. But even in that past Americans were not so welcoming as we like to remember ourselves. Just a few miles south of the quiet forest in which I write, in Edmonds, Washington, where Boeing is dependent on workers all around the world to produce it's 'American' airplanes, a 'fact' that the current occupant of the White House liked to warp when he landed to shock and awe his supporters in his Boeing 757, Chinese workers were forced to 'commit suicide' by jumping off a bridge, sometimes several times when their 'first attempts' failed, because other, European workers were reaching Edmonds from the eastern states.

The United States today face one of the biggest changes in economics--which at one level we see as jobs--that has ever occurred, as we move from a scarcity state to an abundant state. We aren't yet at Star Trek levels of capabilities, but we're getting there fast. But the discussion about it has not reached the politicians who want to make policies for the future, unless seeing something is happening here that they don't understand and so want to forbid can be considered policy. Until we begin to adjust our understanding and options, I fear that open borders will simply make having such a discussion even more difficult.

I hope that the word will reach those on the 'teeming shore' that the United States are little better prepared for the future than anywhere else. Indeed, the United States may be worse prepared than many areas of the world because it has long been in the vanguard of change, and therefore also bears the brunt of that change. But few states are founded on the liberalism of Locke and Smith and Company that has encouraged the United States towards inclusion.  I can't imagine a Salvadoran emigrant expecting to be welcome in Ghana.

(An interesting side note is Japan, which has long opposed immigration, preferring to keep Japan Japanese and preserving as much of its weird culture as is possible in the day of Sony and Toyota, is finding it helpful to invite skilled immigrants to fill the labor gap that has not yet been solved by robots, but Japan is not issuing permanent immigration visas.) 

In the meanwhile, as the number of emigrants/immigrants grow, partly because so many nations are in turmoil and partly because there are just so many of us folk nowadays, the United States probably have more ability to absorb immigrants than the much smaller European states such as Sweden or Germany or England, where there are real immigration crises.  But this is a comparative ability only, simply because of the scale of the United States.  Neither the Republican fear-mongering of immigrants nor the Progressive love fest over immigrants does anything to solve what will may become a very difficult situation without intelligent, serious, data-based investigation of what the future may hold for economic residents of the United States.  A much more comprehensive policy than a wall or a cache of bottled water is needed.

Curiosities' End

Back at the dressing table after not having had room for a muffin because she had eaten so much corn bread, she once more surveyed her afternoon haul.

Mill was sure that she had put No. 895 in a bag before going to supper. Now it was out of the bag, and seemed a different colour from what she had remembered. And, there seemed to be a sort of cloud of tiny insects around it, barely large enough to see. What were they, and why would they gather around an old golf ball.

The sound of the water running in the bathtub told Mill that she would have to study No. 895 later. Aunt Buck liked for Mill to take her bath early so the ancient hot water heater would have time to recover for her own bath. Picking up the ball for a quick closer look before going off to her bath,

Mill felt a slight tingling, almost like a bite from an ant. Whatever those tiny insects were, they had a big defense. By the time she reached the bathtub, she had a slight rash on her arm. Aunt Buck saw it and wondered if she had found some poison ivy.

‘No,. I watch for poison ivy. I think I just got bitten by a gnat or something.’

‘Well, let’s put some baking soda in your bath  water. That should help.’

And the sting and the  itching did pass very quickly. Aunt Buck wanted Mill to stay in the tub for a while to ‘take away the poison’, but Mill was anxious to get back to her specimens, especially No. 895. Dried off in one of the thin and rough towels that it seemed only Aunt Buck liked, except that Mill liked them because Aunt Buck did, and in her seersucker pajamas, Mill returned to the table by the window. The ‘gnats’ were gone. The golf ball seemed the colour it had been when she had found it. It did match the photo she had on her phone. She wished she had taken another picture when it had seemed a different colour. She made a mental note to document her specimens better in the future. This time she was certain to bag No. 895, and put it in line with her other finds of the day. The corn snake skin, No. 896, was a problem. She needed a long bag to hold it without damaging it. Maybe Aunt Buck had a spaghetti wrapper she could use. She did. Aunt Buck knew that her favourite niece often needed special equipment.

The bed felt especially good that night, with the delicious cool of the sheets enhanced by the warmth that remained from the hot soda bath. Mill was quickly asleep.

She did not sleep for very long, it seemed, before a strange noise woke her, a slight buzzing, like bees or a very large cloud of gnats. At first she thought that there must be more of those gnats, and she wondered if she should have shut the window.

But then she saw No. 895. It was out of the bag, again, and glowing again, brighter this time, and humming slightly. Mill sat paralyzed by wonder as her golf ball lifted off the table and swept out the window, gathered speed, and disappeared.

A new story, from the blue ball

Stories from the Blue Ball

Curiosities

Mil carefully spread the finds of the day on Aunt Buck’s curious table. Buck said it had been a dressing table until she took off the mirror. Now it was in front of the window in the spare bedroom, which Mil thought of as her own. There was a curtain on arms that swing out from the edge of the table which made it a perfect puppet theatre.

 Aunt Buck’s house was full of curiosities. It was older and smaller than any of the houses near it. Once it has been a farmhouse, and the had been a cotton gin between it and a highway, but now the farm was a subdivision with a golf course and a little lake. The farm had behind to Buck’s brother Cedric, who has died before Mil was born. He has given the farmhouse and a half acre to his sister. After his death, the family had developed the rest of the farm.

Aunt Buck was the oldest person Mil knew, but she didn't act much like most adults. She was short and trim, and in her jeans and sweatshirts and tennis shoes, could pass as a teenage if you saw her from the back. She was also the only person who called Mil by her full name, even if she weren't angry, which she never was anyway, and which she did now, calling from the kitchen.

‘Mildred Cedric Davidson, you better start washing up. Dinner’s almost ready.’

'I will, Aunt Buck. Just let me bag my specimens.’

Mil collected specimens. She was a naturalist. She always took a picture of them in situ before gathering them, recording when and where she found them. That information she stored on her phone as a description of the specimens. They were all assigned numbers which  she wrote carefully on the plastic bags in which she kept them.

Today's finds started at number 892, a bit of a bird's wing. She could not identify the species yet, but thought it was from an immature robin. It has been under the privet hedge that separated her aunt's yard from the golf course, and robins often nested there.

Number 893 was part of what seemed to be a receipt from the cotton gin. It has also been under the hedge, blown the apparently by some long ago wind. There wasn't much left of it, but the heading, 'Needham Gin’, was still clearly visible. The date seemed to be 9/14/63, but it was pretty faint. Only  two numbers on the receipt, ‘17’, were left. Mil could not guess what else it might have said.

A bottle cap, too rusted to identify the brand, was Number 894. Mil's grandfather had run a sure back when this was still out in the country, and there were many bottle caps around. They were therefore not a major find, but this one still showed a bit of purple color that Mill liked. She would research what soda pop had purple caps later.

Number 895 was a golf ball, but an unusual one. It was a sort of dull metal color instead of the white or yellow that Mill usually found. That fact was why she kept it instead of returning it to the club house for a small reward. It also send unusually heavy, and a little warm. More research for later, about golf ball materials.

The prize find of the afternoon was Number 896: a corn snake shed, still with most of its colors and in one piece.

'Mildred Cedric Davidson, dinner's ready.’ 'Here I come, Aunt Buck.’

Mill tripped to the table, happy that her brother was of at scout camp and she had her favorite aunt to herself. Thomas was alright as brothers go, but still. He was just two years older, but he made it seem like decades, and he called her Dred. She got slight revenge by calling him Theodore, which was no part of his real name but which bugged him delightfully.

Meals were always just about the best part of staying with Aunt Buck. She didn't cook anything unusual, really, except maybe her lemon meringue pie, but all her cooking just tasted special somehow. Tonight's dinner was simple, with tomatoes and cucumbers sliced and soaked together in a mild vinegar, Lambertson green beans cooked with ham, and not corn bread. No pie, but there were muffins, the kind Aunt Buck called just muffins because there was nothing filling  or frosting them. Everything tasted lovely, and Buck asked Mill about her specimens with genuine interest. She thought the bottle cap was probably from a Grapette, a soda long discontinued, but delicious in its day.

Buck, who had acquired her unusual name because she had married a man named Rogers and she had always been interested in space travel, let Mill bring her phone to the table so they could explore their questions. They discovered that the Grapette caps has not been purple. Probably Nugrape, then, was Buck's suggestion. Mill was surprised that Grapettes had come in six ounce bottle, since she had grown up in a world that mostly started with sixteen ounce bottles. She had learned something from collecting an old bottle cap even if it wasn't rare.

Back at the dressing table after not having had room for a muffin because she had eaten so much corn bread, she once more surveyed her afternoon haul.

23. Forks in time

V

45

Nora and Yanto remained disappointed, as did Marcus, and as did, to a slightly lesser degree, Min-seo and Rafael. They kept watching waves for a year, and none of them carried a Hyundai named Attila carrying Kenneth Owens.

Min-seo and Rafael were married, not at Glastonbury in May  but at Seoul in October, a traditional time for weddings in Korea and the anniversary of their meeting. They both wore hanbok, a traditional wedding dress, so again they were in costume. They exchanged not only rings but watches, a recent tradition in Korean weddings which seemed particularly appropriate for them. Rafael had joined the engineering staff at Kenstel, and they made their home in Chandigarh.

As Rafael collected more and more data on time waves, he became less and less expectant that Kenneth would return to the place he had departed. Time and place move independently of each other. So, he quit going to the Home in Pilton. He remained at the University of Sheffield, but worked as a consultant to Kenstel and became one of the best friends of the Acosta-Lees.
Nora Owens continued to keep her son present virtually, with deposits and withdrawals to his account and purchases from Home. If anyone asked about him, she would say, truthfully, that he was off on a trip about some secret project on which he was working and about which he had told no one any details, but that it seemed likely to be very important.


46

In Attila Kenneth and Aidan awoke from what at first seemed a very strange shared dream, but they quickly realized that however much their memories might be a dream, they were indeed together in a Hyundai Harmony which displayed the time and date as  05:00 on 1 November 2039, and their location as a parking lot of a market in Burnham-on-Crouch.

‘We did it! We really did it!’ Kenneth was a little amazed but very happy.

‘You did it!’ Aidan was awed.

‘Open the doors,’ Kenneth said, as if he were just going on a normal shopping trip. Attila was not parked very squarely, so he asked it to repark, now that it had access to all the ‘normal’ satellites on which it relied.

‘We should probably get you some new clothes,’ Kenneth said as he saw Aidan for the first time in the twenty-first century. ‘You look great, but a bit old-fashioned, even for East Anglia.’

So, Aidan learned some of the other things the slab of glass Kenneth carried would do: purchase clothes and food. Play music. He wondered where he could get such a thing. Kenneth reassured him that he would have one before the day was over. If he didn’t have one, people would think he were an alien. Aidan also found out that the thing, which Kenneth called a ‘phone’, could talk to people who weren’t there.

Kenneth called his mother a little early. It wasn’t Sunday, but he wanted her to meet someone.

22. Thin times at Avalon

43


Part of the calculations Kenneth worked on that January had to do with calendrical problems. He had not, when he first arrived in 1704, thought much about the fact that the English would not adopt the Gregorian calendar for nearly half a century. To save electricity, he had turned off the date and time function of his phone and other computers, and had been keeping count of the days the old-fashioned way, with marks on paper. There had been no calendar hanging on the wall of the porch he had visited in Pengenffordd, so he had never really thought about  calendars. But as he was thinking about the upcoming ‘thin time’ of Imbolc, he did. Ancient celtic calendars had not been printed. They were sun dials. Huge sundials, Stonehenge being the most famous. The modern (i.e., 2039) version of the Gregorian calendar, with leap years and leap centuries and occasional adjustments of a few seconds as necessary meant that his devices were pretty close to the time-keeping of Stonehenge. Which meant that if they were going to make a leap this Imbolc, they needed to be ready on 20 January.

Aidan asked how Attila would help them ‘catch a wave’, since he and the other companions of Owain Lawgoch had had nothing like an automobile.

‘I suppose anyone or anything anywhere could be caught up on a time wave. But the special painting on the top of the car lets me see a wave and try to catch up to it. In ‘my time’, there are people who ‘surf’ on sea waves, and they use fast boats to take them to catch waves that are still far from land. Attila helps me try to do the same thing.’

So it happened that an hour  before midnight on Tuesday, the 19th of January, Kenneth turned on all the systems of Attila the Hyundai as he and Aidan squeezed into it to try to catch a time wave. Everything seemed to work fine. Aidan had never before seen all of the displays that Kenneth had at his disposal, but he had long been convinced that this beautiful man he had seen walking through the mists was the greatest mage of all time, so he was amazed but not surprised. The clock clock on the display read 31 January, just as Kenneth had expected. As midnight approached, they drifted off to sleep.

44

Nora’s parents had taken the news of their grandson’s ‘trip’ with little surprise. They had always thought that the boy would go far. Blanche Davidson was almost smug that someone still took her old stories seriously. Min-seo and Rafael had called from Chandigarh to share that they were engaged, and thanked Nora and Marcus for giving them so many excuses to get together, something they probably would not have done on their own.

With everyone gathered around their Duo screens at once, it seemed like a good time to plan for their next trip to Pilton and Glastonbury. The Davidson’s thought that they were a little old for such a field trip, but were happy to have been included in the secret, and asked that Kenneth call them as soon as he returned. Min-seo and Rafael hoped that Kenneth might make an appearance again so they could invite him to their wedding, since his project had been so important in their getting to know one another.

And so it happened that the four original time-travel detectives and Yanto Owens stepped out of one of the Apple Tree’s Volvo Estates into the thick mist of Avalon about an hour before midnight on 31 January 2040 with a piece of kit that looked like a medieval shield made of black carbon fibre. They were in the parking place next to the one where/when Kenneth Owens’ Hyundai had last reported its location to House.  Marcus Rutschman opened a kick-stand on its back, put it on a firm bit of turf, and ran his finger along one edge. It began to glow slightly with a pale green light. Patterns began to be displayed in blue and red and white lines on it’s glassen surface. Occasionally one of the patterns would glow in orange.

‘That one!’ Marcus pointed to a particularly bright orange line that crossed Merlin’s display as a diagonal sine  wave. That’s exactly what Kenneth had hoped to use. If it is, and if he’s trying to return, he might be on it. We need to be ready to move if we’re in his parking place.

They waited. There were some other of the orange waves, not quite so strong, but still hopeful. But nothing came to occupy the parking space they kept open. After about an hour, with only blue and white lines on the display, they decided that perhaps they should try again at Beltane. Or that maybe Marcus should start coming to stay in House more often and monitor the area on a regular basis. Maybe they had put too much faith in ley lines and thin times.

Next morning, they all returned to their scattered homes, Marcus and Rafael and Min-seo with USB drives of the data gathered by Merlin, Nora and Yanto with disappointment.

21. A new year begins

41

The eve of the new year 1705 was a quiet time for Kenneth and Aidan. There was not much celebration going on around them on the farms or in the mines or in the villages, and if there had been, they would not have joined in. The solstice had been a cheerful time for them. Even though the nights were not much shorter yet, they did feel that they had more time to work on preparation for the next stage of their journey. But somehow a new year made them realize how far away from anything they had ever called home before really was. Just over two months ago, it had been 1378 for Aidan Prydudd and 2039 for Kenneth Owens. As 1705 began, Aidan wondered whether he was dead and that the dead do dream, and Kenneth wondered if he had drifted off to sleep in the Glastonbury parking lot and was having the strangest dream of his life. How could any of this be real?

Still, holding each other seemed real enough. Kenneth wondered whether he would have survived the past two months in this strange time without Aidan. Aidan wondered whether he would have survived two months of warfare in the old time, Each was  happy to have the other with whom to share this strange new life-time.

For the next month, Ken went over his data and graphs, becoming more and more sure that they might be able to leap through time again, but also more and more unsure whether the next leap would be to the past or to the future, or whether either one would be a past or future with which either of the would be familiar. But they reassured each other that they would gladly face whatever time or world it might be with each other.


42

The eve of the year 2040 was an exciting time for the five people who shared what they hoped was the secret that time travel had been successful. A week before the end of the year, Raf Acosta had sent Min-seo Lee an e-mail to her private account, which now she almost never used. He had said that he had something he wanted to show her.  Might he come to Chandigarh?  She of course said yes. He said he would be on an Alliance Air flight from Dubai at 15:30 on the 31st. Where would it be convenient to meet her? She said she would be waiting at the terminal in Mohali.

Nora Owens had invited Marcus to join her and Yanto in London for a little family celebration. She had even persuaded her parents, Blanche and Aubrey, to join them from Whitby. There was not yet a Teslatube from Whitby, so they would come by train, arriving at King’s Cross. Marcus would get his own Uberdu from St. Pancras, but Nora thought that she should meet her parents.

Yanto was glad to have a bit of time to talk with Marcus with no fear of worrying his wife. ‘Do you really think someone could survive time travel?’

‘Honestly, I have no way of knowing. Some people thought that train travel would be too fast for safety. Many people thought that super-sonic travel would be fatal.  Compared to super-sonic airplanes, Kens theory of time travel seems hardly dangerous at all. It’s not so much traveling fast as it  it is hopping from one place to another. It’s just that the places are waves, traveling at the speed of time. More like hopping from one slow-moving train to another. But of course also of course we don’t know if he pulled it off. It seems that if he had failed, there would be wreckage, and we haven’t found any.’

‘Ah, but there’s the rub. When might the wreckage be.’

Nora arrived with the Davidsons, who were re-introduced to Marcus Rutschman, and who then asked where Kenneth was. ‘Was he arriving later?’

‘Sit down, please. We have something to tell you.’

20. Time and tide await no man

39

Nora and Marcus had another task while they waited for what they hoped would be an Imbolc window of opportunity: keeping Kenneth Owens alive virtually. They of course did not really know if he were alive in the ‘normal’ sense, but since he seemed to live in abnormal times, they didn’t want him to return to their present and find himself dead. That was not a very difficult task, since Kenneth was pretty much a hermit. His Home did all of his shopping. It was not at all unusual for him to leave the Hyundai in the garage for months. All of his bills were paid and his income deposited  electronically. So, they hoped to make  him seem to be around by doing a few things for him. Nora would go over twice a week to take in deliveries from his locker, and Marcus, with Min-seo, published a paper naming him a co-author. It described printing techniques for nano-antennae, with emphasis on applications for wearable electronic devices. There was no mention of space travel. Ken had not bothered to post anything on any social sites for years, and most of his correspondence before his disappearance had been to either Min or Marcus, so none of his colleagues noticed any lack of activity. Nora called Home every Sunday and talked to the smart house. She found the internet of things more and more normal each week.

40

In the old country, Kenneth and Aidan were also preparing for Imbolc. Attila the Hyundai had large batteries, and there were some solar panels, but the panels were small compared to the area of the car because of elaborate antennae Marcus had printed on the roof. If they were going to be able to make the leap back to the future in any sort of controlled manner, it might not be possible to delay it much longer than three months. Kenneth had to admit to himself that he wasn’t really sure that his trip had been in any way controlled. He had just put himself in  spot where he thought time waves might break and hoped he could ride one. Since he had landed where and when he had, he hoped the break might happen twice. He did hope that he might be able to publish his work in a time that would understand it. Aidan found the possibility of time travel far more exciting than fighting in French-English-Welsh wars, but he wasn’t sure to whom he might tell his tales. He did hope that if they made a leap, it would be into the future. He had already lived in the past, and he was certain that his family and friends thought he was dead. His return would be really hard to explain.

19. Time-traveling hermits

Kenneth slowly became aware just how unprepared he had been for time travel. He had not really expected that it would work, despite what he had told himself. Now that he was nearly 330 years into the past, with lots of data to analyze from his trip, he realized that he might never be able to share it with anyone who would believe it or really benefit from it. He wondered if he might write a book, detailing how he had come to make the trip. Writing was one technology that had survived. But he had no money for paper or ink or pen. And he quickly realized that his food supply, packets of dehydrated camping food, would not last forever, especially now that he was feeding two.

Fortunately, Aidan proved to be a helpful second mouth to feed. He quickly learned to speak ‘modern’ English, and found folk ready to pay him for singing and telling stories. He helped Kenneth build a lath house a short distance from the Hyundai. Fortunately it had come to rest above any land that was used for farming, and before enclosures had begun. Kenneth they passed off as a scholarly hermit. Fortunately  hermits were not entirely unknown in Wales at that time.

And so they passed the winter, Kenneth telling stories of the future to Aidan as they lay together in their tiny cell, Aidan telling stories of the past to the folk gathered around the fires of taverns.


38

In the future, Marcus was not encouraged. He came more and more to think that time travel was possible, and that Kenneth had achieved it. But the data they were beginning to gather with their Merlin was like the discovery of some ancient (or future) library by some archaeologist, written in an unknown tongue. Rafael was more hopeful. He set his deep learning algorithms loose on the data and waited for them to find a new Rosetta Stone.

18. Precedents of time travel

35

It took Kenneth and Aidan two nights to get back to Attila the Hyundai. It had been twenty years since Kenneth had hiked in the Brecons. Now the A470 had not been built, and it was not a park with marked trails, and there were a lot fewer built landmarks, but the ridges and valleys hadn’t changed.  By the second night, staying up on the ridge, Kenneth was able to get a radio connection to the Huyndai, so the part he had thought would be most difficult, finding a small, dark, lozenge hardly 12 feet long in acres of dark brush.

It had not been so difficult to explain who he was and when he had come from to Aidan as he had expected. Aidan had grown up in an age that still accepted magic, and he had heard tales of people disappearing through thing space or waking from long, unexplainable sleeps before. He knew enough about harmonics from harps and enough about waves from paddling in corracles that Ken’s theory didn’t seem outlandish at all. It was easier for Ken to explain it to him than it had been when he had suggested it to his modern friends before he had built his own craft. Besides, if Aidan had thought traveling with Owain Lawgoch might give him stories to tell, he was certain that traveling Kenneth Owens, a mage from the future with raven-black hair and ocean-blue eyes would give him stories unimaginable.

Kenneth’s Hyundai shared with the corracles of Aidan’s youth that it was sized for one occupant. The nights on the ridge, they had snuggled together for warmth amongst beds of leaves, far enough from any trail that they hoped to avoid discovery. Now that they had recovered Ken’s timeship, it seemed best to sleep in it. It had enough proximity sensors that it could do a far better job of detecting visitors than they. Ken did not expect everyone he might meet to be so accepting of his situation as Aidan had been. And if they were detected, he thought did not want to be separated from his only possible way to return home. That meant they they continued to sleep snuggling together, a circumstance neither of them found very troublesome.

What he might do if he were detected, Ken didn’t know. He somewhat regretted that the flying cars he had been promised in his childhood had not become common. His little Attila would not be the best escape vehicle in rough slate ridges around them.

36

Back in 2030--forward in 2030?--time seemed to move too slowly for the four folk who were trying to rediscover Kenneth. The hardware part of their project had been fairly simple. There were no components that were at all difficult for Marcus to requisition. Yanto had followed the work closely, even going up to Sheffield to check out the finished prototype, which Marcus’ colleagues at the Institute thought might have uses in space exploration. Min-seo had convinced her colleagues that India, though it was now a far more powerful manufacturing nation than Great Britain, might still be able to benefit from working with the folks at Sheffield. She had even suggested that Rafael Acosta of Panjiva,  in Brazil, might help them market ‘her’ project. She mentioned of course that she had met him at the Connectivity Conference in Dublin.

The software was more difficult. Here Rafael was very helpful. He was a data analysis wizard. With the new ‘shield’, which Marcus called Merlin, because Merlin had also been said to be a sort of time traveler, and which Min-seo called Jantar Mantar, after the ancient observatory in Jaipur, they thought that they could detect the sorts of waves that Kenneth had called time waves. Rafael was certain that he could isolate them. But, there was no data base for such waves to begin to let him isolate a wave that Kenneth might have surfed. He therefore suggested another trip to Glastonbury, this time with their new device. Marcus suggested the beginning of February, the ancient celtic time of Imbolc, another ‘thin time’.

17. Monuments for time travelers

33

The detectives went back to Ken’s little cottage, Home, and looked again at his notes about celtic disappearances and descriptions of ‘thin places’. They looked at the maps of ley lines that had been composed over the years, maps that had usually been considered pseudo-scientific rubbish.  But most scientists had thought that the atomic theory was rubbish between the time of Democritus and John Dalton, and it was not until J. J. Thompson that they really began to be taken seriously.  There were a lot of correspondences with places Ken had studied and the ley lines. One particularly ‘strong’ line was supposed to run northwest from Glastonbury towards Aberliefenni in Wales, where a band of Welsh warriors were supposed to be ‘sleeping’ in a slate mine. It seemed likely that this might be a good location for Kenneth’s route. If that were his route, however, tracking him would not be easy. There wasn’t any schedule of time travel departures on the net, and they didn’t expect to see any tracks.

Min thought that there might be tracks. If he had left from Glastonbury Tor on some sort of wave, there might have been, might still be, remnants of his wake. She thought her nano antennae might be able to detect it. It was not clear how they would know what it was, however,even if they saw.

So it was decided that the next part of their project would be to construct a wake detector. It would be a lot like the array printed on Kenneth’s Atilla, but it could probably be simpler. There was certainly no need for it to be attached to a vehicle. Marcus envisioned it as a sort of shield-shaped panel,  light and stiff and looking like something that might have been carried at Camelot. He could work on it at Sheffield. Rafael would propose to his team at Panjiva that they would benefit from closer work with the Royce Institute at Sheffield. Min-seo probably needed to play her cards a little closer, since Kenstel expected that they would put her ideas into production somehow. So, it would be their last night in Pilton, at least for a while. Marcus went with Nora to the cottage, Home, and they looked at some of the photos on the Table before Marcus returned to the Apple Tree. Min-seo and Rafael opened the door between their rooms.

In the morning the Apple Tree’s Volvo deposited them at Platform 3 for the 07:27 train to Paddington. Rafael and Min-seo were a little disappointed that Marcus and Nora joined them in First Class for this trip, but they had decided the upgrade was worth it for breakfast, since it was such an early departure. Before the day was over, they would all be back at their own homes, with that strange feeling one sometimes has after a trip that one has never left at all.


34

‘You can come with me,’ Ken told Aiden, ‘but only if you trust me. I am no wizard, but the full story of how I came to be here will be hard for you to believe. But first I need to get into the town and see if what Ieuan said is true. Owain and his men probably won’t look for me there for a while, and if it is true, I can get us out of here without them finding us, I think.’

‘I trust you’.

It was as Kenneth had expected. Owain had looked for him to go back the way they had come. They quickly decided that the wizard had taken the young bard as some sort of hostage, so they spread out along the rock and steep way they had come, moving slowly and finding nothing.

‘I think I can find all the information I need at a church. We must try not to be noticed. If we are, let me speak. I will, if you don’t mind, say you are my servant.’

No one paid them much attention. It was a Sunday.  There were not many people about doing business, and no one seemed to think it strange that they were heading towards church. What Owen was looking for wa indeed found on the wall of the porch of the church, where notices were placed. Much to Aidan’s surprise, St. John’s Priory was now the Brecon Parish Church. The announcements were in English, which Aidan couldn’t read, but they did tell Owen that it was indeed the year of our Lord 1704, the second year of the reign of Anne, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, There was, to Aidan’s delight, no mention of Wales. Was Wales independent once more?

‘We need to hide now,’ said Owen. I can get us back to where we met, but we need to travel at night. I have been here before, hiking as a boy.’

‘There’s not much moon. How can we see?’

Don’t worry. I have a light.’

And so Owen and Aiden headed into a bit of forest on a hill above the town until dark, when Owen showed Aiden a bit of the magic of the slab of glass he carried in his pocket.

Eventually, Owain and his company returned to the town, where they were generally thought to be mad. There were stories of a band of heroes led by an Owain Lawgoch who were supposed to be sleeping in a slate quarry further up the Dragon’s Back. who would awake to become King of the Britons. Now this madman claimed he was Owain. But the men were allowed to work, since they had no families to take them in, and gradually even they began to accept that their earlier lives had been a dream. Owain and Ieuan, however, continued to insist on their story, and spent the last years of their lives in prison for fighting. Ieuan was lucky he wasn’t hanged, because he had come close to killing a man who called him a lunatic.

16. Space time is hard for time travellers.

IV


31

Dinner at the Inn would have been very good if any of the four had been paying attention to the food. They were all a bit overwhelmed by what they had decided Ken had accomplished, or at least tried. But there were other distractions as well. They sat at a square table, men one side, women on the other. Min and Rafael, sitting opposite each other, kept finding their feet meeting. Blushing. Nora, sitting across from the boy she had hoped might be her son-in-law, kept thinking what a nice place The Apple Tree would be for a wedding reception. Now that boy--man--was obviously thinking worrisome  thoughts. As the desert cart was being brought to their table, he shared his thoughts.

‘It’s like Heisenberg, and I think it would make returning from a time journey very difficult.’

Nora did not like the sound of that. Her clearest memory of Heisenberg was that it had to be compensated for in Star Trek. ‘What does that mean?”

‘The problem is that “here” is not just moving through time, it is also moving through space. If the four of us could travel, say, three hundred years into the past, and stay for even a very short time and return, three hundred years into what would then be our future, this ‘here’ would have moved somewhere else. ‘Here’ relative to the ‘here’ we left might be just a few inches down the table, or it might be in the parking lot, or in Hereford, or somewhere off the earth.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Nora, who was beginning to think that she really would never see her son again.

‘It’s not that different from a railroad schedule, really. We bought tickets from London to Castle Cary, a distance of 170 kilometers. The schedule said that we would arrive in two hours and five minutes. But that arrival time was really just a probability. There are many variables that could affect the actual arrival time. We arrived a few minutes early Thursday. So, if we had bought a ticket, not for a destination in space but a destination in time, we would have had to leave the train between here and Taunton. Or, if there had been some major slowdown outside of London, we might only have gotten so far as Reading in two hours and five minutes.  And railroads have the advantage of tracks, which at least gives us an idea of where we might get let off. There don’t seem to be tracks in time travel.

‘What I’m saying is that the universe is very complex, and the calculations necessary to predict where or when someone traveling on Kenneth’s time waves are beyond the capabilities even of today’s quantum computers.’

‘So, it’s hopeless? Nora looked horrified.


‘No. Not hopeless. Just that I think it’s probably useless for us to wait around Ken’s garage for him and Atilla to return. They could easily return, if they do, in Brighton or  in a suburb of New Delhi. Maybe in the English Channel--which wouldn’t be too bad’, he added when he saw the horrified look on Nora Owens’ face, ‘because Atilla the Hyundai would certainly float, and we know it has great radios.’

‘I have an idea that might help.’ It was Rafael who spoke, who had been considering what Marcus was saying very carefully. ‘Everything you say is true. And there are even more complications, because waves interact with each other in all sorts of ways, bouncing and augmenting and cancelling. But we know quite a lot about wave travel, starting with mankind’s early ocean voyages. We have long known that there are recurring local patterns of waves, patterns we can use to travel. My ancestors traveled from Spain to the Americas using such knowledge. Kenneth Owens’ idea for detecting weak but time waves reminded me of a book I read long ago, a book I had forgotten until this evening. It was written by another Kenneth, whose last name I don’t remember right now, but it tells how Polynesian sailors find their way across vast expanses of the Pacific to tiny islands by feeling the waves and currents through the hulls of their dugout canoes.  The patterns remain stable for centuries, and they are recorded in songs that are taught to young sailors. The book is called ‘A Song for Satawal’. So, Kenneth got his inspiration from the songs of his ancestors, the songs his grandmother taught him. Maybe part of what those songs contain is information  about time travel. I have been doing a little reading about some of the celtic legends. Tell me what you know about leylines.’


16
Owain signaled for his men to gather closely. The town looked grand, indeed, but what town it might be, they had no idea. They were not expecting it. But they had expected nothing that had happened to them since they had wakened. It was decided that Ieuan Wyn would enter the town and find out what he could about where they were and what dangers they might expect. Kenneth moved a ways down the hill and crouched in some bushes to  try to get a better look at the town, as well. He didn’t quite recognize it, but it didn’t look so strange to him as it did to the others. And, of course, Aidan Prydudd listened for anything he might put into his story, but he stayed as close as he could to Kenneth.

It was not long before Ieuan returned, in a panic. ‘The town is Pengenffordd. Everything is crazy. I could hardly understand the people, and they thought I was crazy. They say Wales was defeated long ago.  And they say that a woman, Anne, is queen.’

‘How can we be in Powys?’ Every man had this or similar questions, none of them answerable by Ieuan, who was usually level headed, nor by Owain, who was usually in command of any situation. ‘Bewitched.’ There had been stories that the English had sent a sorcerer after Owain. That might explain the storm, and the mist, and their sleeping. That might explain the stranger. He was the sorcerer. ‘Where was he hiding?’

Aiden found Kenneth first, and told him that he must leave immediately. Owain thought he was a sorcerer. Ieuan thought the town was Pengenffordd, so they must be bewitched. And, Aiden insisted, he wanted to go with Kenneth, especially if he were a sorcerer.

15. Apple trees can have guests.

29

Yanto Owens may not have been worried about his son, but he was proud of him. It had taken him a while to recognize that Kenneth’s stubbornness was a gift from himself, and even longer to appreciate it. So, although he did not think that time travel had been Ken’s project, he was pretty sure that whatever it was, he would almost certainly complete it successfully.

While Nora was at the Paddington Starbucks, Yanto was in his shop, playing with simulations of potential valence interactions  of heavy metals. Some might call his shop a man cave, but Yanto always called it the shop. England was a nation of shopkeepers, not of cavemen. Like many such shops, it was full of parts of past projects and tools, old and new. Yanto, for instance, still had an antique 4K TV that he used as a monitor for most of his work. But it was connected to a new Chromebox about the size of an antique Altoids box. With it he could use virtually any sort of computer software he needed, probably running on hardware housed along some Norwegian fjord or a frozen Russian lake.

It had not taken people very long to realize what first they considered waste or litter was actually simply resources that were unavailable to them. Local entropy. But it took hardly more time for people to develop the tools to use that waste, just as bacteria had quickly developed that fed on the plastic in the oceans. Yanto was working on recovery of heavy metals that were scattered about as ‘waste’ in all sorts of places, from folks’ livers to last year’s computer. As he reviewed the properties of Thallium, he noticed some of the past projects gathering dust on the shelf behind his screen. One was Kenneth’s first 3-D printer. He had bought it as soon as the price of printers dropped to less than 1000 pounds. He had used to make models of Star Trek ships to sell to support his more serious projects. Another was a metal box that at first might seem to be a blue biscuit tin.

The blue box was a pc that Kenneth had built twenty years ago.  He had left it behind when he went up to university, replacing it with a normal laptop. Yanto had used it for a while, but he too had bought a replacement as computing power got cheaper and cheaper, so it went up on the shelf. Ken had wanted it to be as small as possible to house an Nvidia GTX 580. He had built his own motherboard for the brand new Core  i7, and Yanto had helped him make the case, which was the heatsink. The case got a little warm, but it kept the insides cool enough to avoid thermal throttling.  Kenneth would joke that it was cooler on the inside. It looked like a Tardis.

Yanto smiled. Perhaps his son had gone time traveling. Kenneth might be a real Time Lord.


30

The four detectives met early on Friday morning around Kenneth’s table. House provided everyone breakfast, and decided it needed to order more groceries if it were going to be having guests. Surprised to find had been on the same train the evening before, they were met at the station by The Apple Tree’s Volvo Estate, and enjoyed high tea at the Inn and outlined what they thought they might do to solve the mystery. Then Nora had taken an Uberdu to her son’s cottage and the others had gone to their rooms. Both Lin and Rafael had wanted to stay up with each other, but they both feigned jet lag and retired to their rooms, separated by a locked door. Marcus retired to his room with his Yogabook to review once again the schematics of all the little circuits he had printed on the surface of Kenneth’s Hyundai. None of them had slept well.

So they had gathered early at Kenneth’s cottage for breakfast and to pursue their outline. The trio who had stayed at the inn skipped its famous breakfast for breakfast prepared by the House.  House made each one’s choice, and decided it should order more groceries if it were to be having guests. Breakfast plates cleared away, they woke the Table to implement their plan.

First, they wanted to compare all the records of what Kenneth had done to the Hyundai with to the information Min-seo had provided him. What had he done that might be beyond what Marcus had printed or known. They wanted to know what sort of vehicle  it was in which Kenneth was traveling.

Then, they wanted to study all of Kenneth’s notes about his concepts of time travel, especially his interest in tales of ‘sleepers’--usually knights or monks who woke after years of being asleep, often in some cave. Was he planning on going forwards or backwards. Did he have a specific time and place as his destination? If he had tried to go to a specific place in the past, they might find evidence of his success in historical records. Or not. They wanted to know what sort of route had he planned to take.

Next, they wanted to compare and analyze all of the data to see if they might understand better just how Kenneth had done the deed. Because, after all,  he had done something. He had just disappeared. It was not easy to disappear in 2030, with everything and everyone connected. None of Nora’s or Marc’s social networks had told them that their friend Kenneth Owens was near, or had checked in, or had posted, or had commented. Because he had left his Table open, they could see that he had not withdrawn any funds just before Halloween, nor were there any unusual withdrawals in the weeks before. He had not planned on taking holiday funds with him, and he had left his bankcard behind. It was obvious that Kenneth had thought he was going time-traveling. Had he? Was that possible? And if Kenneth were not somewhen else, where else was he?

Because of the reviews of their correspondence and notes done before, it was quickly obvious that nothing had been done with the actual antennae on the Hyundai beyond what Min-seo had theorized. Marcus had managed to build it, and Rafael was wondering whether, after the weekend were over, if he could get Rutchsman to work for Panjiva. Certainly his company needed to strengthen their ties to Sheffield. Kenneth’s breakthrough, if he had really made it and was not just craftily hiding out, either dead or alive, somewhere in a crevice of Snowdonia, had been in software. He had further developed some nearly-forgotten work on optical analysis at the University of California and the work done by the LSST to find a way to identify what the thought of as time waves in ‘real time’--an odd concept when one thinks of it. He had relied on his Nvidia Plank One to show his waves graphically. He had taken his graphics card with him (those things are expensive, and he had wanted to be able to use it whenever he landed. He would be able to understand when he was even if he couldn’t get back to when when he had left.) But Marcus was able to use an Nvidia cloud service to see how it might work. Kenneth was traveling, if that was what he was doing, in a cross between an extremely-broad band spectroscope and a surfboard. Rafael laughed. He had been a fan of Norrin Rad as a kid.

The route Kenneth had expected to take was quickly obvious, and no surprise. He had taken seriously the stories of thin places and sleepers and crossing between worlds that were so common in Celtic tales. It seemed that Glastonbury might be a sort of station, a node, for the roads that led to other times and worlds, a sort of stone and iron age Paddington Station. Following that metaphor, however, they had no way of knowing whether Ken might be on a Great Western Railway route to Penzance or Pembroke or a local train to a suburb or off to Heathrow to transfer to some destination very far away indeed. Still, it did seem that Kenneth was not planning to go where no man had gone before, but to retrace the routes of his ancestors.

But was it possible? They all wanted to think it was, to verify Min’s theories and to suggest further, probably commercial applications, but also, and most importantly, especially to Nora and Marcus, to be able to believe that Ken was still (if that were the right word for someone in the past or future) alive, that he was someone who might return to them or  whom they could follow. The rub was that to test his thesis, now their shared thesis, that time travel was possible and that Kenneth Owens had made a device to allow it, they would have to repeat it. Repeatability is the essence of scientific discovery. Repeating it, if they could achieve it without sharing their--Ken’s--find to the world prematurely, would not be easy.

They decided that it was time to try the food at The Apple Tree Inn.  A bit of more relaxed time might let them imagine better how to repeat the conquest that seemed to have been made with Atilla the Hyundai. Besides, when House ordered food, the cost came out of Kenneth’s account. They didn’t know whether, somehow, he might need it to return. So they asked House to call an Uberdu, and Nora called Yanto.

Yanto answered immediately. ‘You’re right,’ he said, without waiting for Nora to speak. ‘Our crazy boy’s a real Time Lord. He’ll probably get a Nobel Prize after all.’

14. Apples blossom, but they also fall.

27

Owain ordered his men and Kenneth the Strange to stay close together. He didn’t want them to get lost again. None of them knew what dangers might be just beyond a clump of trees or rock. He and Ieuan discussed the situation, and decided that if they followed the river upstream, they might come to the ridge dividing it from the flow of the Sevre, and the could once again make progress towards the sea. So, as they fell into a line of twos and threes, Aidan-who-would-be-Bard fell in beside Kenneth the Strange.

‘Dia duit.’ Aidan broke the silence.

‘Dia is Muire duit,’ replied Kenneth, hoping that he might find out more about where and when they were from this beautiful fair haired lad, whom he had noticed seemed to catch every conversation around him. ‘You look a bit young to be a warrior, if you don’t mind my saying. How did you come to join Owain in his efforts?’

‘So, you’ve heard of Owain Lawgoch? I was hoping to tell his story and make my own name as a bard. Perhaps I am too late.’

‘Not at all. I have heard of Owain, but there are only rumours, and they don’t begin to match. Besides, I try to be something of a chronicler myself, and understand the workings of the world. So, how long have you been following Owain?’

‘Three years. I grew up in Ferns, where it seems every boy is named Aidan. But when I was fifteen, I went off looking for Owain, and caught up with him in the winter of the Gugler War. So far, I must admit, the heroic life has been more full of strife and misfortune than I had expected. Still, strife and misfortune can be an important part in a good story. And you, Stranger, how did you come to our journey?’

‘That’s a long story, but I can try to tell you a short version.’ And one that won’t be entirely unbelievable, thought Kenneth.  ‘I was born in London, where my father is a  . . . smith, but I spent my summers with my grandparents In Whitby, where my grandmother told me the tales of Taliesin and the other bards. I moved to Sheffield when I was old enough to leave home, and I saved enough to have a tiny cottage near Glastonbury where I could pursue my own studies. I was interested in traveling, so I set forth, not knowing just where I would go. My path crossed yours and here I am.’

‘You must have saved a lot, it seems. Your clothes are like none i’ve ever seen. You wear a torque like no smith’s son I’ve know ever had, but it’s not any metal I know, either. And, if I may be a bit bold, what is that slab of glass you take out and look at when you think no one is looking? Please don’t think I’m prying, but a bard needs to see and know things.’

‘Then you are an excellent bard, I expect. Sheffield is a great place for a smith’s son to learn more about metals and how they work. I found some ways to make knives and other tools that work well and cost less. So, I was well paid. But I spent almost nothing on what most people think of as wealth. I have put everything I have into this trip, so I dressed very carefully. I didn’t know what sort of weather I would find. Since you survived the Gugler War, you know a bit about weather. And this glass slab,’ taking it from his pocket without looking at it, ‘is my most prized possession, although most would find it useless. There are many wonderful secrets to making things of glass.’

As Aidan took the glass, Kenneth’s phone, their hands touched slightly. And Kenneth, not wanting to look at his phone and waken it, looked into Aidan’s eyes instead.

‘Stop’, Owain said quietly but firmly. ‘There’s a village just ahead.’


28

Nearing the village of Castle Cary, the green Great Western train carried two sets of travelers on rather different trips, even though they all had the same reason for the trip. In a First Class coach, Min-seo and Rafael, deep in conversation, were finding their interest in each other deepening with each mile. In Standard Class, deep in silence, Nora and Marcus were pondering what they expected might prove to be their losses. Nora had admired the stubbornness of her only child, but she had often warned him that it would ‘be the death of him’. Now she feared it had been.  As the train had left Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s great rail shed, Marcus had averted his worry by thinking about the great advances in travel that had happened in the nearly two centuries since the station had been finished. He was a fan of technological history, especially of the history of transportation, his excuse for keeping an old oil-burning Mazda. And it seemed very possible that his very good friend Kenneth Owens had made something as amazing as Brunel’s shed, as amazing as the original Great Western Railway itself, which was even closer to two hundred years old, even if it had a somewhat discontinuous history. But the his thoughts turned to that discontinuity, and to the deaths that accompanied the early years of the road. And he realized that he still thought of Kenneth as more than his very good friend, and that it was very likely that he would not see him again, and that their relationship would go no further.

13. What might grow under an apple tree?

25

Two ABB 977’s landed at Gatwick within ten minutes of each other, one in Emirates livery having carried Min-seo Lee from New Delhi, the other sporting BA colours having carried Rafael Acosta from Rio. Both passengers took a ride on the Reading. And so it was that the two scientists found themselves together again, just a week after parting, and with three hours to prepare notes before their next conference. They observed all the appropriate formalities, of course, but they were soon discussing their childhoods and school years rather than antenna theory and manufacturing techniques. Both had been bored, mediocre students in their early years, their brilliance being recognized only when they had begun to study geometry and calculus. Rafael had liked to build things. Min-seo had liked to take things apart. Both had appreciated anime, not just the most famous such as Miyazaki, who had been standard fare of their bedtime videos, or Makoto Shinkai and his blockbusters, but more exploratory and scattered works like those that had come out of Masaali Yuasa’s Science Suru Studio. They had both been intrigued by the description of the future in Mobile Army Riot Police and happy that future, a time in which they now lived, had not happened.

Their conversation wandered to how unlike their lives had been so far to anything that anyone had predicted when they were in school. Although they were barely into their thirties, they had witnessed changes greater than any previous generation, and their own work was contributing to the changes. When Acosta had first begun to be interested in manufacturing, factories were still huge buildings often covering acres under one roof. Now nearly anyone could manufacture anything in one’s garage if the garage were big enough to hold what was being manufactured. When Lee had started work at Kenstel, the big news in antennae really were big antennae. Very large arrays. It had been thought that quantum computers would allow telescopes as large as planets. Now it seemed that one of the most sophisticated antenna yet had indeed been built in a garage in Pilton.


26

Yanto Owens did not share his wife’s tendency to worry. He would say, if pressed, that neither did he share his wife’s tendency to meddle. He thought Nora’s trips to Pilton with Marcus Rutschman were as much about match-making as anything. There were many reasons Kenneth might have missed calling her one Sunday, and he could have simply have turned off all of his connections to the outside world. Maybe he was just on a hike in Snowdonia, or off on some country lane exploring the myths of sleeping heroes with which his grandmother had filled his head. He certainly did not accept her claim that he had gone off on some sort of time-travel. At any rate, he declined the invitation to join her as she went to meet Marcus at Paddington for the train west. He preferred to tinkering in his shop to vacations at Glastonbury, with all its New Age Arthurians.

And so it was that Nora and Marcus met at one of the Paddington Starbucks as they waited to board the Great Western. Marcus was glad for a bit of extra brekkers. He had left Sheffield at the ungodly hour of 5:00 am. He had driven down before, and met Nora at Castle Cary. But his car was a very antique Mazda Miata, not allowed in London with its antique gasoline engine, and since there would be four of them on this trip, he had decided to take the train and rent a car in Somerset. He was grateful at least that there was now a direct East Midland through schedule. For years there had been a long wait in Derby. One of the disadvantages of having been among the first countries to have rail travel was that Britain had a lot of dowager routes and stations that made travel a bit quaint and slow.

Nora was anxious to hear if he had made any progress in understanding just how the bits of gold and quartz he had printed on the roof of Kenneth’s Hyundai might work.  Marcus explained that the idea was that they would resonate with a very wide range of wavelengths, and that the analyzing software Kenneth had installed in the car would allow him to determine if any met the criteria he expected for time waves. A big problem being that no one really knew if there were time waves. A bigger problem being that if there were time waves, it was very uncertain that anyone could ‘surf’ them to travel in time. The biggest problem being that all of the evidence suggested that Kenneth might have solved the first two problems and now was off somewhere in time. The so far unspoken problem was whether there were two-way tickets for time travel. They had round-trip tickets to Castle Cary. Kenneth may have found a ticket ride, but Marcus had no way to tell what might be the destination.

12. We're Getting Enough Slices of Apple for a Pie

23

And so it was that Kenneth Owen found himself with the band of followers of an enemy of the kings of 14th century France and England, Owain Lawgoch, traipsing through what Owain thought to be Poitou as he tried to find the River Sevre. As they clambered down the slope towards what they thought would surely be the stream, Iauen Wyn suggested that they must have wandered much farther in the storm the night before than they had realized. The ground was too hard and stoney, the slopes too steep, for Poitou. Nothing looked right. And yet the landscape looked vaguely familiar, but not right, not real, not quite any place anyone could remember.

After about an hour and a half, they came to the river.  It, too, was wrong. Terribly wrong. It was not a placid stream rolling through farm lands, something they should by now have realized they were not in as they wandered down rocky hills, but a feisty mountain river. And, it ran the wrong way, not leading them northwest towards the coast they sought but southwest towards who knew where. Still, it was a very cloudy day, the sun not really visible. Perhaps, Iauen suggested hopefully, they were just disoriented, that they hadn’t know the countryside as well as they had thought, that a clearer view of the sky might help them orient themselves.

24

Kenneth Owens’ tiny cottage barely had room for the four detectives to sit around the Table, although it kept them well-supplied with food and drink on demand. Sleeping had to happen elsewhere. There were of course plenty of inns nearby, so Marcus and Rafael and MIn-seo took rooms for the weekend at The Apple Tree, in Glastonbury. It was as different from Kenneth’s modern prefab cottage as anything could be,having been there forever, under a variety of names. It was pricier than some, but it was close to the Tor where Kenneth had last seemed to be. It had been Rafael Acosta’s idea. He did not mention that he thought it would be romantic when he suggested it, only that he thought was in a convenient location and that he liked the allusion to Avalon.


Of course, Kenneth had a phone with a magnetometer in his pocket, a bit of tech that didn’t need wireless connectivity, and he slipped it out, furtively. Indeed the river they had found ran southwest. He quickly repocketed his modern magic, thinking no one had seen him. But Aidan Prydudd had seen. Indeed, Aidan had been watching Kenneth carefully all the while. He was quite intrigued by this stranger, who seemed strange in more ways than usual. And intriguing in more ways than usual.

11. Another healthy Serving of Einstein's Apple

21

Ken was both excited and worried by Owain’s proposal to travel together. Owain was one of the legendary sleepers of Celtic mythology that his grandmother had told him about. His was one of the legends that had made him think of the possibility of slipping into another time, long before he had thought he might be able to do it himself. It was a perfect opportunity to see if there was anything to his ideas. But he was also worried to leave Atilla behind. It was fairly out of sight, amidst a brushy thicket, but it  could easily be found by some rabbit or deer hunter. What they might make of such a device he had no idea. Would they burn it as witchcraft? And even though he could find it again with it homing signal and it could come to him if he were within line-of-sight with it, hills and valleys would block any attempt he might make to activate it, and he doubted if they were anywhere/anytime covered by Google Maps.

Nevertheless, he accepted Owain’s invitation. ‘Where are you headed?’

‘Northwest to the coast, to go back to Britain to claim what is mine.’

Owain’s response found Kenneth completely off guard. He had assumed that he was near Glastonbury, perhaps in Kings Castle Woods, or maybe around Gypsy Lane, where there were a lot of thickens like the one where Atilla had lodged. He had thought Owen might be bound for Abergwyngregyn or London. He had not thought that they might be east of the Channel. But, he realized, he really had very little idea of where or even when they were.  Indeed he might be in a dangerous time for a Welshman. What better Welshman with whom to face danger than the Red Hand?


22

Min-seo was excited by Marcus’ suggestion that her theories had, or might have, worked. She asked him to send her the files that had to do with the fabrication. And, although she realized that they could easily have worked together online, she suggested that they meet in person, and that they invite Rafael Acosta as well. The only question, beyond when, was where. It did not seem a good idea for the press to have Kenneth’s potential time travel story to sensationalize. Besides, Min realized, there might be intellectual property rights issues she had not begun to think about when she had assumed Kenneth’s work was just theoretical. So it was agreed that they would meet in Glastonbury for a ‘tourist weekend’ the following Friday, and that they would invite Rafael Acosta to join them.

Not surprisingly Acosta was happy for the invitation.

An Apology for my Life: I Ain't out to Save the World

This little essay is a response to a comment a friend of mine made on Facebook, in which she said, 'Dale, who stirred it up down the commentary line, is well into his 70's and has the smallest carbon footprint of anyone I know. He is a constant reminder to me that these are small steps towards a bigger change in lifestyle, one that the millennial generation is experiencing.'

The commentary line had been about saving the world by not using Big Oil, about bicycling or walking as an alternative to driving cars, because cars are supposed to be causing global warming and the end of the world as we know it, and Big Oil leads to beheadings in the Middle East. I had pointed out that beheadings are an integral part of the culture and religion of the Middle East long before British Petroleum (See, for example, the Book of Judith), and that I didn't expect the world would end because of us, now matter how much hubris we had, but that cars would soon no longer need us and they might kill us off as unnecessary clutter.

What I want to make very clear is that I don't walk or ride a bicycle or live in a very small house because I want to save the world. I do those things because I enjoy having  few chores and because I like to experience the world. I have just about finished the construction of a tiny house--I still want to paint the now-white front door red--and I no longer have a kitchen. Cooking means one has more dishes to wash and general splatter to clean up.

I am well into my seventies, and the changes in my lifestyle since I had a Chrysler mini-van and a  Jeep Wagoneer and a golden retriever and a big tudor house where I hosted sit down dinner parties for thirty-two people have mostly been in small steps, and with each step I have found I enjoyed life more. I have never read Tom Robbins, but I find that the statement attributed to him, 'Life is too precious to waste on a career', applies to a lot of things besides careers. It's too precious to waste on car payments and spending hours each day in traffic jams, it's too precious to waste on mortgage payments, or on seeking the kind of approval that is most often the real goal of giving large parties. (Although I did for many years give very simple parties, just soup and bread and coffee, because I like to see what happens when groups of assorted people converse. Now I can see that happening on Twitter, without having to wash all those soup bowls.)

I'm not even convinced that the activities of us folk is the major cause of global warming, which has been going on since the last ice age. Certainly the world is getting warmer, but the global climate is a very complex system. One of the major motives for developing modern computers was an effort, starring John von Neumann, to make accurate weather predictions for the allied forces in World War II. The effort pretty much failed, at least in von Neumann's lifetime. I know, of course, that the majority of the world's climatologists agree that humans are the cause, but humans are a species prone to hubris, and the majority of the physicists a century ago thought Einstein was wrong. I have found Freeman Dyson's suspicions about our abilities to understand the complexities of climate more convincing than the folks who want to monetize our fears. I am well into my seventies, and I remember when the world was being destroyed by acid rain and when it was being destroyed by over population.

But if I did think that driving and other human activities were destroying the future viability of human life on this planet, and that human life on this planet was worth preserving, I would park my car and turn off my air-conditioner and watch Altered Carbon on my phone instead of my big-screen LG. And I would not  blame Big Oil for catering to my addictions. (I have found fewer more clashing ironies than the bumper stickers that flourished after the grounding of the Exxon Valdez saying 'Boycott Exxon', as if gasoline could be delivered by fairy moon dust and that ships had not had a very long history of wrecking.

Of course, heroic saviours have long been popular in the stories we tell ourselves, whether Jesus in a religion , or Arthur in romances, or Lucy in the Wardrobe, or Link in Hyrule or Neo in the Matrix. Joseph Campbell became rich and famous describing the Hero's Journey. I think it is probably important that we be the heroes/heroines/ of our own journeys. But when we think we are the heroes of every journey, that we are saving the world, well, I think I will skip the examples like Boney or American politics and just remember wise Puck in Midsummer's Night Dream. What fools we mortals be.

Slice the tenth

19

Owain had wakened with his men, feeling dazed and confused, and not a little hungover, although he had not drunk anything stronger than water on the last day he remembered. Looking around in the mist, he saw only his loyal Cymraeg companions. None of the Aragonese mercenaries were to be seen. But there was another man emerging from the mists, a stranger. Owain studied him carefully.

The stranger was dressed much as a peasant, but he was wearing very new and expensive-looking clothes. His neck was circled by a strange torque that also looked expensive but made of something besides normal metals. His hair was closely cropped. Perhaps he was on pilgrimage, perhaps as a penance.

‘Dia duit,’ said Owain to Kenneth. ‘Dia is Muire duit,’ responded Kenneth. The two men stood regarding one another warily. Neither one knew how confused the other was, nor did either one want to reveal too much. Owain felt as if he had slept for years, or at least he had dreamed of years passing, and Kenneth knew only that he was in some other time than he had left. He thought he should avoid the alien cliche of ‘take me to your leader’, but he wasn’t quite sure how to elicit the information he wanted so badly.

Again, Owain broke the silence between them. ‘A fine day for travel, it seems. Have you far to go?’

‘I am a Glastonbury pilgrim’, said Kenneth, consciously choosing not to say if he were a pilgrim from or to Glastonbury.

Owain recognized none of he more common pilgrim badges. The stranger might be on his way to Santiago, but he wore no scallop shell. Perhaps the medallion hanging on his chest might contain a relic or image of some saint. ‘So, is it to Campostella that you are headed?’

‘Not really. I have saved for a long time to be able to wander just to go where I might go and to see what I might see. This morning my trip has brought me to you. I am Kenneth ap Yanto ap Owain’

‘And I am Owain ap Thomas ap Rhodri. These are dangerous times to be a Welshman. Perhaps we should travel together.’

20

When Marcus opened his files of recent correspondence with Kenneth on the Table, it woke to reveal many other open tabs. Kenneth had chosen not to close those files before he left. If he got back soon, or if he failed to leave, there would be no need to have them hidden. And if he didn’t get back, soon or ever, he was sure that at least his mother and perhaps Marcus would come to investigate. There was no need to hide his project when it would be too late for them to try to dissuade him, and he didn’t want anyone to think there had been any foul play. It didn’t take long for Marcus to surmise what the project was.

Min-seo Lee had just started eating a bit of dinner in her kitchen in Chandigargh when she was surprised by a Duo call from Marcus Rutschman. She had been at the Kenstal labs in Kunli most of the day, talking with production production engineers about possible ways to manufacture her next concept micro-antennae. She was sure her theories about resonance were correct, but putting them into materials presented a lot of problems, and the Kenstal engineers weren’t sure they could be overcome. She was happy, she admitted to herself, to have an excuse to get back in touch with Rafael from the Connectivity Conference. His company specialized in manufacturing solutions.

Marcus Rutschman was well enough known that she accepted his call, even though she would usually have just let a bot reply for her, offering to save any message for later. Besides, she was familiar with his work in nano-printing, and she had taken several of his pubs with her to show to the engineers in Kunli.

‘Please forgive me calling with no notice, Miss Lee, but I have a sort of  potentially emergency mystery here in England, and you may have the clues I need to solve it.’

‘Please forgive me if I eat while we talk. I have had a long day at the lab, and oddly enough, your work came up then, so this may be a helpful call for both of us. What’s your mystery?’

I am at Kenneth Owen’s house. The woman here with me is his mother. Kenneth seems to have disappeared. He  had no presence, physical or virtual, since last Halloween at about midnight.  He left a lot of files open here, and a lot of them involve you and your work on resonance to allow small antennae detect very large waves.’

‘Ah. Yes. We had many conversations about that project of his. I shared my theoretical data, but I have not been able to make the antennae. I never quite understood what particular sorts of waves he was trying to detect.’

‘I think I made the antennae for him. And it seems he was looking for time waves. He thought he could travel on them.’